One Word

People have been asking me if the political side of my blogging might return one day. It's possible; but for now I am generally limiting myself to the weekly digest. What I needed to do was to cease political blogging first, to then provide space for signs pointing me toward the next phase of my life. I have had such occurrences before.

If so such sign is forthcoming within a reasonable time, I shall no doubt have a re-think then, probably a few weeks hence. It wasn't that strong a feeling at the time that something was about to happen, anyway.

In the meantime, I have had a request from one of those enquirers to sum up what I did during those five years or so in a single word. This initially proved difficult, as there were so many words that could have described at least an aspect or two of my efforts.

In the end, the word I settled on was forensic. It was that analytical, detailed and thorough approach I so often took that left no room for doubt or for my target (typically, though not only or always, Labour) to find a way to wriggle out of. Indeed, despite early attempts to do so, local Labour specifically – and known Labour trolls from further afield – found they had to give up as they were simply digging a deeper hole for themselves by persisting.

When such comments here dried up, they preferred to use their own platforms to try to combat what was in a few instances of my forensic blogging, but I'd often find that and comment there, keeping a copy of my comment in case it wasn't published so I could show (a) what I had written there and (b) that they had censored it out of existence, at least at its intended destination.

They found, after several such attempts, that this approach wasn't working to their benefit either, as I was able to counter just about anything and everything they tried on, so in more recent times they did the only thing they still could in order to avoid (or at least minimise) their self-harm: they ignored me, at least publicly.

Had I suddenly lost my relevance? No: behind the scenes they were following my writings even more avidly than ever. Even those local Labour folk I had never previously met gave the game away when I did meet them through give-away clues that either slipped out naturally or that I was able to eke out of them through carefully-worded conversation.

I have mentioned in the past how local Labour, especially on Medway Council, had for years been most afraid of me and a couple of other Conservatives then on the Council, so much so that they set their leading attack dog (technically an attack bitch, but that term is often misused nowadays) specifically onto me, to heckle, barrack and make snide comments about me in the council chamber.

It was the same individual and her live-in partner (then: they have since married) who tried bringing spurious complaints about me to the Standards Board for England and other out-of-the-chamber activities, and I have reason to believe that either they or someone else in local Labour also tried another nasty attack on me only this year – so they still feared and hated me even then.

My writings over the past half-decade hopefully helped people think things through more accurately for themselves, and in theory they should now be capable of doing so without assistance from me. Once you learn how to do something, and why, it stays with you, so I don't really need to keep banging the drum. Despite this, there have been a number of local (and national) issues that I could, I think, have made useful contributions to via this 'blog, and they have had to pass me by during these past several weeks.

I think the best way to look at the possibility of resuming a more active and regular political blogging régime than the weekly digests is to see what happens in my life during this month (i.e. July) and re-evaluate the situation toward the end of that period.

"Forensic John" might (or might not) then return in some form...