Horrifically busy in the real world, hence the longest break in blogging on this site in more than six years. I am, however, still commenting away about the EU (among other things) in 140 characters or less on Twitter on a daily basis – that’s the best place to find me these days. You can get an RSS feed of my Twitter ramblings here – just be warned that it’s not all politics related, some of it’s personal, some of it’s very silly, and some of it’s very sweary.

Twitter has a wonderful ability to suddenly introduce you to new people – a 140 character limit meaning that you can read hundreds of different people’s opinions every day in a way that simply isn’t possible in long-form. If also means I’ve been coming across more ridiculous nonsense than I have in several years, as I keep getting alerted to stories and blog posts from sources I’d never normally come across by myself.

When these are EU-related, they’re normally incredibly familiar – the usual stories that get repeated year after year. Having, as I do, fairly extensive archives, I keep finding myself using old posts to rebut “new” stories – be it over the EU budget, the EU’s role in guaranteeing British freedom, the concept of an EU superstate. Along the way, I’ve got into arguments with anti-EU campaigners from the Taxpayers’ Alliance, the Bruges Group, OpenEurope and more.

It’s all great fun. A bit like blogging in the good old days, when I actually had time to read and comment on other blogs.

Having said that, I’m planning to start blogging again soon. I’m writing less and less in the day job these days (unless you count innumerable emails, Powerpoint presentations and planning documents), and am starting to get rusty.

There’s still a question of precisely what to write *about*, though. I’ve covered many of the broad EU issues – often several times. I have no time for party politics or the “personalities” of the Brussels bubble (something I’ve never been a part of anyway). I usually haven’t got the time – or expertise – for detailed policy analysis. And as entertaining as arguing with eurosceptics can be on Twitter, I prefer to keep the blog for considered argument and polite debate – turning the focus back to pointing out the flaws of eurosceptic arguments tends to attract the kind of responses I have no interest in dealing with.

And in any case, these days there are plenty of other EU bloggers to do that sort of thing – you can find them via Bloggingportal. (I remember when this here EUblogosphere were all fields – just me, EU Referendum (sadly increasingly shrill in its anti-EU vehemence these days), A Fistful of Euros, and a handful of others, now long since departed.)

So, back properly soon. Hopefully. At which point I’ll hopefully also find time to give this place a spring clean – some of the site’s code has broken, and a redesign is long overdue to make the text more readable. The only trouble is I’ve lost my FTP details, so can’t get in to change anything…