{"id":2117,"date":"2009-02-26T23:48:26","date_gmt":"2009-02-26T23:48:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jcm.org.uk\/blog\/?p=2117"},"modified":"2009-02-26T23:48:26","modified_gmt":"2009-02-26T23:48:26","slug":"a-brief-explanation-of-absence-and-restatement-of-principles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2009\/02\/a-brief-explanation-of-absence-and-restatement-of-principles\/","title":{"rendered":"A brief explanation of absence and (re)statement of principles"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve come to a conclusion over the last couple of weeks. It’s something I’ve known for a while, but never quite expressed so succinctly as I’m about to:<\/p>\n

I’m interested in politics, but I don’t CARE about politics.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Unlike most political bloggers (at least, it seems like this much of the time), politics is not my life. There are countless things that I’m more interested in and that I actually care about. Film, art, literature, history, beer, whisky. I could have started a blog on any of these, but I happened to pick EU politics because it would present a challenge. An academic challenge.<\/p>\n

Yes, I’ve had political jobs in both Westminster and Brussels. Yes, I think the EU is more good than bad, and that European political\/economic integration is a nice idea.<\/p>\n

But if the EU were to end tomorrow, would I care? No.<\/p>\n

If I were to be allowed no more beer, whisky, history books or films from tomorrow, however? Damn straight – I’d be distraught.<\/p>\n

The longer, rather more coherently-argued version of this summary of my political outlook, for those who missed it a couple of years back, can be found here<\/a>. It all still applies (bar parts of point 8, written before the current recession), and it remains the most coherent statement of my political outlook I’ve come up with. If you haven’t, I’d urge you to have a read.<\/p>\n

And no, this isn’t an “I’m quitting blogging” post, in case you were wondering – I’ve done several of those before. It’s just that this blog’s approaching its 6th anniversary, and I’m starting to think about priorities and possible changes of direction again.<\/p>\n

With so many new EU blogs recently arisen, the need for me to comment on everything (not that I ever did) is diminishing rapidly – if there was ever a need in the first place. With the EU entering a pre-election period in which party politics is set to dominate (something in which I have no interest), the question is where to direct my limited time, effort and interest to put it to its best use.<\/p>\n

Suggestions welcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve come to a conclusion over the last couple of weeks. It’s something I’ve known for a while, but never quite expressed so succinctly as I’m about to: I’m interested in politics, but I don’t CARE about politics. Unlike most … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nosemonkey-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2117"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2118,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2117\/revisions\/2118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}