To mark four years of blogging I’m holding an Ask me Anything.
Simply ask me a question on any topic you like by leaving it as a comment on this page and I will answer it shortly. Current affairs, books, politics, education, films, favourite vegetable1 - and I will do my best to answer insightfully, concisely or, failing that, entertainingly.
I’m also holding a Paid Subscription Sale. For the rest of this week, an annual paid subscription will be £25 - that’s over 25% off the normal annual price and 40% less than paying for monthly.
For that, in addition to access to future pay-walled posts, you get full access to all archived pay-walled posts, including why private schools lost the middle classes, how Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive is an allegory of Old Testament Israel and whether Mississippi is really richer than the UK.
In addition, if you have your own Substack with over 1000 subscribers and add me to your ‘recommendations’, I will give you a complimentary paid subscription.
Thank you, as always, for reading.
So, what happened in Year 4?
The blog has continued to grow, albeit at a slower rate. Compared to this time last year I have:
Just under 2300 subscribers (1250).
200,000 page views in the last 12 months (130,000).
18 other Substacks recommending me (13).
Subscribers in 59 countries worldwide (41).
On the slightly less positive side, I’ve only written 47 posts in the last 12 months (compared to 56), falling slightly below my target of blogging once a week on average - so I need to work a little bit harder to get that back up again.
It remains a Tier 3 blog, in my patented blog classification system,2 but much more firmly established within that Tier: a typical post now gets 2000-4000 views, with eight in the last 12 months getting over 5,000.3 I achieved a real breakthrough with the Forecasting contest, getting over 1000 entries, and am greatly looking forward to the results,4 and even managed to get a surprising number of people to enter a quiz about whether we should repeal Murphy’s Law.5
The other major development this year was going paid - something I’d long considered doing once I got to 2,000 subscribers. So far this has gone well, and I’m grateful to all those who’ve chosen to go paid, while also remaining committed to continuing to provide plenty of good free content for the wider readership. As always, I’m grateful to all subscribers, paid and unpaid.
Some of the most successful posts from the last year include:
Reeves in Zugzwang - a post which remains highly relevant to Healey’s decisions at the upcoming Budget.
Rage, rage against the growing of the debt - on abolishing real interest rates for Plan 2 Student Loans.
The Progressive Left has a Rule of Law Problem - how the broader progressive movement has tolerated, abetted and enabled a disregard for the rule of law when it does not fit their ‘values’.
Discover your right-wing archetype profile - a political personality-type quiz, geared around right-wing archetypes. (You can still take the quiz!)
Social Media Ban: Responses to 10 common objections - and six ways in which we could tackle broader social media harms.
On Rejection - on why behind every successful person lies a litany of failures (my most read of all time).
Once again, a tremendous thanks to all who read, subscribe, lurk, comment, recommend and share. And if you’re an avid reader, please do take the time to recommend this to a friend or share on social media - I rely on word of mouth for my audience.
Ask me Anything FAQs
What’s off limits?6
Not much. I won’t answer a question if:
It would breach a confidence that’s not mine to share;
It’s so taboo that just writing about it can get you in trouble;
It’s anything directly to do with my current job.
I’m happy to answer most personal questions, but there may be the odd one which I’ll skirt around.
Can I ask you about something you know nothing about?
Yes, but don’t be surprised if the answer is very short!
How long will each answer be?
I’m anticipating one to three paragraphs, but I reserve the right to vary this.
Can I ask more than one question?
Yes, but I won’t answer more than one question from any given person.
How do I ask my question?
Please write it as a comment below this post.
The potato.
Tier 0 (1 - 9): You have a blog! Well done! It’s read by your Mum, your brother and your best mate.
Tier 1 (10 - 99): Tribal bard. Your readership is in the tens, mainly people you know and see regularly, plus perhaps a few others.
Tier 2 (100 - 999): Small community. Your blog is read by hundreds of people, including many people you don’t know. You’ve broken out of your ‘personal contacts’ space. In the grand scheme of things though, it’s still pretty small.
Tier 3 (1,000 - 9,999): Large community. Thousands of people read your blog every week. You’re likely to be known and cited within a particular specialism, field or hobby, though probably not outside it.
Tier 4 (10,000 - 99,999): Global or national reach. Tens of thousands of people read your blog; it will be shared many times each week. It’s likely that some of those readers are influential, or speak of it to others. Yours is a name that other people may have heard of, in that if someone says, ‘I was reading X’s blog’ to a stranger, they might know of it.
Pay-walled posts understandably getting slightly less.
My determination to once again beat the 'wisdom of crowds’ being only one of the reasons I am currently hoping the AfD do not succeed in forming a government in Saxony-Anhalt.
Amongst other, more repealable, laws.
Ask me almost anything.