The chart below, click to enlarge, shows how many unique visitors I got throughout February. Google counts people only once during the period for this particular chart.
This chart says that in February 3,565 different people made a total of 5,044 visits and looked at 10,027 pages. That’s 174 visits per day up from 164 last month.
This morning your three councillors spent a couple of hours knocking on every door in Darwin Road. Once a month we try to get out and see what is going on in different streets in the ward. It was Darwin’s turn today. Most people were happy with the services they were receiving. They like the combined collection and are enthusiastic about the collection of plastics although there were some complaints that sometimes the crews were a bit picky about what plastic they took.
People often ask me how popular is my blog? My wife is foremost amongst these, no doubt wondering if I am using my time well. I now have some kind of answer thanks to Google analytics which I installed at the start of the year. The chart below, click to enlarge, shows how many unique visitors I got throughout January. Google counts people only once during the period for this particular chart.
This chart says that in January 3,765 different people made a total of 5,088 visits and looked at 9,371 pages. That’s 164 visits per day. Before I got carried away I had a look at the stats for the two most popular political blogs, Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale’s Diary, and they came in at about 250-300,000 visits per month.
Just a quick note to say have a great holiday. We are off to stay with my parents for a couple of nights.
I also need to apologise to everyone who has sent us a card and not had one in return – they were bought but baby Gwendolyn has not been inclined to allow her parents to write them. No doubt next year we will be doing that horrid family circular thing.
I don’t suppose there will be much to blog about until next year. Until then …
I haven’t had much time to keep my blog up to-date over the last few days. My daughter was born on Saturday night. Both mum and daughter are well so I am a lucky if somewhat tired man. It will no doubt take a few days for the blog to get too interesting again. Sorry.
I will be in a secret Tuscan hideaway for the next 10 days.
I have no intention of going anywhere near a PC in that time.
Blogging will be resumed on 23rd September.
Paul Bloomfield
Richard Ambler
Blavod
Anthony Ambler
I am off skiing in the morning for a few days so you won’t hear from me until Sunday.
I am hoping to ignore the news media for a few days and read some actual books when I am not skiing or partying.
Bye for now.
Our council chief exec, Darra Singh, is leading the Government’s Commission on Integration and Cohesion. They have produced an interim report today and the press attention has been on statements made about English language competence, see comments from the Independent, the Sun and the BBC. It is not surprising really as the Commission’s own press release was titled: “Not speaking English is the single biggest barrier to successful integration”. The Sun’s typically charmless take on this was: “Talk our lingo or stay out”.
In his speech today Darra said:
The third – and possibly the largest – barrier we have seen so far is not speaking English.
We asked people in our opinion polling what they thought the key barriers to being English were. Only 5 per cent said that they couldn’t see any barriers at all. We wondered for the others if one of those barriers might be people’s faith – that in some sense, you have to be Christian to be English. But only 4 per cent of people thought that was the case. So we looked at what people thought was the biggest barrier. And overwhelmingly, it was speaking English.
Now, I do think that the issue of language is potentially contentious. However, it is an issue that demands a public debate. 60 per cent of people thought that not speaking English was a barrier to making a real contribution to this country.
That finding has to influence all of our thinking from now on.
I am glad the issue has been raised but what were the first two points if English was the third? The first point is deprivation. The report is insightful in pointing out that deprivation is a “white” issue as well as an ethnic minority issue. Although the majority of immigrants live in deprived areas the majority of the deprived are white which leads to the second point. The Commission calls it “competition for shared resources”. This is the issue that BNP has been making its own, ie immigrants are getting your council houses, jobs, etc.
The Commission’s work so far seems pretty clear sighted. Darra is to be congratulated on his work to-date.
Darra was interviewed on the Radio Today programme so if you have the technology you can listen here.
I was bought up in Worthing and my parents still live there. Thankfully it is the kind of place where nothing much happens.
When young people, such as I was growing up, say that nothing ever happens around here they miss the fact that everyone is getting on with each other, enjoying life and exchanging the small kindnesses that make life good.
With the sea in front and the South Downs behind, Brighton just down the road for a night out and London within striking distance for high culture Worthing was a great place to grow up.
I hope that it was only a bored and ignorant teenager who defaced Worthing’s war memorial last night and that it was not something more sinister. Even if it was just stupity it has caused too much pain.
I nicked the photo, above right, from a BBC article.
Phil Taylor 