On June 29, this blog will be one year old. During the election campaign, I experienced quite a bit of traffic as the Rosie vs Jonathan battle heated up but with the elections over and everyone fed up of politics, those readers have gone and the number of repeat visits – mostly I suspect from Lib Dem activists checking what I had written – reduced.

During the next 10 days, I will be busy preparing to get married and am going to take that time away from the blog to think about how to make it better for readers in future. I want to move it away from being nominally a Horsell blog because there wouldn’t really be enough to write about on a daily basis and now Horsell has The Resident blog, I’d rather contribute to the debate on that site that try to match it here. So a change in name is probably in the offing, which I know is terribly confusing but it’ll hurt me more!

I’d still like to be able to give a view of what’s going on in the Woking democratic process from the perspective I get working quite closely with the Conservative group and association. I think that’s something you probably can’t get elsewhere and could be useful (but not too useful, obviously!). I’d also like to be able to talk, within obvious boundaries, about my experiences as a magistrate because again, that’s something that isn’t necessarily available elsewhere.

As I go through my CIPR course (I got a distinction for my first assessment, by the way!) I’d also like to start talking more about Public Relations as a influential factor in our society and politics and picking  up on instances of bad PR and where it has had a subtle effect. For example the Daily Mail carried a story today about a Piranha being caught in a Kent lake. Not at all tied in to the Piranha 3D movie, released in August, I’m sure.

What I don’t want this blog to become is a commentary on national politics, because there’s a load of other blogs that are better than me at that. You know my position, liberal Tory, finding out what someone thinks of every issue gets tedious unless they’ve anything unique to say. So those are some of the thoughts going round in my head. When I get back after my marital mini-break (we’re not honeymooning until September), they’ll be a redesign using the superb WordPress 3.0 and a re-launch along slightly different lines.

Sorry I’ve not updated the blog as regularly recently – there’s a week gap between the last update and this one. It’s just because I can’t now update at work and evenings have been busy with the meeting glut before Christmas. Normal service will be resumed either before or after the New Year, depending on how much there is to write about!

Talking of which, I won’t be blogging over the next couple of days -  I will be spending time with family and we have 14 here on Boxing Day to celebrate our first Christmas in Horsell.

I hope that you have a tranquil and joyful Christmas, whatever you are doing and however you like to celebrate.

Regards, Simon