Life = hectic.

∴

Blogging = Light.

No doubt you will be honoured with some thoughts from my eclectic and highly disorganised mind in the not too distant future, though.

A couple of house-keeping rules -

1. If you want a link here on the Strangeness, e-mail me your website/blog address and I will take a look. Bear in mind, though, that it will take more than just wanting a link to make me give you one. Being an interesting site that is generally relevant to the content of this blog would be a good way to start.

2. If you do insist on dumping a link in the comments section, please make sure that it relates to what the post is about. If it doesn't, chances are I will delete your comment without warning. I'm not here to promote your blog/site.

That is all. As you were.

Obligatory Admin Post

Ooo, a post about blogging admin. This'll be a humdinger of a read.

Couple of points are worth making, though. I do have an e-mail address for this blog (thenamelesst[at]yahoo[dot]co[dot]uk) and I do check it... every now and again. So feel free to e-mail me, but don't think that I'm ignoring you necessarily if you don't get an answer straight away. And if you need an urgent response on anything (although Christ knows why you would) then best to leave a comment on here or on Twatter telling me that I've got mail.

The second point is that there is no point whatsoever in sending that e-mail address LinkedIn invitations. I have a LinkedIn profile, my blogging avatar doesn't. That's a level of interweb weirdness that even I'm not happy embracing.

That is all. Normal Service will be resumed (which these days seems to consist of despairing of politics and speculating about Doctor Who).

Blogging may be a little light...

...As the Nameless Libertarian is moving house. And, in fact, cities.

Yep, after half a decade, I'm heading from London to Nottingham. I doubt that will much change the output of this blog that much - I've heard of other bloggers relocating across the globe and it doesn't seem to have had an effect - other than meaning that posting will be erratic whilst my life is consumed by packing and unpacking stuff and trying to get a decent internet connection. 

Name Change

So, any eagle-eyed readers of this blog will note a slight change to your humble author's title. After a couple of years of being The Nameless One - a name I never liked as it reminds me of a monster in a Sylvester McCoy era Doctor Who adventure - I'm changing my title to The Nameless Libertarian. On the grounds that, y'know, I am a Libertarian. Also because I used to (before the Cameron era in the Tory party meant that I despaired of that party actually being useful in anyway, shape or form ever again) be The Nameless Tory. So it is more natural that I should be The Nameless Libertarian - since it ties in with both my ideological beliefs and the name of the party I support - than the pretentious The Nameless One.

Plus, on those rare occasions when someone links to this blog, they'll now be using the word Libertarian whenever they use my blogging alias. Which means that word - which so few people are aware of and even fewer are actually aware of what it means - will be projected just that little bit further. And maybe, just maybe, someone will read the word, wonder what it means, and do some research. And then realise that the Libertarian ideology is actually the only way forward for anyone who does not support the ever growing malignant cancer that is the government in this country...

Template Changes

I've changed my template back to the one I was using prior to Christmas. Couple of reasons for this:

1. You couldn't read the new template on some computers. Seriously, it looked fucking crap. And unreadable. And that was the template, as well as the content.

2. The colour scheme, whilst initially easy on the eye, quickly began to remind me of the kind of colours one might associate with a child's spew. If that child had been eating toxic crayons.

Rest assured, the changes to the template will not change the content of this blog. The posts will remain intermittent at best, and filled with half formed political rantings, bad puns and stupidly obvious observations. After all, what else is a blog for?

The more perceptive of my 5 or 6 regular readers will have noticed a change to the template of this blog. Haven't done it for any particular reason (in fact I quite liked the previous template) other than boredom.

At some point I will get round to updating the sidebar. For the moment, I can't really be arsed.

Rest assured, the changes won't alter the poor standards of commentary and writing that you can expect from this blog.

A Little Bit of Admin

I have taken the opportunity of a crushingly slow day at work to do some admin tasks on this blog. Mainly updating the sidebar with some new links both to other blogs, and to parts of the Dead Tree Press. I have also (hopefully) fixed the link to Trixy's blog.

If I haven't included you on my sidebar and, for reasons that defy understanding, you feel a need to be included then drop me a line on my namelesst e-mail address. But I will keep this post short and sweet, because any admin post is, by very definition, deathly dull.

Admin

Or the really boring post that no-one reads.

Blogging has been light of late for a couple of reasons - partly because over the past week I have only been home to sleep (and over the weekend not even for that - *ahem*) and partly (and much more concerning for the author) because I cannot access blogger at all times at work. So postings on The Appalling Strangeness may be a little haphazard morving forward, but rest assured there is still some bile that needs to surface...

Changes

No, not a post about David Bowie. But as the more observant amongst you will have noticed there have been one or two changes to The Appalling Strangeness. Mainly the template. If I am honest, I never really liked the last one. For some reason, it reminded me of wallpaper in dodgy pubs. When I first started this blog I wanted a distinctive template. Now I just want one I like. And with a couple of changes (assuming I ever read the book about HTML on my desk) I think I could like this template.

I have also added a couple of links to the sidebar. The Vented Spleen is an obvious but good choice - sweary, right of centre ranting. Brighton Regency Labour Party is a less obvious one, not least because I disagree with nearly everything Neil Harding says. But there are very few people making the case for NU Labour anymore (including ex-Labour leaders and the incumbent Party Chairperson) so I really think it is worth reading. And I tried to add Boriswatch, but the link would not work for love nor money.

And finally, you can now find an e-mail address on my blogger profile and on the blog itself. I appreciate that this will leave me wide open to endless spam about viagara (people, I am 27, I don't need it!) but hopefully it will also allow me to receive hectoring and offensive feedback via e-mail as well as in the comments section.

Enjoy!

Other Stuff...

...indirectly connected with The Appalling Strangeness:

The Moai has updated The Daily Mail Tendency with another excellent piece on the ignorance of the nation's favourite hate rag.

And I am now working on a non-political blog called Notes From A Drunken Evening with a user who is new to the blogosphere. The blog will pretty much do what it says on the tin - jabber on about the stupid, surreal and funny things that happen when two adults abdicate all responsibility for their behaviour and just get twatted on stupidly large amounts of alcohol.

Enjoy. Or not as the case may be.

The Daily Mail Tendency

Last Friday the Moai and I decided, over a few beers in a Canadian pub in Central London (no really, there is one, and I love it), to start a new project. The Daily Mail Tendency. To the Moai it sounds like the name to a politically aware punk band, for me it sounds more like a satrical BBC 2 show, probably along the lines of something produced by Armando Iannuci. But since we are neither punk rockers or TV producers, and because we really like the name, The Daily Mail Tendency will be something else. A blog dedicated to fisking bad journalism everywhere. And whilst it is not the only source of bad journalism in this country, the rabidly angry and often stupid Daily Mail is a good place to start.

Of course, it could go nowhere. But it could also be a lot of fun... Crappy journalism everywhere, bring it on!

Goin' Solo

Just as Paul Weller formed the Style Council, just as Paul McCartney formed Wings and just as Mick Jones formed Big Audio Dynamite, so the Nameless Tory has embarked on his own solo project.

For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about (and I think that probably covers most of the population) I have been an occasional contributor to the Moai's excellent Kalahari Lighthouse and have become a collaborator with him on the new, and hopefully equally excellent, UK Democratic Forum (that's UKDF for those who like abbreviations and aren't intimidated by Forums who sound like Irish terrorists organisations from the 1970's). Most of my sensible, coherent ideas will be on the UKDF. This blog will be more about my caustic observations on modern life than anything useful.

It is probably worth noting that I am neither Nameless nor a Tory. I have a name, and am also not a Tory. True, I voted Tory in 2005, and actively campaigned for this man against this one. But in 2001 I voted Labour, and was briefly a member of the Student Labour Party whilst at university. Basically I support any party has policies that make sense to me. If I had to define myself, it would be as a Democrat (a Lyndon Johnson style Democrat, rather than Hilary Clinton style neo-Republican). "The Nameless Tory" is a wry comment from the Moai about the fact that, compared to him, I am right wing. Don't be scared of my apparent support for the party of Margaret Thatcher...