{"id":72126,"date":"2023-09-29T08:25:42","date_gmt":"2023-09-29T07:25:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=72126"},"modified":"2023-09-29T08:25:42","modified_gmt":"2023-09-29T07:25:42","slug":"the-blog-a-few-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2023\/09\/29\/the-blog-a-few-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"The blog: a few questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

A number of people commented, with consideration and concern, because I felt unable to post here on Wednesday this week, almost certainly because I had an adverse reaction to two vaccinations on Monday.<\/p>\n

Leave aside, for a moment, the good news that this shows that my immune system is working as it should, and let me focus on blogging instead.<\/p>\n

John Warren said:<\/p>\n

What are you doing, Richard? I didn\u2019t expect that comment to appear, perhaps for days. I couldn\u2019t do what you try to do. Take some rest. Go bird watching, if well enough. Take more time off. You will burn yourself out the way you are going.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Alan Peyton said:<\/p>\n

Irrespective of jabs etc\u2026..look at your workload & your work\/life balance\u2026the \u201clife\u201d bit needs addressing? \u2013 take nowt for granted\u2026reduce your blog output to say 3 or 4 times per week concentrated on getting your ideas into the political domain...<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Both viewpoints are interesting.<\/p>\n

John\u2019s is right. I have hardly taken a break since March. An invitation from a friend to go bird watching in the next week on the Norfolk coast and maybe some more local reserves arrived in my inbox almost simultaneously with my vaccination. I have decided to take a week off the day jobs. Trips out may fill my time instead. There will, for example, be no Taxing Wealth Report posts next week for this reason. Many of them take a lot of time to prepare. I will have a break from them, as I will also do from other work commitments.<\/p>\n

But then there are the current affairs posts. This blog may be unusual in mixing these items, and I am not worried about that. The truth is that these smaller posts are often written or dictated in a few minutes (hence the typos), and I enjoy writing them.<\/p>\n

These posts make me think about the day, what is happening, why that might be the case, and what, if anything, might be done about it. This is the almost perpetual narrative of my life. I explore that narrative in writing here. I find it hard not to do these posts because writing them lets me address an issue and then move on. It is almost a release to do them.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, is Alan Peyton right? Would I be better off posting on just one issue a day and push just a few themes somewhat harder?<\/p>\n

The readership data suggests not. For example, important as I think it is, the work on taxing wealth is not promoting a lot of additional traffic. It is much more likely that something else is better read on any day. That is normally the case for my policy-related posts. But should I ignore that and the fact that on the days when I post more items, I tend to have significantly higher traffic on the site, with the multiple postings appearing to cross-fertilise interest in others?<\/p>\n

I would value your opinions. So, some initial questions on the number of desirable blog posts. You can only pick one of these options:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t

How many posts a day are desirable on this blog?<\/strong><\/p>