The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

Typepad Support has just supplied a full set of export files. For now the old site still works, but this link will break on September 30th. With archives in hand, I no longer need worry about the imminent demise of their servers. I respect their professionalism. If I had a month to find new work to replace not only my salary but (critically for Americans) my health insurance, I’m not sure I’d be so diligent. Thanks, guys.

It’s going to take a lot of work however to migrate the old content here. The text and images of all the posts are in different files. The image files alone are 20GB (compressed!) Work will be needed to match 19 years-worth, post-by-post. The first year and a half was on Blogger and is still available there. Please be patient. This labour of love may occupy a fair chunk of my remaining life!

This episode has made me think about what The Last Ditch means to me. I used to write here almost daily. However, since Twitter ended the golden age of blogs, it’s been just a few posts a year. Now that free-speech X has replaced left-totalitarian Twitter (thank you, Mr Musk) I post a fair amount there myself, but my response to the possible loss of this blog suggests it’s not an adequate replacement.

I was surprised how upset I was. Apart from sparing the late Mrs P the First and the ex Mrs P the Second a lot of in-person ranting about politics, it has allowed me over its two decades to light a small, flickering candle rather than just curse the darkness. One of the surprising benefits of becoming a Christian is that I can now trust God with all problems beyond my reach. In my decades of atheism I suffered from a feeling of personal responsibility for every problem in the world that I might conceivably have played a part in solving.

For example, I amused the late Mrs P the First greatly one day. I was not only horrified (as usual) by how far left the UK was drifting in our absence. I also worried about not accepting a long-ago invitation to join the Conservative Party’s candidates. I regretted not going into Parliament. My reasoning? Margaret Thatcher had had no worthy successor. The “wets” had retaken the Party and were making their usual soggy, unprincipled mess of everything. Maybe, just maybe, I could have been (or could have counselled) that successor and saved my country?

Bless her she didn’t mock my hubris. She pointed out, through tears of laughter, that the last thing any parliamentary party wanted was an independent and highly-opinionated MP. Such a person was difficult to manage, as successive law firm managing partners had noted over the years.

“You wouldn’t have taken kindly to the whip”, she observed “and the Whips would have taken very unkindly to you. You would have hated it and you’d be an angry backbencher at best.”

No-one but my Mum ever knew me better and I saw that she was right. I’d also have lost the right to die proud of a life lived entirely on earnings from contracts freely entered into with willing parties. My daughters didn’t have a day of state education or take a student loan for university for example. I paid all their educational costs in cash. So, it would have been a shame to end my career living on money taken by force from the productive. I would be ashamed (as they all should) to be a cadre of the Deep State. Most good people don’t want to live as parasites on their fellow-humans while bossing them around. This is another reason why states must be kept small. Bad people are by far the most eager to work for them.

I am beginning to take the advice I gave to my late father in his final years when he became agitated about the way the country was going.

“Your generation had its time, Dad. The young people have stepped in and are making their own mess in their own way. There’s no point in getting anxious about what you can’t fix.”

It was good advice and maybe that’s why I now blog less frequently. I used to have subscriptions to all the broadsheets. Now I just read The Telegraph, like a sensible chap. By the way, the phone call to cancel my Guardian sub was an absolute joy. In modern Britain, you can subscribe in seconds online. However, it often takes a difficult phone call to escape. Asked why, I said

“The Guardian is the agitprop organ of the West’s enemies. I read it to know what they have in store for us. It’s made me angry and anxious for two decades. Now I don’t have to give a shit what they say any more. The prospect of never reading their poorly-written propaganda again makes this call a highlight of my life.”

Their salesman’s resistance ended. He stopped his pitch and released me without so much as a sigh!

In the time left over from joyful grandfatherly duties, migrating old posts etc., I hope to find more time for blogging. Reviewing old posts will remind me of the pleasure I had in crafting them. Many of the issues they covered are overdue a revisit.

Watch this space…