My 1000th Blogpost

It's a milestone! This is the 1000th post I have made on this blog.

When I started in February 2008, I thought that this would be a mixture of national stuff, sport, TV and whatever else I felt like writing about with a bit of politics thrown in. I even contemplated putting a weekly recipe or book review on here. It hasn't exactly turned out like that.

Whilst there have been a few random postings (the latest of which was my giving up smoking post last week), I've focused more and more on Cornwall Council and local politics. I still comment on national stuff from time to time and still have lots of photos when I'm doing work for the Lib Dems (especially around conferences and the general election).

I hope that this season I'll be a bit more disciplined about putting up match reviews and photos from Cornish All Blacks games.

But at its heart, this blog was set up to concentrate on what's happening in Launceston and how the decisions being made by Cornwall Council affect us in our town. I tag every post I write and the most common tag is 'politics'. That's not so much because I'm a politician (which I am), but because almost everything we do has a political aspect to it, even if we don't usually think of it that way. Politics matters to our everyday lives and therefore the people who make the political decisions matter. That's why Cornwall Council matters and why the elected members - of whatever party or none - are all politicians. We all need to be held to account, but this means we need to be constantly explaining to our local residents what we are doing and what we are thinking.

So here's to another 1000 posts.

Coming up soon will be Cornwall Council's emergency budget. Will it threaten local frontline services? Can we keep and expand localism and really involve more local people in the decisions that affect them? Will the coalition government survive the full five years and what will be the shape of the Lib Dems at the end of that process? Will the Cornish All Blacks be competitive this season? Will I still be off the ciggies come Christmas?

If you have any thoughts about this blog, please do let me know. Either reply in the comments or feel free to send me an email - alexfolkes (at) gmail (dot) com.