Pledge Drive

A Semi-Partisan Pledge Drive – Thank You

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

Semi Partisan Politics Pledge Drive - political blogging - writing - donations

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Thank you for your support

Since starting my first pledge drive of the year last week, I have been both heartened and humbled by the response. I have been most fortunate to receive a number of donations, some from long-time readers whom I know well through the Comments section and social media, and others whom I did not previously know but have been reading Semi-Partisan Politics and finding value in it for some time. I am most incredibly grateful to everybody who has donated so far.

Political blogging can be quite a lonely affair at times – awake at 2AM, typing furiously into the insatiable cursor, trying to get a hot take or a more reflective piece out the door and published before the rapidly moving news cycle makes it completely irrelevant. And aside from some basic stats on WordPress it can be hard to get a realistic sense of how many people find their way to this site, like it and then keep coming back as regular readers.

Lord knows that the British political media does not make the job any easier. Most British political journalists and commentators for “prestige” outlets would sooner poke knitting needles in their eyes than link to an independent blog or news outlet, even if it has something unique or valuable to contribute. The EU referendum campaign taught us that much. But the growing pageviews for this blog suggest to me that a number of you are not happy with what the prestige Westminster political news media have to offer – or at least that you take their pronouncements with a pinch of salt, and like to seek alternative commentary and research to get a fuller picture.

It is those people – people like you – for whom I will keep on writing. Well, and also for myself. As my wife will readily attest, I do tend to become quite irritable quite quickly if I don’t get enough “fighting on the internet” time under my belt each week.

And in case you were wondering, no it is not too late to make a contribution! All donations – large and small, one-off or recurring subscriptions – are most gratefully received, and help to make it possible for me to continue doing what I do (and hopefully getting better at it as time goes on!).

If you find value in this blog and have not already done so, please do consider making a donation to my work using the PayPal link below:

 

 

Any donation, large or small, will help to ensure that this blog continues to provide independent commentary on British and American politics and current affairs, as well as advocating for the causes I have been dedicated to from the start – including Brexit, strengthening the nation state, constitutional reform, a federal United Kingdom, separation of church and state, free speech, civil liberties, healthcare reform, exposing the NHS Industrial Complex and opposing the insidious Cult of Social Justice and Identity Politics.

Oh, and defending capitalism against the slings, arrows and sanctimonious internet memes of a new generation – my generation – who increasingly seem to believe that they can keep all of the good material things in their lives while undermining the economic system which made them possible in the first place.

And if you disagree with one or more of these positions, that’s fine too, let’s have a debate. A grown-up debate where we argue based on principles and facts, without pulling rank based on our marginalised identities or retreating to our safe spaces.

Thank you again to all of my wonderful readers and kind contributors. Each generous donation this past week has brought a smile to my face, and made me more determined than ever to keep on fighting the good fight here on Semi-Partisan Politics.

 

Political Blogging

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A Semi-Partisan Pledge Drive

Samuel Hooper5 Comments

Tip jar

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Time to pass around the tip jar…

As I write this, the Labour Party cheerleading blogs Left Foot Forward and LabourList are launching fundraising drives in an attempt to capitalise on what they see as Jeremy Corbyn’s “triumph” in the general election and the regaining of the political momentum.

The left wing hubris in the week since the general election has been off the charts, with more fatuous articles claiming that Britain now has a permanent “progressive majority” than one could possibly read without going mad from sheer incredulity. Worryingly, the demonisation of conservative ideas and Tory voters also seems to be picking up pace, with Labour MPs like Jon Trickett actively accusing everyday, garden variety conservatives of practising “hate”, an accusation we once reserved for real extremists on the far left and right.

Worse still, many of the more spineless and uninspired elements within the Conservative Party seem to have swallowed this narrative unquestioningly, and are agitating for even the most tentative efforts at fiscal responsibility to be abandoned and core conservative principles thrown overboard in favour of competing with Jeremy Corbyn to promise the British people endless free goodies with no responsibilities and no consequences – needless to say, a competition we can never win.

The British Left has gone insane, claiming victory in an election which parliamentary arithmetic clearly shows they lost. The Conservative Party under Theresa May is proving itself a useless keeper of the flame of conservatism and liberty, cranking up the size of the state, eroding civil liberties and taking their Brexit policy direct from the mouth of Nigel Farage. Worse still, the Right seems to have completely forgotten how to engage young people, ceding the youth vote almost entirely to the parties of the Left without even putting up a fight.

In short, there’s a lot going on and a lot to be fought over in the coming months and years. There are people to be held to account and ideas to be kept alive, particularly when the political party which should be the natural keeper of those ideas seems more inclined to accept Jeremy Corbyn’s hard-left framing of the political and economic debate.

I haven’t done a pledge drive on this blog thus far in 2017, mostly because my blogging output was significantly reduced in the early months of the year, and it didn’t seem fair to ask for donations while cranking out less of the product. However, you’ll notice that the pace of blogging has now picked up once again.

And so, the time has come… to ask regular readers who get value from this blog and from my writing to drop any spare change you may have into my virtual PayPal tip jar.

 

 

As always, I want to make absolutely clear that my regular contributors and generous occasional benefactors are specifically exempt from this request – you guys are already tapped out, and I would not dream of asking any more from you.

However, if you have recently discovered and enjoyed this blog, or perhaps been a long-time reader but didn’t realise that this blog is supported by generous reader donations, your support would be greatly appreciated.

 

 

You may have noticed some changes on the blog lately. On election day, June 8, we launched a new blog theme. Partially at Pete North’s suggestion, I made the change because the old theme was beginning to show its age and the grey text was difficult to read. Hopefully everyone will find the new theme more modern, streamlined and easy to navigate. However, if you have any issues then please do let me know.

I wrote last year about my hope that 2017 would be the year of the independent political blog. It is happening – slower than I would like, but unmistakably happening nonetheless. Many of the intelligent think pieces and best bits of commentary are now published on Medium, or on WordPress or Blogspot blogs, by people who would struggle to gain the attention of the BBC or the prestige media. And the ideas about Brexit pioneered by independent researchers like Dr. Richard North at eureferendum.com and championed by Pete North are now finally forcing their way into the mainstream conversation, albeit often in plagiarised and unattributed form.

The point is that we can influence the national conversation when we want to, particularly when independent writers and campaigners work together in a concerted effort. This is something that both the hard and soft Left have known for years – they have read their Saul Alinsky. We on the right, or elsewhere on the political spectrum, are still scurrying to catch up.

As Pete North rightly says in a recent piece, there is a political revolution underway in this country. While Brexit may not deliver any clear economic benefits in the short and medium term, the disruption that leaving the EU is causing to our political elite and frameworks for governance is ultimately a necessary thing. They are no longer fit for purpose. This had to happen eventually.

But with only a few honourable exceptions, most mainstream commentators and much of the media have not yet broken out of the old paradigm. Overwhelmingly pro-EU, overwhelmingly metro-leftist and secretly (or sometimes openly) incredulous and baffled by people who think differently, their deep-seated biases and preconceptions warp their reporting and colour their coverage all the time, in hundreds of small ways which add up to one enormous cumulative effect.

As I recently wrote, the fake news actually worth worrying about is not the obviously false and hysterical stories about Hillary Clinton being a demon or other such nonsense, but rather the soft bias of the mainstream media, because of the way that prestige news reflects and moulds the worldview of key decision-makers in this country. One weepy Guardian article about Brexit meaning the end of cooperation with Europe, sincerely believed by people with proximity to power, does more real-world damage than a thousand angry Facebook memes about the EUSSR precisely because the Guardian article is credulously swallowed by people who then make consequential decisions based on their prejudice.

Even if you still find value in the mainstream media (and I certainly do – for all the low grade nonsense there are still some diamonds in the rough, and somebody has to hire reporters to go out and be primary newsgatherers) I hope it is now clear that the BBC, the national newspapers, their online personas and internet giants like HuffPost and Buzzfeed are not enough on their own. We also need independent media to keep politicians and the media honest, or at least hold them to account for their failures and evasions.

Long story short: you need independent political writers, and we need you. Now more than ever.

Any donation you can make to this blog – large or small, one-off or recurring – will be most gratefully received, and will aid in the fight.

Thank you.

 

Political Blogging 2

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Support Semi-Partisan Politics with a one-time or recurring donation:

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A Semi-Partisan Pledge Drive

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Political Blogging

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This is a shakedown

I don’t do this often – maybe twice a year – but this is one of those times when I walk up and down the virtual tube carriage shaking my tin and requesting any spare change from readers who find some real value in this site, and have the means to help support it through a monetary donation or subscription, however small.

(Those who have already kindly donated this year are specifically requested NOT to do so again, and to instead consider supporting The Leave Alliance here if they feel so inclined – your generosity towards me is already very much appreciated. You know who you are.)

I am pleased to report that this blog is going from strength to strength (as hopefully you will have observed). New features have been trialled, some have inevitably fallen by the wayside and others have really taken off. Most notably, yours truly was invited to debate the infantilisation of today’s students on the BBC’s Daily Politics show earlier this year – not necessarily the topic or angle I most wanted for my debut, but a good opportunity nonetheless, and one which led to this brilliant caricature drawn by a viewer:

Samuel Hooper - Daily Politics - BBC - Caricature - Sketch - Cartoon - 2

The upshot is that with two back-to-back record-breaking months in March and April, pageviews and unique visitors for 2016 to date have already surpassed the totals for 2015. In other words, in the first third of this year more people have visited and read Semi-Partisan Politics than did so in the whole of 2015.

This has been achieved partly by a significant increase in blogging frequency – from several posts per week to several posts per day, on average. In many ways this is bowing to the inevitable. A political blog is in some ways like a television channel, and going quiet even for a day is the equivalent of dead air during prime time – if you stop, people will simply change the channel.

But this growth is also due to the loyalty and help of you, the readers. Increasingly I find that Semi-Partisan Politics is getting significant referrals through Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and various online bulletin boards – not to mention from the sidebar links of my blogging comrades of The Leave Alliance. Now that this site has a small but real readership, I am able to spend more time writing and less time trying to drum up an audience. A sincere thank you to all those who have shared links to this site, or taken the time to comment and enrich the debate here.

The other fairly significant change is an increase in shorter response-based pieces, particularly with the “Tales From The Safe Space” series. Here, the broader argument (in defence of free speech and academic freedom) is advanced in multiple posts, without the need to restate the case in full each time, and I have shared numerous examples of bad (and occasionally encouraging) things taking place on British and American university campuses with some pointed commentary, but without the full context you would get in a complete essay.

Syndication continues at Conservatives for Liberty and Guerilla Policy.

While I continue to play around with the format and focus of individual posts and series, this blog retains its commitment to the following ideals:

 

Brexit: freedom from the European Union

Democracy and national sovereignty

Constitutional reform and a federal UK

Separation of church and state

Healthcare reform, not NHS worship

Smaller, smarter government

Free speech, without restriction

Fighting the Cult of Identity Politics

Fighting timid centrism on the Right

Fighting empty virtue-signalling on the Left

 

Maintaining the high tempo of blogging required to grow this site means that besides the day job and family time, this blog is my life. Other interests are largely on hold in order to commit to writing as much as possible, a sacrifice I am happy to make because I believe the issues which I write about are important. The few occasions on which this blog has been picked up in the national media validate this assessment, I believe.

I would like to do more. My future reading list now spills onto two book shelves as I try to stay up to date with the most important issues I cover while also trying to remediate a desperately poor grounding in history and philosophy (thanks, state education).

Obviously the EU referendum is a priority at the moment – I am proud of my association with The Leave Alliance, the only group with not only a plan for achieving Brexit in a safe and non-disruptive way, but more importantly a genuinely positive vision for what a globally engaged and democratically renewed Britain should look like.

If you agree with these objectives and enjoy this blog’s coverage and commentary, please do consider using the PayPal tip jar to make a small contribution to my work:

 

 

One-off donations or small regular contributions are all greatly appreciated, and help me to continue my work here. Reader contributions partially supported last year’s live-blogging of the UKIP party conference which won acclaim in the national media, and I hope to repeat the exercise at more of the party conferences this season.

Many thanks to everyone for reading, sharing and commenting.

 

Political Blogging 2

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Why I Write

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Political Blogging

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At the risk of sounding like a PBS telethon…

Why isn’t there more good journalism out there? Gawker paints a depressing picture for those of us who toil away in the often thankless business of writing.

Hamilton Nolan writes:

Many writers believe that our brilliant writing will naturally create its own audience. The moving power of our words, the clarity and meaning of our reporting, the brilliance of our wit, the counterintuitive nature of our insights, the elegance with which we sum up the world’s problems; these things, we imagine, will leave the universe no choice but to conjure up an audience for us each day.

Time and experience have long since disabused me of any such idea. Fortunately, writing about politics and public policy – if immensely frustrating at times – is also its own form of reward.

Nolan concludes:

Maybe there is a talented young writer out there with a dream of starting the very best, smartest magazine or website that has ever existed, and building it into their very own historic legacy. I am here to tell you that it will not work. The business of media has very little, if anything, to do with quality journalism. If you aspire to be a Writer of Legitimately Good Things, the best you can hope for is to get the prestige spot that is paid for by the garbage. To hope for a prestige spot that is not paid for by garbage, or by a lone rich wacko, or by a new advertising technology, but instead by the mass audience that will flock to your brilliance is to ask for too much. If you are able to get a job writing good stuff, you are one of the lucky ones in the big Exercycle of Mindless Entertainment that is “the media.”

Now, political writing certainly shouldn’t be an easy career option. After all, it takes a certain arrogance to expect to be remunerated for sitting at a keyboard ranting about the state of the world and pontificating on the “obvious” solutions to society’s ills, particularly when there are people out there doing real work like serving in the armed forces, providing healthcare, creating world-class art, working out how to get to Mars or producing amazing, unthought-of new consumer products.

There are certainly times when my own efforts at political writing seem depressingly far from the high ideal set out by George Orwell, and much closer to the ranting of the pub bore or the slick keyword focus of the SEO marketer – though having done this (with varying levels of commitment) for four years now, I hope that I am somewhat better than when I started out.

Earlier this week I was at a talk given by Dan Hodges about his general election book “One Minute To Ten”, and got chatting to a senior journalist from the Sunday Times. I put to him that while political blogging may have been ripe with promise ten years ago, the format seems to have dried up today, and readers left with the choice between established legacy media outlets or the latest viral clickbait funnelled through social media.

He didn’t disagree, and hammered home the fact that many readers currently have almost zero loyalty to any specific news outlet, and instead get their news according to what happens to be trending on social media or appear in their (often bias-reinforcing) news feeds. This trend is reflected in the traffic stats for Semi-Partisan Politics. A sizeable minority of traffic now comes through Facebook in particular, and there is always the temptation to devote time and effort to promoting pieces on Facebook to get more eyeballs on the latest piece, even if it brings in few potential long-term readers with whom one can develop a relationship.

The one positive trend at present is the growing and thriving community of Brexit bloggers and campaigners coalescing around eureferendum.com and the work of Dr. Richard North to promote Flexcit – by far the best (and only) properly thought-through plan for how Britain might best leave the European Union and re-emerge as a globally engaged, prosperous sovereign democracy.

If only the same collegial, rigorous and dedicated spirit could be found elsewhere in the political blogosphere as exists among many of my fellow Brexiteers (see links in the sidebar on the right), journalism in this country – particularly citizen journalism and the concept of the campaigning blog – might not be in quite such a parlous state.

Regardless: whatever the people at Gawker say, Semi-Partisan Politics will continue to grow and flourish as we enter 2016, and will campaign – loudly and unapologetically – for the following goals and ideals:

 

Brexit: freedom from the European Union

Democracy and national sovereignty

Constitutional reform and a federal UK

Separation of church and state

Healthcare reform, not NHS worship

Smaller, smarter government

Free speech, without restriction

Fighting timid centrism on the Right

Fighting empty virtue-signalling on the Left

 

If you agree with these objectives and enjoy this blog’s coverage of UK politics and current affairs, please do consider using the PayPal tip jar to make a small regular contribution or a one-time donation:

 

 

Any reader donations will 1) be a personal ego boost to myself, 2) help me to do more original reporting, like the successful live blog of last year’s UKIP annual conference, and 3) help me promote this site and the work of other like-minded writers – particularly in the crucial effort to win a “Leave” vote in the coming Brexit referendum – so that we can actually make a difference.

Small donations from individual contributors are not only greatly appreciated by me, but also help to preserve independent journalism and commentary in general – so that nobody has to rely exclusively on the BBC, the Guardian or the Telegraph to understand what’s going on in our country and around the world.

But it’s not all about the money. What matters even more than that (for me) is spreading the word and sharing the message – and these days, like it or not, that means social media. So if you read something you like here, don’t just sit on it. Share it on Twitter or Reddit. Email it to a friend. Be that person on Facebook who posts provocative political articles on their timeline.

2016 is already off to a good start – pageviews and comments are at their highest ever, and an appearance on a certain major national political TV show (to be announced soon) is in the works. Onwards and upwards!

Many thanks to all my readers for your continued generous support.

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A Merry Semi-Partisan Christmas

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Political Blogging 2

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Onward to 2016, with your help

2015 has been a very good year for this blog. The frequency of posts increased dramatically as we covered the general election and its aftermath, and we have kept up the pace ever since. There are now new articles nearly every day, as well as a more lively Twitter feed.

The net result has been an increase in readership of nearly 400%. This blog is still small, but a number of articles have caught the attention of influential MPs, journalists and activists. And nobody recognised or wrote about the eventual cause of Labour’s general election defeat before this blog, though many others have subsequently swooped in to take credit.

My writing is syndicated at Guerilla Policy, where I seem to be the lone conservative voice amid a sea of unabashed lefties, and I am proud to contribute regularly to the excellent campaign group Conservatives for Liberty.

Semi-Partisan Politics will continue to grow and flourish as we enter 2016, and will campaign – loudly and unapologetically – for the following goals and ideals:

 

Brexit: freedom from the European Union

Democracy and national sovereignty

Constitutional reform and a federal UK

Separation of church and state

Healthcare reform, not NHS worship

Smaller, smarter government

Free speech, without restriction

Fighting timid centrism on the Right

Fighting empty virtue-signalling on the Left

 

If you agree with these objectives and have enjoyed this blog’s coverage over the past year, please do consider using the PayPal tip jar to make a small regular contribution or a one-time donation:

 

 

Any reader donations will 1) be a personal ego boost to myself, 2) help me to do more original reporting, like the successful live blog of this year’s UKIP annual conference, and 3) help me promote this site and the work of other like-minded writers so that we can actually make a difference.

As I swiftly learned this past year, writers don’t get paid very much (unless you are Owen Jones). This blog is written in my spare time around a day job, usually between midnight and 3AM, and is available to everyone free of charge.

However, small donations from individual contributors are not only greatly appreciated, but also help to preserve independent journalism and commentary in general – so that nobody has to rely exclusively on the BBC, the Guardian or the Telegraph to understand what’s going on in our country and around the world.

If you are happy getting all of your news, analysis and commentary from the BBC or the big national newspapers, then by all means carry on. But if you value independent writing which is not beholden to any party, clique or the Westminster establishment, then please consider helping to ensure its continued existence by donating a couple of quid to the independent sites which keep you coming back for more.

But it’s not all about the money. What matters even more than that (for me) is spreading the word and sharing the message – and these days that means social media. So if you read something you like here, don’t just sit on it. Share it on Twitter or Reddit. Email it to a friend. Be that person on Facebook who posts provocative political articles on their timeline (but all things in moderation).

With the help of my informed and generous readers, 2016 will be another record-breaking year for Semi-Partisan Politics.

Many thanks to all of you, and a very Merry Christmas.

Christmas Wreath 2

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