End of term report

When Number Watch was launched in the middle of July, it was a bit of an experiment to see whether anyone reacted. By the end of the year it had reached nearly one thousand hits a week, half of them coming from the USA. This may seem modest by many standards, but was way above expectations.

It has been wonderful to make so many friends, none of whom I have ever met. I particularly value the encouragement and support I have received from some of the giants of the pro-science movement in the USA – in no particular order Steve Milloy, Alan Caruba, James Randi, Bob Caroll, Michael Fumento and S Fred Singer.

There were two main motivations for starting Number Watch. First was the difficulty of winding up the writing of the book Sorry, wrong number! as sillier and sillier stories kept appearing in the press. I became a reluctant self publisher as the only means to get round the covert PC censorship that seems to operate in the British book industry, so the second motivation was to try to provide in Britain the sort of alternative commentary that the above named produce so effectively in the USA.

It is encouraging that American readers tend to find British lunacy as entertaining as their own, quashing the European myth that Americans are insular, but a little discouraging that relatively few of the British are interested in being told about it. On the other hand, regular visits from thirty different countries around the world suggest that, though small, the resistance movement is universal.

There has been a little gentle criticism that Number Watch shows a political bias by concentrating on the misdemeanours of the Government and not of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. The main answer to that is “What opposition?” Number Watch abhors a vacuum – there is nothing you can write about it; besides which, governments do things and oppositions don’t. There is an old Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times”. Now that the USA appears to have moved away from the leftish consensus that has ruled the West in recent years, we may be in for very interesting times. How will the Europeans act when they find that their myths are not automatically accepted by the world’s largest democracy?

Seasonal greeting to all readers and many thanks to those who have provided feedback. It would be pleasant to think that there will be nothing to write about in the coming year, but more realistic to accept that “Insanity rules, OK”.

Here are a few statistics about visits to Number Watch for the last month of the year: