I have had an urge to write my manifesto.\u00a0 Let me explain:<\/p>\n
I am 59 next birthday, retired from normal employment after a chequered career, but left with a feeling I have a little more to offer the world.\u00a0 I think I am good at gathering diverse thoughts and ideas and making sense of them, have a good understanding of people, the ability to listen (although my wife would argue with that) and the ability to speak. \u00a0I am often struck by current issues and have passionate reactions to them, and certainly opinions about lots of things. \u00a0I have had brushes with \u2018authority\u2019, in my career and elsewhere and have found myself being chosen to speak on behalf of groups and others, and am drawn towards politics (note small p!), and wonder if what I might offer might be in the political arena.<\/p>\n
If that\u2019s the case I need a manifesto (\u201cA public declaration of principles, policies, or intentions.\u201d), a statement of what I believe, what my principles are.\u00a0 I am not sure of my intentions and don\u2019t particularly have any policies, or maybe I do with regard to the environment etc., so perhaps more of that later.<\/p>\n
There are many areas where I have opinions, but are they beliefs?\u00a0 What underpins these opinions? How do they fit together?\u00a0 I am kind of imagining I might stand for election and people might want to know what I think about stuff.\u00a0 So this is the first page of that \u2013 the general what\u2019s going on here statement.\u00a0 I plan to blog this. #manifesto.<\/p>\n
So I\u2019m going to talk about what I believe.\u00a0 I may or may not reference other people \u2013 there are many people I admire, who have influenced what I have come to believe, but I don\u2019t intend to explain everything.\u00a0 I expect to rapidly get fed up of typing \u2018I believe\u2019 or \u2018I feel\u2019 or \u2018in my opinion\u2019, so I will probably make statements as though they are true, absolutes, but the whole of what I write is what I believe.\u00a0 My other caveat is that as I develop these thoughts and documents, what I believe may change, but my intention is to work towards a coherent whole.<\/p>\n
Finally I need to say that although I have claimed to have opinions about lots of things, many of these opinions have not seen the light of day, may not have any structure or form as yet, and may not be coherent.\u00a0 They certainly won\u2019t be presented in any order, and although I have a short list of topics I may write about, I don\u2019t plan to cover everything, and have no idea how new topics may emerge.<\/p>\n
I am crap at proff-readng, so don\u2019t expect miracles \u2026<\/p>\n
Maybe it\u2019s a bit of a life story too \u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My Manifesto I have had an urge to write my manifesto.\u00a0 Let me explain: I am 59 next birthday, retired from normal employment after a chequered career, but left with a feeling I have a little more to offer the world.\u00a0 I think I am good at gathering diverse thoughts and ideas and making sense […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[12,22],"class_list":["post-132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manifesto","tag-introduction","tag-manifesto"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.lupson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/manifesto.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4iQp0-28","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lupson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lupson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lupson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lupson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lupson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lupson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134,"href":"https:\/\/www.lupson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions\/134"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lupson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lupson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lupson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lupson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}