In my defence, I have been busy working (I am currently working on a project that means I have to work long hours and travel a lot) and doing my best to spend time with Liz and my friends (something that I am equally as bad at).

I have about 15 articles/posts in draft format and I am probbaly going to start posting them unfinished/unedited because it seems I am incapable of finishing anything before starting something else and rather than have you sit here reading Twitter updates ad infinitum, you might as well get some unpolished work to read and maybe comment on!

I have tended to vote for a Conservative candidate in general eelctions, although how much this has to do with modern Conservative policies over my liking of the candidate and the fact I believed his promises to me more than his competitors is still under consideration, and for a variety of individuals in local elections. This means that although I am broadly conservative in my political leanings (I believe in a small government, privatisation, free market economy and the need for aspiration to be rewarded not punished) I have voted Lib Dem, Labour and independent a number of times. The basis of these decisions usually revolved around what the individual stance was in secularism and supporting local initiative and enterprise.

Whilst David Cameron may not feel that charitable action is something the non-religious excell at, I dn’t think this is the view amongst all Conservative MP’s. The Rt Hon Michael Jack MP has always shown a passion and understanding for local charitable initiatives regardless of their religious (or lack of) denomination.

The Labour party has similar divisions. Tony Blair founded the Tony Blair Faith Foundation yet there are many Labour MP’s that sit on the Parliamentary Humanist Group.

I have stolen Chris’s concept and written to my MP and a number of high profile members of the governemnt and the opposition to ask for a clarification on their party’s views on this subject. I will post their responses (If I get them) on this site.

It was this thought that has inspired a series of articles that I am going to be releasing over the next few weeks. There are five in all, but I think that the final two will probably get posted as a single piece as I feel that the flow is better suited that way. So, for those of you that have been ignoring my posts recently due to the lack of real or meaningful content should start refreshing those RSS feeds and rechecking those bookmarks!

The article series is called Living as an Atheist and will hopefully highlight some of the issues that are faced by atheists when trying to apply the principles and ideas that tend to be associated with an atheistic world view to real life situations.

The first piece will be on what it means to be a young atheist in sixth form/college and then university. The main thesis is that the 16-25 age bracket is the key defining period in how an atheist will develop their wolrdview and what features of that worldview persist into life beyond education.

The second article is about university atheist societies and it is aimed to coincide with the anniversary of the official press launch of the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies. The focus of this article will be on sustainability and leadership within the student community of an atheist society. This is a subject which I have been invited to speak on at the AHS Conference in Oxford att he end of February.

The third part of the series is an essay on working in a multi-ethnic environment and the clash of British capitalism and religious imperatives. The key points under exploration will include the compatability of the market system with Islamic ideas on trade and finance as well as the human element of actually working alongside adherants to a number of religions and how “office banter” can lead to difficult situations and damaging misunderstandings.

The fourth and fifth articles will be a short history of my own journey to atheism and then an in depth analysis into the development of my world view and how that is implemented both in my student world and my professional world.

So, keep your eyes peeled as I am unsure yet as to which day will be ebst for publication but will probably depend on when I need to kill the msot time at work over the next week.

I haven’t blogged in a while so i will just bring everyone up to date:

1) I have had to take some time out from my studies to address a few situations, namely my finances. This credit crunch is a real bitch. Sidetracking slightly, why is it a credit crunch exactly? What’s crunching?

2) As a result of my sabbatical from university, I have had to step down from my roles within both the AHS and Leeds Atheist Society. This was a massive disappointment for me as long term readers will be aware I have been involved with both organisation since their inception. I hope to contine playing a role in some sort of capacity, even if just as a regular old member. The main issue being my need to give the leadership room to develop their own style and direction.

3) I have gone full time with my job at O2. I am now a performance adviser and basically I do the same job, with more responsibility for no extra reward. Well I technically get increased job satisfaction and a job i enjoy most of the time, but not exactly going to make a dent in the old finances!

4) I have moved in with Liz, just the two of us, into a nice little cottage in the Seacroft area of Leeds. It is one of the original village buildings from before they added all the council estates that now mean that Seacroft is a suburb of Leeds rather than its own little village.

5) As a result of the above, I have less than I used to to write about on here, hence the need for a wholsesale change in direction.

I would like to start concentrating on developing a few ideas I have for essays and the like on my particular subjects of choice, i.e. management, secularism, atheism and humanism. Some of this blog is going to get dedicated to that and related stuff, like pics, tweets etc. I also think I am going to put some more syndications on here, sharing posts and ideas by other atheist writers, bloggers and speakers.

I have also started thinking recently about whether there is scope to get more involved in actually devleoping the atheist movement into one that makes a real difference. Chris has focussed in on Humanist Action Group and is working towards turning that into a real charity. Whilst I could piggy back on to that, I wonder whether I could ever really make a difference. My areas of interest is with young people, I think it with this group that real difference can be made. I used to do a lot of work with Lancashire County Council and their youth and community section. I was involved in a number of youth participation programmes too. I also wonder whether I could use some of my contacts in parliament to do soemthing with lobbying and maje a difference that way.

Well as you can see, there are a number of directions this blog could take. I don’t know yet which one I fancy, or which one will come to fruition. Maybe inspiration will hit me, or maybe I will try all of them until I get one that works!

I am actually a little shocked about that fact to be honest. I really didn’t think when I posted that very first time that I would still be blogging two years later!

A lot has happened in thos two years, although not as much as maybe I had hoped for really. I am still studying, working for not a huge amount of money, living like a student, still rather hefty in shape but then I have developed a long term relationship, learned so much about so many things through uni and work, formed and run a national representational organisation, set the ground work for a charitable venture (more on that in the future, it’s all a bit hush hush at the moment) and made some great new friends.

Anyway, it’s cake time now!

While I had no plans to actually use Twitter for anything other than a platform to make my site a little more interactive I have started to find that I am visting more and more regularly to check on other people’s tweets (the slang for updates). There are loads of interestign people using the site, like Stephen Fry, Brent Spiner etc, and because it is all public you can read what they are doing, saying, thinking.

You can check me out on my Twitter page here.

I will post a full review of the machine after I have used it for a little while, although first impressions are pretty good. The keyboard is going to take some getting used to though, as it is only about 70% of a normal laptop keyboard, but generally it is an awesome piece of kit. Just need to get myself down to Starbucks now to sit in the window with my tall skinny latte and pretend to write my novel.

I wish I could claim to have come to the pub just to write this post, but it is actually A-Soc’s second social of the Winter break and is once again pretty well attended – as of this post there are seven of us! The hardcore few!

I have tweaked the original design a little to make it fit the purpose I have in mind, so fingers crossed I haven’t broken anything important, lol. If anyone notices anything untoward then leave a comment on here.

I have also finished the tagging of the archives, which should now mean the site is a little more fluid to use when finding related articles or posts.

There are still some more features that I want to put into place, for example a contact form, a few more pages and possibly an RSS feed page for a few of the other sites I contribute to. I am still undecided as to whether I am going to change the direction of the content on the site, or whether simply to split up the content I already post. I will hopefully come to some sort of decision soon so I can get on with real posts rather than these boring update ones!

I have finally gotten round to adding tags to the posts – currently all new posts and the archives up to December 2007 have had them added, will get round to the rest of the archives this week hopefully. this should make things gel a little easier and hopefully add a new dimension to the site.

The other addition is the calendar feature, that currently lists all upcoming events for the next 14 days. the final settings for this feature will be sorted out today ideally. Thanks to Kieran for his plug-in calendar app.

I will be adding some more features in the coming weeks and hope to introduce a few surprises in terms of appearence and usability too.

A-soc is no different and we have been out in force this week recruiting. We have been pretty successful too, with over 40 new members signing up in the first three days! Check out the pictures below and the blogs over on the A-Soc website.