I thought that I would start off this New Year with a summary of KP stats for the past year. It has been a tough year for my family and I what with the cyclone and son’s illness, but somewhat surprisingly I managed to keep posting fairly regularly. I wrote 38 posts so averaged a bit over three per month. New Zealand-focused posts received the most views, with the post about Kiri Allen’s political demise racking up 498 views, followed by posts on NZ’s culture wars and PM Ardern’s resignation at 491 and 487 respectfully. Interestingly, a post from a previous year (“Miscalculation, escalation and the law of unintended consequences”) topped the list with 562 views. The post with the most comments, 36, was about NZ’s rightwing culture wars. Posts about the storms and NZ elections also got a fair bit of attention. Current events-themed posts topped the more theoretical/analytic ruminations, and the link to the “A View from Afar” podcast series received small but dedicated attention.

We received 21,399 views from 10,587 visitors in 77 countries who generated 290 comments. New Zealand, the US and China were where most of our visitors originated, although viewers came from all parts of the world (only six from Argentina, though). Kiwiblog and The Standard were our main referrers, although social media platforms contributed a fair bit. Also a special shoutout must be made to Ele at Homepaddock, which generated 202 referrals but mostly for her kindness with regards to my son in spite of our ideological differences.

KP gained some new regular readers while some longer-term readers went quiet, and was relatively free from trolls this past year. Thanks to Barbara and Di, we have more regular female commentators than in previous years, although use of pseudonyms makes an accurate count difficult even if I have access to email and IPN addresses. The latter I only scrutinise in the event of trolling so again, it was not as necessary to use the tracking tools in 2023 as it has been in previous years.

Lew is no longer associated with the blog, very regrettably in my opinion, as he focuses on other endeavours. I have been unable to secure more teammates at KP, especially those who can write from a Left perspective on gender and environmental issues and domestic political intrigue. I assume that is partly because other blogs cover those topics in spades and also because people believe that I view KP as a bit of vanity project and am unwilling to share differences of opinion. There may be some truth in that since I am the last one standing from the project begun in 2009 by Anita, Peter, Lew and I, but in my own defense I can say that it is not differences of opinion that I dislike but instead, uninformed or bad writing, especially on topics that I am familiar with on both practical as well as scholarly grounds. It reminds me of my days as a jazz radio announcer and program director in the US when I would warn new DJs that enjoying the sound of their own voices was not the point of their shows, but instead it was about the music. As a result, those who talked (too much), walked. Same with KP. Having said that, if anyone would like to take a stab at joining KP, just write me an email at pablo@kiiwpolitico.com.

We shall see how 2024 turns out. It will be a year of trial for my family for reasons that are well known, but our hope is to surmount the obstacles and get on with life. As for topics to write about, well, there are plenty of those. In fact, as I was reviewing the stats I found a post from Anita dated January 2009 that was about Israel and Gaza. ‘Nuf said. As the saying goes, “plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose”–the more things change, the more they stay the same.e

PS. And as if on cue this fellow Slater shows up to engage in some Muslim-bashing. I have a feeling that he will not be long for this place.