It's a new blog!

Regular readers of my old Velvet Bus Blog cannot fail to have noticed long periods of inactivity, and in several cases have passed comment on this.

To be honest, I got quite disillusioned with life on the old blog. Although it was never meant to be an official Velvet production, many people saw it as such. For me, it was only ever meant to be an occasional pastime, offering whimsical comment on things that I thought people might find interesting.

I always enjoyed blogging but to be honest life is incredibly busy for quite a lot of the time, and after spending 14-15 hours at work immersed in bus issues, the last thing I wanted to do when I got home was get the computer out and spend more time writing about buses!

More seriously, it is very hard to find things to write about that do not breach commercial confidence, and in one case I pulled what I thought was quite an entertaining post shortly after publication, because the organisation about whom it was written revealed itself to have no sense of humour and chose to make ominous comments about our future business relationship if it remained on view. Given that I said nothing that would actually cause any damage to the organisation in question other than some gentle leg-pulling, I now think I should have left the post there - "publish and be damned"!

In short, the fact that people saw the old blog as an official publication meant that (a) some people took it too seriously and (b) my failure to post with sufficient regularity was seen as evidence of some kind of corporate failure. Given that the purpose was only ever to entertain (and occasionally enlighten), I pretty much gave up! But I still liked the idea of blogging and often thought of interesting things to post, just didn't feel sufficiently motivated to do anything about it!

A chance meeting with the inspirational Leon Daniels of First Group at the Euro Bus Expo in Birmingham got me to thinking again! If you don't already read his blog by the way, go and have a look now - it's excellent!

I realise that my biggest mistake was to call my old blog the Velvet Bus Blog because that clearly makes it sound official even though it was never meant to be, so that blog has officially breathed its last breath! Although it can stay there for now for historical purposes, nothing more will be added, and it will be frozen in time as at last April!

I am going to have another go at this blogging lark. Many of the issues described above still remain, so I am not promising success! However, I am going to make it clear from the outset that even though I will often be talking about Velvet and bus issues generally, this blog is my own personal ramblings and is not in any way an official publication of Velvet! That means that if I fail to post, or I fail to keep people's interest, and everyone gets bored and goes away (or starts writing sarcastic comments), that's entirely down to me and no reflection on my bus company! Hopefully that won't happen though and I'll be able to keep a sufficiently engaging blog going for a little longer!

Anyway, welcome to my new blog and let's see how it goes!