Meaning well doesn't cut it for me any more, but political effectiveness when you have never felt comfortable within the political culture and don't have political skills is also not an easy task.  So for the moment I play around with ideas, write a few LTEs and work for a few voluntary organisations.  The blogging is becoming a distraction.  Like a lot of people here I think it may be time to move on.

I suspect a lot of us (Europeans) are looking envious at the USA and the attention / influence blogs are getting there. There is nothing comparable in the EU. Maybe in some of the member states? I don´t know.

I do notice however that blogs even here in backwards Germany are starting to get mentioned in the news media sometimes. It´s a tiny step but I think US blogs have started in the same way years ago. :)

And the European Tribune is one of the few blogs trying to engage / inform Europeans from different countries. That is something precious and shouldn´t be lightly discarded.

To mention just an example.
Your diaries about Ireland. You gave me more information about Ireland than the German media did in the past years. The same with Jerome and his economic and wind energy diaries. And several other diarists / front pagers too.

The point(s) I´m trying to make:

• The current economic crisis seems to encourage a (mental) retreat to the nation state
  
• while at the same time the EU needs to act together
  
• and this needed cooperation across European borders is just crying out for discussions (across borders) especially in blogs like this one
  
• and especially at a time when said blogs are starting to get noticed in national media.

Speaking for myself only, I would miss this European blog and its diarists / front pagers. You could of course tell me that I should have participated more and you would be right. In my own defense I could only say that I was trying to establish my own small business here in Germany which absorbed most of my energy. So I´ve read and only occasionally commented.

In the end though, I will have to respect your decision. Although I ask you (and all the others) to think about it. As I said above, on the one hand we seem to see a return to the (comfortable) nation state for the solution to the crisis. Which - on its own -  unfortunately can´t solve the current economic problems. On the other hand I believe I see a slowly growing media awareness of blogs even in countries like Germany.

If you want to help Ireland and get the Irish point-of-view to an audience for example in Germany, I would respectfully suggest you shouldn´t stop posting diaries here. I don´t quite know where else you could publish an Irish opinion so cheap and get it read by other Europeans?

I don´t quite see how we can help Ireland, the EU or all of Europe by just disintegrating at the first time of economic troubles?

(Mind you, I´m not criticizing anyone personally. Each of you might have different reasons for thinking about leaving European Tribune. I´m just asking you to think about it.)