Meet the Liberal Democrat bloggers: David Boyle

Welcome to the latest in the series giving the human face behind some of the blogs you can find on the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator.

Today it is author, blogger and policy expert David Boyle, who blogs at The Real Blog.

1. What’s your formative political memory?
I don’t know when I became a Liberal, but found myself cheering the party on during the Sutton & Cheam and Isle of Ely by-elections while I was studying for my O Levels. In 1979, I interviewed the local Liberal candidate (Dermot Roaf) for a student mag and went straight off and joined the party afterwards.

2. When did you start blogging?
2007 I think.

3. Why did you start blogging?
Partly because I seemed to be bursting with things to say; partly because, when I said them, people seemed to have a confused look on their faces. I also wanted to think out loud about the political implications of a book I wrote called Authenticity. (I also have an incredibly small publishing outfit called The Real Press.)

4. What five words would you use to describe your blog?
Liberal, human-scale and optimistic.

5. What five words would you use to describe your political views?
Radical, green, localist, humane, naive.

6. Which post have you most liked writing in the last year (and why)?
A post I wrote for Lib Dem Voice which, rather inadequately, tried to set out why I wasn’t as outraged as the Guardian thinks I should be about the spending review.

7. Which post have you most liked reading in the last year (and why)?
Neal Lawson’s Comment is Free blog about using ‘human’ as the yardstick for a new politics. I was fascinated to read it because I had been thinking along parallel lines myself.

8. What’s your favourite YouTube clip?
I think it has to be my wife Sarah’s film about our curtain pattern Kandahar.:

9. Which bloggers, writers or thinkers inspire you?
Jonathan Calder’s Liberal England blog, Colin Tudge’s Campaign for Real Farming, John Seddon, Ricardo Semler, The Distributist Review, Andrew Simms, William Boyd, Adam Thorpe, James Hillman, David Whyte, Bryan Appleyard, Wendell Berry, Anna Coote, Tim Jackson, Simon Jenkins, Edgar Cahn, Vandana Shiva, Wangari Maathai, Bernard Lietaer, Ed Mayo, Jean-Francois Noubel – and Phillip Blond makes me think too.

10. Give us a surprising fact about yourself:
I work in a hut at the end of the garden with a huge sign above it rescued from a skip that says Balmoral Sweet Shop.