I thought you might be interested in a few statistics about this blog.

We're nearing 1.5 million page impressions, or downloads from the site.

But here are some stats that surprised me.

10,500 comments have been published.

33,323 comments have been rejected as SPAM, defamatory or otherwise illegal.

I read every single comment  that goes up.   This blog platform shows me your email address and more importantly the IP address for each comment.

Where the comment is trying to flog knock-off watches or Burberry coats, I just give it the flick wtih no further action.

But where I can see that it's a real person who may just have their facts wrong, I always try to send an email to the address they've given to explain why I knocked the comment back.

And in some special cases, I've written to the commenter and let them know how much I appreciate their enthusiasm - but that I've decided to limit that particular commenter to say one or two comments a day.   But I still read the 20 or 30 other ones as R We There Yet knows!

I really appreciate the spirit in which most people send in their comments and I have never deleted or decided not to publish a comment simply because I disagree with its content.

I hope that you'll bear with me and realise that if I have to have a meeting or have some other thing on that takes a couple of hours, the backlog in reading each comment and approving it can be huge!

Thanks for your many contributions, all 10,500 that we've published, plus the countless emails.

Michael

PS I know Australia and Australians - I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that enough of us know the truth to make sure that the whole account comes out publicly and that those who have done "something wrong" are held to that account and its consequences.