Reader Norman Fraser (not clear to me which of the many NFs out there) writes:

I am amazed at how intellectually short-winded most of your posts are.

I deduce from the tone and context he does not mean this as a compliment. Although would being intellectually long-winded be much better?

I come from a civil service life and tradition, one in which huge subjects have to be boiled down and squeezed on to a (very) few sides of paper to help Ministers take decisions.

A world of intelligent, purposeful generalisation. Where every word has to count, and redundancy takes up space better used for more ‘substance’. Where top-end work has to be done very fast but still be Good. And where the best policy ideas have to linked to what makes sense ‘politically’ and what may actually work in real life.

So, yes, I suppose that there is a tendency to be ‘short-winded’ and even trite in what I write here. Others such as the Archbishop or Heresiarch often give longer and perhaps more ‘considered’ views.

Anyway, heck, it’s a Blog. A self-indulgent genre which allows all sorts of styles and maybe (because it is so free and spontaneous-leaning) contradictions and inconsistencies. Not everyone can be smart and 100% insightfully accurate all the time.

Does anyone out there prefer more but shorter postings, without getting down to deft Instapundit-style minimalism?

Or are longer, more analytical pieces favoured?

Or is everyone other than N Fraser more or less happy with whatever pops out next?

All views welcome, via my ingenious IntenseDebate comments box. (What this does, by the way, is send me emails when comments are posted so I can moderate them speedily. I have had to resort to this sort of filter to keep out Spammers who were penetrating earlier robust defences with too much ease.)

Off to Amsterdam tomorrow for a flying meeting. Normal service resumed on Thursday, all being well.

If you are bored, get stuck into this wonderful story. Lots of elegant writing, a deep and so-simple-so-complex idea behind it, and exotic Balkan angles a-plenty:

Go on. Buy it. And I’ll earn a groat for every one sold.