Paul Cotterill was born and bred in Eccles, a suburb of Manchester famous for cakes. He trained as a nurse and did a fair bit of strike-organizing and trade union militancy before going off to work in international aid for a few years. He now lives in Bickerstaffe, Lancashire, where he won the council seat for Labour for the first time ever in 2007, with a 600 per cent increase to the Labour vote. He is leader of the Labour opposition on the council. Paul blogs his local stuff at The Bickerstaffe Record, and his wider stuff at Though Cowards Flinch.
Why do you blog? > Nobody else will publish what I write.
What has been your best blogging experience? > I really enjoyed getting to grips with the intellectual frailties of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe and the adverse impact of their post-Marxist liberalism on the British left in the 1980s. A very useful source of thinking was one Norman Geras. You should try and get hold of his stuff. Pity hardly anyone read that monster post of mine.
What has been your worst blogging experience? > I wrote what I thought was a really funny satirical piece about the need to get more love interest into leftwing writings, including the development of a new Mills and Boonski publishing house. It took me a whole train ride. But then no one at all read it.
What would be your main blogging advice to a novice blogger? > Be generous with comments on other bloggers' posts. Do unto them as you would have be done to you and all that.
What are you reading at the moment? > Luke Goode's Jurgen Habermas: Democracy and the Public Sphere.
What is the best novel you've ever read? > The Trial by Franz Kafka.
What is your favourite movie? > Stranger Than Paradise.
What is your favourite song? > 'Geneva' by John Otway.
Who is your favourite composer? > J.S. Bach.
Can you name a major moral, political or intellectual issue on which you've ever changed your mind? > I think, under the strange influence of the never-ending structure/agency debate in Western political science, I may be changing my mind about whether Confucianism, and the primacy of the dao/way as an ethical guide, is actually as innately conservative as I thought. I'll let you know.
What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to disseminate? > Jean Baudrillard's late grapplings (in The Lucidity Pact) with the need for a conscious compromise between the terrible logic of postmodernism and the experience of actually being alive. Or at least that's what I think he said. He's very hard to understand. Kafka expressed it much better a century earlier in Amerika, when his hero Karl Rossman finds peace with the travelling show; yes, it's all a show, but it's home.
What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to combat? > The nihilistic logic of postmodernism (see above). Habermas'll sort it, though.
Do you think the world (human civilization) has already passed its best point, or is that yet to come? > It's to come. This is just a blip, caused by me and my generation, silly buggers that we are. My kids, and Jurgen Habermas, will sort it out.
What would be your most important piece of advice about life? > It's probably worth a crack.
Do you think you could ever be married to, or in a long-term relationship with, someone with radically different political views from your own? > No.
What do you consider the most important personal quality? > Honesty.
What personal fault do you most dislike? > Dishonesty.
In what circumstances would you be willing to lie? > To protect my family and my friends.
What commonly enjoyed activities do you regard as a waste of time? > Sleeping.
What, if anything, do you worry about? > My in-tray.
If you were to relive your life to this point, is there anything you'd do differently? > Stay with militant trade unionism.
What would you call your autobiography? > He Came, He Saw, He Played Conkers.
Who would play you in the movie about your life? > Jacqueline Bisset.
Where would you most like to live (other than where you do)? > Kolkata.
If you had to change your first name, what would you change it to? > Reg. It was my nickname for all the time I worked overseas, and I quite miss it.
What talent would you most like to have? > A strong and accurate throwing arm.
What would be your ideal choice of alternative profession or job? > Sub-atomic physicist with my own white coat.
Which English Premiership football team do you support? > Man United. Well, I was born and bred in Eccles, so I didn't have much choice.
If you could have one (more or less realistic) wish come true, what would you wish for? > The Labour party forms the next government, then gets it right (as in left).
How, if at all, would you change your life were you suddenly to win or inherit an enormously large sum of money? > I'd endow the international import/export trade development charity aimed at promoting the grassroots control of trade processes that I'm always on about.
[The normblog profile is a weekly Friday morning feature. A list of all the profiles to date, and the links to them, can be found here.]