My AI generated picture of Westminster to go with the blog.

Hits on my blog reached just over 230,000 last year not including the full number on Facebook and Linked In which takes the reach of the blog to even higher figures.

The most startling change in 2025 was a sudden interest from China that began in August and finally petered out at the end of the year. Figures from China totalled 128,000 over a five month period with at one stage Beijing having more hits than London. Altogether some 40 Chinese cities downloaded stuff from my site.

What was particularly interesting was that there were old blogs and nearly all were concerned with the same issue – the plight of the 50s women who faced a six year delay in their pensions involving Back to 60, CedawinLaw and WASPI.

The largest number of hits were on a 2019 blog which was cross posted with Byline.Com on the date set for a judicial review won by Backto60. In one year this blog added 12,507 hits taking it to over 136,000.

The second highest hits came on my story that men who “retired” at 60 had all their national insurance contributions paid by the state until they reached 65. This gained another 8,744 taking it to over 83,000.

Other large hits were on the Downing Street pensions robbery, the court of appeal decision and the decision to appeal to the Supreme court.

Two blogs not concerned with the issue but led to large hits from China included the leak of Dame Janet Smith’s report into the BBC’s mishandling of the paedophile Jimmy Savile and a 2015 blog on my statistics that showed my blog on the secret hideout of singer Amy Winehouse and a dispute with David Aaronovitch had driven traffic to the site.

I have talked with people who have had dealings with China who suggest that this was a data scraping exercise connected to planned changes in China’s pensions policy. China has one of the lowest ages for women’s retirement in the world at 50. It is currently running a 15 year plan to raise women’s retirement ages from 50 to 55 and 58 and men’s from 60 to 63. It looks as though the Chinese were sussing out the opposition in the UK.

The blog attracted over 8000 hits from the US, and over 1000 from Germany and Ireland down to single hits from places like Angola, Brunei, Myanmar and Mongolia.

The other big growth was on Linked In whose stats are not fully recorded by WordPress. At the end of the year the organisation sent me a note saying I was in the top five per cent of contributors on the site. This is very pleasing as I have had large number of hits where I have taken up whistleblowing cases, unfair employment tribunal hearings, failures of accountability in the NHS and in the judiciary, and injustice for patients in both the NHS and the coroner’s service.

Since it is read by professionals I have gained a following both at home and abroad which is growing. Let’s hope 2026 sees the reach of the blog to new heights.