So here we are – two years older and absolutely none the wiser.

Two years ago today a little post emerged blinking into the light, creating what has become the globe-bestriding multimedia behemoth that is The Ministry.

From nought to 20.8 daily visitors in just 732 days: British design at its best.  It’s like the Millennium Dome, only losing slightly less money.  (Mind you, if I’d been organised enough to keep track of what I’d spent on this site over the past 24 months I’m sure it would run to £300.  That could have bought some really nice bottles of single malt…)

This is post #506.

My favourite post title probably remains “Tory! Tori! Toré!“, though “Hooker line and Singh-er” was quite good too.

The number of gratuitous expletives used in posts is too large to count, but “titwank”, “fuckwittedness”, “prick” (twice), “shite” (twice), “bollocks”, “shit”, “arsehole”, “cunt” and ”fuck/fucking/fucked” (a remarkable eight times) all feature entirely gratuituously in post titles.  (Sometimes swearing is both big and clever…)

Nicky Fucking Campbell has been the person insulted most by the Minister during the past two years, closely followed by Mr. Tony Bliar.  (An honorable mention for a late challenge for this title goes to Sarah Palin.)

There has, I regret, been some repetition.

We’ve had two posts entitled “And still there never seems to be a single penny left for me…“, in January 2007 and a year later.  We’ve had three “Blue Monday“s (December 2007, January 2008 and September 2008).  Early doors we had two “Crash, bang, wallop“s, in January and March 2007.  There were posts called “Reality Bites” in both August and December 2007.

I was a little careless in September and October 2008 when I created two posts both entitled “Never Miss A Beat“.  I quoted “The public gets what the public wants” from Going Underground in both January and May 2007.

And I noticed that a “Red Lights Spells Danger” on both 6 July 2007 – when I would like to point out I was a damned sight more prescient than Robert Peston – and on 24 November 2008.

I apologise.  I shall try harder.

The Ministry has had two hosts, moving from DesignRWeb to AN Hosting over Christmas 2007.

The Ministry has sported four different themes over the past 24 months, though dark.cash – the current theme and also the launch theme – has prevailed for 21 of those months after a few theme-related disasters…

And on that point, there was supposed to be a new, bespoke theme to the Ministry to mark this date.

And all was going remarkably well.  I’d pre-planned things and left myself plenty of time; I’d designed the way I wanted the Ministry to look; I’d found a freelance developer; we’d agreed terms; I’d paid the project funds into escrow; and the developer was happily coding away.

Then all Hell broke loose.  Literally.

The designer lives on the Jaffna peninsula in Sri Lanka.  And the Jaffna peninsula has been aflame all month…

So unfortunately we’ve lost contact due to the general lack of things like electricity and a functioning telecommunications infrastructure in Jaffna at the moment.

I’d like my new theme, of course, but I’m kind of just hoping that our boy is OK and I’m not selfish enough to hand the job to someone else just because we’ve missed this artificial deadline.

So while the Minister is in rude health and fine spirits on this anniversary, the gardens of some of his associates are a little less rosy: Bagerathan – I hope you’re back online soon.

I’m surprised I’ve stuck at this for so long but I’ve really rather enjoyed it all told, so here’s to at least two years more.