Top Blogging!

So, it's that time of year again when Iain Dale opens up a giant Excel spreadsheet and asks the bloggers of the nation to vote for their top ten.

It has a different feel this year somehow. Some people are playing more coy than last year while others are being even more brazen in their attempts to hustle for votes. Some bloggers are even bizarrely boycotting the whole shooting match. OK, the voting procedure has more holes in it than the d'Hondt system but do the Total Politics top 100 lists really have such a devastating impact on some bloggers that they don't want to take part?

I'll play it neither coy nor shameless. I think Iain Dale's efforts in this area are excellent and the top Tory blogger is merely suffering that age-old British problem of tall poppy syndrome. Some say it's all a blatant attempt to win easy publicity for his magazine? I'm not even so sure of that. It's merely a bit of fun and finishing high or low shouldn't really be too much of an issue, even if I do admit my nerves will be jangled when the UK and Scottish lists are released.

But as much as I was chuffed to bits to come 44th in the UK and 3rd in Scotland last year my overriding memory was Doctor Vee's breathless cries for help at being squashed between Brian Taylor and Calum Cashley on the list.

For me, yes I'd love to finish as high up the list as I possibly could, there's no point suggesting otherwise, but the begging bowl will stay firmly in the cupboard. (Well, for now at least, the voting does stay open till July 31st after all...)


I'll be putting my vote in soon enough, not that I have a clue what shape it will take. There really are hundreds of excellent blogs out there with a sustained effort going into so many of them. And maybe I'll post up my top ten or maybe I'll keep it private, I suspect the former only antagonises people who aren't on the list while the latter is a cunning way to promise some people they're top of your list when in reality they are not!

Oh dear, the underhand tactics are coming out already. Maybe I should just boycott it after all...