I don’t know whether this is good Blogiquette or not, but below is the list I am sending to the Total Politics Top 100 blogs survey. I thought I’d put them here because it makes an interesting conversation starter.
- Letters From A Tory
- Dizzy Thinks
- Tom Harris MP
- Lords of the Blog
- Coffee House
- Iain Dale’s Diary
- Guido Fawkes
- The Orange Party
- Burning Our Money
- David Jones MP
I’ve tried to sort of get a mix between the ones I visit the most and the ones I enjoy the most. There is, I admit, a degree of tactical voting, in that I read Iain Dale more, and have done for longer, than Tom Harris but I expect Iain Dale will already have plenty of support he doesn’t need1, and after only about three weeks of reading I’m already a fan of Tom Harris’s style. I also haven’t included Nick Robinson on there even though I’ve been following Robinson’s probably longer than any of the others. This is largely because his blogs rarely say anything that he doesn’t then repeat on the BBC.
The hardest decision was whether to put Dizzy Thinks or Letters From A Tory on the top spot. I think I enjoy Letters From A Tory slightly more, partly for the regularly excellent writing (and great concept), but also for the great community of commenters and sense of humour on display there. So, thanks LFaT, for rapidly becoming my favourite political blog.
One thing that compiling my list has brought up is that I need to alter my blogroll (I think I’ll split up politics blogs from tech blogs). I also need to sort out my NetNewsWire subscriptions because I don’t actually subscribe to a number of the blogs I enjoy reading, and so I miss quite a bit of good comment.
You can vote in the Total Politics Top 100 Blogs by sending an email with your list to toptenblogs (at) totalpolitics (dot) com. I don’t expect my blog to appear in the Top 200, so I won’t encourage you to vote for me, but if you do it of course wouldn’t go down badly!
- Arguably every blog on my list I have come across via Iain Dale – with the exceptions of Lords of the Blog (cheers, Tizzy) and The Orange Party (who have extremely eye-catching headlines, and great posts, that I always see on PoliticsHome). [↩]
And also I suppose it’s like music or books, you’ve got no chance of experiencing it all and more or less everyone has got good new stuff still to be experienced.
As you are doubtless aware, I like LFAT too, but dislike most on your list because the whole vibe of the posts and commentators put me off… that may well be me more than them, but still.
I think the best thing about Lords of the Blog is its name, not so enamoured of what’s within. But who cares with a title like that, eh?
Do you read Alix Mortimer? That’s got to be my favourite blogger.
asquith
July 26, 2008 at 6:39 pm