Love and Liberty

Tonight’s the deadline for nominations to the 2008 Liberal Democrat Blogger of the Year Awards, and if you’re still looking for a favourite posting to propose – or, more importantly, just want to read some of the finest Lib Dem writing of the last twelve months – then I’ve collected a set of links for your surprise, familiarity and delight. Since I appealed to any and all Lib Dem bloggers to pick their own favourite pieces from the last year, nearly twenty have done so, and if you missed any, I’ve collected them all here (thankfully, none have deleted themselves).

I came up with the immodest but practical idea of people picking their own best a few weeks ago in the hope of making the notoriously tetchy and partisan awards season more fun and more interesting for everyone. It’s partly in response to Lib Dem Voice’s very useful, very interesting but not necessarily reflecting the ‘best posts’ rather than the ‘most provocative headlines’ of the year Golden Ton, a chart of the top click-throughs from Lib Dem Blogs Aggregated.

My attempt at a meme was very simple. What did the people who’d written each blog think was the best they’d done since last August? It wasn’t prescriptive, with people able to show off as many or as few posts as they liked, doing it on their own blogs rather than demanding they come to me as a central hub, and not a single imposed ‘category’; simple bottom-up decision-making. And if you liked something else they’d written, you could always propose something completely different, anyway.

So, my thanks to all the people and pachyderms who’ve posted their own lists, and to the friend who got in touch to say exactly why they wouldn’t be posting one of their own. I’ve been fascinated by all the posts that have been picked out, some remembered, some rediscovered, some new to me, and many of them absolutely brilliant (so much so that I’m still struggling to whittle them down by tonight). If you missed any, then, here’s what I profoundly hope is the complete list, in no particularly order except at the top and the bottom. I hope you enjoy them, whether you view them through the prism of the awards or simply to learn, be amused by or argue with them:

• First to volunteer was Joe Otten of Joe’s Extra Bold Blog, who suggested a couple of his favourites on my original ‘appeal’ post

• Millennium Dome of The Very Fluffy Diary of Millennium Dome, Elephant was particularly pleased with another blogger in selecting his favourites

• Jo Christie-Smith was quick off the mark with a rather flattering and very well-argued selection

• Mary Reid of Read My Day came up with a selection including a splendid place visited by Richard, Millennium and I last week

• Alex Folkes of A Lanson Boy came up with the best, truest and most titillating of headlines

• Jonathan Calder of Liberal England stuck to some of his more uncharacteristically political best bits

• Tim Poppleworth of Liberal Polemic almost certainly misspelled my name deliberately (unlike some variations in these posts), given the content of the link he provides for it, and has the highest ambitions

• Stephen Glenn of Stephen’s Linlithgow Diary provides an excitingly Douglas Adams-themed selection

• Jennie Rigg / Snapesbabe of The Yorksher Gob first did some advertising and then counted down her own top ten

• Peter Black AM gives a flavour of his obsessions

• Alix Mortimer of The People’s Republic of Mortimer picks out her own favourites among many other awards

• Andrew Tate of One Hour Ahead aims to rule the world and, worse, preaches TV heresy ;-)

• Liz Williams of Singing My Song had a cold, but a well-informed selection

• Andy Hinton of Wouldn’t It Be Scarier (To Discover Everything You Believe is Absolutely Right)? offers some points he’s particularly bothered about

• Andy Strange of Process Guy doesn’t expect an award, so you should give him one
  

• Mark Valladares of Liberal Bureaucracy wondered if he was too late

• While, last but by no means least, Linda Jack of Lindylooz Muze meets my slightly overstated “fury” with a sloppy kiss. Sloppy kisses back, Linda!

• Oh yes – and I picked mine, too.

If none of those tickle your fancy, while looking at the nominations for the Very Prestigious Snabies I came across this cartoon from not a Liberal Democrat but probably a liberal Democrat, and it made me laugh.

Labels: Blogs, British Politics, Liberal Democrat Conferences, Liberal Democrats, Memes, The Golden Dozen