At Least It Wasn't Mel

Neil Clark writes:

Many thanks for your terrific support in the 2008 weblog awards. We pulled 1,014 votes - just short of last year's total, which was a great achievement, seeing that this year's poll took place during Orthodox Christmas week and many of our Serbian and Russian readers were away from their computers. In addition, I've received a complaint that in Russia the voting circle on the screen did not appear: that's something the organisers are looking into.

Last year our total of 1,116 votes was enough to win the Best UK Blog award by a distance, this year though, hitting the 1,000 mark got us fourth place. But seeing that we were up against the blog representing Britain's second biggest city - Birmingham - and which was touted in the Birmingham media and on the websites of the city's MPs - and one hosted by The Spectator, we did really well to get as many votes as we did.

Congratulations to 'Created in Birmingham', who subject to official confirmation, are the winners of the 2008 award.

Practically all of Melanie Phillips's votes were overnight from America. Next to no one in Britain voted for her. She should stick to writing about education, drugs, how the Tories eviscerated civil society, that sort of thing. She is good on them.