Look at Nosemonkey ‘s visitor graph since he went off to get hitched, way down on normal, no posts to keep drawing us in.

My blog will never have the hits that some others do, I’m spread so thin I can barely update it.

But I think Kathy has a strong point; us Brits just don’t like to talk about politics, even with close friends, I still don’t actually know the political opinions of the young lady I’ve spent the best part of the last month talking to by phone, depsite us having talked about so many other subjects. She just won’t talk about it. To me, that’s weird, but, y’know, degree in the subject does loosen the tongue a little.

Plus, for all its faults the mainstream media in the UK acknowledges that there are alternative viewpoints. In the US, if you wanted to filter your media to reflect solely left or right-wing views, you pretty much could.

There are fewer UK poliblogs and poliblog readers for the same reasons there are fewer UK bumper stickers and buttons on lapels. People here don’t feel comfortable expressing political opinion as freely as we do in the US. British reserve, and all that.

Second, the UK bloggers I read generally don’t update their blogs nearly as often as US bloggers, many of whom are full time bloggers. Are there any Brits who’ve managed to support themselves from their blogs? (Kos should be paying those diarists who bring people to his site.)

Third, UK politics just isn’t as cutthroat as US politics. I would never vote Conservative, but I genuinely like David Cameron. He seems so nice. I could never say that about any of the Republican leaders. And your latest Blunkett scandal pales in comparison to the hijinks of our current US leadership.

The figures are also distorted by a definition issue. Is Kos a blog or a forum? I would have though there was a case that it’s more of a BBS-cum-blogfarm with Kos’s blog attached (let’s face it, no-one, but no-one, goes there to read his posts) than a blog in its own right. The content comes from the user diaries – and shouldn’t they really be considered independent blogs? (Total disclosure: I have a Kos screen name)

Blogs.uk seem on average of higher quality, and interestingly, more blogosphere-oriented, by which I mean they are more conscious of acting as a community.

Normally we complain about politicians and journalists, about their shallowness and their lack of proper technical analysis of the implications of current political policies and legislation. However, there is another section of society which is also fa…

I agree that the US print media is at least as good as the UK newspapers. But I disagree with the suggestion from Brian Barder (my Dad) that the broadcast media coverage of TV and news is as good in the US.

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An interesting topic has been raised over at the Sharpener (interesting for bloggers anyway). The top US blogs exert far more influence over political debate than their counterparts on this side of the water. The question is why?

In a comparison between American and British print and television programmes about current affairs, the Americans come out on top every time, despite the received wisdom. [More >>>]

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Perhaps one reason why French blogging is so big is that searches in French on the internet bring up mostly France-based results; whereas UK bloggers search results are buried with American, Canadian, Australian and International bloggers using English-language. Search engines are not very good at identifying UK-based sites only, especially when so many Brit bloggers may use .Coms like Blogspot, Typepad, MSN Spaces, or host their pages on US web hosts ($7.99/mth vs £7.99/mth for the same service).

Still I guess a lot more than any British blog.