As promised, here’s a roundup of some of the blogs that have appeared in the last few months. And a fair crop it is too. The list represents all the blogs submitted and there is no political bias from me.

To be fair I’ve ranked them in alphabetical order and no qualititive judgements should be inferred – make your own mind up.

Without further ado…

The Apollo Project missed the August 1 cutoff by two days which was close enough. It’s a Liberal Democrat group blog.

Atlantic Rift is a transatlantic blog run by Jonn in London and Aaron in New York. Jonn assures me “we started in late June, but we didn’t
have any actual readers until we started half-assedly publicising it
in at least August”. Oh, go on then.

Bratiaith is “a Bilingual blog about matters Welsh and international”.
(Nominated by Andrew at Bloggers4Labour)

Cicero’s Songs describes himself as “a social and economic liberal”.
(Nominated by Ken Owen.)

Drinking From Home, at four days old, is the youngest blog on the list and is currently tracking down “those politically correct poltroons whose craven deference to Islamic fundamentalism hastens the erosion of our island’s traditions and rights”.

East Acton is the blog of Philip Portwood, a Labour Councillor for East Acton ward in the London Borough of Ealing.
(Nominated by Andrew at Bloggers4Labour)

Eastcliff Matters is the blog of David Green, Thanet District Councillor for Eastcliff in Ramsgate and Labour Party member.
(Nominated by Andrew at Bloggers4Labour)

ebeefs comes from Lahai J Samboma, a Sierra Leonean journalist currently living in the UK, with “a progressive, leftist perspective”.
(Nominated by Tim Worstall.)

Gavpolitics is a Conservative blogger and prospective candidate in the May 2006 council elections. He’s in my neck of the woods as well.

GenghisBlog storms across the plains to bring us his own brand of right wing vituperation.

The G-Gnome Rides Out catalogues “the Right Wing Rants and Ramblings Of A Jesuitical Sophist”.
(Nominated by Laban Tall in The Sharpener comments.)

Great Britain, Not Little England might be familiar to some as MatGB has been mingling as all good bloggers should. Him and PaulJ are “reclaiming the British ideals from the small minded nanny staters”.
(Nominated by Me.)

Huggy’s Mind is the home of “generally moderate left wing ramblings”.
(Nominated by Andrew at Bloggers4Labour)

Jawbox is the nom de plume of Ben Phillips, athiest, socialist and Chelsea supporter.
(Nominated by Nosemonkey.)

John West is a journalist and Labour member living in Paris.
(Nominated by Andrew at Bloggers4Labour)

Lee Gregory is a pro-Labour blogger holding forth on policy and politics.
(Nominated by Andrew at Bloggers4Labour)

Mr Eugenides expounds on an impressive array of subjects.

Musings Of A Disheartened Doctor does what it says on the tin. I hope his iPod gets better soon.
(Nominated by Nosemonkey.)

Nip/Fuct : Tales from the NHS is the everyday story of “a greedy doctor looking for job satifaction AND life satisfaction”. There’s politics in there too.
(Nominated by Nosemonkey.)

Optimates is brought to us by Daniel Lucraft, Cameroonian (Cameronite?) “libertarian conservative”.

Pickled Politics is a group blog aiming to “reflect the political voice of young, progressive British Asians”.
(Nominated by Jarndyce.)

Pigdogfucker is “glorifying terrorists, tolerating intolerance, and making excuses for the inexcusable”.

Points of Jew is a Jewish group blog that intriguingly offers “2 Jews, 3 opinions and much more”.
(Nominated by Robert Sharp.)

Politics for beginners is ChickenLittle’s “political diary of a political newbie”.
(Nominated by Andrew at Bloggers4Labour)

Frank O’Dwyer is Rearranging the Deckchairs while expounding on politics and moral philosophy.

Robert Sharp gets an entry for his own drum – politics, ethics and some slices of life thrown in.

Thesisville! is your genuine “leftie post-structuralist marxist” (it says here) going slowly insane on the final year of a PHD thesis. And has just announced a blogging hiatus, dammit.
(Nominated by Jarndyce.)

Tory Convert bills herself as “Young, Female and Tory” and so is that rarest of creatures the female political blogger.
(Nominated by Ken Owen.)

Tim Neale’s Tea4Two was created in the aftermath of the July 7 bombings and now has an emphasis on civil liberties.

To The Point belongs to Decent Left blogger Andres Kupfer.
(Nominated by Andrew at Bloggers4Labour)

World Weary Detective gives us his views as Metropolitian Police detective. AKA “A view of life from the thin layer between you and the underclass”.

And that’s your lot. A big girlie kiss to all those who sent their blogs or made nominations.

Go forth and refresheth thy blogroll.

In his fine piece on blogging at The Sharpener, Nosemonkey had this to say:

The better – or simply more popular – bloggers end up reading each other and linking to each other and, increasingly, finding themselves less able or inclined, due either to time constraints or the knowledge that their current blogrolls contain enough good people to find most things so they shouldn’t be missing much, to pick up on newer blogs. Equally, the more people that link to you, the harder it is to notice new ones, or new good ones – especially as the likes of Technorati and the other blog search engines are currently having so much difficulty in keeping up to date and accurate.

I’ve only come across two new blogs in the last few months that I read regularly: the mighty Rachel from North London and the excellent Kitty Killer who hasn’t posted since late September (if you’re out there mate, give us a shout). So, to find out what other new blogs are out there, we’re inaugurating a one-off New Blood Blog Roundup.

If you run a political blog of whatever flavour that was created after August 1 this year or would like to recommend one, please email chickyog@gmail.com before midday on Friday December 9. I’ll then present the list both here and on my own blog. As a further incentive to potential third party recommenders, other than the rosey glow of a good deed well done, I’ll also give a hat tip link to your blog.

This isn’t designed as a patronising, patriarchal pat on the head or beauty contest for the “little folk” from self-styled “big boys of blogging”. It’s a genuine attempt to broaden the circle of blogs that many of us are reading right now. There will be no judgements made and all recommendations will make the list. It’ll then be up to everybody using the list to decide who’s cool and who’s fool.

I’m looking after the review column this week while Nick’s away, so things will be a little different (that is, rubbish.)

I was going to write something about The Daily Show, now available Monday to Thursday on UK television thanks to Channel 4’s new spinoff channel More 4. Finally a reason to own a Freeview box. However, there seems little to add to this interview with the show’s Anchor, Jon Stewart, other than to say that you can download some taster clips from the Comedy Central website and the second half of each show, once the satire is out of the way, are usually interviews with an actor/writer/politician shilling their latest movie/book/self and can largely be avoided.

Anyway, a retrospective in instead. On Saturday, the fourth season of The Shield reached the end of its run on Five. I haven’t watched a police procedural show since Hill Street Blues and superficially that’s what The Shield is. For about the first five minutes of Episode One, Season One.

Set in a rundown precinct in a fictional poor area of Los Angeles, the show’s rap sheet is the usual litany of gangbanging (that’s running with gangs, not going to one of Kate Moss’ parties), drug dealing, shootings, rapings and so on. So far, so yawn.

But. The twist in this show is, to paraphrase Noel Coward in the Italian Job: “Camp Freddy, everyone in the precinct is bent.”

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Lance Price, formerly Number 10’s deputy communications adviser, publishes his memoirs soon.

Among the fragrant stories, including Tony Blair’s love for the valleys (“Fucking Welsh”), we have this touching encounter:

Asking his assistant about his sexuality – Price is gay – the prime minister said: “I hope you don’t mind me asking, but when you see a beautiful woman, doesn’t it do anything for you?”

Isn’t that sweet? Parents, worried your son might be a chutney ferret? A night out with Tony down at Spearmint Rhino and a subscription to Razzle will sort him out.

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I’d been following Steven Vincent’s reports from Basra up until he was murdered last week. He’d come to my attention as just about the only Western journalist reporting from Southern Iraq.

The lack of news from the south of the country may have lulled some into thinking that that the region was tranquil. It is certainly much more peaceful than the area in and around Baghdad. But Vincent claimed that this “peace” had come at a price and it looks like trying to discover just what that price was cost him his life.

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Things are finally coming to the boil in the Valerie Plame saga in the US with the imprisonment of New York Times journalist Judith Miller for refusing to testify and reveal her sources to the special prosecutor investigating the outing of CIA agent Plame in 2003.

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Like Blair and New Labour, the British press have drawn a line under Iraq and moved on. Just as many of us suspected, Blair’s piss-poor victory at the General Election was enough to sweep his mendacity under the carpet.

Sure, we still get coverage of the various bombings and carnage but the reasons for all the death and destruction? Well, we’ve put all that behind us. The British media are now too busy bashing the Frogs, arguing the toss over the EU rebate and, as of this morning, ruminating over whither now for Michael Jackson (boy, watch what other stuff slips under the radar today).

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Some people may have noticed a delay between them posting their comments and the comments appearing on the site. This is because the WordPress system that we use has a comment spam filter and any comment with more than one link in it is held back until it is moderated (by me, as it turns out, so be nice.)

That is all.

So now we have the final proof. New Labour is the greatest political party in history. Not content with three historic election victories, bringing democracy to the Middle East and the elevation of a priapic blind man to one of the great offices of state, New Labour can create worlds of their own imagining from the raw firmament.

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Blimpish describes Blair’s Third Way as “Majorism with Marketing“. If you needed any further proof that Blair is the same kind of whinnying little prig as his predecessor, you only had to listen to his self-serving but ultimately hollow homily on anti-social behaviour at his monthly press conference today.

He may speak like a Media Studies graduate in a Marketing department trying to impress his team leader over a lunchtime pint, put his rhetoric is as old as the hills. At any moment I thought he was going to promise to eradicate the Teddy Boy Menace.

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