Political blogs - guess who is not coming to dinner

I’m only going to talk about the political blogs that are nominated as they are the ones I'm most familiar with. A good representation from our friends in the north. And a decent number from local election candidates too. Nice to see the political journalists joining the fun. And the entries from the journalists new and not so new are very strong too, quality writing, consistent posting and a key aspect for me - good engagement and discussion with their readers. I would take the personal view that it is very hard for the solo blog efforts to compete with the group efforts, and let's face it the likes of Slugger and CedarLounge are simply fantastic reads and resources. Still that which does not destroy us makes us strong, eh!

Yet looking at the list I can’t help feeling there are a good few missing that you would really expect to have seen at least one or two of: the likes of Damien Blake, Dominic Hannigan, Ciaran Cuffe and Richard Delevan spring to mind. Does this mean they will now be banned from the top table for blog events in future? Have they been shunned by the politiarati who long only for the delights of the new and shiny, or did people just reckon they would be nominated anyway and people instead sought out those who might not be so popular. That would be a real pity if they were lost for good from the scene but if the awards are genuinely meant to be a reflection of the current state of play for blogging then the logic of doing exactly that would appear hard to avoid. Of course, by saying "banned from the top table" I am being more than a little facetious.

I've said it already but if there was a live nomination process so you could see who was already nominated then this sort of situation would be avoided. After all, this is just the nomination stage and it would be good for the categories to be as inclusive as possible. There again they could have been lost or mislaid, my own nominations for example don’t appear to have made it through even though I did get a confirmation mail. But adding those mentioned above in now would have all the appearance of favouritism so I guess they'll be missing for this year.