The 23rd most popular left-wing blogger is...me!

I'm dead chuffed to have been placed 23rd in the top 75 left-wing bloggers in the recent Total Politics awards. It's nice to know I'm being read, and strange to see my name close to longer established journalists like George Monbiot, and ahead of people like Johann Hari, although given his own troubles this year, maybe that's not so surprising. Big congratulations also to fellow City hack James Bloodworth too, who came in at eighth place with his Obliged to Offend blog.

I love writing about politics, and I try to resist being too self-indulgent or unnecessarily inflammatory in the subjects I write about. Maybe there's a bit too much of that out on the blogosphere - I pride myself on some semblance of balance and reasoned argument, and try not to take myself too seriously.

Thanks for reading, and especially if you voted for me too. It means a lot.

Nadine Dorries: '70% fiction'

In quite an extraordinary way, the MP for Mid Bedfordshire, Nadine Dorries, has admitted her blog was '70% fiction' in a somewhat bizarre attempt to 'reassure' her constituents that she was not shirking her duties.

"My blog is 70% fiction and 30% fact. It is written as a tool to enable my constituents to know me better and to reassure them of my commitment to Mid Bedfordshire.

"I rely heavily on poetic licence and frequently replace one place name/event/fact with another."

Dorries suggested she had been subjected to "bullying" by the media after the expenses scandal broke.

"In the light of the bullying onslaught of the Daily Telegraph I used my blog to its best effect in reassuring my constituents of my commitment to Mid Beds," she wrote.

Sorry Nadine, but that's not bullying - that's fair game.

More from the Guardian.

What with Andrew Marr's outburst last week and Nick Robinson's perplexing Blogger of the Year award, we bloggers have some work to do.