Thank you for Scotblogs votes

I have to say I always knew I had the best readers in the whole world. I would like to give each and every one of you a big cuddle, but that would probably scare you so I'll just leave it at a polite thank you to everyone who voted for this blog in the Scotblogs Awards. Anyway, the Scotblogs Top 5 Liberal Democrat blogs were posted this morning and I was very pleasantly surprised to be in there.

The top 5 include the witty, irreverent and occasionally slightly smutty tales of Lib Dem campaigns past found over at John Ault's Alter Ego blog. I love the way he intersperses his campaign memories with serious stuff, even if he did slag off one of my favourite movies in one of his first posts.

Then there's the fabulous Stephen. He has an originality and a sharpness I couldn't match in a million years and I don't know how he carries all the stuff he knows about in his head. It must be bigger on the inside. He writes on a fantastic range of subjects and isn't afraid to dig deep inside himself to show what he means. I particularly liked this one where he took Jan Moir apart, word by poisonous, bigoted word.

Willie Rennie's blog has a local focus, but he also writes about issues affecting our forces and victims of miscarriages of justice. He traced the progress of his Bill giving the power to suspend driving instructors convicted of serious offences. He's currently campaigning vigorously against Rosyth being turned into a nuclear submarine dump and this post highlighted the reasons behind a Government adviser's departure - I think there are parallels with Professor Nutt's situation here with an arrogant Government refusing to listen to its specialist advisers. He also raised the issue of cleaners at T in the Park not being paid for their work and highlighted how tight fisted the Government is being about allowing children affected by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster into the UK for much needed holidays in fresh air..

Last and by no means least, there's Andrew. He always writes passionately, from the heart, whether it's sharing the appalling violence he suffered as a young gay man, or about awful cruelty to animals, or raising awareness about Pancreatic Cancer after his mum passed away. Politically, he's shown Labour's erosion of our freedoms by highlighting how taking photos of buildings can land you in big trouble and how a baby's DNA was kept on the database. However, for all sorts of smut related reasons, this this is one of my favourite posting of his from last year.

So there you have it, a smorgesbord of the top five Scottish Lib Dem blogs. We should all be very afraid, though, because, on the horizon is a newcomer that's probably going to whip all of our backsides next year. Only a week old, Alistair Carmichael MP's new blog is right on the money. Alistairs's tweets and Facebook status updates have brightened many a dull day for us for some time and if Burning My Boats is half as good as these, he'll take the blogosphere by storm. His second post made it into Lib Dem Voice's Golden Dozen last week - hardly surprising as it highlighted those who share the blame for the Iraq war but who will not be scrutinised for their actions. I hope he finds the time to keep it up.