All things bright and beautiful
Not that long ago Steve Lowe and Alan McArthur visited Cardiff Bay as part of their "Quest for Britishness, Britain, Britons, Britishness and the British." They've written a book called Blightly and this is what they made of Assembly and Assembly politics:
"Maybe the chamber's on fire when Rhodri's in town. Maybe it was more combative before Labour and Plaid Cymru got pally. Maybe the Assembly is just very boring. Probably the latter, and probably because it has powers roughly equal to no powers at all. If the Scottish Parliament, in the (reasonably accurate) words of Simon Jenkins, 'has all the powers of a pre-Thatcherite town council', the Welsh Assembly has powers more along the lines of a parish council ... So this is the bright new devolved democracy, is it? Because to our eyes it looked - sorry about this - just b****cks".
It may be "very boring" if you drop in on a Tuesday afternoon. You may agree with them as to why that might be. But forgive me for punching the air, then, when my colleague Vaughan Roderick drew my attention to
Total Politics Top 40 Media Blogs
1 (1) Spectator Coffee House
2 Paul Waugh
3 (2) Ben Brogan
4 (5) Nick Robinson
5 (6) Comment Central
6 James Delingpole
7 (9) Peter Hitchens
8 FT Westminster Blog
9 (13) Vaughan Roderick
10 (4) Boulton & Co
11 Lobbydog
12 (11) Red Box
13 Guardian Politics Blog
14 (10) Melanie Phillips
15 John Rentoul
16 (3) Three Line Whip
17 (7) Paul Linford
18 (15) Blether with Brian
19 Bagehot's Notebook
20 The Steamie
21 (12) Betsan Powys
22 (8)
23 Paul Mason
24 Ed West
25 Martin Bright
Apart from the fact that Vaughan is now officially the Big Daddy of Welsh political blogging ... ah all right, we knew that anyway but now I'll have to buy the chocolate EVERY day for the next year ... I bet I'm not alone in celebrating the fact that there are three Welsh blogs in the top 25 - two of them based in the Assembly. is there too at number 36.
Thanks to all of those who went to the trouble of clicking/voting and let's hope some of those who've not read our blogs before - but will now - might have their own take on what is bright, what is boring and what is ... that other b word.
I'm Betsan Powys, ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Wales' political editor. I'll be blogging the inside track on .
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