Strange to be blog of the year

Would you believe it.  I can’t quite believe it myself, but you are now reading the Lib Dem Blog of the Year 2013.

I feel slightly embarrassed to admit this, because I have only been blogging seriously since February, and I was among a number of really brilliant fellow nominees, any of whom could have won.  So I am ever so grateful to those who nominated me – and very grateful to my fellow nominees who I have read to learn how to do it.

I have run this blog since 2007, but in rather a fitful way – and gave up entirely while I was at the Cabinet Office organising an independent review.  It didn’t seem to fit very comfortably with being independent.

Then, earlier this year, in a desperate attempt to sell a few of my books, I started doing in every day.  Soon I couldn’t stop.  Goodness knows where all this will end.

So there I was at the Lib Dem Voice awards last night in the Crown Plaza hotel in Glasgow, which – like the conference centre – is a bit like Hampton Court maze, minding my own business, having been assured that I was quite safe and I didn’t have a cat in hell’s chance of winning.

What was I to say?  Well, blogs are an effective protection for people who don’t think very well on their feet.  Of course I hadn’t the foggiest idea what to say then.

So I’m just going to devote this post to a few more expressions of gratitude . . .

. . . to everyone who has been reading what I write, and who devote those minutes from their precious days to visiting my mind, however briefly.  Even if they don’t agree.  Especially if they don't agree.

. . . to everyone who sends me links to things they think will interest me.

. . . to everyone who has encouraged me by tweeting or telling me that they enjoyed reading the blog, and that the ideas I’ve struggled to express are worth struggling to express.

. . . to everyone who has taken the irrevocable step of actually buying one of my books as a result.  You’ve made a middle-aged man very happy.

. . . to all my fellow bloggers who are dedicated to the grand cause that conversation about ideas, with ideas, for ideas, shall not perish from the Lib Dems.