Hame is the sailor, hame frae the sea

Not a reference to Labour Hame this time (although of course Bomber Admin is never far from my thoughts), merely an announcement that I'm back from my travels, after an epic four-hour ferry crossing from Calais to Dover on Monday in the midst of the remnants of Hurricane Katia. I finally arrived at my hotel in Newcastle at 4.45 on Tuesday morning, and the woman at reception gave me a wicked smile, announced she had just released my room, before adding "You're very late". Well, there was no real arguing with that, was there? I took some pictures of the sea at Calais, but I'm still in the photographic dark ages, so I'll have to wait to get them developed.

Anyway, I should have made it clearer that I was heading off for a little while - the Rugby World Cup post was pre-scheduled, albeit cunningly written as if it wasn't! In particular, apologies to Stuart Dickson that I wasn't able to blog on the polling alerts he sent me by email.

And many, many thanks to all of you who voted for this blog in the Total Politics Awards. Irritatingly (and inexplicably) they appear to have scrapped the Scottish section of the awards altogether, so it'll be difficult to make a direct comparison with previous years. Jeff Breslin's masterplan for finally displacing Tom Harris from the number one slot may also have been cruelly thwarted as a result! However, I was delighted to spot that Scot Goes Pop does appear on the list of the UK's top 75 left-wing blogs, at number 48. I won't be able to add a 'vanity badge' to the sidebar this time, though, as they only have one for the top 10!

UPDATE (3pm) : It seems I spoke too hastily - although they didn't appear to be 'slated in', the Scottish and Welsh lists were suddenly published today. Scot Goes Pop is eleventh on the Scottish list - which means I've missed out on the top 10 badge by one place! Aaaaargh! Seriously, though, I'm really thrilled with that result, and thanks again for all your votes. Warm congratulations to everyone who features on the list, and especially to Tris and Munguin on the success of Munguin's Republic, which has rocketed twenty-nine places up the rankings to eighteenth.

Vote for a blog that is fighting for the things that really matter now the midgies are back

If you've enjoyed this blog over the last twelve months, especially while it was covering the thrills and spills of the historic election campaign back in the spring, I wouldn't be at all put out if you consider it worthy of a vote in this year's Total Politics Blog Poll, which is now - slightly later than usual - open for business. Last time round, Scot Goes Pop finished a respectable 23rd in the Scottish section, and by the looks of things only just missed the cut for the top 300 political blogs in the UK as a whole. So it'll be interesting to see what happens this time - visitor numbers are certainly well up on last year, but I'd imagine that's the case for a lot of other Scottish blogs as well.

There's also an additional poll for individual bloggers this time round (ie. regardless of whether their writing is restricted to one blog or spread across several), so I suppose at this point I'll have to pray in aid my endless witterings on Political Betting! My only guest slot on Scottish Roundup to date was also within the last twelve months - I clearly remember that it was in the autumn, because it seemed to take me the whole autumn to finish it.

Voting is slightly easier this year - it's by online form rather than email, although you still have to provide a valid email address. There's also a rule that bloggers aren't allowed to publish a list of ten 'recommended' blogs that they think people should vote for.

So I won't do that, but I will just say good luck to everyone! Click here if you'd like to cast your votes.

Total Politics poll

Many thanks to everyone who voted this blog onto Total Politics' list of top Scottish blogs! Having failed to trouble the scorer last year, I'm really chuffed to finish as high as 23rd. Congratulations also to Munguin and Tris for the well-deserved success of Munguin's Republic in the poll.

There are no huge surprises in the top 10, although as Andrew Reeves has pointed out, it's puzzling that Subrosa at number 9 is an outright 'new entry'. It's also slightly disappointing to see SNP Tactical Voting slip from 2nd to 3rd. For me, it's the leading Scottish political blog by a country mile, and in spite of the name it's relatively ecumenical and non-partisan, so it ought to have a broad appeal. However, the format of the poll works against it - blogs with a UK-wide focus that happen to be penned by a Scot (eg. Tom Harris) have a considerable inbuilt advantage.