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It’s that time of year again. From Iain Dale’s blog:

We’re asking for your votes to decide the Top 100 UK Political Blogs. Simply email your Top Ten (ranked from 1 to 10) to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com. If you have a blog, please encourage your readers to do the same. I’ll then compile the Top 100 from those that you send in. Just order them from 1 to 10. Your top blog gets 10 points and your tenth gets 1 point.

I haven’t decided who I am voting for, but they will be blogs that I have enjoyed and want to help get into the top 200-300 rather than the top 10 - especially writers I like who have been blogging for a couple of hundred posts and may be getting weary, or blogs that are relatively new. However, here are some blogs I will not be voting for.

For all too many people in Britain, politics appears to be a form of organised bickering and special pleading that intrudes in unwelcome or un-engaging ways on everyday life, but just has to be accepted – like road humps and rain clouds. For another, much smaller class of persons, it is a fascinating and all-absorbing occupation, seeping into every corner of human activity, demanding careful attention and observation.

The former demographic is, one can be sure, far closer to the heart of the Ministry of Justice, currently charged with finding ways of encouraging participation among the large number of people registered to vote who rarely participate in general elections and almost never in local ones – roughly 40 per cent and 60 per cent, respectively.

On the other hand, the professional political class, policy researchers, the commentariat and readers of worthy websites such as this one (who together probably make up less than 5 per cent of the population) are bound to be the ones salivating at the launch of Iain Dale’s new, all-encompassing print publication and online resource, Total Politics, which comes yelping at us like an excitable, over-informed puppy.

Liberal Conspiracy and Comment is Free organised a “do” last night under the heading “Blog Nation“. The reactions I have seen have prompted some thoughts on blogs as campaign tools, and how bloggers may work together - or not.

The aim of the evening was threefold:

“To discuss issues relating to political blogging on the left, learn about online activism already taking place, socialise and meet others you’ve been reading on the web. It is about bringing together the liberal-left blogging community.”

I’m interested in how these coalitions can be built dynamically around each issue or campaign as we develop a view and a consensus, and the impact of a caucus on campaigns that require a broader base.

This article is an interlude in my review of the Total Politics website, after my first detailed look. I’ll be coming back with some thoughts about “Web 2.0″ features of the website - and some possible developments for the future.

For now, a different point has impressed itself on my consciousness.

I promised Kristine (good media blog - worth a read) that I’d look at the current mini-spat about the claim that “UK Newspapers run the Best UK Blogs“.

It needs a “kitchen sink” point-by-point post to do a proper response (the claim has some substance, but in my opinion is only half-right), but that will have to wait.

Sarah McKinley, Editor of the new Total Politics magazine, has given an interview to Internet TV show Catch-21.

The video is just under 10 minutes.