Damien Mulley suggests that the Boggersphere is at the stage where we might consider setting up an annual Irish Blog Awards. Which is a good idea which the Free Stater blog is more than happy to endorse. There is, however, a dark cloud on the otherwise sunny horizon, as Damien has noted:

"But this idea isn't unique. Seems that bastion of balance - the Freedom Institute came up with their very own Irish Blogs Award 2005, way back in urm February. Not sure how the voting system worked. They officially called it the "Liberty Blog Awards for 2005" though, so maybe if another Irish Blogs Awards happened they wouldn't mind too much? And if they did it would only generate more attention for these awards. Even better."

Ouch.

A little investigation of our own shows that the 'voting' panel consisted of "Paul MacDonnell (Director of the Open Republic Institute), Paul Daly (Journalist) and Philip O’Sullivan (Freedom Institute Spokesperson)". Digging a little deeper, we see that Mr. McDonnell once referred in a Wall Street Journal article to Gaelic Irish being a "pseudo-aboriginal ethnicity", though we're not too sure if his fellow directors would agree (curiously, though the FI link to the ORI, it doesn't appear to be reciprocated). Mr. Daly we presume to be the same individual who popped up the previous year as a member of - you guessed it - the Freedom Institute. Mr. O'Sullivan is, we suspect, a certain pseudonymous contributor to the FI's blog.

Surely an independent panel unlikely to be hewing to the FI's right-wing, slavishly pro-UK/US ideological line in picking winning blogs.

Our Bushophile friends have referred to their gongs variously as the "Liberty Blog Awards" and the "Irish Blog Awards 2005". We would guess that the latter title was in much the same spirit as the Freedom boys declare themselves "Ireland's Centre for Social, Economic and Political Studies.". (Given the capitalist, nothing-in-life-is-free imprimateur which drives the FI, we suggest that Damien apply for the copyright on "Irish Blog Awards" post haste, just in case)

Taking a look at the Freedom Institute's "Liberty Blog/Irish Blog Awards", we note the following worthies:

• Best Overall Blog Mark Humphrys
• Best Political Analysis Blackline
• Best Economic Analysis Atlantic Blog
• Best Appearance Richard Delevan
• Best Humour Richard Delevan
• Best International Blog Little Green Footballs

(One raving nutter, one Freedom blogger, one former lecturer and Godfather to the FI, one bitter rightwing American ex-pat (and ex-Herald hack), and the vilest pit of snakes today running a blog. Need we say more?)

Back to Mr. Mulley's idea. We'd throw in the following categories as well:

• Best American Ex-pat Blog
• Best Political Blog
• Best Technology Blog
• Best Legal Blog
• Best Group Blog
• Best Commenter
• Best Photography Blog
• Best Personal Blog

Our final word on this is to enquire on the eligible constituency. We're not big on voting based on (blog) property, but we'd wonder if all of Peter Nolan's sock-puppets should really be allowed individual votes...

1st March 2009: changed now-defunct ORI link to Wayback archive of same