I am still in shock at not being shortlisted for the ‘Best UK Blog’ but I decided to swallow my pride and enjoy a few hours enjoying the high quality content of the 10 finalists: Ian Dale’s Diary - A tagline of ‘Commentary, analysis and gossip from the heart of Westminster’ completely turned me off and I closed the Firefox tab before I was subjected to any more torture. Guy Fawkes - Hoping for top tips to blow up the Houses of Parliament but just got more politics. Yawn. Neil Clark - The winner apparently. Anti-war hack with a lot of posts urging readers to vote for him. EU Referendum - Simply couldn’t summon up the enthusiasm to click through. Pub Philosopher - Promising title but yet more (right wing) politics. May as well buy the Daily Mail. The Devil’s Kitchen - Considered outpourings on the wit and wisdom of David Cameron. No thanks. Baggage Reclaim - Much better. A blog recording amusing anecdotes from an anonymous baggage handler at LHR. Oh no - wait a minute - it’s just a blog about dating and ‘relationships’. Nourishing Obscurity - Promising title but this excerpt completely lost me: ‘I see that the current crop of parents lost their moral compass long ago and this is the first generation to grow up “moral-code-lite”. Bright Meadow - Soft porn alert ‘She loved how the amber glinted off his bones’. I daren’t read any more. Particularly as I am on a formal warning from my employer. Kickette - At last. A discerning blog all about football. Only this one is about celebrity footballers (Fat Frank), their tiresome girlfriends and pictures of Ronaldo with his shirt off. I was so depressed that I decided to kill myself compile my own list of the definitive, real, undisputed ‘Top 10 UK (and Irish) blogs’ in strict alphabetic order: ...

I decided to save Oracle Corporation lots of money by not attending Oracle Open World in San Francisco. Initially, my manager spent a lot of time trying to dissuade me but as soon as he uttered the words ‘Billy Joel’ and ‘Prince’, I immediately volunteered for some billable work in Sunderland to help pay for Doug’s complimentary red sleeping bags. Doug Burns, Tim Hall and John Scott seem to have a real problem conquering jet lag while Mark Rittman just does ’the British thing and goes down the pub’. While I don’t travel to the States that often, I did attend a Microsoft training course in Seattle last year. As I don’t sleep on planes, I do recall being quite tired when we disembarked and slightly annoyed when my colleague volunteered to navigate and let me concentrate on driving. ...

Norman - Your next post will be in the style of Micro-Blogging… Monday - NSCR. Plaintive request from a customer to truncate a Siebel intersection table. Siebel’s official stance on the use of any direct SQL to modify data in Siebel base tables is well documented. However, for reasons that are too lengthy and tedious to divulge here, this particular request was approved. Mainly because they deposited £2500 into my offshore account. ...

London - 5 November 2007 The football world was left reeling after Norman Brightside was fired last night. The long serving manager of Whiteside Wanderers was summarily dismissed when the club released a terse statement on their website. ‘36 points. That’s rubbish. You’re fired.’ After a pre-season of great promise, big money transfers and high expectations from fans, Whiteside Wanderers have endured a poor start to the season and are positioned second from bottom after a string of inconsistent performances and bad results. ...

Q: Who on earth could manage to screw up a Cup draw involving just four teams ? A: The Scottish FA. Reminds me of a funny Not The Nine O’Clock News sketch where the draw is made for the FA Cup Final. ‘Number 2 - Arsenal …will play Number 1 - Liverpool and that completes the draw for the FA Cup Final. '