Over at Scottish Roundup, I have written the introductory article about the Scotblogs awards. One or two people had suggested to me that it would be good for Scottish Roundup to run a blogging awards scheme, and after testing the idea out on a few bloggers it was agreed that it would be a good idea.

But it is not intended to be a glorified back-slapping extravaganza. It is to be a celebration of blogging following what has been a difficult end to the year for some Scottish blogs.

It is also intended to be a way of discovering new blogs. Without a doubt, the most difficult aspect of running Scottish Roundup is trying to find new blogs. If you are pressed for time (and who isn’t?), it is easy to keep on featuring the same blogs week after week — and Scottish Roundup fell into that trap.

This is a conscious effort to turn that tide. For that reason, self nominations are encouraged. In turn, I am hoping that this will encourage more people to nominate blogs for the regular weekly roundup.

I am still looking for two or three more panellists to help out on the awards — so please get in touch if you’re up for it. Any help on what the categories should be would be much appreciated too.

The nominations phase will end on 13 January, and voting will end on 27 January. The winners will be unveiled soon afterwards.

ITV F1 have won their second Baftas in two years. For the many non-British readers of this blog, the Baftas are the most prestigious television awards in the country — our equivalent of the Emmys.

Can you guess which race they won it for?

*drum roll*

The Canadian Grand Prix

The most dire F1 broadcast of last year. The programme was so bad that ITV were inundated with complaints and even offered an “apology”, although it was more of a “lame excuse” if you ask me. Strangely, however, the apology has completely disappeared from the ITV-F1 website, Stalin-style. In its place is a mysterious article entitled ‘How BMW turned its form around’ that contains no text. Were ITV worried in case the Bafta academy saw it? (The original article lives on in the Web Archive.)

But F1 fans are not fools. We know a bad broadcast when we see one and we don’t have fish-like memories. Here is Keith Collantine’s post about it. You can also read mine.

Even if you are a Lewis Hamilton fan, ITV’s coverage of the Canadian Grand Prix was less than fitting of the Brit’s maiden win. The coverage was abruptly cut short immediately after the podium ceremony. There was no press conference and not even a sniff of analysis — just a rushed wrap-up.

Even James Allen’s usually awful commentary reached a pretty low nadir as he messed up Hamilton’s chequered flag moment. He started his “winning yelp” far too early which just made him sound a bit silly: “LEWIS HAMILTOOOOON……… … … … [checks watch]… … [reads newspaper] ……WIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNS!” (Check the audio here.)

Furthermore, no other Grand Prix last year was littered so much with adverts. 17 minutes and 15 seconds of race action was missed by British viewers because of ITV. That is over 16% of the race. It is also around three minutes more than even the next most advert-interrupted race. If this happened during a football match there would be nothing short of outrage, and you can bet your bottom dollar it wouldn’t win a Bafta.

ITV won a Bafta last year for its coverage of the 2006 Hungarian Grand Prix. This also “happened” to be another maiden win for a Brit, Jenson Button. But that was also if anything a sub-standard ITV broadcast as Martin Brundle, the only decent person on the ITV F1 team, was not present.

As with Craig from Craigblog, I am spotting a pattern here. No matter how bad their coverage is, ITV F1 will win a Bafta as long a Brit wins a Grand Prix for the first time. We all know that no matter how good their coverage was, ITV would not have won that Bafta unless Lewis Hamilton had won. In which case, the Bafta should go to Lewis Hamilton, not ITV / North One. And last year’s should be handed to Jenson Button.

Bafta are an absolute disgrace. If academy members had carried out even a cursory web search they would have found out that ITV’s coverage of the 2007 Canadian Grand Prix attracted several complaints. Moreover, they would have found out that the vast majority of F1 fans are less than enamoured about ITV’s approach towards F1.

I wrote about ITV winning their Bafta last year. Today, it is one of the most popular posts on the blog (908 visits in the last week alone, compared to 520 for the 2nd most popular post and 255 for the third most popular).

Let us not also forget that no less an authority than Ross Brawn has criticised ITV’s coverage of Formula 1. And I haven’t even touched on the overwhelming Hammy-hype. We F1 fans really have got a bum deal from ITV, and the fact that they are showered with praise in MSM backslapping events just rubs salt into the wound. It widens the ever-growing divide between we fans on the ground and our overlords in the mainstream media.

All I can say is, thank goodness F1 coverage is moving back to the BBC next year. I don’t think I can stand much more of this.

Now where’s the sick bucket?

Read more on this travesty at F1Fanatic.

I hate all blogging awards except for the ones I am nominated for. That means I hate all of them (apart from James Higham’s Blogpower awards!).*

One of the biggest problems is that there are just so many of them. The ones I always saw as the most important were the Bloggies — but perhaps that is just because they are the ones I came across first. Besides, I’ve never been nominated for them, so I hate them.

It’s a bit like degrees, as we have been discussing a few posts back. There are so many blogging awards that most of them mean zilch. So it’s quite funny to see Neil Clark acting as though he is some kind of cyber-god for winning a particularly flawed poll.

The full details are over at The Wardman Wire. Because you could vote multiple times (once a day, apparently), Neil Clark encouraged his readers to vote multiple times. Nineteen times in five days, to be exact.

Then when he won he went over to his patch on Comment is free and declared a blogging revolution — hilariously — “because my views are more in tune with ordinary people than most in the blogosphere”!

The only time I had previously come across Neil Clark before was when he wrote a particularly odious piece on Comment is free about the campaign to grant asylum to Iraqi employees for British forces. It rightly drew widespread condemnation from bloggers across the spectrum. (More on the Iraqi employees campaign here.)

However, this is perfectly in tune with his views on foreigners in general, so it seems. Mr Eugenides has pointed out that (as well as being a defender of Slobodan Milošević) Neil Clark is a candidate for the British People’s Alliance, which has among its policies the following:

The British People’s Alliance is also determined to expose, to halt, and to reverse the deliberate importation of a new working class whose members understand no English except commands, know nothing about workers’ rights in this country, can be deported if they step out of line, and (since they have no affinity with any particular part of this country) can be moved around at will, so that the old working class can be told to go hang, taking with it its unions, its minimum wage, its health and safety regulations, and so forth.

The British People’s Alliance is determined to expose, to halt, and to reverse the enforced bilingualism or multilingualism that transfers economic, social, cultural and political power to a bilingual or multilingual elite, so that those who are or will be excluded are or will be the English-speaking working class, black and white.

This is supposed to be a left-wing party, but it sounds more like the language of the BNP (complete with “some of my best friends are black” statement at the end). But it just goes to show — yet again — that the difference between left and right really is negligible. After all, big government is big government, and once it controls one part of the economy then control of other parts of our lives is not far behind.

Rather than left or right, what really matters is whether you are a liberal or an authoritarian. And ballot stuffer Neil Clark certainly isn’t a liberal.

(I will expand on my views on liberalism and statism in two separate posts soon.)

* I did actually win an award today, and coincidentally it was in a post about Neil Clark.

I have to confess that Blogpower is one of those things that I have kept on hearing about, but I have never fully had the time to investigate.

James Higham is a startlingly prolific blogger. The amount of energy he puts into his activities is incredible. He often sends me emails notifying me about his latest Blogfocus or something like that. And every other blog I visit, he seems to have left a comment there!

His latest email was to tell me about the Blogpower Awards. I am not the biggest fan of blog awards — mostly because I have never been nominated for one, never mind won one! That is a joke of course.

Truth be told, I’m not a fan of awards in general. But James Higham seems like a good bloke. And despite the fact that I have not yet worked out exactly what Blogpower is, it seems like an admirable enough project. So I have decided to nominate.

There are a range of categories on the go, and at first I wasn’t sure if I would be able to nominate someone for each category. But I got one down for most, although I have probably made some kind of mistake that is offensive to my own opinions.

I don’t have a favourite blog as such. In fact, almost every blog goes through good and bad patches, and it is not easy to completely fall in love with any blog. At least, not to the point where you can say, “Blog x is head and shoulders above the rest.” Despite this, I decided to express some opinions for a change.

So get your nominations in now!

I hesitate to write about the Mercury Music Prize, seeing as it’s a load of arse. But it is such an important event in the music industry’s calendar that you can’t afford to ignore it. I do hate it though. Witness music journalists clambering all over themselves last year to make out that they had been championing Antony and the Johnsons before anybody else had even heard of them. Yeah right.

Last year’s MMP wasn’t all bad though. Everybody likes to scoff at the ‘token jazz’ nominations, but I ended up buying Polar Bear’s album on the basis of their performance at least year’s bash — and what a wise purchase it was.

I’ve only heard two of the albums on this year’s shortlist. I’m pleased that Hot Chip’s ‘The Warning’ has been nominated. It is not as good as their debut, ‘Coming On Strong’. Indeed, many of the tracks on ‘The Warning’ feel a bit like watered-down versions of old Hot Chip tracks. But there are some great moments in the album, and I’m pleased that Hot Chip are getting more widespread recognition.

The other album I’ve heard is ‘The Eraser’ by Thom Yorke. I’m quite surprised that Yorke has let himself be nominated, given all the baggage that comes along with the MMP. You know, the fact that it is a poisoned chalice and so on. The MMP works best when it is giving a leg-up to new or unknown acts. Thom Yorke doesn’t need it, and if he were to win the panel would be probably be criticised for ignoring lesser-known acts. I keep on meaning to review ‘The Eraser’, but I haven’t got around to it yet. Soon.

I’ve heard a couple of Lou Rhodes’ tracks and they were kind of boring. And I can’t believe that Muse are nominated. People still pay attention to those pompous arses?

Here is the long list of artists nominated for the MMP. Besides those shortlisted, the only ones I’ve heard are ‘The Campfire Headphase’ by Boards of Canada which was pretty weak, and Field Music’s eponymous album.

Personally I think it is a bit of a scandal that ‘Field Music’ hasn’t been shortlisted. If you’ve never heard of them, they are kind of from the same scene as Maxïmo Park and The Futureheads. Although they are all good, Field Music are by far the best of the three bands. I think their album was delightful and unique; a modest masterpiece. Maxïmo Park were nominated last year, so why aren’t Field Music there?

I am actually struggling to think of any eligible albums that I would really have liked to see on the shortlist. British (and Irish) music isn’t in too good a state at the moment in my view. Most of my favourite albums in recent years have been from foreign bands. I guess it would have been nice if Broadcast were nominated, but I don’t think ‘Tender Buttons’ is a properly great album.

I’ll just end my post with this. I haven’t heard the album, but I know for a fact that it is awful. How can it not be? If the Arctic Monkeys win I think I won’t be able to handle it. They are already the favourites amongst those who just take in the hype instead of the music.

• DJ Martian’s views