Guido and Iain Dale are riding high in visitors to their respective websites.

Big numbers, comparing favourably if not better with similar sites run by ‘mainstream’ media outlets. Increasingly they all feed off each other, of course.

Why not? For far too long a tiny number of media pundits have held extraordinary influence over public life round the world. Not because they were smarter or wiser than many others, but because they were taken on by major newspapers and ran a cosy and lucrative oligopoly.

Bloggers and other web analysts give these plump pundits healthy competition.  Plus they point out errors at supersonic speed: ‘fact-check your ass’, as it’s known in the trade.

My own readership is more … modest. Still, 3000 Unique Visitors a month is OK by me, given that the site has been going only a few months. Thanks, readers

Plus the site has helped me get a droll piece in a brand new UK political magazine launching this month: Total Politics. Be there, or be square.