Here is former UK Ambassador Craig Murray being rightly pleased with himself that his blog is right up there among the most influential blogs in the UK at least according to ebuzzing:

According to the ebuzzing (formerly wikio) rankings, this is the third most influential political blog in the UK – and the fifth most influential blog of any kind. It beats, hands down, the heavily funded ConservativeHome and Labourlist propaganda operations.

Of the two political blogs ahead of it, Guido Fawkes has permanent paid staff, whereas Liberal Conspiracy is a collective of 32 high profile ultra politically correct guardianistas; many of whom are paid by mainstream media.

Yet this blog has total funding of precisely nil and is only me, an ageing and disillusioned man sickened by the growing gap between rich and poor, the domination of mainstream political parties by corporate interests, and the continual promotion of aggressive war.

This blog does everything wrong. There are frequent gaps between posts, sometimes of weeks on end, because I get too depressed at instances of the callous disregard of the powerful for ordinary people.

I do not tweet, except that the start of each blog entry automatically gets tweeted, which someone set up for me.

This is an SNP supporting blog based in Ramsgate, Kent, written by a manic depressive sacked diplomat of eclectic views, whose guiding lights are the deeply unfashionable John Stuart Mill and William Hazlitt, whose favourite book was written by Michael Foot, and who is still metaphorically on his knees begging forgiveness for advising people to put Nick Clegg into government.

Craig has a point. He above all is authentic and passionate. Find an anti-establishment cause and Craig is right there.He was on the spot, watching from the Embassy sofa as J Assange addressed the world from the Ecuador Embassy balcony. That takes diligence. He puts in quality time poring over obscure details to come up with powerfully expressed conclusions: see this one on the Assange rape allegations.

His views – ranging from the self-pitying to the outlandish or bonkers via the sharp and sensible – gush out in all directions. And he has a very strong following among the world’s most ambitious conspiracy theorists, who gather at his site for mutual warmth: as someone wittily once put it to me, "if those people were not busy commenting on this site, they’d be walking round supermarkets muttering to themselves".

On the other hand, he froths up bizarre ideas by playing unrelentingly on a rhetorical syllogistic abuse of the Law of the Excluded Middle: if not X, therefore (plausibly and/or not improbably) Y.

See this superb example which trails a sly smear against Israel in connection with the shootings in France where Craig has NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER to do so:

My own security services sources insist that al-Hilli was not a person of current interest to the UK intelligence agencies and was not involved in anything clandestine. I have no reason to disbelieve them. On the other hand, the limited and confusing information in the media is almost entirely from official sources. I find it very strange indeed how little attention has been paid to the murdered French cyclist, and how easily it is presumed he was just a passerby. Surely it is as likely (sic) he was the intended victim and the al-Hillis the accidental witnesses?

I have only one thought of my own I want to add at the minute. Al-Hilli was a Shia muslim and had been on pilgrimage to Qoms in Iran. What if it is indeed true that he was in possession of no especial nuclear or defence secrets to pass on to the Iranians, but the Israelis thought that he was? The Israeli programme of assassination of scientists involved in Iran’s nuclear programme is a definite fact. It makes as much sense as anything else at the moment, as a possibility.

I am not saying that is what happened. But the directions in which the mainstream media is being so strenuously pointed by official sources, like the massacre of an entire family over an inheritance, are certainly no more inherently probable

See his naughty trick? He takes a completely made-up and arguably anti-semitic idea (ignorant Israeli death squad shoots the Al-Hilli family) and says that ‘inherently’ the theories published by the media are ‘no more probable’. Sure, but why not suggest an Iranian death squad? Or a Chinese one?

Challenged on such dirty drafting ploys Craig can be expected to hoot that X/Y/Z well-known examples of official fabrications show that the powerful have been found to lie, so why are they not lying once again here? This is another banal Excluded Middle: since some people in power sometimes lie, nothing anyone in power is believable. And in any case at least our society puts strong pressure on leaders not to cover things up – perhaps that makes us a bit better than most other societies, not worse?

My own more, ahem, measured, efforts here at this site are far less impactful. But I nonetheless was pleasantly surprised to find myself as high as 120th on the ebuzzing Top Political Blogs and seemingly trending upwards. Our other ex-Ambassadorial blogger Brian Barder is down in 361st place.

So, credit where credit is due. If you make a loud noise, more people hear you.