Welcome to Barnet, the bloggingest borough of them all

Congratulations to David Miller (Not the Barnet Times) and Roger Tichborne (The Barnet Eye) whose blogs have been chosen by the Guardian's Dave Hill (Dave Hill's London Blog) as two of the best in London.

Envious? Me? Not a bit of it! I revel in the success of my fellow Barnet bloggers (natch!) and the fact that Barnet has so far produced a third of London's best blogs: two from the six chosen so far.

Is this mere coincidence? Or is it that we have particularly skilled blogsmiths in Barnet? Or is it, just possibly, that Barnet provides a surprisingly rich seam of scandal and gossip for us to mine? It's probably a bit of all three, but the latter must be very important.

Former Barnet council leader Mike Freer set out to win a reputation for Barnet as a trendsetting, flagship Tory borough. His problem was that once his actual record was placed under the tiniest bit of scrutiny, it was seen to be badly scratched.

Freer and his fellow councillors crave publicity but abhor scrutiny, it's an irritant to them, and they've done what they can to disparage the people who examine what they do. But the lights that Barnet's bloggers are shining on their doings will not dim soon.