11. Zeenat Iqbal: 189
12. Danielle Stacey: 137
13. Hoa Pham: 135
14. Laurie-Anne Bonne: 130
15. Rima AlRakhawi: 118
16. Sarah Ponn: 83
17. Emelie Danielsson: 86
18. Radka Slovackova: 50
19. Carolyn Charlton: 37
20. Monika Braun: 29

In February Hazel Blears, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, used an article in The Guardian to accuse George Monbiot – a campaigning environmental journalist – of using his position as a political commentator to contribute “to the very cynicism and disengagement from politics” that many people seems endemic in today’s society.

In a devastating riposte Monbiot delves into Blears’s voting record on theyworkforyou.

He then uses the publicly available online record to dismantle her claims sentence-by-sentence. It’s a brilliant piece of online journalism.

1. Ylenia Lemos: 279
2. Raj Sandhu: 250
3. Linda Sharkey: 248
4. Stephanie Ott: 238
5. Sara Schedin: 237
6. Christine Fleitz: 199
7. Joanna Aniel Bidar: 178
8. Dursaff Ibrahim: 140
9. FiFi Afobe: 131
10. Zeenat Iqbal: 115
11. Hoa Pham: 114
12. Danielle Stacey: 112
13. Zlata Rodionova: 77
14. Sarah Ponn: 71

2. Join discussion groups and forums whose members discuss your topic (BBC’s Have Your Say, Guardian’s Talk and Channel 4 News are good places to start). Become a participating, interesting helpful member. You will not need to promote or mention your blog; if you are interesting enough, people will check out the URL you place in your member profile/signature.

3. If you have a twitter account, submit your URL to twitterfeed.com so that your new posts will automatically generate twitter announcements.

1. Ylenia Lemos: 224
2. Linda Sharkey: 217
3. Raj Sandhu: 200
4. Christine Fleitz: 165
5. Zeenat Iqbal: 103
6. Hoa Pham: 94
7. Stephanie Ott: 75
8. FiFi Afobe: 66
9. Sarah Ponn: 59
10. Zlata Rodionova: 58

This helps draw people to your blog in two ways:

1). Many people click on the specific pages for WordPress tags. Here for example is the page for news; here is the page for London and here is the page for Islington. You can choose any keyword or short sentence to be a tag. I have, for example, tagged this post with “how to use wordpress tags” on my WordPress theme it appears just below the title (see above).

2). Search engines: Sites like Google also take a lot of notice of tags. Although a search engine will read the entire content of your post, it gives special relevance to two things: the content of your title or headline and the tags you use to describe it. It also reads how many links a page has. Each tag counts as one link, so if you give your post, say, five tags, that already counts as five links. Or put another way, the more tags you have, the easier it is for others to find your content on the internet.

You can now add tags to your new post or go back and add them to your old posts.

* For a more detailed explanation of tagging: see here

1) Clay Shirky: why newspapers are doomed:

“Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.”

2) Steven Berlin Johnson: the future means more news, lot less:

“There is going to be more content, not less; more information, more analysis, more precision, a wider range of niches covered. You can see the process happening already in most of the major sections of the paper: tech, politics, finance, sports.”

1) Ylenia Lemos on some good news for coffee lovers.

“This could help improve the health of tens of millions of customers who, without knowing, are consuming high-calorie foods. Nutritional information is still not displayed in coffee shops’ “freshly made products”, making customers unaware of the dangers of sandwiches’, snacks’ and pastries’ load of saturated fat and salt.”

2) Tim Foss looks behind-the-headlines on the recent ‘wildcat strikes’

“The wildcat ‘British Jobs for British Workers’ strikes which took place at the beginning of February were widely publicised in the media as racist demonstrations, run by the BNP and attended mostly by far-right thugs. When I first saw the strikes on the news, as a lefty born from immigrant stock, my initial reaction was one of disgust followed closely by dismissal of the strikers and the motives behind their industrial action.”

3) While, Greg Taylor notes that the government might soon cap the number of foreign workers:

“Whether or not a limit will actually be introduced is unsure. However if British workers keep on losing out to immigrant workers the government will be under increasing pressure to propose a limit, especially as the recession worsens. It is ridiculous to think that the British workforce is losing out to immigrant workers even at a time so bad as this.”

4) Christine Fleitz continues her forensic examination of the issue of HIV/AIDS in Swaziland:

“A major issue in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Swaziland is social denial. A vast majority of the countries population refuse to admit losing their loved ones to the disease because it is considered to be a ‘taboo’ subject.”

5) Sarah Ponn highlights the growing practice of  “sex-selective abortion”

“The global abortion debate has been inextricably linked to the feminist ideals of freedom and choice. But the availability of modern sex-determination technology is giving rise to a horrifying trend of sex-selective abortion, particularly in Asian countries.”

6) Maria Orihuela impresses with a sharp preview of the National Gallery’s new Picasso exhibition:

“Picasso: Challenging the Past explores Picasso’s work and his influences drawing subtle comparisons between the Spaniard and several other artists including household names of their own such as Eugène Delacroix or Édouard Manet.  The exhibition illustrates Picasso’s admiration for European classical painting with a special mention to his fellow Spaniards, Diego de Velázquez and Francisco de Goya, to whom Picasso paid a tribute in various occasions including  his famous 58 versions of “Las Meninas”.“

7) Hoa Pham examines the latest child protection policy in the UK.

“Lord Laming’s UK Child Protection Protection Progress report was published today following the request from Ed Balls, children’s secretary. It is one of the most heated topics in discussion in the House of Common.  [As to be expected] it has received attention as well as enthusiastic responses from everybody: from members of the House to social workers and anybody else who felt the urge to take action”

8.) Joanna Aniel Bidar respondes to the LSE’s Proffesor Norman Rose:

“A two state solution? Do give me the freedom to express one thought on this point. Leaving Palestinians two pieces of land as Gaza and West Bank? Please Mr. Rose, we need more than floating words and with your mental judgement you could come up with something more valid and acceptable than denying where the Israeli state has violated basic human rights.”

9) Laurie-Anne Bonne waxes lyrical on the state of London’s public areas:

“London. Urban, beautiful, modern, GREEN London. I love London. Seriously. It reminds me of us women. Sophisticated, glamorous and attractive on the inside but still, having a huge hypocritical secret.”

10)  Danielle Stacey feels the pain of the retail recession:

“Anyone involved in retail right now, knows that they are playing a waiting game. Its like being aboard the Titanic; a great big iceberg, no lifeboats and you end up clinging onto abit of driftwood for dear life.”

Bubbling under:  Jess Duncan; Tamara Obeng; Radka Slovackova; Linda Sharkey; Emelie Danielsson