Six sites

I don't tend to do long link lists in the side bar. I know it's the fashion to link to everyone in sight but I don't find them very helpful personally so try to go for short and usable rather than covering everyone who might conceivably link back to me. Probably a bad blogging policy, but then I've never been that bothered about numbers of readers.

I do tend to link in posts though and do enjoy that element of blogging that turns what could be a pretty solitary exercise into a community. It's also true that links in posts generally produce a lot more hits than side bar links, partly because of the growing popularity of RSS readers which mean that readers don't actually see your site anyway - just your posts.

I'm always a little suspicious of bloggers who don't link to others in their posts, although link exchange deals have never really appealed to me. You should just link to stuff you like, or at least you think is interesting. But again you can't link to everyone so you're bound to offend the easily bruised whatever you do.

Anyway, to cut a long story short here are six sites I've come across recently that are worth checking out;

• Scotland Votes is an excellent tool for all your Scottish voting needs.
  
  
• Jody McIntyre is an interesting activist blogger.
  
  
• Julia Stephenson is a green/media/animal rights person.
  
  
• Saci Lloyd is the author of the Carbon Diaries.
  
  
• The Common Wealth Network is an interesting Christian lefty site.
  
  
• The right to recall is the NUS campaign to unseat Lib Dems.