At the risk of blogging my own trumpet...

Arriving home after a blog-free week in Tenerife, I found a Google Alert directing me to a rather positive review of these pages on the politics.co.uk website (HERE).

I've long thought that blogging is a bit like writing books, as you never quite know whether you're hitting the mark(s) you were aiming for until you get unsolicited feedback from readers.

So to come across a review like this is not only very encouraging, but also helps to make it seem worth blogging on for a bit longer:

'Knowledgeable, well-written and occasionally witty - rather as one would expect from a professional communications consultant.

'Well laid-out without being visually stunning, Max wins points for plenty of functionality, links and videos.

'He seems to be on something of a crusade against the heinous practise of powerpoint presentations, which lends this blog a unique flavour.

'Not many blogs out there focus so much on politician's presentation style, so this makes a nice addition.

'Regular posting and decent opinion pieces round out what is a thoroughly impressive piece of work.'

I also take it as quite a compliment that Politics.co.uk awarded it the same score (8/10) as Iain Dale's Diary, one of the country's top-rated political blogs.

Blatter the bureaucrat or Blatter the bully?

Blatter the bureaucrat

If you can bear it, here's Blatter the bureaucrat announcing FIFA's decision on which country should host the 2018 World Cup:

Blatter the bully

Now, again if you can bear it, here's Blatter the bully pushing President Zuma out of the way to present the cup to to the winners earlier this year:

Blatter the boor

As I pointed out then - in Bad manners from Blatter as he bags limelight to present the World Cup - there was a time when FIFA allowed heads of state to present the cup. But that, of course, was before Blatter and his boys took over.

Interestingly, the original YouTube video of this that I embedded in the post back in July suddenly stopped working, as it had mysteriously become 'unavailable'. Could it be, I wondered that FIFA had been so embarrassed by Blatter's boorish behavior that they'd had it removed?

In the light of today's announcements from FIFA, how they reached that or any of their other decisions remains a mystery.

So too is whether anyone will have had the decency to warn the Russians that whoever is their president in 2018 will need to bring shoulder-pads to the final.

• Are Vladimir Putin and Vlaek Schebal by any chance related?

WikiLeaks News: Are Vladimir Putin and Vladek Schebal by any chance related?

Watching the chess match in the James Bond film From Russia With Love last night, I couldn't help wondering, as they do in Private Eye, whether Russian politician Vladimir Putin and Polish film actor, the late Vladek Schebal, were by any chance related?

Probably not, as Wikipeda assures us that Mr Shebal 'excelled in playing cold, sinister villains'.

P.S. 16th December - and another one

Today I must thank Patrick Hennessy, political editor of the Sunday Telegraph for drawing my attention to another candidate via Twitter (@PatJHennessy): Putin's true look like is much closer to home. It's @paulwaugh. Separated at birth...

I can see what he means, but don't know enough about Mr Waugh to know whether he's as good at 'playing cold, sinister villains' as he is at writing about them: