Also, coming up this week, a Blog Awards special in which we preview all the candidates for all the awards in all the categories. New columnist John Waters is working on the copy as we speak.

From all corners of the country bloggers of all shapes and sizes converge on Dublin to drink pints, tell jokes about UNIX and swap Wordpress upgrade tips. Secondary to this is an elaborate awards ceremony, hosted by popular radio presenter and former TD for Dublin South-Central, Rick O’Shea.

Mullet has challenged Declan Ganley to a duel. As yet Ganley has not repsonded.

Already preparations are underway for the 2009 show with a change of venue and, indeed, a change of city. This years awards will take place in Cork, home of the founder and country music singer Damien Mullet. He told the Irish Sentinel “People have said it’s great that I’m bringing the show to Cork, the real capital of Ireland, and that I’m doing my bit for Corkonian rights, but it goes much deeper than that.

It’s all to do with handiness. After this year’s show I can just grab a taxi and go home. As you might imagine a taxi from Dublin each year costs a fortune”.

But with excitement building amongst the blog populi a dissenting voice has emerged. Hank Scorpio, Libertas spokesman, has called on people to vote against the Irish Blog Awards. He said “So what is in this ‘awards show’ that is so objectionable? It grants extensive powers to the Irish Blog Awards with no real means of holding accountable those taking over the power. The Irish Blog Awards will have extensive power over key areas Irish blog life. In some of these they are even granted exclusive control and in others they will have the ability to write Irish blog legislation.

In fact, it is hard to think of any major function of blogging in which the Irish Blog Awards cabal would not have power over if the Irish Blog Awards goes ahead. For the future of Irish blogging people should vote ‘no’.”

The move has been met with widespread condemnation across the Irish Blogging scene apart from the blogger who likes everything who said “I can see his point of view. Yes, the Irish Blog Awards is great, and yes, it’s my absolute ambition to win one but Libertas won’t follow me on Twitter if I go against them so I’m saying that we should acknowledge how great the awards are and give full props to Damien Mullet but at the same time we should vote ‘no’. It’s easy being me”.

It’s not the first controversial incident to emerge from the Irish Blog Awards. In 2006 blogger Twenty Major sent a henchman who, unbeknownst to many, released a pheromone into the audience which would ensure he won awards for the next two years. His evil plan was revealed in his 2008 autobiography ‘My life as a cunt’, before his enforced retirement due to old age.

And in 2007 fourteen audience members were gunned down in cold blood by a Limerick gang who took their fancy dress just that one step too far.

President Klaus was in Ireland to meet with Libertas, the shady underground movement many believe to be the inspiration for Quantum in the new James Bond film. Its omnipotent leader, Declan Ganley, hosted a party to launch the organisations movement into politics this week with Klaus as the guest of honour.

Rocky Dennis is pro-Lisbon

The star-studded event, which featured celebs such as Jim Corr, that model he went out with that looks the same as his sister and even has the same name for God’s sake, 2FM’s Gerry Ryan and Zig from Zig and Zag, took place at Libertas’s sophisticated underground lair which runs from beneath Gig’s Place on South Richmond Street to as far as Cassidy’s on Camden Street.

At the event President Klaus declared himself unhappy at the way Ireland had been treated for voting no to the Lisbon Treaty. He explained that the democratic wishes of the people must be respected and assured party-goers that when the Czech’s took over the EU Presidency in a few months time he would ’send over a few cases of Staropramen’ as a gesture of goodwill.

But Munster MEP Brian Crowley has taken exception to Klaus meeting Libertas as his comments. “This fella is nothing but a silly little prick”, he told reporters outside Le testicule d’or, where he was lunching at the expense of taxpayers. “We must not mis-interpret the Lisbon Treaty referendum result. 70% of the Irish people strongly back Irish membership of the European Union, with only 8% against. This was the clear finding of the IMS Millward Brown study that was carried out this summer into the attitudes of the Irish people towards Europe.

Of course by bringing this up I am simply muddying the waters myself and suggesting that Irish people are too thick to know the difference between voting no to a specific treaty and voting no to the EU as a whole. But the thing is, they are too thick, the great thick eejits. I mean, there’s certainly no other explanation as to why the treaty was rejected. It’s not that we took votes for granted, or that it was an impossibly long and vaguely comprehensible document. It’s all do with Irish people just being stupid. Now, if you’ll excuse me I’ve got to practice my ‘How can we be lovers if we can’t be friends?’ for this weekend’s Boltorama, the annual Michael Bolton impersonator festival in Basle”.

It is thought that Libertas could have as many as three hundred candidates for the next general election with many undecided voters hoping the organisation’s links with American defence contracters could mean easy access to personal RPGs, sub-machine guns and sonic blasters which are not even available on eBay.

: Czech President Vaclav Klaus talks at the Libertas launch party.

Download audio file (klaus.mp3)