Ballot papers for the Labour deputy leadership contest went out this week, and in an entirely unscientific appraisal of the blogs, it looks like Jon Cruddas is doing well.

Paul Linford acknowledges that Cruddas, the only non-minister in the line-up, has carved out a distinctive niche as the outsider, but thinks that Hilary Benn has managed to turn the tables on him.

Linford also links to a story on the Press Gazette website, about a local reporter being pushed into a wall by a Gordon Brown minder.

Idiosyncratic Labour backbencher Austin Mitchell backs Cruddas on his blog because he's "talking sense", while Mars Hill has been working for the Benn campaign and posts about it here.

Dave's Part thinks Peter Hain's well-resourced campaign is an example of the creeping Americanisation of modern politics, while Beau Bo D'or has a rather cruel, if amusing, characterisation of Hazel Blear.

Jokes about the diminutive Blears' height haven't been in short supply - here's another one from the Mirror's Kevin Maguire.

Blears has a blog, as does Harman, Cruddas and Johnson. Benn doesn't have a blog as such, but his site is here.

Hain's blog is here, where he has a quick gloat about the fact he has more Facebook friends than the others - 750 at the last count - but also writes a thoughtful post on the usefulness of online campaigning.

On the subject of campaign blogs, anyone who failed to bookmark Oona King's page on the Gordon Brown for Britain site may be surprised to find she is still plugging away here.

Anyone who missed Simon Mayo's 'speed dating' hustings with the deputy leadership candidates can listen here, while the New Statesman's Martin Bright worries he had his own Walter Wolfgang moment while chairing a debate between the six.

In the Commons this week, Reid's dig at Peter Hain over leaks on stop and search powers for police was causing much amusement, at A Conservative's Blog, for example.

If you dip into posts on that subject you'll also come across this week's big outbreak of hostilities between blogs of the left and the right, with screams of 'Fisk!' from both sides.

It started when Iain Dale accused the political reporters on the Sunday papers of being Gordon Brown's lapdogs - denied on the comments to this post by several political editors - and led a post to this Dale tribute site, Iain Dale's Dairy.

There's also a great post from Roy Greenslade on Conservapedia, a new alternative in the US to the mighty Wikipedia - which is six times more liberal than the American public, apparently.