Tony Abbott? Most Appalling Person of 2010?

Well you readers have spoken and that’s what you voted in overwhelming numbers in the annual Crikey Readers Choice Awards, and even though we were really tempted to rig it we didn’t.

So fine. There you go. But … yawn.

If we’re talking about expectations and exceeding or defying them, we politely suggest Abbott ain’t it for Most Appalling. After all, this is the man who made the Liberals electorally competitive when they were supposed to be doormats under the triumphant re-election of Labor … Sarah Palin was runner up with 24% of the vote, followed closely by faceless man and special friend of the US, Mark Arbib.

It’s no surprise that Julian Assange took out Crikey’s Person of the Year by such a whopping margin. Relatively unknown 12 months ago, a household name today. Shot out of the box in April with WikiLeaks’ release of Collateral Murder, by late November, just when we thought it was safe to slip into a summer coma after a monumental year of news, Assange and WikiLeaks gave the traditional news cycle the finger by dumping so much information on us it’ll take years to figure out what just happened … So yes, we’re with you on that trophy.

Aung San Suu Kyi for Person of the Decade? We thought you had more imagination than that.

George W Bush for the Platinum Arsehat is hard to argue with. On that score we say, congratulations sir, well deserved. Interesting that nominee Osama bin Laden seems to have scored lowest in that category… but who are we to judge?

It’s the Readers’ Choice after all, it’s just that we reserve the right to pick on your answers in the editorial. The cake? We have it, we eat it, we trample it into the carpet …

BP clearly reserved a special place in your hearts with twin wins — the coveted Maddoff for Most Spectacular Corporate Misadventure, and the University of East Anglia award for Most Significant Contribution to the Environment.

And we could quibble and say Justin Bieber ain’t a meme, but we’re not sure what a meme is anyway, and we suspect his hair might be one, so we’ll let that one go through to the keeper.

We can say this: 2010 has been … relentless, at Crikey we’ve felt very lucky to be in the eye of the hurricane, and with you lot along for the ride. Thanks for reading, and for giving us lip.

We’re all going to have a good lie down now, but we’ll be back publishing the Daily Mail on January 10, and in the meantime, our website will keep ticking over (not to mention Crikey‘s Cephalopods of Summer Series … see below.)

Happy end of 2010 … we made it. Just.