So far, short of taking the time and effort to develop and perfect one of my own, the Simplicy WordPress theme by Zit Seng is one of the best there is, provided you are happy to tinker and customise it.
However, it still needs improving as there are accessibility issues, formatting problems and so forth, thus this will be a work in progress. That said, this applies to most if not all other themes too, including the often touted commercial ones like Thesis. Edit the header and footer is child’s play, though I will cover it later. Of more concern are omissions in the search box and the trouble editing the style sheets, something not helped by WP calling <ul class=”xoxo blogroll”> and similar junk
(To be expanded)
Mutter
Adding ul.xoxo.blogroll { } to the style sheet is a workaround, adding your own formatting of course, but I hate using hacks, shouldn’t be needed.
(Quote from (microformats.org) : XOXO is a simple, open outline format written in standard XHTML and suitable for embedding in (X)HTML, Atom, RSS, and arbitrary XML.)
A day of tinkering later… Beggar this, I’ll create a theme myself!