Britblog Roundup # 12

Right, now that we’ve got that election out of the way and are sentenced to another 5 years of helotry under our Lords and Masters, time to get back to the serious things in life, like the Britblog Roundup. Yes, it’s that time again, time for us to point out the good and fun stuff in the blogosphere from these Isles. You can nominate your favourites for next week simply by emailing the URL to britblog AT gmail DOT com.

For those of you who have come as a result of the mention on the BBC site, a little hint.  The Britblog Roundup is a weekly event here, Sunday afternoons. You can see all 14 of them by going here. Yes, you can join in and recommend people for next week’s and beyond.

First up is the Angry Chimp, with what might not be an entirely true description of Vernon Kay’s health problems. Very funny though.

Scary Duck continues his mining of childhood memories for laughs. Again, very funny and not about politics at all.

Blood and Treasure (sorry, we’re back to politics already) has a great post on the British voter. Essentially, politics is driven by a small section of the society which happens to be hypocritical. The way he puts it, it does seem obvious.

Random Acts of Reality, who’s been away, shows what is really important to a Brit (scroll through a few posts). Of course, a really good cup of tea.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen provides guidance to yet more of the property programmes I thankfully don’t get here in Portugal. Top tottie indeed.

Tim Newman uncovers one of the secrets of the inscrutable East. It’s worth remembering that with the current oil price these are the people with all the money in the world.

Village Hampden has the evidence that one does not need planning permission to fly an English, Welsh, Scots, Irish or British flag, but you do need it to fly an EU one. Perhaps worth using that information to torture a few local councils?

Norm of the Normblog provides another installment of his guide to the Momma ’n’ Daddy collection...issue #26 in this ongoing exploration of country and western lyrics. It’s tough up there on the (north) western frontier that is Manchester.

There’s a new group blog, The Sharpener, definitely worth a closer look. Nosemonkey’s election liveblogging extravaganza bodes well for the new site.

Jarndyce wonders about the low turnout in the election, wanting a "none of the above" option (as they do in Russia) on the ballot paper. This way we can work out who is simply too lazy to vote as against those who cannot bring themselves to vote for any of those on offer.

From the diehard left we have celebrations of George Galloway’s win, Dead Men Left and Lenin’s Tomb both thinking that this is the beginning of a realignment in British politics, the re-emergence of a class based , specifically working class based, party.

Nick Barlow is deeply unimpressed with whoever names Govt departments these days. Dept of PEI? Depending upon how you pronounce it could be golden whatever they are for the deeply lonely.

Left Out Liberal has a huge post-mortem on the election, starting here. Much wisdom contained and a decent primer to the background of British politics.

Phil at Cabalamat looks at how (and whether) tactical unwind influenced the five seats the Lib Dems lost to the Tories. Something of a pity it didn’t work that way in Taunton as well.

Europhobia points to the fact that the Tories actually won the popular vote in England. While he uses it as a justification for some sort of proportional representation (which probably won’t happen) it’s bound to become one of the great talking points in weeks to come, especially in relation to the West Lothian question.

England Expects has a further revelation from Brussels. Apparently our EU President is a lot more closely tied to his old university friend than he has so far let on.

Blithering Bunny adapts Jarndyce’s recommendation above, for a none of the above option, by nominating no posts this week as they’ve all been boring. He mutters something about politics being involved I think.

Murky has started a letter campaign to find out what his MP and others think about electoral reform. Check back for replies. The Curious Hamster has added his squeak to the campaign as has Peter Black.

Herge takes us away from politics again by recommending CakeSniffers Beware, who is running an anti- Tim Henman campaign (about time, too) and Half an Identity, who appears to be in a witness protection program but has had to flee the police running it. Both very funny blogs.

Dave VH at North Sea is running a haiku competition. You need to boil down all 324 squillion pages of the new EU Constitution into a 17 syllable verse. This is one that I think we should all join in with, pros, antis and those who don’t care. Drop your attempts in his comments.

One interesting blog by a Green Party candidate is James Humphrey’s. I especially like the graphic of Tony Blair.

Francis posts from inside the belly of the beast on French foreign policy. Wrong on everything all the time seems to be the general view and that’s when he’s being polite.

A very interesting philosophy blog from Cornwall, Studi Galileiani, I’m very impressed by this report from game theory.

What this tale demonstrates, of course, is that there is no such thing as a rule-free environment - whether in a game or, by extension, anywhere else. Since they function to limit the sum of all possibilities, a game without rules can always result in a single player winning while everyone else loses (and actually the winner is also a loser because he or she has no one to play again with). The question, then, is not whether to have rules at all but rather which rules to choose.

I often use the same point in less general terms in economics. There is no such thing as an unregulated free market, we are only discussing what the regulations should be and who should compose and enforce them. That blog is going to reward further investigation I think.

Albion Blogger was recommended by several for this post. Quite rightly so, an eloquent dissertation on a certain segment of society.

And there we have it, this week’s Britblog Roundup. Get your nominations in early for next week’s to britblog AT gmail DOT com, sign up for the group at [email protected] and if you feel so inclined, support this roundup by having a look at what the advertisers on this blog have to offer you. I especially recommend Skype, up there in the top left corner, have been using it myself ofr the past few months and it is a great deal cheaper and even better sound quality than the regular land line phone networks. It’s also free to try.

See you next week!