Britblog Roundup # 17

Yes, it is that time of the week again. Coming at you from the sunny ’ville of Cascais (yes, just the next beach to the wilding attack by 500 crazed muggers on Friday in Carcavelos) it is Britblog Roundup Number 17.

People nomiate what they think are the best posts from the British and Irish blogs over the past week, I put them up and we all get to see the good stuff we missed.

You can nominate your favourites for next week by simply sending the URL to britblog AT gmail DOT com.

First up is something from the Joy of Curmdgeonry, apparently there has been a report out proving that Britain is in fact Hideously White.

There is a quite delightful flight of fantasy over at Funkasaurus. It isn’t any one post so much as the original conceit and the way that it is played out over the whole blog. Definitely worth a look.

A mixture at Screenburn of the speeches of Malcolm X and the Apple announcement on moving to Intel. Well, yes, I have to admit, that was the immediate thought I had, that this would be the perfect method of point and counterpoint.

Harry’s Place carries the news of a notorious holocaust denialist being asked to play/speak at the Socialist Worker’s Party Marxism 2005 event. They are quite rightly appalled. As always on this blog, the comments section is highly amusing.

Harry himself also has a very good post picking up on Matt Welch’s comments about Travel Snobs. I saw the same sort of behaviour in Moscow myself.

News from Beyond the North Wind has a trio of posts (start with number one here) on climbing An Teallach. Not your normal sort of blogging about apart of the country that generally gets ignored.

A Tangled Web shows his support for donald Rumsfeld and gets argued with in his own comments section. Rummy for President indeed.

Scott Burgess at the  Daily Ablution continues to wash brains for us. This post is on the lunacy (literally) known as biodynamic farming. What people manage to convince themselves of is truly amazing.

Politicalog notes a system of bribing students with IPods.

Jarndyce and Mr S&M have a back and forth over the idea of demand-revealing referenda. A very different voting system where you let your money do the talking....not just what do you want to happen but how important is it to you that it does?

Thinking for the People has related thoughts on Direct Democracy and his vision of a perfect democracy.

Mike’sBooks takes a look at the Religious Hatred Bill and is less than impressed. He compares the Parliamentary scrutiny process to a reverse screen (hey, read the post to find out what that is!) which seems almost too kind for it.

Liberal England is also on the same subject. It would appear thatwere we to have the joys of the Second Coming Jesus would be prosecuted for inciting religious hatred.

We also have an ex-Ambassador, Brain Barder, weighing in from the left on this subject. As he asks:

As other commentators have plaintively enquired, is Christian Scientism a religion? Satanism? Flat-Earthism? Scientology (now there's a can of worms waiting to be opened!)? What about astrology, a system of beliefs having no rational or evidential basis and therefore not easily distinguished from other systems having the same characteristics but obviously qualifying as religions? It will be hard to exclude almost any kind of dotty irrationalism from the scope of this sloppy piece of draft legislation.

Harry Hutton takes a look at Canadian Animal Welfare methods. Not quite the RSPCA.

Galilean Library has a long essay on the philosophy of film using the Three Colours trilogy as the starting point. I will admit that until reading the essay all I remembered of that was the hanging scene. Serious and informative.

Charlie Whitaker has started the ambitious task of defining what we would need in a new constitution for the UK. I’m looking forward to the rest of the series for having destroyed the checks and balances of the old system we do need to impose some others.

Geoff Roberts has issues with something from the Huffington Post. He wants to get all Agincourt with the Americans over it too.

Murkee made something of an error and went into a Starbucks and tried to speak English. Confused the poor dears.

Clive Davis has an email interview with Jesse Larner on his new book, Moore and Us. Fascinating critique of Tubby Reifenstahl from the left.

Phillip Stott is both amusing and contrarian on global warming, insisting that it has been hotter before and it was just great. (You’ll need to scroll down a little.)

Tom Fuller segues from one of my posts to a discussion of the road pricing scheme. He’s got some useful thought on the basic criteria necessary.

And there we have it, hte Britblog Roundup for this week. Don’t forget that you can see the past ones in the category archives to the left and send in your nominations for next week’s to britblog AT gmail DOT com.