Britblog Roundup # 50

As you can see from the number above our first anniversary is rapidly approaching. Make sure you get your nominations for next week’s in to britblog AT gmail DOT com.

We’ll also take nominations for a bumper extravaganza issue on the first anniversary, issue # 52. While we’ll do the regular weekly one, please also (and only one per person, please!)  feel free to nominate your favourite post of the past year.

First up is Brian’s Brief Encounters. Yes, another work blogger silenced by the bosses for being just a bit too revealing of how things are actually done. Smash the Police State! Clenched fist salutes all round! (Am I revealing my age by saying that "Power to the People" is always inextricably linked for me with Tooting Station? And is that where this blog name comes from?)

Talk Politics on the Dawkins polemic on religious belief. Worth reading for this para alone:

Those who know Gill's work will recognise the style instantly. When you have nothing to say - which in Gill's case is the vast majority of the time - simply break out the big book of ad-hominem attacks and sprinkle illiberally. '[S]plenetic, small-minded, viciously vindictive falsetto rant' rather nicely sums up Gill himself, so much so that one half suspects that his real objection to this documentary lies in Channel 4 having given someone other than himself the opportunity to mount a solid prime-time rant and is therefore merely the literary equivalent of penis envy.

Stumbling and Mumbling on the economic and power implications of the placebo effect. Much more interesting than I’ve made it sound (and make sure you read James Hamilton’s comment).

Guido and The Monkey are pimping their latest pod cast. (Is that quite the right verb there? Ed.)

Tim Ireland is less than complimentary about the first effort. (Less? British understatement.)

A useful lesson in grammar from Lavengro in Spain. Seriously, at least I found it useful, as someone who has never actually studied grammar in any language. Too young for latin and greek at school and no one ever bothered to teach English grammar as it was assumed you’d pick it up from those first two.

Make My Vote Count starts off well and gets better:

Politics, it appears to me, is very much like the weather. Both, despite being issues that affect us all to some (usually exaggerated) degree, make for startlingly dull conversation. Both are heavily polluted by human beings. Both possess a remarkable ability to disrupt the rail network. And both send the less intellectually privileged parts of the nation into a media-spiced spin every time things get a bit extreme.

Francis on those muslim cartoons in Denmark. As he points out, the Religious Hatred Bill might mean that publication in the UK would be a criminal offense. So much for free speech, eh?

On a much lighter note Pootergeek mixes and matches a famous trial of the past with a possible one of the future. It’s the sort of thing Alan Coren would have bought (in a flash) for Punch back in the good old days.

The ToffeeWomble is back from his various freebies on the newspaper’s travel budgets. The last line makes it.

The Parking Attendant picks up on a seemingly minor point about ID Cards. The addition of RFID chips. How much easier that will make identity theft, eh?  (Apologies for the untimely interruption to your Britblog experience.Thunder, hailstorms and lightening: not things the Portuguese internet can deal with without problems.)

Liberal Review has something interesting on where that MSM research comes from:

...several of these searches came from IP addresses (the internet's equivalent of phone numbers) belonging to media organisations, including newspapers and TV networks. Perhaps the most amusing example was someone from ITN searching simply for "Chris Huhne dirt" - an optimistic effort at digging up a story if ever I saw one.

Ken Owen borrows Bessie Smith’s words to provide advice to politicians asked intrusive questions.

NHS Blog Doctor welcomes the US into the NHS. Dunno why I’m linking to only one post actually, you shoud be reading the whole thing.

Jarndyce actually rather likes Cameron’s idea that all of the young should do community service. (My views are a touch more sulphurous but he makes his point well.)

The Sharpener has something interesting but as they’re over their bandwidth I can’t tell you what it is.

Liberal England introduces us to Loulou Harcourt. (Who she? Read it and find out!)

Wat Tyler has news on where the money actually goes in the NHS. Not far enough is the obvious answer.

Stephen Tall takes the mickey out of the Telegraph. Rather well, actually. (Read this first.)

Mad Musings of Me asks if MPs sex lives matter. To anyone other than they or their partners, that is. And if they do, should they?

The Filter on the man who has probably done more to save decent architecture in recent decades than any other. Oddly, no, it’s not John Prescott.

Philobiblion dares to go to a meeting on sustainable cities. Interesting stuff, and I’d add as someone who works on the fringes of the field that there are indeed simple ways on the energy front.

Natalie also gives us a book review on "Underground London". Apposite really as part of it is about those Victorian sewers, one of the unsustainable bits of the city.

The Purple Elephant sings the praises (cough, cough) of those who have designed Cambridge’s new bus system.

The Naijaman on new laws on gay marriage in Nigeria. Amazingly, not just outlawing such, but any gay relationship or even advocacy of their being allowed to be legal!

AI Dodge sends in the review of his band’s recent gig. Not even written by himself!

And finally, something I highly recommend. A long piece indeed, but well worth it. Get yerself round to Redemption Blues. Not just a lovely essay (you can agree or disagree with it but it is wonderfully done) but it has what I think is the very best note about blog comments I’ve seen: