Britblog Roundup #72

Apologies if I don’t get too upset about the association result yesterday: the way the local Portugee was acting around here last night I’m rather glad I didn’t have to walk through a crowd of them if they’d lost. Still the way the newspapers are talking today Mr. Potato Head might have something interesting to say to one of his team mates at the first training session in a few weeks.

After that, here’s the Britblog Roundup!

First up has to be The Obscurer. As he says, An Interlude for those recovering from exiting at the Q Final stage (again).

Early Modern Whale on "In Bed With Nicotania" No explanation, just read.

Blithering Bunny takes a swipe at Venus Williams: comes away with a fair chunk of flesh, too.

Paul actually explains everything (and I do mean everything) you’ll ever need to know about politics and politicians in one single post over at The Sharpener.

Confront an elected representative on his own, and he is generally nice, quite good at his job, well intentioned and working hard to accomplish achievable goals, often with some success. Confront him with an idea and no avenue for running away from it, and he will likely spend at least some time thinking about it on its merits; he is, after all, of above average intelligence and, on the whole, means well. View the same man as part of a herd, however, and he becomes remote, idiotic and incapable of achieving anything save earning money by wasting yours chasing after a series of bugaboos and utopias. The merits of a particular issue are lost amid a maelstrom of conflict, be it over something large like class- or party-lines or something more personal, like ‘agreeing’ with a person who is in the position to enhance one’s career.

Doing It All Again on the abortion thing. A bit of real life injected into the metaphysical debate.

Mr. AI Dodge on the British Political Scene and the BNP’s place in it.

The Ministry of Truth on the background to that face slashing incident: and a welcome reminder of why we actually have courts, evidence, judges and their variations in sentencing.

qwghlm on the myth of the Royal 62 pence per head cost. Some very good ideas there indeed, most fun (BTW, would they get the revenues from the Crown Estates back?).

Perfect.co.uk reads The Great Leader’s article for The Guardian and doesn’t (what a surprise!) like what’s there.

David Maister with a nice little joke about the differences between English and American.

Save the Ribble continues campaigning: this week with the Pub Guide to the whole dispute.

The Touchline Bawler says goodbye to Andre Agassi at Wimbledon. (Question for the tennis geeks: AA and SG’s young ’un. Anyone else actually had two singles title’s holders as parents? Two title holders?)

Chris Dillow braves The Sharpener’s waters to point out that, yes, Blair really is a Marxist (although I might say Marxian rather.)

Some seriously original content over at Redemption Blues. A long interview with Professor Beverley Skeggs. Feminism and Marx may not be my cup of tea but for those for whom it is....

Natalie Bennett (who knows quite a bit about newspapers) on the British Museum’s exhibition, The Front Page.

When an artist is honoured with a retrospective by a major gallery, it tends to be taken as a sign of graceful retirement, so what does it mean that the British Library’s main exhibition space is now occupied by an exhibition titled “Front Page: Celebrating 100 Years of the British Newspaper”?

Philobiblon with her take on the by-elections. A not unnatural call for electoral reform in there.

Tom Reynolds on one of the problems if citizen journalism: just what can you reveal?

For ancient history fans, "When in Rome did they start doing as the Romans do?" Fabulous title and well informed post, as always over there.

The fword blog. Wife beater gets anger management classes (or some such) to protect his career: at the Dept of Constitutional Affairs. Sheesh.

Advice on how to tour Scotland from What do I know? Essentially, Ignore the part with almost all the Scots in it and go to the Highlands.

Petite Anglaise on the joys of motherhood: most especially the joys of moving teh child on to the ex-partner in certain circumstances.

And there we are, another Britblog Roundup successfully negotiated. You can make recommendations for next week’s simply by emailing the URL to britblog AT gmail DOT com. Me, I’m off to see if the Portuguese public has calmed down yet.

Until next week:

Toodle Pip!