Six of the Best 142

Lorna Spencely has sympathy for an old adversary, Robert Halfon, is under threat of legal action from Liverpool John Moores University over views he has expressed in the House of Commons about that university and Libya.

This is not the only case in which Parliamentary privilege must be defended. In a post everyone should read, Anna Raccoon writes; "Mr John Hemming, MP for Yardley in Birmingham, rose to his feet and used parliamentary privilege to list some of the secret prisoners, the people who have lost their liberty in the UK behind closed doors; the court orders which detail the secret injunctions – not for the benefit of footballers or bankers ... but the injunctions, not mere ‘super-injunctions’ that the media could not mention, but ‘hyper-injunctions’ which even prevented the aggrieved citizen from appealing to their MP for help."

Don't look to headteachers to defend our liberties: TES Connect reports they are about to complain that requiring schools to obtain parental permission before gather biometric data on children will impose a "huge bureaucratic burden".

Stephen Williams, Lib Dem MP for Bristol West, has been out meeting the city's homeless.

With everyone's attention turned to Libya, The Daily (Maybe) has a digest of reports of protest and repression elsewhere in the region.

Good news from Unmitigated England: Peter Ashley has a new book coming out. Cross Country looks at "Southwest Cumbria, Herefordshire & Shropshire, North Norfolk, Romney Marsh & Dungeness, North Cotswolds, Essex Estuaries, Wiltshire-Dorset Borders, North Cornwall Coast and High Leicestershire (of course)."