Six of the Best 221

"Papers won't say anything about race now because they know they'll get hammered for it. When no-one cares who's gay and who's straight any more then the papers will have to talk about other things apart from someone's sexuality. You know, like maybe they're a good footballer." A Scottish Liberal has an interview with a retired football player in his late 30s who played for a number of English lower-division and non-league clubs in the 1990s and early 2000s and is gay.

Cllr Victor Chamberlain writes on Manchester Liberal Democrats' support for a 20mph speed limits on residential roads across the city.

BishopBlog brings news of 2011 Orwellian Prize for Journalistic Misrepresentation.

Lib Dem blogger SomeBeans has been taking photographs of Chester Cathedral.

"During the worst of the Blitz it was sometimes too dangerous to expect people to get home and the stagehands and performers often sheltered in the lower two floors underground. Around 1943 the theatre created its famous motto – 'We never closed' – although to a lot of people this quickly became 'we never Clothed'." Another Nickel in the Machine discuss the Windmill Theatre and the long career of Benny Hill.

"Whiter than swans or gulls on the river; whiter than smatters of snow on the Stiperstones; whiter than lines on the road or polypropylene sacks of asbestos fly-tipped in the wood – there is something both vestal and venal in snowdrops." Writing the Guardian's Country Diary, Paul Evans ponders this flower's stubbornness.