Six of the Best 299

Last week made A Scottish Liberal proud to be a Liberal Democrat.

With Obamacare apparently secured, The American Prospect considers what liberals in the USA should strive for next.

"I was really pleased when residents in my block of flats voted recently against becoming a gated community – or at least against locking the gates we already, unfortunately, have installed. I don’t want to live in something that feels like a prison, when you have to rattle keys to get to your front door, with the gate clanging shut behind you as you walk towards it. And I think that having people around in the communal garden, a pleasant, social environment, as we have now – I regularly say hello to at least 20 of my neighbours, and know some people who use it as a walkthrough – is much better security than a lockdown that screams “something to fear here!" Philobiblon fights back against our self-defeating obsession with security.

Malcolm Noble Mysteries - Market Harborough's leading crime novelist - writes on his positive experience of the regional press and his fears for its future.

You can listen to a talk on Luddism in Lancashire and Cheshire by Richard Holland on Soundcloud.

Landscapism ponders a triptych of ruins around Llanthony Priory.