Six of the Best 521

The View from Creeting St Peter is far from impressed by Liberal Reform's attempt to give the Liberal Democrat leader a veto over party policy.

"Shropshire Council is busy transferring many of its staff and services to its wholly owned company, ip&e. This company still must respond to freedom of information requests, in almost the same way that Shropshire Council does even if those requests are ‘bizarre’ in the eyes of council leader Keith Barrow." Ludlow's Andy Boddington fights the good fight.

It easy to forget how consistently good Stumbling and Mumbling is. Here he argues that a powerful state is often not in the interest of the workers.

The Intercept believes student (we used to say 'pupil') privacy is at risk in the age of Big Data: "The fear is that the multi-billion-dollar education technology (or “ed-tech”) industry that seeks to individualize learning and reduce drop-out rates could also pose a threat to privacy, as a rush to commercialize student data could leave children tagged for life with indicators based on their childhood performance."

How much sleep do we need? Akshat Rathi once tried an experiment to find out.

Just One More Ten Pence Piece … shows us the Queen's visit to British Celanese and Spondon Station in 1957. (I used to play chess against Derbyshire in the British Celanese canteen.)