I love Harborough in the springtime

I think it was the daily walks under Covid Lockdown that did it, but in recent years I've come over all Fotherington-Tomas about flowers and blossom.

So here are some recent photos from Market Harborough.

Six of the Best 82

Disgruntled Radical details Labour's long history of gerrymandering. He also provides our illustration, which I take to be a gerrymander.

Not many of us spend our birthday appearing on local radio and television because of a blog post. But Niles's Blog did.

The Futility Monster argues that the SATs system has no integrity: "There is no reason to keep the SAT system. We are told that parents “like” them. Well, who wouldn’t, when you’re told that Little Johnny is a shining model pupil getting outstanding scores in everything. Yeah, him and everyone else. It achieves nothing but feed you a lie because it’s exactly what you want to hear."

An important literary discovery is reported by Solipsism and Me. A host of early Molesworth pieces by Geoffrey Willans that appeared in Punch but have never been published in book form.

The Happy Apple has been to the Workhouse Museum at Southwell in Nottinghamshire.

The apparent lack of realism over whether Andrew Flintoff will ever play again is clouding his reputation, argues The Old Batsman. Today, "he looks as hapless and uncomfortable as Ian Botham did when me met that bloke who was going to make him the next James Bond and he was forced to parade around in a ludicrous striped blazer talking about Hollywood".

Ronald Searle is 90 tomorrow

The Channel 4 News site has a video interview with the creator of St Trinians and St Custards. Because Ronald Searle will be 90 tomorrow:

Ronald Searle was standing in his sitting room - rose champagne bottle (his engine oil, he calls it) at the ready in his one good hand - his writing/drawing left hand.

Monica Searle, in her 80s, greeted us warmly at the top of the stairs, freshly coiffured in tinted glasses. They've been a couple for over half a century (a second marriage for both of them) - "bliss," she tells me.

There's a poignant mutual dependence. She describes herself as "Slave Number 17".

"Why 17?" I asked. "My favourite number," she replied. We go on to spend five delightful hours with the Searles.

Monica Searle doesn't drink. The rest of us - reporter, cameraman, producer and Ronald Searle - valiantly stick to the task, three bottles of champagne (Billecart-Salmon at 50 euros a pop - we checked at duty free on the way home). There've been tougher assignments.

An exhibition devoted to Searle's work opens at The Cartoon Museum in London tomorrow and runs until 4 July.

Britblog Roundup 255: This week with added video

Welcome to this week's selection of the best in British blogging.

Politics

As you see, we start with something new: a video. It comes from Paul Staines' Guido Fawkes blog.
I have sometimes been puzzled by Guido's pre-eminence in British blogging - why is there such a readership for stories about Gordon Brown picking his nose? - but this film on "The Hubris of Nick Robinson" is a classy production and explains what the blog does with all those interns. Guido is promising more good things in the run up to the general election.
Writing on Liberal Democrat Voice Mark Pack looks forward to the debates between the main party leaders at that election, making 10 predictions. One of them is that "there will be a battle over worms".
The New Adventures of Juliette probably will not enjoy watching David Cameron in those debates: she objects to seeing a:

giant poster of David Cameron's weirdly smooth, wholesome, lineless, boneless-looking pinky-beige face gazing earnestly down at me from a great big fuck-off billboard".

And Gordon Brown had better not try arguing that liberal voters support his policies: Mark Reckons isn't having any of it.
Around the world
If you really can't face the prospect of those debates, you could try moving abroad.
Where to choose?
Odessablog helpfully points out that Ukraine is the 68th best place to live.
There may be a lot wrong with Spain too, but Thoughts from Galicia has discovered a journalist who believes you are not entitled to mention them unless you are Spanish yourself.
Or you could go to Africa, though Charles Crawford explains that you may find yourself officially the only gay in the continent.
Maybe you would do better in Paris, which On An Overgrown Path has visited.
Around Britain
Go Litel Blog, Go has found a poem by John Clare that is relevant to our current weather:

And in the morning, when the tempest drops,
At every cottage door mountainous heaps
Of snow lie drifted, that all entrance stops
Until the besom and the shovel gain
The path, and leave a wall on either side.

Earthpal describes a current-day struggle with the white stuff. And Musings from a Muddy Island allows us to enjoy scenes of Mersea Island in the snow.
Unmitigated England describes a visit to the landscaped gardens and follies of Stowe which may just have passed on his enthusiasm for such things to his sons.
And English Buildings explains his ambition of "slowing down the buildings".


Communication
Just because the people who run internet companies like jellybeans and snowboarding, it doesn't mean they can always be trusted to do the right thing.
The Bristol Blogger reports that earlier this week Wordpress took his blog and a couple of other blogs down without warning or explanation. It turned out that this was because each carried posts about the former vice chancellor of the University of the West of England, Sir Howard Newby.
It transpired that the pressure on Wordpress came not from shit-hot international libel lawyers but the rather less minatory figure of the director of legal services at the University of Liverpool, which is Sir Howard's new employer.
EcoLogics was another of the blogs caught up in this row and provides its own account of the affair. And Bristle’s Blog from the BunKRS asks why Liverpool is so reticent about Sir Howard's appointment.
Communication takes many forms. Geoff Jones, for instance, is having trouble unlocking his iPhone.
And The Misssy M Misssives celebrates the demise of thank you letters. Me, though I was never that good at them, I cannot note the passing of old-fashioned civility without a little sadness. Besides, the more is see "the 1950s" used as shorthand for all that the writer things is wrong with Britain, the more I want to defend that much traduced decade.
My advice is to search out the Molesworth Self Adjusting Thank You Letter.
The blog 1930 to 1960, which is probably rather keener on the fifties, has found a precursor to the popular modern children's novel Goodnight Mr Tom that was published in 1943.
Next week
The Roundup will be found on The Wardman Wire.
Please send your nominations to britblog [at] gmail [dot] com as usual.

Clegg: You may think I'm soft but I'm hard, damned hard

Oh dear.

Deborah Summers writes on the Guardian politics blog:

"There is no question of a free vote on this matter; there will definitely be a party whip and as a member of the frontbench David will be bound by the same collective responsibility as everyone else," a source close to Clegg says.

"If he feels he can't toe the party line then he will have no choice but to stand down."

Is Nick really prepared, within his first 100 days as leader, to lose one of his most respected front-bench spokemen? Surely he cannot be that silly?

I think Nick would do well to keep this particular souce a little further from him in future.

Thanks to Peter Welch. Our title is taken from Nigel Molesworth's "Know the Enemy or Masters at a Glance" in Down with Skool! See this video.