The Joy of Six 1467

Claire Jones says Britain is sliding backwards into open racism: "Shame has evaporated. With skin colour as their yardstick, the UK’s self-appointed 'defence warriors' are having a field day shouting at anyone brown-skinned, from ordinary folk to celebrities and political figures, to 'go home'."

"While it’s relatively easy for regulators to monitor the actions of Snapchat or TikTok, it’s impossible to police the millions of websites that might contain forums and chats. Any policy shift will have failed if it ends up pushing kids into even less regulated places on the internet." A social media ban for under-16s would be popular but, asks James Clayton, would it really help?

"Off 16 planned non-London LTNs tracked by the researchers, just one was fully implemented – a failure rate of around 94 per cent." Megan Huws argues that councils lack resources to deliver Low Traffic Neighbourhoods amid the culture wars.

Leanne Tritton on the difficulty of reusing redundant buildings in Britain today.

James Bloodworth looks at what the fame Russell Brand enjoyed until recently tells us about our society.

"It's a shot of such pure emotion and simple poignancy that it is regularly cited as the greatest ending in cinematic history. In the 95 years since City Lights' release, numerous films have tried to replicate its subtle artistry and the power of its performances." Gregory Wakeman watches a Charlie Chaplin masterpiece.

It's Freddie van Mierlo vs Russell Brand

The Guardian reports from Pishill on Oxfordshire

It is an idyllic, quintessentially English scene, but rake the surface and the embers of a fierce local row soon spark into life. On one side, people determined not to lose an 800-year-old pub; on the other, a magic amulet-toting, born-again Christian broadcasting "alt-right" views to the world from its environs.

Yes, it's Russell Brand.

The author of My Booky Wook and Booky Wook 2, Newsnight interviewee, former guest editor of the New Statesman and Guardian sports columnist, and recent adherent of whichever branch of Christianity requires you to prance about in your underpants with Bear Grylls, wants to take over the pub at Pishill:

Brand, who lives in a nearby village but often broadcasts from Pishill to his 6.83 million YouTube subscribers, saw an initial plan to convert the pub into a recording studio and a community space refused in February after more than 50 local objections. Residents argue the most recent iteration, which seeks a “mixed use of pub, ancillary accommodation, function room, media studio, offices”, would still leave them with nowhere to have a pint.

“No one believes he’s going to open the pub,” said Josh Robinson-Ward, who got married in the Crown’s function barn. “He’s said from the beginning he had plans to open the pub but never has and it’s unclear that he’ll have to open it if this goes through. From the off I think he thought that if he had enough money he could just do what he wants.”

But the forces of light have a champion:

Freddie van Mierlo, the local Liberal Democrat MP for Henley and Thame, said the Lib Dems were pushing the council to support pubs becoming assets of community value with tax relief.

He said the Crown should be opened solely as a pub. “Pubs are not the playthings of the wealthy; they are the heart of rural communities like Pishill and Stonor, and should be protected and cherished,” he said.

Accounting for the rise and rise of Russell Brand

I strongly recommend Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey's latest Origin Story podcast, which covers the rise and rise of Russell Brand:

Dorian and Ian reassess Brand’s extraordinary rise to fame in the 2000s in light of recent allegations of sexual misconduct and explore how British culture gave him a free pass. 

In 2013 Brand swapped sex and fame for a new compulsion, reinventing himself as a flamboyant agitator to great acclaim. In the void between Occupy and Corbynism, his verbose mishmash of self-help and socialism briefly made him a lion of the left. 

During the pandemic Brand embraced a darker shade of politics, promoting conspiracy theories about Covid-19, Ukraine and much more besides. After the allegations broke last year he went full crank, aligning himself with Robert F Kennedy Jr, Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones in the paranoid space.

As they say, this is a bizarre story of celebrity and conspiracy, addiction and attention, which says a great deal about where we are now.

Somehow this disqualifyingly moronic assumption did not deter Russell Brand's political acolytes

Embed from Getty Images

Twitter yesterday was full of people arguing that, because Russell Brand - who denies all the allegations made against him on Saturday's Dispatches programme - was being defended by right-wing conspiracy loons, there were no lessons for the left to learn from his rise and fall.

If you pointed out, as I did a couple of times, that Brand had written a Guardian column for years and edited a special issue of the New Statesman, some were outraged.

So I was pleased by Marina Hyde's article in the Guardian this morning, which looks at the role of the press - the Guardian and herself included - in boosting Brand over the year.

Here are a few quotations from it:

Back in the day, though, a lot of people were thrilled to be on what they thought was Russell’s side of the line. For a certain type of mournfully uncool man on the left, Russell Brand was quite the excitement. You only had to watch their little faces in his presence – lit up at being fleetingly indulged by the kind of guy who would probably have bullied them at school. 

And:

The apogee of this particular stage of Brand’s inevitable journey toward alt-right-frotting wingnut was surely the ludicrously feverish speculation over whether he’d endorse Labour in the 2015 general election. 

Keen to be awarded his royal warrant, the then Labour leader, Ed Miliband, traipsed to Brand’s London flat during the final stages of the campaign, for a filmed interview where committed non-voter Russell inquired rhetorically: “Since suffrage, since the right to vote, what has meaningfully occurred?” Nothing much, he reckoned. Somehow, this disqualifyingly moronic assumption did not deter his political acolytes.

And:

What is completely bizarre, with the benefit of 2023 hindsight, is how the Sachsgate story was framed, both by those who were reflexive defenders of the BBC and “comedy” and free speech (then a somewhat lefty preoccupation, funnily enough), AND by those who wished their destruction. Fleet Street quickly settled into tribes and covered it as a story where each assumed the other was acting out of vested interests. This was back when our only culture wars were about things that happened on the BBC. (My how we’ve grown.) Mail vox pops were incandescent; some Guardian ones found it an “overreaction”.

Hyde also reminds us that the Liberal Democrat contribution to this climate was Nick Clegg telling GQ he had slept with 30 women.

I have sometimes resisted the cult of Marina Hyde in the past, but this is a brave and important column.

Later. Sadly, the column isn't or brave as I first thought. Here is a Lost in Showbiz column by Hyde from January 2009 - thanks to Gerry Lynch for tweeting it:

Today in Jesus Wept we must turn to Sachsgate breakout star Georgina Baillie, who has thus far managed to parlay Russell Brand's insult to her dignity into an excruciatingly candid red-top buy-up and a number of semi-mucky photoshoots.

But can we please draw the line at the trenchant newspaper comment pieces? It seems not. Breaking another ten second silence, Manuel's estranged granddaughter takes to the pages of today's Sun with an opinion column unlikely to give PJ O'Rourke any sleepless nights.

Entitled "My View", it sees the Satanic Slut attempt to gain some sort of purchase on this latest Jonathan Ross "outrage", the details of which I literally cannot be bothered to even look up, let alone confect horror over. The world can now be divided into people who genuinely think caring about this crap is important, and people you might wish to know socially.

If Russell Brand was the school bully who was briefly your friend, then in these columns Marina Hyde was the most popular girl in the school, and she was being mean to someone else.

It's a shame she didn't acknowledge that in today's article. What appeared to be an admission of guilt now looks more like an attempt to hide it with fake candour.

Russell Brand was a creation of television and the tabloids, not the comedy circuit

Until last night's Dispatches, I had never seen Russell Brand's comedy act. I now look back on those days with affection. 

But that doesn't mean I wasn't aware of him. As I complained in 2013:

Russell Brand turned up writing on football for the Guardian. He guest edits the New Statesman. He's interviewed on Newsnight. I can’t get away from him.

He wasn’t much of a sportswriter and his political views on Newsnight were ridiculous – a bunch of media-left slogans and a call for unelected officials to tax us all.

But then why should he be expected to be an expert on these things? He is a niche comedian.

Brand’s trouble is that he has become a symbol of youthful cool and everyone wants to be associated with him.

Jonathan Ross’s exit from the BBC arose from his inability to grow middle aged gracefully. He wanted to show how young and hip he still was. And the way to show that was to demonstrate to us that he knew all about Brand’s love life.

And two years later Owen Jones fell under Brand's spell too. And have a look at the Guardian's contributor page for Brand to see just how much the paper loved him.

The extent to which Brand was a media creation was brought home to me by something Simon Evans tweeted this afternoon:

Brand is not now and never was a comedian. He was never on the 'comedy circuit', which is now being traduced as an unreconstructed sewer of nodding, winking, pawing, leering predatory men, with a code of silence to match their coercive behaviour.

He's a TV/tabloid/PR construct and that is the sewer you need to navigate if you want to understand the culture that allowed him to thrive. Pretty much the exact same one that allowed his illustrious precursors in disgrace to thrive before him.

I was a stand up from 1996 and gigged hard on the circuit until 2010 or so. I didn’t see Brand on a bill once. I’ve been in multiple dressing rooms with everyone else from that era, however quickly they elevated to TV and tour shows. That’s how it works. I’ve never even met Brand. 

The only time I saw Brand at a show was  standing at the back of a one off gig being hosted by his friend Simon Amstell. I am not guilting Simon by association, I don’t know him. But that’s who he was there with. 

Brand is (or rather was in those years) 100 per cent the product of the very culture that C4 deliberately cultivated like a pseudo left wing Daily Mail sidebar of shame, with a dash of Eurotrash. I found it nauseating but they loved his bad boy shock factor.

My honest gut feeling was that he would have been despised in 90 per cent of 'dressing' rooms on the circuit. They were old fashioned enough on the whole and If nothing else he showed a good deal of self awareness in steering clear of the place and booking himself on the fast track to notoriety via Big Brother and Bizarre.

And for some sharp analysis of the way the media kowtowed to Brand, read Evans on his appearance on Newsnight in the video above.

He says of it:

It’s not a masterpiece (and I cringe at some of the boosted “laughter track”) but then it was written and performed in a 48-hour period. And the hat was misjudged. I did not quite understand the format. 

But I will assert that my chosen take on Brand was driven through against the prevailing perception of his having spoken truth to power in that Newsnight interview. Prevailing in the SUFTW offices at any rate. And particularly among… but no. I’ll leave it there. 

John Rogers discusses This Other London with Arthur Smith

I often post videos of John Rogers' walks here, but he has also written a book: This Other London: Adventures in the Overlooked City.

Here, in two interviews, he talks to Arthur Smith about it, as well as the research he does for Russell Brand.

Al Murray on Russell Brand

The Pub Landlord is interviewed by the Independent:

"What you have to admire about Russell is ... [that] what he might lack in serious argument he makes up for with adjectives."

Six of the Best 462

Iain Brodie-Brown says the Liberal Democrats should rethink their post-election strategy: be prepared to enter a confidence-and-supply arrangement and abandon the pledge to deal first with the largest party.

"One of the less obvious side shows to the defection of Douglas Carswell MP from the Tories to UKIP has been the report that he may be taking his data with him – detailed data about his constituents, it appears, and according to the Daily Mail people at UKIP are ‘purring’ at the prospect of getting hold of the data." Paul Bernal looks at the legal and moral questions raised when MPs change party and seek to take their data with them.

"I met a woman once with an exhausting history of mental difficulties who was married to a headteacher. Her husband had charge of her medication and she told me she couldn't help noticing that, when they had any kind of argument, he increased her dose." David Boyle on health professionals who threaten patients.

Facebook’s Report Abuse button has become a tool of global oppression, says Russell Brandom on The Verge.

Miles Goslett in the Oldie points out that the BBC is still concealing the truth about who knew what and when about Jimmy Savile.

Alan White from Buzzfeed looks at the unlikely rise, fall and rise of Viz.

Russell Brand won't leave me alone

Russell Brand is a comedian who appeals to the young. I don’t like him, but that’s fine. I’ve reached the age when I am not meant to like that sort of performer.

The trouble is, he won’t leave me alone.

Compare him with another of “those Russell comedians they have nowadays” (as Stewart Lee put it), Russell Howard. I don’t like him either. I have complained about him on this blog. But these days I don’t watch the programmes he is on, so we get on just fine.

But Russell Brand turned up writing on football for the Guardian. He guest edits the New Statesman. He's interviewed on Newsnight. I can’t get away from him.

He wasn’t much of a sportswriter and his political views on Newsnight were ridiculous – a bunch of media-left slogans and a call for unelected officials to tax us all.

But then why should he be expected to be an expert on these things? He is a niche comedian.

Brand’s trouble is that he has become a symbol of youthful cool and everyone wants to be associated with him.

Jonathan Ross’s exit from the BBC arose from his inability to grow middle aged gracefully. He wanted to show how young and hip he still was. And the way to show that was to demonstrate to us that he knew all about Brand’s love life.

Hence those bullying phone calls to Andrew Sachs. As my mother said at the time, he and Brand behaved like two teenagers making dirty calls from a phone box.

For all I know, Brand may be a good comedian. I have never seen him in that role.

But my views on him from all the other appearances I have been unable to escape are well summarised in this tweet…

i'm choosing not to be infuriated by russell brand's prose by imagining he writes it in the same spirit that les dawson played piano.
— euan mccolm (@euanmccolm) October 24, 2013

I am sure I once read an article making very much these points, but I cannot find it online - perhaps I dreamt it? Anyway, I am writing it myself.

Russell Brand to edit the New Statesman

You may have seen the embarrassing interview with Brand on yesterday's Newsnight.

The New Statesman's decision to ask him to guest edit an issue reminds me of this column I wrote for its website in the magazine's glory years:

I liked the Statesman in the 1970s. Under Anthony Howard’s editorship, the back half was written by the hip young gunslingers of the day: Martin Amis, Christopher Hitchens and Julian Barnes. Those in the know called them “The Hitch”. “Mart” and “Julian Barnes”. 

Further forward it was all politics. They even printed the leading article on the front cover, which made the magazine appear wonderfully serious. 

Today, after 30 years of educational advance, the Statesman has to put a colour picture on the front or it wouldn‘t sell at all. 

And if you open it today you find that every comedian in the country has a column. And Julian Clary has a big one. 

It wasn’t like that in the seventies. The contents page didn‘t read: 

Freddie "Parrot-Face" Davies on the future of the Common Market; Dickie Henderson on the Palestine Question 

And coming next week: 

Mike and Bernie Winters debate the Bullock Report on Industrial Democracy.

In defence of innuendo - and against Jonathan Ross

Mark Lawson has a piece in the Guardian today pointing out, no doubt rightly, that the BBC has a far more chequered history than many of its modern critics like to pretend. It wasn't all high Reithian principles until a few years ago.

However, I think he gets it wrong when he argues that there is an equivalence between the excesses of Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand and the way that earlier comedians relied upon innuendo "given that previous eras were so much more decorous and sensitive than ours":

The comedian Ronnie Barker, widely eulogised at the time of his death as an innocent family entertainer from whom uncouth youths of today such as Ross and Brand could learn, relied heavily on inventive but relentless sexual innuendo, especially during the spoof news bulletins on The Two Ronnies.
Morecambe and Wise were generally cleaner, with both Eric and Ernie routinely complaining in interviews about peers who resorted to "blue" jokes. But, even their representative sketch about the art world - "My aunt's got a Whistler," boasts Ernie - ends with Eric waggling his glasses and replying, "Now, there's a novelty."

The difference is that Eric and Ernie - or, to be more precise, whoever wrote their script - were showing a wonderful awareness of the possibilities of language. "My aunt's got a Whistler" - an innocent phrase that shows a knowledge of art - is made into something appallingly rude. More than that, it will be rude in a slightly different way to every listener.

By contrast, Jonathan Ross yelling "He fucked your granddaughter!" displays no wit or inventiveness at all. It is worth noting, however, that what is really objectionable here is not the obscenity but Ross's eagerness to let his listeners know that he is friends with the stars and knows all their secrets. Basically, he needs to grow up.

Verbal comedy often involves saying one thing but meaning something else. For that reason, it flourishes when there are things that cannot be said.

Take the wonderful screenplay for Kinds Heats and Coronets. When Louis says to Lionel:

You're a lucky man, Lionel, take my word for it.

he is telling us that he has slept with Sibella (Lionel's bride) the night before the wedding.

And then this exchange:

Louis: How did you enjoy your honeymoon?
Sibella: Not at all.
Louis: Not at all?
Sibella: Not at all.

tells us that Lionel and Sibella's marriage was not consummated on honeymoon.

Even the film's ending contradicts the moral rule of its day: Louis gets away with his crimes if you want him to. Incidentally, Screenonline suggests that this Kind Hearts and Coronets is another British film of the 1940s that was too racy for the America censors. The ending had to be recut to show Louis's memoirs in the hands of the prison governor.

I seem to be arguing myself into an uncomfortable position for a Liberal - than censorship encourages creativity. So let's just attack Jonathan Ross's huge salary from the BBC again and leave it at that.

House Points: An interview with Nick Clegg

My House Points column from today's Liberal Democrat News.

Bloggers in Sheffield

I have been to many Liberal and Liberal Democrat events in my time, but never one in a cathedral. Until last Saturday, that is, when Yorkshire and Humber Region held its conference at Sheffield Cathedral. I went along because I was one of half a dozen bloggers invited to interview Nick Clegg.

The session was dominated by economic questions in a way it would not have been even a few months ago. Nick was clear that the Conservative strategy of blaming everything on Gordon Brown was convincing nobody; certainly, their ratings for economic competence have plummeted in the polls. They are obsessed with government debt when the real issue in Britain is astronomically high levels of personal debt. And they fail to grasp the extent to which the public has decided that it is the Tories’ own approach - the deregulation of financial services and similar policies - that is responsible for the mess we are in.

I asked Nick whether his recent calls to "buy British" risked encouraging the sort of protectionism which would make the global economic situation worse. It turned out these reports have been greatly exaggerated: he was just talking about an improved version of the current Red Tractor standard. But my question did produce one of two great quotations of the day: "This party, certainly not under my leadership, will never, ever advocate protectionism."

We learned that while Nick personally supported party policy, which is to repeal the provisions in the Embryology Act that discriminate against lesbian couples adopting, the Parliamentary party had collectively decided there should be a free vote when the new bill was before the Commons last month.

And we learned he thought it unfair to call Barack Obama a populist. That Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross had behaved like total prats, but it had been absurd for the prime minister to take a break from a summit in Paris to tell senior BBC management what to do about Manuelgate. And that Michael Gambon should be the new Doctor Who.

And the second quotation? Asked whether the largely Labour readership of one blog would regard his call for tax cuts as "moving to the right", Nick replied: "I am never going to satisfy Polly Toynbee and Jackie Ashley."

Britblog Roundup 194: The one done from home

My turn to host this roundup has come around again and this time I have the luxury of doing it in the comfort of my own home rather than in a Shropshire pub or a Bournemouth cafe. Just as well, given the number of nominations.

Let's start right away with the story of the week. No, not the collapse of the global economy, but...


Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand

What does this case tell us about the future of public service broadcasting in a multi-channel world? Search me. It's much easier to attack the Daily Mail.

Quaequam Blog! thinks it is "the paper for pervs" and Stumbling and Mumbling observes:

Those dupes of the Daily Mail who have complained remind me of those Muslims protesting against the cartoons of Mohammed. Their whining about “offence” is a toxic mix of emotional incontinence and intolerance. They flaunt their manufactured sensibilities like a flasher waggling what Mr Brand would call his winkie.

before going on to ask some pertinent questions after all.

Meanwhile Heresy Corner investigates the double life of Georgina Baillie, while the f word defends her right to be a Satanic Slut if she chooses.

And who is this offering a judicious summing up of the whole affair?

If Ross and Brand had rung up, say, David Baddiel or Frank Skinner and deposited lewd insinuations on the answer machine it's hard to see that there would have been any controversy at all. That their victim was someone fondly remembered for a role he played more than thirty years ago - movingly described by his granddaughter as a "lovely, kind old man who's never hurt anyone" - provided the trigger.

Why, it's Heresy Corner again!

Incidentally, my Mum says that Brand and Ross behaved like a couple of teenagers making a rude call from a phone box. Spot on, if you ask me.


The credit crunch

Stumbling and Mumbling is a good guide here too, looking at the relations between fiscal policy and inequality.

Pajamas Media (hmm, sounds American to me) is amazed that:

In a bizarre twist of political fate Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown has actually gone up in the polls of late after his fate was unsettled in the lead-up to his annual party conference last month.

And Stroppy Blog finds a persuasive feminist angle on the subject:

Pressure on household budgets is usually pressure on women. Paying bills, getting in the weekly shop, making sure the kids are clothed and the holiday paid for still falls mainly on women's shoulders, so when prices go up and/or incomes fall, it will be mainly women who are expected to work wonders with the balance sheet or to go without.”

Which brings us rather neatly to...


Women

Mrs Thatcher. She was a woman. And Archbishop Cranmer notes the 20th anniversary of the lady's Bruges speech. For some reason I am reminded of Alexander McCall Smith's hymn from 44 Scotland Street:

God's never heard of Belgium,
But loves it just the same,
For God is kind
And doesn't mind -
He's not impressed with fame.

Anyway, the f word looks at feminism and polyamory (doesn't she write for the Guardian?)

Stroppy Blog calculates the sobering cost of domestic abuse: for the state, employers and victims, it estimated at around £23 billion. And Philobiblon presents a round up of women's action from around the world.


Religion

Let us pray. Or perhaps not.

Clairwil mourns Sony's decision to withdraw the "Little Big Planet" computer game because a song featured on it might offend Muslims. And Archbishop Cranmer does not see how any Jew, Christian or Muslim could vote for Barack Obama, as he supports and actively legislates for live birth abortion.

The Freethinker turns the irony up to 11 and reports:

That bastion of progressive thinking – the Islamic Medical Association – has attracted yet more unwelcome attention, this time as a result of its President, Dr Muhammad Siddiq, storming out of a medical disciplinary hearing.

A Very British Dude is not impressed with the government's plans to exclude "preachers of hate" from the country.

Heresy Corner reports this year's Bad Faith Award:

The smart money was on Ratzinger, but he was pipped at the post by US conservative columnist Dinesh D'Souza.

while The Daily (Maybe) wonder if religion is worth worrying about at all.

The BondBloke Alternative concludes:

So, as far as I can see, as long as there is religion there will be conflict of one sort or another; either between religions, i.e. Christian and Islamic religions, or within religions themselves. i.e. within the Christian church about matters of gay ordination etc., or within the Islamic faiths where different factions have vastly different interpretations of their faith.

Drink

I don't know about you, but I could do with a stiffener after all that.

NHS Blog Doctor appeals to the government not to "make people nervous about going to the doctor for fear of being chastised about their drinking".

The paramedic who writes Random Acts of Reality has to contend with the after-effects of drink and our growing lack of common sense:

It drives me bloody crazy - a person falls asleep on the bus and the bus driver isn't allowed to touch them. They call for an ambulance and because the patient is 'unconscious' it's a top priority call. Because of the eight minute target we are forced to respond at speed, ignoring other, almost more certainly deserving, calls. We get to the scene and wake the 'patient' up, often they are drunk, but sometimes they are just tired. We are then forced to do a full work-up on them and take them to hospital (unless the patient refuses).

I personally do at least one of these a week if I'm working late or night shifts. Often it's more.

The Devil's Kitchen is not impressed that moderate drinking by mothers during pregnancy does their children no harm - or, in the case of boys, does them some good:

the BMA considers pregnant women to be a set of cretins who will go on a bender if it veers, even for a minute, away from the 'demon drink' rhetoric.

And one of the Britblog Roundup has appealed for some publicity for a friend who has just set up selling cider and perry over the internet. I am assured the drinks are all top class.

Sorry, we don't do commerical here. I mean, it's not even a blog!

I'm off to the pub...


Places

Unmitigated England visits the Crown at Theddingworth, a few miles west of Market Harborough.

It happens that in an earlier life I was a member of Harborough District Council and we refused the owner of the Crown permission for a change of use from public house to private residence. I believe we were only the second council to use planning powers in this way. Sadly, the Crown did close as a pub a few years ago.

Diamond Geezer visits the new Westgate shopping centre in London. And Musings from a Muddy Island has been to Lindisfarne and photographed the boatsheds

Stroppy Blog opposes development in an historic quarter of Edinburgh and bigs up another blog: Independent Republic of the Canongate.

Finally in this section: from Market Harborough to Market Bosworth as English Buildings discovers a belvedere.

Children

Kids today, eh? Petite Anglaise shares a mother's angst and Split Infinitive reflects on adult authority and the back of the bus.

Reviews

SwissToni's Place review a comic and ends by asking: "dare I accuse the authors of this brightly coloured disposable nonsense of... literature?"

I Like has discovered a homage to Jack Vettriano's Singing Butler in Tunnock's Tea Cakes and Caramel Wafers. Like you do.

Cutting the Wire marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's A Coney Island of the Mind.

The Daily (Maybe) has been to see a Quantum of Solace. And so has Harpymarx, who asks whether it is time James Bond was retired.

Politics

High on Rebellion believes: "at this moment class seems the best site of struggle for revolutionary change", whereas The Daily (Maybe) thinks it is time for a green leap forward.

And the Green MEP Peter Cranie discusses the party's plans for the next general election.

Liberty

We end with the subject that unites most bloggers, right or left. We agree that liberty is a Good Thing.

So A Very British Dude dissects the arguments Jacqui Smith has used in defence of detaining terrorist suspects for up to 42 days and is not impressed.

Is there more to life than shoes? is concerned for:

a young man is, realistically, going to be deported to a Greek prison on the grounds of evidence obtained by torture of his two friends where he may be held for up to 18 months without trial and where the likelihood of a fair trial, given how the Greek authorities have behaved so far, is unlikely.

Jock Coats attended the Libertarian Alliance Conference and reports it in two parts: namely part 1 and part 2. The Devil's Kitchen plugged the event before the event.

The Appalling Strangeness surveys fiction about dystopian futures and concludes that today "turning a blind eye will lead to nothing other than waking up one morning and realising it is all too late".

One blogger breaks the consensus. The Labour MP Tom Harris says: "this is all paranoid fantasy, and why so many people get off on it, I’ll never know". And The Devil's Kitchen replies in characteristic style.

In other words, he swears like Jonathan Ross. If you are offended, why not write to the Daily Mail?

Next week's Roundup will be hosted by Mr Eugendies. Please send your nominations to britblog [at] gmail [dot] com.

An old joke recycled

Jonathan Ross says he is leaving the BBC "without rancour".

That's funny, I thought he was taking Russell Brand with him.

Russell Brand, Jonathan Ross and the credit crunch

Writing for the Wealth Bulletin, Mike Foster draws some imaginative parallels between the excesses of Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross and the excesses that led to the credit crunch:

On one level, the affair matters not a jot. But it also demonstrates the way in which people like Brand and Ross overreach themselves after enjoying the adulation of millions, and salaries to match.

The effect of this kind of leverage on animal spirits were also on display in the financial markets of 2007, when investors and financiers became masters of the universe, after using cheap debt to build business empires and boost their personal bottom line.

The Curse of House Points

My first House Points column of the new season appeared in Liberal Democrat News on Friday 17 October. In it I took aim at George Osborne:

He still gives the overwhelming impression of being a clever schoolboy. It is hard to get the idea that he was once David Cameron’s fag out of your head. He made "bloody good toast" and has now received his reward.

So Osborne is not a figure who commands respect in a crisis. Already Conservative voices are suggesting Kenneth Clarke would make a more credible chancellor if the party came to power.

Five days later Osborne was in deep trouble after it was alleged he was personally involved in discussions to channel a £50,000 donation from Russia's richest oligarch to the Conservative party.

Last Friday - 24 October - House Points questioned whether funding the BBC through a licence fee was going to be defensible for much longer. In passing, I took aim at Jonathan Ross and his £6m annual salary from the Corporation.

Today, three days later, Ross is in deep trouble over his and Russell Brand's telephone calls to Andrew Sachs.

I wonder whom I should write about this week?