BritBlog Roundup 145

Welcome to this week's selection to all that is best in the British blogosphere. Well, some of it anyway.

Football
Best to get it over with. Narey's Toepoker may believe "The future's bright, the future's tartan" but we are less confident south of the Border.

Cruella-Blog thinks we make too much of sport anyway. Into the Ibyss thinks that international football is now a poor relation of the club game, with the result that players are less bothered about it.

Westminster Wisdom suggests an alternative team, composed of characters from Dickens's novels. I am sure that Betsy Trotwood would give the ball away less often than Steven Gerrard did.

Arts
Welcome to a new contributor: Jeffrey Archer. Yes, that Jeffrey Archer. Lord A has been to see Glengarry Glen Ross at the Apollo. At least, he says he has.

This seems a good point to slip in my Liberal England posting on the sad origins of Agatha Christie's record-breaking play The Mousetrap.

My London, Your London is disappointed to find the Midwest just off the Charing Cross Road. And Just 474 Votes to Win marks the last days of the Kilburn State cinema.

Which brings us rather neatly to....

London
The Village Beneath looks at the toll wartime air raids took of St Pancras:

In total there were 1278 air raid incidents in St Pancras ... 957 people had been killed and 1,443 people had been seriously injured. 1,576 houses were demolished, 1,744 uninhabitable and 13,825 had blast damage

English Buildings looks at a former hat factory in Hollen Street in Soho and goes on to reflect:

Back in the early 1980s, I used regularly to take the short train ride from New Cross Gate to London Bridge. On this brief inner-city commute my train passed all kinds of factories churning out products from foods to light engineering goods. Paper bags, biscuits, malt vinegar, and flags were all being made near that busy railway line. Most of these industries have since vanished from the area and many former inner-London factories are now given over to apartments or shops.

And Theo Blackwell wants your support for a community play project in Camden Town.

Sexual Politics
Redemption Blues celebrates the work of Serap Cileli, an "indefatigable campaigner for the rights of Muslim women in Germany, whom I am proud to call a friend".

Mind the Gap warns against evangelical feminism. And Lavengro in Spain points out that the spread of AIDS in Africa cannot be wholly the fault of the Roman Catholic Church.

Environment
Green Girls Global looks at James Lovelock's Gaia theory - the view that the Earth should be treated as a single living organism. (The name "Gaia" was suggested by Lovelock's friend and neighbour. the novelist William Golding, incidentally.)

Bsketti argues that biofuels are "the devil's Ribena".

Politics
Alice in Blogland (a belated nomination, this one) marks Remembrance Day in her own way:

Rather than parading around in uniform and firing cannons (why do they always miss Nicholas bloody Witchell?), remembrance day makes me want to find ways to resist war and support others who resist. Remembrance is hypocritical if we do it while perpetuating the very conditions which cause the loss of life we mourn.

Chris Paul notes the fall of John Howard in Australia, and Ellee Seymour expresses her concern over the loss of Child Benefit data.

Craig Murray reports on the campaign to prevent the deportation of Jahongir Sidikov:

How on Earth can we consider deporting dissidents back to Uzbekistan. Do Ministers not know what happens in that country, or do they just not care? And why can't I get any politician, journalist or official even vaguely interested? Even on the internet, no prominent bloggers have shown any interest. I don't know that I have ever felt so frustrated and alone - but my problems are nothing compared to how Jahongir must be feeling. To sit in a condemned cell awaiting a relatively quick death must be awful. But to await the kind of things the Uzbek security services will do to you - and to be awaiting them in England - is unthinkable.

Finally, let's go to Lib Dem land.

Liberal Burblings reflects on bloggers' role in party election campaigns and their bloodthirstiness: "we do love to see a head drop into the basket, don't we?" he asks.

If we do, then The Whiskey Priest has fitted a nice shiny new blade just for Nick Clegg.

And Suz Blog reports on the find of a box of human ashes in the car park of the building where Islington Lib Dems have their office.

Farwell
Thanks to everyone who made nominations this week.

Next week's Roundup will be at Philobiblon.

Please send your nominations to britblog [at] gmail [dot] com.

Ciao.