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.