Six of the Best 77

Andrew George, Lib Dem MP for St Ives in Cornwall, is campaigning against unfair banking charges:"It is not unusual for bank customers to find themselves hundreds of pounds overdrawn within a few weeks of initially straying just a few pence overdrawn. Such abuse by high street banks which were themselves bailed out by poor taxpayers is morally unacceptable."

Caron's Musings contrasts officialdom's treatment of Raoul Moat and of Florence and Precious Mhango.

The Big Society is just an admission that the state can't do everything, says Tory councillor James Cousins.

Congratulations to Labour-run Tameside on finding a new way of wasting public money. The Manchester Evening News reports that it has blown £36,000 on creating a "virtual town hall" in Second Life.

History Today mourns the fact that less than 30 per cent of schoolchildren take history at GCSE: "Apparently, it is seen as a difficult, academic subject, a stigma it shares with the separate sciences and modern languages (i.e. the very subjects that make one educated)." The magazine's blog has harsh words for the cult of "relevance" too.

I was too busy in Gaddesby to get to the English Heritage Festival of History at Kelmarsh Hall last Saturday. But it doesn't matter: Unmitigated England was there.