Six of the Best 133

Writing for the Oxford Student, Ed Watson stands up for the Liberal Democrats: "So, by all means call me and my party incompetent. Call us misguided. Tell us that we’re failing to live up to our principles. Tell us that we’re just plain wrong. But tell us that we lack principles, or impugn our integrity in some other way, and I’ll see you on the meadows with pistols at dawn."

On the OurKingdom site Malcolm Stevens discusses the detention of young offenders and calls on the Coalition to match the liberal achievements of... Margaret Thatcher: "Under her command from the early 1980s, the UK witnessed an unprecedented decline in the numbers of children and young people sentenced to custody: from almost 15000 in 1980 to 1500 in 1991."

Toby Young slaughters Labour MP Andrew Slaughter and his criticisms of free schools on the Daily Telegraph site.

Steve Joseph, on the BME National site, writes about his efforts to do something about "the increasing number of young black men drawn to crime, drugs and, in many cases, guns".

Peter Black AM finds that, entirely predictably, Larry the Downing Street cat is already looking to develop role beyond rodent control.

Wartime Housewife, that fount of robust good sense and member of the increasingly influential Harborough school of blogging, selects six favourite cultural links for The Dabbler.