Six of the Best 230

A former Vestal Virgin

"The cream of Scotland's Lib Dem blogosphere..." begins a post on A Scottish Liberal. But it gets better after that and reports a searching interview with Willie Rennie.

"I don’t like how the SNP has been cosying up to News International, nor how Alex Salmond is big chums with Rupert Murdoch these days. And I don’t like how many SNP members/supporters appear to be falling into line and accepting this." A Burdz Eye View examines an unlovely development in Scottish politics.

The Learning Spy asks who inspects Ofsted. It's a good question.

Paganism did not wither away, it was consciously destroyed says the always-interesting Heresy Corner: "Within a few of generations of Constantine's conversion to Christianity another Roman emperor, Theodosius I, acting under the influence of a Milanese fanatic later known as St Ambrose, made the practice of the empire's traditional religion illegal. Temples were closed, soothsaying was outlawed on pain of death, the Oracle of Delphi was shut down, the Olympic Games were cancelled after more than a thousand years of quadrennial celebration, Plato's Academy in Athens was forced to close its doors (many of its leading lights fleeing to sanctuary in Persia), the Vestal Virgins were forcibly married off."

Lady Don't Fall Backwards celebrates the career of the children's television writer and director Richard Carpenter, who died yesterday.

"I tend to be on my own for at least an hour or so, and occasionally hear the sound of footsteps following me; running, whispers and the sound of children laughing or playing. Noises will immediately halt if I go to investigate the source of the occurrence,  and start again, if I stop paying attention to it/them." Too lib·er·al [adj.] on working in one of the most haunted buildings in Canterbury.