Six of the Best 239

"MPs, please, please, please take what your civil servants tell you with a huge pinch of salt: they’re even more likely than you not to understand the internet, and even more likely than you to be swayed inappropriately by the copyright and security lobbies!" Paul Bernal's Blog explains why governments' digital policy is so bad.

And SRoC: Slightly Right of Centre writes about what may be the latest instance of this: moves towards filtering of the internet.

"You can have as challenging a curriculum as you like, but if you have a vicious struggle for league table supremacy and not enough resources in the .  any teacher ambitious for their school and their students (who need A*s to get to the university of their choice) will find some way of maximising their chances (it's the intellectual equivalent of tax avoidance....)" The Times blogger Mary Beard fears Michael Gove's plan to put universities back in charge of A levels misses the point.

Peter Linebaugh talks about Luddism, the fencing off of the commons, popular resistance to dispossession, and the radical message and enduring influence of the Magna Carta in an audio on Against the Grain.

On Huffington Post Katherine Macfarlane writes about the experience of being a child of divorce.

Sophie Bosworth writes about the work of the photographer James Ravilious, son of the artist Eric Ravilious.