Six of the Best 247

Keith Nevols reviews the alternative Queen's Speech being promoted by Conservative Home and the Tory right: "The alternative speech claims to be ‘popular, pro-poor and broadly based’. Unfortunately, this is not so much a programme to encourage jobs and growth but more the reiteration of a right-wing agenda that would have made Mrs Thatcher blush."

The council election results in Gwynedd sound like the plot of an Ealing Comedy, says What You Can Get Away With,

Stephen Williams, Lib Dem MP for Bristol West, looks back 20 years to his first election: "Our volunteers delivered two leaflets and knocked on every door in the ward. The leaflet text was composed on a typewriter and the black and white photographs were turned into dots for printing by a photo bureau.  The canvass cards for door knocking were made by me and my agent ... spending two evenings cutting up the election register and pritt-sticking each street onto card. The results of the canvassing were written up by hand onto triplicate carbon paper, to be used when 'knocking up' supporters on polling day. All of this now belongs in the museum of electioneering."

"Goodbye Tories, hello Liberal Democrats," says Blue Liberalism.

Unpaid internships are bad for students, bad for workers and bad for society, argues Derek Thompson on The Atlantic.

The BFI's Sight & Sound magazine reports on the opening up of the lost continent of British silent films  at a festival in Cambridge last month.