"Well written, funny and wistful" - Paul Linford; "He is indeed the Lib Dem blogfather" - Stephen Tall "Jonathan Calder holds his end up well in the competitive world of the blogosphere" - New Statesman "A prominent Liberal Democrat blogger" - BBC Radio 4 Today; "One of my favourite blogs" - Stumbling and Mumbling; "Charming and younger than I expected" - Wartime Housewife
Showing posts with label Britblog Roundup. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Britblog Roundup. Show all posts
Bournemouth was my first Liberal Democrat Conference in I don't know how many years - I suspect the last one was in the same town in 2008.
And, of course, many of the people I knew then aren't at conference these days. So next time I attend Conference, and I don't intend waiting another 17 years, I shall make more effort to go to events and fringe meetings.
I was more ready for the internet cafe (ask your parents) in St Michael's Road from which I posted an edition of the Britblog Roundup (ask your parents) no longer being there.
Anyway, this time I kept passing a fascinating piece of Victorian Nonconformist fantasy on the way from the Metropole back to my own hotel.
The Unitarian Church, designed by Lawson & Donkin and built 1890, had seating for 400 persons. When the dwindling congregation sold the building it became a "mediaeval" banqueting hall, then a burlesque and cabaret venue, before a more sympathetic restoration and conversion to offices.
He also quotes its Listing as saying it offers:
A very rich mannerist interpretation of mediaeval items coupled with imaginative freestyle touches.
Improvements to broadband is (sic) promised next year for people living in some isolated Shropshire communities that struggle of get online.
As a result of a new roll out of ultrafast broadband by local provider SWS, that’s changing with Stiperstones village the first to benefit from a future proofed ‘gigabit capable’ broadband infrastructure.
But then Stiperstones village has always been at the forefront of such efforts. At one time there was an official scheme under which, if you went into the pub and asked about web access, they would hand you a laptop across the bar.
Back in 2008, when the BritBlog Roundup was a thing, I took advantage of it to compile an edition there.
I have a soft spot for Natalie Bennett. She and I used both to be members of the team that took turns to host the Britblog Roundup.
But her performance on the Sunday Politics the other week has led some to wonder whether the Green Party would do better to field Caroline Lucas in the leaders' debates later this year.
And Natalie should be careful, because Caroline Lucas has sharp elbows and previous form.
Brighton Pavilion was the Greens' best prospect of a gain at the last general election largely because a local activist called Keith Taylor had built it up.
Then in 2007 Lucas descended on the town, professed her "admiration and respect" for Taylor and took the nomination from him.
If she expresses her admiration and express for the Green' current leader, Natalie really will be in trouble.
I gave up hosting the Britblog Roundup a while back because of differences over blogging direction. But I am happy to link to it when it is hosted by Redemption Blues.
A Timely Reform looks at the questions BBC2's Newsnight failed to ask - in case the answers spoiled the piece knocking the Lib Dems that they presented last night.
Sir Alan Beith is interviewed by Total Politics: "There are a lot of Labour's laws that I would like to repeal. They became rather like a nanny state. Very authoritarian party and created supposed anti-terrorism legislation which was only used in situations which had nothing to do with terrorism."
"Last night I had the 'pleasure' of being detained against my will not by the police but by Rail Enforcement Officers who operate on the South Eastern rail services. What did I do wrong? I took a picture of these Rail Enforcement Officers and when they asked me to see and then remove the pictures from my phone I refused." The experience of You've Been Cromwelled shows that photographers are still being harrassed and that our public spaces are now peopled by all sorts of people in uniform whose claim on the authority they exert is questionable.
As someone has kindly nominated my post about Gaddesby church, I had better direct you to this week's Britblog Roundup and Mr Eugenides.
Fred Inglis, writing for Times Higher Education, celebrates "the massive continuity of organisations such as the Brownies, the Women's Institute, the parent-teacher associations (it is the women who save us), the trainspotters, the vintage car enthusiasts, the utterly admirable legions of the RSPB, recently and lovingly apotheosised as 'Swallows and Anoraks'."
I seem to be falling out of love with the Britblog Roundup, so let's try a new feature to showcase interesting links I come across while browsing.
How often Six of the Best will appear, I don't know - presumably whenever I have accumulated six links worth posting - but a couple of times a week feels about right.
And the title? Well, this is Liberal England, and what could be more English than corporal punishment?
Anyway, here is the first selection:
Let's start with one for the Lib Dem loyalists. Liberal Democrat Voice has copious quotations from Nick Clegg's interview with Mary Riddell in today's Daily Telegraph and a link to the whole thing.
Stumbling and Mumbling asks if we baby boomers are really the luckiest generation (grammar schools, student grants, cheap houses) and why the young are so quiescent about it if we are.
Anglo-French co-operation on defence is back on the agenda. (Remember David Owen's proposal for a Euro beumb?) Lavengro in Spain writes about a collision, little reported in the British press, between British and French nuclear submarines in the mid Atlantic last year that suggests there may be a way to go yet.
Having pleased the Lib Dems, here are a couple for the Dr Who fans. Craig Murray is to be played by David Tennant in a play for BBC Radio 4. It will be broadcast on 20 February.
And Wartime Housewife, another member of the increasingly influential Market Harborough school of blogging, has some fun with a gas mask. "Are you my Mummy?"
Welcome to this week's selection of the best in British blogging.
Politics
As you see, we start with something new: a video. It comes from Paul Staines' Guido Fawkes blog.
I have sometimes been puzzled by Guido's pre-eminence in British blogging - why is there such a readership for stories about Gordon Brown picking his nose? - but this film on "The Hubris of Nick Robinson" is a classy production and explains what the blog does with all those interns. Guido is promising more good things in the run up to the general election.
Writing on Liberal Democrat Voice Mark Pack looks forward to the debates between the main party leaders at that election, making 10 predictions. One of them is that "there will be a battle over worms". The New Adventures of Juliette probably will not enjoy watching David Cameron in those debates: she objects to seeing a:
giant poster of David Cameron's weirdly smooth, wholesome, lineless, boneless-looking pinky-beige face gazing earnestly down at me from a great big fuck-off billboard".
And Gordon Brown had better not try arguing that liberal voters support his policies: Mark Reckons isn't having any of it. Around the world
If you really can't face the prospect of those debates, you could try moving abroad.
Where to choose? Odessablog helpfully points out that Ukraine is the 68th best place to live.
There may be a lot wrong with Spain too, but Thoughts from Galicia has discovered a journalist who believes you are not entitled to mention them unless you are Spanish yourself.
Or you could go to Africa, though Charles Crawford explains that you may find yourself officially the only gay in the continent.
Maybe you would do better in Paris, which On An Overgrown Path has visited. Around Britain Go Litel Blog, Go has found a poem by John Clare that is relevant to our current weather:
And in the morning, when the tempest drops,
At every cottage door mountainous heaps
Of snow lie drifted, that all entrance stops
Until the besom and the shovel gain
The path, and leave a wall on either side.
Earthpal describes a current-day struggle with the white stuff. And Musings from a Muddy Island allows us to enjoy scenes of Mersea Island in the snow. Unmitigated England describes a visit to the landscaped gardens and follies of Stowe which may just have passed on his enthusiasm for such things to his sons.
And English Buildings explains his ambition of "slowing down the buildings".
Communication
Just because the people who run internet companies like jellybeans and snowboarding, it doesn't mean they can always be trusted to do the right thing. The Bristol Blogger reports that earlier this week Wordpress took his blog and a couple of other blogs down without warning or explanation. It turned out that this was because each carried posts about the former vice chancellor of the University of the West of England, Sir Howard Newby.
It transpired that the pressure on Wordpress came not from shit-hot international libel lawyers but the rather less minatory figure of the director of legal services at the University of Liverpool, which is Sir Howard's new employer. EcoLogics was another of the blogs caught up in this row and provides its own account of the affair. And Bristle’s Blog from the BunKRS asks why Liverpool is so reticent about Sir Howard's appointment.
Communication takes many forms. Geoff Jones, for instance, is having trouble unlocking his iPhone.
And The Misssy M Misssives celebrates the demise of thank you letters. Me, though I was never that good at them, I cannot note the passing of old-fashioned civility without a little sadness. Besides, the more is see "the 1950s" used as shorthand for all that the writer things is wrong with Britain, the more I want to defend that much traduced decade.
My advice is to search out the Molesworth Self Adjusting Thank You Letter.
The blog 1930 to 1960, which is probably rather keener on the fifties, has found a precursor to the popular modern children's novel Goodnight Mr Tom that was published in 1943. Next week
The Roundup will be found on The Wardman Wire.
Please send your nominations to britblog [at] gmail [dot] com as usual.
A reminder that I shall be hosting the Britblog Roundup tomorrow.
If you have seen a posting on a British blog over the past week that you think particularly fine, please send the URL to britblog [AT] gmail [DOT] com and I shall include it.
Nominating a posting for the Britblog Roundup is a good way of promoting a blog that you think deserves more readers. And you are welcome to nominate a posting on your own blog too.
A late change in the rota means that I shall be hosting the Britblog Roundup on Sunday.
If you have seen a posting on a British blog over the past week that you think particularly fine, please send the URL to britblog [AT] gmail [DOT] com and I shall include it.
Nominating a posting for the Britblog Roundup is a good way of promoting a blog that you think deserves more readers. And you are welcome to nominate a posting on your own blog too.
All nominations by Sunday lunchtime please.
Incidentally, for the first time I can remember I did not post a link to the most recent Roundup. That was because it ignored the Roundup's long-established tradition of being reasonably politically neutral and turned into a rant against bloggers who did not share the editors' own views. No doubt you could find it by Googling.
