Blogoir

Is hosted by Mr Eugenides.

Linking to a lot of UK political stuff, plus this good piece about how the proliferation of new media outlets create closed sub-cultures:

The internet is an extension of the telephone network, and as such it's a two-way communication medium rather than a one-way broadcast medium. The internet allows people to answer back, in ways that the church pulpit and books and newspapers and TV and radio never allowed, or only residually allowed.

And this changes everything. It changes the game completely.

Is hosted by Is there more to life than shoes? (We are never told.)

A link to a nice piece by Natalie Bennett about her Grandmother's thrift and good nature.

And some good - but maybe fake - advice to young ladies from the Heresiarch.

Most regular readers of this site are familiar with the immortal line from The Inimitable Jeeves: when Aunt is calling Aunt like mastodons bellowing across primaeval swamps…

 

Anyway, that’s what it’s been like behind the scenes of Britblog Roundup this week – the various hosts and hostesses bellowing primaevally among themselves about what and how the Roundup should round up. Only one death so far…

 

BBRU hosts are supposed to track down lively examples of the blogging genre. But there is a lot of blogging out there to choose from, not least corners of the Internet teeming with allegedly English nationalism which spirals off into anti-semitism, ‘islamophobia’, xenophobia and strident intolerance of pretty much everything.

 

BBRU’s policy is to give all that a wide berth and focus instead on other stuff.

 

So, getting on with it…

 

* * * * *

Let’s start with Climate Change (Or Not). A good week for so-called Sceptics as the mainstream media finally have started to look at bad science, exaggerations and conflicts of interest which all have infiltrated governments' environmental/climate policies in recent years.

 

Whatever one thinks about climate issues (which are fiendishly complex), a small but unrelenting part of the blogosphere has used spontaneous mass networking to look hard at tough technical questions and leap ahead of the mainstream media, shooting yawning holes in the credibility of British/EU/US and wider climate policy. This profoundly democratic development exemplifies the waning power of governments and legacy media to shape public opinion.

 

EU Referendum has done a startling job in rummaging around in the myriad commercial and other activities of IPCC leader Dr Rajendra Pachauri, to the point of making it on to TV in India. See his latest piece on how climate change may usefully be making for greater rainfall in the Sahara, plus his argument that the truth is being served best by networks of free bloggers:

 

In the free (and rapid) exchange of information and ideas (and mutual criticism), it is us working as a loose community who most closely approach the scientific ideal. This is, of course, why we are winning the intellectual argument. The political battle, though, has yet to come.

 

Devil’s Kitchen hammers away at this subject from a libertarian angle. He lambasts those who such as Sunny Hundal who still defend the core Climate Change/IPCC position:

 

What Sunny hasn't grasped—or, rather, wilfully refuses to grasp—is that if one or more claims are suspect, then they are all suspect.

 

Quite. And it’s having results. Talking Clock points out that UK public opinion is now changing fast.

 

Bishop Hill likewise has achieved planetary reknown by hitting plenty of fat lazy climate targets. Here he is again, drilling down into the data.

 

* * * * *

From one wise Prelate effortlessly to another, and the realms of ‘religio-political’ agendas.

 

Archbishop Cranmer gives us a Conservative Creed.

 

Wantage Pastor Neil Townsend loves to blog about the excitement of his faith! And he uses exclamation marks! Lots of them!

 

The Heresiarch pores over Mrs Blair, religion and a punch in the mouth.

 

Penny Red rails against Simon Jenkins’s views about the Pope from her exciting socialist, feminist, deviant, reprobate, queer, journalist, tea-drinking, smoking, toast-eating perspective, helpfully giving her work a coarse title to make sure we won’t want to read it: Does Simon Jenkins shit in the woods?

 

Over in central Europe Odessablog is doing his best to explain to us Ukraine’s elections. A dirty job but someone has to do it.

 

Nourishing Obscurity boasts of his Russian and Serbian (Боже Боже) and French girlfriends. Having wallowed in some of the deepest, lushest European integration on offer, he remains pro-Europe but anti-EU: down with Euro-Quislings, down.

 

Witterings from Witney laments the fact that Dover is being hived off from England as part of a new European region. (Nifty map.) By contrast councillor Philip Booth (Green) is striving to give Stroud the nocturnal profile of North Korea.

 

Up in Stroud Green ward (no relation) in Haringey, Green Party candidate Sarah Cope is being driven witless by local housing socialism:

 

As a council flat resident, I have long battled with the powers that be to get even the simplest repair job done – and had to suffer a lot of ill-will and sometimes staggering levels of rudeness from staff…

 

… A resident in a council block is terrified of the mice that run amok in her abode. She cannot sleep and is having to stay with friends. Other residents complain but the Housing Manager says that unless EVERY resident in the large block complains, the interior of the flats cannot be treated. (I checked whether this is in fact the council’s rule, and it isn’t).

 

Two Conservative parliamentary candidates are blogging furiously. Dominic Raab is down the boozer in Stoke D’Abernon. Robert Buckland has some very brainy stuff about Legal Aid – is that really going to wow voters in Swindon South?

 

Labour Party stalwart Brian Barder has made it his life’s work painstakingly to damn Tony Blair for war crimes. Hey, Brian, how many times (if any) did you vote for him?

 

Two (Green) Doctors look at scandalous SNP abuses of Scottish parliamentary hospitality but make a wise suggestion:

 

… please let's not give it a "-gate" suffix. They're a dead horse in general, but Parliament's already had Piegate and Burgergate. We couldn't handle "blade of Scottish beef with roast onion mash and winter greens-gate".

 

* * * * *

And on to Writing. Good. And Bad.

 

Samuel Pepys reminds us how he helped invent elegant English.

 

The Top 100 Scottish Blogs are proclaimed. The winner is SNP Tactical Voting.

 

But who would want to miss No 97, namely Hythlodaeus who is another one looking closely at what Scottish politicians eat – and how mere mortals can pay to sit next to them at the trough?

 

Call me old fashioned, but I can’t take seriously blogs riddled with spelling errors. Such as plane stupid moaning about BAA’s role in Scottish tourism. Just embarassing.

 

Here by contrast is Paul Cornell with elegant writing and top-end sci-fi comic design – Indomitable Iron Man.

 

If by now you have not died of boredom, here is a beautiful piece by James Hamilton about the psychology of Brian Clough. Check out the video of Clough sternly gaslighting a fashion challenged youthful John Motson.

 

And Kaite Welsh looking at early palaeontologist Mary Anning - who discovered the first Icthyosaur:

 

… it was Mary’s lengthy career that inspired the nursery rhyme “She sells sea-shells on the sea shore”, but it was not until recently that this oddly-dressed woman from Lyme Regis has been given her due… Anning stumbled across the fossil of a strange monster with “flippers like a dolphin, a mouth like a crocodile, and a pointed snout like a swordfish.”

Phil Walker deftly helps Michael Moore identify a new, just economic order.

 

Phil’s blog is called The Melangerie. No relation to MyLingerie, aka knows as KnickersBlog. Get all your Valentine’s Day underpants here.

 

Any self-respecting blogger keeps a close eye on Search Engine Optimisation (the things you do on your site to soar from the utter obscurity of page 52 on Google to the utter obscurity of (say) page 2. And nothing being sacred, there are even Dirty Tricks here too, as David Naylor explains to the microscopic number of people able to follow him.

 

With your SEO neat and tidy, read The Conservative Blog’s Ten Blogging Commandments. I liked No 9: Clean your Teeth (Or your Blog will Lack Bite).

Alas some bloggers, even cool libertarian ones, just run out of road. So, farewell then, Charlotte Gore…

* * * * *

Very finally, two utterly beyond awesome things.

 

First, peezedtee laments the absence of schwung in today’s advertising, reminding us how toothpaste ads used to look and sound.

 

Second, many of you people out there are full of declinist ennui and looking for something to do with your empty lives.

 

So, here’s an idea. Reacquire Purpose and Meaning.

 

Dig out old video clips of Sid James. Then sit there for many long hours cutting out individual words by him, which you can then arrange painstakingly with electronic music to give us Sid James singing an obscure Pink Floyd song.

 

Aaargh. Dust On the Stylus tells us that it’s been done already – back in 1991, by Fortran 5. Who also got Derek Nimmo into a studio to sing Layla by Derek and The Dominoes.

 

How cool is that?

 

* * * * *

Next week’s BBRU is hosted by Trixy.

 

Make her life easy, readers. Send her a few lively links, via britblog @ gmail.com

Is up and running at Suz Blog.

Good link to Love and Liberty's post:

New Labour’s 4,289 New Laws – Yet Blair Walks Free

And a wail for national liberation from Nourishing Obscurity.

This week's Britblog Roundup is hosted by Matt Wardman.

Will we accept household electricity bills of £5000 per year? No.

And a link to a gushy piece about a new economic model, which seems to mean stifling innovation to get the wonders of a 'steady-state economy':

For example: if you hear someone proclaiming an innovation as great for productivity, ask questions (and if it means workers won’t spend 10 hours a day breaking rocks, great, but if it means a machine replaces a person doing a decent, proper job, ask why? then ask again).

What?

Where do you think the 'machine' came from? It came from other people doing decent proper jobs in inventing it and all the parts and thought that created it.

And the chances are that that machine is doing the tedious bits of a job, opening the way to allowing a human to have more time to focus on the less boring bits.

Much better to have all those people in wearying domestic service?

Is deftly hosted by Liberal England.

Look out for a Besomy Bletherer's views on the lost art of Thankyou Letters.

And more suppression of free speech, this time connected with the University of Liverpool. Not easy to follow what is happening if you are not following what is happening, but start here.

 

Is hosted again by a Very British dude with his beautiful eyes.

He looks at the genre. Thus:

Blogging is not new - it is pamphleteering and essaying with modern technology. Early Modern Whale, for example examines a 16th Century pamphlet about a landslip in Kent, and talks about the writer using this phenomenon to explain his religious beliefs.

Check out the good link to Jack of Kent on what makes a good blogger. He identifies three qualities:

• independence
• sourcing and linking
• originality

Sounds about right.

Plus there's a link to The Daily (Maybe) musing on the rather stale subject of an ethical foreign policy. 

Have a rummage around the other stuff too.

Britblog Roundup 253 is hosted by Amused Cynicism.

It links to Two Doctors greenly blaming leading planetary Leftists for the Copenhagen debacle:

This betrayal was therefore delivered by the most left-wing American president since FDR, a notionally communist regime (although more accurately an authoritarian capitalist one), the more left of the main Indian political blocs, the most left-wing Brazilian government in modern times, and a South African president promoted by the South African Communist Party over his predecessor. 

Gordon Brown wasn't in that room, but no-one could imagine he'd have improved it... Clearly none of the various forms of vague leftism on offer are going to save us. Last week they stood together as they abandoned the environment, they abandoned the planet's future, and they abandoned social justice too.

They are not part of any progressive consensus worth supporting: they are just another of the obstacles to progress.

In more Green-looking-at-Left good news, here is 'green activist' Derek Wall poring over ruinous splits in the Socialist Workers Party which otherwise we all might have missed.

Finally, here is what you need to know about bundling. Not the sort of bundling when you sell several different products together.

Is hosted by the raging Mr Eugenides.

He kindly links to a couple of postings by the "ever-readable" me.

But also have a look at a stirring defence of bullet points.

And a Cheese-like look at the issues surrounding the outing of a blogger in Scotland.

Plus home-schoolers are rising en masse against the state's control of education.

And lots more.

At Philobiblon. Always feminist.

Which takes one to intense and dense analysis of something I'd not heard of before, namely lazy transphobic cis feminism.

Eeek. 

Wikipedia helps on Cisgender, but not much:

Cisgender is a neologism that means "someone who is comfortable in the gender they were assigned at birth"

Which is a definition itself full of trite progressive assumptions, namely that gender is 'assigned' and that one may or may not be 'comfortable' with what one gets.

Anyway, Laurie Penny armed with a quiver of Dave Spart adverbs (utterly, entirely) is utterly and entirely against lazy transphobicism in all its forms:

Femininity is a social construct and Bindel is right to identify it as such. She is utterly wrong, however, to claim that transsexual men and women are any guiltier than cis men and women of re-enforcing damaging stereotypes. In fact, the misogyny and sexist stereotyping that Bindel identifies as associated with trans identities are entirely imposed on the trans community by external forces.

"Feminity is a social construct".

A familiar refrain, all the odder since it rules out much of Nature from us humans, yet often comes from people who often are the loudest on environmental issues.

And is it simply untrue? As scientists are (perhaps) demonstrating:

The notion that females are more highly invested in their children than males is being confirmed by findings in biochemistry and neuroscience, as these disciplines clarify the role of hormones—particularly testosterone and oxytocin—in sexual and reproductive behavior.

I'll stick to the Balkans. A lot more straightforward.

Let’s start at the top, with Climategate. A great mass of original material is hacked or leaked from a key UK Climate Research Unit.

 

Those who want urgent action of different sorts on climate change are exhibiting unease, insisting that it is all a fuss about next to nothing and that the science is ‘unquestionable’. Which is fine, except that a heck of a lot more questions are buzzing around at the moment.

 

Climate-change sceptics proclaim a huge victory, arguing that this material shows all sorts of unprofessional/unethical behaviour on the part of leading climate researchers, not to mention uncertain data on which key climate warnings have been based.

 

John Redwood deftly describes the rival camps and sub-camps. BBC’s Martin Rosenbaum looks at Freedom of Information angles.

 

Bishop Hill (no bishop nor hill he) has been busy explaining the issues in simple terms. Plus doing some digging himself.

 

Former diplomat and ex-Greenpeace climate and energy consultant Stephen Tindale checks out Conservative policy on Climate and finds some things to like.

 

For a post-Yugoslav neo-Stalinist contrarianist’s view, there is always self-indulgent Slavoj Zizek railing against ‘naturalising nature’. Quite.

 

My conclusion? It boils down to a hard choice between adapting to climate change as and when and where it happens, or trying to muster the resources now to ‘mitigate’ the changes and somehow stop the climate changing as pessimists fear. But if the pessimists are right, isn’t it too late anyway?

 

Pedant-General (over at Devil’s Kitchen) gives an eloquent account:

 

• the worse the climate situation is, the greater the cost of mitigation and the more attractive it is to go for adaptation. This is the oddity with the Stern Report. If his numbers are correct, we're either doing enough for mitigation already or we shouldn't be doing it at all. As the shrieking gets louder, the costs of mitigation inevitably rise and the argument gets stronger AGAINST mitigation.
•  Finally we get to the politics and the Bjorn Lomborg position. Even if it is all ghastly, there are many more important things to do with our resources. Millions really actually will die from preventable water-borne diseases, malnutrition and malaria and we really actually can do something about those. Buggering about with the climate, although it definitely will be expensive, is desperately uncertain both in terms of its effectiveness and the lives it will save. That's not a good trade off.

One argument against Adaptation is that we have run out of room. Philobiblon points out that a mere 6000 years ago there was a thriving human culture in an area now submerged off the East Coast of England called Doggerland (not to be confused with where we alas now live, namely Doggingland):

 

… the rate of sea rise in the 20th century – 20cm, “may be higher than at any time since the loss of Doggerland” (and they note that between 18,000 and 5,500 BC sea levels rose by more than 140 metres.) And they note the huge, human, difference: “Ultimately, the Mesolithic communities of the great plains were flexible and mobile. Suffering there must have been, but the communities moved and adapted.

 

Modern society does not have that luxury…Unlike the inhabitants of Doggerland, we have nowhere else to go.”

 

Even more recent civilisations on our ever-shifting shores have been and gone, including the Romans. Diamond Geezer swings by London’s only visitable Roman Villa and is impressed by the way it is run.

 

The (I think) winning argument for leaning towards Adaptation is that for better or worse it is what in fact is going to happen, so let’s get on with it intelligently?

 

* * * * *

Another area where we the public are able to press our noses against the grimy window of policy and peer in at what really happens is the new Chilcot Inquiry on Iraq. Even if those deep dark Blairish manoeuvres over Iraq are as nothing compared to the deeper and darker goings-on in Jersey.

 

So far a series of not-so-silent FCO Knights (Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Sir William Patey, Sir Peter Ricketts, Sir Christopher Meyer) have been giving their views to the Committee, which itself includes another FCO Knight, Sir Rod Lyne. Yes Sir!

 

David Hadley reminds us that another reliable witness from an even loftier position plans to set the record straight.

 

Natalie Solent shares with us her brisk submission to the Inquiry.

 

* * * * *

Climate and Iraq are all about the limits of government behaviour in a democracy, and also about how citizens in a democracy make their concerns felt.

 

For example, when should the police keep DNA samples? The Heresiarch ponders.

 

As I always say when training young diplomats, “it’s not enough to be Right – you also have to be Convincing”. How about British government attempts to stop us file-sharing? Sufficiently Unconvincing that a busy petition is being organised against them.

 

If governments don’t (yet) decide everything, citizens themselves hammer out their ideas. Not always … nicely, especially when it comes to the role and impact of Muslim communities.

 

Intellectual Muslim has shut up shop for now under pressure from “uncontrollable security threats and obscene input & sabotage by external individuals wishing to undermine the integrity of our site and the credibility of our content.”  

 

Woe to the UK Blogosphere, Anna Raccoon too is giving up:

 

… the world of blogging is fuelled by petty jealousies, vitriol, feuds, unsubstantiated allegations, apostrophe police, and a whole host of people who in another age would have been happy twitching their curtains and writing letters in green ink. I have watched in horror as several new forums have descended into a cesspool of hatred and nastiness, and you know what? I got up this morning and decided that I just didn’t have the energy anymore, or the thick skin, to do it any longer.

 

Here is Anna on equality of domestic violence to show us what we’ll miss.

 

Over in Switzerland they now and again ask people what they think. This time the idea of minarets is proving unpopular.

 

Yet here in the UK the government uses our money to subsidise Islamist radicals. The BBC discovers something amazing about Imams and shares their discovery with us. The Spittoon is unimpressed with the Islamic Human Rights Commission’s negative views on the symbolism of wearing a poppy for Remembrance Day.

 

British Christianist media are attacking official attempts to edit out Christmas in favour of a denominationally neutral ‘Winterval’ – or not. And us usual the Daily Mail is under attack, this time for suggesting that too many foreign babies are being born in the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London.

 

* * * * *

Politics! And Law!

 

Two Doctors take to task Labour’s Tom Harris MP over proportional representation.

 

Conservative ideas are getting scrutiny as election day looms. Ruscombe Green looks at their policies on rewarding recycling and thinks local. The Daily (Maybe) thinks that the Conservatives hate Europe incoherently.

 

Another former diplomat (FCO lawyer to be precise) turned Conservative + blogger is Dominic Raab, now the Tory candidate for Esher and Walton. All politics being local, what about the impact on local roads of planned gas works?

 

Meanwhile, over in Spelthorne, Graeme Reid fears that the process of selecting a new Conservative candidate is jinxed. Liberal England does not like the Conservative choice for Richmond Park, wealthy Zac Goldsmith.

 

Are magistrates pushing too many cases up to a higher level unnecessarily? Yes, says The Magistrate’s Blog.

 

* * * * *

 

To conclude with nice things.

 

Your Christmas gift problems solved, far from the beaten track, with two books: War with the Newts and Jan Maclure’s Escape to Chingking (Christopher showed that resistance should be to death, and that death was fine so long as it came out of patriotic ethical effort and not from giving up.)

 

Two fine buildings: Kilburn School of Needlework and the church of Saints Mary and David, Kilpeck

 

Finally, to a question that really matters, and one close to my own heart as I am the proud owner of a Linn hifi system (including a feisty Sondek LP player): which sounds better, the Beatles’ Help on vinyl/mono or remastered stereo? Andrew Hickey decides, with some aplomb.

Update from Andrew Hickey: I was comparing the remastered mono with the remaster of the original 65 stereo on the same CD. I prefer mono to stereo, but also prefer vinyl to CD, but only have the mono Beatles on CD... it's a hard life...

My Bad. But read his analysis anyway - a model on how to look at such things.

 

* * * * *

 

Next week’s BBRU is hosted by Philobiblon. Contributions to britblog [at] gmail [dot] com, please.

The latest BBRU is hosted by Trixy.

She links to Jack of Kent who has examined in some depth a strange case of a man handing over to the police a shotgun he said he had found and then being prosecuted. Having watched various trials as a budding barrister, I am loath to give a view on any court case without having been there to see for myself the credibility of the witnesses and the skill of the lawyers in presenting their case. This one is ... odd.

And have a look at Heresy Corner giving some cogent thoughts on the arguments against 'regulating the blogosphere' which he nonetheless fears is creeping in our direction.

Next week I host BBRU again. Hurrah.

So please send any nominations to britblog [at] gmail [dot] com

Is hosted by Clairwil, coming off the BBRU subs bench and scoring well on links, less well on apostrophe's.

It links to this magnificent piece by Heresy Corner about Winston Churchill's miserable speech style.

And Punkadiddle on a lovely classic book cover (I had it too - not sure where it is now).

And who says fat isn't sexy? Try nineteenth century French peasants:

Beauty consists in being well-fleshed, glowing, plump and large

Is here.

Including a wearying rant by Penny Red (socialist, feminist, deviant, reprobate, queer, journalist, aspiring author, freelance copywriter and sometime blogger) about  women and their unending (it seems) bodily misery.

Lighten up, Penny.

At least you're unlikely (for the time being) to get stoned in the UK merely for exercising your Right to Choose your lover.

And I don't mean drugs.

Is hosted by Liberal England.

It links to some howls of denunciation of an undoubtedly unpleasant article in the Daily Mail. Including this nicely tuned sexist analysis from one Clairwil:

Consequently the repulsive, fat bitch had to haul her big, lardy, arse back to her keyboard and find some justification for rejoicing over the barely cold corpse of a dead man in his early thirties.

Such is public debate in this country these days.

Still, Max Atkinson does his best to analyse some of it.

Is hosted by a Very British dude - and his beautiful eyes.

Where he links to the Heresiarch on Confiscatory Justice.

And (as per my very own Suiculturicide) looks at a link on the teaching of science in state schools:

Science is no longer taught as an progressive discovery, with experiments backing each phase, but as some sort of government propaganda indoctrination scheme

Off to Amsterdam in deep despair.

Is now posted, hosted by Amused Cynicism.

Several links re the Polanski Affair - none too impressed by him.

And a perhaps rather over-schematic posting by Paul Canning about the eight stages of genocide.

And the benefits of storytelling in LibDem ideas about getting the state to ban airbrushed photographs in media outlets aimed at under-16s, to try to stop young people getting distorted ideas about their own body shape. I just have a feeling that that won't work. Or that it would be wise even if it did. What is it about all this constant obsession with greater state control..?

Is here, hosted by peregrinating cyclist Nourishing Obscurity.

A lot of work has gone into this one with masses of links, so swing by to see all your questions answered:

• Brigitte Bardot - feminist? No.
• Is the aim of life to pass on one's genes? No.
• Are our institutions being colonised by creeping collectivist infantilism? Yes.

Get stuck in.

The latest and not too long Britblog Roundup as hosted by Matt Wardman is here.

It dwells on that central subject of political phenomenology, the close links between the UK Lib Dem Party and Nazis - all with a Yugoslav angle to make it all the more fascinating for readers of this blog at least.

And it looks at that Baltimore Hoax and how a UK blogger bamboozled far too many media people.

Check it out.

Is hosted by 'always feminist' Philobiblon. Check it out.

I like it when feminists talk dirty.

And BBRU 239 links to a posting by diamond geezer asserting that blogging is dying (the main argument being that as there are so many blogs there are fewer comments and it is the comments which make a blog).

Hmm. I get relatively few comments, indeed very few, but I rather assume that is because I have an elite readership not wishing to reveal themselves, plus most people of course agree with me anyway.

Or maybe I should just threaten to stop as Craig Murray did and watch the masses beg for it not to be so?