Welcome to the Briblog Roundup – and as you might expect on Philobiblon, I’m going to organise this a little unconventionally.
Lots of talking goes on across blogs, but I particularly like blogs where peole talk about what they’re actually doing, so I’m going to start this roundup with a few examples. Jim on The Daily (Maybe) reports on his efforts to keep a small part of Cambridgea Tesco-free zone.
Going geopolitical, Louisefeminista has a report from the demonstration in support of Burmese protesters outside the embassy – with some great pictures.
Back on the local scale, the Barkingside21 blogger has been getting little things right – litter bins, noticeboards and saving paper on council surveys.
And finally in this section, Sasha Khan of Croydon Greens was at London Freewheel and produced a short video, complete with jazzy soundtrack. Imagine, that’s what the streets of London could be like one day… (as I wrote on Comment is Free.)
But that doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty to talk about, and get angry about. The Daily Mail might have been invented to provide fuel for bloggers, but even it was outdoing itself in a story about a cosmetic surgeon. Sounds normal enough you might think, but on The F-Word Samara Ginsberg sums it up more clearly “Man salivates over photos of glamour models and decides who has the best tits!” Surely a case for the BMA?
On Earthquake Cove, Peter Sanderson is bored with shock art that only manages to shock that odd species, the Daily Mail reader. (Are there any bloggers who actually admit to being such a species – I mean as a positive choice, not one to get their blood pressure up in the morning?)
Back on women’s body image, Cruella blog looks at that anorexia advert. Could it be a whole new direction for advertising, she wonders, and even a job for creepy Uncle Neville?
Following that train of thought, Caroline Hunt offers a solution to the IT nerdiness problem – “Don’t let the freaks and geeks scare you off!” And even the bionic woman – a British bionic woman in the US – isn’t too scary, KT Dodge reports.
But are the Olympics of 2012 going bionic? Diamond Geezer is charting progress thus far – two months after “big wall” day. Hopefully that will only be with good science, not the useless science identified by Clive Bates on Bacon Butty.
Gender was also a big part of the Iranian president’s visit to the US: The Curious Hamster on A Big Stick and a Big Stick suggests that Ahmadinejad was misunderstood, while Mr Eugenides has a short but extremely pointed contribution to the debate.
Now that takes me smoothly to the 17th-century author Jospeh Swetnam, who is infamous for his The Arraigment of Lewd, Idle, Froward and Inconstant Women which has been a byword for misogyny for centuries (he should have written for the Mail, you might say, but on Early Modern Whale, Roy Booth finds that when he stuck to homosocial matters – i.e. having a good brawl – he was on sounder ground, offering good advice on such matters as how to survive if thy enemie in the night charge upon thee.
Moving forward in history, on Investigations of a Dog, Gavin Robinson reviews Michael Howard’s Liberation Or Catastrophe? Reflections on the History of the Twentieth Century, a “consideration of the big strategic and political problems of modernity”. On a smaller, but more shocking scale, Jonathan Calder has tha amazing story of a Canadian 14-year-old sentenced to HANG in 1959. He’s finally, and happily not posthumously, just finally been acquitted.
Now, up until now you might have though something was missing from this roundup: an election maybe? Well of course on the political blogs there’s been talk of little else. (After all of this Gordon can hardly back out now, can he?)
Mr Eugenides is convinced that this Gordon Brown has stolen most of David Cameron’s wardrobe possibilities, and quite possibly with them an election, by adopting the views and tone of a particularly objectionable London cabbie. On The Devil’s Kitchen, meanwhile, Dr De’ath is becoming heated over citizen juries.
Jonathan Calder on Liberal England is a bit worried about what tack the Lib Dems can take if Gordon says “go”.
Now it might not be thought possible, but Gordon was largely keeping Boris Johnson out of the spotlight last week. Largely.
On Hug A Hoodie, Jonny Wright noted how Hazel Blears was being ‘classist’ in her description of the Tory mayoral candidate, but Cicero was finding parallels with Jeffrey Archer, but wasn’t, I’m sure, being at all classist (if of course always classicist… sorry!) Lady M on EC1 Cruise Control, meanwhile, is finding eerie parallels with George Dubya.
Elsewhere in politics, Peter Black, Lib Dem AM in Wales, is questioning a decision by the Commission for Racial Equality over a possible travellers’ site. And on Central News a proposal to open policing to private competition.
After all of that talk, it seems reasonable to go back to finish with action, or reaction, or what you might otherwise call “real life”. On TrannyFattyAcid, a wrenching tale of what happens when personal targedy and pain collide with care-less, careless bureaucracy. And Nee Naw, an ambulance call-taker, has more real life than you want to encounter. (Warning, some may find that distressing.)
Turning away to something lighter, if a little introspective, Internet Nomad has been interviewing Peter Hinchliffe, formerly of newspapers all around the world and now a “citizen reporter”.
And finally, staying in the media world, Ministry of Truth has begun a serious, detailed investigation of how Britain’s libel laws might be rewritten in the light of the Usmanov case. The Daily EM has drawn a series of less on Cyberactivism 101 from the case.
And that’s the end of this Britblog roundup. Next week the travelling carnival moves on to Westminster Wisdom.
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