Welcome to the Britblog roundup, the all-singing, all-dancing carnival that brings the best of the blogosphere of these islands to you in one easy show – as nominated by you, the readers. Do send your favourites to britblog AT gmail DOT com for Westminster Wisdom’s edition next week.

Section 1: Getting the keyboard dirty

I always like to read about people doing things, getting out and about. Journalists might be, as Flat Earth News points out, increasingly chained to their desks, but there’s no reason for bloggers to be.

So I’m going to start with a collection of bloggers seeing and doing things for themselves, which will also take you on a small but perfect formed tour of the nation…

What could be more evocative of England la profonde than “Whipchicken Farm, Dog Drove South, Dog Drove North and Powder Blue Farm”. They’re on Unmitigated England’s route through the fens It turns out the last name does make more sense than it sounds – but I’m still puzzling about the others, although there’s more on driving dogs right at the end of this roundup, which might shed some light on the subject…

Also walking, if soon not to be, is Dr Sean in West Sussex, who’s found his sensible pedestrian path into town is to be cut – although as is so often the case, the council “consultation” was invisible to those affected.

And walking for a purpose is Adrian on Green Reading, who provides a photographic account of the Japanese peace walk to Aldermaston.

Bibbluemeanie is seeing first hand in London the inhumanity of the asylum system – some minor officials throw their weight around – and a few days later the subjects are back at work…

Also seeing heavy policing is fellow Britblog host Suzanne Lamido, who lives just up the road from me (but not all the hosts are north Londonites, promise) found herself on the fringes of a major police operation. Helmets, massed ranks, screaming sirens. Seems they found lots of dodgy mobiles and forged documents, with 35 arrests. Let’s see – 1,100 police, divided by 35 arrests …

At the real front line, Random Acts of Reality meets a genuine victim of life.

Which kind of puts all of the fuss about Terminal Five in perspective, still Diamond Geezer had the sense when visiting on day one, with camera to always have the intention of leaving by Tube.

Finally in this section, you can go with Julie on Londonist, who braved the rain and the drinks tent to see the boat race. Okay, maybe it’s just because I’m antipodean, but I just don’t get the excitement…

Section 2: History and media

(Unashamedly pandering to my own interests here, but they’re all great posts…)

Sharon on Early Modern Notes is braving the depths of a minor feud to explain just how to get extra points in an academic pissing contest. It runs along the lines that “to get this piece of information I had to crawl over broken glass,scrambled over barbed wire and….

On Early Modern Whale, Roy is analysing two accounts of the explosion of Mt Etna in 1670. As a shorthand, one might be from the journal Science, the other from the Daily Mail.

On Mind the Gap, Peter Tatchell’s use of Sylvia Pankhurstis questioned.

But Anna on Inklings has no problems at all with a BBC account of Edwardian mourning – and she looks further into its nasty health effects for women. (Men just got to wear a ribbon on their hat!)

The Magistrate, like lots of people, does, however, have problems with the Daily Mail. Well don’t we all – but in this case it either doesn’t grasp the nature of the law of common assault, or thinks there should be a special law for “financial advisors”. Well so might many of us – just not in the direction the Mail is pointed.

And finally, if Shakespeare wrote 884,647 words with a quill, how can we generate millions of items between computer backups?

Section 3: Politics

Our own Matt Wardman has instituted roundups of the Scottish, Welsh and Westminster parliament. Given the government’s sudden desperate enthusiasm for constitutional reform, how long before there’s a “English” to add to the collection?

And Amused Cynicism has turned serious to back a campaign to get parliamentary bills published in an accessible form. Whatever will these supporters of democracy think of next?!

Perhaps serious analysis of bills, as Spy Blog has done to the Draft Governance of Britain – Constitutional Renewal Bill. It is your democracy the Spy is trying to defend, so you really should read this.

Because of course legislation is the solution to all problems, as Feminist Avatar notes on An Open Letter by a Feminist about suggestions that the legal drinking age in Scotland be raised to 21.

Elsewhere in politics:

• * My heart sank when directed to a post making comparisons to Nazis (usually not a good sign of sensible argument), but on Prison Law Inside Out, the jailhouselawyer assembles an account of our disappearing civil liberties.
• * Blood & Treasure looks back to the Eighties with fond nostalgia – not for the music but the personal freedom.
• * A short sharp take on how the terminal five kerfuffle could enter the Guinness Book of Records.
• * What would really doing something about child poverty cost? Antonia has some calculations.

Section 4: Miscellaneous

Finally, to the uncategorisably curious. Into which class the Blog of Funk’s celebration of the bendy nature of cheese definitively falls.

As does Liberal England’s account over the row over a an advert in which a song goes for a drive and sings – in this case with genuine music nostalgia.

And Onionbagbloggers solution to the disappearing wheelie bins.

Having got a new phone/mobile PC, I have wrestled with and eventually conquered the synchronisation software with Vista, and got phone and laptop talking to each other, only to learn that you have to have Outlook on the computer to synchronise the contacts and diary. (Obviously vital.)

You would think you could synchronise the Windows calendar on your computer with the phone, but no – its clearly a plan to make you buy Outlook (which I don’t want for email since I’m a Gmail devotee).

(I’m not the only one to be angry!)

Grrr… do I allow Microsoft to blackmail me (90-odd quid), or work out an elaborate workaround… probably involving manual double entry and relying on Google calendar – which means I have to trust that the 3G is always working?

Welcome all to your weekly gathering of the big, the bad, and the curious – the best of the British blogosphere – as nominated by you. (Remember – if you see a great post drop a line to britblog AT gmail DOT com – so it can get in next week’s; the more the merrier.)

Going to start this week with something serious, considered and long: Chameleon’s review on Redemption Blues of Seyran Ate?’s The Multicultural Fallacy (Der Multikulti-Irrtum). The child of a Turkish father and a Kurdish mother, the author has lived in Berlin since age six, but “Because of her uncompromising stance on the plight of Muslim women and girls in contemporary Germany, she has been forced to remove her name from both doorbell and post box and has no official address. As she pointedly writes, she lives in a country where freedom of expression enshrined in the Constitution, yet she has no choice but to live in hiding, punished for speaking her mind with overt hostility and even death threats.”

Since the original is in German, I’m sure I won’t be the only one who needs to read this detailed review and commentary to get a sense of what is obviously an important book. You might want to make a cuppa before you sit down to the post, but it’s worth the time.

After that, I promise, the posts get shorter, and, to begin with, highly practical. I’m always a fan about people blogging about actually doing things, rather than sitting at their computers, so here’s a short selection from this week:

* Pluvialis is an accipiter neophyte – in other words she is training a goshawk. But training a bird to accept a hood isn’t a simple process: “Quite reasonably, my goshawk knows that she has a much better chance of a) flying to my fist for food, or b) chasing and killing and eating something if she can see.”

* The blogger at Leyton.org was at a 700-strong public meeting about plans for a Glasgow park. To say it got heated hardly seems to cover it. The anger seems to have arisen in large part due to one of those “consultations you have when you aren’t consulting” – not sure if the London Borough of Camden learnt from Glasgow or vice a versa, but sadly I know all about those…

* Dorothea on Conserve England is growing parsley – and sets out just how to do it.

* Jess on The F-Word is teaching herself shorthand – and steaming at the sexism in the textbook. (I have to sympathise – when I learnt shorthand many years ago I failed several tests through spluttering over their contents – one about how secretaries (with of course female pronouns) should always be pleasant and accept unreasonable requests such as picking up the boss’s dry-cleaning comes to mind.

* And Rob on A Comfortable Place is marking essays (he’s an OU teacher) and reflecting on plagiarism. It is, he concludes, not a technical problem, but a moral one. In fact it is now easier to catch people out.

Then some politics on a big scale: on LonerGrrrl a Dear Mr Postmodernist letter – cutting hardly cover it.

Back to more traditional Britblog fare (if you want to skip the Westminster and related politics scroll down and you’ll find the point it stops in CAPS):

On the Ministry of Truth, a detailed, factual summary of the circumstances around Peter Hain’s resignation and analysis of what’s wrong with the law. It will tell you things you didn’t know, and bears not a trace of yah-boo politics, a fine example of the way the blogosphere can fill in gaps all too often left by the mainstream media.

And Rachel from North London, who of course has good personal reasons to be concerned, asks some searching questions about the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee and the background to the 7/7 enquiry.

On Barkingside 21, a deconstruction of the government’s “commitment” to renewable energy.

On Dizzy Thinks a post (written before Hain resigned), with a suggestion that an advert for a post dealing with “legacy issues” means a reshuffle of departments, not just ministers.

On A Blog from the Back Room, the writer has a view on the theory that it would be good for Labour to lose the next election. But this writer likes to take the gentle, subtle approach: “I give a huge raspberry. It’s idiocy. It’s piffle. It’s nonsense dressed up in a clowns outfit and made to do a jig in the market square before an audience of appalled merchants and townsfolk.”

Meanwhile, on Our Kingdom, the home blogger has thoughts on Brown’s “personality problem”. “To be a driven politician today demands a personality defect. My guess is that the Brits are still sufficiently not so Americanised that they can live with this.”

Getting Londoncentric (and making up for what one columnist this weekend described as derisory coverage of the London mayoral race), at Harry’s Place an exploration of the attacks on Ken Livingston – yes it is a rightwing conspiracy, but then Ken does leave himself open on many fronts.

And on Belsize Liberal Democrats, news that the first English female councillor, Reina Emily Lawrence may be about to get a blue plaque. About time, I say!

And just down the road (promise these Camden posts were nominated, I’m not getting parochial) on Suz Blog we learn that “gobshite merchant” is now an acceptable council-ary word – and thus by definition “parliamentary” I wonder? In case you are wondering about the term “gobshite”, Suz explains.

Back to the national: On the Action on Rights for Children blog a series of videos about CAF forms, now being filled in for every child.

And on a blog that might be said to be taking alliteration just a little too far, Gavin’s Gaily Gigest, reflections on Gordon Brown and your organs – not for those of a delicate constitution who are eating breakfast, I’d suggest.

On a Livejournal, Advancing the Sum Total of Human Knowledge, a post for Blog for Choice day concluding that not all those campaigning against abortion rights are crazy.

Finally in this section, in the “people shouldn’t play games with toys they don’t understand class” – is Guido’s run-in with a Telegraph journalist.

END OF POLITICS….

Blood & Treasure is unusually serious and sombre in contemplating J.G. Ballard’s autobiography, and why now would be a good time to read it.

And Dr Roy on Early Modern Whale has been travelling through time to visit a recovering chess addict, who thought about the game even, shock horror, in the pulpit. A modern computer addiction panic anyone?

The Magistrate is going back to the old days, rather more recent ones, and reflecting on one of his horror cases. He might have plenty of bad things to say about the state of the courts today, but clearly there have been some improvements.

Turning to the music side Liberal England is waxing lyrical about the virtues of Spencer Davis, complete with a 1966 clip from YouTube. They don’t do hairdos like that any more – mmmm….

And Peter on Unmitigated England has a great photo of a phone box as you’ve never seen one before – well except perhaps after a _very_ long night out.

Meanwhile Stumbling and Mumbling tries an economic analysis of the effect of the departure of a Blue Peter host.

And staying on the childish side, Juliet on Musing from a muddy island a reflection on the difficulties of parenting in the age of the ‘child-safe’ internet filter.

And to finish, who better than the inimitable Diamond Geezer? Okay, you might say that this belongs in politics, but it has that great virtue of being seriously funny, to pull it out of the pack.

And that’s it for this week – a bumper week for nominations, so please do keep them rolling in next week, when the roundup moves to Westminster Wisdom. (At least that’s the most recent rota I can find – if I got it wrong someone please advise.)

One for my technical readers. I’ve got a Dell laptop that recently had a complete reinstall of Windows XP, that is refusing to install any new software. It downloads, then acts like it is installing, but the process never reaches its end – no error messages. I’m running the Comodo Firewall and Antivirus, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem on my other machine… all help gratefully received.

… but a resolution nonetheless. I WILL NOT save files to the desktop as a quick and convenient way of finding/attaching them to things, because I will eventually have to clean up the desktop – and that takes quite a while, as I’ve just discovered in an afternoon of software maintenance and updating. I’ve probably just deleted something vital, but I just reached the “if I don’t recognise it, it goes” stage.

Fun. Not.