You might think that I’ve suddenly gone all postmodern and designerish, but no, I just got the gig at the last minute very late in the day (or early in the morning, depending on how you look at it).

So I won’t be able to do all of the nominations below justice – do follow the links and make your own judgements.

But I will point you to one post for the week that you absolutely must read – and it is only a paragraph, so it won’t take long: on Olly’s Onions find out how the CIA has exhausted its torture budget.

And if you’re feeling your blog reading is inadequately rewarding in the material sense, then you might want to visit Liberal England, where Jonathan Calder has have DVDs of Taking Liberties togive away.

Now the two posts I talk about on the Radio Five Roundup — I’ll add a direct link when it is up — also deserve a special plug.

First up on The Debatable Land, a Scottish journalist living in Washington (not perhaps the obvious person for the subject) considers Shane Warne versus Muttiah Muralitharan and concludes only one is great. (And, no, I don’t know why I choose to make myself pronounce that on national radio.)

Second, Alice in Wonderland concludes that
farting fish are good news. (And remember, as Chris Vallance says, we aren’t actually recommending that you try the treatments suggested here at home.*)

Also on my must-read list is Craig Murray’s take on London’s white elephant in waiting; Is Bugs Bunny a feminist? as Cardiff’s Mind the Gap returns with a new site; The Daily (Maybe) comments on the “great new plan for education”, which involves sacking teachers en masse; and Miss Prism explains the genetic code for clueless journalists of her acquaintance.

Other nominations (I’d be extolling the virtues of many more of these were it not nearly 2am):

• Ten top political turning points
• The uselessness of resistance to Labour’s repression
• The festival of light and more
• Smoke and mirrors and blogs
• Not all hoodies are bad
• Sexist jokes have more effect than you might think
• 
  Riding the London goblin – if you’re lucky you might even get a seat.
• Save the Ribble seems home and hosed, but is keeping the umbrella handy just in case

And finally, I reckon that for late-night labours I’m entitled to link to one of my own: over on My London Your London I’m visiting the “Barbican sex exhibition”, and finding that if there’s one link across time and culture, it seems that most of the time for most women sex has been more about work than pleasure.

So that’s it for this shortened edition: I know that preparations are already in hand for a bumper edition on Clairwilnext week to make up for it, so do send your nominations in to the usual address: britblog AT gmail DOT com.

*Warning: prepared on the basis of amateur legal advice….