Vote early! Vote often!
/The 2007 Weblog Awards

I have very little time for blog awards in general and the Wizbang one in particular. However they are here to stay so I suppose we should all do our duty and make sure Iain Dale doesn't win!
At the moment he is leading in the 'Best UK Blog' category, with 21.2% of the vote. The list of 'links' on the site isn't working because, while they managed to include the 'list' part they've omitted the 'links' part. I made the mistake of thinking the blog names were links to their sites and accidentally voted for Kickette, " a fun and gossipy site focussing on the lifestyle of football players, written from a female perspective." WTF?
Anyway get over there every day and indulge in some tactical voting. This may mean voting for Kickette and that may mean Kickette being voted 'Best UK Blog'. But on reflection I can think of no better outcome for someone who thinks it's all bollocks anyway.
UPDATE: Sean Gleeson has emailed me to tell me he's fixed the links and that my mock banner is 'stylistically inconsistent' with the 2007 Awards standards (I was too lazy to check the font etc, its Euphemia and I used Verdana and a couple of upper case letters). But Sean did more than that, he sent me a corrected banner! (above) Amazing!
I feel guilty now :( So...
Support the Weblog Awards!!
God, I'm such a tart!
UPDATE: Sunday evening. And Kickette is in the lead. It is clear that every self-respecting left of centre blogger should get themselves over there and vote for this woman, whoever she is, otherwise it will be a race betweenDale and EURef. (Sorry DK, but it looks like you are out of the running mate.)


I have very little time for blog awards in general and the Wizbang one in particular. However they are here to stay so I suppose we should all do our duty and make sure Iain Dale doesn't win!
Anyway get over there every day and indulge in some tactical voting. This may mean voting for Kickette and that may mean Kickette being voted 'Best UK Blog'. But on reflection I can think of no better outcome for someone who thinks it's all bollocks anyway.
UPDATE: Sean Gleeson has emailed me to tell me he's fixed the links and that my mock banner is 'stylistically inconsistent' with the 2007 Awards standards (I was too lazy to check the font etc, its Euphemia and I used Verdana and a couple of upper case letters). But Sean did more than that, he sent me a corrected banner! (above) Amazing!
I feel guilty now :( So...
Support the Weblog Awards!!
God, I'm such a tart!
UPDATE: Sunday evening. And Kickette is in the lead. It is clear that every self-respecting left of centre blogger should get themselves over there and vote for this woman, whoever she is, otherwise it will be a race betweenDale and EURef. (Sorry DK, but it looks like you are out of the running mate.)

"And if people don’t like that, they can kill themselves like Mum did."
/How theatre can mend our broken democracy
I'm sure Andy Field is right about the idea that "community-based theatre can empower the disenfranchised and prompt political growth" it's just that having been through the sixties and seventies with all that agitprop and those touring political theatre groups playing mostly to empty church halls I can't really take the idea seriously. I know this means that I'm displaying "the jaded flavour of downbeat cynicism that has dogged the British theatre for so long" but I can't help it. Sorry, I just keep thinking of Legz Akimbo:

Via DK

I'm sure Andy Field is right about the idea that "community-based theatre can empower the disenfranchised and prompt political growth" it's just that having been through the sixties and seventies with all that agitprop and those touring political theatre groups playing mostly to empty church halls I can't really take the idea seriously. I know this means that I'm displaying "the jaded flavour of downbeat cynicism that has dogged the British theatre for so long" but I can't help it. Sorry, I just keep thinking of Legz Akimbo:
Via DK

Young and Uncut
/Uncut - Music and Movies with something to say
This months free cover CD is -'Like A Hurricane',
a tribute to Neil Young with 16 covers from the
likes of Paul Weller, KD Lang, Cowboy Junkies,
Jay Farrar, Sonic Youth, The Flaming Lips and
lots more. Well worth the £4 -30 cover price on
its own.
And here is the man in his prime 36 years ago:


This months free cover CD is -'Like A Hurricane', a tribute to Neil Young with 16 covers from the
likes of Paul Weller, KD Lang, Cowboy Junkies,
Jay Farrar, Sonic Youth, The Flaming Lips and
lots more. Well worth the £4 -30 cover price on
its own.
And here is the man in his prime 36 years ago:

Today's 'Most Decisive Opening Paragraph' award goes to...
/Martin Kettle

There is no easy answer to the question of whether Sir Ian Blair should resign as London's police chief. Anyone who pretends otherwise is kidding. There are serious arguments for him to fall on his sword. But there are also serious arguments for him to stay where he is. On balance the case for him remaining commissioner is much stronger. Yet it would be idle to say this without reservations.

Worst blog posts ever
/Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly considers the very worst (US) blog posts ever
This has got to come close. It's John "Hindrocket' Hinderaker from Powerline (no relation) on July 28th 2005, blogging about George W. Bush:

This has got to come close. It's John "Hindrocket' Hinderaker from Powerline (no relation) on July 28th 2005, blogging about George W. Bush:
It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can't get anyone to notice.
He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.

"Sometimes, that's what happens"
/Police guilty over Menezes case
I'm pushed for time today but there are plenty of posts on the Menezes shooting around the blogosphere including, a thoughtful analysis from Septicisle, comments on Livingtone's appalling interview this morning from Jamie, and a link to the 'repellant speech' of Blair's barrister, Ronald Thwaites from TYR and posts from Justin and Davide Simonetti.

I'm pushed for time today but there are plenty of posts on the Menezes shooting around the blogosphere including, a thoughtful analysis from Septicisle, comments on Livingtone's appalling interview this morning from Jamie, and a link to the 'repellant speech' of Blair's barrister, Ronald Thwaites from TYR and posts from Justin and Davide Simonetti.

Lordy, lordy
/Blue-blooded and green

There is something irritating - actually, let's not beat around the bush - there is something monumentally infuriating about rich people telling the masses that they should live more meekly. Yet the British environmental movement is stacked with the guilt-ridden sons and daughters of superwealthy businessmen and the old aristocracy, who think nothing of telling the great unwashed that they should stop taking holidays abroad, stop shopping in supermarkets, and stop being so bloody greedy.
In the past, fabulously wealthy priests, adorned in purple silks and wearing glittering gold rings, told the mass of the population that they should be glad that they're poor since poverty and hardship are virtues. Today, fabulously wealthy environmentalists, adorned in organic cotton denim and hemp based pullovers, tell us that we should live humbly in order to save the planet from the furious hellfire of global warming.

A timely question
/Is Nutrition Science Not Really Science?

If public health research functioned like some of the harder sciences — high energy physics being the one I know best — then researchers would be ridiculed and perhaps even run out of the field for over-interpreting their evidence or publicly presenting the results of sloppy experiments or basing claims on premature evidence and none of this would have happened. The researchers would have been be so scared of screwing up that cascades would never have been allowed to start (string theory, perhaps, being the exception to the rule).
You can think of this kind of brutal response to bad science as an immune system that serves to protect reliable knowledge from infection by the infinite number of bogus but compelling ideas that are out there. The last place you want a science to find itself is where obesity research is today, with hypotheses of causation that can explain none of the pertinent observations, but yet are believed so fervently that no one can challenge them without being ostracized or declared a quack.


It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can't get anyone to notice.
Check out Sir Ian Blair's lughole. 