Marianne Mikko (PES, Estonia) apparently harbours a profound suspicion of blogs and blogging, as reflected in the terminology she has employed in relation to our "polluting" cyberspace and our propensity to indulge in "misinformation and malicious intent".

Such generalisations, inaccurate and offensive though they may be, could have been shrugged off had it not been for the fact that Ms Mikko is the author of an own-initiative report on Concentration and pluralism in the media in the European Union (final version, PE402.864v02-00).  Although it possesses no legal force, the report nevertheless offers an insight into what future legislative initiatives may be expected from the Commission.  On the one hand, blogging has grown into a form of expression important enough to have caught the eye of politicians and regulators, whilst on the other the response illustrates the complete lack of understanding of the phenomenon amongst those eager to place restrictions upon it.  Incidentally, she has in the meantime hastily cobbled together a blog of her own, presumably to stave off accusations that she is busy shooting her mouth of on issues she is eminently unqualified to address.

Background

The initial working document (PE398.617v01-00) sets out the background to the report, articulating the concerns that inspired it: "Media freedom and pluralism are vital for democracy, given their essential role in guaranteeing free expression of opinions and ideas and in contributing to peoples’ effective participation in the democratic process.

The European Parliament has shown continual concern for the defence and the promotion of media pluralism, as an essential pillar of the right to information and freedom of expression enshrined in Article 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which remain fundamental principles in preserving democracy.

Plurality of information from a wide variety of sources, as well as access to a wide range of high quality information, are the prerequisites for democratic communication in an open and democratic society.

European citizens are not only entitled to have guaranteed access to independent, objective and impartial information but also to a wide choice of other high-quality content".

I doubt very much whether any of these sentiments in themselves would upset bloggers.  After all, absolutely anyone can create a blog – you don’t even have to own your own computer to do so, as libraries and Internet cafés provide access without the cost being prohibitive and if you do not want to pay a monthly fee to a host you can sign up to Blogger.  Your arguments and viewpoints are similarly preserved in the virtual world and, unless you are a ferociously outspoken critic of certain regimes your writings can potentially reach an audience right across the globe.  What could possibly be more conducive to "effective participation in the democratic process"?  This is precisely what sets blogs apart, what makes them intoxicating for those who devote their time and energy to them.  Their sheer variety is overwhelming: there are teenagers seeking catharsis for their hormonally-induced angst, feminists picking apart the latest batch of newspaper articles perpetuating gender stereotypes, even politicians anxious to show that they are not so out of touch as they are often lambasted for being.  Yes, there is plenty of dross, yes, there are exquisitely crafted products that do not receive the recognition they deserve, but this cacophony of voices competing for public notice has permanently altered the relationship we have with those in authority over us, increasing accountability (for the simple reason that it is no longer possible for local councils to behave in a heavy-handed manner without provoking an outcry on the Web).  Instantaneity of communication amongst members of, for example, a pressure group to save a stretch of woodland with a shared blog as a forum and the flow of information more generally increases transparency and (hopefully) discourages those in positions of power from abusing the privilege.  The most anti-democratic move conceivable would therefore be to attempt to stem that flow.  Blogging reigns supreme when it comes to "democratic communication in an open and democratic society".

Turning back to the working document, an extension of the EU’s powers is a recurrent theme throughout the text.  It would be an error to dismiss these calls out of hand as they represent an endorsement to the Commission in striving to enhance its role:

"The EU competence to act on media pluralism is confined to the area of competition law.  However, the financial scale of activities directed at vertical and horizontal concentration of media ownership in the most new member states of the EU does not extend to the point where EU competition law would apply.

The media is not only a business but also an ideological and political tool of considerable influence.  A case could therefore be made for greater EU and international involvement.

We should consider creating a charter for media freedom and strive for its Europe-wide and indeed global acceptance and ratification.  There is a need to monitor systems for media pluralism based on robust, reliable and impartial indicators".

Another preoccupation pertains to the erosion of quality of content, or "dumbing down", of the entertainment on offer (yet who is going to stop a bored pensioner from tuning into the thousandth episode of a Brazilian soap when the only alternative is another generic home improvement or antiques auctioning show?):

"Despite the progress of new information technologies, television remains a most influential source of information for European citizens.  Viewers now have hundreds of channels at their disposal.  As new formats such as Mobile TV as well as new channels made available by the digital switchover develop, there are now endless possibilities for the display of [a] wide variety of content.

However the greater quantity available has not lead to an increase in quality.  Instead there has been a noticeable drop in the quality of content throughout the EU, most notably and seriously in news reporting, TV throughout Europe becoming less informative and more sensationalist.

Concentration of ownership has resulted in a lower quality of content.  The current drop in quality of programs is most noticeable in Member States where there is a high concentration of media ownership.

The most powerful corporations are able to use the scalability of their business models to displace the possible new entrants.  new and high-quality providers will find it hard to compete against the content cheaply recycled from other markets, other channels and from the archives of a big company.

Thus the proliferation of new channels may simply increase the power of a few corporations, solely concerned with profit maximisation".

As Ms Mikko goes on to admit, this is primarily a problem in the new Member States.

Cheap schedule-fillers also come under fire:

"Especially the publications aimed at entertaining the mass market customer are increasingly using the content generated by their readers and viewers.  Videos and pictures from mobile phones, holiday or real-life stories are some of the examples of the content generated by the general public and published through for-profit channels.  The customers receive at most symbolic rewards for their content, sometimes in the format of the customer lottery with a main prize and several smaller prizes.

Such content is displacing professional content to the detriment of the media professionals’ livelihood and to the journalistic level of the content.  The measures to counter such trends could include institutionalised rates of compensation for user-generated content.

User-generated content also creates a danger of constant surveillance and invasion of privacy for public figures as well as private citizens.  Therefore the applicability of ethical and legal codes to such content should be debated".

Frankly, I would have thought that the paparazzi have cornered that market.  The price of celebrity, no matter how minor or fleeting, the unrelenting glare.  An insatiable demand exists for every tiny detail of the lives of the famous, the wrinkles on their hands and necks that ruin the deception of eternal youth so carefully (and expensively) performed by the plastic surgeons, or whether the PM bites his nails (which could be interpreted as a physical manifestation of his inner turmoil).  Even the humblest citizens are under constant scrutiny anyway.  Personally, I am infinitely more worried by government surveillance, the CCTV cameras, the desire to track our every movement by installing devices into cars, ostensibly to tax drivers more fairly, the more exhaust fumes you pump out into the atmosphere, the more you pay, but which in reality, is a means of keeping tabs on every trip (the same goes for the Oyster card, which can likewise be used to establish our whereabouts, provided it is registered in our name, of course). The minutiae of our daily lives is available for bureaucrats and corporations to pore over, right down to which brand of biscuits we prefer, courtesy of our supermarket loyalty cards.  In this wider cultural context you can hardly blame the casual bystander for cashing in no matter how disapproving you might be of the wider cultural trend that whets this unsavoury appetite.  Ms Mikko is shooting at the wrong target.  Indeed, more relevantly, where is the condemnation of journalists cheerfully reproducing passages from bloggers without permission or remuneration?

Finally, the core anxiety is rendered explicit, the presumed incompetence of the ordinary consumer:

"Some would argue that at the end of the day viewers are responsible enough to regulate themselves and freely decide what they choose to watch, and there is no need to regulate to preserve media pluralism.  This would be the case if viewers were media literate.  Unfortunately this is far from true.

Information today is above all visual.  All media messages are constructed using a creative language with its own rules, promoting values and points of view and are often designed to gain profit and/or power.

Media literacy would constitute a good tool for safeguarding media pluralism, as viewers would be able to independently judge the content of the programs or information to which they have access.

In this respect, the EU citizens should be encouraged to develop the skills to analyse content and manage information, which would allow them to think creatively and critically".

These points are reiterated in the report proper, as it emerged from the Committee on Culture and Education (PE402.864v02-00), with 33 votes in favour, one against and no abstentions, as demonstrated by the passages cited below. 

Recital S: "whereas, however, respect for pluralism of information and diversity of content is not automatically guaranteed by technological advances, but must come about through an active, consistent and vigilant policy on the part of the national and European public authorities".

Recital V: "whereas the media remains a tool of political influence, and whereas there is a considerable risk to the media’s ability to carry out its functions as a watchdog of democracy, as private media enterprises are predominantly motivated by financial profit; whereas this carries the danger of a loss of diversity, quality of content and multiplicity of opinions, therefore the custody of media pluralism should not be left purely to market mechanisms".

The recitals are so numerous that they continue into double letters: "AB. whereas media consumers should have access to a wide choice of content".

AG. whereas in commercial media outlets private user-generated content, especially audiovisual content, is increasingly utilised for a nominal fee or without any payment, raising problems of ethics and protection of privacy, a practice putting journalists and other media professionals under undue competitive pressure,

AH. whereas the increased use of user-generated content does not always respect the rules on privacy of citizens and public figures, and whereas, therefore, legal means need to be provided to protect those concerned".

"AU. whereas the EU has no intrinsic competence to regulate media concentration, nevertheless its competence in various policy fields enables it to play an active role in safeguarding and promoting media pluralism; whereas competition and state aid law, audiovisual and telecommunication regulation as well as external (trade) relations are areas in which the EU can and should actively pursue a policy to strengthen and foster media pluralism,

AV. whereas there are a growing number of conflicts concerning freedom of expression,

AW. whereas, in the information society, media education is an essential means of empowering citizens to make an informed and active contribution to democracy,

AX. whereas the increased supply of information (particularly thanks to the Internet) is making the interpretation and assessment thereof increasingly important".

"BA. whereas we live in a society constantly being bombarded with information, instant communications and unfiltered messages, while the selection of information requires particular abilities".

Once again, we are confronted with Ms Mikko’s  patronising assumption that the Great Unwashed are idiots, devoid of an ounce (or should that be a gram?) of discernment and common sense.  Even if this were true, the best means of remedying the perceived problem would indeed be to enable readers to maintain a critical distance from texts through developing their analytical skills, rather than clamping down on blogs.  The public are portrayed as hapless, guileless infants, bloggers cast in the role of the wicked witch with the apple, one bite of which would poison their victims.

The actual recommendations are presented in the body of the report:

Paragraph 5: "Points out that the development of the media system is increasingly driven by profit-making and that, therefore, societal, political or economic processes, or values expressed in journalists’ codes of conduct, are not adequately safeguarded; considers, therefore, that competition law must be interlinked with media law, in order to guarantee access, competition and quality and avoid conflicts of interests between media ownership concentration and political power, which are detrimental to free competition, a level playing field and pluralism".

Paragraph 12: "Welcomes the Commission’s intention to develop specific indicators to evaluate media pluralism".

Paragraph 13: "Calls for further indicators, in addition to media pluralism, to be drawn up as criteria for analysing the media, including its orientation as regards democracy, the rule of law, human and minority rights and professional codes of conduct for journalists".

Paragraph 14: "Considers that the rules on media concentration should govern not only the ownership and production of media content, but also the (electronic) channels and mechanisms for access to and dissemination of content on the Internet, such as search engines".

Paragraph 21: "Stresses the need for the EU and Member State authorities to ensure journalistic and editorial independence by appropriate and specific legal and social guarantees, and points out the importance of creation and of uniform application in member States, and all markets where EU-based media companies operate, of editorial charters to prevent owners, shareholders, or outside bodies such as governments, from interfering with news content".

Paragraph 22: "Calls on Member States to ensure through appropriate means a suitable balance among political and social sensibilities, in particular in the context of news and current affairs programs".

Paragraph 27: Recommends the inclusion of media literacy among the European key competences and supports the development of the European core curriculum for media literacy while underlining their role in overcoming any form of digital divide".

Paragraph 28: "Maintains that the purpose of media education must be, as laid down in Council of Europe Recommendation 1466 (2000), to provide citizens with the means of bringing critical interpretation to bear on, and utilising, the ever growing volume of information being imparted to them; considers that this learning process will enable citizens to formulate messages and select the most appropriate media for communicating them, and hence to exercise their rights to the full where freedom of information and expression is concerned".

This is the backdrop against which Ms Mikko’s pronouncements on blogging have to be assessed.

Blogging

The working document states:

"Weblogs are increasingly popular among the general public as well as among the media professionals. In several cases they have considerably influenced the decisions taken by the business and media executives – or even regarding those executives.

Many professional journalists run blogs on their employers’ websites; others do it on dedicated hosting sites.  the legal status of weblogs kept ‘privately’ by media professionals is undetermined, causing uncertainties regarding source protection, applicability of ethical codes and the assignment of liability in the event of lawsuits.  the same questions apply to a certain extent to the weblogs of politicians/public figures and private citizens.

Additionally, the widespread use of weblogs by media professionals gives rise to questions regarding the pluralism of the content in their primary occupation".

The report itself deals with blogging in two recitals and two paragraphs:

Recital T: "whereas, while the Internet has greatly increased access to various sources of information, views and opinions, it has not yet replaced the traditional media as a decisive public opinion former".

"AI. whereas weblogs represent an important new contribution to media pluralism and are an increasingly common medium for self-expression by media professionals as well as by private persons; their proliferation implies a need to establish legal safeguards providing for the assignment of liability in the event of lawsuits, and establishing the right to reply".

Paragraph 25: "Suggests clarifying the legal status of weblogs and sites based on user-generated content, assimilating them for legal purposes with any other form of public expression".

Paragraph 26: "Supports the protection of copyrights at the level of online media, the third parties having to mention the source when taking over declarations".

The Explanatory Statement endeavours to account for Ms Mikko’s eagerness to meddle: "The development and acceptance of new technologies have led to the emergence of new media channels and new kinds of content.  The emergence of new media has brought more dynamic and diversity into the media landscape; the report encourages responsible use of new channels.

In this context the report points out that the undetermined and unindicated status of authors and publishers of weblogs causes uncertainties regarding impartiality, reliability, source protection, applicability of ethical codes and the assignment of liability in the event of lawsuits.

It recommends clarification of the legal status of different categories of weblog authors and publishers as well as disclosure of interests and voluntary labelling of weblogs".

Four alternative resolutions were tabled by way of amendments (as prescribed by Rule 151 (4) of Parliament’s internal procedures) jointly by Christa Prets on behalf of the Socialist Group and Hannu Takkula for the Liberals (A6-0303/1), by Pál Schmitt for the European People’s Party-European Democrats (A6-0303/2), Helga Trüpel for the Greens/European Free Alliance (A6-0303/3) and finally by Věra Flasarová, Giusto Catania and Umberto Guidoni for the United European Left/Nordic Green Left (A6-0303/4).  Although there are slight variations in the numbering of the recitals and paragraphs between the modifications, the wording on blogging is identical in each.  The new recital reads: "whereas weblogs represent an important new contribution to freedom of expression and are increasingly used by media professionals as well as by private persons" and the less belligerent passage in the main text: "Encourages an open discussion on all issues relating to the status of weblogs".

Evaluation

As has become apparent, the main focus of the report is on the mainstream media, more specifically television.  Blogging seems curiously out of place, tacked on gratuitously, or perhaps because Ms Mikko is keen to demonstrate how web-savvy she is and the Internet to her mind poses a threat to the livelihood of journalists as the public have grown tired of reading the bland, editorially triple-checked output of paid columnists, whose authority to pontificate on subjects about which they know little (often in a drearily didactic tone) has correspondingly diminished.  Niche blogs where members of a given profession reveal what goes on behind the facade, demystifying their occupations and mercilessly expose the flaws that riddle the system, rightfully condemning the resulting absurdities, might even intrude on the territory of the undercover investigative journalist, but, given the incomparable wealth of insight and experience of the insider, this is not necessarily to be lamented.

The democratic credentials of blogging cannot be impeached, but its very popularity (fuelled in part by the dream of discovery and escape, or the yearning to establish contact with others in the same situation) has attracted politicians and journalists, who have parasitically exploited our medium to generate cheap publicity for themselves, to clamour for our admiration, in short to maximise the privilege they already enjoy in excess, yet we bloggers are expected to submit to regulatory intrusions because of their relentless self-promotion (for them to fall out of the limelight is to cease to exist).  Surely this is the wrong way round.  Not that I am advocating that blogs by public figures or newspaper scribes be targeted, subscribing to the thin-end-of-the-wedge theory.  If the blogs in question are subsumed under the newspaper’s or party’s main site then the halfway intelligent reader will surmise that – in the absence of a specific disclaimer – the contents meet with party/editorial approval or will at least to some extent accord with the general outlook or policy of the organisation involved.  Any postings will therefore be influenced by the values that the newspaper or party adhere to, even supposing they deliberately wish to provoke debate by disagreeing with a specific initiative or viewpoint.  So far, so patently obvious.  When the same politician/journalist maintains a private blog (what Ms Mikko frets over), as a form of flaunting themselves or a less than subtle means of soliciting business, it is highly unlikely that they will suddenly abandon those core convictions.  Far from desperately trying to conceal their affiliations, they are usually quite brazen about displaying their status.  Companies with something to sell might potentially go to great lengths to disguise advertising as blogging.  It is conceivable that, let’s say, a washing powder manufacturer might employ someone to pose as a housewife churning out glowing testimonials to the ability of a given brand to remove the peskiest of stains.  Unless, however, they were willing to fork out for a writer of genuine brilliance who would only occasionally sneak in such praise and deal with other topics or adopt a truly convincing fake persona it wouldn’t take long for readers to suss out that they were being manipulated.  So far, the preferred method of hawking wares (potency-enhancing pharmaceuticals and diet pills) has been to bombard blogs with comment spam, with all the subtlety of a gaudy neon sign at Piccadilly Circus.

The most cursory examination of the nature of blogs suffices to illustrate quite how misplaced Ms Mikko’s fears are.  For a start, blogs are written by private individuals with limited resources (time and money).  Most bloggers depend for their livelihood on their day jobs and cannot afford to give them up, myself included.  Only a miniscule number of bloggers have been able to switch to blogging as their main source of income, no matter how stratospheric their statistics (number of hits, subscribers to feeds).  The handful of book deals that certain bloggers have secured has not yielded enough in advances or royalties to fund a life of untroubled leisure.  From that point of view alone, we cannot really compete with newspapers, which command both advertising revenues and a staff of trained correspondents and specialists covering the entire spectrum of what is deemed newsworthy.  Nor can we for the most part pursue leads or maintain contact with sources who might alert us to a story.  Hence the accusations levelled against us by our "betters" that our activity is merely reactive (sounding off about articles we have unscrupulously culled from newspapers) or derivative.   

The key issue is the professional/amateur divide.   This cannot be reduced to an argument about the quality of writing (and I am sick and tired of being derided as a mere dilettante by one snotty columnist who immediately springs to mind).  Much of what bloggers write is of a higher standard as far as both accuracy and the pleasure derived from reading the final product are concerned.  Bloggers can be incisively analytical and every bit as eager to uncover and castigate hypocrisy in crusading mode.  Bloggers are not encumbered by space constraints and can develop a complex argument at length, a luxury beyond the reach of those labouring under strict word limits.  What most of us do not have is a diploma in journalism or the undisputed benefit of having clawed one’s way up through the ranks from local stringer to the exalted heights of editorship.

Then there is the matter of reputation, which can only be earned over time and with unflagging, painstaking effort alongside raw talent.  Blogging can be little more than a hobby for some, a harmless way of passing otherwise dull hours, whilst for others it might evolve into an obsession.  A blogger can spend months or years slogging away without any guarantee of being noticed, much less of gaining recognition or acclaim.  Accordingly, free hosting sites, such as Blogger, are bleak repositories of defunct projects, of thwarted ambition, of passing fancies, of extinguished passions.  Compare this with the established cultural presence of the broadsheets, anything other than ephemeral.  Although individual contributors may have been crucial in the attainment of their stature, their fortunes do not depend on any single person, gradually accruing over the decades.  The great newspapers are veritable institutions, imprinted on the nation’s consciousness, a self-evident part of daily life.  Blogging can never dislodge them (as the report acknowledges when it talks about the dominant position they occupy on the Internet) precisely because their authority has built up in geological strata, layer after layer.  They are ritually consulted, morning after morning on breakfast television as well as on politics shows, reinforcing that authority, that ability to influence opinion, to call politicians to heel.  The first pot of call of the reader wishing to access quality information will be the paper they trust, whether in dead tree or electronic format and it is simply absurd to claim that bloggers command the same respect.  Unfortunately.  Journalists are only too keen to remind us of our comparative lack of prestige, occasionally condescending to quote from us (without paying for the privilege) on the assumption that we will feel immensely flattered to have been showcased.  Although we cannot topple the mainstream media from their pedestal we are too important a phenomenon to be completely ignored and still possess novelty or curiosity value for those looking to fill column inches.

What are the motives for reading a blog?  A blog can provide a shrewd idea of what one person thinks and might not constitute a reliable guide to party or organisational policy, but instead of the bland pap routinely posted on official sites can lapse into the most glorious vitriol.  Blogging tends to complement rather than usurp newspaper reading.  It tends to be more narrowly focused on single subjects, cataloguing reactions to government proposals, defending or attacking them depending on political conviction, pointing out inconsistencies and discussing the relative merits of the arguments advanced.  Blogs are for spare time, for coffee breaks, evenings and weekends, consulted for entertainment, distraction or relief from the daily grind, for their stridency and refusal to slavishly regurgitate received wisdom.  As to which particular blogs are likely to appeal, we enter the territory of personal biases.  As Julian Baggini writes in Welcome to Everytown: A Journey into the English Mind (London, Granta Books, 2007): "The papers that do best are those which reflect the basic values their readers already have.  If they fail to strike a chord, they just won’t sell.  That’s why, although imperfect, they are more reliable barometers of national opinion than many would like to think" (p62).  What applies to the papers for once applies to blogs equally well.

Our credibility does not emanate from our association with a venerable publication, or our respect of a strict ethical code, but from the authenticity and directness of our personal voice, from our independence and the fact that our motivation is not turning a profit.  When it comes to our writing, we are not on anyone’s payroll, we are not beholden to anyone (which brings us straight back to preserving pluralism and diversity: we bloggers are the embodiment thereof).  The trustworthiness of what we say arises from the fact that we are not pretending to endorse a view, but genuinely hold it.  Our reward is to know that someone is actually reading (and, hopefully, appreciates) our scribblings.

In short, blogs are not assimilable to newspapers and it is therefore out of all proportion to attempt to subject them to the same rules. 

As for the insistence on the right of reply, this again betrays complete ignorance of the most rudimentary facts about blogging.  If you feel slighted by a blogger, you can immediately reply by leaving a comment.  What could be simpler?  If the comments are disabled, or the host is curmudgeonly enough to delete your remarks no matter how obstinately you persist in typing them in (so that they never actually appear on the site), then reply on your own blog.  It is unpleasant to be lacerated in public, but you can stick up for yourself.  Unsubstantiated allegations and nonsensical, unfounded accusations are usually recognisable as such (admittedly provided the reader is willing to give a fair hearing to both sides, though this is something no writer can control).  Just ignore the slanders or distortions if they are not worth bothering with.  If your words have been ripped out of context and misrepresented you have to rely on the integrity of the reader to test the validity of the criticisms by consulting the original text.  At the end of the day, nobody can force you to read a blog.  If it offends you, all you need do is close the window…The most that a legislator could hope to achieve would be to compel us to insert a (redundant and sterile) standard formula at the end of a post prefacing the rebuttal or objections from the complainant (without the remotest assurance that anyone will bother to give it more than the most cursory of glances) or correcting a factual inaccuracy.

The call for voluntary labelling was dropped from the body of the text, but reared its ugly head in the Explanatory Statement.  Such a label is intended as a substitute or surrogate for readers’ powers of judgement, but its effect would prove infinitely more insidious, casting an automatic pall of suspicion over any blogger who refuses to adopt it.  I could not help but be reminded of a recent discussion with my colleague EP.  She takes turns to mind the children in the church crèche in a mutual support network, enabling the off-duty mothers of the congregation to listen to the service in peace without the squalling of fractious infants whose appreciation of theological niceties somewhat limited.  These are all middle-class, middle-aged working women helping each other out on an informal basis, not men lurking around playgrounds trembling as they proffer sweets to unsupervised pre-pubescents, but now the diocese has demanded that they fill in a sex offenders screening form in order to continue because the crèche operates in public premises.  She recounted how the mental images conjured up the questions left her physically sick.  Have you ever had sex with a baby?  She was left breathless with indignation at the politically correct gender blindness permeating the exercise.  To her mind, the mere existence of the form was corrosive, especially now that accusations of abuse must likewise be recorded, decrying it as a charter for revenge and petty jealousies, whilst at the same time agonising over whether she should pull out of the babysitting network so deep was her resentment over the implied slur on her character.  The dilemma was exacerbated by the knowledge that if she didn’t fill in the form, it could be construed as a tacit admission of having something to hide.  A classic example of how the well-meaning desire to protect the vulnerable can end up severing bonds of solidarity and trust (pedophiles still slipping through the net to blight the lives of their victims).

Bloggers should refuse to adopt such a label on principle.  Certain practical difficulties might suffice for it to be shelved.  Who would award it?  Who would adjudicate whether it was deserved or not?  Would regular content checks be carried out to ensure the standards were being rigorously maintained over time?  By dint of the very nature of the blog as a vehicle for personal opinions, no blog can be impartial, as what is committed to paper (or rather the screen) passes through the filter of consciousness, class, education, political persuasion, preoccupations and gender to name but a few of the more obvious factors.  This is true of any vehicle of expression (newspapers and television channels are not miraculously exempt and operate under a commercial imperative to appeal to their chosen constituency) and healthy scepticism ought to be the default position of any reader, listener or viewer.   Bloggers do not in my experience subtly masquerade as neutral.  In fact, as alluded to earlier, most readers turn to blogs precisely because they are refreshingly candid, if not immoderately opinionated.

One final issue of vital significance is that of anonymity.  Ms Mikko wants to eliminate the possibility of blogging under a pseudonym.  What we have witnessed is the ugly and unjustified persecution of bloggers by employers terrified that their good name might be besmirched.  Rather than reviewing or eradicating the practices the blogger has lamented, employers have preferred to lash out with a "fire first, ask questions later" policy.  There is no comeback for the blogger concerned, no means of retaliation beyond highlighting the injustice on their site.  No adequate protection has been put in place to prevent such arbitrary and unfair dismissals.  On both sides of the Atlantic bloggers have come to prominence for falling victim to such treatment (securing book deals and leaving the jealously guarded reputation of their former bosses in tatters).  In spite of the photographs (most of which date back twenty years anyway) in sidebar and profile page, I have been relatively watchful about covering my tracks in order to avoid incurring the wrath of my employers (search engines concentrating on texts as opposed to pictures, which can be carefully captioned), for whom the distinction between contractual and private persona might be overly nebulous and contrived.  Organisations are notoriously reluctant to have their flaws brought to light, no matter how great their ostensible and publicly proclaimed commitment to transparency, whistle-blowing and loyalty still regarded as mutually exclusive.  Without safeguards the only outcome of forcibly outing us would be to stifle dissent, stifle criticism and thereby stifle pluralism.  Servile, cringing conformity to the officially sanctioned line would be all that remained and our paymasters would impose their orthodoxy with all the monotheistic zeal of the Inquisition.  I find it extremely sad that Ms Mikko seems to be utterly oblivious to the irony of how her proposals would promote blatant censorship, achieving the exact opposite of her stated aims (not to mention the hugely detrimental impact on European business either provoking a mass migration to American and other ISP’s which do not have to capitulate to regulation on labelling).

The Debate (Monday 22nd September)

(The statements dealing with blogging have been marked in bold)

"Dear colleagues, dear President, Commissioner, EU membership has almost doubled since the beginning of 2004.  Ensuring the convergence of standards for the protection of democracy and basic freedoms towards the highest existing levels is one of the main post-Enlargement challenges.  In this context, the report welcomes all initiatives aimed at safeguarding democracy and points out that the media remains an influential political tool, which should not be treated solely on economic terms.  The report recognises the decision of the European Commission to entrust the determining of reliable and impartial indicators of media pluralism to a consortium of three European universities.

In addition, this report stresses the need to institute the monitoring and implementation systems based on the indicators thus determined.

The report also recognises the ongoing efforts of publishers and journalists’ representatives to create a Charter of Media Freedom.

In addition, the report underscores the need for social and legal guarantees for journalists and editors.

The report advocates the adoption by multinational enterprises of the best practices for editorial and journalistic freedom in each country where they operate. 

It expresses concern over lower standards being applied in the Member States that acceded to the EU in 2004 and 2007.

The development and acceptance of new technologies have led to the emergence of new media channels and new kinds of content.  The emergence of new media has brought more dynamic [sic] and diversity into the media landscape.  The report encourages responsible use of new channels.

Weblogs.  I understand and I do not understand the concern of webloggers.  My entrance into cyberspace has created among a lot of bloggers rapid reaction.  I make it clear now: nobody is interested in regulating the Internet.  That’s why I support, as rapporteur, the compromise that has reached common understanding in the Socialist, ALDE [Liberals] and Greens political groups and which underlines the following: encourages an open discussion on all issues relating to the status of weblogs.  Full stop.  We remain here.

The report acknowledges the challenges posed to the print outlets by the migration of the advertising revenues to the Internet, but points out that the new commercial media landscape is dominated by the established public and private media content providers.  It also takes the standpoint that the concentration of media ownership is approaching levels where media pluralism is not guaranteed by the forces of the free market, especially in the new Member States. 

The report recognises that the public service media needs a sizeable and stable market  share to fulfil its mission.  It points out that, whereas in certain markets, the public service media is a leading market participant, it mostly suffers from inadequate funding and [from] political pressure.

The report recognises the need to increase media literacy in the EU, recommends the inclusion of media literacy among the nine basic competences and supports the development of the European core curriculum for media literacy.

Once again, the report welcomes all initiatives aimed at safeguarding democracy and points out that the media remains an influential political tool, which should not be treated solely on economic terms. 

Freedom of expression is the key of my report.  For that I really stand for.

Thank you".

Commissioner Figel’s reply: "Distinguished Members of Parliament, I’d like first of all to congratulate Madame Marianne Mikko for the excellent report.  The Commission shares many of the views expressed in this report.  We are convinced that this resolution sends a very positive signal in favour of media pluralism to all interested parties, including Member States and, of course, European institutions, namely here the Commission as well.

Safeguarding democracy and plurality, as you have said, plurality of expression, is essential.  We must maintain a good balance between the objectives of the diversity of voices in media and competitive strength of media.

However, earlier and intensive consultations indicated that it would be politically inappropriate for the Commission and for the European Union to harmonise media ownership rules or media pluralism.  Subsidiarity is effectively a strong consideration here and a "one size fits all" measure or model would not suit the variety of situations.

This is the reason why I think it would be a mistake to over-regulate a very lively blogosphere.  Nevertheless, I agree with you that certain legal obligations imposed on the press, such as respect for copyrights, or the right of reply must be respected in any case by websites.

Putting user-generated content sites on an equal footing with any other forms of public expression seems like a desirable aim to us.

Conversely, creating a rigid and special status for blogs seems counterproductive and in contradiction with the genuine spirit of Internet.

The Commission agrees with the Parliament that European Community’s competition rules themselves can only partly, partially ensure the pluralism of the media.  This is exactly the reason why media pluralism is regarded as a legitimate public interest by Article 21 of the EC merger rules, or regulation.  Therefore, Member States may take appropriate measures to protect media pluralism by implementing additional rules beyond the merger regulation.  They must apply, however, national and EC law.

However, as regards the competition rules, I would like to nuance a little your statement on the harmful character of concentration of ownership on media pluralism.  Europe’s media companies, including the written press, must be strong enough to withstand competition at global, international level.  We are against over-restrictive rules on media ownership, which could reduce the competitiveness of EU companies.  Situations are not comparable from one Member State to another.  There is real, real diversity of situations.

I am, of course, in favour of more transparency of ownership and of complete information being available to the public regarding the aims and background of broadcasters and publishers.  This is a sine qua non condition to attain more authoritative and reliable media. 

As you insist in your resolution, public service broadcasters are an indispensable element for media pluralism.  This is why the Commission thinks that their missions of public service must be clearly specified and their funding ensured, otherwise great uncertainty will ensue.

In this respect, Ladies and Gentlemen, we all agree that the definition of the public service remit is in principle a matter for Member States to decide, rather than the Commission.  Member States also decide the mode of financing public service broadcasting, as indicated in the Amsterdam Protocol.  In this context, the Commission’s role is to minimise distortion of competition between all types of media.  The Commission also appreciates your position on codes of conduct and self-regulation as instruments to support media pluralism.

Thank you, Mr President".

At the vote held on Thursday 25th September, the watered down, amended version of the report was adopted with 307 in favour and 262 against.  Although this represents a climb-down, the euphemistic phrase "encourages an open discussion" means that while we may have stopped them now, our elected deputies are not going to let the matter drop, but are likely – after an appropriate "reflection period" – to engage in window-dressing by inviting tame "stakeholders" (based on the model established by the Constitutional Convention’s sham consultation) to spout set pieces before re-tabling restrictions.  This is not about passing fads, or vanity, but one of our most fundamental freedoms.  We must resist all proposals to muzzle us and we must band together to ensure the effective conveying of our viewpoints and the unflinching defence of our interests, which coincide with the interests of democracy.

Other Reactions (without the slightest pretence of exhaustiveness):

Jon Worth:

http://www.jonworth.eu/more-eu-controlling-blogging-outrage-a-more-careful-analysis/

http://www.jonworth.eu/if-you-are-nice-to-me-i-might-be-nice-to-you/

http://www.jonworth.eu/whinge-whinge-get-a-grip-ep-has-no-chance-of-controlling-blogging/

 Daniel Hannan:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/daniel_hannan/blog/2008/09/04/how_the_eu_plans_to_regulate_blogs

 EU Referendum:

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2008/06/oh-yes.html

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2008/09/blogs-away.html

 Iain Dale:

http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2008/09/eu-mounts-another-attempt-to-regulate.html

 Dizzy Thinks:

http://dizzythinks.net/2008/09/eu-wants-to-take-contorl-of-message.html

 Cranmer:

http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/2008/06/eu-scrutinises-malicious-bloggers.html

 The Devil’s Kitchen:

http://devilskitchen.me.uk/2008/06/ep-monitoring-blogging.html

 Bruno Waterfield:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/3059617/Euro-MPs-to-vote-on-anonymous-blog-ban.html

 Mr Eugenides:

http://mreugenides.blogspot.com/2008/09/malicious-intentions-or-hidden-agendas.html

Tim Worstall:

http://timworstall.com/2008/09/24/that-eu-blog-suggestion/

Charles Crawford:

http://charlescrawford.biz/blog.php?single=542

EU Observer:

http://euobserver.com/843/26813

Is there more to life than shoes?:

http://more-to-life-than-shoes.blogspot.com/2008/09/blogs-were-not-clear-yet.html

Hunched over tables in interiors with stained glass and brass angels holding lamps, a peculiar blend of living room intimacy and the detached reverence of the place of worship, the great and good of Waffle Central grey visibly as they sip their cherry-flavoured beers, nicotine-darkened walls now smoke-free, small dogs quivering at their feet, poised to dart out and nip the waiter’s ankle in frustration (instinctively aware of the impunity granted by their child-substitute status, the social and commercial imperative to defer to the big-bosomed, multi-corseted mistress in her creaking finery banishing all other considerations, the most formidable retribution the yapping miscreant need fear a yank on the leash and a scolding). Each brew is served in its own unique glass, accompanied by a tiny bowl of salted nibbles, sörkorcsolya as such an offering is known in Hungarian (beer skates, something to help the liquid slip down even more smoothly), usually dainty pretzels and Twiglet-equivalents. The menu comprises snacks that aggravate hunger instead of soothing it, white-bread toast with a slice of ham and cheese, a lettuce leaf kept artificially crisp, miniature gherkins and pickled onions in that most strident of clear vinegars, which could function as a paint-stripper or hospital corridor disinfectant with equal efficacy.

Several years ago, my friend Dorrit commented approvingly on the custom of placing an individually-wrapped biscuit on the saucer next to the coffee, a pampering of the customer she hoped could be exported to her native land. The quality of the token varies in direct proportion with the sumptuousness of the surroundings (if you visit Wittamer’s café, for example, to take pleasure in demolishing the carefully hand-crafted cakes with their extravagant swirls of pure cocoa butter chocolate you can also expect to be presented with a small plate of truffles with your pot of tea, though the bill matches the polite reception and attention to detail). One biscuit stands out as pre-eminent, however, having attained the status of national icon, the Speculoos. Numbed with the fatigue of a night made restless by the knowledge that I would have to wake up at five in order to make the connection (and that my working day would not end before midnight after the trip), the crisp, slightly cinnamon-flavoured sliver of comfort revived me once I had removed the plastic filter through which the scalding water had already passed (in the days when the buffet car and the trolley service on board the train had not been abolished to staunch the losses, I signed the protest petition and was left to mutter resentfully along with all the other regulars on the route, the ten-minute stopover in Luxembourg main station hardly adequate for procuring warm liquid refreshment when several hundred other caffeine addicts feel the urge at exactly the same time in a mass dash, choreographed by desperation in a display that would put the otherwise breathtaking aerobatics of sky-blackening starling flocks to shame).

The flavour of the Speculoos is singularly appropriate to its context of net curtains, tall city houses, unremitting respectability (the neighbour below when I first moved here made my life a misery by banging up every time my baby wailed with colic, accusing me of child abuse because no infant makes such a racket unless it is being systematically tortured and sending the concierge around if I had the temerity to speak to my parents on the phone after ten in the evening, the cut-off point for noise of any description – at the weekend woe betide the suburbanite who dares mow the lawn on a Sunday, there are helicopter patrols that check for such heinous crimes as well as illegal bonfires on the Day of Rest), sickly, sugary guilt to banish the burden of unimpeachable conduct, of sitting knees sternly and uninvitingly clamped together because any other posture would mark you out as being of questionable virtue, of the rain-drenched drabness, which is the natural hue. A hint of spice, of exoticism, of escape, but nothing too adventurous, nothing that would make you question why you were still here, why you put up with it all. A fragrance of rebellion, of subversion, yet paradoxically also of cocooning, retreat to the parlour and convention, a tumult of contradictions and hypocrisies melting on the tongue. An immature taste, forever soothing in its childish immediacy.

Responding to the endless appetite for innovation and confident that we have all been adequately trained to succumb to the impulse buy at least once, the makers of Speculoos have devised a fresh aberration. In Britain, it would send the anti-obesity killjoys into self-anointing paroxysms of righteous indignation, eyes rolling, foaming at the impudent and unapologetic obscenity of it. A spreadable biscuit paste! Speculoos concentrate to trowel on to the morning roll, to alleviate the constant, throbbing pain of a transitional period stretching endlessly onwards through a thousand rainy afternoons cleaning up after the neighbour’s pug as it leaves a not-so-pleasantly-odoured deposit in the lavender patch. At least stripy Milky Way possesses some justification, the logic of sticky fingers in the summer sunshine.

Having dispatched the Hungarian to the local supermarket to obtain a sample purely as a nod to the possibility of a less onerous form of cultural assimilation, I unscrewed the lid, pierced the waxy, hymen-like seal with my knife and plunged the blade in. Regret can only sometimes be anticipated, and always vaguely, as acknowledgement in advance would lour like a bouncer leaning against the entrance, sniffing the pheromones of the nervous. To have discovered, after all these years, something to like about this miserable, petit bourgeois cesspit, the chief virtue of which up to the moment when the evil concoction assaulted my taste buds was the ease with which you could quit its confines (no more than a couple of hours in any direction).

Whatever next? Squirting mayonnaise over my chips instead of ketchup?

Welcome to the calamitous edition of the Britblog Roundup made possible thanks to the caving in of a 280 square metre section of a certain ceiling, which sent eight tonnes of rubble crashing down onto the dissenters’ benches (had the Chamber and galleries been occupied, the estimated death toll would have been thirty-five). Amidst the chaos, disruption and abandonment of comforting routine, I invert the customary running order, commencing with:

Blogging and Censorship

It saddens me that on practically every single occasion when I have acted as host of late I have been compelled to include such a section (indicative of a trend, which we must stand up against). Bloggers do not as a general rule enjoy the protection that being on the payroll of a major publication might entail (opportunities for malicious persecution to be given instant publicity, any legal costs of defending against accusations of libel borne by the paper) and our relative vulnerability might appear to render us a soft target for those who wish to muzzle their critics.

A week is a long time in the blogosphere and, I am relieved to report, in this particular instance, we have a happy ending. Although the threat has been averted, the story possesses more than historic interest, as the principles at stake are too important (democratisation of information inter alia). Hopefully the case study will prove a salutary lesson, which might suffice to deter bullies in future (I am an optimist).

By way of a preface, allow me to echo the sentiments expressed by Phil of A Very Public Sociologist in the comments to his Solidarity with Harry’s Place, where he writes: “(…) what really matters to me is that either Jenna Delich or someone acting on her behalf has threatened legal action, action that could possibly see a popular blog closed. If the action is successful how long will it be before other blogs come under attack?”

Andrew Ian Dodge of Dodgeblogium sounded the alarm in Harry’s Place taken down by host.

I find it truly dismal that ISPs can be so utterly craven, although I realise that ideals are not an essential when turning a profit, and that the relationship between the owner of the server and the blogger is impersonal, its basis a purely commercial transaction. Nevertheless, instant capitulation to the slightest pressure before verifying the truth of the charges levelled strikes me as pathetic, all the more so when you consider that all a determined blogger needs to do is create a back-up version out of the reach of the long arm of British law that cannot be forcibly shut down (which is precisely what happened when the material re-appeared on Blogger in the form of The Jenna Delich Archives).

Snoopy the Goon of Simply Jews pointed out the hefty dose of irony involved in Jenna Delich took Harry’s Place down or coalition of the muzzled burns their strawman: “Aside of the current UK law on libel being ridiculous, there is a supreme irony in the way the two lowlifes mentioned above behaved. These two belong to a small but vociferous crowd of “anti-Zionists” that chronically complain about being muzzled by everyone – from the Zionist lobby to the British Royal Post. And look what have they perpetrated. It will be quite difficult for them to revive their favourite strawman now, I am afraid”.

Returning to Phil for a moment, no blogger can afford to remain complacent, regardless of their feelings about a given site: “Personally, I have very little time for the politics peddled on HP. Warmed over social democracy plus humanitarian imperialism plus trenchant Zionism do not suit my radical palate. But they have as much right to push their rubbish politics as any other blogger, regardless of how distasteful they can be at times. So down with the complaints, the writs and the threats of court action, and away with those of censorious intent. If you’re stupid enough to make the kind of mistake Jenna Delich did, then you should take the blowback on the chin, not scrabble around for a lawyer’s letter”.

Modernity Blog devoted several postings to the issue, carefully setting out the background in depth in Mr Cushman, Sue Me Too, part 1; part 2; The Implications of Silencing Harry’s Place and culminating in a comprehensive demolition of the flimsy plea of ignorance in For UCU Activists – How To Avoid Re-posting from Neo-Nazi, Ku Klux Klan or White Power Web Sites.

Unity of Ministry of Truth exposes the farcical nature of the whole sorry episode (I can write that with hindsight in the knowledge that the attempt failed) Harry’s Place sued over typo?: “Absurdly, the bone of contention here appears to be nothing more than an errant hyphen. In the article which revealed Delich’s gaffe, HP published a blurry photograph of Delich which sported the caption, “Sheffield-based academic, Jenna Delich – links to far right websites associated with the Klu Klux Klan”, when it should, of course, have read ‘“Sheffield-based academic, Jenna Delich, links to far right websites associated with the Klu Klux Klan”.

The hyphen could be viewed as introducing a measure of ambiguity as to the precise meaning of the word ‘links’.

If you’re minded to take the photograph, and its caption, entire out of its original context then you could, at a stretch, argue that the word ‘links’ may be being used as a noun in the sense of indicating an association between Delich and David Duke, rather than as a verb indicating that Delich had made a connection to David Duke’s site by sending UCU members a hyperlink, in which case you might also reasonably conclude that its takes no small amount of intellectual dishonesty to try to level a claim of libel on the back of [a] premise that [is] so fucking thin it’s practically mono-molecular. The full article is wholly unambiguous in explaining the nature of Delich’s act of linking to Duke’s website and that’s more than enough to make any suggestion that Delich has been libelled a complete nonsense”.

Finally in this brief sampling of reactions, Britblog’s very own Mr Eugenides added his voice to the outcry in Harry’s Place taken down.

It would seem that humility is in short supply in these days of aggressive posturing, sackcloth and ashes are so last century. If you believe you have been misrepresented, issue a refutation, or, if you come to the admittedly unpleasant realisation that you are in the wrong, be honest, admit it. My tactic has always been to ignore my detractors when their utterances are unsubstantiated, relying on readers’ intelligence and discernment to weigh up the plausibility of the evidence after careful examination. Whilst acknowledging that I am eminently fallible, I have every confidence that anyone who takes the time and trouble to examine my words is capable of distinguishing between manifest idiocy, a blatant misreading/distortion and a valid swipe. If the slanders persist, politely engage with them. Or, I reiterate, face up to the unpalatable fact of having committed a grave error and do not compound it with a further error of judgement.

Bullies consistently underestimate one crucial factor: the solidarity between bloggers, which transcends political divisions. Our sheer numbers are enough to tie you up in the courts for more lifetimes than allegedly the boast of your average moggy and the ripple effect ends up doing infinitely greater damage to your reputation than if you had bothered to demonstrate why our allegations are unfounded (though here such a course of action would have been a lost cause). When will the moment of epiphany finally arrive?

Try as he may, Charles Crawford perceives nothing sinister in FCO rules pertaining to what may or may not be disclosed following retirement in Diplomats Gagged: “The problem at the heart of all this is twofold:

• weak Ministers in a weak government annoyed at some disloyal former civil servants’ memoirs, but themselves pouring fuel on the flames by employing their creepy armies of SpAds who hope to cash in when they leave office by throwing around internal gossip
• a serious incongruity between (a) any norms laying down post-career guidelines for publication, and (b) the fact that huge amounts of stuff can be prised from the system anyway via wily Freedom of Information Act applications.

In short, not a sinister attempt to censor until death. Rather the normal muddle of a democratic society”.

As a footnote to the inexorable creep of censorship, Dummies for Destruction in Pants, discusses an alarming intrusion perpetrated by a (now former) member of staff at a major bank (isn’t it morally uplifting to witness such efforts backfiring?). Worth reading for the deliciously wicked retaliation based on a fictitious great-grandmother’s maiden name…

Politics

Cabalamat of Amused Cynicism in OMG, I must be a terrorist! dismisses a guide to suspicious activities with the withering sarcasm it so richly deserves. Indeed, I would have included this under humour because of its sublime idiocy, only I fear the joke is on all of us: “Do you own a computer? Use a mobile phone (particularly a pay-as-you-go one)? Do you own luggage or travel places? Do you own a vehicle, or hire one? Do you own a camera?

If you answered yes to most or all of these questions, then according to a poster put out by the Metropolitan Police, you’re a terrorist suspect”.

The present Government seems absolutely determined to criminalise the entire population with its endless onslaught on our liberties embodied in the DNA database and its plans for ID cards with fingerprints and retina scans. For a dictatorship to function, its lackeys must cultivate an all-pervasive atmosphere of suspicion, intimidating its subjects so that they never dare to speak their minds and do not feel the slightest twinge of remorse at shopping each other to gain advantage. Admittedly I am exaggerating (one major element that is missing for a genuine dictatorship, of course, is the brute physical coercion to extract compliance), but the incremental erosion of our freedoms (which the Hungarians referred to as “salami tactics”), the most glaring of which has been the sanctioning of lengthy periods of detention without trial ought surely to shake us out of our apathy.

Jim Jay of The Daily (Maybe) hosts the Carnival of Socialism.

Harpymarx in Who cares for the carers…? highlights a report from the Work and Pensions Select Committee putting forward proposals about compensating that neglected group for their efforts, to ensure that they are not penalised financially because of failing to qualify for a full state pension: “The cynical would of course forgive you for saying that there looks to have been a degree of electoral calculation. Imagine a Tory election campaign having to tell a chunk of voters that the tax cuts for the rich are going to be funded by their Carers Allowance being cut back. The charitable might say that NL are finally cottoning on what a social democratic government should be up to”.

It is indeed a scandal that their sacrifices have been so assiduously ignored, perhaps because they are women, whose “natural” propensity for nurturing has not been deemed worthy of reward and whose careers are regarded as dispensable anyway?

In a second contribution, Charles Crawford delivers a justly scathing verdict on the flaws and inconsistencies of British foreign policy in relation to the Balkans in Ralph Waldo Emerson On Kosovo/Georgia: “In short, Washington and London were struck by (and yielded to) the intensity of tiny Albanian nationalism, but underestimated the intensity of far mightier Russian nationalism. I warned London myself about this risk several times as HM Ambassador in Poland. To no avail.

In all the weary meanderings under New Labour about the UK’s foreign policy objectives/targets/priorities and (now) Policy Goals, is not this a comprehensive – and unforgivable – blunder of basic professional technique?

Yes.

How will the mass of states round the world react now?

Most will be privately aghast at Russia’s banal power-play to dismember Georgia.

Some may think that this is a reason to move to recognise Kosovo but not Abkhazia and S Ossetia, as a gesture of protest against crass Russian land-grabbing beyond its borders.

But I suspect that the great majority will keep avert their eyes from this shambles, torn unhappily between deriving private satisfaction from the unedifying disagreements between UNSC members on this core international law issue – and fervently hoping that violent separatist urges in their own respective parts of the world are not given new impulses”.

Chive Turkey of Olly’s Onions salvages humour from the otherwise depressing news that overcrowding in our jails is to be tackled by the construction of sprawling institutions, which has been given a nickname amenable to puns in Prison watchdogs, Tartarus residents object to Titan jails: “‘The plan is to have Tantalus unsuccessfully trying to drink water or eat grapes that are always out of his reach,’ National Council of Independent Monitoring Boards president Peter Selby says. ‘And Sisyphus has to roll a rock up a hill for eternity? Health and Safety won’t be happy. Where are the cost-benefit studies on all this?’”

In Class in Modern Britain (Houndmills, Palgrave, 2001), Ken Roberts addresses the phenomenon of politics as one career option amongst many: “There has been a major shift in the relationship between paid politicians and the people. The political parties used to be composed of active members who were broadly representative, in socio-demographic terms, of the parties’ voters. In this sense, the parties represented broad sections of society. Elected representatives gained their positions on the basis of their skill in saying, and putting into effect, what other members willed. But politics no longer works in this way; nowadays the young adults who remain active in politics for years and years tend at least to envisage paid careers as elected or unelected politicians. There are fewer active stalwarts who do not expect such careers, and the activists who become elected representatives in all the parties tend to be from the same social backgrounds – university educated, with subsequent career experience either confined to politics, or in management or the professions.

Today’s politicians are more of a distinct career group, but, even so, they are probably better informed than ever before about the state of public opinion. All the parties pay for regular opinion surveys and run focus groups to ensure that they remain in touch. The leaders want to know, and they are in fact well-informed about what all classes of people are thinking. None want to ignore any substantial sections of the population (…) Election campaigns are now fought through the media. Active members are not as crucial as they once were. Parties that are represented in parliament are able to draw some funds from taxpayers. They continue to need, and to seek, contributions from individual members and supporters, but in practice they rely heavily on corporate sponsorship – from trade unions and business in the case of Labour, and from business alone in other parties. Needless to say, the manner in which grassroots party members are treated, often bypassed, by their party leaders, can only reduce the rank and file’s incentives to engage in long-term political activity” (pp239-40).

Along similar lines, Jeremy Hargreaves roundly rejects the claim that Politicians today have narrower experience than their predecessors? Rubbish: “(…) compared to the politicians of say a hundred years ago, most politicians today have far far more contact with the whole very wide range of people that they represent. If you had written to, say, Churchill asking for help with, say, a piece of casework about, I don’t know, the immigration status of a member of your family, or asked Stanley Baldwin to help you access more benefits from the Government, I don’t think you would have got much help. Compare that to the huge amount of casework which most MPs do for their constituents today, from the articulate complainers to the most genuinely needy, and it’s clear that politicians today have far far wider experience of the issues and problems in the constituency than their predecessors. Certainly no MP today could conceive of getting away with only visiting their constituency only once every few years as its MP (as Churchill did) – and imagine how a candidate would be crucified by their opponents for standing for election in two constituencies in the same General Election (as Gladstone and many others in his day did). Compared to them, someone today who has come straight out of university to spend say ten years as a leading local councillor, has far wider experience of issues, from helping the poorest to dealing with the business world.

Quite simply, the extension of the franchise, reinforced strongly by the campaigning techniques first introduced by the Liberal Community Politics movement of the 1970s and now predominant in all parties, has transformed the relationship between politicians and their electorate, and vastly broadened the experience and understanding of MPs, leading councillors and other elected figures”.

Behind the hankering after a Golden Age when all politicians were patricians as opposed to grubby careerists trespassing in the hallowed halls of Westminster from the lower orders it is possible to detect disgruntlement at the impudent challenge to ancient and entrenched privilege. However, the constraints of dependence on the patronage and favour of the party elite no doubt encourage rigid conformity to central doctrine, the prospect of demotion or ejection stifling personal conviction and principled disagreement.

Decca Aitkenhead’s interview with Alistair Darling in The Guardian, in which the Chancellor set out his gloomy assessment of the state of the economy and little by way of relief for the future, attracted widespread attention amongst bloggers. As a personality, Mr Darling is not exactly charismatic or inspirational, reminding me of his native environment, the wind-lashed, austere island of Lewis with its muted colours of storm cloud grey, peat brown and heather purple, whose inhabitants are renowned for their eschewal of extraneous verbiage, who cringe at the outward display of emotions, purging it from their speech, and for their dislike of excess and brashness (quite laudable traits in some respects and distinctly rare amongst his caste). He appears to have absorbed the humourless impulse of that last bastion of stern observance of Sabbath piety (the swings and roundabouts in children’s playgrounds are chained up on Sundays as the Lord ’s Day is not to be polluted by frivolous distractions and amusements).

This passage in the interview caught my eye: “His wife has moved down to Downing Street, and when they went for a meal with another couple recently, and tried to order a second bottle of wine, ‘the waiter came over and said ‘too much wine’. In a loud voice. So we stuck to the one bottle for the entire meal’. Another meal out with his press adviser was reported in the News Of The World as a decadent affront to struggling families. ‘It’s just the way things are,’ he says, matter-of-factly. ‘It’s understandable’.

I wonder what it must be like for someone whose career had been hitherto blameless to find himself publicly upbraided by wine waiters. ‘Well, I think most people understand perfectly well that most of the problems they face are international. However, that doesn’t help sell their house. I was at a filling station recently, and a chap said, ‘I know it’s to do with oil prices – but what are you going to do about it?’ People think, Well, surely you can do something, you are responsible – so of course it reflects on me’”.

Chris Dillow of Stumbling and Mumbling with his usual alacrity reveals the deficiencies in the Chancellor’s reasoning in Darling: the worst for 60 years?: “1. GDP. This fell 1.3 per cent in the worst four quarters of the 1991 recession. The Bank of England reckons the chances of a repeat in the next four quarters are a roughly two standard deviation event – less than a one-in-20 chance.

2. Unemployment. The consensus among independent forecasters is that the claimant count will rise by around a quarter million – to 1.1 million – by Q4 2009. In the 1981 and 1991 recessions, it rose three times as fast. It rose twice as fast in 1975.

3. Household incomes. Yes, these have been squeezed recently. But independent forecasters expect the squeeze to abate next year, and for real disposable incomes to rise 1.1%. In the worst point of the 1981 downturn, they fell 2%, and in 1977 – when incomes policy bit – they fell 4%.

4. House prices. OK, so these’ll fall. But this means diddly squat. House prices are not net wealth. Many people gain from falling prices.

5.Financial conditions. The stock market has risen in the last few weeks. The All-share’s dividend yield is 4% – slap in the middle of the range (3-5%) generally considered to be a long-run normal rate. People who are staking money on the UK economy, then, don’t think we face a crisis. Contrast this with 1974, when some people genuinely thought capitalism would collapse”.

John Band of Liberal Conspiracy in Bad Chancellor. Bad Journalists, agrees that Darling’s prognosis is faulty: “This is absolute, shimmering, festering poo on a stick”.

Two Doctors in It’s over, darling likewise contest his take, the reality being more apocalyptic than he makes out, understating the dimensions of the problem: “It’s not primarily about a credit crunch. Like the dot com bust before it, we’re seeing the end of a bubble spun up by market players and governments to try and fend off something worse. Its symptoms are grim, sure, but the underlying problem is that we’re well into the dying days of the cheap oil economy, more commonly known as globalisation”.

Chicken Yoghurt laments the inconsistency of Darling’s contradictory statements on former Scottish Labour leader Wendy Alexander: Respectfully not likeable. Perhaps the Chancellor is shrewder than we gave him credit for, at least as a judge of character (before the somersaults of denial that is).

As the summer slump draws to a close, deprived of ammunition from closer to home, bloggers have been gazing across the Channel for inspiration. James Grieves of Scribo ergo sum cautiously greets the launch of the New Anti-Capitalist Party in A Short Glance South: “At the moment, in fact, that most objectionable feature I can find in it is the name. ‘Anti-capitalist’ is easy enough to do, its presenting a workable, feasible alternative that always proves the tricky part for socialists (revolutionary or otherwise). Committing yourself to criticising capitalism is a far less interesting goal than stating your conviction to present a supplanter system that you will introduce in its place”.

Indeed, dramatic developments across an even larger body of water certainly call for comment, more specifically the selection of Ms Palin (reputedly not as well-travelled as her comic genius namesake, famed for enduring bone-cracking massages from women with the build of retired Olympic shot-putters in Eastern Europe).

Mick Fealty of Brassneck presents a measured review of media reactions to McCain’s running mate in Sarah Palin steals the end of Barack Obama’s Convention.

Speculations abound as to McCain’s motives for choosing her. The Heresiarch of Heresy Corner in First Lady? voices his approval: “(…) if I were John McCain, she is the one who I would have chosen as my running-mate. In fact, she strikes me as not only the right choice, but the only plausible contender – unless there were another 40ish, relatively independent, middle-of-the-road woman available. She isn’t black, but you can’t have everything, I suppose.

To counteract McCain’s negatives, she had to be relatively young, and she probably had to be a woman (though he might have got away with a man who was black or Latino). In a campaign likely to be dominated by visuals as well as visions, it also helps that Palin has the looks of a former beauty-queen”.

He goes on to muse whether McCain has hit upon a cunning means of siphoning off support from the Democrats, particularly those miffed at Hillary having been passed over (I agree it was rather churlish of Obama): “Sarah Palin is everything Joe Biden isn’t: not experienced (but why does she need to be?), not a Washington insider, not an old white guy. To Hillary’s army of female supporters, who yesterday said ‘Yes, we can (just about)’ when asked whether they could, after all, swallow their disappointment and lend Obama their vote, Sarah Palin presents an interesting dilemma. Do they vote for the candidate who promises many of the policies they want to see, or do they vote for the woman? A no-brainer, you might think, especially since Palin’s traditionalist stance on abortion (…) is unlikely to be to the taste of many ardent feminists”.

Cranmer of the eponymous blog positively glows with praise for her in Sarah Palin for vice-president – an inspirational choice: “She is in her mid 40s and really quite beautiful. But it is not for her aesthetic qualities that Cranmer is delighted by the choice (though they help), but because this remarkable women manages to combine having a large family (five children – one with Down’s syndrome) with a successful career, first as Mayor and then as Governor. Her eldest is in the army, and her youngest is still mewling and puking. She can clearly multi-task, being adept at running Alaska, carrying a baby and bringing up a family simultaneously.

And Governor Palin is a Protestant Evangelical Christian. Moreover, she is strongly ‘pro-life’, not like the à la carte Catholic Joe Biden who supports abortion. It will be difficult for any ‘pro-choice’ group to attack her on this, not least because she lives every day with the very real difficulties of bringing up a Down’s child – a child which the vast majority of pro-choicers would have denied the right to life. And not only is she pro-life; she is pro-marriage, hunts, fishes, and enjoys dog sledding and drilling for oil”.

In other words, McCain’s choice is astute rather than smacking of desperation: “And yet while there is a constitutional requirement for the separation of church and state, there is still a very significant contingent – made up largely of Roman Catholics and Evangelicals – who do not believe in the separation of faith and politics. And since, for the majority of these, the issue of abortion outweighs all others, it is most certain that they will now flock to the McCain-Palin ticket.

Barack who?”

Abortion is equally symbolic for feminists. If we were to be compelled to surrender ownership of our bodies to priests or politicians, it would propel us straight back to the Dark Ages. Control of one’s body is fundamental to personal autonomy and, as such, is non-negotiable. As Andrea Dworkin states in Right-Wing Women (New York, Perigee, 1983), abortion is viewed with loathing by conservatives: “Right-wing women regard abortion as the callous murder of infants. Female selflessness expresses itself in the conviction that a fertilised egg surpasses an adult female in the authenticity of its existence” (p32). Indeed, she is quite unflinching in her dissection of the rationale underlying their distaste: “right-wing women accuse feminists of hypocrisy and cruelty in advocating legal abortion because, as they see it, legal abortion makes them accessible fucks without consequence to men. In their view, pregnancy is the only consequence of sex that makes men accountable to women for what men do to women. Deprived of pregnancy as an inevitability, a woman is deprived of her strongest reason not to have intercourse. Opposition to birth control is based on this same principle.

Right-wing women saw the cynicism of the Left in using abortion to make women sexually available, and they also saw the male Left abandon women who said no. They know that men do not have principles or political agendas not congruent with the sex they want. They know that abortion on strictly self-actualising terms for women is an abomination to men – left-wing men and right-wing men and grey men and green men. They know that every woman has to make the best deal she can. They face reality and what they see is that women get fucked whether they want it or not; right-wing women get fucked by fewer men; abortion in the open takes away pregnancy as a social and sexual control over men; once a woman can terminate a pregnancy easily and openly and without risk of death, she is bereft of the best way of saying no – of refusing the intercourse the male wants to force her to accept. The consequences of pregnancy to him may stop him, as the consequences of pregnancy to her never will. The right-wing woman makes what she considers the best deal. Her deal promises that she has to be fucked only by him, not by all his buddies too; that he will pay for the kids; that she can live in his house on his wages; and she smiles and says she wants to be a mommy and play house” (pp103-4).

I for one hope that disillusioned Hillary-ites won’t vent their frustration in a protest vote that would end up doing more harm than good and side with Zhora Moosa of The F-Word in The ‘race’ is on: “Is it more important to have a woman, any woman, in the White House than a pro-choice President that is a man? No. Don’t do it America – a woman does not a feminist politics make!”

Gene of Harry’s Place in John McCain’s disturbing choice wisely counsels us to take a long hard look at whom Ms Palin associates herself with, more particularly the extent of her involvement in the 1996 Pat Buchanan campaign. As I tend to give American politics a body swerve, the article’s link to the Anti-Defamation League’s record of the nauseating bilge Mr B has spewed over the years proved as illuminating as it was revolting. I will confine myself to quoting his views on gender as published in the Washington Times in 1983: “Rail as they will against ‘discrimination,’ women are simply not endowed by nature with the same measures of single-minded ambition and the will to succeed in the fiercely competitive world of Western capitalism…The momma bird builds the nest. So it was, so it ever shall be. Ronald Reagan is not responsible for this; God is”.

Culture

In the light of the vigorous resurgence of militancy amongst the religious, full marks to cabalamat of Amused Cynicism for reminding us that the Bible is not all shepherds, mangers, angels, lambs and doves, but that, far from being timid or evincing compassion for the frailties of His creations, the Old Testament God is vengeful, bloodthirsty and eager to mete out terrible punishments for disobedience in A great book for Bible studies. What Christianity (and monotheistic religion in general) boils down to is regulating, or more accurately, suppressing female sexuality and handing over control of fertility to men, coupled with the denial of full humanity to women. The not so glad tidings can be summarised as subordination and inferiority as divine design (against which struggle is mere folly and wasted energy), the systematic oppression of women expressing the “natural order”. As the no-nonsense illustration shows, men are more than willing to enforce their domination through violence in the face of female disobedience.

Given that it exposes scriptural teachings in all their nonsensical ugliness, I wholeheartedly endorse cabalamat’s conclusion: “This is just the sort of book that ought to be used in compulsory religious education lessons in schools” (for further excerpts I recommend Hemant Mehta’s source piece at the Friendly Atheist).

Continuing on the theme of religion and its implacable hostility towards women, Natalie Bennett of Philobiblon introduces us to Gary Macy’s The Hidden History of Women’s Ordination: Female Clergy in the Medieval West in The other story of Abelard and Heloise. The Church’s pathological unwillingness to concede any semblance of authority to women as manifested in the controversy over women’s ordination is nothing new: “And, Macy adds, Abelard was far from alone in this in his time, but by the end of the 12th century, the memory of women’s ordination was being written out of church history. One of the early proponents of the “it never happened” school was Rufinus, writing between 1157 and 1159, who defined “real ordination” as ordination to the altar and everything else as mere commissioning to a job. Consequently, Macy concludes: “In one of the most successful propaganda efforts ever launched, a majority of Christians came to accept that ordination had always been limited to the priesthood and the diaconate and that women had never served in either ministry”.

In a delightful essay Roy Booth of Early Modern Whale demonstrates that a rodent famed for its drowsiness was firmly ensconced in the English imagination long before dozily popping its head out of a teapot in The early modern dormouse. One of many fascinating quotes pertains to their use in remedies for a variety of ailments. Glad that medical science has advanced since it was penned in 1607 (I for one certainly prefer the contemporary hearing aid): “A live Dormouse doth presently take away all warts being bound thereupon. Dormyse, and field-mice being burnt, and their dust mingled with honey, will profit those which desire the clearness of the eyes, if they doe take thereof some small quantitie every morning. The powder of a Dormouse, or field mouse rubbed upon the eyes helpeth the aforesaid disease. A Dormouse being flayed, roasted and anointed with oil, and salt, being given in meat, is an excellent cure for those that are short winded. The same also doth very effectually heal those that spit out filthy matter or corruption. Powder of Dormice, or field-mice, or young worms, being mixed with oil doth heal those that have kibes on their heels, or chilblains on their hands. The fatte of a Dormouse, the fatte of a hen, and the marrow of an Ox melted together, and being hot, infused into the ears, doth very much profit both the pains and deafeness thereof”.

Chris Partridge of Ornamental Passions acquaints us with the architectural splendours of Southwark Health Centre, Walworth Road SE1. The motto above its main entrance proclaims “The people’s health is the highest law” – if only today’s NHS would take this injunction to heart!

That stalwart of the Britblog Roundup Peter Ashley of Unmitigated England once again shepherds us in the direction of a hidden pearl, more specifically, a baptismal font in St Mary’s, Wellingborough, so exquisite that even the most hard-hearted of unbelievers would be cured of their affliction at the mere sight of it in Atheists and Dolphins.

Whereas no human artefact could induce me to genuflect in worship of an invisible oppressor, if you must insist on a deity, then Mr Ashley’s vision (supporting Durkheim’s thesis) pottering about and generally minding his own business is less harmful than many other contenders: “(…) my God is tending his Gertrude Jekyll-style cottage garden, his snowy white locks disguised under a Panama hat, occasionally mopping his brow with a big red-spotted handkerchief. Whenever a motorbike roars noisily by his front gate the rider mysteriously falls off at the next bend”.

The ever-enjoyable Camden Kiwi casts an expert eye over Shane Meadows’ Somers Town, the Movie.

Jonathan Calder of Liberal England reminisces about memorable performances at the Festival at the Edge in Polly Bolton: Call of the Siren with a helpful clip from Youtube for those of us unfamiliar with the singer.

Feminism

Louise Livesey of The F-Word laments how the results of a survey of 1,527 people conducted by the Yorkshire Building Society carried out as a vehicle for advertising an insurance product were contorted by the Daily Telegraph to suit its political agenda in Gender Role Research Misrepresented (again – yes I know we shouldn’t be surprised.

The source piece at easier.com attests to the longevity of traditional concepts concerning appropriate gender roles: “Gender stereotypes are alive and well with research showing the top three things most valued by men in their partner being domestic tasks, namely, taking care of the home (44%), cooking (39%) and cleaning (33%). Women, on the other hand, most value good listeners (41%), financial stability (38%) and their partner being a great parent (27%). Domestic tasks appear further down the list with only 12% of women relying on their partner to do the cleaning”.

I share Louise’s dismay that men’s priority is for a live-in skivvy to provide for their comfort.

Penny Red cogitates on the reasons behind the rise in demand for penis enlargement surgery in Eeep: “It’s not only the mentally ill who mutilate their genitals in private: you can pay a surgeon to inflict far more radical damage, a snip (literally) at £3-12,000. I’m talking, of course, about the booming industry of surgical penis ‘enlargement’, the nearest male equivalent to labiaplasty. We’ve all had versions of those relentless spam emails, offering in poor English to furnish us with a magnificent schlong for the price of a university education. Well, they keep coming because some people keep clicking – millions of anxious men and boys, in fact, all over the world, every day.

Yes, it’s fucking political. Male sexual neurosis is massively damaging, to feminism, to society, and to men themselves. This is not male apologism, or backsliding, it’s one feminist’s request for more discussion of a damaging socio-sexual taboo, in the context of a blog post in which I get to shout ‘COCK!’ a lot.

There, I’m glad I got that out of my system”.

Commercial exploitation of anxiety about inadequacy, literally not measuring up, now blights the lives of men as well as women: “The cultural markers of femininity are worn like a cloak and meticulously judged – from breasts to width of the waist and hips to degree of ‘curviness’ to hairstyle to set of the face and features. For men, only one specific part of the body is sexualised, and it’s kept under wraps, endlessly mythologised and certainly not featured in any fashion spreads. Feminists might argue that because women’s whole bodies are inevitably sexualised, men have it easier. Those feminists are right: men do have it easier. But that doesn’t mean that men don’t get a raw deal too – where little girls grow up seeing examples of perfect sexual bodies plastered everywhere they look, little boys experience the opposite – the cock is spoken of in hushed tones and never revealed, fictionalised, aggrandised, reduced to a few furtive glances in locker-rooms and arcane priapic symbols scrawled on playground walls and toilet cubicles”.

Miscellaneous

Reynolds of Random Acts of Reality provides a taxonomy of suicides in If They Hadn’t Woken, which alerts the reader to a slightly macabre anecdote from Area Trace No Search, recounted in Ambos and Tea Spots: “Both of the ambo lads were paramedics, who usually work on the solo fast response cars. One night shift in the very early hours of the morning, they had parked up by the river next to each other for a chat and a cup of tea, whilst waiting for the calls that never came.

Of course, warm drink, heaters on, both of them fell asleep.

As one of them described it “The next thing I know, a pissed wailing banshee is hammering on my window and screaming at me”’.

Kate Fox, in her brilliantly funny examination of our foibles and deficiencies, Watching the English (London, Hodder and Stoughton, 2004) deems our recourse to choreographed exchanges highly instructive: “Social dis-ease is a shorthand term for all our chronic social inhibitions and handicaps. The English social dis-ease is a congenital disorder, bordering on a sort of sub-clinical combination of autism and agoraphobia (the politically correct euphemism would be ‘socially challenged’). It is our lack of ease, discomfort and incompetence in the field (minefield) of social interaction; our embarrassment, insularity, awkwardness, perverse obliqueness, emotional constipation, fear of intimacy and general inability to engage in a normal and straightforward fashion with other human beings. When we feel uncomfortable in social situations (that is, most of the time) we either become over-polite, buttoned up and awkwardly restrained or loud, loutish, crude, violent and generally obnoxious. Both our famous ‘English reserve’ and our infamous ‘English hooliganism’ are symptoms of this social dis-ease, as is our obsession with privacy. Some of us are more severely afflicted than others. The dis-ease is treatable (temporary alleviation/remission can be achieved by using props and facilitators – games, pubs, clubs, weather-speak, cyberspace, pets, etc. – and/or ritual, alcohol, magic words and other medications), and we enjoy periods of ‘natural’ remission in private and among intimates, but it is never entirely curable” (pp401-2).

Swiss Toni of Swiss Toni’s Place recalls his experiences of the politeness reflex, avoidable interactions and the pitfalls of allowing oneself to become ensnared by small talk in It’s a fashion that we follow that we should be forgetting… I am sure we can all empathise with: “I sometimes find myself having terrible dilemmas when I see people that I vaguely know standing in a queue that I’m about to join. If I join the line behind them, then small talk is inevitable because horrible, awkward, forced small talk is clearly much better than blanking someone and pretending that they’re not there. This happens quite a lot at work, and I have to say that I will quite often delay my coffee for 5 minutes just to avoid a mildly uncomfortable social situation. It’s ridiculous. I know it’s ridiculous, but there you go”.

Anne of I like takes us on on nostalgia-filled visit to the Museum of Brands and Packaging, in a charming and lavishly illustrated evocation of the days of hallowed memory when dire warning labels and nutritional analyses did not take up half the packaging of anything we were likely to ingest in Brands R Us, which I am sure will strike a chord with many of my compatriots: “It’s funny how the merest glimpse of a product can take you back decades. For me it was the sight of Mackintosh’s Toffee Cup which I used to love. Seeing it through the glass I was instantly transported back to childhood, going to the paper shop to buy one, unwrapping the thin foil and biting into it. The toffee was really light and thin and would make giant toffee deathslides when you took a bite. It was more delicate than a Cadbury’s Caramel so I used to kid myself that I was quite refined eating one, probably with a can of Top Deck to wash it down”.

Jason Cobb of onionbagblog warns us that the upsurge of interest in cycling prompted by the Olympics can have its drawbacks in Crash Course. Although the main focus is on the absence of track etiquette among the “Beijing boys”, I was amused by the revelation that beneath the eco-friendly, quiche-munching, sandal-wearing façade, even cyclists succumb to petty rivalries: “Welcoming new riders to Herne Hill is all very well, but as with most sports, there is both a competitive, and snob factor on show. Especially so in cycling, where in all honesty, it really is All About the Bike.

The hired frames from the Herne Hill lock up stand out from the hand crafted, titanium track bikes. And then there’s the lycra…”

Ooh err!

To close with a smile, diamond geezer’s hilarious tips for the advanced procrastinator, lists 100 unproductive activities. A snippet ought to be enough to whet the appetite: “(…) watch a DVD, watch all the DVD extras, watch the DVD again with director’s commentary”. Or: “(…) flick through all the channels on Sky and end up watching a carpet cleaner infomercial because there’s nothing better on”. Or: “(…)check your email, check your email again just in case, have sex (n.b. side effects may include keeping you busy for an additional 20 years)”.

Next week’s Roundup will be hosted by Natalie Bennett at Philobiblon. As usual, please submit your nominations to britblog [at] gmail [dot] com