Britblog Roundup 45

This being a festival of both the Christian community (Christmas) and the Jewish community (Chanukah), I thought I'd start off with something suitably light-hearted and laughter inducing.

Scott Burgess is on form at the Daily Ablution with this post which includes a miscellany of the ludicrous Guardian statistical errors he specializes in finding. Try his takedown of the Guardian's miscalculated stats on the greenhouse emissions created by turkey with all the trimmings. If your stomach can still stand it, you can follow up his pointer to a profound Guardian enquiry on whether it's a good idea to drink your own urine. Then Scott offers this gem on the Guardian's miscalculation of USA greenhouse emissions. Yes,  a 16% stat gets transmuted by that Guardian magic into 100%. And without so much as a compositor's error.

Still on the religious holiday theme, here's Laban Tall's wonderful compilation of utterly daft statements by assorted clerics, Guardian readers, religious columnists, most of whom are UK based. This being Britblog Roundup, just ignore the few overseas loons who try in vain to compete with sound British folk like the Bishop of Norwich:

Herod kills all the young children in his attempt to destroy this newborn king. So Mary and Joseph escape to Egypt rather than returning to their home town and Jesus immediately becomes a refugee.
That's one of the things about the Christmas story that makes it contemporary. In Norfolk we count refugees, asylum seekers and migrant workers among our neighbours."

The roundup has a nomination for this post about Christmas which sees it as the Dark Side. A good follow up to Laban's post, if you find these matters interesting.

Pootergeek has an uncharacteristically aaahhhh post on his part in the festival here.

Blood and Tears puts up a 2005 Bah Humbug take on Christmas here. Stephen Pollard has a Jewish version here.

She's actually in Paris, but Petite Anglaise offers this story of an office Christmas Party in the Marais, with all the unpleasant features which characterize English ones. Tokyo Girl, another Brit expat, reminds you that not everywhere in the world celebrates Christmas, even if they do have inflatable Santas, but they still get a holiday in Tokyo because it's the Emperor's birthday. And here's Cruella-blog's take on the current fuss about the film of memoirs of a Tokyo Geisha, which anyway was written by a white man.

Laban also wickedly extracts a tellingly ironic juxtaposition from the current Normblog Profile. The commenters seem to get quite steamed up about the profilee. I wonder why?

She has her own take on improving education for the poor here. Let's get rid of faith schools for one faith she says. Well, maybe it's self-evident to her that Jewish schools should be educating Christians, Muslims and Buddhists too, but she may not be aware that the orthodox Jewish tradition does not allow the teaching of the faith to non-believers. The opposite of the evangelist tradition of seeking to get everyone to listen to the Christian message which views like this are ultimately rooted in.

Natalie at My London Your London has a lively round-up post on the current state of bookshops in the Charing Cross Road, which includes a follow up to the legendary Helen Hanff's 84 Charing Cross Road.

Suz Blog puts the current Standards Board case against Ken Livingstone into context, with an overview of what's going on his case, plus links to a whole range of other cases. It seems clear that the Standards Board moves slowly and ponderously. Which can either mean that the guilty get plenty of time to go on enjoying office and shooting their mouths off (as long as they do it while off duty), or that someone's career can be put into limbo while they face months of expense and uncertainty.

Another Liberal Democrat blogger, Liberal England offers us a glimpse of a past hero of his, who I've never heard of, one J.W. "Paddy" Logan, who starts a general House of Commons chamber riot when he tries to cross the floor to sit with the Conservatives. Or did he?

Now that the Tory Party has elected that Terribly Nice David Cameron as its leader, it's time to start hearing why people are Tories in the first place. Here's a good account from Biodun at Peaks and Troughs. Liberty Cadre snipes away at the new order here.

Oh, yes, and a little bunch of three of us Brit bloggers were running our stuff on the BBC Today programme web site this week. The hard pressed Today prog staff haven't quite kept up with all our contributions yet. My latest is here.

Comments

[Chipsy]

Dr..I'm Rupert iPM's Editor. Chris Vallance would be too modest to say ahiyntng but he is a great asset to the programme and your early comments on our first posts were very helpful. The working title changed from The Blog Prog to iPM ( should I be telling you this? ) for the reasons that invloved trying not too sound too geeky to the audience on Radio 4 and make the link with the fact that people who bring you PM ( no i ) are the same people who bring you iPM. But accept it's not going win everyone over. What we are keen on is the ability to be as transparent as we can be about how we make the programme and how the audience can help us shape what we do, who we speak to etc. We've been asked to produce a series of programmes using this format until Christmas thereafter who knows, but I think it is a way forward and overwhelmingly the initial feedback has been good. Of course, what's most helpful is the honest stuff we've had from you and others about the blog and the programmes we make. So thanks again.