[blogfocus tuesday] eight more to intrigue you

Let's go!

1 Welcome back to the boys at Asadodo and to a particularly interesting post on the Bullingdon Club:

So irresponsible was the Bullingdon, indeed, that to this day those invited to join the Club's 20-strong membership are welcomed by having their rooms trashed (something which, admittedly, many students are capable of achieving without the aid of some chinless types in dinner dress) and then required to book a private room at a local establishment where the Club's members can drink themselves into near insensibility before reducing the room to a state where it would look far from out of place in Central Baghdad.

Down the years the Club's reputation grew and grew. Lampooned by Evelyn Waugh as the Bollinger Club and attracting such (usually only briefly) upright members of society as bad artist and zookeeper Lord Bath, fraudster and thug Darius Guppy, gleefully caddish former minister Alan Clark and er, David Dimbleby, the Club spent its time in glorious irresponsibility, throwing bikes through windows, smashing street lights and carrying out assorted other activities which lead lesser mortals to criminal charges and Club members to throw large amounts of daddy's money at the victims.

2 Mutterings and Meanderings writes of that season which is upon some of us again:

The spring spider season has started in my house. Their favoured hang-out is my bath. I have recently removed two to prevent them from drowning. One was able to escape onto the windowsill; the other made a run for it across the floor, but alas, the cats did to it what cats do to small defenceless creatures.

The fact I can remove spiders is a big breakthrough; it wasn’t always the case. Now, I can put a glass over them, slide a leaflet that’s fallen out of a magazine (see, they do have a purpose) under them, and set them free. I am able to mock those afflicted with arachnophobia.

3 A much underestimated blogger, Paul Kingsnorth and I may have personal issues but his posts are well worth a look:

I'm not a great fan of St George myself - he's a bit of a silly saint and, since he never set foot on English soil, a rather inappropriate one. If we must celebrate our national days with Christian martyrs I'd rather go back to St Edward the Confessor, who was our original patron saint until St George was promoted over him during the thirteenth century. Edward was more peaceful, thoughtful and interesting and he had the added benefit of actually being English. St George took his place when post-Norman crusader kings promoted his cause on the grounds that he was good at kicking Muslims about (not dragons; that came later). Another good reason to demote him, in my view. It's just provocation.

4 UK Daily Pundit has the scoop* on that party animal, Iain Dale:

It was the party to end all parties - the mother of all parties one might say. Attended by the great and the good I suspect BBC Radio 4's News 2006 Christmas Party was a night to remember.

There was Gordon Brown and Cherie Booth, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuiness, The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, Ken Livingstone, Tony Blair, John Prescott and even Iain Dale .... Iain Dale?!?!?!

The list of guests invited to Radio 4's Christmas bash is more than 10 pages long and will make your eyes water.

* Information just to hand indicates that the said Iain Dale did not actually attend the event. [See comments below.]

5 Notsaussure, in his usual carefully written way writes of Blair and Iraq:

So isn’t he saying, in terms, that the carnage in Iraq wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for the invasion? That the invasion was, at least in part, the cause of the current sectarian strife?

Yes, yes, if you’re foolish enough to ignore warnings not to keep your PIN number in your wallet along with your cards and you then leave your wallet lying around in a pub, that doesn’t excuse someone making off with your wallet and emptying your accounts, but you couldn’t thus wholly absolve yourself of your responsibility for the misfortune, could you?

6 Ian Grey speaks of bribery and corruption and I say thee should be more of it:

It is a thin line between a gift and a bribe of course, but unless you are a Company Director then the monetary value is generally low.

However, branding plays a role in the desirability. In 1988, I joined CCT Theatre Lighting, a good brand (number 2 in the market), well respected in the professional sector and thought of as a cool company. Shortly after I joined, they acquired Furse Theatre Products, a company well respected in the educational sector but with a poor image on the pro side, due to some rather duff ranges of products in the 60s & 70s.

Consequently, we did a big promotion at Riverside Studios (actually in a Pub down the road from the trade show) and had loads of T shirts made which proved very popular. I was visiting a theatre a few weeks later and the electrician asked if we had any left.

"Sorry", I said, "We've run out of CCT ones, but we have plenty of Furse ones left." Pause. "Oh-kay." he said. "I could always wear it for get-ins, or maybe when I'm cleaning out the Pit or the Roof Void."

7 Sisu is addressing the lightbulb revolution and Al Gore:

Whether or not you do this or that to cut down on your energy use, how can an honorable human person wallow in the cheap thrill of bragging about one's CO2 purity? Pride goeth before a fall. Are we ALL politicians now? In our view, it's all too human, a 21st-century, secular version of the venerable human sacrificing of virgins or offering of food you'd rather eat yourself to appease the gods. Akin to the religious indulgences of yore referenced by critics of Sir Alfred's own holier-than-thou offering of money for forgiveness a couple of weeks back when it came out that the Gores expended four times more energy than the average citizen per year just to maintain their one-of-many Tennessee homestead.

8 Jeremy Jacobs has a touching piece on the English resorts of yore and particular, his home town:

Margate, like so many of Britain's seaside resorts ha[s] become almost [a] ghost-town. Cheap foreign holidays, English weather and poor facilities have condemned places like Margate to the scrapheap. Successful seaside resorts like Bournemouth, Eastbourne, Brighton & Blackpool appear to have have adapted to change. Presumably, their local authorities have had the foresight to re-invent their respective towns in order to cater for modern trends. There's no reason why this couldn't have happened to my home town.

Hope to see you on Thursday. Bye for now.