Sociological Images have got a graph up from David Nutt's work on drug harm in Britain.  The rankings are very interesting, but so are the differences between 'harm to others' and 'harm to users'.  Let's pause for a moment in a dream of sensible policy.

Over at the C of E, Thinking Anglicans are reporting that 50 clergy are set to join the Ordinariate.  Some of them will be retired.  The Church has 1338 ordination candidates in training, at last count.  (Just a thought with which to read the inevitable Church in Crisis! headlines.)  Back to the flying bishops, Liturgy wonders if the faux-bishop will be having a faux-farewell? 

The IDS welfare white paper has hit and The Spectator has helpfully read it and come up with one of those ten things you need to know lists.  A big part of the whole thing is the replacement of a raft of welfare payment possibilities with a universal credit system.  But, from what I can tell, the changes won't be coming in until 2013 and will take until 2017 to be fully up and running.  What might happen then if the Coalition doesn't exist anymore? 

Dan Hodges wonders who will be Ed's guru.  I'm pretty interested in the suggestion that there might be a Labour turn to Bauman. 

An independent commission on high pay has been launched.  It is called the High Pay Commission.  It will tell us that high pay is too high.

Simon Schama (The history tsar?) has come up with 6 bits of British history that every student should know.  The Guardian book blog is challenging readers to come up with 6 of their own.  I shall think on.  What do you think? 

I have been hesitating throughout this week about writing a post on the comprehensive spending review.  Since most of the posts and articles I've been reading have been CSR-related, I haven't posted any of them here whilst I contemplate.  So, this handful of links is a bit of a CSR black hole. 

Having said that, the Inequalities blog have a good article on how the coalition has 'found it so easy to cut benefits for the poor'.  This is more about social attitudes than the CSR itself and it's very much worth a look. 

The North-South divide has been cropping up in the news with concerns the CSR cuts will aggravate it.  So it must be John Bulmer time.  Still, oldies but goodies: John Bulmer's North.  (Vaguely related note: I've just started reading Helen Jewell's book about the North-South divide, and I had never before twigged that Northumbria = North of the Humber.)

The Heritage Crafts Association are reporting that skills minister John Hayes has highlighted support for craft skills in a recent speech at the RSA.  This is good news for the HCA, but 1) how seriously do we take this as an indication of potential government policy? and 2) if we do, and we read it alongside the Browne report on higher ed (and do read Stefan Collini's article in the LRB on that front), should we be worried about it as a vision for education which isn't really doing any favours for the social status of traditional crafts? 

Completely unrelated to any of the above (unless we get into spectral ethnography; but that's only my new favourite thing on Tuesdays), Peter Ackroyd has a new book out about the English ghost.  Related to the spectres of English Catholicism, apparently.

And speaking of ... the CofE blogosphere has been firing busily over news not only of the ordinariate but of every women-back-in-the-kitchen brigade charging out to form their own non-secret society.  As I imagine it, a Society of St Teatowel and St Nappy meeting would consist of a chorus of "more tea, vicar?" from 1950s housewives.  It could all go horribly wrong when the housewives turn out to actually be Sharon's Dita Von Teese-themed hen night.