Britain Today today is brought to you by English Beat's 'Save it For Later', and a sad kitten who has eaten too many biscuits. 

From the nation that brought you colonialism comes more immigration hypocrisy, this time with the hysteria preventing artistic exchange.  Daft as a paintbrush.  On a somewhat similar topic, Anton Vowl writes intelligently on 'white' Britishness (and rumours of demise). 

Under daft as a brush, see also: Lord Young, who has resigned after suggesting that during the 'so-called recession' we've 'never had it so good'.  The most interesting comment, of course, has been over whether what he's gone and said might be true: tosh, says the Spectator, though, wait a second, says Stumbling and Mumbling.  Meanwhile, Dave Osler at Labour Uncut notes that Lord Young (and his well-off ilk) have always had it better. 

More big news came last week of course in the looming spectre of the royal wedding.  My thoughts about Prince William don't get much far beyond wondering whether he is actually the most boring man in Britain, or whether an accountant from Milton Keynes might just pip him to the title.  For sheer entertainment value I'd rather see Fergie and Andrew try it all over again (after re-uniting on I'm a Celebrity, of course).  Anyway, here's Paul Richards on the wedding, the monarchy, and the Labour party's relationship to it all. 

The Indy reviews Jesse Norman's The Big Society and suggests it might be the clearest explanation yet (but that isn't necessarily saying much!). More book reviews over at Open Kingdom, where two books about why the Tories didn't gain a majority at the election are put head-to-head. 

Since the Coalition took power, Britain has become one of the 'most data-friendly countries', according to Datablog which wonders whether government spending data can really change the world?

Here's the full text of Nick Clegg's recent political reform speech.  Worth reading, I think.  In more Clegg coverage, William Davies asks 'who is the fairest of them all?'. 

Over the weekend I did some diligent pruning and re-ordering of my RSS feeds, before sloughing through the 700+ posts that had accumulated in my reader.  Hours of entertainment.  The good news is that my 'Britain Today' posts will now have much more emphasis on the 'Today', rather than, as they have been, 'Britain about this time last week'. 

The time zone difference (since I'm in the Southern hemisphere, I am writing from Britain Today's tomorrow), I can do nothing about.  And Posterous is keen on catapulting me even further into the future.  But all of the temporal disorder is ever so anthropology of time. 

With all of that Britain Today Tomorrow promising, first up is an article from last week.  (Or is it from Shakespeare's England?)  Hops, Horseheads and Horsepower: A Highly Selective History of Beer by Adrian Teal. 

The Pope has been and done the Newman thing and then Poped off again, so to counter all this Catholicism, here's Eddie Izzard imagining the Anglican Inquisition: Cake or Death?  (h/t Liturgy)

Andrew Rawnsley has a new paperback of his The End of the Party coming out, and the Observer are carrying an Exclusive! Extract!  This should satiate all your needs for a narrative re-telling of the post-election 'negotiations' between Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg (neither should be confused with the Pope or Eddie Izzard, although I would like to see The Phone Call animated in Lego). 

Nick Clegg has had the Lib Dem conference to contend with, poor dear (you do it to yourself, you do, that's why it really hurts).  Jackie Ashley has a perceptive take on his role in government ... and the Lib Dem future. 

Now, I must go, because I am accidentally listening to Alison Moyet.