Seatbelts on, please.  This is going to be a biggie. 

There has been quite a lot of comment about the student protest.  I tend to agree with this suggestion from The Spectator that the violence is likely to help rather than hinder the Coalition's cause. 

There has also been a lot of political moaning about the European Court's judgment that British prisoners must have the right to vote.  I'm with Kate Green: so they should. 

Off course the other big news has been IDS and his work-for-the-dole scheme.  Well, it isn't quite.  The idea, apparently, is to pack long-term (12 months+) unemployed off on a month's community service.  Excellent comment from Jackie Ashley (who took a Guardian comments bashing for it).  More discussion on the carrot and the stick from ToryDiary.  (Though must we have the spurious 'supporting families' bits ... says this daughter-of-multiply-reconstituted-families.)

Ross McKibbin in the LRB has a must-read on the current political/economic situation.  Add this to a very interesting perspective over on the Inequalities blog on 'why the welfare state doesn't matter any more'. Elsewhere, Sunny Hundal writes on why the left shouldn't oppose all cuts and Jonathan Todd argues that Labour must consider (and articulate) multiple futures, not just certain post-cut doom.  

Oldham post-Woolas (you done good, Harriet) is shaping up to be one to watch.  ToryDiary look at whether it should be given to the Lib Dems ... or if the Tories should put up a good fight.  Regardless, we might see here the North's first real political comment on how the Coalition is going. 

Amidst all of this political talk, Kerim Friedman's look at Bourdieu and the role of the public intellectual hits the spot nicely. 

Over at the CofE, the final reccommendations from the Faith and the Future of the Countryside conference have been released.  It has been a bit of a speaking out week for the Church with ++Rowan expressing grave concerns about welfare reforms.  (Although that Telegraph link dramatically hypes up 'church in crisis' over the flying bishops!)

Michael Young (author of 1957's Family and Kinship in East London) remembered.  His life and work calls, Paul Richards argues, for a Good, not a Big, society. 

I reckon the 70s are fast becoming the new 60s as the darling decade of scholarly research.  Andrew O'Hagan writes on the 70s style. 

Whew!  Can I have the weekend now? 

There was no Britain today yesterday.  There is a Britain today today, but it's short because I've been pulling Fosters cans out of the garden all morning (not mine, tossers who prefer gardens to bins).  There will be a Britain today tomorrow.  Hope you're confused.

Faisel Rahman asks 'how can we encourage poor people to save?'. 

Jenny Diski is discouraged about politics.

Simone Abram on the other financial crisis.  My heart thrilled to the mention of Leeds.     

Now, I must go, as I'm off to finish writing a seminar paper. 

Is a hedge anti-social?  Or do people become anti-social over hedges?  Leylandii is a popular hedge choice of recent years because it grows fast and dense.  Problem is, with something that grows like that, it takes a vast quantity of maintenance and know-how which belies the quick fix appeal.  And a hedge of epic proportions tends to induce neighbourhood rage of epic proportions.  Hideous hedgery apparently falls under the Anti-social Behaviour Act (though you can't get an ASBO for one, which I guess means they're not equivalent to high-decibel howsyerfather) according to Leo Hickman in the Guardian, noting a fresh outbreak of the 'gret leylandii war' in Plymouth.  These neighbourly is-sues are always interesting (at least, for this anthropologist) because they point to expectations and ideas around space and encroachment.  

On the quite-close-to-my-research-actually front, there's an interesting article from Paul Kingsnorth about scything (h/t Elizaphanian).  As well as an introduction to folks getting their scythe on, there is consideration of one of the central problems in the study of revived traditions: the absence of handing on.  To latin it up a moment, traditio is originally concerned with the handing on of the knowledges of the church, and 'tradition' has both noun and verb forms to describe both the thing being handed on and the act of doing so.  So the problem, particularly for folklore bods, is that if the thing and the act have become separated, can it still be considered tradition?  

And since this is getting a bit lengthy ... Chatwin. Diaries out.  Review.   

Simon Jenkins has been neglected on my RSS-tacular; a sad situation which I've rectified.  Here he is in fine form on the defence budget.  Plus, an article from last month: As Cameron gets radical, the left dozes on planet 1945.