Weekend blogging round up...

I've finally switched to the new blogger system. I didn't want to risk it for months because I was scared of losing everything on the blog. Recently, however, I got to a point where I decided I simply didn't care anymore if the blog disappeared into the ether forever, so I closed my eyes and clicked ...

..and phew, all 560 posts, all your comments and all the links are still here, which is good because now I can do a round up of some of the good stuff that has been written this week. I have not been able to read other people's blogs for about a month, because I have been working flat out, so it's been great to catch up a bit this weekend.

Not Saussure on the extremists within our midst....

'I’ve also asked Ruth Kelly to set up a study group to investigate ways of better integrating motorists — many of whom were born and brought up here — with the community and ways of persuading them that sending letter bombs is very un-British. I would encourage the parents of young motorists to look for the danger signs — a fascination with Top Gear is very suspicious — and to report them to the police as soon as possible for their family’s sake...'
more...

Sunny from Pickled Politics in Comment is Free

'As I stated in November when introducing New Generation Network (NGN), the idea that whole "communities" can speak with one voice is not only disingenuous but counter-productive. It only benefits those willing to constantly shout the loudest and spend time pushing their own agenda...'

Sunny also has a good guest post on Islam and Feminism from Zohra, and a lot of other interesting stuff.

Wife in the North has been consistently excellent since she started blogging, and here is a taster, for those who have yet to discover her writing Mothers and Daughters

'She told me the nurse was going to give her an anemone. I thought this unlikely. The bustling Scottish nurse arrived, not with flowers but with rubber gloves. Mother mine, teeth biting into the cotton pillow and tears falling onto my hand shrieked in silence as the nurse got on with it. Old age smells of shit and shame not Chanel...'

One Violent Crime and the Female Victim (hat-tip: Incurable Hippie)

'Again and again, women are told that we can avoid rape if we don't go out alone, don't get drunk, carry our car keys as a weapon, take self-defence classes, don't dress revealingly, don't talk to strangers, and on and on. We get it. We live it. And we still get raped.Women get raped sober and drunk. They get raped when they're out and when they're home. They get raped wearing short skirts and wearing burqas. They get raped by men they know and by men they don't know. If one woman avoids rape by using her self-defence skills, a woman unable to defend herself gets raped instead. Whatever women do or don't do, men continue to rape them....'

And whilst we are on the subject of rape, please send a prayer or a wish for one of this blog's readers, whom I will call Annabel, ( not her real name) who contacted me this week to tell me about the rape trial she is in the middle of, where the verdict is expected soon. Any raped person who finds the strength within herself to stand up and face her rapist down in court does us all a great service, and I wish her every success in getting the justice and the closure she deserves.