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A cracking Blogpower roundup by Ian from Question That over at Blogpower:

As the saying goes, if it weren’t for the weather the British would be left with nothing to talk about. This is seldom more apparent than when the skies are grey and going outside leaves you soaking wet. Guthrum raises the subject of flood defences, while more prosaically Liz regrets going out without a coat.

Fortunately the saying isn’t entirely true, or this would be a short roundup indeed. There is political polemic from a British libertarian perspective this week from The Last Ditch: Stop trying to make an omelette with a JCB! Until we stop imploring the state to ‘do something’, QUANGOs will never be uprooted (Pub Philosopher). Also on a related note, here is The Tin Drummer on why people with nothing to hide can still have everything to fear.

British party politics: Parliament may be on holiday, but the partisan bloggers are not. Norfolk Blogger finds some common ground between the Liberal Democrats and the SNP. Mike Ion imagines giving this speech to the upcoming Labour conference. Andrew Allison makes a Tory pitch for UKIP supporters. Cornish Democrat takes a Toynbee-esque line on ‘fuel poverty’ with the help of a press release from the Celtic League.

Read it all.

This is the second in the lastest series of Blogpower Roundups, and this is my roundup of some of the current live issues around Civil Liberties. I’ve only been able to cover half of the Blogpower blogs, but I’ll do another one soon with the other half.

While there are differences between bloggers on some questions at the edge on just what comes under Civil Liberties, there’s usually a strong consensus around the right to self-expression, and that restriction of topics that we can write about or the excessive monitoring of online activity are BAD things.

Heather Yaxley has reflected on the whole theme of Defending Blogs.

Colin Campbell’s comment about extra speed cameras in South Australia prompted me to do some digging into just how many speed cameras we have now in the UK. The answer: one hell of a lot - perhaps 10,000 plus all those installed in cars and on motorcyles.

I thought we’d have a lowbrow tabloid-blogging celebration of the pulling qualities of the Pukka Pie - as a balance to Simon Barrow’s high-minded column coming later.