The Blood is The Life 03-02-2012

• The Sonic Lipstick Sarah-Jane Smith fandom newsletter hangs up it's collective keyboard
  :(
  (tags: doctorwho )
  
  
• Mark Thompson: Is Lib Dem MP gender balance problem exacerbated by FPTP?
  Mark is very good at taking a point that is already well known and finding and collating the evidence to back it up. He's a Lib Dem Fact Check if you like. Here, he gives us the maths and shows his working to prove that actually, Lib Dem gender balance is better than both the other two main parties, and unlike them, we've never stooped to quotas. Now, if only we could make such progress on other diversity issues, while maintaining the lead on gender....
  (tags: )
  
  
• Trust Your Gut
  Jim Hines demonstrates his awesome. Again.
  (tags: )
  
  
• Amy Reeder shows pages in process for Batwoman #6
  Beautiful art from Amy Reeder
  (tags: comics )
  
  
• Update on the Komen brouhaha
  Miss Diane shows her activisty side.
  (tags: feminism )
  
  
• BBC Comedy Blog: Comedy Talent Search
  Fancy writing a sitcom? Now's your chance
  (tags: comedy )
  
  
• Andrew Ducker has a fabulous idea for phone functionality
  (tags: phones )
  
• We face a return to Dickensian Britain
  I find this very hard to disagree with :(
  (tags: politics )
  
  
• I swear to god I will lose my mind if I hear the “sex sells” fallacy one more time...
  This!
  (tags: feminism )
  
  

If anyone is wondering what I think about the forced cabinet reshuffle...

... it's mostly bored resignation that in the midst of mouthing off about diversity, Clegg promotes two white middle class middle aged cisgendered het men, rather than one of the vastly more capable women he has available to him. I can't bring myself to be angry about it, like Caron is. I just don't have the energy any more. My irony meter went sproing a long time ago. It's like the fact that while the Welfare Reform Bill was going through Cameron was hosting a party for Children in Need. Because there's going to be so many more of them, now they've forced the Welfare Reform BIll through.

Of course, the fact that it's Ed Davey who has been promoted to Huhne's job is, as the fabulous Epps points out, just the polish on the turd.

The stench of hypocrisy adhering to the leadership of my party is really getting pungent now. I didn't get into politics to make the disabled suffer for no good reason, or to cause people weaker than me pain just because I could, and I didn't do it to pay lipservice to diversity while all the time maintaining the status quo either. If I wanted to do that I'd have become a member of the Cornerstone Group of the Tories.

I didn't do that. I joined the Lib Dems. And increasingly, these days, I'm wondering why I bothered. I keep coming back to this one thing: what's the point of a democratic conference if the parliamentarians just ignore it? I'd like to hear a convincing answer to that.