Hi folks! Conference season is now well and truly upon us, and it began last weekend with the arrival of the LibDems in Bournemouth. Caron had her reflections here.

However, not everyone was impressed with the week – and non-LibDems found all sorts of things to look at, such as Vince Cable’s proposed ‘mansion tax’, which left both Dave and Subrosa cold.

Nick Clegg didn’t go down too well, either. James was not impressed with his attempt to woo Green supporters. Fitaloon didn’t buy into the LibDem Leader’s Prime Ministerial aspirations, and Tom Harris was amused at the clash between Clegg’s speech and President Obama’s speech at the UN General Assembly.

Meanwhile, the Scottish LibDems had a small fracas over the independence referendum, with Kevin Lang, LibDem PPC in Edinburgh North & Leith, suggesting that the party should drop its opposition to one being held. His SNP opponent, Calum Cashley, notes Tavish Scott’s reaction, while Jeff, who lives in that constituency, points out that Scott’s smackdown is weakened somewhat by LibDem MEP George Lyon echoing the call. As it happens, Caron is what could best be described as cautiously sympathetic to the position put forward by Messrs. Lang and Lyon.

Speaking of the referendum, BellgroveBelle hails the SNP proposal to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in it, but Stuart Winton wonders how that squares with the SNP policy to restrict alcohol off-sales to ages 21 and over.

Now to a vote that (we assume) is closer than the referendum, and to the headline story: the Glasgow North East By-Election, and the candidacy of that famous banjo-er of terrorists, John Smeaton. His campaign has not got off to a flying start, and Joan McAlpine, Ideas of Civilisation and Shuggy all stick the boot in, as Smeato himself might say. Stuart Winton points out that the Jury Team, who are backing his candidacy, appear to have abandoned their open primary model in favour of bankrolling a campaign by someone the general public has heard of (though no one as yet has pointed out that fielding someone of the blue persuasion in a primarily green part of Glasgow may not be the best tactic). Yousuf, meanwhile, notes that the bookies still favour him over the Tory or LibDem candidates.

Staying on the subject, it’s worth reminding people that 1) Tommy Sheridan is a candidate in the By-Election, and that 2) is still awaiting trial for perjury. Yousuf looks at the implications of the former for the result, while Joan McAlpine notes that Tommy has sacked his lawyer, Donald Findlay QC.

Staying in Glasgow, the row over GARL and the upgrades to Dalmarnock Station continues to rumble on, with a spat developing between the Scottish Government and Glasgow City Council. Anne McLaughlin isn’t impressed by Council Leader Stephen Purcell’s approach to the discussions, while Duncan is uncomfortable with Labour playing a Glaswegian Regionalist card.

Elsewhere, the resignation of Major General Andrew Mackay over the Government’s approach to the war in Afghanistan, with Fitaloon, Subrosa and Andrew Reeves all unhappy with developments there. Jess the Dog, meanwhile, flags up the point that a major factor in Mackay’s decision was the delay in a major offensive against the Taliban due to Gordon Brown’s visit.

With the second Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty approaching, Jeff takes a look at events there.

Andrew Reeves, meanwhile, is angered by comments from Ali Abdussalam Treki, Libyan Minister and President of the UN General Assembly, about homosexuality.

Elsewhere, Neil Craig has been daring Liberal Democrats to respond to his accusation that they supported war crimes against the Serbs in the 1999 air strikes against Yugoslavia, and goes on to list a number of LibDem bloggers who haven’t published his comments regarding the matter on their blog.

Closer to home, Baroness Scotland – the UK Government’s Attorney General – is in the soup over having hired a woman who shouldn’t have even been in the country as a home help. Pelters are duly given to the Baroness from Angus Nicolson, Bill Cameron, Fitaloon and Jess the Dog.

And in the week before the Labour Party Conference in Brighton, Charles Clarke’s mouth has once again gone into overdrive and has issued the now repetitive call for Gordon Brown to quit. Kez issues her own call for Charles Clarke to put a sock in it.

In other news, Shuggy is not happy with how the Curriculum for Excellence is (or not) developing. Meanwhile, Yousuf wonders if sending your kids to private school is consistent with Labour values.

Meanwhile, Neil Craig asked how much money the British National Space Centre is putting into X-Prizes. As part of the BNSC’s response, he was invited to respond to a consultation on the funding and management of the UK’s extra-terrestrial activities. So he did.

Lallands Peat Worrier has a thoughtful post on the powers of Ministers to delay implementing legislation.

Stephen reports on the activities of the Menie Liberation Front.

Did you know that it’s a year since Iain Gray took over as Leader of Labour’s MSPs? Time flies. LPW has a retrospective, while Chris reckons George Foulkes is doing a better job of keeping Labour in the limelight.

It’s also a year since the birth of BBC Alba: Iain M. Hepburn takes a look at one of the channel’s biggest weaknesses.

Speaking of TV, broadcasting has been the latest theme discussed as part of the National Conversation. Dave isn’t impressed. Kez is horrified at the possible threat to Eastenders. Personally, if I were in charge, I wouldn’t just pull the plug on Eastenders, I’d actually make distributing the show a criminal offence, but different strokes for different folks.

Over at Dear Scotland, there’s a plausible attempt to apply the Glasgow and Blantyre Coma Scales to football fans, using the Kilmarnock v Rangers game as the corpus.

Tom Harris has an analysis of Parliamentary twittering.

Clairwil isn’t impressed with the overreaction to Kurt Cobain’s image being used in Guitar Hero.

Finally, over at Scotland in the Gloaming, here’s a soothing picture of the Knapps in the morning.

So that’s your lot for this week. If you want to send in a link for next week’s Roundup, you can use the dooberry on the right, or send us an e-mail to scottishroundup@gmail.com. You can also follow us on Twitter: @ScottishRoundup. Bye-de-bye!

For our first unified political and non-political blogging roundup, the main story is the Glasgow Airport Rail Link, or rather the fact that there isn’t going to be one.

Jeffrey Breslin notes the opposition to the axing of the rail link. Neil Craig thinks a better rail link could be built for a lot less money — £20 million instead of £115 million.

Yousuf Hamid thinks it is Edinburgh favoritism:

Following on from the unfair capital supplement that Edinburgh were given despite marching figures it’s another example of Glasgow getting a raw deal. I will blog on Glasgow later but let’s be under no illusions. Yesterday’s decision on the rail link and the 1000 jobs that would have come with it was not about Westminster cuts but the Scottish Governments priorities. And here’s why.

But J Arthur MacNumpty points out that the Greens should welcome this:

Why are the Greens complaining? I’d have thought that given their hostility to air travel, far from making it easier to get to Glasgow Airport, they’d be campaigning for it to become the most inaccessible place in Scotland!

And Lallands Peat Worrier says the rhetoric being thrown around is a bit over the top:

I merely wanted to suggest that the reaction and vocabulary of political opposition must be coloured by the themes I meandered through above. Swinney Denies Anti-Glasgow Bias … Outrage as Swinney Swings his Budget Axe on Glasgow … Quoth Steven Purcell, it represented a “dagger in the heart of the city” … a “clear anti-Glasgow agenda”. While this may resonate with constituents with a particular interest, I’d be terrifically surprised if most of the population found the figure of a hard-done-by Glasgow terribly charismatic.

Moving on to other subjects, Colin Campbell has a rather pretty photograph of Gourock by twilight. On the subject of photos, here’s one of Port Charlotte lighthouse on Islay.

Big Rab is just as good at picking the lottery as Derren Brown.

On the subject of people called Brown, Jess The Dog reviews Dan Brown’s latest book, The Lost Symbol. The verdict:

Brown is a good writer [but] his books could be far better with a bit more effort.

Tom Harris is not a fan of Churchill insurance:

A few years later I made a mistake: I switched our home insurance to Churchill. As soon as this latest disaster happened, I phoned their helpline, to be told that no-one there could help (it was a Sunday night, after all) but that someone would call the next day. Sure enough, at quarter to nine the next morning, I received a call from a very young girl whose script in front of her told me that I was not covered for the damage to the ceiling – even before I had the chance to explain that I didn’t know the cause of the damage.

Caron talks about the Liberal Democrats’ Real Women policy paper — you know, the one that wants to ban airbrushed pictures of women in magazines:

The Debate was about the Real Women policy paper which has attracted widespread media attention. Its design has attracted a bit of criticism. Liberal Democrats are used to having their policies espoused in long, closely typed policy papers, set out in two columns, a bit like the Bible. This one is more like Bella, or Heat than that – but I think it’s good that we’ve produced something in a format that others might actually want to read. Jo Swinson herself suggested leaving spare copies in doctors’ surgeries or giving them to a friend to spread the word rather than helping your local authority meet its recycling target.

Hi everyone. Yes, it’s true. After a year, the non-political roundup experiment is being brought to an end. Most agreed that it was better to now re-merge the two roundups, so we will be reverting back to one roundup every Sunday covering the whole blogosphere.

In the meantime, though, there is still the past month of excellent blogging to get through, although it is a bit on the short side. Something to do with it being summer. Sort of. And the transition to the new way of doing things. Err. On we go.

Iain Hepburn outlined a stunning PR FAIL. The original post has now been removed, but you’ll get the idea.

As always, photobloggers have captured the imagination of those who have nominated blogs this month. There is this “Almost Daily Photo-Diary of Caithness”. If it rains later on this month, get in the pub. And watch out for this cheeky chappie.

Anas has a lengthy essay about his increasing disillusionment with music.

Something that would certainly make me disillusioned with music would be seeing U2 live. Gary Marshall wrote about his experience watching them perform at Hampden.

Of course, U2 weren’t the only ones putting on a dodgy performance at Hampden this month. Cruachan at Loose Change sums up all there is to say about Scotland’s World Cup challenge. For a slightly more lengthy take, check out Craigblog. For a very in-depth analysis, read Left Back in the Changing Room.

Richard Leyton muses on memory — a funny old thing, I agree.

For a change, Angry Steve was the calm one in this road rage incident.

I’ve been munching on a mince pie while compiling this roundup. Glad I’m not on my own in the early festivities. Mike Smith has noticed shopping channels preparing for Christmas in the middle of August.

On the back of the claim that haggis was actually invented in England, Finally Woken looked at Scottish attempts to claim customs as its own, and compares them with apparent attempts of Malaysia to claim Indonesian symbols as its own.

Redjotter has seen an application for swimming lessons which asks for the child’s name. How is that supposed to make adults wanting lessons feel?

Huttonian wrote about an old and unique bicycle.

And that’s it! And that’s the end of NoPoScoBloRo forever. Sorry the last one was a bit rubbish.

But please still get those nominations coming in, because the next time you can get interesting blogging featured will be this Sunday! So please do utilise the contact from on the right, or email us at scottishroundup@gmail.com. Thanks!

Well the kneejerkism of Labour now looks like making Edinburgh’s Museum of Childhood become a museum of modern culture as two stories this week seem to mark the possible end of childhood as bloggers know it.

The news that the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) is to bring in Criminal Record Bureau (CRB) checks for all adults who are regularly in touch with children sparked uproar across the blogopshere. Subrosa, a grandmother, called it the ‘anti-paedophile’ database, a way to get details of one in four of us. Giving the mother’s perspective is Caron surely as she writes these plans should be “such a relief” actually “err, actually, no. [She'll] despair of it, in fact”. Jeff gave us five reasons why CRB checks will not be an effective tool against Paedophiles. I asked where are we going to find the police time and resources to carry out these checks and keep them updated, plus are they that accurate really as in the last year the number of errors doubled. There wasn’t much initially in favour of the scheme until Tom Harris trundled up saying he’d “take parents’ views on this issue much more seriously than those without children”, so no objectivity allowed then.

As if the possible difficulty of children to be involved in clubs, talented young chess players and bowlers having to wait until they are 18 to join and compete being examples cited, the Government then also wanted to change factual children’s TV. With a jerk of the other knee they are doing away with under 14’s appearing on TV unless they are singing, acting or dancing. What about shows like Blue Peter or Newsround etc I wrote.

The other big story to take the Political Blogosphere by storm was the fact that when Big Ben strikes 10 on Election Night we won’t get a result at some point through the night. News that more local authorities are looking at carrying out their counts on Friday in the day sparked a lot of response. Malc led the call to save Election Night, Tom Harris gives some reasons for a quick count, I give some different ones eventually (scroll to the end). Caronon the other hand recognising the personal fabulousness of the event isn’t too bothered if we know the final result by lunch or tea time on the Friday. So when we get to see the mano a mano cage fightbetween UKIP’s Nigel Farage and speaker Jon Bercow, which James thinks may see a Speaker defeated at the ballot box, is up in the air. But at least Labour and the Tories can be relieved that whatever time of night or day the count takes place there will still be indication of how well they are doing on the swingometer; not so fast says James.

Away from Westminster and unto Holyrood. Mr Eugenidespoints out how some pubs, including Parliament’s local, are getting round the new licensing law restriction on happy hour drinks’ pricing. Also suggesting a cunning plan for the MSPs who voted for. Still on the booze Underdog Bites Upwards has a honey I shrunk the blogger moment when he wonders have the aisles and bottles got bigger.

Caron was in her sick bed the other week when the legislative programme for this session was announced. Having emerged she asks why of all their election pledges is an almost certainly doomed push for referendum on independence the one they want to keep pushing? Jess the Dog just thinks Lord Foulkes’ latest questions on defence are just pathetic.

It may have been a big week for football in Scotland but not everyone was that bovvered. Jeff picks up on the Scotsman’s story seeming to take the view that it is important to be aware of constituents concerns for the national team, Duncan however praises human politicians who aren’t ‘identikit robots’ for the sake of politics. Mr Eugenides though points to the fact that ignorance-pointer-out-in-chief Frank McAveety use of the word Liberal is even more out of touch, by 21 years to be exact.

James tried in vainto lure the top Scottish Lib Dem bloggers to the Green Party. Though there was a range of Green issues raised by both sides. The public, or at least the writers to the Scotsman’s letter’s page, have picked up on compulsory purchase orders and Trumps intended use of them. Then there is also the news that the SNP’s green credentials, not to mention their child friendliness (this week’s theme), are in doubt following proposals of a road tax on bicycles. There is also a closer look at aircraft emmissions.

Neil Craig highlights some of the joys of modular housing. 

Clairwil points out that phenomenally protestors can sometimes be in the wrong place, at the wrong time for the wrong result.

You’ve noticed I’ve not mentioned Megrahi this week but Dark Lochnagar has a rather tough stance to take on Britain’s 9-11 style plotters.

Good news for us Scots though as Andrew Reeves points out. Not only are the Weggie men well endowed but we’re a well groomed nation.

Finally congratulations to Caron’s Musings on celebrating a birthday this week. Was it really three years ago I got asked, “How do I start a blog?”, tempus fugit.

Well that is it for this week, by the time Cabalamat compiles the next Political round-up I’ll be in a new decade as well as down in Bournemouth as party conference season continues. In the meantime there is a NoPoScoBloRo midweek so keep those nominations coming either through the nominate tool on the right, or an e-mail to scottishroundup@gmail.com. Also Twitter users follow us @ScottishRoundup.

Hi everyone. I’ve been having a think about the direction of this website, as I do from time to time. I want to put my thoughts to the readers because ultimately it’s not my website, it’s the Scottish blogosphere’s so the choice is up to you.

I am wondering about the separation of political and non-political roundups, which has been running for about a year. Originally I decided to separate them in an attempt to ramp up coverage of the wider blogosphere. In that, I think it has worked. But the flipside of that is that it has been ghettoised into its own corner. Perhaps it is time to go back to having one roundup per week, covering the whole blogosphere.

I can think of some advantages and disadvantages.

The separation between political and non-political is artificial in many ways, and it is difficult to know where to draw the line. Moreover, I feel that leaving a month between non-political roundups is too long. Sometimes great posts get nominated when the next roundup is not due for four weeks, which is quite a long time.

On the other hand, when a roundup has to be produced every week and only a few nominations come in, it usually falls to me and whoever is editing that week’s roundup to find interesting material to feature. I only have a limited amount of time to do this, which is why the roundup ended up often focussing on the same few blogs over and over again (something I promised I wouldn’t let happen when I set up Scottish Roundup).

It is so easy to fall into the trap of covering mainly politics. The news cycle normally provides a major focal point or a couple of major topics to cover. That allows the roundup to demonstrate the thinking of bloggers and the connections between blogs, contrasting different viewpoints with one another. That is a lot more difficult to achieve with non-political writing, because few writers will tackle the same subject in a week.

But I think these days we get enough nominations to help avoid that. Plus, it seems to me as though we have made good traction in reaching out to the wider Scottish blogosphere, not just political bloggers.

The idea behind Scottish Roundup was never to focus exclusively on politics, although that was always going to be a major part of it. But, by accident, it started to fall into a trap of covering just politics. Now I am worried that it is falling into a trap of a different kind.

That is why I am thinking about moving back to having one weekly roundup covering the whole blogosphere, but with a more conscious attempt at integrating issues outside of politics. Perhaps one idea would be to have a special roundup when there is a major news event (such as the recent release of Megrahi).

What do you all think?

Another idea I am thinking about is to bring in more features, so that the website is not just about roundups. (Obviously the name of the website is a bit of an issue, but we can think about that later.) I am considering making this a website about Scottish blogging (and podcasting / citizen journalism / etc) in general, perhaps with articles about issues affecting bloggers, profiles of bloggers and so on. Is that a good idea?

As you can probably tell, I am quite confused about what to do. But that is why I wrote this post. So please let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment or by emailing me at scottishroundup@gmail.com if you prefer. Thanks!