It’s been a busy week.

The Scottish Parliament resumed after its summer recess, marking the unofficial start of next year’s Holyrood election campaign, and the Scotland football team returned to international competition, marking the unofficial start of the ‘Reinstate Berti Vogts as Manager’ campaign.

Elsewhere in the real world, this week’s roundup contains posts on men, masculinity and ultra-cool arty calendars. It’s an eclectic mix.

The return of MSPs to Holyrood this week provoked a furious reaction to what has to be one of the biggest issues facing society today. Not reducing the deficit, fighting poverty or meeting the challenge of Scotland’s alcohol culture. No, Green MSP Partick Harvie was the voice for the thoughts of the nation when he tweeted on Monday his great disappointment that Microsoft products have been installed on Scottish Parliament computers. It can only end in tears.

If you want to keep up to date with the errant twitterings of Scotland’s political classes, I’ve posted a rundown of Scotland’s Top Political Tweeters.

But it wasn’t all railing against The Man for our elected representatives this week. In fact, rather than one big issue dominating the Scottish political blogosphere over the last week, there are no real themes which have bridged the political divides. To illustrate the point, on her blog, SNP MSP Ann McLaughin described the timetable for her week in Parliament, while Carron set out her personal manifesto for the Scottish Liberal Democrats. Labour’s Eric Joyce, meanwhile reflected on the chasm between reality and the political debate on drugs, while the Rebel has a plan to see more normal people in parliament. As if.

With the announcement at the beginning of the week that the SNP Government was not going to bring a Bill on an Independence Referendum to Parliament before next year’s election, a myriad of Independence-supporting bloggers debated the hows, whys and wherefores of the issue, mostly with each other. Calum Cashley led the way with his eminently readable treatise for Independence, while Joan McAlpine argued that the Scottish Government could bypass Holyrood and take their case directly to the people. The Burd calls for a rethink. The Lallands Peat Worrier interrogated the legal case for such a referendum, while Love and Garbage weighed in with the counter argument.

(Serious point though – where have all the Scottish Labour bloggers gone? The blogging world needs a new Kez or Yousuf to keep it balanced).

But to be honest, I preferred Love and Garbage’s posts on Hans Moretti or Morcambe and Wise.

Scotland’s football performance this week against Lichtenstein was a different type of comedy. More like John Cleese’s Basil in Fawlty Towers  - the scene gripped  the viewer with tragic, cringeworthy demonstrations of personal awkwardness that was both difficult to watch and impossible to walk away from.

‘Horror’ was a word that came up on some of the post-match posts. Rob at Left Back in the Changing Room questions Craig Levein’s approach, while Alex Massie lays the blame on the national malaise: “we tell them that they’re hopeless and yet demand they achieve great things”. At least Big Rab at the Ben Lomond Free Press made me laugh!

Alex is right – there’s something about football that encapsulates the Scottish national psyche, both the good and the bad. I suppose that’s why another couple of posts caught my eye this week.

Lallands Peat Worrier trawls the tales of the Court of Session to bring us the case of John McCormack’s dismissal from Hamilton Academical, and lays bare the culture of misogyny still prevalent in parts of Scottish life.   

Elsewhere, Ellen tells her tale of sectarianism, tribalism and football, asking: “Could someone tell me how to sort it out and explain it to the children?”.

But don’t be put off just yet with stories of grim social realism, failure in sport and sexism. Here’s the light at the end of the tunnel!

Gillian at Cocktails at Naptime has a guide to communicating with your man. It was so good, I sent a link to it in an email to my wife – who was sitting at the other side of the room  J  

Yeah…OK…Bye highlights a beautiful thing, an Ink Calendar.  Nadine takes up a challenge close to my over-worked heart in Eating My Way Around Edinburgh, and reviews Santini’s, which in my humble view is the best Sports-Centre-Changing-Room-Themed-Restaurant I’ve ever eaten in.

A group of non-profit organisations are participating in #BeGoodBeSocial, a social media get-together to be held next month in Edinburgh. Ross McCulloch sets out the inspiration (and the confirmed line up) in his tribute to #NFPtweetup.

Inspired by Missy M in Roundups passim, I’ve been spending a bit of time this week with the loveliness that is Blipfoto. I can definitely recommend it to those of you who haven’t been, even just for a look around. These are my efforts. After spending far too long looking round the site on Saturday night I had a big list of cool stuff to link to here, but as my laptop died this morning with the links inside, you’ll have to look for yourself. I promise it will be worth it.

There’s been some great stuff written and posted on the Scottish Blogosphere this week – so thanks to those of you who’ve made me laugh, cry and think! Please also accept my apologies to those of you who wrote posts which I’ve not managed to include, I lost a few links in this morning’s Great Laptop Disaster.

Happy blogging.

J

* Alex Massie

Thanks to Duncan for taking a chance on the new guy to edit this week’s Roundup.

With no experience and little instruction, I tuned to Wikipedia for advice. It said that editing “is a practice that includes creative skills, human relations, and a precise set of methods”. Ah well, I should have checked before I volunteered…..

This week in the Scottish blogosphere we’ve had politics, shopping, get-togethers and ‘a wee bit of culture’.

Our ‘wee bit of culture’ provoked a raft of responses on Frank McAveety’s actions at the Scottish Parliament’s Petitions committee this week. To be fair to Frank Mc most of the responses I could find online were, if not sympathetic, definitely not damning. Mr Eugenides was uncharacteristically charitable, while Caron places the Labour MSP’s actions in a wider context. Will Patterson’s response, in sorrow rather than anger, placed the episode in the wider context of the challenge faced by the Scottish Labour Party over the next year. Stuart blames Sandra White. After getting such an easy ride from the blogosphere, it took me 25 minutes of searching to find someone who really sticks the boot into this misguided misogyny online.

So a big round of applause for this week’s feminist idol, Calum Cashley.

Elsewhere in politics, SNP Tactical Voting thoughtfully assesses the challenges that the SNP faces for next year’s Scottish Parliament elections, and poses the question: whether Alex Salmond? James Kelly is still a fan.  Yousuf Hamid’s post last weekend on the perils of fiscal autonomy under the SNP Government prompted Joan McAlpine to put the case for more powers for Holyrood as a means to a fairer Scotland. With the UK government still to bring forward their full proposals for new powers for Scotland, this issue has some way to run.

This week I’ve been mostly obsessing about the World Cup, as have many of you. (For the full authentic World Cup experience while reading this week’s Roundup, you should first click here.)

Rob at Left Back in the Changing Room addresses the big question of the World Cup so far: Why has the TV coverage been so dreadful? and references the outstanding article on the issue by Tom English in this week’s Scotsman on the same subject.

Closer to home, the superb Alex Massie and the Scottish Football Blog both take issue with James Macintyre in the New Statesman whose calls for a end to the English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish football teams seems to have united an otherwise disparate range of football and political bloggers in opposition.

Back in the real world, kind of, I had a great night on Thursday at the Media140 conference at the CCA in Glasgow. I liked Pat Kane’s point on the growth of those of us with ‘extimacy problems’ –when you have problems not sharing. I thought that would be a good phrase to use to an audience of bloggers Pat’s posted his thoughts and notes on social media on his blog, which also has edited highlights of his excellent talk.

The latest in a series of interesting events in the real world which I can’t go to because I already have plans for that day is the ScotGovCamp scheduled for 31st July. I’ll have a drink for you in Berlin folks!

Last, but by no means least, here’s the first in an irregular series of themed sections, catchily entitled:

Other Stuff That John Likes

“These streets will make you feel brand new, the pubs will inspire you! Let’s hear it for Leith Walk, Leith Walk.”

Joan McAlpine goes shopping

Some pictures of poppies

Scotland in the gloaming, the magical time before sunrise or after sunset

Johanna Basford’s Fringe Typeface

So that’s all from me.

If you enjoyed any of the articles featured today, you can subscribe to my Reading List of interesting things on the internet by following me on Twitter.

Happy reading,

John