Sorry for lack of actual content – proper posts tomorrow. For now, some links.
First of all, I don’t plan to discuss Brown’s ‘gaffe’ today, where he was polite to a bigot to her face and then grumbled about her behind her back, without realising his mic was still on. It’s the kind of thing that every single politician in Britain has done, and Brown just got caught. It was fun to joke about on Twitter, but it should not have dominated the news in the way it has. This, however, is important. This illustrates exactly why we need to change the rhetoric surrounding immigration. Meanwhile Justin at Chicken Yoghurt shows precisely how disgraceful it is that this disgusting hypocritical war criminal who has destroyed the lives of millions DARES to criticise someone else for bigotry.
(I must look into how you change party policy on immigration, in fact, and work towards getting ours changed. )
David Brothers says what I’ve been saying for a long time about ‘canon’
Laurie Penny reviews a couple of books on the way the Baby Boomers have destroyed their children’s lives.
Tom at It Took Seconds examines John Cage’s 4’33 and also links to this very thorough examination of the piece.
And a good piece from Language Log absolutely demolishing the fallacy that ‘men don’t listen’
Finally, if you’re using Spotify (and yes, unfortunately, the free software clients are still not up to much, so I’m still reliant on the proprietary client – one of only three non-free pieces of software on my machine, along with Inform 7 and the nonfree rar for unpacking cbr files) you can add me to the social whatsists and send me music or something. as well as seeing all my playlists in one place.
Sci-Ence! Justice Leak! 
I’d be happy to get Manchester Gorton Liberal Democrats to promote a motion to Autumn Conference in Liverpool…
That’d be great! Now I just have to think of a positive policy I’d want, rather than just ‘not that”…
Well, the party offer a motion drafting service; you might want to use Act or the LDV members’ forum to discuss options for the motion contents. Basic structure would be something like:
Conference Notes
1. Positive contribution of immigrants according to blah blah blah
2. Racist rhetoric in media such as blah blah blah including unjustified claims foo, bar and baz
Conference Resolves
1. Always to promote the positive benefits of immigration to this country
2. That our immigration policy document X, be amended to remove references to “tough on immigration”
3. That Nick Griffin be refused treatment by NHS staff who cannot trace their ancestry back to before the Battle of Hastings. Which probably makes them Vikings.