No time for a full post today — I’m on my way down to see Brian Wilson & Al Jardine, on the same bill as Squeeze at a festival. I should be just suffering my way through the last of James Blunt’s set when this goes live. Today is the last day of my mad rushing about for a while, so there’ll be proper posts again starting from tomorrow, when I’ll review both the Brian & Al gig and Mike Love and Bruce Johnston’s set from last week.

Meanwhile, links:

Nick Barlow looks at Conrad Russell’s Intelligent Person’s Guide to Liberalism, a book as good as he says it is.

The truth, if any, behind various legal myths of the “you can shoot a Welsh person in Chester, but not if you’re eating mince pies” variety.

Is this the most right-wing government ever? Millennium thinks not. 

Scalzi on Amazon vs Hachette

And Nicholas Whyte has put together a list of places you can get the short fiction that’s been nominated for the retro-Hugos but isn’t in the packet.