Six of the Best 584

"The UK has gone further down the road of co-opting its citizens into immigration policing than most European countries," says Frances Webber.

Tesco's marketing strategy involves making us feel warm towards farms that do not exist, explains Tom Levitt.

Charlotte Gill is not impressed by a Leeds primary school's decision to ban the game of tag: " I find all of this safeguarding a great shame. It shows how childhood, which should be a free and exploratory time, is now being over-policed."

JohnBoy pays tribute to Barry Hines. Among the facts he is uncovers is that Hines once played in a Loughborough Colleges team alongside Dario Gradi and Bob Wilson.

"Though the origin of Easter eggs and Easter bunnies can be traced back to ancient times, the Victorians did not begin to celebrate Easter in the way that we know now until the late 19th century. It was then that Easter bunnies became fashionable." Some fascinating social history from Mimi Matthews.

Eric Grunhauser on the stave churches of Norway, which combine Christian architecture with Nordic designs and the motifs of a Viking great hall.

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Just because they retweet you, it doesn't mean they have understood you

As it stands this evening, the Labour leadership is against bombing Syria but in favour of bombing Britain

— Jonathan Calder (@lordbonkers) November 26, 2015

It's nice to be widely retweeted, but does it mean that all those people have understood what you have said?

A new paper highlighted by the British Psychological Society's Research Digest blog suggests it does not:

The researchers based at Peking University and Cornell University say that the very option to share or repost social media items is distracting, and what's more, the decision to repost is itself a further distraction and actually makes it less likely that readers will have properly understood the very items that they chose to share.

You can read about the two studies on the Research Digest, but I have observed a small example of this phenomenon myself today.

Last night I blogged about Desborough Town Council and its decision to increase its precept by more than 400 per cent.

If you read that post you will see I express some sympathy for this decision - "If ever a town gave the visitor the impression that it needs some money spent on it, that town is Desborough" - yet every person who has retweeted my tweets about this post appears to be a Labour supporter.

Did they even click through to the post before retweeting?

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Lord Bonkers' Diary: My old friend Rising Star

A second day in the US with Lords Bonkers. Today he meets an old friend who once featured prominently in these diaries.

My old friend Rising Star

It seems the Red Indian influence remains strong in New Rutland to this day. Who should I meet when I arrived in Gladstone, the state capital, but my old friend Rising Star, at one time the Liberal Democrat MP for Winchester?

We went for a firewater and he told me that he had given up politics and returned to the trade of his forefathers: he is dealing in animal skins ("Um nice little earner.") When I asked him what he had made from afar of the travails of our party he replied with characteristic sagacity: "Heap big trouble."

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10

Earlier this week in Lord Bonkers' Diary...

• Do you know New Rutland?

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Mill Hill East to Edgware

Another video about a lost line from Londonist.

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