top tips for Tuesday

The ebullition having subsided I have drank off the potion, and my transformation into a popular-culture blogger carries on apace, although I'm working tomorrow therefore the potion's nothing stronger than a rather weak cup of tea. So I'm kicking off a new series of posts, due to run most Tuesdays, looking at different blogs. I'm starting with stuff (mostly) from blogs on my blogroll, so there's a lot of emphasis on the seasonal events that have just happened. (So I've got the top tips, but having been too hooked on the Christmastime TV schedule, specifically Sister Act 2 and Day of the Triffids, I've just waved goodbye to Tuesday!)

The first link however, has only a tenuous connection with Christmas, in that its subject penned a best-selling Christmas song. I'm not a big fan of the man who wrote Working Class Hero while a millionaire living in a Home Counties mansion, so my jaw hit the floor when I read a post by John Smeaton, director of SPUC (Society for the Protection of Unborn Children), who's found footage where Lennon and Yoko Ono reveal their belief that overpopulation is "a myth". This was 1972, when Ehrlich's The Population Bomb had whole governments shaking in their boots, so I must (reluctantly) give a hat-tip to Dr Winston O' Boogie. And how well-done of John to find the clip.
The inspiration for this feature is Iain Dale's Daley Dozen. The patron saint of political bloggers is also a contributor to Conservative History Journal, whoser Christmas blog is about Dickens; not the ubiquitous Christmas Carol, but the Christmas scene from The Pickwick Papers.
Linda of Don't Poke the Baby is a photographer and Roman Catholic home-schooling Mom living in the US, and a strong pro-lifer; her blog is a valuable and fascinating record of life in the southern States - brilliant family pics in this one! (The pic to the right is from her blog header and is of a pro-life gathering in Washington DC.)
Risa from Isramom returned to the US from Israel to celebrate Chanukah, and posts some super pics of a white Christmas in New Jersey and New York, including the "world's largest menorah".
The Rt Revd David Thompson of the Anglican Diocese of Ely (which includes Cambridge) meditates on the martyrdom of St Thomas Becket, 12th-century Archbishop of Canterbury, assassinated by four knights who arguably misinterpreted Henry II's cri-de-cœur to be rid of the turbulent priest. WARNING: Edward Grim's contemporary account, which is part of the post, is the stuff of nightmares.
Fr Tim Finigan of The Hermeneutic of Continuity is a Parish Priest and lecturer in Sacramental Theology who practices Mass in the Tridentine Rite (said in Latin with the priest and congregation facing the same way). Here he discusses a section of the Pope's Christmas sermon about the precedence of the liturgy in Christian life. There's some sad news in the comments: the death of David Taylor MP of the Labour Party, on of the staunchest pro-lifers in Parliament.
This is PR consultant and writer Ellee Seymour on memories of a very special Nativity service in Wicken, a nearby Old Fen.
Straying from my blogroll, I've just viewed a tweet from Revd Bosco Peters, who posted a link to buzzmarketing daily's post on the most important tweets of the year - including a tweet from space, one from Barack Obama and, of course the famous pic of Flight 1549 lying in the Hudson after being successfully ditched by pilot Chesley Sullenberger; Twitter had arrived with a bang, and the internet was changed forever.
Penultimately, Yasin Akgun writes on The Conservative Blog (which is, confusingly, about conservatism with a small "c") about the possibility of David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, considering the "nuclear option" should a hung Parliament - in which no party has a majority - occur in next year's British general election, and another possibility: that Labour, running on ideology in the absence of ideas, may be tempted to rig with the vote.
And lastly, here's Cameron himself with his New Year message, on the blog of the virtual prelate Cranmer.