Early Morning Barbecue

I awoke in the early hours of Saturday morning to find the bedroom bathed in pulsating blue light. Cat leaped from the sack to peer out the window - it was a fire engine! How exciting! We both hurried to the back bedroom and was greeted by a crappy old van happily blazing away. How we oooed as the front tyres exploded, and aaahed as the flames yielded to the smothering embrace of foam. After a short scuffle with the firefighters the fire flickered and died and the good people of my block of terraces could retire to their mushrooms to resume their nocturnal forays into dream land. But eager to record the aftermath for posterity (and to prove I have a real existence outside the internet), atop this post you will find one of my photos.

Frequent visitors will notice a few subtle changes to AVPS in the links department. First up are various sociology blogs I've managed to turn up in my internet wanderings. This list of links will I hope bolster AVPS's tenuous claim to be a sociology blog.

I've also taken time out to compile a list of establishment blogs, comprising sundry Blairites, Tories, LibDems and other fellow travellers of the bourgeoisie. Here you'll find people like Iain Dale, apparently the left's pet Tory; the increasingly unhinged Guido; David Miliband - one of the few Blairites I actually like; the freaks of Harry's Place and much else besides.

Counter-hegemonies have had some attention lavished upon them too. I welcome John Angliss, Labour of Love, Leanne Wood, Leftwing Criminologist, Mike Marqusee, Never Trust a Hippy, Red Squirrel's Lair, Renegade Eye, The Pleasures of the Popular, and The Soul of Man Under Capitalism to the AVPS blog roll. Also, applying the Norman Geras rule of bumping off blogs that have remained quiet for a couple of months, it's goodbye to Bolshevichka and JJB Fightback (the latter having ceased trading completely). I hereby serve warning to Air Pollution and The Revolution Decides - you're for the chop if you don't post soon!

Lastly on the links front, I've added the new site of the CWI Scotland to the socialist websites section.

And that's your lot! This week you can expect posts on Michel Foucault, the Third Way, and Paul Virilio along with the usual supply of incisive commentary, reportage and polemic ;)

PS Forgot to add the Obsolete blog to the above roll call. Sorry comrade!