Over Hill and Dale

Two nice people have been nice to me in the last week or so.

(1) Dave Hill, the journalist and novelist who blogs at Temperama, has asked me to write a post about England. This isn’t something I usually think about that much, but when I have, it’s been in an uncertain, puzzled sort of way – which itself is telling. Many thanks to Dave for giving me a nudge to think in an interesting (to me anyway) direction, and for propagating the contents of my head. The piece is here.

And a selection of Dave’s fine Guardian CiF work is here.

(2) Iain Dale, Conservative blogger and bookseller, has rated Freemania the 27th best Labour-supporting blog in the country. Or possibly the world. The ratings are of course his own subjective opinion, so it’s not as if I’m now officially demonstrably brilliant or anything. But compliments are always welcome.

I grew up in a Labour family in the 1980s, and was bemused but relieved to find at university that many Conservatives are actually decent people who have little or no inclination to bite the heads off poor people’s babies. Iain looks to be one of these.