LABOUR LOSES BOTTLE

Council tax revaluation to go, according to the Guardian. Very brave, I don't think. It's all falling apart quicker than I'd imagined in my worst dreams.

ICH BIN EIN BERLINER

I worked on the first edition of the Berliner Guardian last night as a sub on the comment page and I am massively impressed by the redesign, which is stunning.

Typographically, it’s a peach. I’ve always thought straight-down-the-line slab-serif fonts were a bit late-1970s/early-1980s (remember when Rockwell Bold ruled OK?).

But the new Guardian’s Egyptian is flexible and quite exquisite. It’s back to Century Schoolbook and then on some. Very, very nice, an amazingly attractive reassertion of modernist typography. The only place it doesn’t quite work for me so far is the drop caps, which look rather like the default font when the computer is set to Courier . . .

As for layout and page design – wow. Great use of white space, restraint where it's needed, very few problems for subs trying to sort it out (mostly) – a triumph.

Well done comrades!

ONE KENNY MILLER

Edvard Grieg! Henrik Ibsen! Edvard Munch! Roald Amudsen! Thor Heyerdahl! Can you hear me, Thor Heyerdahl ! Your boys took one hell of a beating! Your boys took one hell of a beating!

REDS UNDER THE BEDS

There was a piece by Richard Norton-Taylor in the Guardian yesterday on the latest releases from the National Archives, which mentioned in passing some MI5 material on the late Betty Reid, the Communist Party apparatchik who from the 40s until the 70s was most responsible for rooting out deviationists from the CPGB. Norton-Taylor didn't make a lot of it, but to me it looks like the most comprehensive documentation yet made public of the security services' surveillance of the CP in the middle years of the 20th century. I've already spent two hours downloading and reading bits and bobs, and I've still got hours more fun to come. More on this anon.