Yes, I acknowledge that this is not a huge shock - Tesco isn't that far away - but coffee is at the heart of something valuable to our small village. I've mentioned our monthly coffee mornings, organised by the Parochial Church Council, and they have been at the core of building a social life in, and for, the village. However, thanks to Ros, something new was brought to my attention. The Rural Coffee Caravan Information Project was launched as a means of reaching out to small, relatively isolated communities, providing information about services, or bringing people together. And yes, it ...
I was delighted to hand the keys over to the new tenants of the first new Council Housing in a generation. The new homes pictured above are in Gracemount and the ones in this picture are a modern take on the colony style flats we have seen elsewhere in the city in places such as Shandon and Stockbridge. The project is ongoing and is to be extended to two more areas to add to the three original areas. I am so proud that we are building council housing again. It demonstrates the pragmatic approach to housing that the Lib Dem ...
I recently signed an e-petition to accelerate the Liberal Democrat proposals to raise the tax-free threshold to £10,000. Not only do I believe in tax cuts for those who are less well off, but I also appreciate that I can participate in this e-petition and affect governmental procedures. You can add your name at http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/28640 Another e-petition was set up by Anne Williams whose son died at Hillsborough. I would certainly have added my name if I had heard about it, as according to the people around him Kevin died at around 4pm and according to the authorities he died ...
Not having time to blog having other fish to fry, as it were, I just thought that these following stories from professional sources might well provide, interesting reading. This one for instance I assume, will not just trouble conservatives but councillors from all parties particularly those living some distance from Maidstone, it seems that in tax terms, councillors are easy pickings for HMRC who are seeking to get back taxes, for travel expenses, it's been well documented that senior tax officials are happy to accept hospitality, from large corporations, who are even more happy to rob the British economy of ...
it was sad to learn of Emlyn Hooson's death this morning, and I have been thinking of him not only as a great figure in the politics of Wales and the UK, but as a great personal friend over half a century. One of the first engagements I undertook after my own by-election was to speak at Emlyn's by-election in Llanidloes, and we were close allies in the successful campaign to revive the Liberal Party in the sixties, We holidayed together in Brittany, where we spoke for devolution in the French political system, and Emlyn taught me the few sentences ...
As a tribute to Marie Colvin, the Sunday Times journalist who was killed in Homs today, her newspaper has made her final report freely available rather than keeping it behind the firewall. I think this is a fitting gesture. When Whitney Houston was found dead her record company Sony immediately raised the price of her recordings. Though I have no strong opinion in the matter and this move was quickly reversed, it strikes me that this was rather a crass thing to do. So there you are: two moral judgements about a private company's pricing decision. There is nothing very ...
The American philosopher Theodore Roszak was asked some time ago what he thought should be done to improve American education. He suggested that we find out what Bill Gates thought and do the opposite. I thought of that today when my eldest came home from a special session at primary school when everyone was asked to bring in their DS units to play maths games. He is seven, and he doesn't have one - as his classmates pointed out rather forcefully. There is already something of a conspiracy to get our children hooked into screens. It has been pretty hard ...
Lord Hooson, who died yesterday, was leader of the Welsh Liberal Party from its inception in 1966 until 1979, and MP for Montgomery from 1962 to 1979. He won the seat at a by-election following the death of the former Liberal leader Clement Davies and retained it through five general elections. The Shropshire Star has a photograph of him being carried through the streets of Welshpool after the constituency's result was declared in October 1974 election. As his Daily Telegraph obituary makes clear, he was not afraid of controversy: After Liberal losses in the 1970 election, Hooson told the Liberal ...
With the City Council both freezing its Council Tax and freezing the allowances paid to City Councillors it is troubling that the County Council is still running a "public consultation" exercise on the current levels of remuneration for County Councillors. As you know the previous "Independent Remuneration Panel" (IRP) advised the Council that Councillors were being drastically underpaid and deserved an absolutely obscene 25% pay rise - a pay rise the vast majority of the Conservative group then voted to accept. The Panel was ruled to have been illegal constituted and the pay rise was consequently thrown out. This is ...
With the City Council both freezing its Council Tax and freezing the allowances paid to City Councillors it is troubling that the County Council is still running a "public consultation" exercise on the current levels of remuneration for County Councillors. As you know the previous "Independent Remuneration Panel" (IRP) advised the Council that Councillors were being drastically underpaid and deserved an absolutely obscene 25% pay rise - a pay rise the vast majority of the Conservative group then voted to accept. The Panel was ruled to have been illegal constituted and the pay rise was consequently thrown out. This is ...
As promised, here is what happened at my meeting with Jenny Willott MP. Because so much was discussed, I'm going to be splitting up my account of it into different blogposts each dealing with a particular topic as well as a summary blogpost at the end. This blogpost covers the time limiting of contributory ESA and the Work Capability Assessments. I met Jenny Willott in her office in Portcullis House. Also present was her young son (who spent the duration of the meeting fidgeting on Jenny's lap) and Giles Derrington, Jenny's Parliamentary Researcher, who knows the details of the Welfare ...
The word 'sustainable' has sadly been abused over recent years. When someone struggles to defend or oppose something they simply add 'it is not sustainable' or 'only sustainable option'. It also sums up why the Old Common site is not ideal, but I will use it, rather then abuse it, by explaining why. As a fan, football is all about skill and passion. That last minute wonder free kick winner.
There are two bits of empty land on Booker Avenue where it has a junction with Greenhill Road. One is where the old garage used to be and the other, which is grassed over, used to have an old people's home on it. I'm often asked about what's happening with these and over the years there have been loads of suggestions, including a health centre. Well the news for the grassed over bit is that there are plans to build flats there. South Liverpool Housing has been given the chance to put some flats up which will be for sale ...
Wed 22nd
19:08
Rowan Atkinson's 'creative freedom' fallacy... Because James Bond and Countryfile aren't actually th...
The Guardian reports today: The BBC should have been free to drop Miriam O'Reilly from Countryfile without attracting any accusations of age discrimination, according to comedian Rowan Atkinson, in a controversial intervention into the debate about the lack of older women on television. It appears, though, that Rowan Atkinson has confused two concepts: 'creative freedom' and 'unjustifiable discrimination'. Slightly bizarrely he's chosen to expose his confusion by writing a letter to BBC Radio 4′s The Media Show: Atkinson said O'Reily's complaint was no more sensible than "Pierce Brosnan complaining that he was sacked from the role of James Bond for ...
It seems that Tesco finally bowed to public pressure and is no longer expecting the jobless to line-up and provide them with four weeks of unpaid labour. Whilst I was pleased to read this, it was too little, too late for me. Do Tesco expect us to be pleased that they're finally offering to pay people in return for their hard work? This has taught us an awful lot about Tesco's ethical beliefs. The company was happy to accept unpaid labour before the public knew about it, but as soon as they started receiving negative press coverage, they brought the ...
Liberal Democrat MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber, Edward McMillan-Scott, re-elected as one of the European Parliament's 14 Vice Presidents last month, has again been allocated the portfolio for Democracy and Human Rights. He has also been given a new responsibility, for Transatlantic Relations. He was put forward by the liberal Group in the European Parliament and is the only British MEP on the Parliament's Bureau, responsible for its management, organisation and finances. He has a long record in campaigning for human rights and democracy support. He was the first outside politician to get to Cairo after the fall of ...
I blogged recently about the new Tesco on Holmefield Road wanting to get longer hours for alcohol sales. The shop had got permission to sell beers, wines and spirits from 7 am to 10 pm seven days a week. Residents had argued against this on the grounds of previous anti social behaviour linked to alcohol sales at the same location and I put in an objection on those grounds. The licence went ahead following Tesco argments about local responsibility. Then, just a few weeks later we found that having got the license Tesco had applied to make the hours longer. ...
Liberal Democrat MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber, Edward McMillan-Scott, re-elected as one of the European Parliament's 14 Vice Presidents last month, has again been allocated the portfolio for Democracy and Human Rights. He has also been given a new responsibility, for Transatlantic Relations. He was put forward by the Liberal Group (ALDE) and is only British MEP on the Parliament's Bureau which is responsible for its management, organisation and finances. He has a long record in campaigning for human rights and democracy support. He was the first outside politician to get to Cairo after the fall of Mubarak and ...
2000AD is 35! Yay! Happy birthday 2000AD. Stay Awesome! I hope that one day miss Holly will be drawing Dredd. And not Nicolai Dante, who I never really got the appeal of. Maybe Anderson PSI or Sinister Dexter or Durham Red or Venus Blue Genes... The Phoenix, though difficult to get hold of (we had to go to OK Comics in Leeds, which is an hour's journey), proves to be perfect for my Hol. She loved the section on how to make your own comics (thank you Neill Cameron), and she loved ZomBee in issue 6, and she loves Corpse ...
Wed 22nd
17:13
Licensing Act 2003 Subcommittee Wirral Council 22/2/2012 Part 1 Appointment of Chair, Lifestyle 82-8...
Panel: Cllr Bob Wilkins (Chair) Cllr Eddie Boult Cllr Steve Niblock The papers for this meeting can be found here. Agenda Item 1: Appointment of Chair Cllr Bob Wilkins said he was the Chair of the panel and that on either side of him was a councillor, who were also on the panel. He asked ...
Wed 22nd
17:00
Lib Dem Conference Protester charges are dropped - but after he'd spent 10 days in jail
Remember way back in September I was not chuffed to hear that student Edd Bauer had been packed off to jail for unfurling a protest banner on a bridge near the ICC in Birmingham where our Conference was going on? Well, today his case came up before the judge in Birmingham and, in what sound like farcical scenes, were dropped because the prosecution could not offer any evidence. To put someone through five months of stress, not to mention the time in prison when he was subjected to violent attack, for, essentially, nothing is really not acceptable. Liberal Democrat MP ...
I have received notification that an application has been received by the City Council for a Premises Licence variation for premises at Morrisons, 418B Wilbraham Road, Manchester, M21 0SD. The application's proposed Trading hours for the supply of alcohol for consumption off the premises only are as follows: Mon to Sat - To extend the permitted hours from (0800 - 2300) to (0700 - 2300), Sun - To extend the permitted hours from (1000 - 2230) to (0700 - 2300). Opening hours for the premises: Mon to Sun - Unrestricted. To remove conditions set out in Annex 2 1 and ...
As promised - the 2nd of my posts on the proposed budget cuts that are seen as unacceptable by the Liberal Democrats. Lifeguard cover at Sefton's Pools At last week's Sefton Cabinet meeting it was agreed by all parties to reduce the impact on lifeguard cover, previously being imposed by Labour's draft budget. The original proposal was to take a £70K saving by reducing or removing lifeguard cover at Sefton's pools. The Liberal Democrats had already discussed the proposal and we were strongly opposed to reducing cover at public sessions. Thankfully it was agreed to keep lifeguard cover at the ...
Opinion polls this year have shown us between seven and sixteen per cent. That's a significant fall compared to the twenty-three per cent we received in the 2010 election. One polling website recently stated that, on a universal swing, we would get only two seats. In 1997, our vote fell by one per cent to only 16.8%, nonetheless, but we made an electoral breakthrough, winning 46 seats. If polls continue to be difficult, can we again defy first-past-the-post, and retain a sizeable parliamentary party? I think we can. There's been a lot of discussion about the strategy we should adopt ...
It's been an especially exciting time in internal Liberal Democrat politics of late, as Liberal Reform took its first faltering steps into the world and received a wonderfully positive response, as laid out here. As mentioned there, my Lib Dem Voice ... Continue reading →
I have received notification that an application has been received by the City Council for a new Premises Licence for premises at Amaya Indian Eatery, 133 Beech Road, Manchester, M21 9EQ. I believe this is the Old Chapel premises next to The Trevor Arms. The application's proposed trading hours for the supply of alcohol for consumption on the premises are as follows: Mon to Sun 1100 to 2330. The Proposed trading hours for the provision of late night refreshment are Mon to Sun 2300 to 2330 and the Proposed opening hours for the premises are Mon to Sun 1100 to ...
I've recently become the custodian, on behalf of the Liberal Democrat History Group, of a great treasure trove of interviews with party figures. Adrian Slade carried out all the interviews and here he explains their background: Since 2004 the Journal of Liberal History has been the guardian of what, although I say it myself, is now becoming a uniquely interesting party archive - a set of CDs and audio-cassette tapes of in-depth interviews I have conducted with leading Liberal Democrats of the last decade. The collection spans the years 2002-2011 and each interview is now available for listening from the ...
I am told that the Hardy Lane/Barlow Moor Road junction will be reopened around March 7th for approximately 6 months. The junction was originally due to be reopened on the 11 February, which was then postponed until 18th February; however due to unforeseen circumstances it has been pushed back to March. The closure of this junction has created a significant amount of traffic chaos in this part of Chorlton and it's reopening (even for a relatively short period) will be welcomed. The reopening will entail the Closing off of the Cundiff Road chicane which will stop motorists from exiting Barlow ...
As a general rule I am against bribing companies to act as you want them to, everyone responds to incentives, however I don't feel that giving them money to do as you want is always the best way to go about things. I've only just read The Guardian's report on Nick Clegg's announcement of a £126m scheme to encourage employers to take on more NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) 16 and 17 year olds. My fundamental problem with this scheme however, is that it doesn't seem to be creating any additional opportunities, just bribing companies to fill vacancies ...
It is with much regret that Liberal Democrat Voice has received word that Lord Hooson, former Liberal MP for Montgomeryshire, passed away peacefully yesterday. Emlyn Hooson was educated at Denbigh Grammar School and University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, before serving in the Royal Navy in World War II. By 1960, he had become the youngest ever Queen's Counsel, whilst rising swiftly through the ranks of the Liberal Party, chairing the Welsh Liberal Party from 1955. When Clement Davies died in 1962, Emlyn was selected to fight the resultant by-election for a Parliamentary seat which had been continuously Liberal since 1880, ...
Maybe Eoin Clarke is a bit of a soft target for a bit of abuse after all he is beyond ridiculous with his spin, lies and downright idiocy, but there is an article that has taken the biscuit, (Except you won't get a choice of which one if he has his way), and it's rallying against consumer choice. Let's start with the ridiculousness, already previously highlighted in the best bit of news satire around Private Eye: It's not just those that have made me sit up and take notice it's this blog: "Why I detest consumer choice" [See Update 2] ...
The only Prime Minister I can imagine doing this: in recent years is Tony Blair. And he wouldn't be slightly shy yet effortlessly cool, he'd be grinning and smug and embarrassingly bad. I mean, Ted Heath could conduct, and I can imagine Wilson doing something with a brass band, but singing with BB King and Jeff Beck? C'mon, that's just awesome. I'm sure there are policy reasons to disagree with Obama, and I'm sure there are reasons his supporters are disappointed in some of the stuff he's not done, but you've got to admit, the man has style. And yeah, ...
Much-maligned former Metropolitan Police commissioner Lord Iain Blair had a few interesting things to say at the Stephen Lawrence memorial lecture last night, not least an attack on the Coalition government for doing virtually nothing to address race inequality in Britain. Speaking ... Continue reading →
Yesterday was a strange night. Although there were lots of important items to discuss perhaps the most important was discussed less than you would have expected. The Financial Budget reports and the many appendices will be discussed this coming Tuesday, when the level of Council Tax is agreed (decided). There is not always agreement but it will be a freeze. I spoke on the following items: 1. There was a plan last year to save over £300,000 on reducing the number of day centres around the borough. We disagreed with their plans as they were putting money before vulnerable residents. ...
[IMG: Military Road wall] Sandgate Parish Councillor Tim Prater reported a knocked down wall in Sandgate to Shepway District Council via Twitter on Monday night. The wall by parking spaces opposite the Little Fish and Chip Shop on Gough Road, Sandgate, was knocked over around 4.30 in the afternoon on Monday. The Monday evening "tweet" to Shepway District Council's twitter account read: "@shepwaydc Wall has been knocked down today in Sandgate by parking spaces at junction Military Rd / Gough Rd. Could it be fixed please?" Tim Prater commented: "Shepway Council have previously fixed issues reported to them via Twitter ...
[IMG: Weymouth Road bus shelter] The new Weymouth Road bus shelter Dilapidated bus shelters in Horn Street and Cheriton High Street have been replaced to improve the local environment and encourage local bus use. A new shelter has also installed in Weymouth Road. The new shelter was requested by local residents and has been funded by County Councillor Tim Prater from Highway grants. The three shelters was ordered and installed by Shepway District Council using funds from Kent County Council's Member Highways Fund, Tim said: "I'm pleased these new shelters are in place. The two replacement shelters in Horn street ...
Wed 22nd
13:50
The Independent View: The major environmental tests facing the Liberal Democrats in 2012 (Part 1)
The Liberal Democrats have long been seen as the greenest of the biggest three political parties. Now in government, the party is facing tough decisions with huge implications both for our country's efforts to reduce carbon emissions and for wider protection of the natural world. During his time in office Lib Dem Climate Secretary Chris Huhne won a couple of significant battles with Cabinet colleagues. Most notably, despite opposition from the Chancellor, he won the backing of David Cameron to put into law tough new carbon targets for the 2020s that were recommended by their independent advisers the Committee on ...
Network Rail has agreed to repair the untidy and defective barrier on Ridgmont Road. Chris comments: 'I have been pressing for this for years – not only does it look untidy but the plastic barriers are sometiems removed by certain motorists who think the rules don't apply to them. this practice is dangerous and I am glad that we are closer to a real solution.' Network Rail will also be clearing put the drains on their section of ridgmont Road which have been prone to flood.
David Laws has argued at the Guardian's Comment is Free site that the Coalition should accelerate Liberal Democrat tax cutting plans. The government's previous plan was for the allowance to rise in steps of £630 over the next few years, to reach £10,000 by April 2015. Clegg and chief treasury secretary Danny Alexander are rightly insisting that we look to bring forward those tax cuts. This week they seemed to attract the unlikely support of Labour's Ed Balls. But his plan for a totally unfunded tax cut is as unlikely to convince the deputy prime minister as it is the ...
For the past few weeks, I have been horrified by the actions of the Syrian state. President Assad has allowed his Government to systematically attack his own people. Many constituents with family and friends in Syria have contacted me to discuss ... Continue reading →
This is a quick tutorial to show you how to rip DVDs on a headless server. That is; one which only has command line access. The documentation for MakeMKV is available. It's a bit sparse. It also doesn't have many of the features of the GUI. For example, the GUI allows you to select which video, audio, and subtitles, you want to copy. So if you only want the original German director's commentary, with the Swedish subtitles from the main feature, you can do that. [IMG: makemkv gui] The command line is an "all or nothing affair". Install The SoftwareWe're ...
Last week saw the sad news of Whitney Houston's passing, it is always sad when anyone passes away at such a young age, not just because they are famous. In the wake of this Sony made, what can best be described as a PR error, their crime was to follow the laws of economics and increased the price of her music to a new optimal level given an increase in demand. I didn't actually hear about this at the time (to be honest, Whitney isn't exactly my thing so didn't follow any of the coverage) but it did appear as ...
Last night I attended and supported the ceremony that promoted the Liverpool Association of Chartered Accountants to the Freedom roll of the City Council. It gave me cause for thought about how enterprise had shaped our city from before the ... Continue reading →
Here is a TV link to my speech in parliament yesterday Here is a written copy.
Liberal Tweets is an aggregator (run by the king of Lib Dem aggregrators, LDV's very own Ryan Cullen) which displays in one convenient place all the latest tweets from Liberal Democrat members who are using Twitter. If you are one of those but aren't yet being included, you can email ryancullen@libdemblogs.co.uk - ryancullen.hat.libdemblogs.co.uk.spam.com (this is spam bot hidden email address, replace .hat. with @ and remove .spam.com for the real one). * Mark Pack is Co-Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and writes a monthly newsletter about the Liberal Democrats.
Two stories today: Firstly, there's this delightful violation of direct government intervention from my own neighbourhood: Governors of Nightingale Primary School removed by Education Secretary Education Secretary Michael Gove today removed Nightingale Primary School's board of governors after they refused to bow to pressure to become a sponsored academy. The board was told this morning it would be dismantled and replaced with an interim governing body, which includes Deborah Absalom [the former director of children and young people's services at Conservative-run Bexley Council] as its new chair... I'm not sure that Gove has the constitutional power to remove the boards ...
Big Brother Watch has published a report on CCTV, which contains some interesting facts about the UK. Amongst the rather intriguing information contained in it is the revelation that Caerphilly is the highest spending local Council on CCTV, shelling out over £4 million on 146 cameras between 2007 and 2011. That is more than twice as much as Cardiff, who have 860 cameras. The least watched citizens in Wales live in Pembrokeshire. They have just four CCTV cameras. Before I continue it is worth highlighting the comment at the bottom of the post which poses the question 'what is the ...
What NOT to do when relaunching NI Conservatives... | Ian James Parsley They will never learn! (tags: northernireland ) How to Remove Your Google Search History Before Google's New Privacy Policy Takes Effect | Electronic Frontier Foundation ...in a few easy steps. (tags: internet ) Rotting From the Inside Out - By Michael A. Cohen | Foreign Policy "The debate over American decline is missing the point. All this talk about projecting U.S. power abroad means nothing if we can't fix our severe problems at home." (tags: ushealth uspolitics )
Yesterday was Cornwall Council's supposedly annual Budget Meeting (although we seem to have two of these a year these days). The Tory Leader of the Council seemed a bit edgy from the start and although he tried to put forward a positive message he seemed to cut a more isolated figure as the day rumbled ...
Hat tip to Guido Fawkes
Back in 2010 we campaigned on a vision of open government and "new politics". The debacle over the NHS Strategic Risk Register shows how far we have strayed from this policy objective and also how hit and miss the Coalition's political management has become. The Risk Register issue is just one in a very long line of political blunders in the life of the Health and Social Care Bill. This time the Government is still trying to oppose public opinion, the Information Commissioner and now a Labour motion in the Commons, causing far more political upheaval than necessary. Whatever the ...
Scotland's Equality Network, building on the success of its Equal Marriage campaign is now setting about tackling homophobia and transphobia in sport. It pains me to think that there are some LGBT people who feel that they either can't participate in sport, or don't reveal their sexuality because they are worried that everyone, from their team-mates to fans or sponsors would give them grief for being who they are. Stephen Glenn has written about homophobia in sport, including this post about comments made by an agent after the last World Cup. Football has done itself no favours by giving the ...
I've been reading an interesting case this week about someone in the US who has been targeted quite badly by an individual over a disagreement. It got so bad that their personal life was invaded by the perpetrator and their professional reputation in danger of being damaged. Knowing that a friend, whom you let into your ...
Last Friday's Guardian-hosted #HElivechat on the role of the philanthropy in universities, on which I was one of the virtual panellists, covered a range of issues. The single biggest issue for new development offices eager to start delivering a return on investment to their university is... "How do we start to build our number of donors?" Here's one of the questions that was asked: As an institution new to Development (I have been in post for one year) we have missed the boat with regards to the matched funding scheme. This means that we can [sic] use this as an ...
Usain Bolt: short, cropped hair, champion sprinter, middle name St. Leo, winner of three Olympic gold medals. Jonathan Ross: long, wavy hair, TV present, middle name Stephen, winner of three BAFTAs. An incongruous pair, you may think. But one thing will bring them together in 2012: social media. Jonathan Ross, back in January 2009, played a major role in taking Twitter from the geeky niche into the mainstream tool it is now - not only used by many but popping up every week in one form or another in the mass media outlets. It was Jonathan Ross's comeback show, with ...
Liberal Democrat Secretary of State for Scotland Michael Moore MP writes a regular column for local newspapers in his constituency. Here's the most recent edition. Meeting with First Minister After a short illness-related delay I met the First Minister this week to discuss the Scottish Government's independence referendum. I am absolutely committed to working with Mr Salmond to agree on the terms of the referendum and this meeting was the first part of this process. On this most important of questions where all of us living in Scotland will decide the future of our country, it is vitally important that ...
The claim in the report by the Defence Select Committee of the House of Commons that Britain is vulnerable to attack from space-fired nuclear weapons and "space weather", caused by changes in solar activity, is obvious to any science-fiction aficionado. They say that the government is not doing enough to combat the potentially devastating impact of such an attack, but short of sending Bruce Willis into space with a nuclear warhead, it is not clear what exactly they believe can be done. The Guardian says that the government assesses the likelihood of an attack from either conventional or high-altitude nuclear ...
I met with Jenny Willott MP (and her research assistant Giles, and her toddler who she was babysitting at the same time) on Monday evening to discuss the Welfare Reform Bill. Unfortunately I haven't had a chance to write up what happened until now. Because quite a lot was discussed, and because I was busy yesterday and will be again today, I'm probably not going to be able to publish a full account until this evening. However, just to summarise very briefly, the good news that things aren't quite as bad as we thought but the bad news is that ...
As reported in last night's Evening Telegraph, I have welcomed a decision by the City Council and Tayside Contracts to give greater priority to footpath gritting beside a busy nursery school close to the West End Ward. Law Nursery School in Campbell Street is near to the West End Ward, and as a result, children who live particularly in the north of the West End Ward make use of this excellent nursery school. However, constituents of mine whose children attend the nursery complained that the pavement right outside the nursery in Campbell Street was not a priority route for winter ...
An open letter to the Malaŵi Acting High Commissioner (I think the real one has been sent home in in a bit of "tit for tat" diplomacy.) 20th February, 2012. The Acting High Commissioner, Malaŵi High Commission, 36, John Street, Holborn, London,WC1N 2AT Your Excellency, As a former VSO who was privileged to work in Malaŵi in the late 80s and early 90s I am disturbed by reports that the country may be reverting to authoritarian rule. Like most of my contemporaries my memories of "the warm heat of Africa" are overwhelmingly positive. I made many friends among some of ...
Watching the Mayor put up the first Fairtrade Cambridge sticker Yesterday, the Mayor of Cambridge, Cllr Ian Nimmo-Smith, put up the first Cambridge Fairtrade sticker in the Green Coffee Company and gave out stickers to Fairtrade retailers. The stickers are sponsored by the Co-op, the first big supermarket to stock Fairtrade goods back in 1992. Cambridge shoppers are being asked to keep an eye out for Fairtrade goods when they go shopping - and pass on their findings to the Cambridge Fairtrade Steering Group by email (fairtrade.cambridge@hotmail.co.uk ) or via their blog http://fairtradecambridge.wordpress.com. Having a good list will help us ...
This is the end of our latest visit to Bonkers Hall, but stand by for an exciting announcement from Rutland most popular fictional peer. Oh, and subscribe to Liberator. The first Lady Bonkers at the wheel Some years ago, a police constable called at the Hall to tell me that there had been a complaint lodged against me. One of my motors had burst through a farmyard gate scattering the chickens, narrowly missed the farmer as the driver shouted "Get out of the way, you damned fool!" and then made its escape by ploughing through a hedge and racing across ...
MP Julian Huppert is celebrating victory after Cambridge people living in residential care have been told they will still be able to keep the benefits that allow them to get out and about. Julian has fought to save the Mobility Allowance, a component of the Disabled Living Allowance, which allows disabled people to pay for taxis and other transport. He called on Minister for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith and Minister for Disabled People, Maria Miller to rethink moves by the government to take away the benefits in 2014/15. Julian had been contacted by a number of constituents who ...
Here are the novels on this year's Nebula shortlist, ranked by owners on Librarything and Goodreads, with Amazon sales rank thrown in. Librarything Goodreads Amazon owned score owned score paper Kindle Embassytown, by China Miéville 767 3.96 2427 3.86 17544 8141 Among Others, by Jo Walton 444 4.19 1240 3.86 14122 7864 The Kingdom of Gods, by N.K. Jemisin 147 3.96 642 3.93 11329 12887 God's War, by Kameron Hurley 157 3.82 373 3.62 16292 22719 Mechanique... by Genevieve Valentine 102 4.47 309 3.88 8706 6319 Firebird, by Jack McDevitt 60 3.86 178 4.11 20955 10082 The order above is ...
I've only recently become aware of reviews on sites like Amazon from the point of view of an author, rather than that of a reader. As a reader, I've rarely, if ever, reviewed books I've bought from a website. But I've decided to change that. (Before anyone thinks this is a whine, this isn't about ...
Here's a copy of my interview by Carolyn Quinn on the BBC Radio 4 Westminster Hour on February 19th. You can listen to the whole programme on the BBC iPlayer here.
I attended the Southfield ward panel on Monday evening where residents, ward Councillors and the police review recent crime trends and set plans to avoid likely criminal actions. The local ward Sergeant Darren Gray spoke about the high level of crime in Southfield ward compared to the same month last year (and there is still another week or more to add to the crime stats). He did reassure us that these apparently high crime levels were low compared to areas in the opposite end of the borough. He did mention that a lot of the crime was people leaving items ...
