On another site on which I also blog, someone has posted a comment that I never consciously saw, with the comment having been replaced by the glorious words: "This comment by Fred Blogs has been moderated", although it doesn't say Fred Blogs, it says a real person's name (a name hitherto unfamiliar to me, and I'm not going to Google him, as to do so would only bring trouble), but it's best not to put that real name here, as I have no desire to attract any further attention from whoever that person is.Underneath that person's comment, somebody else has ...
Welcome to Broxtowe Enews, brought to you by the Liberal Democrats and edited by David Watts, the leader of the Lib-Dems on Broxtowe Borough Council. 1. Wind Turbine at Chilwell SchoolThe Greening Beeston scheme have announced plans to install a community wind turbine at Chilwell School. They received a grant from the Notts Energy Partnership to fund this and have been seeking people's views about which of a number of options was preferred. The wind turbine at the school was the clear winner. A planning application has been submitted to the council and will be decided on in due course. ...
Seventeen men are blindfolded and tied together at the ankles. On they wander, and the weakest of them falls down a mineshaft. Due to the rope tying them together, the other sixteen men are pulled down the mineshaft after the weakest one. Such is the Eurozone disaster about to unfold. It really is perfectly ludicrous that we are waiting on an election result from Greece. Greece. A country which has gone through numerous contortions over the years going back to the Colonels' takeover. Greece's perignations used to barely make it to page 97 of our papers. Stuff happened. But now, ...
On Wednesday I blogged about the 1950 British thriller The Clouded Yellow. Here, without sound, are some outtakes from that film showing Liverpool, its docks and their railways. In particular, there is footage of the Liverpool Overhead Railway.
Even the Guardian, the paper that's been so critical of the Coalition in general and the Lib Dems in particular, these past two years, has had to run this story. This is the announcement that many of us have wanted to see for as long as we've been politically active. That women who take time out of the labour market to care for children or sick relatives will not be penalised in their old age. This is an example of the Coalition delivering a major benefit to mainly women. And although it's Iain Duncan Smith who's quoted in the article, ...
I confess that I haven't completely read two of the five nominees, but I am sufficiently confident in what I have sampled of them to vote as follows: 1) The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Third Edition. The first two editions were essential enough; the third edition may not yet be Wikipedia but it is already more authoritative and in admirably ambitious. It's not a completed work; voting for it in this state it feels a little like giving Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize (I hope with a better outcome); but it gets my top vote anyway. 2) The Steampunk ...
An email arrives... The committee for the Liberal Democrat campaign for a Northamptonshire police and crime commissioner invites applications for selection as prospective candidate for the police and crime commissioner in the police authority area of Northamptonshire. Potential applications should contact the returning officer Roger Shelley for an application pack. Applications must be sent to Roger by 5 p.m. on Friday 29 June 2012. Applicants not on the party's list of approved candidates at the closing date for applications will not be considered by the committee. It is the responsibility of applicants to check that their applications have been received ...
"We don't discuss the content of Prime Minister's Questions any more, we discuss who 'won', and every new initiative is discussed in terms of how it well affect the polls, or what it might do for someone's standing in the Cabinet. Let's not discuss the nuance of whether it's right that Greggs can claim hot food isn't hot to stop paying VAT, let's turn it into a contest as to which party leader can show the most enthusiasm in wolfing down a pasty." Nick Barlow at What You Can Get Away With has a thoughtful post examining why so many ...
The second half of the 20th century defied expectations that it would not live up to the excitement of the first. True, there was no Third World War, but momentous political and social upheavals kept both journalists and diplomats busy, trying to make sense of the process of decolonisation, the radical and sometimes despotic regimes ...
This is perhaps the single most beautiful book in the Hugo Voter Packet, with lavish illustrations of the very visual subculture which it describes. I must admit it also turned around my own opinion on steampunk - I had a lot of sympathy with Marigold's father on Questionable Content, but VanderMeer and his fellow contributors have convinced me that there is an interesting, potentially subversive and liberating aesthetic and literary movement out there, whose roots are broader than I had appreciated and whose aspects extend further than I had realised. I will give it a good place on my Hugo ...
And I nearly missed it! I very much hope the people involved in a crash at The Jolly Drovers roundabout this afternoon were not too badly hurt. I was making my way back from the Lib Dem Regional Conference in Gateshead to see the torch when I met standing traffic, and from the Fire Engine that went past and the length of the delay it's clear that there was a real problem. That itself makes the matter of the torch a mere triviality on the day, but nevertheless it was good to make it home in time to be part ...
Call me an old sentimental fool, but I happen to believe that the appointment of Fatou Bensouda as Chief Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court is something to celebrate. She is a Gambian woman. So she has overcome numerous hurdles to become a top lawyer. Apart from anything else, The Gambia is a very small, very poor country. It really is a great achievement for Fatou Bensouda to reach the pinnacle of such a prestigious international profession. [IMG: Post to Twitter] Tweet This Post
I have just been listening to the new Big Finish Fourth Doctor play, The Trail of the White Worm, which reunites Tom Baker and Geoffrey Beevers as the Doctor and the Master, clearly and explicitly set between The Deadly Assassin and The Keeper of Traken. I was then moved by an irrational impulse to try and establish a clear timeline for the Master, as seen from his own point of view. Most of this I think is reasonably well-supported, though some of the Third Doctor short stories and the various Masters who confronted the Eighth Doctor in different media are ...
Sat 16th
18:20
Go for gold with a good read! Summer reading challenge starting soon at Rock Road Library
Story Lab One of my favourite jobs has been to give out medals and certificates to children as part of the Summer Reading Challenge. Our local library, Rock Road Library, has run the Challenge for many years, but the great thing is that it's being done by children all over the country, indeed in 23 different countries across the world, so you are not reading alone but are part of an international event. Children between 4 and 11 read six books over the summer holiday, collecting stickers and other treats along the way, culminating in a gold medal and a ...
I urge you all to read Mike Boot over on Kew Focus, more to follow...........................
Saturday 7th July, from 5.30pm Pig Roast Venue: Key's Cottage, Meldreth Family: £30, all kids under 15. Adults £13.50 All you can eat, traditional roast pig, plenty of vegetarian options. Riverside garden Contact Susan van de Ven (01763 261933) or Tim Stone (01223 836527) for tickets.
Starting on Monday they are going to be re-surfacing Waterloo Road in Birkdale. The work will take up to a week. The contractors claim that in order to minimise disruption they will only work 'off peak' between 9.30am to 15.30pm. (We had a promise about working hours when Guildford Rd was remade and that was ignored, I hope this will not be repeated) Pedestrian access and access for emergency vehicles will be maintained
There is no national memorial that names nurses killed in the two world wars. For many people it was the writing of Vera Britten that first drew attention to the role of nurses especially in WW1 and this was further enhanced when in 1979 the BBC televised a dramatisation of her novel Testament of Youth with Cheryl Campbell in the lead role. There was a new edition of the book a few years back complete with an introduction by her daughter Shirley Williams. In 1981 Virago published an anthology of WW1 poetry written by women Scars upon my heart the ...
Later this morning, I took part in an excellent event at Riverside Nature Park, at which five new information panels were officially unveiled by Professor Rob Duck, Dean of the School of the Environment at the University of Dundee. The panels look superb and enhance the Nature Park that was officially opened exactly a year ago. The Nature Park is going from strength to strength, with good visitor numbers. Here's some photographs from this morning's event, along with a short video from the unveiling ceremony! The superb view from the Nature Park across the Tay One of the information plinths ...
Sat 16th
16:10
Mandatory work: if we believe in evidence-based policy it's probably best to pay attention to the ev...
Four months ago, when the political row over 'workfare' was at its peak, I wrote here on LibDemVoice that liberals needed to progress the debate beyond 'the simple and simplistic 'left/right' attitudes currently on display, and start grappling with how best we can empower the individual to make the best of their own lives — including, and especially, those who appear to have settled for a life on benefits, and reject all other offers of help.' Avoiding dogma, embracing evidence Key to this, I suggested, would be avoiding the dogmatic approaches of the Tories — who appear to believe that ...
This morning, I had the pleasure of attending the Dundee West Church Fair as part of the church's Summer Festival. In addition to the well-attended coffee morning, there were various stalls such as cake and candy, books, raffle, tombola and arts and crafts - and also musical interludes, floral art and craft demonstrations and activities for children. A great community event - photo from the coffee morning below:
The recent spell of inclement weather has led to an explosion in our garden's slug and snail population. I had a reminder of this at about 2am this morning. The rain was doing it's best to keep me awake but I wasn't being disturbed until, having turned over I felt something on my pillow. I raised my head and felt to see what was there but found nothing. Nothing until I scratched my head and discovered a large slug going for a slither across the top of my head. Lots of searching for kitchen roll and torches etc accompanied by ...
There's no prize at stake - just the opportunity to prove you're wittier than any other LDV reader... Here's Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg appearing at the Leveson Inquiry this week. What do you think might be being said or thought by or about him? And the winner of our last caption comp is... Some fantastic entries for our most recent caption competition, Cameron & Miliband "Cooee!" Edition. The winner, according to The Voice's judging panel of one, was this one by Andrew Tennant: 'At the Diamond Jubilee celebrations, Cameron and Miliband court controversy by publicly betting on the number ...
Ann Widdecombe has held a webchat on gransnet in which we got this gem. Presumably you are opposed to gay marriage? What would you say to a mother like me, whose son would desperately like to marry his partner and who feels that he should have the same rights as her daughter. I can never understand why the very people who support marriage as a source of social stability would wish to deny this to one group. Surely it would be better to include gay men and women (where they want to be included) then to push them out into ...
I've just got back from the Garston Fun Day which again this year took place on Garston Park. I was helping on the Friends of Garston Park stall and not only did we manage to sell out on the tombola, we sold loads of plants too, as well as managing to talk to people about the work we do to protect and improve the park. I took some photographs and will post any decent ones both on here and on the separate Friends of Garston Park blog. Despite the rather threatening weather, it was great to see all the organisations' ...
As I was going to bed last night, I had a quick look at the Queen's Birthday Honours and switched off my iPad in disgust when I realised that former Labour cabinet minister Tessa Jowell had been made a Dame. I wish I'd read on, though, because much further down the page was the news that Gordon Liberal Democrat MP Malcolm Bruce had been knighted. When you can still remember a Conference speech 20 years on, you know it's had an impact. I remember him making a speech in Glasgow to the Spring Federal Conference in 1992 that was searing ...
The Falsetto Sock Puppets put the saga of Argyll and Bute Council's Day of Shame to a well kent song. Enjoy.
After my previous criticisms of Argyll and Bute Council's actions in banning a 9 year old taking photographs for a blog, Never Seconds - in which she was fully supported by her school - I am very pleased to see that the council has reversed its original decision and will allow Martha (a.k.a. VEG) to continue taking pictures of her school meals and writing accompanying reviews as of Monday. That this about-turn is the result of intense public pressure and significant media interest is undeniably true. The bottom line, however, is that the right decision has been made. I trust ...
Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Some 560 party members responded, and we're publishing the full results. It's just 41 days until the London 2012 Olympics starts, so we tested the view of our sample of party members... LDV asked: All things considered and with the benefit of hindsight, do you think London should or should not have bid to host the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games? 57% – It should 34% – It should not 10% – ...
Earlier this week I blogged about the incompetence of Cornwall Council over the introduction of a new payment system which is leaving local firms out of pocket. Today I received the following news from one local firm: "we received the outstanding cheque today for invoice dated 30/4 and cheque issued 12/6 unfortunately it is made out to the wrong person so we will have to return it, despite the payee details being printed very clearly on the invoice" Tweet
As promised, I'm now going to spend a little time reflecting on the experience of 6.002x as a whole. 1. Course content As I said in my first post-mortem post, I was a little disappointed that there wasn't more digital and more practical electronics in the course. There were a couple of weeks where I honestly thought I'd joined a maths course rather than an electronics one. However, having survived the whole experience I believe that the maths really was necessary to gain a proper insight into the subject. The content delivered was coherent and usually interesting (but please, the ...
Which of Doctor Who's 11 Doctors is your boss? Not sure, myself! (tags: doctorwho ) Behind the scenes in the EU Catherine Ashton greets the new president of Serbia. (Page is in Croatian but embedded video entirely in English.) (tags: serbia eu ) The border vote: A trend stretching back 44 years #fb My piece in Belfast Telegraph. (tags: northernireland ) Vandezande gaat voor zevende legislatuur Our mayor is seeking a seventh *six-year* term. (tags: belgium )
Gallup reported this month that, Majority of Chinese Prioritize Environment Over Economy ... Fifty-seven percent of Chinese adults surveyed in 2011 — before the country's economic slowdown grabbed headlines — prioritized protecting the environment, even at the risk of curbing economic growth. About one in five believed economic growth is more important.
Liberal Democrat MEP Sir Graham Watson yesterday challenged some youngsters at Colston's Primary School in Bristol to a game of chess in a bid to promote the inclusion of such strategic games into the national curriculum.Sir Graham, knighted last year in the Queen's birthday honours list, supports the initiative of chess Grandmaster Gary Kasparov's foundation to encourage more students to play
I've never seen the point in making Political pledges, they ultimately come back to bite you on the arse. No matter your intentions, the reality of politics and economic frailty means your pledges may have to be abandoned. Take Tuition fees (yeah I know, I know...) the party were caught up by circumstances to a degree and were forced to choose between an economic reality and responsibility to the rest of the country's economy. I've been playing a lot of Fable III recently and as you progress through the game you have to make political pledges to would be supporters ...
I've previously blogged about the catastrophic failure of the Interception of Communications Commissioner, giving seven different failures, any one of which would be damning but cumulatively make the post a good entrant for 'most failed regulator'. They included such failures as ignoring warning signs of widespread law breaking: [IMG: Laptop and mobile] And finally, and perhaps most damningly once all the evidence is in, there is the little matter of the alleged repeated law breaking that the Interception of Communications Commissioner appears to have completely ignored. The New York Times 2011 investigation into phone hacking included allegations that journalists were ...
From : The poll's results on voting and the border are convincing. This trend they illustrate goes at least as far back as Richard Rose's surveys of political opinion in Northern Ireland in 1968. Since then it has been clear that a substantial chunk of the Catholic population do not actually want a united Ireland. It has been of the order of 20% to 40% in the past and it has varied with circumstances. People wonder why, if this is true, 80%-90% of Catholics who vote are voting for parties who favour a united Ireland. I believe that it ...
A Scottish Liberal: Illiberal Scottish council silences 9 year old girl (tags: ) Peter Black: Time to make a stand Peter is spot on about the CCDP (tags: ) Owen Jones: Working-class Toryism is dying and it's taking the party with it - Commentators - Opinion - The Independent The problem with Owen's conclusion is: most of what is hurting the working classes is Labour policy being continued by the Tories (and us, for the shame of it). The reason they don't vote Labour EITHER is because they remember that, at least for the moment. (tags: ) Privilege, Entitlement and ...
Sat 16th
08:55LibLink: Stephen Tall names Matthew Parris 'Liberal of the Week' for calling for end to private scho...
Over at CentreForum's blog, LibDemVoice Co-Editor Stephen Tall has named columnist Matthew Parris the inaugural winner of the think-tank's 'Liberal of the Week' for 'his attack on the charitable status of private schools that are bastions of privilege.' Here's an excerpt from Stephen's reasons: The fact that private schools are directly equated with charities such as Cancer Research UK and Oxfam - and can therefore benefit from rates relief and exemption from tax on investment income - is breathtaking. It means that the low-paid in society - including those earning less than the minimum wage - are helping to subsidise ...
Liberal Democrat Voice reports on the swift u-turn by Argyll and Bute Council, who having tried to ban a nine year old girl from taking photographs of her school dinners and blogging about them, found themselves being tried by social media. The Never Seconds blog has received widespread publicity whilst, at the time of writing Martha Payne has managed to raise £44,574.86 for Mary's Meals, an international movement that sets up school feeding projects in communities where poverty and hunger prevent children from gaining an education. The whole sorry saga is covered in detail here. It is difficult to know ...
"Coalition will survive after this Parliament" said the Mail headline about David Laws' speech to the Institute for Government. "Will it heck as like" was the polite version of my reaction as I mentally wrote a blog post at a full ten on the Richter scale of blogging invective. Read down the article and you see that what he actually said was something quite different and actually pretty snorworthy: In spite of the perception around the Queen's Speech that there was not new legislation in health, education and welfare, the agenda we set out in the coalition agreement was massively ...
Keynes famously said that when the facts changed he changed his views. Not so Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne. We have now had over two years of so-called Quantitative Easing (QE), an attempt to revive the economy by printing money. As predicted by Keynesians, it has not worked (and as observed by Keynes, what was then called "cheap money" didn't work work in the '30s either) because businesses will not borrow to invest if there is no demand. Another problem with this "loose" monetary policy is that the government has no control over what will happen to the ...
Two updates received from Dundee City Council regarding work starting later today: 1. THE DUNDEE CITY COUNCIL AS TRAFFIC AUTHORITY being satisfied that traffic on the road should be prohibited by reason of surface dressing works being carried out HEREBY PROHIBIT the driving of any vehicle in Explorer Road (from Apollo Road to Mallaig Avenue), Dundee. This notice comes into effect on Saturday 16 June for 2 weekends. The second weekend will only be used if work is delayed due to poor weather conditions. Pedestrian thoroughfare will be maintained. Alternative routes for vehicles are available via Riverside Avenue / Kingsway ...
Flesh and Blood Recut, remastered, and with nearly an hour of extra footage, we didn't get in in time to see all of this definitive documentary on Hammer films, but what we did see was by turns informative, intruguing and hilarious. Definitely one to get the updated DVD of if/when it comes out. The Monster Squad I hadn't seen this before, and I really liked it. It was kind of like the Goonies with Monsters, and while it was flawed (the Dracula was rubbish, and the soundtrack was very eighties) there was much in it that was very good indeed. ...
Congratulations to Malcolm Bruce, Lib Dem MP for Gordon, who is knighted in the Queen's Birthday Honours.
