Everyone in East Reading this weekend has been talking about the bizarre proposal from Labour Councillor Tony Page and his Council mates to have an ill-defined 'mini Park and Ride' on Palmer Park. On the face of it, this singularly stupid idea is a threat to those who already use the sports and other facilities at the Park, or is a blatant attempt to concrete over green space. An alternative analysis exists: in the venal world of some Labour Councillors, the plan could be a punishment to the electors of Park Ward for voting Labour Councillors out of office. While ...
U-570 as HMS Graph undergoing sea trials I was reading on the Medway Memories website the other day about the possibility of a German U-boat being captured in August 1941 and being escorted by a Short Sunderland up the Medway to Chatham dockyard. This immediatly caught my attention and I went beavering away to Wikipedia and Uboat.net to look into the possibility and to follow up on the lead that the site gave me U-570. Eureka, I have an answer. The short answer to whether a captured German U-boat came up the Medway (namely U-570) is no.... The long answer ...
I don't listen to Women's Hour very often, but, in a desperate attempt to avoid football, I downloaded the pod cast of the Saturday 'Best of' version. What was was that they had two very different members of celebrity culture discussing how women are seen in society. This gives rise to a number of debates ...
Through the Euro zone crisis Germany has formed a rather negative opinion of Greece. Germans thinks that the Greeks are lazy and inefficient. On the other hand, Greece thinks that the Germans are profiting out of Greece. Through all of these financial crises and arguments between countries it is the children that suffer. The picture above depicts a normal Greek family who have been left homeless because of the Euro zone crisis. The child in this picture is being subject to poverty at such a young age. A mother in Greece (please click on link below) had to leave her ...
For a few months in 2010, I was tempted to give David Cameron the benefit of the doubt. My cynicism and suspicion that his credentials as a reformer, moderniser and de-toxifier of the Tory brand were simply a smokescreen for a more sinister brand of Conservativism were actively challenged by a reasonable performance during the first period of coalition government. He appeared to have some genuinely liberal inclinations, looked willing to distance himself from the right-wing of his party (a bane of previous Conservative leaderships) and gave indications of a commitment to pluralism. However, in recent months Cameron appears to ...
We got a huge response to our Waste & Recycling survey earlier this year, and from what people told us we are pretty confident we have identified the main issues. And a lot of smaller niggles as well. We have had to make some decisions about what it is realistic to try to change. A complete new system is just not on the cards. But we think there is scope to make some improvements. And we will work towards some of the longer term changes that people want. The top three issues have come out as: - the green waste ...
Cameron's suggestion today that housing benefit should be stopped for everyone under 25 is an example of poor policy, based on generalisations. It appears to be based on a stereotype of how people live, or should live, i.e. that if you're under 25 you can live with your parents. Whilst it may make sense for some people, there are so many people for whom this would not work. For example, what about if you're currently entitled to housing benefit due to being in low paid work, but not living anywhere near your family; what if you don't have any family, ...
Today's Larks in the Parks (in Victoria Playing Fields and Fleetville) defied the rain. Chris has acquired a nice-looking pot of honey and an interesting book on Mao.
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 279th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere ... Featuring the seven most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (17-23 June, 2012), together with a hand-picked quintet, normally courtesy of LibDig, you might otherwise have missed. Don't forget: you can sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox — just click here — ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging. As ever, let's start with the most popular post, and work our way down: 1. Downing Street confirms ...
There is clearly a problem with these lights and Herts Highways have been alerted. We are told they will be fixed next week. Chris
The next Dulwich Community Council meeting will be held this coming Tuesday evening, 26th June, at the Herne Hill Baptist Church on Half Moon Lane. The main agenda items include an update on the Barbara Hepworth Statue replacement in Dulwich ... Continue reading →
This week the Ministry of Defence (MOD) announced a £1.1 billion contract with Rolls Royce for building nuclear submarine reactors. This has caused quite some controversy and Defence Secretary Philip Hammond was immediately called to answer an Urgent Question in the Commons on the implications of this spending and whether it preempts a future decision on whether or not to replaceBritain's Trident nuclear weapons system. The contract itself will see £500m spent on the refurbishment of Rolls Royce's Raynesway plant in Derby, while £600m will go on building new nuclear reactor cores to powerBritain's submarines. Most of these will be ...
Willie Rennie in today's Scotland on Sunday came out attacking those who wish to see a second question on the ballot paper. This goes against the latest Mori poll that shows 70% of Scots believe the referendum should consider a question on a more powerful devolved parliament. Ironically, Rennie's piece is titled "Let's get question ...
Neil Balderson, with a grave visage, opened the envelope and read out the group's task: "RE-IMAGING THE BANK OF EAST SESSEX You are officers of East Sessex County Council, which 22 months ago responded to a worsening economic landscape in East Sessex as a result of the international downturn by offering help to local businesses through the innovative creation of a Bank of East Sessex. The Bank was scoped to deliver user-friendly loans to SMEs which were unable to access traditional sources of finance due to an adverse lending environment. It was managed through an arms-length instrument and seedcorned with ...
June Books 18) The Unwritten: Leviathan, by Mike Carey and Peter Gross This is the second of this year's Hugo nominees for graphic novel which I have read - a pleasing narrative of young Tommy Taylor, who gets separately from his girlfriend and his vampire side-kick to get sucked into crewing the Pequod and ending up in a confined space with Pinocchio and Gepetto, the Prophet Jonah, Sinbad the Sailor and Baron Munchausen (and a random Celt). The literary allusions are dense, the artwork generally good and the narrative coherent, though perhaps a little less adventurous than I had hoped ...
Saturday was once again the Sutton Liberal Democrats excellent summer party, complete with – of course – a raffle. But a raffle with a difference and one that has until now escaped my list of tips for a good Liberal Democrat raffle. The neat idea they had was a very simple one: write the name of each person who buys a raffle ticket on the back of the stub. That way, when the winning raffle tickets are pulled out of the hat you get "Chris Jones!" and the said Chris Jones immediately knows they have won and heads off to ...
David Laws has earned himself a generous write-up in today's Telegraph, with the paper which triggered his resignation from the cabinet two years ago hailing his 'radical vision of a liberal state', and lamenting with crocodile tears that his downfall was 'a great loss to the Cabinet'. The cause is an interview David has given to the paper in which he makes the case for further public spending cuts and lower taxes — a case he has outlined in greater depth in an article in the current Institute of Economic Affairs journal, highlighted last week on LibDemVoice. Here's an excerpt ...
On Friday night's Graham Norton Show there was fascinating intercghange between will.i.am and Miriam Margoyles. Margoyles kept telling off will.i.am for misusing the word "like". OK as a verb, she said, but not as a substitute for "said", for example: "He was like, why have you come here?" I disagree with Margoyles. The English language is great because it has evolved enormously over the years. The language should reflect how people use it, not text books. Long may that continue. [IMG: Post to Twitter] Tweet This Post
I sit here, that being my armchair in front of a telly, watching F1 (BBC1), oblivious to just why this is referred to, as a sport, rather than what it is, a state paid for advert for the global automotive industry, I have on my occasional Sundays off. Hopefully I shall shortly be dragged away to spend time with my grand kids. Yes to the point, I have this compulsion to blog, and I have a hundred subjects, prejudices, call it what you will, these vary from the outrageous theories, to the mildly perplexing issues in life, such as democracy ...
Not every person under the age of 25 has the ability to turn up at home and be welcomed with open homes, Indeed some people under the age of 25 do not have parents or other family at all to turn to. Therefore the decision to scrap all housing benefit to people under the age of 25 is repugnant and should not be allowed to happen. There are all manner of reasons that someone under the age of 25 may not have a stable household they can live in. They may have been living in care until the age of ...
We had a great time this morning helping out at Stockport College as the olympic torch came through. There was a lot more than just the torch to enjoy: the college put on a boxing demonstration, rowing machines, a band and dancing. Thank you to everyone involved in planning for today- it's taken a lot of hard work.
The EU plans to reach an agreement over a Common European Asylum System by the end of this year, aiming to strengthen common standards on asylum, establish greater solidarity between member-states, and ensure fair and decent treatment of refugees. Currently countries on the EU's periphery continue to shoulder the brunt of refugee flows relative to their capacity, burdening the already strained living conditions in immigration reception and detention centres. Malta provides a case in point. During 2011 Malta received more asylum requests per-capita than any other EU country, with 4,500 applications per million inhabitants, ten times more than the UK. ...
HT: This week the respected Ins titute of Economic Affairs will publish an article by David Laws MP calling for deeper cuts to public spending and tax. In his paper, David argues that the great names of Liberalism - William Gladstone, David Lloyd-George, Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes - would be "shocked" that more than 40% of the economy is now accounted for by the public sector. Yes indeed. The Sunday Telegraph have given it front page status today and has an illuminating interview with him inside. Go get your copy or check it out on line.
Thought some Lib Dems might find this piece interesting:
Yesterday's expedition to Long Buckby and the grave of Stanley Unwin has naturally put me in mind of the Small Faces. Unwin narrated the second side of the group's LP Ogden's Nut Gone Flake and was surely a better choice than their original thought Spike Milligan. But the Small Faces and the solo career of Steve Marriott have featured in Sunday videos before, so it is time to catch up with the band's bass player and other songwriter Ronnie Lane. After Marriott left to form Humble Pie with Peter Frampton, the remaining members of the Small Faces joined Ronnie Wood ...
Since we are now past the Solstice, I thought it might be intertesting to see what sf stories have been set in 2012 (and were written some time before 2012). This is not an exhauistive listing, just the things that caught my eye. Probably bad film: 2012 (2009), starring John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet and others, directed by Roland Emmerich, in which the world is devastaed by natural disaster. To be honest, the name of the director alon is enough to deter me from wanting to see this. Possibly better film: Time of Roses (1969), original title Ruusujen Aika. ...
Nick Clegg certainly isn't one to shy away from voters, even at a time when the Lib Dems, he personally, and the government he's part of are all suffering from unpopularity. Ever since Nick became leader he's placed a premium on direct voter contact through his 'town hall' meetings. It was a smart strategy which not only earned valuable exposure through the local media, but also ensured he was much more prepared and ready for the televised election debates in 2010. And this summer he's setting off on a tour of 13 meetings at which he's under no illusions he'll ...
Many Liberal Democrats will have been choking on their Corn Flakes this morning as they read, with horror, David Cameron's plans to slash benefits even further than this year's Welfare Reform Bill. If he had his way, there would be no Housing Benefit payable to anyone under 25. The critical part of the article is, however, this sentence: Downing Street said they were Conservative plans for after the next general election.That's all right then. This rubbish isn't going to happen on our watch. Except.....there are lots of young lives that may be even more ruined than they are already if ...
How a dentist and a corrupt French Commissioner are responsible for weird science and Kill Bill videos | Jon Worth | At the intersection of the EU, UK politics and tech #sciencegirlthing explained. (tags: sexandgenderandsexuality eu )
It's been two years since Liberal Democrats in Sutton bucked the national and London trends by storming to victory over the Conservatives. The result made local bigwigs the toast of the town with colleagues around Britain eager to find out ... Continue reading →
Extraordinary circumstance require extraordinary reactions. John Dodd approached me a while back to discuss how best to take things forward on the 'Scandal hit' Merseystravel. Labour's record at the transport authority is an embarrassment to almost everyone. Some credit does rebound to the Labour rebels who finally took on Mark Dowd but we must ask; what took you so long? Loyalty to the Labour Party or sheer funk stayed their hand for too many years at great loss to the tax payers and to the reputation of local government. Next time there is a proposal to give extra powers to ...
It has been fascinating to follow Gladstone's Library (St Deniol's) as it seeks to redefine Liberalism. Little snippets have been leaked from their sojourn at the Hay Festival where hundreds of people filled in their 'liberalism' voting cards'. I guess a summary will appear shortly on their blog devoted to the project .http://redefiningliberalism.blogspot.co.uk/ The contribution from pollster Peter Kellner -who was a 'don't know' seemed to think we were useful people to have around ...................
That's the headline on a post over on Labour Uncut, and they have the full internal Unite strategy document to corroborate those claims: The strategy is a powerful statement of intent. It's clear that Unite intend to fundamentally change Labour... In one passage, plans are set out to recruit 5000 new members from Unite into the Labour party. But this is no altruistic membership drive; the purpose of this influx of activists is to control local constituency parties... The document goes on to outline how these new activists will be marshalled by Unite's political structures to act as a bloc ...
On the 12th June 2008, the Conservative opposition front bench spokesperson on Home Affairs did something very unexpected. He resigned his seat as an MP.The reason he gave for this was to spark a national debate on the issue of civil liberties which is an issue close to his heart. He fought the ensuing by-election on this issue and won with 72% of the vote (albeit on a 34% turnout).But the net result of this somewhat inexplicable action is that from the day he resigned to this David Davis has been a backbench MP. He would have been a shoo-in ...
Saturday morning saw me canvassing postal voters by the Thames over in Kingston, including one rather nice Art Deco block of flats: I went out armed with the Kingston Liberal Democrats secret weapon: You might think that is just a plain brown envelope, and you would be right. But what Kingston does is give everyone a supply of these, so that if you find yourself at a block of flats with a communal letterbox, you can quickly address an envelope for each leaflet you need to leave behind – making sure it has a much higher chance of getting to ...
As a youth I desperately wanted to be a Marine Biologist and dedicate my adult life to working in the Caribbean documenting the life cycles and behaviours of Lemon Sharks (Negaprion brevirostris) in the mangrove lagoons. Instead, a couple of failed A'level chemistry modules and the adoption of Plan B I'm now as far away from that dream as I could be and now lead an existence writing about Politics and annoying people. Still, I like to keep touch with my previous Par armore and this is how I stumbled onto a startling fact: Blue Sharks (Prionace glauca) will not ...
Anybody who has doubts as to the Liberal Democrats' influence on Government only needs to turn to today's Mail on Sunday where the Prime Minister sets out the welfare reforms he would want to bring in, if only the Tories had a majority and Nick Clegg's party was not holding them back. Cameron tells the paper that he wants to: Scrap most of the £1.8 billion in housing benefits paid to 380,000 under-25s, worth an average £90 a week, forcing them to support themselves or live with their parents.Stop the £70-a-week dole money for the unemployed who refuse to try ...
Earlier this week, Baroness (Susan) Kramer moved a debate in the House of Lords on UK economic growth. Her speech covered the background to the UK's current economic position as well as a number of suggestions of what the government can do to encourage growth. Below is a slightly edited version of the speech. In 2010 the coalition inherited a badly damaged economy. The previous Government had built their boom on the back of tax revenues pumped up by false profits from the banks – a bubble that burst in 2008 – and on the back of consumer spending pumped ...
In March the exceptionally popular David Walter lost his battle with cancer, and a memorial service is being held for him this week: Wednesday June 27th at 2pm at St Brides Church, Fleet Street EC4Y 8AU As Chris Rennard said when David died: [IMG: David Walter] David Walter David was widely respected as a decent, principled and trustworthy person. He was always positive and encouraging to work with as well as being professional and completely loyal to the party that he always supported. He had to be discreet about his party allegiance whilst working for the BBC and ITN and ...
The pasty tax campaign has won an award in the Politics Home awards held last Tuesday but screened last night. Well, sort of... Some of the awards are given for the use of social media and one is for the use of hashtags on twitter, Hashtags (the use of # before a word or phrase) allow people who have no other connection to link with each other. So the use of #pastytax in posts on the site allows people who all want to comment on the same thing to see what others are saying. The Politics Home people gave the ...
For many years I was single-minded in raising the profile of marriage equality. I never had the luxury of stopping and reviewing the wider implications to my world view as there just weren't that many people interested in getting past the "But why do we need it?" argument. Now the campaign has moved beyond me and better campaigners are heading the charge. I no longer need to spend time writing to people, getting media attention on the issue or arguing with opponents. I now have the time to sit back, watch what happens and finally see the wood for the ...
I had the pleasure yesterday of calling by the community barbeque in Kelso Street organised by the residents of Kelso Street, Kelso Place and Jedburgh Road and was most grateful for the kind invitation. It was another great example of community spirit in the West End so many thanks to Sarah and her neighbours who organised the day!
Not had a musical interlude recently! This Ricky Martin (featuring Swedish singer Meja) hit from 2000 is a rather good cover of the original by the Hooters from 1993:
(I think I'm the first person to try this – so I decided to document the process.) A few weeks ago, I won a Raspberry Pi at the #OTA12 hackday. It arrived on Friday, so I thought I would turn it into an SMS server using the incredible FrontlineSMS. 0. Setting up the PiThis is the easy part. Follow the excellent guide on the eLinux wiki. Essentially, download the Debian image, extract, and dd it onto an SD card. The hardest part was finding a full sized SD! In the end, I found an old adapter and stuck in a ...
