Local residents have been aware for some time that there is a major problem with drainage on Northern Avenue with the entire road being covered with water almost every time it rains. Many people have reported this to Hampshire County Council but the only visible response to date has been for contractors to arrive on Sundays to pump the water away. Today saw yet another attempt to clear the flood waters. I spent some time watching the work and talking to the contractors after which I emailed a letter to the local county counciillor asking for urgent action to deal ...
Today Fountains Abbey serves as the most wonderful folly you can imagine. Britain's largest monastic ruin and most complete Cistercian abbey stands in the landscaped park of Studley Royal, another great house that belonged to the Aislabie family. The house itself suffered a serious fire in 1946 and was pulled down shortly afterwards, but its park and water garden are very much still there. Some would see the dissolution of the monasteries as an advance of modernism but more and more I see Henry VIII as Britain's answer to Stalin - at least when I am walking around abbey ruins. ...
The DUP at their annual conference handed out to their members a survey. According to Slugger O'Toole there are the usual things you'd expect to see on a membership survey. Opinions on level of subs, views on merger with the UUP, how the party should change, women representation in politics and views on quota of female candidates. None of this stuff would generally look out of place in any survey of party members anywhere. The DUP has taken to calling itself the party of progress, though many of doubt how far that progress has got apart from agreeing to form ...
See here: So this is the version which includes some improvements to the ways in which secret courts can be applied for. However the amendments do not kill off secret courts or Part II of the Bill altogether, and therefore fall well short of the motion at the Liberal Democrats autumn Conference this year.
It doesn't seem like a month since I last shared a Kylie 25 video - mainly because it was just last week! Anyway, hot on the heels of that one, here is the lady herself with a recording of Slow, as featured on the The Abbey Road Sessions album. As an added treat, the original video is featured below too - I think it's fair to say that Ms Minogue understands who her target market is... Andrew
This is Little Bowden Recreation Ground, famous for Backwatersman's Stump Watch, Bryan Magee's philosophical epiphany and the rescue of a cat. This afternoon parts of it were flooded. This was nothing to do with the River Jordan: it was just the volume of rain we have had over the past few days. But at least some people were enjoying it.
As I wrote the other day, 2013 sees the centenary of Benjamin Britten's birth and the Britten 100 website has been launched in preparation for the celebrations. So this Sunday's music video sees a rare excursion into the classical world. Friday Afternoons was a set of songs that Britten wrote to be sung in schools.They are settings of poems, many of them collected by Walter de la Mare in his anthology Tom Tiddler's Ground. Cuckoo! was written by Jane Taylor, whom I assume to be the same woman who wrote the words to Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. This performance by ...
Just a quick update on behalf of the Bar Hill Community Market which will be taking place this Saturday (1st December) at the Bar Hill Octagon and in the next door Church. Please come along and help support your local community. Stalls will include fruit and vegetables, home-made cakes, jewellery, greetings cards, sweets and other confectionery, locally made jams, knitted items, patchwork, bags, wooden crafts, and other beauty products. There will also be opportunities for raising funds for local projects. Refreshments will be available and (Weather Permitting!) there will also be a BBQ. If you wish to be part of ...
Over on Liberator's blog, Lord Bonkers casts new light on events at Cruden Bay in the summer of 1908.
About prisoners or more about Europe for Tories? In the past week we've seen two significant policy proposals be published on prisoners and Justice policy. First was the long-awaited 'Rehabilitation Revolution' which was laid out in the Coalition Agreement and seeks to involve independent providers in a payments-by-results system of prisoner rehabilitation, much like the A4e unemployment programme. I only hope this new system is administered better as its has a lot of potential if done right. The second was the Government publishing the Voting Eligibility (Prisoners) Draft Bill for pre-legislative scrutiny last Thursday as a direct attempt to stave ...
I was very sorry to hear of the death of Dave Sexton, who was manager of Chelsea when they won the FA Cup in 1970 and the European Cup Winners Cup the following year and thus one of my boyhood heroes. Sexton was not a colourful figure like Tommy Docherty, whom he succeeded at Chelsea and was to succeed at Manchester United a few years later. Nor was he a paterfamilias like Jose Mourinho or Sir Alex Ferguson. At Chelsea, at least, he seemed subservient to the personalities of the team's leading players. But he must have been a great ...
Over dinner and cider last night, I treated our guests to this rare treasure, a 2005 double A side from British Sea Power and the Wurzels. A joyful joint enterprise; BSP atmospherically cover 'I am a Cider Drinker' while North Somerset's finest deliver a spirited and comic rendition of 'Remember Me'. I can't remember where ...
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 301st 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 (17-24 November, 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. Elections: beating the ...
So far it has not been picked up by the British press - a reader directed me to Press TV and there is also a report on the website of the Pakistani newspaper The Nation - but on Thursday a Labour peer called for a nuclear attack on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border. Here is the former defence minister Lord Gilbert speaking in the Lords that day: I draw your Lordships' attention to what used to be called the neutron bomb. It is a very misleading description. It was not necessary a bomb. It was a warhead that could be attached to ...
It's been a challenging few weeks. Having collapsed on the afternoon of Remembrance Sunday and taken to hospital, I have since been told to slow down and rest. Easier said than done. It's been a relatively quiet two weeks of recuperation but I have at least had a productive time in catching-up on much needed housework during these past two weeks. A young Sebastian Vettel with Michael Schumacher Today, I took some time off from moving my home office downstairs to watch the final race of the F1 season and am delighted to have witnessed Seb Vettel take a 3rd ...
The latest edition of Liberator magazine (issue no.356 - November 2012) has just landed on subscribers' doormats. Not only that, but Liberator now has a blog, to help readers get their Liberator fix between issues. Here's a summary of the new magazine's contents: The editorial column Commentary urges disillusioned Liberal Democrats to stay in the party and fight. The insider gossip column Radical Bulletin begins with a look behind the ministerial reshuffle. 'The Borrowers' - Jonathan Hunt (a former Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate) says Liberal Democrats must accept the deficit and borrow to invest in growth. 'Back to the future' ...
Sun 25th
17:40
Ed Davey shows other Lib Dem ministers how to put forward a savvy argument within Coalition
I was very struck, reading Ed Davey's interview with The Guardian this weekend, how he chose to describe the deal-making process between the two Coalition parties over the energy bill: Davey admits that the failure to secure a decarbonisation target by 2030 is his biggest disappointment. "This was the most difficult issue in discussion, and a genuine issue of disagreement. I think we have got a good compromise. We have agreed we will now take a power in the energy bill so the government is empowered to establish a decarbonisation target at a later date. That was not on the ...
Sun 25th
17:24
Peterborough City Council faces "sufficiency shortfall" due to extension of free early education pla...
Members of the City Councils Creating Opportunities and Tackling Inequalities Scrutiny Committee were recently informed: "From 2014, the government is proposing to extend free entitlement (15 hours) to 2 year olds. This support will be targeted at 40% of the children nationally with eligibility criteria focused on economic disadvantaged and those with SEN. In Peterborough this is expected to apply to 50% of children. This increased entitlement will place pressure on the Local Authorities to ensure sufficiency of placement. £100m has been made available nationally to support expanding provision. As information on future funding emerges, plans for dealing with the ...
Sun 25th
17:00
In other news... Teather's non-defection, Mulholland on beer price-fixing & MEPs on Irish aborti...
Sarah Teather Would Rather 'Poke Her Eyes Out' Than Join Labour (Huffington Post) Lib Dem MP Sarah Teather would rather "poke her eyes out" than defect to the Labour Party despite being sacked from the government, according to the party's chief enforcer. After the New Statesman noticed Teather had voted against the coalition plans to cap benefits, a policy she decried as "immoral and divisive", rumours swirled that this meant she was about to defect to Labour. However the speculation was shut down by Lib Dem whip Alastair Carmichael, who tweeted: "I just asked her, says she would rather poke ...
Here is a safe prediction: whatever the Leveson report recommends for British journalism, there will be an awful lot of duff arguments rolled out. Despite much of the debate being couched in how important it is for the press to tell the truth and how many difficult judgements there are to make, we'll hear plenty of simplistic rhetoric based on shonky factual foundations. That's a shame, because the sight of large numbers of people proclaiming the former whilst doing the latter may make for great satirical black humour but it debases an important debate. So here's my contribution to some ...
Which parties' voters would consider voting UKIP most, and which parties are UKIP voters most likely to consider voting for? This shows a few interesting signs. Almost a third of Plaid Cymru voters would consider voting for UKIP, while only 1% of UKIP voters would consider voting for Plaid Cymru. The figures will be distorted slightly because most UKIP voters don't live in Wales anyway, but it suggests that there is a huge opportunity for UKIP to steal votes from PC that they have not yet managed to do. Secondly, in Lab-Lib and Con-Lib marginals, a rising UKIP vote would ...
Lib Dem energy secretary Edward Davey was interviewed in The Guardian this weekend about the energy bill to be announced this week. The paper fillets the main points Ed made here: • Insists that energy prices overall will be 7% lower than they otherwise would have been in the medium term as a result of government policy, even if prices in real terms may rise due to the worldwide energy market. • Rejects talk of a government-sanctioned dash for gas as overblown, even if he concedes the Conservatives will big this up. • Says shale gas will not have a ...
A team of us from Dundee Liberal Democrats took part in a campaigning effort by the cross-party Better Together campaign today. There was a great reception from local people as we all campaigned in the Murraygate area of the City Centre - here's a photo below of some of my Dundee LibDem colleagues at the City Square at lunchtime!
Just caught up with this weeks X Factor USA. As I mentioned on this blog before, 13 year old Carly Rose Sonenclar is absolutely amazing. This week she took a plain, ordinary song and brought out some truly amazingly well placed notes in this rendition of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow". No wonder that the USA voted her best act of the week.
I am not sure if this is the right time to post this video given yesterday's rugby international result, but as the new hobbit movie is about to hit the cinemas I thought it worth showing how New Zealand is seeking to cash-in.
Here's another of Ros's interventions that I hadn't covered, from 5 July 2011... Schedule 5 : New Chapter 4ZA of Part 1 of the Local Government Finance Act 1992 Amendment 129LZZZA Moved by Lord Jenkin of Roding 129LZZZA: Schedule 5, page 263, leave out lines 9 to 29 One of the joys of local government finance is the use of language, and this debate turned into a symposium on the word 'excessive' and the appropriateness of its use in legislation. Ros demonstrated that not all members of the House of Lords are wedded to quill pens and reference libraries... Baroness ...
Last night (well in the early hours of today) whilst watching Australia v South Africa in the second test from Adelaide I was laying in bed and trying to work out my Test team of my lifetime and decided to blog about it so here we are. I am only including players I saw who were at the height of their game in my watching life. This means that players like Botham and Marshall – two players who would certainly be in the mix are not going to be considered. Also this is not a 'best team of my generation' ...
Sun 25th
13:15Nick Clegg's fourth Letter from the Leader: "The only way out of the housing crisis is to build our ...
Here's Nick Clegg's latest missive to Lib Dem members and supporters — this week focusing on his efforts to get Britain building again to help those households in need of decent, affordable housing... I'm writing this as we come to the end of an incredibly hectic week in politics. The negotiations over the budget in Europe, securing of a much needed ceasefire in Gaza, rising speculation about the upcoming Leveson report. And Ed Davey's important announcement of a landmark coalition deal on low carbon energy that will deliver billions of pounds of investment in clean technology and create thousands of ...
The fifth anniversary of my blog went by without me noticing. I don't know if I'm a narcissist, but I quite often find myself re-reading old entries. Sometimes it's because I've Googled for the solution to a problem, only to find I helpfully blogged about it yonks ago - other times I'll read an article and think "Hmmm, I wrote on that subject a while ago," and go off to find what I used to think. With over 560 entries - ranging from single images to thousand word screeds - it's tempting to leave everything which I've written preserved in ...
There has been some concern from local residents about cars parking on the pavement in Upper Bloomfield Road. The council is to put in two bollards to stop this happening
Well, this made it pretty easy to decide what to blog about my trip yesterday to help Marisha Ray in the Croydon North by-election: To find out more about Marisha Ray's campaign and how to help it, see www.CroydonNorthLibDems.org.uk.
Facebook makes it official — an external advertising network is coming soon — Tech News and Analysis (tags: ) BBC News - Welfare reform and not paying the rent (tags: ) 10 lessons for Labour from the PCC elections Interesting for other parties too, and the comments are worth reading (unusually) (tags: ) Evicted man died living in his shed | This is Staffordshire (tags: ) Why Peter Cushing is tougher than Chuck Norris (tags: ) Early Hours Motorway Closure After Horse Dies on M1. | West Yorkshire Police :( poor horsies (tags: ) Bruce Campbell on handing over the ...
Ward: Odd Down App Ref: 12/04714/FULParish: N/ARegistered: 8th November 2012 Expiry Date: 3rd January 2013Location: Red Lion Quarry Frome Road Odd Down Bath Bath And North East SomersetGrid Ref: (E)373791 - (N)162247 LB Grade: N/AProposal: Replacement of extractor fan outlet (Retrospective).Officer: Chris Griggs-TrevarthenApplicant: Spray Tec Agent: SM Harris And Associates1A Red Lion QuarryFrome
If you're a conference representative for the Liberal Democrats in the East of England, you should have received (or be about to receive) the voting pack for members of regional committees. I'm a candidate for Regional Policy Committee, and as we only have a limited space in the manifesto booklet to talk about what we want to achieve on the committee, I wanted to expand on my ideas. Firstly, I think the regional policy committee has a number of roles it needs to fulfill. Most importantly, it needs to develop distinctive Liberal Democrat policies for the East of England. This ...
Lord Justice Leveson's inquiry into the phone-hacking scandal will report this week. His recommendations on the future of press regulation are the subject of intense speculation, with essentially three positions being staked-out: What's being proposed 'Independent regulation backed up by statute' Advocates, who include Evan Harris and the Hacked Off campaign group, argue that the only way to ensure the press does not abuse its position in the future is for it to be regulated. But, they insist, this should be independent both of government and the press, the two main vested interests in this debate — something akin to ...
With thanks to Tour Scotland, here's a video of our superb fireworks display managed by Robin Carstairs at the West End lights switch on/Christmas events last Wednesday evening:
Well, I also had lunch with friends and wrote some stuff. But part of the day involved popping over to the Container Store and picking up these: Button hooks from the Container Store And screwing them into my wall to do this: A place to hang my hats. Yes, hats, plural. Yes, I have nine hats (two on one hook, there.) No, I don't regret a single one of these. Floral fedoras! ...have I mentioned my thing about floral fedoras? Should I be explaining how awesome Capital Scandal is and why I have this imperative to have fedoras? Maybe later. ...
