I was about to write a blog about Seasonal Affective Disorder but then I saw a tweet that Joe Michalczuk had quit his job as commentator of Pompey games on Express FM. I wouldn't blog about that if that is all there was but no – he didn't just quit – he launched into a scathing attack on many people as you can see in his full resignation tweet. Talk about going out with a bang. He left the gas on and stood at the door for several hours to ensure that the whole place filled up and then lit ...
[IMG: thornton hughes browne] It's been another record-breaking day for Mike Thornton's team in Eastleigh — well over 200 party volunteers had arrived by lunchtime today, with many more arriving later on. This follows the 530+ who visited this weekend, and the 1,000+ who campaigned during the first week. The party's poll ratings may not be sky-high, but the determination of Lib Dem activists to prove wrong those who argue the party's doomed has rarely been more resolute! This Lib Dem enthusiasm has been picked up by the press this week: Tories sniff defeat as bullish Lib Dems pour into ...
In addition to the transcript (posted below) the audio is available here; Cllr Kilian Bourke (LD Group Leader, Cambridgeshire County Council) The format is m4a (suitable for iTunes), unfortunately the quality is quite low - the County Council doesn't routinely record the entire debate in the Council Chamber, just the Oral Questions (which I'll be publishing later). Recordings are available for the speeches made by the other group loeaders; Cllr Nick Clarke (Conservative), Cllr Peter Reeve (UKIP), Cllr Paul Sales (Labour), and Cllr Ken Churchill (Non-Aligned Conservatives).
Is the granting of approval to run Academy schools a favour by Michael Gove to a big Tory donor? I attended a showing of a film which demonstrated a blatant upheaval of the Education system in what could be seen as a move to remove state schools from government spending. The case study used was Downhill Primary, a community primary school that was previously failing but, due to a new headmistress (Leslie Church), started hitting floor targets for the first time and was improving. Michael Gove identified Downhill as a 'failing school', despite evidence to prove otherwise, and Harris Academy ...
On the 20th anniversary of the abduction and murder of two-year-old James Bulger, Professor Frank Furedi argues that this tragedy has been exploited to create a thoroughly unhealthy culture surrounding our attitudes to childhood: The tragic legacy of this horrific murder continues to haunt British society. The immediate response of British society to this shocking event was an understandable sense of revulsion. But regrettably this very human reaction swiftly mutated into one of moral disorientation.Policy makers, politicians and media commentators played a critical role in inciting this response. Their histrionic and scaremongering response to this event served to distort the ...
When you spend a good portion of your reading time in blog and commentariat land you quickly find out what people think is wrong with the world. Up towards the top of lists are jobsworths / petty bureaucrats / red tape etc. well here is a tale to warm your cockles...this isn't a whinge this is praise......followed by a little whinge :-) So there I was on t' train clutching my advance ticket and wondering what type of company I shall share today. Just as the train pulls out I realise I should have jumped on an earlier train. For ...
"So," a voice crooned smugly in the darkness, "you return again to our little planet, Doctor, with a new face and a new friend. You must find us very interesting indeed. Almost as interesting, perhaps, as I find you." Andy Lane has rarely disappointed me, and this New Adventure, introducing new companions Roz Forrester and Chris Cwej, is up to his usual standards, with lots of good ideas - mollusc-like aliens resenting their recent defeat by humanity; a peculiar radiation that induces homicidal psychosis in its victims; a richly imagined array of settings, including a bootleg medical centre in the ...
I use the word "sings" in its loosest sense. The Sandy to his Danny is Barbara Potter, of whom you have read here before. I liked the comment on the original Leicester Mercury story that suggests we have found the new Arthur Mullard and Hylda Baker.
"Footballers who score hat-tricks against West Ham do not always die in suspicious circumstances, but ... they often do. More often, statistically, than they should." In London Falling, a team of police detectives find themselves pursuing an evil entity around London - a being whose fascination with the fortunes of West Ham turns out to be rooted in ancient and tragic history. It has a bit of a slow start but is otherwise brilliantly done, a fantastic run combining police procedural (including the complex details of the coppers' private lives intertwining with the details of the case) with eldritch magic. ...
There is a danger, as a traditionally minded Liberal, of saying that you are in favour of more women MPs but finding yourself opposed to any measure proposed of bringing that end about. That said, I do worry about the idea of two people sharing the role of constituency MP, as suggested in a proposal to be put to the spring Lib Dem Conference. I worry because I fear it would further undermine the basic premise of representative democracy - that is that an MP uses his or her judgement on the issues that come before parliament and is judged ...
For some reason, which I can only guess at, my home telephone has stopped ringing. Why is it? Because everyone I know is at the Eastleigh by-election? Because people only use mobile numbers these days? Because my friends have finally disowned me? All these are possible, but what I have noticed more than anything else is that - for the last three or four weeks - I have had no cold callers, no telephone salespeople asking me if I am Mrs Boyle, no strange foreign sounding call centres demanding to know whether I have taken out insurance. I realise there ...
Photo by Sabine J Hutchinson www.virtual-shropshire.co.uk Mike Crockart, Liberal Democrat MP for Edinburgh West, has started holding constituency surgeries via Skype, reports Caron's Musings. "Among African-Americans who have grown up during the era of mass incarceration, one in four has had a parent locked up at some point during childhood. For black men in their 20s and early 30s without a high school diploma, the incarceration rate is so high — nearly 40 percent nationwide — that they're more likely to be behind bars than to have a job." John Tierney writes for the New York Times on mass incarceration ...
I was saddened to learn of the death of Jessie Blackburn, recently of the Riverside View Nursing Home, and previously of Blackness Court. Mrs Blackburn was 103. I had the pleasure of meeting Mrs Blackburn some time ago, to discuss a local issue, and she was a sprightly and hugely pleasant lady. There's a fitting tribute to Mrs Blackburn in today's Courier.
[View the story "Eastleigh by-election: 19 February - how could things get worse for the Tories?" on Storify] Eastleigh by-election: 19 February – how could things get worse for the Tories? Storified by Mark Pack· Tue, Feb 19 2013 10:13:28 How could things possibly get worse for the troubled campaign of controversial Conservative candidate in Eastleigh, Maria Hutchings? Well, try this from their co-chairman Andrew Feldman: the company running the servers for their voter contact database has gone into administration and key services were unavailable: "At present, these servers are hosted by a third party company that has suddenly, and ...
[IMG: HertsConstab] Liberal Democrats have questioned the judgment of Conservative David Lloyd, the Hertfordshire Police and Crime Commissioner, following the resignation of his recently appointed Deputy, Rachel Frosh. Rachel Frosh resigned from her £20,000 two-day-a-week job as David Lloyd's Deputy after a bizarre Facebook posting came to light. This showed an image of Adolf Hitler with the suggestion that "socialists" and, by implication, any left-wing inclined people, were comparable to members of Hitler's faschist political movement. Liberal Democrat Police Spokesperson, County Councillor Chris White (St Albans Central) commented: 'Clearly she had neither media savvy nor common sense – and so ...
The Telegraph has a lengthy profile of Rachel Smith, Vince Cable's wife. If cows can be considered to have a casting vote, then Hopeful and Caramel have done their bit to make sure Rachel Smith sees more of her husband in the future. The wife of the business secretary, Vince Cable, is a farmer with a dwindling beef herd in the middle of the New Forest. For months she has been trying to get these two Dexters in calf. The bull has visited; the artificial insemination man has been summoned with his catheter, but the two ladies remain resolutely and ...
I paid out some £3300 on my Halifax Credit Card, this showed up on my monthly statement. Two days later my card had a rebate of £2400. It seemed sensible to contact Halifax to see if my statement could be re-issued to reflect the real balance of £900. I'm told 'Our system doesn't allow us to do this'. Welcome to the nightmare world where humans are totally superfluous - the COMPUTER rules alone. Of course it's not quite that simple. Instead of being able to just pay off £900 & incur no interest I'm now obliged to either pay the ...
[IMG: reform] It seems that journalists in the national media now make time to read Liberal Democrat policy consultation papers, even before they are discussed at Conference. Following the Mail's rant about the so-called 'jewelry tax' (from the Tax Policy consultation paper), we now have a more reasoned appraisal by the Guardian of one of the proposals in the consultation paper on Political and Constitutional Reform. This major consultation is very wide ranging, and begins thus: Our recent policy on constitutional and political reform has tended to focus on altering the democratic structures of the United Kingdom. We have sought ...
Well I'm finally back from two days in Eastleigh where I had a great time in the by-election campaign - such a great time that I shudder to think of the state of my inbox now that I'm back. So, before I start on it, I'm going to procrastinate by airing some thoughts about the UKIP supporters I met on the doorstep in Eastleigh. Because the thing is that I did a lot of knocking on doors and speaking to people in a particular type of area - tightly packed, somewhat run down, former council estates where most of the ...
Internet security has been a concern of national government's for some time. It is inevitable given the international nature of the internet that any information held on it is vulnerable to attack. There are also other issues regarding ownership of that information when it is stored on servers in a different country to its source. That is why the Prime Minister is right to raise this issue with the Indian Government but although it is a start, the issue of confidential information about millions of Britons stored on Indian computer systems being open to cyber attack from terrorists, fraudsters and ...
Here's today's hand-picked selection that caught my interest... Twitter / stephentall: Hilary Mantel on great form ... I tweeted Hilary Mantel's article on Sun. Why can't I provoke Mail-rage? RT @stephentall: Hilary Mantel on great form http://buff.ly/XidmXu Former Lib Dem to stand for English Democrats at Eastleigh by-election (From Daily Echo) Better Off Out I suspect > Former Lib Dem to stand for English Democrats at Eastleigh by-election http://buff.ly/YDhBKr Chris Huhne would escape Lib-Dem mansion tax despite owning eight homes – Politics – News – London Evening Standard Yes but he'll pay 45/50% tax on rental yield> 'Chris Huhne would ...
Congratulations to Devon and Cornwall's new Chief Constable on the message he has sent out about the force's values. His no compromise message highlights the dangers that face our force at a time when public confidence in the police has been shaken. I don't believe that there is any systemic or individual problem in Devon and Cornwall Police that will cause the public to lose trust. But we cannot avoid the fact that the phone hacking saga, arrests and allegations of improper police behaviour and relationships with journalists have done much to shake the national confidence. It would be all ...
Cycle Helmets: The impacts of compulsory cycle helmet legislation on cyclist fatalities and premature deaths in the UK (pdf) – A long piece of research but an interesting one, coming to the conclusion that the reduction in cycling caused by a compulsory helmet law for cyclists would cause more deaths than the helmets would save. This is not an argument... – BenSix on the Iraq war: "It is hard to express what an appalling man the late dictator was: a man who was cruel that would not merely invade a nation but torch its resources as he fled; a man ...
Sorry for the slow write up on this, hectic weekend of elderly care and hospital trip with little Ollie-bob, I only got around to reading Friday's report this morning! Any way.... So, the Medway Town's safeguarding Child care has been rated as wholly unacceptable by Ofsted (read the report here). Councillor Wickes has apologised, as has the new(ish) Children's Director Barbara Peacock, for failing to... well here's what Cllr Wickes said: I apologise for our failure to deliver the service our children and young people deserve. There are many problems with cases being signed off and then being re-referred. According ...
You can tell I've got a new toy to play with – here's a couple of videos I shot yesterday from the launch of Colchester Comedy Festival, featuring Anthony Roberts of Colchester Arts Centre and Miss High Leg Kick abseiling off the side of the Town Hall. For more on the festival, see their website, Facebook or Twitter.
Yesterday's Manchester Evening News had, as it's front-page headline, "Bring Back The Old Squad!" The article opened with the gushing statement; "An army of retired detectives is being lined up to help police tackle major crimes." I'm all for innovative thinking, and have often thought that the combined knowhow of retired police officers could be put to productive use, but our sad experience of the former Labour Government has taught us to look long and hard at any announcements they make. In the body of the Manchester Evening News article is the revelation that £100,000 has been allocated for this ...
You know what it's like:- you wait forever for a guest blog post, and then two come along at once. Further to contributions from Stephen and from my sister Lois, here is the first of two from my other sister Joanna. A Road Trip for the Mind I have a soft spot for the American beat generation. It started when my friend Naomi posted a copy of 'On the Road' to me with the instruction to read and dream. I read and I did, indeed, dream. It's a cliché, of course, to dream of the open road but the idea ...
Local residents are overwhelmingly in favour of the new A6 to Manchester Airport Relief Road, with seven times more people supporting the road than opposing it. Working with Cheshire East and Manchester, Stockport Council sent out over 85,000 consultation surveys on the various options for the A6 to Manchester Airport Relief Road. In addition, the consultation was widely advertised and available online through the website and social media. Council officers are currently looking at the 8,000 responses in detail before drawing up final plans for the road. The next stages are: The three local authorities will vote on the preferred ...
Just over ten years ago, I was one dot in a crowd of one million people in London calling for the Labour government of Tony Blair to stop the Iraq war. We all knew that Saddam Hussein was a murderous dictator who was much-hated in his own country but we knew equally well that the case for invasion of Iraq (it was never a 'war') was a gigantic deceit, cooked up by the Blair and Bush governments for their own purposes. We knew that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction. We knew that far from being a friend of ...
A few years ago, you could go around Cheadle and Gatley – or any other area – and find numerous examples of graffiti on walls, signs, bollards, telecoms boxes – it was all over the place. The Lib Dem team decided to go for a zero-tolerance approach. We went around the area searching for graffiti, hunting it out and reporting it wherever we saw it – even if it was something relatively minor. As a result of that – and other things that have happened – there's now a lot less graffiti around our villages: a real victory. Visiting different ...
Rob Pensalfini has written a delightful blog in which he accuses (or perhaps credits) Shakespeare with inventing the emoticon. He claims that this is within A Winter's Tail, Act I, Scene ii - in the first folio. So, I turned to the First Folio viewer which allows people to see scans of the first printing of The Winter's Tale - in this case, the New South Wales scan. [IMG: Shakespeare emoticon] Direct link to scan. The "emoticon" is also present in the second folio, the third, and the fourth. However, at some point, the smiley vanishes! The fourth folio was ...
The current edition of Liberator magazine features a rather mocking picture of Education minister David Laws on the front cover: Haha it's because he's a Tory...geddit.... I don't mean to have a sense of humour failure, but would the weirdy beardies of 'The Liberal Collective' like the equivalent saying they were writing the manifesto for Labour? ...
[IMG: Email inbox] Only a third of emailed newsletters and circulars sent out by the Department for Education to schools and teachers are read by the recipients according to new figures I have secured following a Freedom of Information request to the Department. In 2012 the Department sent out 148,182 such emails, with their systems recording 49,504 of them as having been read at least once (33%). If this was simply a cold-calling type email marketing list, then a 33% open rate would actually be quite good. However, this is very different from that – it's official information from the ...
I noticed one of my local papers reporting that the MP for Luton South was to lead an "inquiry into whether the law on prostitution should be changed": 'Gavin Shuker MP leading inquiry into sex trade laws'. I was intrigued. This is a very worthy, if somewhat tricky, subject to tackle. The law needs to protect, often very vulnerable, people from exploitation so to question whether the current legal situation could be improved to do this better is surely worthwhile. Yet this is not an easy issue for politics to deal with. Society at large seems to have a complicated ...
Today Cornwall's Liberal Democrats announced an alternative budget to freeze council tax and invest in front line services. Here are the detailed figures for the coming financial year. The full amendment that will be voted on by the council includes everything for the next four years. The Liberal Democrat budget proposal seeks to implement spending commitments as follows for 2013/14: Council Tax Freeze: £4.272 million Partially restore Leader's Contingency Fund: £0.2 million Investment in Youth Services: £0.2 million In order to pay for this spending, the Liberal Democrats propose to raise income as follows (all figures are in comparison with ...
Another year of council tax freezeCuts to car park chargesInvestment in road repairs and youth servicesMore money for beach cleaning and litter picking Cornish Liberal Democrats are today announcing a budget alternative which would see council tax frozen for a third straight year. "Our budget alternative stands in stark contrast to the official budget proposal of the Conservative-led council," said Cllr Jeremy Rowe, Leader of the Liberal Democrats on Cornwall Council. "Where they promise a council tax rise, we will freeze it. Where they propose service cuts, we have found the money to reverse many of the harshest. Where they ...
[IMG: Screen Shot 2013-02-19 at 09.19.00] Although Bury residents fair better than others for many health concerns, we are statistically MORE likely to get cancer and more likely to die from cancer than the national average. in the country. The local health services are warning us that some local people put off seeking help and, by the time they go to the doctor, it is too late. NHS Greater Manchester has launched a new campaign, urging people to lookout for 4 key signs of cancer and go to their GP if they have any of the symptoms. There are over ...
Heaton Park have been reviewing their catering arrangements. As people will know the Lakeside Café ceased operating on Friday 25 January, and the park is now consulting with Park users and non-users to find out what sort of food and drink visitors might want during a day out at Heaton Park. It is expected that a new catering service will start in the summer, but in the meantime visitors will be able to buy snacks and hot drinks from a mobile unit situated outside the Lakeside Cafe and use the facilities inside the café building. At weekends there will also ...
Episode 47 of the House of Comments podcast "Whose Mansion Tax is it Anyway?" was recorded on Sunday and is out today. This week myself and Emma Burnell discuss Ed Miliband's announcement of a mansion tax and a reintroduction of the 10p tax rate, the latest from the Eastleigh by-election, the court decision on workfare and the Sun's decision to publish a front-page bikini picture of the recently killed Reeva Steenkamp. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here (note - this is a new feed so if you used to subscribe to the old feed a couple of ...
From the start of April 2013, people who pay income tax will see a further reduction in income tax levels, bringing the total tax cut to £600 a year since Liberal Democrats joined the Coalition Government. This is through raising the 'threshold' – the amount of income that people can earn BEFORE pay tax to £9,440 a year – this is a tax cur of £600 a year for more than 20 million people across the country. In Bury this means that 73,900 people have had a tax cut of £600 (about 4,400 people in Holyrood Ward alone). In Bury ...
feminist aspie rants about neurotypical privilege (tags: ) Nadine Dorries: Expenses Authorities Would Have Me Kill My Dog And Have My Child Adopted Count the fails in Nadine's thinking. (tags: ) Oppressive beliefs and breast size preference « Feminist Philosophers Apparently I'm sexist... (tags: ) New BMI (New Body Mass Index) We all know that BMI is flawed. This is an attempt to paper over the cracks. (tags: ) Doctor Who - Reece Shearsmith cast as Patrick Troughton | Radio Times :) (tags: ) Comic-book superheroine Cat aims to see off gender stereotypes | Books | guardian.co.uk (tags: ) Kate ...
[IMG: Jewellery shot for RK Jewellers 01] "Now they want to tax jewellery: New Lib Dem wealth plan to target ALL assets" screamed a headline in the Mail on Sunday yesterday, warning their readers of the latest appalling imposition that Lib Dems in government were about to put upon the public. "Families will be forced to pay tax on jewellery and other heirlooms under controversial new plans drawn up by the Liberal Democrats. Under the scheme, tax inspectors would get unprecedented new powers to go into homes and value rings, necklaces, paintings, furniture and other family treasures." they said. If ...
Amnesty: Convicted Sahrawis must receive fair trials in civilian courts | Amnesty International¬es Regime favoured by the West getting away with blatant human rights violations - as usual. (tags: westernsahara )
[IMG: Stornaway Aviary] The two girls in our household have been crazy about Stornaway for several years. Having enjoyed their gig at New Greenham Arts tonight, I can now see what they were on about. A superb band. The Lib Dem connection is that Tim Bearder, son of Catherine Bearder MEP, was the first person to play Stornaway on the radio and was suspended from BBC Radio Oxford in March 2006 for "barricading himself in the studio" and playing a full hour of Stornaway on air. I like the cut of that man's jib. [IMG: Post to Twitter] Tweet This ...
The next Cheadle Area Committee will be at Bolshaw Primary School, Cross Road, Heald Green starting at 6pm on Tuesday 26th February 2013. Items on the agenda include: Planning application for extension to 118 Styal Road Measures to reduce traffic speed on Styal Road near Lomond Road, where there have been several accidents The application for Manchester Harriers to use Scholes Fields for school cross country
On Tuesday 5th March, a group of us are taking part in another clean-up of parts of the West End. My thanks go to the ever-enthusiastic Trudy Cunningham, Environment and Sustainability Officer at the University of Dundee, for organising the event. Details below - do please contact Trudy if you are able to take part!You can download a higher quality PDF version of this poster here.
I was once a Catholic; I went to a Catholic school. I recall receiving my first Holy Communion on a bright Spring morning; all the children taking part were obliged to have a banner made by their families proclaiming their love and support. My Swedish grandmother, though she was Lutheran, made my banner. It read: ...
It is better late than never that the First Minister has finally caught up and called for proper powers for our National Assembly, but the question is, does his party back his position? It is now time for the Labour party to make their stance clear on the matter. Does the Shadow Welsh Minister, Owen Smith MP, support these proposals? Does Ed Miliband support these proposals? If not, then one must wonder how significant these proposals actually are. As we all know, the Welsh Labour Government has traditionally had very little influence over their Labour colleagues in London. The people ...
As Ward Councillors we have just received the following email from the Council : "As you will be aware during 2011 and 2012 we trialled mobile catering concessions at Cantelowes Gardens; Kilburn Grange; Tavistock Square and Waterlow Park. Over all the mobile catering concessions in parks and open spaces have had mixed success depending on the site but generally there has been positive feedback from the local community. Income from mobile catering concessions has though been very low from £2,500 in 2011/12 to £4,350 in 2012/13. A barrier to the contract value has been the duration of the contracts and ...
Monday, 18 February 2013Statement by Emily Frith, Lib Dem Parliamentary Candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn Statement from from Emily Frith sent to Hampstead and Kilburn Democrat members this afternoon: "Dear All It is with regret that I have to let you know that I am standing down as the Liberal Democrat Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn just a few weeks after I had the honour of being selected by Liberal Democrat members in the constituency. This has come about because I have been offered a job in government in which I will be working to give the Liberal ...
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