The text of David Cameron's speech today to the National Conservative Convention contains the following passage: [IMG: 7196134082_e9e49cc5e9_n] ... We give people the tools to succeed. Yes, we believe self-reliance is a good thing, but that doesn't mean "you're on your own". You can't just say to the teenager who no one has ever believed in: "pull yourself up by the boot-straps". I know the leg-ups I got in life. A loving family, wonderful parents, a great school and university. Aspiration needs to be nurtured. And this party has always understood that. We want people to climb up through their ...
[IMG: Lynne Featherstone MP and the Haringey Lib Dems at the Whittington March] Together with the Haringey Lib Dems, I joined the Whittington march today. We repeated our call for local health services to be protected. The Whittington Board recently announced its intentions to sell off a third of the Hospital site and reduce the number of and staff at the hospital. It came as a shock to politicians, residents and staff alike and caused a great deal of concern. It was, of course, only three years ago that we took to the streets to march, petition and fight against ...
Yesterday I called on the Liberal Democrat high command to come clean and tell us the real reason they are in favour of secret courts. Today Nick Clegg's weekly email arrived. Eagerly I opened it. But nothing. Not a mention of secret courts. It was worse than that. The email was mostly about the Leveson proposals and the battle over whether and how we should legislate to implement them. It was quite long but, even so, we were referred to an article by Nick in The Times for a more detailed exposition of his views. That was a big problem ...
Nick Unless you send me a full explanation of the secret courts scandal, please stop sending me these fatuous letters. Best wishes Paul [IMG: Post to Twitter] Tweet This Post
The Telegraph has a quite shocking story about an attempt by an NHS Trust in England to silence an MP, who was trying to do his job by raising concerns about the deaths of two patients. The paper says that Steve Baker was given legal advice that Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust could be prosecuted for corporate manslaughter after an elderly patient who should not have been on solids died after being given the wrong food. However, when the MP told the trust's chief executive Anne Eden he intended to raise the prospect of charges in a radio interview, she told ...
Sat 16th
17:13
Welsh Government makes 'very basic' errors in major literacy and numeracy presentation
The Western Mail reports on an embarrassing faux pas as part of a roadshow of events to update schools on Wales' new Literacy and Numeracy Framework. They say that delegates at venues including Cardiff's Swalec Stadium and the Liberty Stadium in Swansea were left annoyed by a series of glaring errors in the Welsh language presentation at the events. They quote a teacher present at a meeting in Venue Cymru, Llandudno, who said it was "a joke" that a conference on literacy contained slides that did not make sense: The teacher, who asked to remain anonymous, also questioned why S4C ...
Some photographs from the Scottish Liberal Democrat Conference at the West Park Centre today: Dundee team meet Vince Cable MP Danny Alexander MP addresses conference Caron Lindsay snaps a photo of Eastleigh by-election winner Mike Thornton MP Willie Rennie MSP addresses conference
Much has been written again this week regarding Secret Courts, and the resignation of Jo Shaw (one of the leaders of Lib Dems Against Secret Courts) from the party. I could easily fill up this entire post with such pieces again this week. I will refrain, however, and give you this one by Jonathan Calder. Oh, and maybe this one from The New Statesman's Stagger's blog by Richard Morris. Meanwhile, Nick Barlow wonders if Clegg wants a new membership... ...or maybe there's something he's not telling us, muses Jonathan Calder. Away from the issue of Secret Courts, Mark Pack has ...
I have just finished reading what for me is the most thought provoking book I have ever read. I was totally unaware until I read The Chilling Stars by Nigel Calder and Henrik Svensmark that not only does the earth move round the sun, but that the sun moves round the Milky Way Galaxy that we live in. The discoveries of Cosmoclimatology turn the accepted theory about climate change on its head. It challenges the prevailing views about climate change held by our party and offers real scientific evidence that there are much larger drivers of climate change than just ...
Subsea 7 is inviting residents and interested parties to view its initial proposals to build high quality offices for their expanded presence in Sutton. An exhibition will be held on Tuesday 19th March at the Sutton Holiday Inn between 1pm and 8pm. A further exhibition will be held on Tuesday 26th March at the same ...
[IMG: new york groove] Yesterday, I overheard my daughter singing "I'm back in the New York..." This triggered a distant memory so, after obtaining formal permission in triplicate, I opened her bedroom door and enquired as to the precise lyrics of the song she was singing. The song was "New York Groove". The reason my daughter was singing it is due to its being the theme song to one of her favourite TV programmes, NY Ink. The song was originally a hit for Hello on the silvery labelled Bell Records in 1975. NY Ink uses the Ace Frehley version from ...
I thoroughly recommend watching this superb video. [IMG: Post to Twitter] Tweet This Post
It's the classic three steps to bad press work: Step 1: Bad news A bad news story about Haringey Council hits the media: A man left brain damaged when he tripped in a pothole has won an estimated £1 million in damages... Homes for Haringey, a subsidiary of Haringey council, initially denied responsibility for the accident, although they accepted that they had not maintained Lightfoot Road to a proper standard. In 2008 the council agreed to pay 72.5 per cent of Mr Bullock's full claim value, and after five years of negotiations, the final figure was approved at the High ...
Mike Smithson posted this image comparing press circulation figures of ten years ago with now earlier: [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
Just a quick update on both the above. I've had a couple of complaints about flytipping around the Blue Ball Lane / Simister Lane areas between Simister and Heywood Old Road. The Council's team have now been out twice to remove flytipping. If this issue persists please do let me know and hopefully the Council can deal with this as quickly as possible. Other residents have contacted me because Simister Green was being missed by the street cleaners and I understand that this was to be mechanically cleaned last week. Please let me know if these issues persist. Tim
Here's today's hand-picked selection that caught my interest... Osborne under pressure The Tory Diary Even-handed assessment of the Chancellor by @PaulGoodmanCH » Osborne under pressure http://bit.ly/15S1fTZ Longform: A Tale of Two Londons by Nicholas Shaxson A look behind the bullet-proof glass of One Hyde Park » A Tale of Two Londons http://bit.ly/Yh13Ik Rob Portman and His Brave, Gay Son : The New Yorker So this is actually a warms-your-cockles story involving a GOP politician » Rob Portman and His Brave, Gay Son http://nyr.kr/XGjwUl Factcheck: Is the cost of renewable energy pushing households into fuel poverty? | Full Fact A good ...
It's been four years since I got a .tel domain. Way back then, I wasn't that keen on the idea - I thought the implementation was iffy and the design pretty naff. Since then, the site has got easier to use and now looks a lot better - especially on mobile. [IMG: edent.tel screenshot] When http://edent.tel/ came up for renewal last year, I decided to add Google Analytics to it so I could see if it was useful. [IMG: tel stats] So, at the moment it bumbles along with 2 to 5 hits a day - more when my blog ...
I remember my 27th birthday very clearly. I was at Medway hospital with my Mum, sister, grandfather and my 90 year old grandmother who was suffering from dementia and had suffered a fall and had a nasty leg wound. After a long wait in triage she was moved on trolley to a staging area for another few hours. As time went by mum became most distraught and asked the only nearby nurse for assistance, namely the wound dressed and water for a dehydrated patient who had no idea what was happening. "I'm doing my paperwork" she was told. After half ...
Only two members of the Scottish Liberal Democrat conference voted against a motion opposing the introduction of secret courts. One of them was Jim Wallace, whose name is on the Government's bill. The leadership didn't put up a fight, which in some ways is more frustrating. Why won"t they come forward and engage in the debate? It's clear they have no intention in taking the slightest bit of notice of the vote, or the previous votes carried by enormous majorities at Federal Conference. There was only one speech against and that was from someone who opposed secret courts in principle ...
Sat 16th
10:51
March Books 4) Berlin - A City Divided: Chronicles, by Susanne Buddenberg and Thomas Henseler
[IMG: scan0001] I am personally fascinated by Berlin, and by the Wall which I saw in 1986 - I took pictures, which must be in a box somewhere, of the Brandenburg Gate both from the same position as the Holzapfel family in the extract to the right and from the other side. This book, produced by the Federal Foundation for the Reassessment of the SED Dictatorship (ie the East German regime), tells very simply five stories of people affected by the Wall - the teenage student who flees west as it is being built in order to complete her exams; ...
Sat 16th
10:29
Clegg statement on Leveson: our proposals pose no danger to press freedom, but will give assurance t...
[IMG: clegg on leveson] Nick Clegg – who declared on Thursday his backing for a free and fair press – has now published a statement on how he's approaching next week's critical Commons vote on how the Leveson Report is taken forward: Next week MPs will have the chance to deliver the robust, independent self-regulation for the press that Lord Justice Leveson recommended in his report. It was hoped that talks between the party leaders would be able to agree how such a system would work, but the Prime Minister's decision to end those discussions now means that the issue ...
The first and simplest conclusion of this book is that life for most French people between 1940 and 1944 was miserable. This is a terrifically well-researched and fluently written account of occupied France during the second world war. It is a subject where of which my previous knowledge could probably have fitted on the back of a postcard - collapse in 1940, Pétain and Laval, resistance, D-Day, don't take 'Allo! 'Allo! seriously. I had never considered the impact on France of the continuing imprisonment of the two million - two million! - soldiers captured in 1940, plus the hundreds of ...
The Tories have done some pretty appalling things lately, including a dogmatic insistence on austerity policies, NHS reforms and calls to repeal the Human Rights Act. But they have finally done something so vile and disgusting that it is doubtful the coalition can survive. I refer of course to the decision by Tory-controlled Mid Devon District Council to abolish the apostrophe. You can tell how bad things are when even a local greengrocer complains: "The apostrophe is part of the English language so I think it should be upheld." The North Devon Journal reports that the rot has spread to ...
As he whizzed along Camden's back streets and canal banks and along the edge of Regent's Park he sometimes glimpsed the whole scene as a vast, broken woodland, the forest of London. It was like when as a lad he'd seen from the hilltop how the landscape of Lewis wasn't moor and field and bog with outcrops of rock, but a gnarly mass of rock with a thin overlay of peaty soil. The vision of the city as a forest uplifted him. It was almost utopian, and within it he felt the bike's smooth engineered wooden frame and handlebars as ...
We live in simultaneous ages, and sometimes they are only given names when we are dead and gone. It is peculiar that we should live in a country and never be told its name. The Renaissance historians named the 'dark ages' and 'middle ages' that had gone before. Modern historians have their 'Victorian Age' or 'Age of the Enlightenment'. Most of us think more in terms of decades. But there are other ages and in some ways they are more meaningful, because they sum up the prevailing philosophies of life that dominate the moment in time that is ours. The ...
Sat 16th
09:47
Stockport toured the UK for Comic Relief, appearing as Belfast, Mansfield and Newport Pagnall
We don't do things in half-measures in Stockport, and for Peter Kay's Sofa Ride, the whole town toured the UK. Stockport first turned up in Belfast to kick off Peter Kay's Comfy Sofa Challenge, as Stockport Mayor Wendy Meikle became the first person ever to simultaneously be Mayor of an English town and of the capital of Northern Ireland. [IMG: Stockport Mayor Wendy Meikle in "Belfast"] Stockport Mayor Wendy Meikle in "Belfast" The town of Stockport continued it's fund-raising tour of the UK, turning up in Mansfield a few minutes later. [IMG: Stockport in Mansfield] And then Stockport completed the ...
Having spent months lobbying across the world to try and ensure that at the end of the 57th UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) we had agreed conclusions – when the good news came through last night – I was very relieved. Last year when the theme was Rural Women – much to everyone's surprise – consensus was not achieved and therefore there were no agreed conclusions. This may have passed many by (as this world meeting on women never gets the attention it deserves) but had this happened a second time – the consequences would have been ...
David Steel should have been the warning. His conversion from young liberal firebrand to eager defender of the status quo in the House of Lords ought to have shown us that it's very easy to go into power with grand intentions of reforming it, and then end up defending all the things you used to complain about. You can call it going native, being captured by the establishment or whatever you want, but there's no denying that it happens. The rebel gets co-opted by the system, and then works to defend it isn't much of an original plot, anyway. That's ...
Southwark Labour have been charging more rent than they need. They've stated away £6.5M into a war chest. They're now deciding how to spend this money in the last full financial year before the next local election. This money should either not have been charged to generally our poorest residents OR it should have been used to make improvements before. But we do have local housing issues that can be brought forward. We've suggested our priorities for East Dulwich council properties are: 1. Safety issues such as electric wiring 2. Security – tenanted properties are the target of burglary and ...
Why DRM is such a fucking stupid idea (tags: ) Are you a fan of The Princess Bride? Click this And have the tissues ready. (tags: ) DWP seeks law change to avoid benefit repayments after Poundland ruling | Society | guardian.co.uk Eurgh. This is just evil. (tags: ) We must not ignore the Cameron government's attack on disabled people | Bright Green (tags: ) Introducing the next pattern...the Robson Coat! | Sewaholic Oh man... I have too many sewing patterns I haven't started yet already, but this one looks like something I would LOVE to wear... (tags: ) Doctor ...
You can download a good quality PDF version of this poster here.
How real is the danger of an EU collapse? My verdict: It's receding, but the UK is the wild card John Bruton: 'the EU is still regarded by many in the UK as a homogeneous foreign country, not a highly diverse Union. Britain's membership is seen more as a disposable convenience than as a long-term commitment." (tags: eu ukpolitics ) Britain's potential exit from the EU French, Polish and German authors reflect. (tags: eu ukpolitics ) Hostile platitudes On dealing with the loss of an online friendship. (tags: Internet )
Sometimes in British politics a smart slogan can be very effective. Mrs Thatcher's officially named Community Charge was quickly dubbed the "Poll Tax" and almost as quickly seen off. The present government is retreating rapidly form its planned removal of a subsidy for those who allegedly under-occupy their social housing now that the label "Bedroom Tax" has stuck. Of course smart slogans don't always work to the benefit of social responsibility. Gordon Brown's proposal of a perfectly sensible levy on estates to fund care of the elderly was quickly labelled a "Death Tax" and just as quickly died the death ...
I DON'T read the Daily Mail but someone pointed out an article by Richard Littlejohn (sigh in frustration) which is so malignant that I wonder how much more Right the Right can go before it demands that people show their hunger swollen bellies to prove that they are living in poverty. The article is a comment on a report published by the TUC this week on how the 'majority of children of UK children will be living below the breadline by 2015'. I know that social policy can involve different ways of measuring needs and poverty levels and sometimes it ...
I have recently been in touch with the City Engineer regarding concerns about a significant amount of water seepage from the retaining wall along Pentland Avenue, towards the Balgay Road end of the wall. This has been raised with me by local residents and by representatives of Community Spirit Action Group. The City Engineer has updated me as follows: "As you will be aware weather-wise, we have had higher than normal levels of rainfall. This has led to ground saturation and less natural absorption and attenuation of rainfall. This has resulted in elevated ground water tables. Our feeling is that ...
From On Liberty by JS Mill The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member ...
