I remember when I was a kid of probably about ten but maybe more or less watching the Lon Chaney senior version of phantom of the opera on channel 4 as part of a run of phantom of the opera films which also included the Claude rains one and (I think) the Herbert Lom one and a couple of others. I'm reasonably sure they showed five versions of the story, but I don't know if one of them was a TV movie, and i think at least one version was foreign language. I'd like to know what films were shown ...
Our petition calling for an investigation into the Accident and Emergency service provided by Stoke Mandeville Hospital to Wycombe residents has now reached 6000. Another 2000 are required in order to trigger a debate at Bucks County Council. If you have yet to sign the petition then please sign it online at http://campaigns.libdems.org.uk/WycombeHospital [IMG: petition] Or you can download a petition form A&E PetitionJulia
Catherine and Thevinov meet Julian to discuss their concerns Cambridge sixth-form students have told the city's MP Julian Huppert that the government's A level exam reform will stifle creativity and increase stress. The students from Hill's Road Sixth Form College called on Julian to support their fight against the planned changes which they describe as "a shambles". Seventeen-year-olds Catherine Spencer and Thevindu Edirisinghe from the college's School Council, who have just sat their AS level exams, asked Julian to take a letter outlining their concerns to Education Minister, Michael Gove. The college's NUS officer, Catherine said: "This new approach to ...
Cllr Peter Downes Leading Cambridgeshire County Councillor, Peter Downes, who has been campaigning for better funding for the county's schools for more than 20 years, has given a cautious welcome to the Chancellor's promise to make the system fairer. Cllr Downes, Liberal Democrat County Spokesman for Education said George Osborne's announcement yesterday (Wednesday, June 26) might be good news but he was not pinning all his hopes on it. "This government's record on school funding has been mixed so far," he said. "It has kept its promise on the Pupil Premium, which provides extra money for the most disadvantaged pupils, ...
Pardon my anorak but, following last week's short film of five Deltics at Stalybridge, here is some footage (rather a lot, actually) of them in their pomp. My favourite spot for watching them was Retford, where the boys taking numbers called each other "thee" and "thou". There is a point of interest right at the end of the film where you see Weedon station still standing. Wikipedia says it closed in 1958 and was demolished soon afterwards. Weedon is the site of a military complex from the Napoleonic era that was used as an ammunition store in World War II. ...
More and more, the Coalition agreement reads like the blueprint for the government Britain needed but did not get. Take the introduction to the section on communities and local government: The Government believes that it is time for a fundamental shift of power from Westminster to people. We will promote decentralisation and democratic engagement, and we will end the era of top-down government by giving new powers to local councils, communities, neighbourhoods and individuals.What we have seen instead is Eric Pickles threatening to strip local councils of their planning powers and hand them to a centralised planning inspectorate. And we ...
I don't care that George Osborne had a burger on Tuesday night, or that Danny Alexander had a Dominos pizza last night. I don't care that Eric Pickles had a salad today or that Nick Clegg buys his burgers from a restaurant I've never heard of. I don't care Ed Milliband once bought a burger or Grant Shapps ate in McDonalds but Vince Cable didn't. I really don't care. I so, so don't care I do care that Hullreceived the go ahead for Castle Street today and that the pupil premium was protected. I care that the government is throwing ...
I saw someone on Facebook discuss how the public sector will lose automatic pay rises, and whilst it may result in a blow average increase in wages for some (probably very few), with news in recent months about wild increases in pay rises across the public sector, I do see some sense. This freeze, is fundamentally to stop, [...]
The Southbank skatepark has long been part of one of the best parts of London, but now it is under threat from developers. Yesterday, local MP Kate Hoey, a former secretary of state for sport, delivered a petition to the commons that had been given to her and neighbouring MP Simon Hughes, showing the strong ...
Was to just send me an email telling me what I'd told them — that GNU/Linux users can only download one track at a time. I've just spoken to someone there on the telephone, and he said that no-one in their call centres has any information as to why GNU/Linux users can no longer download [...]
The Court of Appeal has just published it's judgement in the latest sex-by-deception case. This is, to the best of my knowledge, the first time a written judgement has been provided in such a case and is binding on the lower courts, i.e. creating case law. It's not good news. As I'm quoting direct from the judgement, the below contains detailed references to sexual acts. This is unavoidable as it is highly relevant. There are no references to underage or non-consensual acts, the case revolves entirely around "deception" as to gender invalidating consent. I'm going to quote extensively from the ...
Liberal Democrat Councillors in Bangor are working hard to ensure that HMOs in the area are properly managed and allow sufficient room for families, couples, the elderly, and workers to live in the Bangor community, as the number of family homes continue to decline in areas such as Upper Bangor. When Bangor City Council set [...]
Arfon Liberal Democrats were pleased to her plans for a £250m prison in North Wales which will create over 1,000 jobs. The prison is expected to be built on a site on a Wrexham industrial estate by 2017, and in addition to boosting the economy and creating jobs, it will make family visits easier, which [...]
Thu 27th
17:25
"There is something fundamentally wrong with a society where disabled people in need of support are ...
They laugh as they push more and more into poverty, insecurity and desperation. A comment from Action for M.E "The Chancellor's plan to further squeeze the most vulnerable people in society, including people with M.E./CFS, is nothing short of shameful. Our Welfare Rights Line is already inundated with calls from people in desperate need and these latest moves will just make things worse. There is something fundamentally wrong with a society where disabled people in need of support are instead pilloried and purposely pushed further into poverty." My fellow Lib Dem members, how do you justify this?
The Street Scene -soon to be back on display at The Atkinson Southport What has Clem Davies got to do with the new exhibition at The Tate and how is it related to the 1950 election in Finchley? Well I was waiting for a meeting and with a couple of hours to kill I went to see if I could get into the much publicised new retrospective of Lowry's work opening at The Tate this Tuesday. The placed was packed, but I got a ticket. Lots has been written about Lowry and I have nothing new or original to add ...
Yes, let's pick at some old scabs, shall we? The New Statesman reports that Danny Alexander has confirmed the student loan book will be privatised. The report explains why this makes no economic sense. What the New Statesman doesn't say is that reopening the issue of student loans makes no political sense either. That issue has become a byword for mistrust of the Liberal Democrats. So why revive the controversy? Oh yes, I forgot. Everybody who used to vote Liberal Democrat is a 'protest voter' who can be safely jettisoned in favour of hard-working-centre-ground-alarm-clock-Britain. I hope these imaginary voters will ...
At a time when we are seeing some of the biggest government cuts in a generation it may seem to belittle the suffering people are facing to complain about the effect of the spending review on the science budget. As the government is trying to reduce our debt to income ratio, they have cut the deficit but we also need to create long-term sustainable economic growth. For this to happen investment in science and innovation is key. Our spending on research and development is vital to drive forward economic growth and reverse the current stagnation we see in our economy. ...
The Cricklewood Networking Event went off very well last night at The Crown Moran Hotel. The room was filled with local residents and business people come to meet new neighbours and hear about the latest developments in Cricklewood. There was a very interesting presentation from Sally Williams, a local retail specialist who is working with businesses in the area. She presented the findings of a UCL study into the reasons why people come to Cricklewood - and how they would like to see it improved. Its interesting that the survey clearly indicated that the most important thing people want to ...
Yesterday's spending review demonstrated like nothing else just how our party leadership have betrayed the values we erstwhile all held dear. I have no doubt that many of our ministers in government worked hard behind the scenes to make it all "Less Bad" - but the ultimate impact, and their complicity in policies which seemed predicated on a belief that while someone is down they should get a kicking - is hugely disappointing. We have just issued a statement here on Liberal Left. But that doesn't express my own personal disappointment, that the wider parliamentary party appears to have nothing ...
Here's your usual round-up of comments from Lib Dem party groups following yesterday's spending round announcements. Both Liberal Reform and the Social Liberal Forum issued press releases. Here's what the SLF said: Danny Alexander MP will tomorrow announce details of capital spending plans, a result of hard-fought negotiations led by Vince Cable and others. The Social Liberal Forumm recognises that further cuts to current spending in the Chancellor's Spending Review today are unlikely to repair public finances in the absence of robust economic recovery. Today's announcements are insufficient to tackle our real economic challenges following the banking crisis and the ...
Danny Alexander announced today the coalition's plans for job-creating investment, in energy, road and rail infrastructure. Some of the priorities seem a little strange (I'll return to the question of whether road-building helps anybody except the road-builders). But it just so happened that, this morning, I was also talking about jobs - at the annual conference of the Centre for Local Economic Strategies in Manchester. Richard Kemp was there promising he would push for a Bank of Liverpool. And I talked about 'asset-based' economics, where economies re-grow using their own resources. Because, important as conventional job creation investment is, successive ...
Here's today's hand-picked selection that caught my interest... Liberator's blog: A coup against Clegg? Liberator calls me a "notable commentator". When yr called that by Liberator you know it's not meant as a compliment http://bit.ly/1afSfN9 Labour and Unite: a little time-bomb « Labour Uncut Interesting dissection of Lab's internal turmoil from @rob_marchant > Labour and Unite: a little time-bomb http://bit.ly/1afQZtg Spending review: the dividing lines » Spectator Blogs I've a hunch @IsabelHardman is right: "I have a hunch that the seven-day wait will be a bad dividing line" http://bit.ly/17hspV9 Spending review 2013: a triumph of politics over reason Must-read from ...
The UK Coalition's austerity programme has come under a lot of criticism especially from the Labour Party, who ahve now admitted that they would have done exactly the same thing. Like others my main concern has been the need to get capital investment going so as to create jobs. I am delighted therefore at the announcement by Danny Alexander today of a £1 billion programme of investment, including a new prison in North Wales that will do exactly that. He is proposing that the first £50bn is committed to infrastructure projects starting in 2015-16, with the rest earmarked for the ...
Thu 27th
13:12
Why handing control of the Fire and Rescue Service to the Police Commissioner would be bad for Cornw...
It seems that free-spending Conservative Police Commissioner Tony Hogg is keen to expand his empire. He has welcomed a proposal by the Home Secretary to explore the idea of police commissioners taking over the running of fire and ambulance services. Chancellor George Osborne also gave a hint of such a move in his spending review announcement yesterday. I don't know that much about the ambulance services, but Cornwall Fire and Rescue Service is a hugely specialised team which has developed brilliantly under Cornwall Council. It has new leadership and was taken off a list of those services seen to be ...
Hard working Museum staff left without a good pay rise again I was most despondent when I heard the Chancellor's speech yesterday with yet another attack on the Publicsector workers. For another year our pay is frozen at 1% increase, which effectively results in a pay cut yet again as prices rise by 4% and rail fare could rise as much as 8% next year if we're truly unlucky. I understand that the Public sector is often seen as bloated and in need of trimming but it always comes to us plebs at the bottom rather than the ...
Video by hmtreasuryuk on YouTube. Yesterday, we set out a Spending Round that delivers Liberal Democrat priorities on investment and improving our public services while making responsible choices to deal with the financial problems Labour left us. It demonstrated that the Liberal Democrats will remain firm in our commitment to tackling the deficit, but fair in the way we go about it. Our number one priority in Government has been to fix the economic mess we inherited from Labour. Today I have set out how we will invest in our country's economic future by creating balanced growth and delivering lasting ...
Another win for Leicestershire - this time the Leicester Mercury - in our Headline of the Day Award.
Thu 27th
12:34
Sur-prize: it's only a matter of time before there's a prize for the best prize | Ohid Yaqub
Prize-mania is infiltrating science and technology policy and drowning out more important innovation debates Innovation prize-mania seems to be infiltrating policy corners and important institutions everywhere, from the NHS to NESTA and the UNDP. This week, The Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering made its first £1m award. A few weeks ago, Cameron launched the £1m Longitude Prize. Earlier in the year, the $3m Breakthrough Prize and the $1.5m Tang Prize were launched with considerable fanfare by celebrity billionaire founders. Nature reckons it's "wise to accept such gifts with gratitude and grace". Innovation policy researchers are being asked to provide support ...
Hi, I recently purchased from you the box set "Where The Action Is" in MP3 form. I am a user of the GNU/Linux operating system, and previously when I have bought albums from Amazon, while the Amazon MP3 downloader has been unavailable for that platform, I have been able to obtain the .amz file and [...]
Hopefully by the time you've read this you'll be aware of the details I announced this morning to secure the future of energy supply for the UK - if not, and excuse the pun – let me enlighten you. As you know already, we have a plan in the form of the Energy Bill that is progressing well through Parliament. The plan essentially addresses a major issue - we need to attract £110 billion of private sector investment to replace the supply we lose as a result of 20% of our power stations closing by the end of this decade. ...
Thu 27th
11:56Independent, 27/06/13: Chancellor George Osborne keeps an eye on the election as he decides not to c...
Prateek Buch, director of the Social Liberal Forum, said: "Britain needs a more effective economic approach beyond hoping that cutting government spending will heal the economy....The additional cuts to local government, transport and public sector pay will squeeze already-strained public...Read more ›
There's a fascinating feature piece in the New York Times: [IMG: Inspecting binary data. Photo courtesy of http://www.sxc.hu/photo/965906. Some right reserved] Political marketing has usually lagged behind commercial marketing. Companies that spend billions of dollars a year developing ways to make many more billions of dollars a year tend to have little to learn from presidential campaigns, which are generally start-ups aimed at a one-day sale. But the (re)selling of the president, 2012, was an entirely different matter. The campaign recruited the best young minds in the booming fields of analytics and behavioral science and placed them in a room ...
Thu 27th
11:14
How did Hull Labour react to the government announcement of the Castle Street upgrade?
I'm sure a simple thank you would have sufficed Diana
Julian Huppert MP Cambridge MP Julian Huppert is optimistic that the Chancellor's announcement of a fairer funding formula for the nation's schools could bring long-awaited extra cash for Cambridgeshire. Julian has been campaigning for years to get more money for the county's pupils and hopes that the announcement from George Osborne will bring good news. "I have fought hard for this and it was good to hear the Chancellor finally acknowledge publicly that our schools and others across the country have been unfairly treated," he said. "We are at the bottom of the national funding league table and our schools ...
posted The Blood is The Life 27-06-2013 http://t.co/cfdHLz2fuQ on #dreamwidth (tags: (from twitter) dreamwidth ) [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
Nick Clegg has written a piece for the Sun about jobs and helping people finding work. They have a Sunemployment campaign which aims to match people up with jobs in their area through a series of roadshows. Every year, the Sunemployment campaign helps thousands of people find work. The roadshows that take place in the summer offer a chance to get advice and find out about opportunities. Since 2010, the Government has helped to create over 1.3 million jobs in the private sector, across all sorts of sectors - from science to IT, communications to manufacturing. These are jobs that ...
The weekend of Friday, July 12th to Sunday July, 14th will see Rochester and the wider Medway come alive for what's being termed Medway's Big Weekend.Having made a fantastic debut at Eastgate House Gardens last year, The Rochester Literature Festival(RLF) is this year holding its Summer Garden Party on Sunday 14th July, at the Good Intent Pub in John Street, Rochester, between 12noon and 4pm. They invite you to join them for a delightful cultural mix of performances, open mic, storytelling and a special edition of Seasonally Effected.For the first time, the RLF is a part of the Medway Open ...
What links one of the world's great dramatists to Britain's playground bully? What could link Greek tragedy to the government's biggest hypocrite? Shortly before the end of his long life Sophocles wrote "Philoctetes", about the Greek hero who took part in the war against Troy. Philoctetes is the inheritor of Heracles' bow and he sets out with the other Greeks to secure the return of Helen, who has been spirited off to Troy by Paris. En route he is bitten in the foot by a serpent. The wound turns septic and the smell and Philoctetes' cries are so hard to ...
The Scottish parliament has just released it's own "Equal" Marriage Bill. (PDF Link) The nature of devolved legislative powers is that there is much they can't fix, such as reintroduction of the fast-track Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) process. However, the things they could have fixed from the English and Welsh version... they haven't. Firstly, the spousal veto is still present, without time limit. (Schedule 2, paragraph 3 – starts on the bottom of page 38) In a nutshell, if you want gender recognition including employment law protection and you are married, you'd better hope you have a cooperative spouse. Otherwise, ...
posted The Blood is The Life 26-06-2013 http://t.co/xvFmBAb8If on #dreamwidth (tags: (from twitter) dreamwidth ) The US Supreme Court has ruled no standing on Proposition 8, allowing #equalmarriage in Cali. http://t.co/I4PfwcgbK8 ... #SCOTUS #Prop8 #DOMA (tags: (from twitter) equalmarriage scotu ) Lots of Niggle Farridge RT @RosamundUrwin: Politicians who look like peppers: http://t.co/4mWnW3mhHG (via someone else, I forget whom) (tags: (from twitter) ) YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!! RT @BBCBreaking: #SCOTUS strikes down law that defines marriage as between a man and a woman only http://t.co/N7VctIkN1s (tags: (from twitter) scotus ) Regulation at a glance | Flip Chart Fairy Tales ...
Local traders have complained about the high level of council fees. Chris has called in the matter to the council's Local Services Scrutiny Committee which will take evidence and make appropriate recommendations. See below for article: Council Fees
We all know what would be Eurosceptics' answer to a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union: "no". But what is the question? The question of the question has been raised by Liberal Democrat MEP Andrew Duff, who asks what kind of EU would Britain be choosing to stay in or leave. He points out that, if David Cameron gets his way and there is a referendum in 2017, by then the EU will have changed. As in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where the answer to "the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything" was 42 ...
Thu 27th
08:25
Cllr. Iain Brodie-Browne, Leader of the Lib Dem opposition on Sefton Council responds to Labour's Lo...
[IMG: Iain Brodie-Brown] A balance needs to be struck between house building and preserving a sustainable environment and this suggested local plan has, I believe, got that balance wrong. This does not mean we would go to the barricades for every acre of open space. Clearly in order to provide enough homes and jobs, sites like, for example, the former hospital land in Maghull and the Thornton relief road should be developed. In Southport, we have long accepted the need for a considerable number of houses to be built on the former tip at Kew: land which, while open space, ...
The Blyth Quayside Family Funday ( also known as Lifeboat Open Day) will be held on Saturday 7th September, from 11 am All the usual stalls and activities will be there, together with one or two new ones. The day will focus around the new Lifeboat Station on Quay Road which started to operate in the last couple of weeks. This year an added attraction is sponsored Bungee Jumping. In return for sponsorship of £100 or more, you can do a bungee jump over water. The first £50 goes to the cost of the jump, the surplus goes to the ...
[IMG: Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011] There's a very useful study out, commissioned by the Electoral Commission, looking at whether restructuring the laws governing elections, without making substantive changes to their content, could improve them. I'm regularly disappointed by the low value placed on simplicity by people who come up with rules that govern our lives, especially when it comes to law or regulations that large numbers of volunteers, and not simply an elite cadre of paid professionals, need to follow. (It's one of the reasons I think the Office of the Public Guardian has such flawed processes; ...
It has been an extremely busy week on West End and City Council matters thus far. Here's some of the issues covered and meetings attended : * On Monday afternoon, I attended a site visit along with residents and City Council transportation officers to Pennycook Lane car park. Last year, on behalf of residents, I secured agreement from the council that the disabled bay would be widened as it is presently too narrow to allow a person with mobility difficulties to be assisted in and out of a vehicle. The site visit was to discuss how the bay can be ...
I cannot think of a suitable title for this post, other than the rather childish bleat above. Sir Mervyn King, former Governor of the Bank of England, has retired and is to receive a pension said to be "to the north of £5million." On top of that he now becomes a member of the House of Lords and can receive £300 per day (yes, per day) attendance allowance. And that's tax free. Both pension and attendance allowance are, of course, public money, taxpayers' money, our money, part of the expenditure the government is so anxious to cut. In the same ...
A new community project in Dundee aimed at supporting people who are receiving end of life care at home, is seeking volunteers. The Here4U project provides extra support to these people and offers the opportunity of social interaction to improve the individual's quality of life. It is a service for people who have a life-limiting illness and are receiving palliative care. Palliative care is an approach that improves the quality of life of individuals and their families facing the problems associated with life-limiting illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering. It provides relief from pain and other distressing symptoms ...
The joint review undertaken by Healthcare Inspectorate Wales and the Wales Audit Office into the governance arrangements of Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board makes for grim reading. Time and time again the report highlights significant failings by Betsi Cadwaladr UHB. I urge the Health Board to seriously consider the twenty four recommendations made in the report and to address these failings as a matter of urgency. There are clearly wide-ranging and deep rooted problems that must be addressed. It is essential that the Health Board has strong leadership from the top. There has obviously been a breakdown in the working ...
Liberator 's blog reports that Lib Dem activists may be moving against Clegg as he "seems to have reached a stage in his leadership, where he can no longer disguise his contempt for his own party." Clegg's speech at the conference of what's left of ALDC at the weekend certainly gave that impression. I haven't heard anything that suggests an active campaign to oust Clegg, but I have heard from a number of sources within the party that Clegg had been planning to stand down as leader next February, with the aim of handing the baton on to Ed Davey. ...
I'm going to put a public health warning on this post - it contains some images of Julia Gillard that I had to think long and hard about before reproducing. I've decided to go ahead with it, because I think that they need to be in the public domain, because it's in the public interest. I do it with a heavy heart and an understanding of the implications it might have on my own health and standing in the party. As some of you may know, Julia Gillard stopped being the Australian Prime Minister today - largely due to incredibly ...
