[IMG: Semilong Post Office, Northampton] Sarah Uldall, Lib Dem County Councillor for the St George Division in Northamptonshire, has started a campaign to save Semilong Post Office from closure after news emerged that the current subpostmistress is retiring and a new owner is needed for the Post Office to stay open. "The Semilong Road Post Office has been in existence for 50 years. Not only does it provide essential services, it is also a local landmark and a meeting place. It will be sorely missed." said Sarah. Puzzled reader: I am sure this is an admirable campaign, but why are ...
You may have heard of Harold Davidson, the Rector of Stiffkey (which, I had better add, is pronounced 'Stewkey'). Convicted on charges of immorality and defrocked by the Church, Davidson protested his innocence. To raise funds for his reinstatement campaign he exhibited himself in a barrel on the Blackpool seafront and performed in other sideshows of a similar nature. He died after being attacked by a lion in whose cage he was appearing in a seaside show in Skegness. The parallels with the recent career of Lembit Opik - reality TV star, comedian, wrestler, pop impresario - are all too ...
This is one of the songs the Rhythm Kings played last night. It appears on the Rollings Stones album Black and Blue, where it is credited to Billy Preston, Jagger and Richards. But George Fame was quite cutting about those last two getting a credit when he introduced the song, which makes you wonder how amicable Bill Wyman's departure from the Stones was. This version of the band includes both Peter Frampton and Gary Brooker, who were not in Market Harborough yesterday, but it does show how good Bill Wyman's contacts in the business are.
[IMG: Der Elfer] A handsome fellow, isn't he? He's a very good friend of Nick Clegg. Our leader brings him out at every conference speech of his. He's called Mister Strawman. Take the 2011 Brighton conference. Nick Clegg worked himself up into an almighty lather as he introduced Mister Strawman – the simple 1/0 binary choice of being in coalition and not being in coalition: I know that there are some in the party - some in this hall even - who, faced with several more years of spending restraint, would rather turn back than press on. Break our deal ...
Late last week, I released an eBook copy of the Voynich Manuscript on Amazon. I sent a few tweets encouraging people to either download it for free from my website - or buy a copy from Amazon. Amazingly, given the choice, some people decided to throw a couple of quid my way! Once I saw that people were retweeting me, I rushed over to the Amazon stats page to see how I was doing. [IMG: Top 4-fs8] Holy cow! Not only had I actually sold some copies, but it was enough to propel me to the top 10 of several ...
This is a very sad story. This part especially hit home: Not owned by any company, Golden Rice is being developed by a nonprofit group called the International Rice Research Institute with the aim of providing a new source of vitamin A to people both in the Philippines, where most households get most of their calories from rice, and eventually in many other places in a world where rice is eaten every day by half the population. Lack of the vital nutrient causes blindness in a quarter-million to a half-million children each year. It affects millions of people in Asia ...
[IMG: Mic] Over on Liberal Democrat Voice, Caron Lindsay writes a very timely article entitled "The lessons we must learn from for Nick Clegg's next holiday". This refers mainly to the David Miranda and Guardian drive crunching news stories. Beneath the post, Mark Pack comments: ...the party's slowness isn't just about the Home Office or when the DPM is on holiday. Too often the party is too slow to get its message out in the media and even slower to communicate properly with members. I agree. Nick Clegg was totally not on holiday when thumb screws had to be applied ...
One question on yesterday's Any Questions concerned education and one of the panellists gave the view that teachers were fed up of Government interference. What the education system really needed was a period without change and teachers could assess how they and their pupils were doing. This was loudly applauded. Another panellist took the opposite view. If something was going wrong within the education system then it is the duty of the government to step in and correct it. This view was applauded too. If something is wrong with the education system then maybe it is the Government's duty to ...
Many thanks to the 11,500 visitors who dropped by Lib Dem Voice this week. Here's our 7 most-read posts... Nick Clegg's office speaks out on Miranda detention and destruction of Guardian data (87 comments) by The Voice Opinion: I disagree with you. You must be stupid, incompetent or a liar... (100 comments) by Mark Valladares Why I'm not so worried about David Miranda's detention (42 comments) by Caron Lindsay Some more information on the reasoning behind Nick Clegg's approval of the destruction of the Guardian's information (33 comments) by Caron Lindsay I'm a liberal and I'm sticking up for Nick ...
[IMG: IMG_0269] We went across the Hamble on this yesterday. It really is the most "cute, ickle" ferry across such a beautiful estuary! It reminded us of another idyllic ferry ride we were fortunate enough to take last year in Pittwater, New South Wales from Great Mackerel Bay to Palm Beach. It really was out of this world. My photo is below. In both these cases, the ferry ride was gentle, with just the trickle of the water to disturb the peace.... [IMG: great mackerel bay] [IMG: Post to Twitter] Tweet This Post
FACT: Government spending in China amounts to 20.8% of GDP, a little over half what it is the United States. The Chinese state also employs a small and shrinking proportion of China's workforce. While these figures are about what you would expect from an East Asian nation at China's level of economic development, they do [...]
This morning local residents held a demonstration at Glebe Road, Little Bowden, about the continuing problems being caused by the new housing development there. I went along and also met the Liberal Democrat county councillor Dr Sarah Hill there. The residents want the developers, Redrow Homes, to accept responsibility for the run off for the run off of water, mud and slurry from the site and make good any damage it has caused to their houses and gardens. They also want Redrow Homes to improve the drainage of the site (as was required by the original planning permission) and fund ...
Nick Clegg's two spells of holiday this Summer have been characterised by the Home Office in particular getting above itself in his absence. Both the party and Nick's Special Advisers should have learned from the furore over the "Go home" poster vans. The Home Office pulled a fast one by implementing this pilot without telling the Liberal Democrats. The response from the Party was the right one – that they were "disproportionate, distasteful and ineffective" and Vince Cable saying a few days later that they were stupid and offensive. The problem was that the response came out by carrier pigeon ...
With the works at St. Gregory's school that the Combe Hay Lane was closed off to traffic.A hammerhead was created to allow refuse lorries to turn, but currently they don't use it. Several residents have raised the issue of parents using it to drop off their children and then trying to turn right on to the Wellsway. We will be raising this with the council and St. Gregory's
Some weeks have gone by since the strange news that the Roman Catholic Church is thinking of canonising G. K. Chesterton, author of 'The Rolling English Road' and other ditties. It felt like a silly season story, but the time has gone by and it still seems to be true. I'm sure it won't happen. Chesterton was an early critic of Hitler, naming him for what he was before most of the commentariat, but his fatal admiration for Franco and Mussolini probably puts him beyond sainthood these days. These issues were more complicated then than they seem now. Much of ...
[IMG: Balcombe Fracking] Today's Observer splashes with "Liberal Democrats blast environmental damage caused by fracking." Not quite. We've had quite a lively debate here on Lib Dem Voice on the merits and demerits of fracking (Gilbert, Boddington). In the Observer article Tony Helm suggests that Liberal Democrats have rejected shale gas extraction. As I said not quite. Tony references Policy Paper 109, Green Growth and Green Jobs, describing it as an "official policy paper." That is in a sense correct, but it is not "official policy" as most readers of the Observer might conclude from the phrasing. Whether the policy ...
BBC bias? Yes, but not to the left researchers say Interesting, if flawed, research. (tags: ) FAO @Lordbonkers headline of the day? RT @HXCourier: Charity shop terror pensioner jailed - Crime - Halifax Courier: http://t.co/SSzAnFy1eX (tags: (from twitter) ) posted The Blood is The Life 24-08-2013 http://t.co/39YjabXqeX on #dreamwidth (tags: (from twitter) dreamwidth ) BBC News - Leeds bids to give 1950s robot Cygan a home (tags: ) To the Guys Who Threw Eggs at Me Tonight | Dances With Fat (tags: ) making no comment about the scores on this quiz But I got 25. SUCK ON ...
The Independent reports that six architectural firms will be on the edge of their seat on Friday as they wait to hear whether their building has won the 2013 Carbuncle Cup, the award bestowed on Britain's ugliest building. The favourite for architecture's wooden spoon is apparently Castle Mill housing at Port Meadow, Oxford. The paper says that the Frankham Consultancy Group-designed complex for Oxford University graduates has been nominated more times than any other building in the cup's history after being erected on a beauty spot, much to local people's fury. Other contenders include the Redcar Beacon, also known as ...
[IMG: hands pushing keyboard] I have shovelled something like half a million words into cyberspace since I started blogging three years ago. Some of those words were arranged in ways that were pleasing, to me at least. Some of them were arranged in ways that might best be described as decidedly clunky. What makes the difference largely eludes me. But then, when it comes to writing, I'm no kind of craftsman. It's all a bit more agricultural. When I started blogging I had been writing as a social scientist for more than twenty years. Social scientists have been responsible for ...
The Western Mail reports that millions of pounds could be saved by the Welsh Government if it managed its estate more effectively: In a report published today, the Finance Committee - which oversees spending over government - said government departments that manage 41 properties around Wales were operating largely independently of each other and there was no "single, coherent approach". It said the practice was in "stark contrast" to the government's requirement of local authorities to formulate distinct strategies to identify savings and best practice. The committee urged a unified approach across the whole organisation as part of its 14 ...
As I recently advised, I agreed to take part in an abseil down the University of Dundee Tower Building to help raise funds for the MS Society Dundee Branch - and this happened yesterday afternoon. Here's a few photos from yesterday with thanks to Mark, Janet, Kirsty and Nick: There's also some more photos here (thanks Kirsty and Nick!) The MS Society Team of five are pictured above and volunteers for other good causes also took part yesterday, including people fundraising for the National Autistic Society and Chest Heart and Stroke Scotland. Very many thanks to everyone who has kindly ...
I am on Wave 102 News this morning discussing the impending roadworks in Blackness Road in the stretch between Hawkhill and Bellfield Street. You can listen to the interview by clicking 'play' below:
Today has been an uplifting day. I ended up over in the Lisburn Road area of the city of Belfast which is not somewhere I have been for quite some time. I can't remember when I was last over there. But I was over there, spending time with Andrew and one of his contemporaries from...
I've just got back from a concert at Market Harborough Leisure Centre. The queue was not properly stewarded, the was a gap of several aeons between the opening act (Steve Gibbons) and the main attraction, and I am not sure we got everyone who was originally advertised. But it was a great night and I would have paid just to see Georgie Fame. Georgie Fame and Terry Taylor Beverley Skeete Steve Gibbons
