This 1986 documentary looks at the remains of this much-mourned line. It contains footage from an earlier film by John Betjeman. This appears to be the first part of three - you lucky people!
A BBC News page gives the history of the draining of the Somerset levels: In Roman times artificial flood defences were built to keep out the tides from the nearby Severn Estuary, and ditches were dug. This created a network of inland channels to drain large areas of floodplain marsh. During the Middle Ages the monasteries at Glastonbury, Athelney and Muchelney drained and looked after the land. Dutch engineers arrived to drain the Levels in the 17th Century. Farmers have managed the landscape ever since.Except that there is more to it than that. A post on Tallbloke's Talkshop (written by ...
It has been a trying day on the internet. In attempting to defend the notion that making change is complex, and that actions have consequences, I have been accused of being in favour of the suffering of the poor and the vulnerable, the retention of Trident, the preservation of the monarchy and of wanting a disproportionately large military. The defence put up by one formerly rather senior figure in local government is that he presumed that I believed in such things because I didn't entirely agree with him, and therefore must be bad and evil. And, having done so, then ...
"It seems very much to be the old Strathclyde's way or no way at all. That's a huge mistake. Policing needs in Glasgow are totally different from policing needs in the Highlands and Islands. What next? Tasers in Achiltibuie?" Caron's Musings dissects the paradoxical centralising tendencies of the SNP. A debate between Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage would be well worth watching, thinks Neil Monnery. Politics for Novices is not pleased that a group of local businesses is creating a new CCTV system. "Nairn floated gloriously free of the style wars that periodically consume British architecture, offering instead a passion ...
Tomorrow we will be having our next action day in Blaydon constituency (and a bit of Gateshead constituency). Members will be out campaigning in Dunston Hill, Lobley Hill and Whickham. Each ward has its own leaflets and letters to delivery and there will be some door knocking as well. Events kick off at 10am. As usual, there will be food provided for helpers. I was drafted in to provide cake.
My next email newsletter to people in Blaydon constituency went out last night. It covers Ryton, Crawcrook and Greenside, Winlaton and High Spen, Chopwell and Rowlands Gill and Blaydon wards. It leads with the story about Labour's plans to build on local greenbelt, but also includes material about landfill, improvements to the A1 and a bit about my appearance on BBC's Inside Out programme last
Update from the Council: Work began yesterday with the removal of trees and vegetation around the pond area (Phase 1). I understand archaeologists will be on site over the weekend to excavate this area behind the Institute building. A temporary compound has been established while consultations continue with Stockport Homes and residents of Queens Gardens. Hopefully agreement will be reached to allow for the compound to be relocated on the Queens Gardens side as per attached phasing plan. Hours of operation - after consultation hours have been relaxed and are now 8:00 to 16:30. Delivery hours remain at 10:00 to ...
I wrote the other day on the logistics of the National Liberal experiment of Nick Boles with the conclusion that it was in some ways doable, but needed serious fleshing out as a concept, let alone a plan of action. Ostensibly to the public eye nothing much has happened with the scheme since it was first publicly aired many months ago. That is not to say that Mr Boles has not been beavering away (cue the cuddly animal) on a strategy to make the concept into reality. So to help him out.. or moreover the rest of us..I took Bright ...
I've several times asked for recommendations for fiction by women writers, because my fiction reading is over 95% male, and that's not good, either for me or society. Unfortunately, most of the recommendations have been people I've just bounced off. But today I realised something obvious — I've been asking for SF/F writers, especially, because [...]
In just over 48 hours I have stayed in two hotels, been on two plane flights, used two different currencies, been through three airports, been in four countries, and travelled more than 2,500 miles. That's jet-settin' tech writin'! —Andrew McFarland Campbell on Google+ This was the most extreme journey for a job interview that I...
Blog Categories: Economics Oxford Political Comment Vote: 1 vote + Vote up! - Vote down! The Vale of White Horse District Council has recently been told, through the "Strategic Housing Market Assessment for Oxfordshire" process, that its estimate of what land it needs to make available in the planning system for housing up until 2031, agreed only a year ago in their Local Plan, was over 50% out, short of what is actually needed. They have had to find sites for 7,300 additional new homes over this period, 4,000 of which additional number must be started in the next four ...
A fellow councillor recently retweeted in a spirit of irony, something about 'evil' public sector workers. After a short exchange it became clear that the issue was the 'demonisation' of public sector workers by the government. Now it almost has the status of received wisdom that Michael Gove hates teachers, Jeremy Hunt hates nurses, Eric Pickles hates local government workers, all Tories hate welfare recipients, that this hatred leads to demonisation, and the Liberal Democrats, while perhaps not directly involved, are quite comfortable with all this. I was reluctant to get involved, as I disagree often with Michael Gove, and ...
I didn't expect myself to be writing a blog post about figure skating, but sour grapes really are very unedifying. Slate.com reports that 1.7 million people (unsurprisingly, mostly South Korean) have signed a Change.org petition alleging that the voting in the Sochi competition was rigged in favour of the Russians (a charge rather distastefully put to the American public last night on NBC by figure skater Gracie Gold). It's all a bit pathetic really; and although Jessica Winter's article, also in Slate, starts off sounding like it is on the side of the tin-foil hat brigade, it is actually worth ...
Local councillors have just received at 16.22 today notice that council officers plan to resurface Barry Road starting on Monday 24-27 February 8am-4pm. If you live on Barry Road and park a vehicle on Barry Road you will need to park it elsewhere. If you live nearby expect lots of Barry Road residents to park on your street! See attached draft letter to be delivered over the weekend. After seeking clarity we now know that Barry Road will be resurfaced from its junction with Lordship to junction with Upland Road. You could not make this up! Barry Road letters
The Liberal Democrat Education Association Conference 2014 was a thoroughly enjoyable event with friendly people and some fantastic debate. One such debate was the emphasis placed on professionals teaching in early years education. It is important to note, governance relationships within the modern welfare-state has evolved from its top-down centralised roots to a system of partnerships, networks and stakeholders. Equally, the philosophy of state-interventionism has moved away from the notion that education professionals exist in isolation from other stakeholders such as parents as well as other areas of welfare such as health. Therefore to direct ones faith in "the professional" ...
Fri 21st
15:30
Newsletter From The European Parliament, Friday 21 February 2014 - Sir Graham Watson MEP
The failure last week of the Council of Ministers to approve or reject the authorisation of Pioneer Dupont's genetically modified maize TC 1507 continues to make waves. Under an ancient and unsatisfactory procedure called comitology, the Commission's proposal to authorize the placing on the market of a product is adopted if not approved, amended or rejected by the Council. But for such a sensitive decision to be made in this way fourteen weeks before voters go to the polls in the European elections seems hamfisted at best. Member states can decide not to allow the sowing of the seeds on ...
Stockport Homes has done the double at this year's Housing Innovation Awards, winning the 'Most Innovative Refurbishment Project' and 'Most Innovative Housing Provider (medium sized company)' awards. The winners were announced at an awards ceremony on 6 February 2014. Stockport Homes won the 'Most Innovative Housing Provider (medium)' award for being more than a social landlord and striving to 'transform lives', with successes including: • developing a new Continuous Improvement Framework to drive our service improvement under the Government's agenda of co-regulation by Boards and customers; • developing a strong Customer Scrutiny Panel which reviews and challenges the services provided; ...
Celebrating Apprenticeships around CambridgeOn Monday, I had the pleasure of meeting 19-year old twins Suhayalah and Yahsmin Bhatti, as part of my monthly "Celebrating Apprenticeships" initiative. They're currently undertaking a one-year science apprenticeship at Addenbrooke's Hospital. It was great to get back in the lab and witness firsthand how enthusiastic the twins are about the work they're doing in the department of haematology. There are lots of apprenticeship opportunities out there and I would encourage anyone who wants to know more to visit http://www.camre.ac.uk/apprenticeships/ Fighting to Bring Papworth to Cambridge We have been anticipating Papworth's move to Cambridge for 10 ...
As the Guardian reports: A joint Australian and British study has found that lottery winners tend to switch their political allegiances to rightwing parties after their windfalls. They also appear to become less egalitarian and less concerned by the challenges faced by people on low incomes. The research analysed more than 4,000 British citizens who [...]
My other half and I are lucky enough to live a couple of minutes walk from a decent sized Co-op store. It's convenient, has some fairtrade, and we get a few vouchers through being members. The downside is that we seem to be supporting the Labour party when we have no wish to. The Co-op supports Labour candidates to the tune of £800,000 a year apparently. The Conservative MP Jesse Norman claimed that the Co-operative group has in the last ten years "given £6,187,788 to the Co-operative Party, and a further £355,857 to the Labour Party". It's a bit of ...
FactCheckEU, which provides factual information about the European Union even if it occasionally hurts the case for membership, investigated the case of retiring UKIP MEP Trevor Coleman. He had stated that the European Parliament "has no power, it can't make or change legislation". After refuting this assertion, FactCheckEU's report concludes: According to Votewatch, Mr Colman has only taken part in half of all votes during his five years in office (ranked 751st out of 766) and has admitted that one of the reasons he attends the sessions in Strasbourg and Brussels is to secure the allowances. He has only tabled ...
In 1861, the Peruvian Government of Ramon Castilla, ordered two small cargo-passenger "gunboats" for Lake Titicaca. They were to be built in UK by James Watt of Birmingham and the Thames Ironworks (the origins of West Ham Football Club & its 'Hammers' nickname') .Without a rail link to the lake at that time, all cargo had to be carried up on mule back. Therefore,the ships were built in kit form, with no piece weighing more than 3 ½ cwts, the maximum carrying capacity of a mule. On 15th October 1862, the "Mayola", bearing the 'kit' [for two ships]docked at Arica ...
The Times reports that UKIP leader, Nigel Farage has picked up the gauntlet thrown down by Nick Clegg and will debate him on Britain's continuing membership of the European Union. This immediately puts pressure on Miliband and Cameron as to whether they are also prepared to set out their party's stall in what could be a defining moment in May's European elections. Let us hope that the debate does not stand or fall on the decision of Labour and Conservative leaders to participate or not. We need to raise the profile of the arguments for staying in Europe and this ...
Last July I wrote a piece for Lib Dem Voice about devolving powers to London and other large cities. My article was drawing attention to a report published last summer called Raising the Capital (pdf). This report had been produced by the London Finance Commission, an authoritative and wide ranging group of experts from both inside and outside politics, and crucially including experts from Birmingham and Manchester and chaired by the highly respected Professor Travers of the London School of Economics. The report highlighted that barely seven per cent of all the tax paid by London residents and businesses is ...
Homoglyphs are characters that love each other very much look strikingly similar to each other. Can you quickly tell the difference between these two - O0? That's The capital letter "o" and the number 0. How about Il1|? Depending on the font used - and your attention to detail, it may be hard to spot the difference between all three. The sites homoglyphs.net and IronGeek are great resources for creating text which uses similar looking - but not identical - characters. Іt's fairly оbvious in the above that something fishу is going on‚ but in this sentence it's more ...
[IMG: Writings on the wall - Social media - the first 2000 years by Tom Standage] Tom Standage's book, Writing on the wall: Social media – the first 2,000 years, has at its heart one good magazine-length article about how many of the concepts we associate with social networks run over the internet have in fact been around in all sorts of forms for thousands of years. Concepts such as commenting, sharing and livening up content with stories about cute animals date as far back as the Romans and their Acta Diurna. It's a neat piece of insight which doesn't ...
I won't mince words too much here. I have written already about the desirability of reestablishing the Royal Navy as the Senior Service. Navy people would argue it has always been "senior" but let's face it the disastrous merging of the services into the DoD back in the 1960s took status away from all of them. It may have suited US aims of neutering the UK (and the UK was was lying on the operating table with legs akimbo in the early 1960s... pardon my bluntness) but it was a severe mistake that has led to a long-term muddying of ...
Am composing this on my phone away from home so forgive me if it is riddled with typos. Yesterday there appeared on Lib Dem Voice two articles about food poverty. I don't think either of them was a particularly good or bad article in terms of the solutions they proposed, but one of them made me VERY angry in the tone it took which led me to make some ill-judged remarks on Twitter, to which the immediate response of the author of the article was to squeal about me trying to stifle his free expression, which is, of course, a ...
When someone is experiencing a mental health crisis, it essential that they feel able to access the help they need - and quickly. They will probably be in a state of extreme distress and confusion. Without help, people may be at risk of causing harm to themselves and those around them (cases of injury to others are actually very rare). They often end up in police cells - completely inappropriately. They may even commit suicide - and all too often, I hear tragic cases of suicide after someone has repeatedly been unable to access mental health crisis support. This isn't ...
This winters rainful has been historic and contributed to significant flooding. As a nation we've also notable success around flood protection. Less rainful caused 200,000 more homes to flood 50 years ago and the significant measures taken sicne then have resulted in far less flooding. But that's little consolication to those that have been affected. But it's also clear that recent governmental agricultural rule changes have also had a major impact on this – It's little consolation that it was Conservative ministers that let this happen when Lib Dems are in coalition with them nationally. Sorry to those affected ...
Fri 21st
09:34
SW UKIP MEP Trevor Colman exposed by @FactcheckEU as peddling an 'extreme whopper' lie about EU
South West UKIP MEP Trevor Colman - who admitted to the BBC recently that one of the reasons he attends the sessions in Strasbourg and Brussels is to secure the Parliamentary allowances - has been exposed by Factcheck EU as telling an 'insane whopper' lie about the role and function of the European Parliament. The MEP, who is standing down at the next election in May, stated in an interview with
Here's some of the articles that have caught my attention in the past couple of days... Downton Abbey and House of Cards: dramas that live in the world of the 1% | Gail Dines | Comment is free | The Guardian Okay, Guardian. BUT WHAT ABOUT QUINOA? > "Downton Abbey and House of Cards: dramas that live in the world of the 1%" http://bit.ly/NfetFW The Co-operative – Have Your Say After 18 years banking with them, it's been good to vent on the Co-op's political funding http://bit.ly/1fkLJ9e The Real Blog: Why Popper is the key to modern Liberalism I share ...
It's no good. I simply can't resist it. The old monsters at management consultants McKinsey & Co are just too tempting a target, and not just because they are so responsible for the shape of the modern world and its organisations - but because they are so slow to grasp why those organisations are stuck. I subscribe to their online newsletter and it is always well-written and informative, and sometimes so wonderfully old-fashioned that I find it irresistable. The elite consultancy, named after its founder James Oscar McKinsey, the first management consultant, still lives and dies by the highly misleading ...
If, like me, you a fan of multiple sports, the past two weeks of Winter Olympic sports will have made great viewing. The sporting action, however, will not end [...]
[IMG: Engineering Student] Image CC Engineering at Cambridge Liberal Democrats are deservedly pleased that the British economy is turning the corner, both in terms of growth and employment. But how can we ensure that we maintain and improve on this trend? Aldes are concerned that one of the greatest threats to maintaining sustainable growth and prosperity is the skills gap, where the UK is unable to meet the demand of employers for high-value technical and industrial skills. The UK Commission for Employment and Skills recently claimed that around 22% of all UK vacancies exist due to the inability of employers ...
Our Headline of the Day Award turned out to be a triumph for the West Sussex County Times.
Watch the new video from Amnesty International UK: You can also watch this on YouTube.
Fri 21st
07:45
Another Coalition? 1-in-5 of the public likes the idea, but is divided between Lib-Lab and Lib-Con p...
Nick Clegg sparked a flurry of Coalition speculation this week, with his (relatively) warm words towards Labour on a BBC Radio 4 documentary this week. Everyone's had their say – but what does the public think? YouGov has polled them to ask... The first question asked which option folk would like to see after the next general election... [IMG: yougov coalition feb 2014] So a Labour majority government is the preference of most (31%), narrowly ahead of a Tory majority government (29%). A coalition government involving the Lib Dems would be favoured by 19% – a Lib-Lab pact (10%) noses ...
This story originally caught my attention when I saw a tweet from Niall O'Dowd as I boarded a plane for a week's holiday in the U.S. Virgin Islands (that's not relevant to this post, I just like rubbing it in). @NiallODowd Have you taken down the John Spain article? — Chris Connolly (@Cripipper) February 15, 2014 O'Dowd's tweet linked to a story in Irish Central (his U.S.-based news website), outlining the circumstances under which a story by John Spain relating to the salary of the Chief Executive of the Irish charity REHAB had been taken down after legal threats from ...
There needs to be an improvement to cancer waiting times after figures published this week showed that a key waiting time target has once again been missed. The Welsh Labour government has a target for 95% of urgent patients to be seen by a specialist within 62 days. New figures show that over the most recent quarter, only 92.1% of these cases had started definitive treatment within this time period. The Health Minister stated that the cancer 62 day waiting time target would be met by October, yet still that important target has not been met. Over the last year ...
