On Saturday we had our latest Blaydon and Gateshead action day, this time in Whickham, Dunston and Lobley Hill. 24 people joined in. HQ for the day was Whickham Church Hall (see photo above - lunch time at HQ). We were joined by Angelika Schneider, our prospective European candidate (2nd from right in the photo above). I provided the lunchtime cake (homemade of course!) I spent the
This morning I received an email about HIV and Poverty from the Terrence Higgins Trust asking me to contact my local council's cabinet member to find out what is being done by the council to support people living with HIV who are in financial difficulties. However, since in Northern Ireland health, social care, and benefits...
Gatley Police newsletter, March 2013
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Some research has investigated whether people like you and me can be encouraged to forego using lifts to take the stairs between floors. Many of us have very sedentary work – sitting around on chairs all day. Signs like this were used: [IMG: takethestairs] They found such signs tripled the numbers taking the stairs. Obvious health benefits for people and some electricity and lift wear and tear saved. They also found that lifts visible from the foyer and with external windows were the most popular. Really important for a place like Southwark with lots of new developments that our planners ...
Last night Mrs Gauge and I finished working our way through this year's nominees for the Best Picture Oscar with just a week to spare before the Academy Awards on the 2nd March. The bookies are pretty clear who is going to win but I think what is most interesting about this year's selection is what they say about America. 12 Years a Slave- The relentlessly grim frontrunner is powerful and painful to watch. This is however, not just a story about how slavery was wrong. This is a story about a free, black American citizen was tricked into slavery ...
Just a few links. Proper post tomorrow. Shabogan Graffiti on Star Trek IV Paul Magrs and Stuart Douglas are going to read one pulp novel for each year from 1900 to 1999. Why not read along with them? Magrs' first post is here The true history of libertarianism in America Calamity Jon Morris is auctioning [...]
Wednesday this week sees two Stockton Council meetings which will make decisions that have a real impact on residents of the borough. On Wednesday afternoon the Planning Committee meet, in public, in the Jim Cooke Conference room, reached through Stockton Library. The agenda is a full one, with two lots of housing at Ingleby Barwick, a car park at Billingham and an update report on the 5 year
In today's brief discussion on courtesy titles and equality in the Lords, I was intrigued by the intervention of Conservative backbencher, Baroness Sharples, who noted;My Lords, is my noble friend aware that I have actually killed off three husbands so perhaps the question does not arise for me? Are there not much more important matters that the Government should be concerned with? She may well be right, although it does lead one to wonder exactly what happened to her husbands. That bag looks pretty vicious...
What are we to make of all this intrigue surrounding one of our highly respected councillors. As a one time close observer of local politics, I just wonder why, Simon felt it necessary to talk to the press, or indeed anyone, I for one do not know what to make of it other than to say that if Louise Oldfield believes she has been a victim of bullying she is entitled as a hard working citizen and champion for Margate to ask for assistance from Kent police and they as the experts expected to do a proper job. Simon is ...
An investigation by Birkdale Lib Dem Councillor Simon Shaw has revealed that one charity has cost Sefton Council £350,000 in lost rate income over the last four years on the two shops it operates in Southport - money that could have helped keep our lost library open. Healthy Planet is a national charity operating around 30 "Books for Free" stores around the country. In Southport they have one shop in Cambridge Walks and another in one of the large units next to Homebase at the Meols Cop Retail Park. Back in January Simon wrote to senior Council officers calling for ...
Now the blog's lttle video of the Land Song has topped 4,500 hits on youtube it is due another outing here. The best place for information is here http://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/the-land-song/
I visited the Southport Police Station last week to discuss with the new Sargent for Birkdale enforcing the 20mph in the ward. He was most helpful. He outline the action already taken -including fines levied and talked about the role volunteers can play. We already have citizens locally who help the police identify speeding traffic and the Sargent is keen to expand this team. If you are concerned about speeding traffic please don't sit around moaning-volunteer. The police offer training and support. Just a few additional volunteers would make an enormous difference. Please contact the Police Station
My husband Ian and I disagree on Scottish Independence. He is a Canadian of Scottish descent and I am English, but our ethnicity has nothing to do with it. He is an historian who has spent his career examining the question of nationalism and the harm it causes. He'd vote for the union. Like him [...]
Mark Pack has reprinted this spread from the 1984 Liberal Assembly issue of Liberator. It was probably the magazine's finest hour. Certainly, it was the only time we have provided the lead item for the BBC's six o'clock news. The spread caused a huge row at the time but, as Mark points out, the pen portraits of the Liberal MPs (written by Ralph Bancroft, if I recall rightly) are remarkably kind - click on the picture and you should be able to read them. Only one MP complained: Malcolm Bruce, who thought we had made him sound too worthy. That ...
Leicestershire County Council is going to honour another six people or places in the county with green plaques. There is a shortlist of 12 on the council's website and you can vote via that site too. I shall, of course, be voting for Market Harborough's own Nobel laureate William Henry Bragg - you can learn more about his work in this episode of In Our Time. But you can vote for six different people or places, and there are some other deserving nominations such as the John Taylor Bellfoundry in Loughborough and Monty Python's Graham Chapman. I shall also be ...
My day job is in procurement. It really compliments my home time being a local councillor. And occasionally being a councillor informs the day job. I came across some really interesting peer reviewed research showing that even small gifts make a difference to peoples behaviours and decisions: Sadly almost all organisations don't recognise these impacts and do allow such small gifts. In both roles I've never accepted gifts. Sometimes I have eaten sandwiches at a suppliers remote premise. As a councillor I have never accepted anything. I have only had lunch with developers once and paid my part ...
Liberal Democrats on Cornwall Council are continuing our series of parking offers with a new scheme offering free parking for half an hour in all Council run car parks. The offer, which begins on 1 March and runs until 20 April, has been developed in response to calls from many local businesses to allow people to make a flying visit to their local town centre. This is the third major parking offer provided since the Liberal Democrats became part of the administration of the council back in May. It comes on the back of the budget put forward by our ...
There is a central moral conundrum at the heart of the payday loan phenomenon. It is that payday loan companies are designed to help people through what are intended to be unusual and temporary periods of financial difficulty. Long-term and repeated use of payday loans is seriously expensive. Yet - and here's the rub - the business plans of most payday loan companies envisage growth. Their business purpose, and the purpose of their investors, is to maximise their profits - and this is bound to be at the expense of some of the poorest families and the most vulnerable places. ...
ALDC members will be unable to log in or post new stories on their MyCouncillor websites for around three hours on Thursday 27th Feb. This is in order for us to 'migrate' our server from one machine to another. This move will help us make sure that the network improves its security and technical performance. [...]
I'm feeling a bit disgruntled today. My two governments are in the news. The Scottish and UK Cabinets have set up rival camps, glowering at each other with the City of Aberdeen providing an unwitting No Man's Land. How very ... Continue reading →
I'm feeling a bit disgruntled today. My two governments are in the news. The Scottish and UK Cabinets have set up rival camps, glowering at each other with the City of Aberdeen providing an unwitting No Man's Land. How very different it could have been. Given that these governments share responsibility in really important areas like employment, climate change, transport and energy, I think it would have been so constructive if they'd been able to organise a joint session to discuss these issues. Youth unemployment, for example, is a significant issue north of the border and it's something that both ...
The costs of rescuing its banks in a future crisis could leave an independent Scotland even more indebted than Iceland or Ireland As the Economist explains: A sterling zone would resemble the euro zone in some ways, with integrated monetary and banking systems but separate fiscal and political ones. This asymmetry made the euro prone [...]
We're very keen on technology, here in Creeting St Peter. Admittedly, I understand far too little of it, but one must try to keep up. Ringtones intrigue me, following exposure at work to a colleague who is a pretty serious musician. Andrew hated my ringtone, describing it as sounding like an enraged wasp, and I admit that the usual tinny ersatz tunes that you get are a bit annoying. Accordingly, having discovered that I could upload music onto my BlackBerry, I changed the ringtone to a Bach fugue. Instantly distinctive, there could be no doubt that it was my phone ...
In common with many Lib Dem activists I have ambivalent feeling about Nick Clegg. I don't feel that there is a strong case to either say that that no good had come from the coalition or from his leadership, or alternatively that it's all been peachy. In my view it's actually a case of what you think the balance has been between successes and disappointments, a debate where I sit roughly in the middle. However Nick's latest move - challenging Nigel Farage to a public debate on Europe – has my unbridled admiration, both morally and politically. Morally not only ...
There were three parts to this discussion. The first was the original question "What are benefits for?" in general terms, the second was about public perception and the third about current practice. Nowadays benefits are usually linked to work, so the purpose is seen to be to tide people over while they are unable to work, but also to prepare them for work and enable them to take work when it is available. So, at one level, the benefit system simply fulfils a duty of care - to keep people going while they are unable to fend for themselves. They ...
I read this lovely piece this morning about marriage - This Generation Has Learned from it's Parent's Mistakes" and agree with a lot of it. Added to this, it's a personal frustration that I've been told forcibly before (or "oppressed" ;)) that marriage is definitely out-dated and been faced with questions such as "Why would you want to chain yourselves to another person?" and "How can two people be expected to get long forever?", "It's not natural" which I would think is fine for anyone's particular personal philosophy but doesn't need to be extended to everyone. People are different, and ...
Mon 24th
12:27
Manet's The Execution of Maximilian plus Becket's Murder and Images of Political Killing
Manet's The Execution of Maximilianplus Becket's Murder and Images of Political Killing17 January - 16 March(free admission) Trouble and Strife18 January - 2 March(free admission) The Beaney House of Art & KnowledgeCanterbury High Streetthebeaney.co.uk The visceral nature of art to not only record historical events but to capture the latent horror is evident in this varied and chilling exhibition on historical political executions. There is also a section on political cartoons and a selection of Kent-based artists whose work incorporates themes of struggle and conflict. Thought provoking in a time of modern political conflict around the world. I recommend a ...
Take a look at the following text, looks normal enough doesn't it? "Harry ‮".draziw a si Potter Now, try to select the text and see what happens. WHAT WITCHCRAFT IS THIS?! If you examine the source code for this page, you'll see that I'm using the Unicode Bi-Directional characters. "Harry ‮".draziw a si ‭Potter These characters are useful when writing text that includes, say, English and Arabic - but they can also be used for malicious purposes. On a more mundane level, they can cause all sorts of UI bugs. I've just filed a bug against the Chrome browser for ...
Four weeks on Saturday, the first same sex marriages will take place in England. Scotland will have to wait a bit longer, till the Autumn. You'll remember the emotions of the parliamentary debates on this. In order to say thank you to all the parliamentarians who contributed, as well as to all the people who campaigned for equal marriage, Stonewall have released this video which shows highlights of some of the best parliamentary speeches made by lesbian, gay and bisexual parliamentarians. Our own Liz Barker, Stephen Gilbert and Stephen Williams are featured. It made us smile and is just the ...
The Western Mail reports on demands by rail users that a cut in fares on a railway affected by storm damage in England should be mirrored on a Welsh line which was knocked out over a month earlier. They say that a temporary 25% discount applies to tickets for journeys west of Exeter, where the track was damaged on February 4. But fares are not discounted on the Cambrian Coast line, wrecked by waves, gales and rain in many places on 2nd January. The railway beside the sea at Dawlish, near Exeter, is expected to reopen in April - much ...
Probably the most famous, even infamous, version of Liberator magazine came out during 1984. With Liberal Party leader David Steel coming to the end of a long sabbatical as party leader, Liberator speculated that it was time for him to go and produced this pointed round-up of the strengths and weaknesses of possible successors. The appearance of the piece enraged Steel, though reading it now it seems pretty tame compared to the sort of speculation all leaders are regularly subjected to. Even the waspish comments about some of the MPs are fairly kind compared to what passes for much of ...
Mat: "what are you meant to be reminding me thing morning, Holly?" Holly: "Lights!' Mat: "which means?" Holly: "well, lights!" Mat (sighing): "which means?" Holly: " I need new bulbs for my lights" Mat: "and what do we need to do to GET new bulbs for your lights?" Holly: "something I don't want to do which is why I didn't mention it" But of course, girls all LOVE going shopping... [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
Baroness Floella Benjamin has written for the Voice website about what the government is doing to help young black people find jobs. More than 30 million people are now in work and since the 2010 General Election, the number of people claiming the main out-of-work benefits has fallen by 566,000. This is great news and my party, the Liberal Democrats, have worked hard in government to achieve success stories like these, listening to people's concerns and ensuring the right support is being put in place. But disappointingly there's no denying that unemployment is still disproportionately high amongst young black people, ...
The Times contains a report on what they term a new bombshell for the SNP, namely that Brussels is likely to enforce higher VAT levels on an independent Scotland. This comes on top of the UK Government's insistence that an independent Scotland will not be allowed to retain the pound and doubts cast by the EU President that Scotland may not even be allowed to join the European Union. The paper quotes the European Commission in asserting that any new member of the EU would have to impose VAT on all consumer goods. They say that new member states might ...
It's a funny thing, but just 48 hours after I posted the question about what makes Alan Turing the ubiquitous English hero for the 2010s, then the Observer reports the next twist in the tale about the famous Turing Test. Let me quickly explain for the uninitiated. The test was set by Alan Turing in 1950 as a way of deciding mathematically whether or not a computer could think. Turing suggested that the test would be passed when you couldn't tell whether you were taking to a human being or a computer in written conversation. He believed that moment would ...
Alongside pizza flyers and estate agent adverts, you may have received a leaflet on Care.data. This April, GP surgeries were going to upload data from GP records onto a national HSCIC database - unless you opted-out. The leaflet had no opt-out form or Freepost return address. If you don't opt-out, medical data, including prescriptions and your conditions, will leave the surgery and go to HSCIC. HSCIC then centrally pseudo-anonymise it - removing your name. Your birthdate and postcode stays. HSCIC's own risk assessment warns patients could be identified if the pseudo-anonymised data was joined up with other easily-available data. And ...
Gin worth £18,000 stolen from lorry on A14 I am willing to volunteer to the police to test any stolen goods they recover from this story, just to make sure it's the genuine article (tags: ) Union threat over Calderdale budget vote - oh noes! Union upset that their members might have to put up with only SOMEWHAT better conditions than private sector workers on SSP rather than incredibly better. No mention of the fact that the real beef of the union is that one of the proposals is to stop paying taxpayer's money for them to have staff and ...
There are times when you begin to realise just how complicated Government can be, and, whilst writing yesterday's preview of next week in the Lords, I came across The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 (Consequential and Contrary Provisions and Scotland) Order 2014. Being a curious soul by nature, I read Schedule A, which lists a series of pieces of legislation that require revision as a result. For your delectation and delight, here's the list in chronological order; Metropolitan Public Carriage Act 1869Pensions Commutation Act 1871Local Government (Emergency Provisions) Act 1916Population (Statistics) Act 1938Marriage Act 1949Reserve and Auxiliary Forces (Protection ...
What is 5 x 0? Nothing. Right? Well, correct, this blog does not wish to break maths. (I prefer to leave this to my wilder theories that I share with my university tutors!) Here is another one though. What if I told you 5 x 0!=5 In fact, what of I told you any number (lets call it N) multiplied by 0! is N and not 0? It is generally agreed that 0!=1. Welcome to the world of 0! What is 0! I hear you ask? The factorial function (symbol: !) means to multiply a series of descending natural numbers. ...
