Nich Hoult writes harshly bur fairly about England's disarray against Australia today: At the moment it fells like they are making it up on the hoof, as teams do when they dither over sacking a captain and leave it until a few weeks before a tournament. Here they dropped Ravi Bopara after 11 consecutive games to replace him with Gary Ballance, who had not played a one-day international for nearly six months. He batted at three too, a position Taylor had occupied with occasional distinction since November. He in turn was demoted to bat at no 6 for the first ...
Thousands of Kurds from across Europe gathered in Strasbourg this afternoon for a rally by the city's stadium. As one of their foreign guests I gave the following short speech in English, simultaneously translated into Kurdish: We are gathered here under the Strasbourg sun at what I believe may be an historic moment in the [...]
Thanks to Will Howells for giving me my Trivial Fact of the Day. The films Planet of the Apes and Bridge on the River Kwai were both based on novels by Pierre Boulle. This reminds me of an incident from my days as a student at York. A lecturer used an incident from Bridge n the River Kwai to illustrate a point of moral philosophy, but the seminar rapidly descended into an argument about which actors had been in the film.
[IMG: Greg Judge speaking at Lib Dem conference] I know it's a tough call, but George Hargreaves currently has it in the race to be Ukip's worst Parliamentary candidate with his extreme and nasty views – such as wanting the NHS to refuse to treat people with AIDS – mixed in with the eccentric and offensive – such as believing Manchester United sponsors Satanism. Even more best wishes than usual to Greg Judge who has been selected as the Liberal Democrat candidate to face him in Coventry South: Am pleased to announce that I am now the @CovLibDems Parliamentary Candidate ...
One of the real problems with solar farms in my book, windfarms too, is that they don't supply power locally but plug into the national grid. That destroys the link between locality and renewable energy. That's one reason why a solar farm proposed at Acton Scott was thrown out by the South Planning Committee earlier [...]
Sat 14th
18:05
Ramblers – A meeting to chat about Sefton's Local Plan and its effect on public footpaths
Had a good meeting this morning with a representative of the Ramblers Assn. The meeting was to talk through any negative implications on the Maghull and district footpath network of Sefton Council's decision to build on areas of Green Belt. The conclusion we came to was that the huge 'New Town' site to the east of Maghull will throw up the biggest challenge as a public footpath crosses it which is clearly an historic track. I say historic as it is named on the Ordnance Survey Map as 'Moss Nook Lane'. The path runs from School Lane to the M58 ...
The Telegraph has unearthed an STV documentary on the early days of Labour in the Treasury in 1997. It makes fascinating watching for all sorts of reasons. It feels not unlike an episode of The Thick of It, with Ed Balls a bit like Ollie Reeder to Whelan's Malcolm Tucker. Everyone looks so young, Gordon Brown particularly. Ed Miliband has become significantly less geeky over time, too. The Telegraph article is full of derision for Labour's removal of regulatory powers from the Bank of England. That principle seems fine to me, and fairly logical. If you give the bank the ...
[IMG: "You might already know that these are books. But what you might not know is that the words inside them are made up by people."] "You might already know that these are books. But what you might not know is that the words inside them are made up by people." The Pitch: There's been a lot of complaint that TV mainstream doesn't have much, if any, programming about books (rather than just being based on them). This show aims to change that by finding Britain's Next Top Writer in a primetime show. Having made one giant leap of originality ...
Transport for London boss Sir Peter Hendy is under fire after he accepted an invitation to attend not one, or two, but three dinners from which women are excluded. The Independent has the story: The CommonSpace website said that Sir Peter, 61, who receives a £348,000 salary, attended the December dinner in the Radisson Blu Hotel in Portman Square, London, as a guest of the Scottish-based bus company Alexander Dennis Ltd. Photos of the event posted on the society's website showed a "handsome body of men enjoying their dinner" alongside another picture of female performers in thigh-cut dresses who were ...
via Facebook
It's hardly unsurprising that a letter in the Observer, "
[IMG: Julian Huppert MP] Julian Huppert has tabled an amendment to the Serious Crime Bill enabling journalists to better protect their sources. He wrote about why this was necessary in the Guardian – apparently over 600 applications have been made to access journalists' phone records in the last three years. That's about four a week. As Julian puts it: How will anyone be brave enough to contact a journalist in the public interest, if they know that they can easily be tracked down? What's more, these actions have clearly discouraged whistleblowers from coming forward, having a chilling effect on free ...
Nothing is more tedious than those tweets telling you that campaigners from every party have just received "a great reception on the doorstep". Why do they do it? Because of what happens when you tell the truth. Let me to take you back to a Guardian account of the Hartlepool by-election of 2004 and what happened to the Liberal Democrat candidate Jody Dunn: On August 27, Dunn had written in her blog about a dispiriting evening out canvassing with Simon Hughes. "It didn't just rain last night, it poured," she wrote. "In fact the evening became one of the more ...
Japanese Garden- Calderstones Park You may think that I am a little obsessed by the way Liverpool's increasingly right wing Labour Party are behaving over the potential sale or disposal of part of our Parks. Well spotted - you are ... Continue reading →
Sat 14th
13:24
Sarah Teather shows how to do an exit interview with dignity, empathy and thoughtfulness
[IMG: Sarah Teather] Sarah Teather's announcement that she was standing down as a Liberal Democrat MP on the eve of our conference in 2013 did create some waves at the time. She was very critical of some of the things that the party had done in government, most notably welfare reform. Since then, she has done what she's always done – been a strong voice speaking up for poorly treated asylum seekers and was a strong voice in the campaign against cuts to criminal legal aid. She's now done an interview with the Telegraph in which she talks about her ...
It's unlikely that David Lean's masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia (Rotten tomato score: 99%) and Fifty Shades of Grey (Rotten tomato score: 27%) will regularly be discussed together. One can, however, find the odd connection. Firstly, there is a modest thematic one. Secondly, both films were edited by a lady named Anne V. Coates. Among her other credits [...]
The following post was originally posted on Lib Dem Voice on Thursday 5th February which was Time To Talk day, a day encouraging everyone to talk about their personal experiences with Mental Health issues. The Lib Dems have been running a long running campaign to break the stigma around Mental Health and several Lib Dems chose to share their experiences on the day. The original post can be found on Lib Dem Voice by clicking here. This is my personal experience with Mental Health. Cancer Stresses Me Out [IMG: Maggie's Centre Dundee] Maggie's Centre Dundee Over the last 15 years, ...
An editorial in yesterday's Independent will give both heart and motivation to Liberal Democrat troops heading out on to the doorsteps this weekend. Its acceptance that our fate is sealed for this election will irritate those teams of canvassers in our key seats who are finding a good response on the doorsteps. Those of us who have been around for a while will know that our demise has been predicted at virtually every election. They demolish Jeremy Browne's theory that we need to position ourselves on the centre right, highlighting the unprecedented successes of Charles Kennedy's time as leader. They ...
Camden Council has been talking about developing the Liddell Road industrial estate for a long time now, but it still amazes me that it could put forward such a flawed scheme. In the Council elections last year, Camden Labour made all sorts of promises to build thousands of new houses - yet they are now proposing [...]
It's been a busy week at work. While I'm still fit (according to my last set of blood tests in December), I am starting to feel progressively more tired. This week's schedule meant that Monday and Tuesday were busy days and also that I wasn't able to get home until around 1am on Wednesday Thursday. That would have all been probably all right, but getting up at 6am on Thursday to make sure that I got to a customer meeting on time that morning just about finished me off. I got home at 2pm and went to bed. Even after ...
I am just about to take delivery of much planned, thought through and desired bike. And I realised that Alex P was significantly responsible for my cycling journey to this point. Alex and I like the idea of each other and mostly click but we don't spend much time in each other's company and won't now he's gone down sarf with his magnificent financée Grace (whose only flaws are insufficient time spent cycling and refusal to eat pork). Alex was around on all rides when I first joined the Cappuccinos in Feb 2011 and when someone mentioned Etape du Dales ...
Labour activists are fond of blaming the bank for the economic mess they bequeathed to the current government. And of course they are now advocating punishing their bête noir even more for their sins against the economy and ordinary people. I am not opposed to a further levy on banking profits but I do recoil at the sort of hypocrisy and spin being deployed by Labour in this campaign. That is because their culpability in this crisis was clear at the time. Despite all their denials Labour's failure to regulate the banks properly and their mismanagement of the economy put ...
Sat 14th
10:25LibLink: Danny Alexander: A defence of our role in Coalition, whatever Jeremy Browne thinks
Danny Alexander takes to the pages of the Independent to challenge the points made by Jeremy Browne in his critical interview in that paper yesterday. He looks back at the recessions of the 80s with their mass unemployment and misery and highlights the differences in approach brought into government by the Liberal Democrats. This, he says, has brought about a quicker, fairer end to the economic downturn: Liberalism is about individual freedom, fairness and opportunity. And freedom, fairness and opportunity cannot flourish without a strong economy. Today, Britain has the strongest growth and fastest job creation of any advanced economy. ...
While on a trade mission to America, Boris was asked the kind of questions politicians always get thrown, but almost invariably fumble (to use an Americanism). He was asked to imagine a scenario in which he was in a rescue dinghy that had room for only one more person: which one would he save? David Cameron or George Osborne? This was Boris' answer in full: "I'd immediately plunge, dive overboard, and offer them the dinghy in the knowledge that I can swim heroically to land myself. That's what I'd do." That's a great answer, and the reason I start this ...
I see that there is now a discussion about the complexity of our tax code. Yes, it has many thousands of pages. Yes, it is much longer than 'War and Peace'. Yes, parts of it are fearsomely complex. That could be because we live in a complex financial world. Actually, it's mostly because we use the taxation system for social engineering and for the encouragement of certain activities which the State approves of. So, let's take film tax credit, for example. The principle is easy, we want to encourage the making of films in the United Kingdom. So, you need ...
Thursday 12th February saw the official opening of The Atkinson Museum on Southport's Lord Street. I have commented on this excellent building (or to put it correctly collection of 3 buildings) previously and for those not familiar with Southport it used to be called The Arts Centre. A splendid combination of Library, Museum and Theatre it must now rank as being of regional significance. The Museum is titled Between Land & Sea but also houses a significant Egyptology collection. Shipping and tourism are well to the fore as you would expect from a museum that covers a geographical area stretching ...
The last two of these are getting a bit desperate - clearly variant spellings of words I use LOADS (tags: ) Met's refusal to police London rally 'may be human rights breach' (tags: ) And the Duckworth Lewis Method isn't even in here... (tags: ) Heavy metal heroes Valentine's Day cards (tags: ) Main party leaders respond to calls for inclusive SRE in all schools (tags: ) Britain must look at replacing the NHS with an insurance system, Nigel Farage says (tags: ) 50 Shades of Grey: a film about male power, idealising emotional abuse as sexy when it isn't ...
The Daily Wales reports: The man who campaigned to remove the dragon from the Welsh flag because it represents the 'sign of Satan' is standing as a UKIP candidate. Pentecostal minister, George Hargreaves, has been selected by the party to represent them in the Coventry South seat for the forthcoming General Election. In 2007, as self-elected leader of the Welsh Christian Party, he launched a campaign to have the 'evil' dragon removed from the Welsh flag. Amongst his other views, he's attacked Manchester United for allegedly* sponsoring Satanism, called for the NHS to refuse to treat HIV victims and founded ...
The One World Centre in Dundee is holding an informal Fair Trade Café Conversations event on Wednesday 25th February at the Cairn Centre, 12 Rattray Street between 4pm and 5.15pm. There will be the chance to sample lots of Fair Trade goodies while chatting with others about Fair Trade opportunities, activities and resources for schools. To reserve your place at this free event, please contact Clare Fulton, Global Learning Adviser at the One World Centre - email clare@oneworldcentre.org.uk or telephone 454603.
Based on just shy of nine years blundering around at it, blogging can be summed up as follows: You spend hours writing a post about something you really care deeply about – hours of lovingly fact-checking, putting in links, photos etcetera. And then two people and Googlebot read it. Let's call that type of post "the Googlebot post" – virtually unseen by the human eye. An example is this post which I wrote about the Leveson Report. I spent hours poring over that report. And it is thick! I put enormous energy into carefully picking out relevant quotes and assembling ...
No change in the top 10 this week, with George Murray's Marauding Fullbacks continuing to lead the LibDemVoice Fantasy Football League after Week 25. But let's also hear it for three players outside the top 10: Will Barter (Mid-Table Meanderers) had last gamesweek's best performance, with 70 points. Honourable mentions go to Max Wilkinson (Regency Spa Town) and Richard Farrance (Wirral_Rovers), with 68 and 67 points respectively. [IMG: LDV FANTASY FOOTBALL 25] There are 160 players in total and you can still join the league by clicking here.
No change in the top 10 this week, with George Murray's Marauding Fullbacks continuing to lead the LibDemVoice Fantasy Football League after Week 25. But let's also hear it for three players outside the top 10: Will Barter (Mid-Table Meanderers) had last gamesweek's best performance, with 70 points. Honourable mentions go to Max Wilkinson (Regency Spa Town) and Richard Farrance (Wirral_Rovers), with 68 and 67 points respectively. [IMG: LDV FANTASY FOOTBALL 25] There are 160 players in total and you can still join the league by clicking here. * Stephen was Editor (and Co-Editor) of Liberal Democrat Voice from May ...
Tweedbank (the for now terminus of Borders Rail) finally got its track laid earlier this week. There has been a variety of videos celebrating this feat - but none so far (as I'm aware) involving drone footage and a cheesy soundtrack...
A long-term strategy to improve St Albans popular markets was reviewed by St Albans City and District Council's Local Services Scrutiny Committee on Thursday 5 February. The five year plan aims to increase the markets' financial viability and contribution to the development of the City centre. It includes proposals to boost promotion of the markets, [...]
