Tim Farron went and opened Jane Brophy's campaign HQ in Oldham West and Royton today and, as is the way with these things, was surrounded by lots of colourful diamonds: Delighted to join @Jane4OldhamWR & kick off our Oldham West & Royton campaign today. Jane is a brilliant campaigner pic.twitter.com/96rdPyZNzs — Tim Farron (@timfarron) November 7, 2015 I would strongly recommend that if you can get over to Oldham between now and the by-election on 3rd December, you do – for your own benefit as much as any help to the campaign. Yes, Jane Brophy is a fantastic candidate, a ...
Phil Norman does not set out to choose his 100 greatest television programmes. Rather, in this collection of short essays, he seeks to reproduce the strange juxtapositions and serendipitous discoveries that characterised the medium in the days before the proliferation of channels. So World in Action sits next to Playschool, Blankety Blank next to Life on Earth, and Twin Peaks next to Jonathan Meades. Forgotten programmes that were important, or seemed important, in their day are brought back into the daylight. There are essays on Roots, Max Headroom and The Strange World of Gurney Slade. And it is good to ...
I wasn't going to do National Novel Writing Month this year. I had too much work. I had to study. I couldn't think of a good idea. The Dialectics Society kept doing stuff that sounded more fun than trying to come up with a decent plot. I was not going to let myself do NaNo this year. I lasted about four days. If you haven't heard of National Novel Writing Month, it's more like International Novel Writing Month now. I think it started in America. Basically, you try to write either a 50,000 word novel, a more than 50,000 word ...
Tim Farron has been busy today. Not only has he been opening our campaign headquarters in Oldham West and Royton (of which more later), but he's been at the Yorkshire and the Humber Liberal Democrats' Regional Conference in York. The core speech is not really knew – what he's delivering as he goes round the regional conference is what they would call in The West Wing "Modified Stump". Anyway, enjoy. Here is his speech which is pretty much in full. You can't make this guy stick to a script – and one thing in particular is how the joke changes ...
The photo montage above shows Suvla Bay during the campaigning in the First World War, alongside the present-day scene there As we approach Remembrance Sunday, my thoughts this year are particularly focussed on the Gallipoli campaign. We're at the one hundredth anniversary of that invasion attempt, which took place from April 25th 1915 to January 9th 1916. Comedian Hugh Dennis has produced an excellent BBC programme called "In search of Great Uncle Frank" which explains the campaign very well, through a visit to Suvla Bay (in present-day Turkey) scene of much of the carnage, to retrace the steps of his ...
The other day the Guardian ran an obituary for the BBC broadcaster Jeremy James. He was a member of the team that presented the documentary series Man Alive. But I remember him best as the presenter of The Master Game. Chess on television? The consensus among broadcasting professionals was that it did not work, but then the BBC came up with an innovation that mean it did. As soon as the game was over, the players were taken off and, while everything was fresh in their minds, asked to record their thoughts during the game as though it were live. ...
You know the song – Henry and Liza have a circular conversation such as this: There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza, There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, a hole. Then mend it, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry, Oh mend it, dear Henry, dear Henry, mend it. With what shall I mend it, dear Liza, dear Liza? With what shall I mend it, dear Liza, with what? Try straw, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry, With straw, dear Henry, dear Henry, with straw. It goes round in circles. Henry needs to get a sharpener ...
Back in 2001, realising that my future lay in being a grumpy old man, I wrote for Spiked about 'walking buses': A walking bus scheme is where children do not make their own way to school and neither are they driven by their parents. Instead, they are walked to school in a group under the supervision of volunteer adult escorts. Usually there will be an adult 'driver' walking at the front of the line and an adult 'conductor' at the back - with both adults and children wearing high-visibility jackets. Children can join the crocodile only at specified points, and ...
This is not the stuff of far flung fantasy. This actually happened, this week, in Canada, to a Liberal Party that's fought its way back from devastating election defeats. Here are two things that you should watch and take heart from. First of all, a 24 minute behind the scenes video filmed by CBC of Justin Trudeau's first day in office. In parts it has the feel of an episode of The West Wing, but our absolute favourite moment is when he puts down the reporter for being disparaging about the Cabinet travelling on a bus, reminding him that this ...
Flick through a Federal or Yorkshire Regional conference agenda these days and it's likely that you'll see Calderdale as the sponsor of several motions or amendments. This article shows how we've made that happen: The short version for those who just want the how and not the why keep policy and admin totally separate, always involve people at every step of the way, have a definite aim to a definite deadline, have visible outcomes so people can see they are making a difference, and always make sure there is food/drink at every event. The longer version: when I took over ...
The Conservative Party pulls off a surprise victory in a general election in which the opinion polls were massively wrong. That victory came with the help of Labour Party still hobbled by past economic crisis and which, in the face of defeat, swung sharply to the left. The Conservative government, determined to leave the compromises of the past behind, sets off with a series of controversial, high profile policies, rapidly running into political crisis and u-turns leaving the immediate post-election talk of a new era of Tory political dominance looking rather premature. Sounds familiar? I'm talking, of course, about the ...
The photo montage above, from Getty Images, shows Suvla Bay during the campaigning in the First World War, alongside the present-day scene there As we approach Remembrance Sunday, my thoughts this year are particularly focussed on the Gallipoli campaign. We're at the one hundredth anniversary of that invasion attempt, which took place from April 25th 1915 to January 9th 1916. Comedian Hugh Dennis has produced an excellent BBC programme called "In search of Great Uncle Frank" which explains the campaign very well, through a visit to Suvla Bay (in present-day Turkey), scene of much of the carnage, to retrace the ...
A classic short sf novel of 1940, and one that will surely be in the running for next year's Retro Hugos. Our two protagonists are slans with telepathic superpowers, running the gauntlet of the oppressive government of normal humans, aided only by powerful secret weaponry. It's obviously a bit of a fable for fans of earlier days; now that geek culture has gone mainstream, I don't think it resonates as much, and some of the social attitudes of the writing were already out of date by 1940. I suspect it has a good shot at the Retro Hugo, but not ...
Saturday: Last year, we loved Peter Harness's "Kill the Moon". This was, er, a controversial opinion. (No, that's not an invitation to tell me again why I am wrong.) Perhaps, having everyone read an allegory that wasn't there into his previous work, you might think he'd be more cautious. Not a bit. This year, we're putting the subtext into the text so blatantly that nobody's going to get the wrong message. (I bet they do get the wrong message.) But it's always a relief to be able to give an honest review to people you know. And this was terrific. ...
County Councillor Chris White has awarded £2,000 to Fleetville Community Centre, from his locality budget, to begin the process to replace the existing community centre with a new building. The money will help to fund early stage consultation, legal advice, accreditation, a structural survey and the creation of a website. The current building was built [...]
Tim Farron is absolutely right to accuse Corbyn's Labour Party of acting like a "nodding Conservative dog" for giving qualified support to Theresa May's controversial plans to shake up Britain's surveillance laws. In the Independent, he promises to lead the fight against the Draft Investigatory Powers Bil, saying that the Liberal Democrats will table amendments to the legislation in an attempt to give judges, rather than ministers, the power to authorise warrants to intercept the contents of people's communications and hack computers: Mr Farron told The Independent: "The Home Secretary has created a sham of judicial authorisation that doesn't fool ...
Four years of an ALDE Party led by Sir Graham Watson is nearly at an end and, following his announcement in Oslo in May that he would not be seeking a third term, one might not be surprised to hear that the campaign started almost before he sat down. I for one was lobbied by a potential candidate at the reception that followed and, since then, two candidates have emerged to contest the succession. So, who will the Liberal Democrat delegation, which represents 12% of the votes to be cast, have to decide between? [IMG: Siim Kallas] Siim Kallas is ...
[IMG: Tower of London Poppy r] Above is a poppy from the Tower of London display The Liverpool Echo has the story – see link above www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-34747072 The BBC also has a time lapse video of the installation on its web site – see link above The artwork installation looks great; must get to see it.
[IMG: Ben Carson. Photo courtesy of Gage Skidmore CC BY-SA 2.0] American politics sure is strange at times: Republican front-runner Ben Carson (god, that feels weird to type) is in hot water over allegations that he never actually tried to stab someone, despite his claims to the contrary in his best-selling memoir. Carson's 1990 autobiography Gifted Hands is a redemption narrative, in which the nadir of the brain surgeon's troubled adolescence comes when he tries to stab a classmate to death in ninth grade... [But] CNN reported that interviews with Carson's childhood friends and acquaintances painted a radically different picture ...
A great way to spend today - starts at 11am!
Some people out there are getting very het up about the fact that a petition to have a no-confidence vote on David Cameron as prime minister is closing in on the 100,000 signatures mark. The significance of the six-figures is that once the petition reaches this many signatories, it can be considered for a debate in parliament. The word "considered" is the real key here. This is all part of Cameron's own initiative, enacted in 2010 shortly after he became prime minister, around e-petitions, the idea being to boost "transparency and democracy" apparently. The only problem is, it's a fudge. ...
The average Human brain consists of at least 86 billion neurons and perhaps ten times more glyial cells. Yet each neuron, through synapses, can connect to as many as ten thousand other cells. The estimated number of neural connections is thus in the order of trillions: in fact an estimated 0.15 quadrillion connections. Brain specialists believe that each Human Brain may be capable of processing as much as 2.5 petabytes of information through these synapse connections. This is about seven times larger than the entire library of congress. Incidentally, to build a computer of similar power on current technology would ...
The Hillary Clinton Doctrine Excellent analysis of how the likely next president will handle the world. (tags: uspolitics ) Confessions of a humanitarian: My amoebas and I have gone through so much together o god yes (tags: politics health development ) The 18th Brumaire of Jeremy Corbyn I don't agree with all of this but it's a very good read! (tags: ukpolitics )
No change at the top of the leaderboard, with Paul Revell's Sock Monsters (667 points) continuing to lead the LibDemVoice Fantasy Football League after Week 11. Not far behind are Christopher Buck's Moves Like Agger (637) and Simon Stokes' Back of the Net (629). But let's also hear it for three players outside the top 10: Stephen Rowlstone's LFC96 had the best week's performance, with 97 points. Honourable mentions go to Judith Dickinson's Willy Fogg's X1 and Rik Barker's Surreal Madrid, with 92 and 90 points respectively. [IMG: ffl 11] There are 220 players in total and you can still ...
