Current Helliconia Summer, by Brian Aldiss Last books finished Short Fiction Eligible for the 1941 Retro-Hugos Vol 5, ed. von Dimpleheimer The Last Man, by Alfred Noyes The Oxford Book of Christmas Stories, ed. Dennis Pepper Doctor Who: Big Bang Generation, by Gary Russell Next books Selected Stories, by Alice Munro A Princess of Roumania, by Paul Park Helliconia Winter, by Brian Aldiss Books acquired in last week Short Fiction Eligible for the 1941 Retro-Hugos Vol 5, ed. von Dimpleheimer Lois McMaster Bujold, by Edward James Welcome to the Doomsphere: Sad Puppies, Hugos, and Politics, by Matthew M. Foster The ...
I know, I thought I'd wrapped up my Retro Hugo reading, but then over on File 770, Kyra alerted me to this interesting novel, in which almost all of humanity is destroyed by a Doomsday Weapon at the very beginning, the hero spends many chapters exploring dead cities and finding the heroine, and they must then deal with the villain (the hero's surname is Adams; the heroine's first name is Evelyn). It's pretty heavily steeped in the writer's Catholicism and hostility to war; there is a lot of poetry (including some very coy use of Theocritus in the original Greek ...
Former Lib Dem MP for Eastbourne Stephen Lloyd has one of the funniest Christmas cards this year. [IMG: Stephen Lloyd Alpaca] And before anyone complains that it actually isn't an alpaca, we know this. However, Richard Curtis and Ben Elton success with Blackadder II was only enhanced by their failure to correctly identify root vegetables... * Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
and a good New Year to everyone!
The innocence of the young is one of the great joys of Christmas. It is the job of the political leaders to protect that innocence from the, sometimes ugly, world around us. The scale of the challenge that the international community faces in Syria cannot be understated. We have seen the impact of the conflict... More Willie Rennie's Christmas Message
According to the Daily Fail, Vince Cable is working on a novel, a political thriller: Cable, 72, is already deep into the tome, having already bashed out 40,000 words. It will apparently be a political thriller, set around a controversial arms contract affecting India and Britain. Details thus far are scant, but a friend informs me the prose will be quite 'pared-back and spare', in the style of Irish novelist William Trevor. Cable certainly has insight into Anglo-Indian relations, not just because he is a former government minister. His first wife Olympia, who passed away in 2001, was Goan. 'I ...
Jesus Christ the Apple Tree is an anonymous 18th-century poem and this setting is by the 20th-century British composer Elizabeth Poston. Between them they manage that combination of the sacred and the pagan that makes Christmas work.
After the mild controversy about the PM's Christmas Message, and Jeremy Corbyn's lack of one, I wondered what a Lib Dem PM's Christmas Message might look like. This is what I came up with: Britain is a country of many nations, of many cultures and of many faiths. But I do believe that as we celebrate Christmas, a deep-lying common faith that unites us all rises to the fore. It is a faith that unites Christians and Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus, Theists and Atheists. It is a faith in us. A faith in our capacity to build a national community ...
Our Lib Dem Christmas Card this year tries to capture both an ancient hymn and the wonderful visit to our City of the 3 Cunard Queens So that's 35,000 Christmas Cards delivered. 3 Christmas Parties attended and all the presents ... Continue reading →
Christmas is a time where we all reflect about our lives; that of our family, our friends and others around the world. At this time I think of those injured or have lost a family member in the sadly frequent terrorist events. One of my friends was shot in the Paris Bacalan music venue but left hospital recently. If you spot any of your friends who are not as happy as they usually are, please make sure you speak to them as this can be a time when people's mental health suffers to check they are okay. Looking specifically to ...
Joanna Ferguson announces the relaunch of Liberal Youth's blogging platform The Libertine. "Measurement, Bob says, is the big challenge facing the outdoor education industry. You can measure a child's progress in maths, spelling, grammar... so we tend to hone in on those things. But it's so much harder to quantify how much more confident or empathetic or happy a child is this term versus last. So we don't prioritise these things, and so nor the activities that develop them.'" Dominic Collard speaks up for outdoor education. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein spent some time teaching in an elementary school in the ...
Stockport has some great museums: Staircase House, the Air raid shelters, the Hatworks, the art gallery and Bramall Hall. Here are the opening times over the Christmas period [IMG: museums opening] Here's a 2for1 voucher you can use at Staircase House over New Year [IMG: 2for1] And you can click here to enter a competition to win a Lowry print and other goodies just by liking the Stockport Museums facebook page and saying which is your favourite Stockport museum and why.
A very different Christmas message from the rest as Kirsty Williams shares one of her family traditions, reading Dylan Thomas' A Child's Christmas in Wales. Kirsty read an extract and it's great to see how passionate and involved she gets in the story. Brilliant stuff. Kirsty Williams' 2015 Christmas MessageThis year's Christmas message from Kirsty Williams is a little different...A very merry Christmas from all of us at the Welsh Liberal Democrats. Posted by Welsh Liberal Democrats on Wednesday, 23 December 2015 Get yourself a cup of tea and enjoy this.
Q Local Southport has the story on its web site – see link above [IMG: Iconic scenes of Liverpool spotted on a wall mural in Moorfields Station] Iconic scenes of Liverpool spotted on a wall mural in Moorfields Station With thanks to Cllr. John Dodd for the lead to this story.
What with one thing and another, updating this site has not been a priority in the last few months. I have been active online – but just not here! I will try to do better in 2016. Meanwhile, Merry Christmas everyone and if you are looking for a good cause to support at this time can I suggest either (or both) http://wokinghamcrossroads.org/ Wokingham Crossroads Care http://www.rrsg.org.uk/ Reading Refugee Support Group (which also covers Wokingham) See you in the New Year.
Staff in Cheadle Co-op were threatened with a knife as a robber stole money from the store at around 8pm on Wednesday 23rd December. We're very relieved that no-one was injured in the robbery, but it's a pretty horrendous experience at any time, let alone less that a couple of days before Christmas. If anyone has any information that could help catch those responsible, please call officers on 101, or alternatively, call the independent charity Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
Local Liberal Democrats have strongly condemned the continuing train disruption caused by 'driver shortages'.Lib Dem Leader and local councillor Chris White said: 'I have been getting complaints about the deteriorating service for some days – a problem sometimes made worse by the inappropriate deployment of short trains. 'Local people pay a fortune for season tickets and travel cards but at [...]
Tim Farron features tomorrow in a Christmas Day Lakeland Radio broadcast. Between 12pm and 3pm tomorrow, the pre-recorded show will air and Tim will count down his top 40 tunes. Cumbria Live has the story: There will be no Slade or Wham Christmas hits with Westmorland and Lonsdale MP Tim Farron picking the music – instead there will be songs from the Sex Pistols, The Clash and X Ray Specs. The show will feature on Lakeland Radio on Christmas Day with a selection of Tim Farron's favourite hits from across the years including Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now by The ...
A couple of weeks ago we reported that our Conservative MP Mary Robinson had voted to allow fracking under national parks. Over in Hazel Grove, their Tory MP William Wragg managed to go even further. He's just one of two Conservative MPs who signed a Greenpeace pledge to oppose all fracking and yet he too voted for it. We now know that large parts of Greater Manchester, including areas just a few miles from us, have been opened up for exploration and potential fracking. [IMG: Selection_248] A recent 4.6 magnitude earthquake in Canada has been definitively linked to fracking.
As the hordes of shoppers swamp the supermarkets, looking for that last brussel sprout, turkey crown or jar of cranberry sauce, spare a thought for Jeremy Corbyn who, according to the Telegraph, will be locked in some Parliamentary eyrie plotting the next phase of his cunning plan to rule the Labour Party, the UK and the universe. There in a world far, far away the Labour leader is planning a reshuffle to oust his most prominent shadow cabinet critics. The paper says that Corbyn and his aides will spend the next fortnight working out how to replace leading internal critics ...
Unlike some councils, Stockport sets out what's happening with Christmas bin collections well in advance. Our bin calendar published a few months ago has the collection days not only for this Christmas but for 2016 too. Bin collections do change over the Christmas period – as we like our refuse collectors to have time off! To find out which bins are being collected on which days, check your bin calendar or put in your address here.
Now if only this was how elections were decided on in Britain...
The Daily Telegraph ran a feature this week that is perhaps the worst piece I have ever seen in the newspaper, one entitled "No room at the cinema for baby Jesus". It's basically a re-hash of the old "the secularists are trying to ban Christmas" spiel, but this article came across as a sort of sub-Daily Mail treatment of the subject. I hope this doesn't mean that the "Crimbo is under attack!" thing is coming back into style (at least within the world of right-wing journalism), I really don't. The story, such as it is, revolves around a 45-second advert ...
With turnout in the Grendon Underwood & Brill by election at 29% despite it being held on the eve of Christmas Eve, there was rather more public participation that you might have expected in a by-election which saw the Lib Dems score an 18% swing from the Conservatives. This result in Aylesbury Vale is another example of both the strength and the limitations of the Lib Dem recovery in council by-elections. The party isn't withering away in them, and is frequently moving back to be well ahead of Ukip and the Greens. But as with other examples of this trends ...
The innocence of the young is one of the great joys of Christmas. It is the job of the political leaders to protect that innocence from the, sometimes ugly, world around us. The scale of the challenge that the international community faces in Syria cannot be understated. We have seen the impact of the conflict on our television screens and the beaches of the Mediterranean. But where there is darkness there is also light. The response across the globe to the Paris attacks was uplifting. Singing together at the football, standing together on the streets and even the United Nations ...
Another great video from Tom Scott: In 1987, a German student wrote CHRISTMA EXEC – a virus whose basic mechanisms still work if you port them to today's desktop computers. Why haven't we changed in nearly 30 years? And what could we do instead?
Dai y Mirror. That's how the Daily Mirror, the UK's most respectable tabloid, spells its name this morning on its masthead. On the BBC's Radio 4 "Today" programme this morning there was much speculation as to why. Is it a mistake? Is it maybe Welsh? I think I've cracked it. It's a coded message. They've missed out the "L" There's "No L" Noël Merry Christmas.
Over the past few days, Brunei, Somalia and Tajikistan (to name only those I have spotted in the news) have banned celebrating Christmas. To that list one can of course add Saudi Arabia, where Islam is the only permitted religion. I find it sad that the Islamic fundamentalism — much of it promoted by Saudi [...]
Will the Republican Party Survive the 2016 Election? First of two great @TheAtlantic pieces: @DavidFrum looks right. (tags: uspolitics ) America Is Becoming More Liberal Second of two great @TheAtlantic pieces: @PeterBeinart looks left. (tags: uspolitics ) The Tatooine Cycle Star Wars IV: A New Hope, retold as an Irish epic. (tags: sf ireland funny ) Georgia Prime Minister Garibashvili resigns I didn't see that coming! (tags: georgia )
IT manager has bikes stolen after cycling app reveals his address 17 splendid translation fails A Day in the Life of an Ordinary Trans Woman (CW transphobia) Why you should always buy the men's version of almost anything - apples in the UK as much as the US Norway Offers Migrants a Lesson in How to Treat Women - this is uncomfortable but maybe good? OfC it'd be great if this was explicitly taught to all people - and maybe in Norway it is? Excellent tip from @scope for aspies at Xmas - tips are user generated tho; some are ...
