3 hours spent in the office today with my ward colleague folding 13,000 Focuses. They are currently going out to the deliverers. I will start delivering my patches tomorrow.
Second paragraph of third chapter:Thus a shrill voice, to his ears hideously different from that other, interrupted and dispersed his visions. Little Jane, his ten-year-old sister, stood upon the front porch, the door open behind her, and in her hand she held a large slab of bread-and-butter covered with apple sauce and powdered sugar. Evidence that she had sampled this compound was upon her cheeks, and to her brother she was a repulsive sight.Seventeen: A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William was the best-selling novel in America a hundred years ago, in 1916. If ...
There is a nice piece in the Guardian today where Petula Clark and Tony Hatch talk about the making of their classic record Downtown: In 1964, I was a huge star in France but the swinging 60s were starting to take hold in London and I wasn't part of it. Tony Hatch, a junior producer at Pye Records, came to see me in Paris and told me I had to record again in English. I was in the kitchen making some tea when I first heard him playing the melody to Downtown. I ran in and said: "What's that?" At ...
A gem from the Labour Party for the Colchester constituency in 1951 with this football themed leaflet.
Thanks to the Northampton Chronicle & Echo, we have our Headline of the Day.
Witney by-election candidate Liz Leffman has been campaigning for local NHS services, as she explains in the new film from the Liberal Democrats.
With thanks to BBC News.
As the Snoopers' Charter, sorry Investigatory Powers Bill, starts its final stage in the Lords today, have a look at this video from Liberty which gets over the intrusive nature of this illiberal measure. You can find more information about Liberty's campaign here. It's kind of odd that Liberty's former director, Shami Chakrabarti, is only abstaining on this bill along with her Labour colleagues. As the Independent put it: Theresa May is about to get away with the largest expansion of state surveillance powers in peacetime, and no one can quite explain why Labour politicians who have been spied upon ...
Anna Ingram (from Morrisons) and I World Mental Health Day 2016 saw the first Mayoral Reception in Southport Town Hall to mark that occaision . For me the day had begun as Neil Newton's guest on Sandgrounder Radio broadcasting from their new studios in Houghton Street. I was delighted Neil had me on to talk about mental health and he proved to be an informed and sympathetic interviewer. Their is still much work to do in combatting stigma concerning mental ill health and securing the appropriate resources to ensure that the necessary services are available. My second port of call ...
After two and half hours debate, which was at times heated and passionate, the South Planning Committee decided that it is minded to refuse the application for a petrol station and supermarket at Rocks Green on the outskirts of Ludlow. The committee wanted to refuse the application outright but legal advice was given that the... Continue reading Breaking... Planning committee wants to refuse Rocks Green supermarket →
History is written by the winners, so they say. Definitions of winning, however, adapt with historical context. Take Brexit, for example. Right now it seems as though the 48%, and anyone else broadly sympathetic to the Remain cause, are being pushed to the margins by the brashly victorious Leave campaign. Called "sore losers" (as if this is a child's football match or something else that barely matters), and told to stop being so bloody-minded and undemocratic, it may look as if anyone who voted Remain is soon to be consigned to the footnotes of future grammar school textbooks. Like Cassandra ...
Every time I say something liberal about immigration or immigrants, people swarm to tell me that I'm being silly and idealistic and we have to respect people's genuine, legitimate concerns. Since they rarely say "these are my concerns" - there's a lot of hand-waving and a lot of pre-emptive defensiveness about how not-racist they are - it's difficult to figure out sometimes what the concerns are. Sometimes the acceptably non-racist immigration concern is the "drain on infrastructure," but the tide is already starting to shift on that one as people realize the infrastructure is underfunded by local and national governments ...
[IMG: From fourth to win with Trish Robertson] We did it again! We have an excellent new councillor in Trish Robertson who won the Culloden and Ardersier by-election last week. We won, but it was nail-biting stuff, down to the wire. So how did we do it and what do we need to work on? We had a great candidate who listened, [...]
Tue 11th
13:29
Stage 1 Complaint to Shepway District Council Against Refusal of Call-In Request on Cabinet Member D...
[IMG: Tim Prater] Please accept this as a formal complaint on the process and decision made to fail to accept the call-in of the decision (officially dated 29th September) of the Cabinet Member for Transport on the Sandgate East Parking Zone. I understand that I should exhaust your complaints procedure before taking up my issue with the Local Government Ombudsman http://www.lgo.org.uk/make-a-complaint The decision to proceed despite 96% of the 342 respondents to the statutory consultation on the scheme being against it (329 out of 342) seems to me completely unacceptable and perverse, and at odds with the process used by ...
Nick Clegg's account of the coalition and its aftermath is an insightful and in many places startlingly frank account. This is not a complete review, though do buy and read the book for yourself, but I'll pick up a few of the issues raised. [IMG: clegg-book] Nick devotes a chapter to "the plumage of power" – looking at how a government anchored in the centre ground by Liberal Democrats ended up appearing from the outside merely to be run by unusually moderate Conservatives. One aspect of this was being seen with the trappings of power. The value was understood all ...
Since the British EU Referendum in June there has been a lot of talk about "Hard Brexit" versus "Soft Brexit", with Prime Minister Theresa May giving the impression that she favours the former, i.e. sacrificing access to the European single market in order to "get back control" of immigration. Remainers like myself not surprisingly think [...]
Devotion towards the free market has been a cornerstone of the Conservative Party for a very long time. At moments in the 20th century it was tempered with what would in the Thatcher years be painted as "wet" concern for equality; yet the idea that markets and the individualism that makes them work has been core to the Tory belief system for generations. Under May, we see that unravelling. Never has there been a Tory conference in which the business community felt so left in the cold as in 2016. The assumption presumably being that if they don't like what's ...
I'm asking this both on my blog and on Patreon because I don't know who reads my pieces where, but it's aimed at my Patreon backers. As I said last week, I'm going to start doing weekly comics reviews, free ... Continue reading →
So, you've all probably heard that my phone is being recalled again. I'm really upset about this; not because of any fears of it exploding (seven out of a couple of million is pretty good odds) but because I really REALLY love it. I love the way it works, the way it feels, and most of all I love and adore the S-pen, which I affectionately call the Pokey Stick. I have been a Note user since the Note 2, and before THAT I spent a reasonable amount of time with a Nokia 5800. I can't cope without a pokey ...
Daily Mail headline about royal mail (not an actual link to the fail) Actual serious point: is the reporting of this to soften ppl up for the postal aspects of the snoopers' charter? Give Brits voluntary dual EU citizenship after Brexit - EurActiv.com RT @MikeH_PR: More consideration of this please Give Brits voluntary dual EU citizenship after Brexit @EurActiv Can someone tell the British LGBT awards that bi women are not part time lesbians - The Queerness RT @TheQueerness: Can someone tell the British LGBT awards that bi women are not part time lesbians Instagram When Bae doesn't WANT to ...
The New Economics Foundation is re-launching itself today, and I am a fellow. It seemed like a good moment to look at the history - not just of nef - but of green economics in the UK. This is the first of three blogs, to be published over the next three days... The year 1973 was almost apocalyptic - war in the Middle East, the energy crisis, the three-day week, private armies, the imminent breakdown of society. It was all very unnerving. Nothing seemed to be working. Perhaps that was one reason why the atmosphere was suddenly alive with alternatives. ...
It might just be the increasingly autumnal weather, but it seems that every day another government announcement is made that chills me to the bone. This morning I read in the Telegraph of a new pilot scheme, devised by the Home Office, that will force pregnant women to prove their right to use the NHS when planning to give ... Continue reading Pregnant women: 'Papers, please!'
[IMG: 6982295499_f019582ec0_z] The way Theresa May has gone about co-opting the EU Referendum result to serve her own political ends is audacious. The construction of the referendum outcome as being a mandate to pursue the harshest of hard Brexits is utterly without justification. Its construction as a mandate to give controls on EU immigration primacy above all other considerations is disingenuous in the extreme. The argument that bringing Brexit decisions before Parliament would be undemocratic because the Government are honour-bound to follow the "will of the people" is as disreputable as it is incoherent. While we might tire of repeating ...
We're supporting World Food Day, this Sunday 16 October 2016, coordinated by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation. At present, almost 800 million people in the world do not have enough food to lead a healthy active life. That's about one in nine people. About 21,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes, about one person every four seconds, most of whom are children. [IMG: WFD2016_Webbanner_EN] Climate is changing. Food and agriculture must too Last year 193 countries pledged to end hunger in the next 15 years. The global goal for achieving Zero Hunger is 2030. One ...
First was the shock. It seemed as if Britain had driven off the edge of a cliff. Then denial. The dust settled and nothing much seemed to have changed. But now, among those that follow politics and business, there is a slow, creeping realisation of just how big a mess Brexit is. This isn't so much ... Continue reading Can Brexit be reversed? →
Writing a blog on Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) as a 2015 General Election candidate set off a string of events. I was contacted by MHFA England CEO Poppy Jaman and we met to discuss her vision of parity of esteem in mental and physical first aid. [IMG: kirsten-johnson-norman-lamb] Several emails and months later, I met with Norman Lamb MP to ask him to consider how we could change the law so that health and safety legislation which referenced First Aid could include mental as well as physical health. Norman was enthusiastic about pursuing this, and wrote to the Department ...
Sefton Council is proposing to bring in parking restrictions on Southport Road and Hall Lane in Lydiate, outside Our Ladies Church, but questions are being raised locally about whether they are really necessary. Representations were made to Lydiate Parish Council at its meeting last Tuesday by the Chairman of neighbouring Down Holland Parish Council who happens to attend the church himself. An extract from a Sefton Council report on the matter says:- 1.1 A request has been received from a local resident, for 'No Waiting at Any Time' restrictions to be introduced at the junction of Southport Road and Hall Lane, ...
Tue 11th
09:01
Brexit – No matter how you voted you surely want those you elected to have a say in what the a...
Yes I have had many a rant about the madness of leaving the EU and the profound negative social, economic and employment effects it will have but this posting is not another one. Have a look at the Guardian article via the link above. Is it in any way unreasonable for Parliament to be involved in deciding what the alternative to Brexit actually is? After all the only direction the electorate has given is that they want to leave. There's was no instruction about what alternative they wanted, indeed the Brexit Leaders never offered a clear alternative. So I ...
A fascinating photograph (below) looking west along Perth Road and with Roseangle to the south with what is now Dundee West Church prominent in the photo. The full Dundee City Council Photopolis collection is available here.
There is an interesting article on the Sky News website that claims to be based on leaked government documents, which asserts that a "hard Brexit" would see the Treasury lose up to £66bn in tax revenues a year. The document contains a warning for Cabinet ministers that leaving the single market and switching to World Trade Organisation rules would cause GDP to fall anywhere between 5.4% and 9.5% within 15 years. The forecast is based on a study which was controversially commissioned by then chancellor George Osborne in the run up to the EU referendum. It says that assuming no ...
Britain's Brexit delusions The other Paul Taylor writes. (tags: brexit ukpolitics eu )
Two new planning applications have been received in Holyrood Ward as below: Lawful Development Certificate for the existing use of 414 Bury Old Road, Prestwich as a house in mutliple occupation (HMO). 414 Bury Old Road, Prestwich, Manchester, M25 1PZ Ref. No: 60643 Received: Thu 29 Sep 2016 Single storey side and rear extension 31 Milton Road, Prestwich, Manchester, M25 1PT Ref. No: 60622 Received: Mon 26 Sep 2016 Please do not hesitate to get in touch if you require further information or help with these. The details will be on the Council's website here.
Residents are invited to attend an Employment, Health and Skills showcase which takes place on Wednesday 19 October at Bury Town Hall. A huge range of companies, agencies and service providers will be there to talk to visitors as part of the latest 'Bury Means Business' initiative. [IMG: xu2bjbdwch3ql0e1vcf4.jpg] This event runs from 2pm to 7pm in the Elizabethan Suite, and there's no need to book; just turn up when you want, and people will be there to help you get the most out of the event. More than a dozen skills providers will be there, with information on training ...
I wrote a thing! More specifically, a review of the last play that I saw in New York. So, here is my review of Love, Love, Love by Mike Bartlett at the Roundabout Theatre Company's Off-Broadway Laura Pels Theatre: I'd like to start by stating that I enjoyed this. The writing was sharp and the acting was generally of a very high standard, particularly Amy Ryan as Sandra, who made me squirm with her character's awfulness. But a few things puzzled me - first, why weren't some of the references Americanized? I know that this is a very British play, ...
October 10, 1966, was a big day for my personal musical obsessions. The Monkees' first album was released, and on the same day the Beach Boys released possibly the finest single ever released, "Good Vibrations". I've written possibly too much ... Continue reading →
