I had thought that the Vanquis advert would be the thing that would irritate me the most during this chilled out festive week. Even if you lay aside the fact that it's advertising outrageously overpriced credit, the utter misogyny of the plot line should see its creators banished back to the 11th century where they belong. But no, the Tories had something to seriously annoy me. Their plan to make voters show ID at polling stations in the name of "securing the ballot" is a thinly disguised attempt to skew the voting in their favour. Let me explain. If you ...
Part 1 and Part 2 have already appeared. July One of the less remarked deaths of the year was that of the poet Geoffrey Hill, author of the wonderful Mercian Hymns. Aided by a passage from an Auberon Waugh novel. I argued that Boris Johnson had gone too far: He is no Little Englander: he was born in New York to a father who made his living by working in international organisations. Some sources claim he is still a US citizen. But, by gambling he could court the Leavers, whose views he must surely despise, lose the referendum and gain ...
Thu 29th
20:30
LDV's Top Twelve of 2016: #9 +++Breaking News THREE, no, actually FOUR Lib Dem by-election gains
Over the next few days, we will be publishing our twelve most read posts of 2016. Many thanks to the 533,000 people who have visited the site over the past tumultuous 12 months. At number 9 is the sort of post we have run a great deal this year. Late on a Thursday night, the local government by-election results start to come in. Quite often the headline changes several times as the gains flood in – and this one was just like that – a night of four spectacular gains. Good news from different parts of the country – three ...
It's not the most exciting gost sign, but it was looking fine in today's sunshine.
Regretting Brexit Over Christmas I spoke with an elderly couple who vote Leave. A months ago they were buoyed up: they had bought the stories from the Leave campaign, been worried about the number of immigrants when they saw a television programme from the place where they grew up (and haven't visited in a long time), and were excited by the optimistic stories in some of the pro-Brexit papers. Now things are different. They had thought we would be out of the EU as soon as the vote happened — like resigning from a club — and are waking up ...
Well, my resolution to shift to Dreamwidth has lasted less than a day. Several things changed my mind, of which the most important is that Livejournal seems to have started working again. But also Dreamwidth is really lacking in a number of the good features that LJ has built on in the last few years - there is no image hosting as far as I can see, the embedding of media from other sites is clunky and unrealiable, and there is no way to schedule a post in advance (for the last year or so I've been writing the coming ...
"Britain is the most centralised country in the Western world. Its political system is weighted overwhelmingly towards Westminster, with few institutional safeguards against the writ of Parliament, itself increasingly in thrall to the executive." Tom Crewe on the decline of local government. Lion & Unicorn considers the decline in Shami Chakrabarti's reputation in 2016. Donald Trump is shining a light on how much of the American political system is encoded in custom and how little is based in the law, says Annie Karni. The rules for electing the President of the United States are deeply flawed, argue Eric Maskin and ...
Over the next few days, we will be publishing our twelve most read posts of 2016. Many thanks to the 533,000 people who have visited the site over the past tumultuous 12 months. This one was a preview of that Question Time in July where Sal Brinton and Ian Hislop took on George Galloway a couple of weeks after the EU Referendum. It's still available on iPlayer. Our panel for this Thursday's #bbcqt – @TomTugendhat Charlie Falconer @SalBrinton @georgegalloway and Ian Hislop pic.twitter.com/6ASK8UC95f — BBC Question Time (@bbcquestiontime) July 6, 2016 Sal has been brilliant on Question Time every time ...
By sheer coincidence, my Christmas goodies included two collections of short stories by two different lesbian authors, and I think it makes a neat pair to review together. Not, mind you, that the two collections have anything much more in common with each other than two collections both by straight men would have; it's more that the two of them have approched the craft of writing in interestingly different ways. The Listener, by Tove Jansson Second paragraph of third story ("The Birthday Party"): "Couldn't you wait with that?" said Vera Häger. "They'll be here any moment. I think we should ...
Over the next few days, we will be publishing our twelve most read posts of 2016. Many thanks to the 533,000 people who have visited the site over the past tumultuous 12 months. At number 11, we have a post from July asking some questions of the newly formed More United. Kudos to Paddy for replying the next day. In a blaze on social media. the More United project, supported by Paddy Ashdown, launches this morning. It's certainly ambitious: MoreUnited.uk is a new movement setting out to change British politics. We're going to transform the way politics is funded, giving ...
Instagram is just lovely. I wish I remembered to use it more often. The default behaviour is to be nice to people and say how much you like their picture. It's much more difficult to work up the energy to be nasty to people on Instagram. Everyone should use it. (Except nasty people, of course.) Chances are if you're reading this that you've already added me on Instagram, but if not, please do; I am @nwbrux there as I am on Twitter. My most liked picture on Instagram this year was taken in a Brussels pub, London Calling on Place ...
Most retweeted, a massive 412, well ahead of the field - and original content too! - was a comment on the Hugo awards, picked up particularly by Vann R. Newkirk II (@fivefifths), The Grugq (@thegrugq), Cindy Gallop (@cindygallop) and Harper Reed (@harper) which put it on a cumulated 650,000 potential impressions, the second highest for the year, and also got the most replied: All 4 written fiction categories in 2016 #HugoAwards went to first-time winners, all 4 women, 3 WoC. — Nicholas Whyte (@nwbrux) August 21, 2016 Second most retweeted: my comment on a Guardian report on British foreign policy ...
The Liverpool Echo has the story on its web site – see link above Extremism? Does anyone really think that environmental campaigners are a danger to our society? Should we not be welcoming the challenge that such campaigners bring to our democracy? Is Orwell's 1984 being taken as a 'guide' to how our society should be organised? Goodness me, I must be viewed as being an 'extremist' then as I look upon myself as an environmental campaigner! I wonder whose radar I am on for protesting about building on Green Belt and high grade agricultural land in Sefton? Big ...
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38408686 The BBC has the article on its web site Michael Gove talks of a Civil War without muskets and alludes to the Parliamentarians winning the war. His grasp of history is slipping in that after a period of turmoil there was a restoration on the 26th May 1660, albeit changed for the better by improved parliamentary constitutional procedures restraining an hitherto unbridled/autocratic executive. As Jorge Augustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás the Philosopher better known as George Santayana said "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it". To which should be added: "But those ...
This is my first time posting to Dreamwidth! Hopefully it will also crosspost to Livejournal seamlessly. Facebook has increasingly become my most used channel of interaction online. Most of my content is not expecially original - I repost links to a lot of articles, and to my own Livejournal entries (now Dreamwidth), and sometimes I repost pictures that I have found on Twitter or Instagram. My most shared Facebook post of the year was a case in point - a fun picture of Bill and Hillary Clinton as students, that I probably saw on Twitter, saved to my phone and ...
Second paragraph of third story ("Home is the Hangman"): I sat in a chair turned sidewise from the table to face the door. A tool kit rested on the floor to my left. The helmet stood on the table, a lopsided basket of metal, quartz, porcelain, and glass. If I heard the click of a microswitch followed by a humming sound from within it, then a faint light would come on beneath the meshing near to its forward edge and begin to blink rapidly. If these things occurred, there was a very strong possibility that I was going to die. ...
Over the next few days, we will be publishing our twelve most read posts of 2016. Many thanks to the 533,000 people who have visited the site over the past tumultuous 12 months. We kick off with our 12th most popular post, a message from Tim Farron in the aftermath of the EU Referendum vote: Tim Farron has sent this message to members this evening: Liberal Democrats have always believed that Britain should be outward facing, collaborating with other countries to tackle global challenges. Our membership of the European Union allows us to do that. Britain has now voted to ...
In an interview with The Guardian, Jeremy Corbyn (shocked to see him interacting with the right-wing press) had a go at Theresa May for being like Henry VIII in her desire to keep the triggering of Article 50 from parliament, instead citing royal prerogative as the means to do this. In layman's terms, being a bit of a queen about it all. It made me think again about the Brexit debate. My biggest concerns, evaluating the last six months, has been the lack of vision for a post-Brexit combined with a slight authoritarian air to the whole thing. One of ...
Measures used in some Republican controlled US states such as Florida of introducing barriers to voting for ethnic minorities and poorer communities have been in place for some considerable time, with decisive effects in close elections. That, together with the disproportionate electoral college, undermines claims by the USA to be a model of good democratic practice. Now it seems that the Tories want to bring similar restrictions into play in the UK which, when combined with the boundary reviews, could see them entrenched in power for some time to come. As the Guardian reports, plans to trial a requirement for ...
[IMG: 12-days-5] On the fifth day of Christmas, ALDC and Election Workshop gave to me... £50 off orders of 5,000 or more letterheads. Direct mail should be a staple of every campaign. It allows for effective targeting and is read much more widely than a normal leaflet. And having a personalised letterhead is the perfect way to [...]
The Economist's main Christmas leader is something of a cri de coeur to liberals to feel not defeated but invigorated by events of 2016: For a certain kind of liberal, 2016 stands as a rebuke. If you believe, as The Economist does, in open economies and open societies, where the free exchange of goods, capital, people and ideas is encouraged and where universal freedoms are protected from state abuse by the rule of law, then this has been a year of setbacks. Not just over Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, but also the tragedy of Syria, abandoned to ...
I have called on Dundee City Council to make better use of its half-empty West Bell Street multi-storey car park which I feel could be revitalised if short-stay parking was permitted. This could also have the beneficial effect of helping ease the on-street parking capacity problems near the University of Dundee Campus and in West Port, South Tay Street, Nethergate and the east end of Perth Road. The council's Head of Roads and Transportation advised me :Bell Street multi storey car park is a very large car park with in excess of 900 spaces and currently demand does not require ...
Series 1 of Bird of Prey is fabulously done, with a high pace, plenty of twists and frequent uncertainty about what direction the story is headed in.
Europe's (lack of) migration problem There are not enough migrants. (tags: eu migration ) A Sportscaster's Secret Mission To Save Jewish Family At The 'Nazi' Olympics A historical vignette, but an important one. (tags: germany holocaust ) Chris Christie is isolated in New Jersey Ohdearwhatapitynevermind (tags: uspolitics ) Dutch woman with two British children told to leave UK after 24 years Kick out the furriners, eh? #Brexit (tags: brexit ukpolitics eu ) Ten Elections to Watch in 2017 All worth noting! (tags: elections ) On Mourning Ann Leckie reflects. (tags: death )
