Today was the day for Arts Fresco, now billed as "the biggest street arts festival in the Midlands". The rain defied the forecast by largely holding off and it is clear that the day has now become a major event for local food and drink producers too. As its website says: Every year thousands of people flock to Market Harborough to wander the streets, mingling with roaming dinosaurs, mad chefs and wheelie bins that drive themselves. Performers from all over Europe take part, from big names in the world of street theatre to unknown artists looking to build their careers, ...
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 488th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere ... Featuring the five most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (3-9 September, 2017), together with a hand-picked seven you might otherwise have missed. Don't forget: you can sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox — just click here — ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging. As ever, let's start with the most popular post, and work our way down: 1. Lib Dems gain council seat in Cambridgeshire ...
There is a story on the BBC News site that begins: The first word of their values statement is "open". And they have a new UK leader to sell to the voters.So why did the Welsh Liberal Democrats decide to hold their autumn conference in private?The two-day gathering attended by the party's new UK leader Sir Vince Cable was even advertised as "public" on their Facebook page but public, press and potential new members were clearly not welcome.Ouch. Of course there are times when even Liberals want some privacy for their discussions, but I note that the BBC quotes the ...
We settled our agreement, to release the ties of energy that had bound us in the crowd and looked around our littoral for purpose; We were castaways – at home along the riverside, watching for the tide to rise and ease a passage through the shallow channels of our lives – who'd reached a low landscape, north-lit [...]
Current Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (a chapter a month) Synners, by Pat Cadigan Thinking Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman Life During Wartime, ed. Paul Cornell Last books finished How The Doctor Changed My Life, ed. Simon Guerrier Next books The Famished Road, by Ben Okri The Dancers at the End of Time, by Michael Moorcock Alexander the Corrector: The Tormented Genius Whose Cruden's Concordance Unwrote the Bible, by Julia Keay
Fleet Street in London is the traditional home of Britain's newspaper industry, and as such it was the place to go if one wanted to meet up with a journalist. More specifically, one would visit one of a number of ... Continue reading →
It was Open Monument Day today in Flanders, and I decided to go for a guided walk along the river Dijle through the middle of historic Leuven. About a dozen of us gathered at the Sint Jan de Doperkerk (Church of St John the Baptist) to be greeted by the bubbly and enthusiastic Bo, a medieval history graduate who has set up a tour company to explore the city. The historical map of Leuven is generally presented as two concentric circles, the outer walls (now the ring road) and the inner walls (still visible in eg the St-Donatuspark). But apparently ...
Sun 10th
13:17
LibLink: Willie Rennie: Lib Dems put forward a vision of Scotland at the heart of both unions
The Scottish Liberal Democrats are the place to be if you want to stay in the UK and the EU, says Willie Rennie. In a wide-ranging article for Holyrood magazine, he sets out what we would do to tackle the crisis in Scotland's public services. Health, education and the Police are all in a mess and we have the ideas to fix them. A strong education system is the key to a strong economy in the long term. It is critical that we educate future generations so that they have all the skills they need to succeed. Failing at education ...
Liverpool must do more about the problems facing good private hire and hackney carriage drivers as they struggle to do business in our City Centre Readers of my blog and the Liverpool Echo will be aware that on two occasions ... Continue reading →
In recent years, the hottest place to be on the Saturday night of Conference is the Lib Dem Disco. This year it's back for the fourth time. Sparkly wristbands are ready. Get yours at https://t.co/BBw6yhXRvQ pic.twitter.com/6l4hq0ilkU — LibDemDisco (@LibDemDisco) September 3, 2017 This year, the organisers are being uncharacteristically cagey about their line-up, tantalising us by drip-feeding out the contestants who will be competing for the prized accolade of Best DJ. The title has been won for the last two years in fantastic style by Jo Swinson. The last time I spoke to her about it she was adamant she ...
Walter Becker of Steely Dan died last Sunday. This isn't the bands best record, but it is the one I remember most from the British charts. It was Christmas 1976 and a friend had bought me How to Beat Bobby Fischer - a collection of all the competitive games the American world champion had lost. I suppose the central idea was a gimmick, but it turned out be that most valuable of things for the improving player: a collection of well-annotated grandmaster games. The great Russian player Peter Svidler says it was the book that made him fall in love ...
miss_s_b | The Blood is the Life for 09-09-2017 I posted The Blood is the Life for 09-09-2017 to my dreamwidth blog [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
Sat, 12:56: MP stopped at border over daughter's name urges passport reform https://t.co/NlCxP0nm2o Home Office strikes again. Sat, 16:05: Even Racists Got the Blues https://t.co/MHFcNubNNb Technical but hilarious. (Irish language.) Sat, 17:28: RT @neilhimself: Friend discussing upcoming wedding: "We could have a Disco in a tent." Me: "Now is the winter of our disco in a tent..."... Sat, 18:10: William Cecil, Ireland and the Tudor State, by Christopher Maginn https://t.co/Mmev0fAe9e Sat, 20:48: Class, the Doctor Who�Spinoff Barely Anyone Watched, Is Dead https://t.co/Ry3TV8xGhc Sad, not surprising. Sun, 08:00: RT @AdamRutherford: Pah. Amazon won't let me post this review of An Wilson's ...
There's a lot of talk at the moment about how artificial intelligence may develop. Will we end up in a world where not only have robots taken their jobs but where their artificial intelligence has become dominant, unintelligible to human minds and powering robots to have control over us? To answer that, let me take you a little into the very plausible future. It's one where many households have domestic robots. Those robots don't understand exactly how to behave or follow human orders from day one but require some training up. The voice recognition takes time to learn orders just ...
Sun 10th
10:23LibLink: Vince Cable The Tory fallacy that immigrants are taking British jobs and driving down wages
It is good that people like Andrew Adonis help to build the case for a referendum on the Brexit deal. However it is profoundly depressing when both he and Tony Blair feed the "immigration is bad" narrative. Thank goodness somebody is out there saying that immigration is actually a good thing and that this narrative that these foreigners are coming over here and taking our jobs and driving down wages. Step forward one Vincent Cable, writing in the Guardian: At the heart of the politics of immigration is the belief, repeated by Theresa May as a fact, that immigrants, especially ...
After my five year old daughter insisted on seeing "The Emoji Movie" and I thus resigned myself to having to watch it, I went through a phase right before viewing in which I was perversely looking forward to it. Reading the reviews, it seemed like the film was one of the worst ever made in the history of the medium – as an admirer of bad movies, I thought here was one I had to see for myself. Having now watched it, I can say "The Emoji Movie" is not the worst film of all time. Hell, it's not even ...
Yesterday, tens of thousands of us marched through central London, from Hyde Park Corner to Parliament Square, chanting the slogan "Exit Brexit!". I don't think the turnout was quite as big as last March, but the atmosphere was just as festive, under the warm, late summer sun, and there was a sea of flags — [...]
I never cease to be amused when the referendum slogans and arguments of the Brexiteers come back to bite them, though that feeling is always moderated by thought of the damage the leave campaign are doing to the UK and its economy as a result of their lies, their prejudices and, in some cases, the racism inherent in their campaign. We have seen that claim that the NHS will receive an extra £350m a week is the lie we always claimed it to be, that we are all worse off, even before we leave, due to the weakness of the ...
More data from the EPOP 2017 conference, this time showing what proportion of each party's membership claimed to have delivered leaflets during the 2017 general election campaign.
I love listening to Test Match Special on the radio and in the days when test match cricket was available live on free-to-view TV I would turn off the sound on the TV and replace it with the Test Match Special commentary. I guess this was something many cricket lovers did and maybe those who still watch live test match cricket via pay-to-view channels still do it now. This year the visiting teams were South Africa and the West Indies and a great summer of Test cricket it has proved to be. But I have one lingering disappointment/question that I ...
The next West End Police Surgery takes place at Blackness Library tomorrow - Monday - details below :
Back in August, I waxed lyrcially about the history which is reflected regularly in the BBC programme "Who do you think you are?". I feel compelled to return to the subject, given the sheer awesomeness of the last episode in the current run of this BBC series. Available on BBC iPlayer for the next 27 ... Continue reading A belter of a TV programme on the family history of Noel Clarke
