"Being female in a culture that sexually objectifies the female body has effects. Girls and women are socialised into internalising the outside view of their bodies." Clinical psychologist Jay Watts on what men like Harvey Weinstein do to all women. Eduardo Porter explains why big cities are thriving and smaller ones are being left behind: "Opportunity in the information era has clustered in dense urban enclaves where high-tech businesses can tap into rich pools of skilled and creative people." Flo Clucas explains why we need more statues of women. "If more women walked alone, then we wouldn't be alone. Let's ...
My old Kindle keyboard died a couple of weeks ago. Having looked into repairs and replacing it with the same model on eBay and such, it's going to be less fuss to just buy a new one1. Looking into the current models, I hit upon a dilemma. I really, REALLY do not want a backlight, and I have been told that on both the paperwhite and the voyage you can turn the light down low, but never off completely. For me, the main attraction of an e-ink display was the lack of invasive lightiness buggering up my delicate little eyeballs. ...
Embed from Getty Images It may have been a slip of the tongue or it may have been an attempt to placate the headbangers who now dictate Conservative policy. Either way, calling European negotiators "the enemy" has made the claim that Hammond is the sole grown up in a cabinet of muppets and vegetables less convincing. And he should remember who his real enemy is. One of my favourite pieces of political wisdom goes something like this: A keen new Conservative MP was sitting in the house, staring intently at the Labour benches. "What're you doin', young Tompkins?" asked an ...
Back in the day when he was leader, he was referred to as Ming. Now he's in the Lords and newly appointed Defence Spokesperson, he's back to being Menzies. Anyway, our new Defence spokesperson had this to say about Donald Trump's latest destabilising shenanigans over Iran: This is yet another example of Trump's boneheaded belligerence. Not content with senseless responses to every provocation of Kim Jong Un, he is determinedly undermining a treaty which has proved to be an important influence on nuclear non-proliferation. Every time Trump opens his mouth, the world becomes a less safe place. Surely, by implication, ...
Charity shops like this are kept alive by armies of volunteers. Any social policy must empower and fund the volunteers who keep our society vibrant Over the past few days at the NACAS Conference I have been inspired by so ... Continue reading →
A simple enough blog post, this - does what it says on the tin, so to speak. As many Welsh Lib Dem members will now know from the ballot packs that have started arriving on doorsteps, I am standing for election to both the National Executive Committee and the Campaigns and Candidates Committee. I'm standing, quite simply, because I think I can make a positive contribution. The ballot packs include a brief 'manifesto', but I thought I'd take the opportunity of less formally expanding a little (OK, possibly quite a lot - I've never tried to claim 'brevity' as my ...
Second paragraph of third chapter:It was only when they stopped at a crossroad and placed shining white eggs on the ground, that I noticed they all wore white smocks. Their faces were veiled. The veils had holes through which I could barely see their eyes. After they had made their offering at the crossroad they bounded on through the streets, past scenes of rioting, and into the forest. They ran through pitch darkness, through silence and mists, and into another reality in which the gigantic Masquerade was riding a white horse. The horse had jagged teeth and its eyes were ...
I've been thinking about social media today, what with the twitter boycott and everything. And I can see Twitter dying, actually. Or maybe just limping on, haemorraging users, but never quite dying, the way LJ has. I mean, it's already got to the point where users bemoan how it used to be in the good old days... But Facebook. Facebook is never going to die, is it? It's like amazon; its critical mass is too huge, its gravity too crushing for the vast majority of internet users to escape. Periodically someone comes up with a better social networking idea, but ...
I've been getting more angry in my politics. In 2015, it was the post-coalition Tory savaging of the low paid, last year it was Vote Leave's deceits, this year the hypocrisy of Corbyn in supporting welfare cuts. But this week I was brought up short, when told I should stop looking for the speck in the eyes of my political opponents. That stung. That section of the Bible has influenced me enormously. As a teenager, I memorised most of it. I constantly think of the impossible standards it sets, try to follow them, and of course dismally fail. I think ...
This is the thirteenth of my posts based on a recent tour of the eastern half of the USA. I visited a number of sites relevant to African American history. To mark Black History Month, I am relating some of the things I saw, in the order I saw them. In Montgomery, Alabama I visited the Dexter Parsonage Museum (photo above) – which was the home of Dr Martin Luther King Jr during the Montgomery Bus Boycott (of which more in a latter post). Dr King lived here with his family from 1954 to 1960. It is preserved with the ...
The windows in our house have needed mending for ages. Today is the day the landlord finally sent the window man round. I am looking after the dogs in a room where he doesn't need to go, and working from my laptop (boss has me doing research into arcane bits of law today). But the window man is here. And I can't even go to the loo, because one of the windows he is mending is the bathroom window. And I really really need to pee. Typing out a blog post helps, right? [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
(Proper post later) I am, as you will know, about to put out a short mystery novel, The Basilisk Murders — it should be out early next week, and it's the first in a series of three featuring the same ... Continue reading →
It's hard to imagine these days, but when I first came to live in Brussels, in 1974, the Grand-Place was a gigantic car park, except on market days when stalls replaced the vehicles. That unsatisfactory situation ended years ago, but only a very limited area of the city centre was declared off-limits to cars. Returning [...]
A few days ago, I wrote Part 1 of this article, at the time intended to be the one and only part, but the response in comments and in person has, I feel, required a deeper look into the situation we face in the North of England post-GE2017, in particular the areas that I know well, and provide some of the more interesting case studies. Part 2 looks at the General Election of June, and Part 3 will look into how we move forward. Southport has always been interesting, staying orange in 2015 when everyone thought it would go blue, ...
Instagram photo "Will you tell her to stop trying to take pictures of me with the @topcollarbox and open it up?" The banning of Rose McGowan shows nothing's changed at Twitter RT @MartinBelam: Absolutely must-read from @ladyhaja exposing the lengths men will go to in order to try & silence women journalists Today is Women Boycott Twitter day in case you're wondering why I'm not on there. Automated tweets will still happen, but that's it. Trans teens are being killed while we debate nonexistent problems In which m'friend and colleague Zoe dispels some myths, most recently spread by Salman Rushdie ...
Thu, 12:08: RT @FriendsofEurope: How to counter the rise of hacking? At #StateofEU this week we debate democracy with @RachaelDesign @alexanderdecroo @... Thu, 12:19: RT @emilyrees_eu: Former PM Kevin Rudd on #Brexit: the UK "stuffed it up badly" #StateofEU https://t.co/RaL2tB4t82 Thu, 12:21: "I want to pour cold water on everything you have said. - @JonWorth #StateofEU Thu, 12:25: RT @FriendsofEurope: "Estonian e-voting is no panacea whatsoever" - @jonworth introduces an opposing view to the discussion on #digital #de... Thu, 12:29: RT @jonworth: That's interesting. @nwbrux was against comp voting b4 moving to 🇧🇪, now in favour. I was opposite - ...
1) What is the first song you remember from your childhood? Now I'm Here by Queen. 2) What is the first music you purchased with your own money? Poison by Alice Cooper 3) What's a piece of music that you know by heart? Crikey, there's hundreds. Everything from hymns to classical to Five Finger Death Punch. I'm singing pretty much constantly. 4) What's a song that makes you turn off the music right away? The Archers Theme tune 5) And why? Because if I give in to The Archers my radio 4 addiction will be total and complete. [IMG: comment ...
This is a truncated excerpt from my new book, "Apocalypse Delayed: Why the Left is Still in Trouble". If this interests you enough to want to read the rest, it is available here. One of the key features of the 2017 general election was what could be termed the "presidential aspect": the relevant party leaders playing a greater role symbolically in both of the main parties' campaigns ("Theresa May's Team" as opposed to the Conservatives) and subsequently, the vote for either party being seen as a vote for "Jeremy" or "Mrs May" (or explicitly not for them, as the case ...
Fri 13th
10:22
LibLink: Nick Clegg: Be warned, Brexiteers, I know better than most the consequences of breaking a p...
Writing for the Times Red Box, Nick Clegg has been warning Brexiteers about the dangers of not keeping promises you make to electorate. As he points out, he should know. The Brexiteers are heading for the same stormy waters, he says: When asked to reflect on the official Leave campaign's shopping list of promises to the voters during the referendum campaign, Duncan Smith, one of the most vocal campaigners for Brexit, dismissively replied: "We just made a series of promises that were possibilities." We know that leading lights of the Leave campaign had had enough of experts; now they appear ...
It has been a few weeks since I last delivered a Focus newsletter and I was feeling the withdrawal symptoms. Yesterday I got some significant relief when I went to Ryton and delivered 500 copies of our latest ward Focus. I now feel so much better!
Thankfully, tabloid newspapers have moved on from spinning untrue and absurd stories about the European Community. Instead they are promoting the even more absurd concept that we can leave the EU and emerge with our economy intact. Nevertheless, in the interests perhaps of jolting our memory about how hysterical things could get, the Mirror has provided a useful list of some of the more bizarre claims. It highlights in particular how anti-Europeans and little-Englanders used lies and misinformation well before the EU referendum in an effort to turn the British public against the community in defiance of their own interests: ...
Despite being a devout atheist Jew, there are still some Christian figures for whom I have a certain admiration. These are admittedly minor figures in the Christian tradition, people like Jesus, St Francis of Assisi and the Pope. I must apologise, though, to my readers of the Christian faith, that I find some of the [...] The post A simple yardstick for telling false prophets from real ones appeared first on Radix.
Yate and District Twinning Association (twinned with Bad Salzdetfurth in Germany) present a talk by Professor David Clarke of Bath University at Yate Library, Yate Shopping Centre. Entry to this fascinating talk is only £3.00 including light refreshments. The event is on Friday 3rd November, starting at 7.30 pm. For further information please email info@yatetwinning.co.uk or contact Chairman Martin Monk on 01454 853175.
Walls are generally built to keep people out. Trump's big beautiful wall, Hungary's anti-refugee wall, the Great Wall of China, Hadrian's Wall and every castle wall built before, during and after the medieval period. There are exceptions to this rule. The Berlin Wall was built to keep people in, as is every prison wall ever constructed. But in Africa a wall with a difference is literally sprouting. It has been dubbed "The Great Green Wall of Africa." It is neither holding people in or keeping them out. It is holding at bay the sands of the Sahara desert and helping ...
Fri 13th
08:04
Bluekip will want Bercow's head on a plate for stating the obvious in our parliamentary democracy
The Daily Telegraph has the story on its web site – see link above Whatever you may think of Bercow (or indeed the Telegraph) he is spot on here. Brexiters always conveniently seem to forget that we live in a parliamentary democracy and their half-baked plan to take us out of the EU at whatever cost is actually the politics of the mad house that will ruin the UK economically and substantially reduce our influence in the world. More power to the elbows of MP's who can see the cliff edge looming and want to stop the UK chucking ...
Some very promising Council by-election results overnight. First of all, there was a gain from the Conservatives in the Lib Dem stronghold of Three Rivers. Good to see the majority of one being boosted. It's a GAIN in Oxhey Hall & Hayling Ward, Three Rivers District Council. LD Keith Martin 672 Con 461 Labour 428 UKIP 35 Green 31 pic.twitter.com/hkd3IaH1ZN — ALDC (@ALDC) October 12, 2017 Congratulations to Keith Martin and the fabulous team in the area. In Sheffield there was a solid 21% increase in the vote, even though Labour held the seat. Beighton (Sheffield) result: LAB: 48.6% (+5.2) ...
Five Conservative defences and three Labour defences make up this week's tally of eight council by-elections. Those eight contests have six Liberal Democrat candidates. Always disappointing to miss out on some (especially given the importance of fighting every election), though at least in these two cases they are wards the party hasn't fought in well over a decade. Even in much better times, we weren't standing in them. First up, a Lib Dem gain in Three Rivers with a huge swing from the Conservatives in what had been a split Lib Dem/Conservative ward and a collapse in the Ukip vote: ...
