[IMG: Nothing like a whiff of Cold War Part 2 to fan the hawk instincts] "Is the end of the Cold War, therefore, only the end of Part 1, just as Star Wars, the movie, promises?" said Professor Gwyn Prins in his book, 'The Heart of War: On Power, Conflict... The post Nothing like a whiff of Cold War Part 2 to fan the hawk instincts appeared first on FeministMama @ambitiousmamas.
After I posted a distant view of a tidily restored West Bay station that I took in 1997, I remembered that this was not the first time I had been there. I first visited West Bay in 1982 and remember photographing the old station when it looked very different. Had I kept the photo? I had. Disused Stations confirms that this is West Bay and explains the scene. In the summer of 1982 the old station building served as the office for a boatyard.
For more than a year we've been investigating Cambridge Analytica and its links to the Brexit Leave campaign in the UK and Team Trump in the US presidential electionsays Carole Cadwalladr, presumably in tomorrow's Observer. Her article is an interview with Christopher Wylie, and he turns out to have previously offered his services to the Liberal Democrats: "I wanted to know why the Lib Dems sucked at winning elections when they used to run the country up to the end of the 19th century," Wylie explains. "And I began looking at consumer and demographic data to see what united Lib ...
Snow, flood, fire. They are the obvious emergencies that have and could occur again in Ludlow. There is the unexpected too. A coach or rail crash. A bridge demolished. There are also the things we tend not to think about. A flu pandemic. A shutdown of the countryside due to disease in livestock. Disruption of food supply chains. Loss of power. The whole point of emergency planning, contingency planning, call it what you will, is that we must be prepared for routine events and exceptional events. That means local preparation as well as working alongside the blue light services and ...
Buzzfeed has done an analysis of our prospects in this May's elections. They talked to former LDV co-editor Mark Pack and the party's Deputy Leader Jo Swinson. The Party is going after EU Nationals' votes and has invested in a series of social media adverts targeted at various nationalities. Swinson said EU nationals would not be convinced by Labour's stance. "They are pretty furious at the current government and also not too impressed with Labour's position because Labour are really letting the government off the hook when it comes to Brexit," she said. "In terms of the front benches and ...
Responding to allegations in the New York Times that Cambridge Analytica 'harvested' 50 million Facebook profiles in a potentially huge data breach, Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesperson Ed Davey said: "If these allegations against Cambridge Analytica are correct then it is a shocking betrayal of people's personal data." "If this data was then actively exploited for political gain it is both underhand and immoral. This whistleblower has made serious allegations of what would be dodgy practices. They must now be investigated." "My fear is this could be the tip of the iceberg and all campaign work linked to Cambridge Analytica ...
Sat 17th
17:16
Vince calls on Government to delay changes to mortgage interest payment for people on benefits
In less than 3 weeks' time, the Government stops paying mortgage interest to for those on certain benefits. Some bright spark at the Department of Work and Pensions came up with a way to save the Government money – by getting a private company, Serco, to operate a loan scheme. Instead of having payments covered by the state, they will be covered by the homeowner taking out a private loan with Serco in return for a charge on the property. That means that they will have to pay back an unspecified sum of money if they eventually sell their house. ...
This is an update to a post I made in 2011. Lá 'le Pádraig shona daoibh! I've been making occasional notes about the relationship between Doctor Who and Ireland, but this seems a good enough day to pull it all together. TV Who No part of televised Who is set in Ireland. However Tom Baker visited Derry and Belfast, in character as the Fourth Doctor, back in 1978: There are a number of Irish characters in TV canon, all male as far as I know: The Underwater Menace (1967): Sean, a shipwrecked Irish sailor, played in excruciating stereotype by P.G. ...
The inevitable is happening. Just over two weeks after my first chemo cycle and I've started to lose my hair. Nicely in time for the 'mini beast from the east', which is raging outside the study window as I write. I'm pleased to report that my eyebrows are still holding their own, but the thatch on top is now falling ... The post Hair today, gone tomorrow (probably) appeared first on ten pence piece.
The Arthur C. Clarke Award have released their full submission list, and as usual I have run it through the Goodreads and LibaryThing catalogues, checking the number of owners on each system and the average rating. The list below is raked by geometric average of the number of owners on the two systems. I have bolded the top quartile of each column (which for both ratings columns neatly matches those books which got on averge 4 or more points out of 5). What jumps out at me is that three books are in the top quarter of all four metrics ...
Sat 17th
14:20
"They're definitely doing better than we've seen for a while": senior Conservatives fear Lib Dem pro...
Over in BuzzFeed the Liberal Democrat prospects for the May local elections get a study: Senior Tories in Westminster are nervous about the Lib Dems' chances. "They're definitely doing better than we've seen for a while," one cabinet minister told BuzzFeed News recently. They put this down not only to their stance on Brexit but to their new position as the "none-of-the-above party". The local elections will be the first big test for the party's leader, Vince Cable, the 74-year-old who took over in July last year after his predecessor Tim Farron failed to turn anti-Brexit sentiment into a vote ...
Totnes Liberal Democrats have selected Caroline Voaden as their new Prospective Parliamentary Candidate (PPC). Caroline Voaden contested South West Devon in the 2017 general election an is an ex-Reuters journalist who moved to the constituency in 2007. She was national chair of the WAY Foundation and has run her own business, Social Fabric, in Totnes. She now works as marketing coordinator for a local business. Of her selection she says: I'm absolutely thrilled to be selected to stand in my home constituency - I've lived here for 10 years, I've raised my family and run a business here. I am ...
Sat 17th
11:36Government supports council candidates being able to withhold their address from the ballot paper
For a while now general election candidates have been able to avoid having their home address published at election time. Instead of having their full address on the ballot paper, they can opt instead to have a note of whether they do or do not live in the constituency appear. The reason for introducing this change was to help protect people against harassment or worse, both to cut the risks of it happening and also to encourage more people to stand by so doing. Following the Committee for Standards in Public Life (CSPL)'s review of intimidation in public life, the ...
I've just completed my Conference feedback survey with more than my usual irritation that it didn't give me the chance to give the feedback I wanted. If you attended Conference, you will have a link to the survey in your email. I had a marvellous time in Southport. I had an amazing b and b, The Leicester, which was very cheap but spotless, comfortable, well decorated and there was even a doggie for me to pet. It was the first time that I'd been there in 20 years and I regretted not having the time to see more of the ...
Fri, 12:40: RT @faisalislam: Exclusive: Secret Brexit agreements cover No Deal "open border" plan to not enforce customs checks at UK border Fri, 12:56: The Intellectual We Deserve https://t.co/sbdjBAhTZf This is probably the only thing you need to read about Jordan Peterson. Fri, 16:05: Can Theresa May's customs plan resolve Brexit dilemma? https://t.co/mAfowPIjCv Probably not. Fri, 18:26: From Wildthyme with Love, by Paul Magrs https://t.co/KIgKK6zU3e Fri, 18:47: Celebrating St Patrick's Day. (@ Henry Le Boeuf Hall - @bozarbrussels in Brussels, Belgium, Brussels) https://t.co/PRD0zYqobo Fri, 20:48: RT @MeghanMcCain: My father doesn't need torture explained to him. https://t.co/ajrtr7Vn5A Sat, 10:45: Brexit: Theresa ...
Password Rules Are Bullshit I am very much feeling this today. miss_s_b | This week's Friday Five I posted This week's Friday Five to my dreamwidth blog I Watched All 629 Episodes of The Simpsons in a Month. Here's What I Learned. The Simpsons is full of worrying anti-intellectualism, and this long read has many examples of it. "For staying in his dead end, Homer is lavishly rewarded: with love, with friendship, with foreign travel. For trying to escape from hers, Lisa is punished again and again." When You Scramble Names, It's Because of Love There are fewer people with ...
Tom Scott: "I'd never heard of moiré effect beacons until I got an email asking me about them. It seemed like a really clever idea - but it was really hard to research. Or at least it was, until I stumbled upon one magic phrase that revealed its history."
It's good to see Wearside Lib Dems call out Sunderland Council for an incredibly ill-judged anti-alcohol campaign poster. @SunderlandUK @BalanceNE what were you thinking with this stupidly misogynist campaign? The undercurrent of victim-blaming is shocking. If a woman is "pressurized" into having sex it is not her fault nor down to alcohol. Why blame girls for the actions of people who abuse them? pic.twitter.com/BsLMvDIPKB — Wearside Lib Dems (@WearsideLibDem) March 16, 2018 * Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
The BBC report that Wales' most senior civil servant has refused to publish a redacted version of a report into whether the sacking of Carl Sargeant was leaked before a cabinet reshuffle. She is concerned that to do so would have implications for future investigations, specifically it would prevent future witnesses from being totally candid if they thought their evidence were to be made public. On the face of it that is a valid decision. I would expect nothing less from the Welsh Government's top bureaucrat. But politically it is a disastrous for the First Minister as it leaves the ...
The government's Clean Bus Technology Fund has awarded major grant funding to South Glos Council which will be used to cut emissions and improve air quality. The money will be used to retrofit emissions reductions technology on the 78/79 service buses that run from Thornbury to Bristol, via Filton and Cribbs Causeway, the X46 which runs from Yate to Bristol, via Winterbourne, and the 47 which runs from Chipping Sodbury to Bristol via Downend. All 81 buses will be upgraded from Euro IV/V standard to Euro VI, which is the best environmental standard available and will cut the release of ...
A 507/508 EMU Merseyrail unit at Crescent Road level crossing – Birkdale, Southport. www.merseyrail.org/seasonal/new-fleet-videos.aspx The videos are available on the Merseyrail web site – see link above Yes of course, these video clips can be seen as one side of a propaganda war between Merseyrail and the RMT, although as I have said many times before Merseyrail are just the front for the dispute on the employers side as the real creators of the dispute are in fact Merseytravel, the public transport body for the Liverpool City Region. I continue to scratch my head about how Merseyrail keep pretending the ...
Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) and NHS Greater Manchester have outlined their ambition to reduce the number of smokers in our city by a third in 2019. They are looking to provide additional stop smoking support, potentially create more smoke free spaces, crack down on illegal tobacco, license tobacco retailers; there is even talk of a potential levy on tobacco companies and more. They are asking the communities of Bury what they think about this, what might be important to them and if/how they think this ambition should be approached in their area. "We need to hear from as many ...
DUNDEE CITY COUNCIL - WEEKLY ROAD REPORT REPORT FOR WEST END WARD - SATURDAY 17 AND SUNDAY 18 MARCH 2018 Benvie Road/Mitchell Street junction - closed from Saturday 17 March for 5 days for demolition works. Mitchell Street closed Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 March only. Nethergate/South Tay Street (West Marketgait to South Tay Street including South Tay Street junction) - closed from Saturday 17 March for up to 5 days for carriageway repairs. REPORT FOR WEEK COMMENCING MONDAY 19 MARCH 2018 Riverside Drive/South Union Street at Dundee Railway Station - off-peak (9.30am - 3.30pm) east/northbound nearside lane closure for ...
