Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the part-science, part-art skill of making your content appear high in search results. Do that and you get more web traffic (just as those businesses who did SEO before the internet existed got more business). There are many factors which go into getting your content performing well in search results. That's why there are whole books written about it and people who work full time doing just SEO. But there are also plenty of small and simple SEO tactics you can follow. One of the most common which is not followed is how to go ...
Released in 1955, Night of the Hunter was the only film Charles Laughton directed. It was not a commercial success, but today it seems utterly extraordinary. As the excellent discussion of it on The Evolution of Horror podcast brings out, it defies categorisation. A Southern Gothic fairy tale? Maybe, but that is only part of the film. The original novel by Davis Grubb is worth seeking out too. It contains much of the eerie glittering atmosphere that Laughton brought to the screen. You can see a famous scene from the film above and listen to the podcast below.
This just in from the Shropshire Star: Firefighters had to deal with a bonfire that spread out of control on the Stiperstones. The fire, at the Bog, near Minsterley, was reported at 7.30pm on Saturday. Crews from Church Stretton and Minsterley arrived to find the fire had spread to undergrowth and was about 50 metres by three metres wide. They brought the fire under control in just over an hour.Well done everybody. This story does give me a chance to use another of my many photographs of The Bog and to recall that the New Statesman once described my blog ...
Liverpool's Labour council wants to allow developers to build houses in the city's Calderstones Park. You can read about the campaign to stop it here. Local campaigners have been granted a judicial review of the council's decision, which will take place in November. They are now raising funds to pay the costs. When I first heard about these plans I was reminded of a passage from that great Liverpudlian Alexei Sayle's novel The Weeping Woman Hotel: Harriet recalled when she'd been a child in the early 1970s in Southport that a park had been a very different thing. There were ...
Tom Brake got some good coverage in the Independent today – the digital equivalent of a front page splash. He revealed that 357 members of staff at the Government's Brexit Department, equivalent to around half of the current staff detail, have left since July 2016 He observed that the new figures revealed the "deep instability right at the heart of the Conservative Government's failing Brexit operation." Figures uncovered by our intrepid Lib Dem Freedom of Information team reveal that as of June 2018 that 357 staff have left the department in the last two years which is pretty incredible given ...
I am not now and never have been a member or supporter of Britain's Labour Party , but I can't help thinking that the accusations of antisemitism in the Party are a well- orchestrated smear to distract them from their true purpose for most of the last six months. And a very successful one too. Back in March this year, conveniently before the May Councils Elections, it was brought to the media's notice that Jeremy Corbyn had, six years earlier in 2012, praised a street mural which, among others, disrespectfully portrayed some bankers who may have been meant to be ...
Current Byzantium, by Judith Herrin Vurt, by Jeff Noon The Guermantes Way, by Marcel Proust Last books finished Comet in Moominland, by Tove Jansson Huawei Stories: Explorers, ed. Tian Tao and Yin Zhifeng Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson Finn Family Moomintroll, by Tove Jansson Next books Ginger Star, by Leigh Brackett Dark Satanic Mills, by Marcus Sedgwick Missing Adventures, ed. Rebecca Levene
The Liberal Democrats have a great policy on assisted dying, detailed in the Medically Assisted Dying motion moved by Chris Davies MEP in 2012. Yet it is buried in the depths of Conference papers past on our party website (see page 20, Conference Report Brighton 2012) and in the last general election manifesto there was only a bland half-line to show we support extending end-of-life choices at all. As Davies' motion notes, good assisted dying models already exist in several European countries, and having control over one's own life is at the heart of liberalism. So why let this policy ...
Chichester Hall Works Update - September 2018 [IMG: Chichester Memorial Hall, Sandgate] Many thanks for your understanding during the recent works to the hall. We're pleased to say that things seem to be progressing well. The works to the left side of the hall are now complete and scaffolding removed. Those works included replacing and improving the guttering, rebuilding window sills, sealing around and repainting all upstairs windows and all upstairs woodwork and filling a multitude of cracks to the wall and render. We don't want to tempt fate, but after the heavy rain of August Bank Holiday weekend an ...
Though more heavily populated than Moheli, Anjouan is the most attractive of the three main islands that make up the Union of the Comoros. The capital, Mutsamudu, has a number of characterful buildings with screened first floor balconies and there is quite a long seafront road that is interesting to explore (if one can ignore [...]
Responding to the news that UK manufacturing growth has hit a two year low, Liberal Democrat Leader and former Business Secretary Vince Cable said: "The world economy is booming. It should be a good time for UK manufacturing, particularly with a weaker pound. The fact it isn't speaks volumes about the uncertainty being created by the Conservative Government's incompetent handling of Brexit. "Both the hard Brexiters - represented by Boris Johnson - and the EU have rejected the Prime Minister's discredited Chequers compromise. It is clear the only way out of this mess is for the people to have the ...
These last months' debate on Brexit have established one fact: a portion of the people who have voted leave have done it for the wrong reasons. This is a fact, not an interpretation or an opinion, and it is on facts that decisions must be taken. Many people of that portion realise that they did not understand Brexit or were simply misled. Many of these, we now know, would vote remain. In fact polls, such as YouGov's across a significant 10.000 people, show that currently Britain would vote remain 53 to 47, as expressed directly in these terms : 'Slightly ...
Mon 3rd
12:31
A look at the Boris Daily Telegraph article that provoked a harsh response from Number 10 (at last)
"Look, Boris Johnson resigned over Chequers. There are no new ideas in this article to respond to. What we need at this time is serious leadership with a serious plan and that's exactly what the country has with this prime minister and this Brexit plan." That is an official comment from Number 10 in relation to Boris Johnson's latest Telegraph article on (what else?) Brexit. It may not sound like a lot, but in context, this counts as a major slap down from Downing Street to Boris. There has been a massive reluctance on the part of the team around ...
The Brexit Blog: The calm before the storm? It's monday, it's time to get terrified about brexit again. Brexit putting the union at risk, new poll reveals (warning: autoplaying video) Scots and Norn Iron folks would vote to leave England and Wales to stew in their own shit if brexit actually happens. If you like what you see here (or even if you don't) please consider dropping me a tip: [IMG: Paypal Donate Button] [IMG: Buy Me an uncaffeinated beverage (because I'm allergic to coffee) at ko-fi.com] [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
Sun, 12:09: RT @natural20: This was exactly my reaction. There are many, many reasons to dislike May and she shouldn't be PM of the UK, but let the wom... Sun, 12:56: There is always another side of the story. Compassion doesn't cost you anything, and sometimes it can teach you som... https://t.co/dEsqtCCBy1 Sun, 14:21: Here for the Zomerfeest. https://t.co/KQ9EMW7cC0 (@ Parochiezaal Oud-heverlee) https://t.co/uQzNxRRznP https://t.co/lJiQbbqXDj Sun, 15:25: A Very English Scandal (drama), and The Jeremy Thorpe Scandal (documentary) https://t.co/W7yRnHCofl Sun, 16:05: RT @Popehat: I'm not saying for sure that Ann Coulter will die if you all ignore her. I'm just saying, ...
What can the Liberal Democrats offer Labour voters who don't like the way their great party is heading under Jeremy Corbyn? What, particularly, has our party to offer the working people of this country who have seen their standard of living drop under the Government's austerity programme and can't expect better if Brexit happens? As the party that supports neither unbridled capitalism nor full-blooded socialism, we allow markets to operate as freely as possible, but intervene to ensure they are well-regulated and competitive, and to offer individual citizens greater powers and rights. "We want to build a new economy that ...
Not managing that too much, so don't worry...Having told you all last week that I'm running the London Marathon next year, I decided I'd start a series of posts on how my training's going and what it involves. That should give people an idea of what you have to go through to prepare for a marathon and it might even provide some inspiration for others going through the same process. This training has a very clear goal — getting myself in a position where I can run 26.2 miles at the end of April. As someone who hadn't even managed to run ...
The adoption of Churchillian language by Boris Johnson in his bid to lead the Tory Party and become Prime Minister, would be laughable if it were not so ironic. Churchill may well have stepped up to the plate in his country's hour of need, but his career was almost as chequered as that of Boris, and of course Churchill was a good European, who had a strong commitment to human rights. Churchill did not create the crisis he led us out of. It is a shame that the same cannot be said for Boris. In this light, Boris Johnson's first ...
We hear a lot of talk about loyalty these days. And 'loyalty', the word, usually comes with positive connotations. That may well be appropriate when applied to, say, dogs' loyalty to their owners. But little is talked about the corrosive effect of excessive appeals to loyalty. Authoritarian leaders have long made loyalty to their cause [...] The post Loyalty can be a double-edged weapon of tyranny appeared first on Radix.
All the political parties seem to be having trouble with membership issues at present for different reasons. Both the Labour and Conservative Parties have problems with factionalism and racism which Liberal Democrats do not. We have little factionalism and are happily united behind Vince, but membership is not big enough and not active enough. However, membership nationally is way over twice what is what in 2012 and in Liverpool is at its highest since the Party was formed more than twenty-five years ago. Our problem is that not enough of the members are really active. In Liverpool, we have made ...
I'm not one to criticise Theresa May's dancing. You don't want to see me on a dance floor, if truth be told. And, regardless of her prospects in "Strictly Come Dancing", she was trying. And on that thought, welcome to another week, with the schools going back and, indeed, Parliament. The behaviour is likely to be rather more dignified in schools though, with the weekend papers featuring supposed coup preparations against both Corbyn and May. We Liberal Democrats have Vince's speech to look forward to at the end of the week, when he may, or may not, be talking about ...
Mon 3rd
07:00
From diet pills to driverless cars: why we need to debate the politics of science and technology
It's time to say goodbye to the Political Science blog at the Guardian - but we're moving to a new home Last week, the results of a successful trial of a new diet pill - lorcaserin - were published in the New England Journal of Medicine and immediately hailed by some as a "holy grail" in the fight against obesity. The study of 12,000 people in the US who were obese or overweight found that those who were given the pills lost an average of 4kg over 40 months. Was it too good to be true? The conventional coverage of ...
DUNDEE CITY COUNCIL - WEEKLY ROAD REPORT REPORT FOR WEST END WARD - WEEK COMMENCING MONDAY 3 SEPTEMBER 2018 Riverside Drive (at Riverside Approach) - temporary traffic lights and Riverside Approach closed southbound for one week for gas main renewal. Clayhills Drive - temporary traffic lights until Tuesday 4 September for one week for Scottish Water mains repair. West Park Road (Perth Road to St Johnswood Terrace) - closed northbound on Monday 3 and Tuesday 4 September for BT duct installation.
