Two days ago we went on a walk from Sutton-in-Ashfield to Pleasley Colliery. Today, with the same guides, we carry on from Pleasley to Bolsover.
There is something very shabby about Boris Johnson's act. His refusal to follow precedent and grant John Bercow the customary peerage given to retiring Speakers is just one more example. So I am pleased to see that Bercow's successor Lindsay Hoyle has called for the precedent top be followed. The Evening Standard quotes Hoyle as saying: "My view is every speaker has been offered a peerage, so custom and practice says that's what's always happened. "It doesn't have to be taken but, personally, I think if that has always happened then we should continue with that. "I think it should ...
We are now ten days into the unfettered reign of Mr Johnson and his cohort and there are no surprises: the outlook is as gloomy as predicted. The programme announced in Parliament omits the promised protection of employment rights as we leave the EU, there is to be no compassionate treatment of refugee children and the promised increase to £10 per hour in the minimum wage will only happen "if economic circumstances permit." Parliamentary scrutiny of the negotiations with the EU re our future is to be severely restricted, the government is to reserve to itself "Henry VIII powers," the ...
The results of the GE have not been easy to digest. As one of the many target seat candidates who almost made it, the results hold a double dose of sadness. Sadness that in Guildford we came so close yet didn't succeed this time and also for our nation that it's ended up with a government so unrepresentative of the values that I still believe it holds at its core – fairness, openness, welcoming of diversity and a desire for integrity in its politicians. Locally and nationally we will review the election campaign in due course, but I want to ...
As the deafening noise of tumbleweed grows, here are the three LJ posts that got five or more comments this year. 2 June: a post about objets d'art in Utrecht and Leuven. 5 comments. 1 December: Dr Strangelove, the book it was based on and the book of the film. Also 5 comments. 18 February: The 54 whole numbers whose square root is less than or equal to their number of divisors. 8 comments. How the mighty have fallen. (Last year I tried posting an analysis of my LinkedIn posts as well, but it's really impossible to pull meaningful statistics.) ...
I've been fiddling around with the methodology of rating top tweets using the analytics that Twitter provides, and I've finally come up with a solution that satisfies me - rank them all, by all the rankings available; and add together the reciprocal of each ranking to get an overall score. That gives me a top 22 which I am goign to share with you. Tough, it's my blog. In 22nd place, election day commentary and the one and only tweet of the year that got an app opened (whatever that means): Vote for Froglet https://t.co/P285V8uJGy It's time to revisit the ...
I had a couple of Facebook posts that went viral this year. The best performing was one where I didn't actually write the material myself, but shared it from a screenshot, and it got picked up by the two linguistic communities concerned, etting 99 shares. This Brexit commentary was my own material, and got 21 shares. My five Facebook posts that got the most comments, in ascending order, were this Brexit commentary (actually copied from an FT journalist's tweet, with attribution): ...which was beaten by this Brexit commentary: ...which was beaten by this very brief Brexit commentary: ...which was beaten ...
It's not all that easy to measure Instagram impact (and they are going to make it more difficult). These two videos both got between 300 and 400 views. https://instagram.com/p/B5NEMf1gTld https://instagram.com/p/B0lzMlvAUks My top five Instagram photo posts were: https://instagram.com/p/ByvCULPI-AH (A visit to the Vatican) https://instagram.com/p/B3PQPPTokDU (A visit to Dordrecht) https://instagram.com/p/B2ZWB-PILhW (The two younger kids at a comics festival in Brussels) https://instagram.com/p/By5SQSPIlCh (B's birthday) https://instagram.com/p/Bugxt_ngZU0 (Doctor Who content will seriously increase your footprint!)
My biggest media appearances were the BBC election broadcasts for the three elections in Northern Ireland, with my long-term sparring partner Mark Devenport. Not much of it is online, but I am in 2:49-3:35 here: Some viewers' responses were a little, er, unusual... Kraftwerk, the Magherafelt years. pic.twitter.com/mBlGFilsbp — MLAs And The Like (@MLAsAndTheLike) May 27, 2019 The most important piece that I wrote on Northern Ireland was for the Irish Times, published 10 July, setting out the three preconditions as I see them for a referendum on unifying Ireland to be successful. (Click to embiggen) Apart from that, on ...
It's easy, after an electoral setback such as that we suffered last week, to look for easy answers and quick solutions. The truth is, there are none. We need a proper analysis of what the raw data tells us and, yes, we need some soul searching about the prospectus we put to the people and the personnel (behind the scenes and in front of the cameras) that came up with and sold-or failed to sell-the message. But on one thing, I argue, we can be clear. The Centre must hold firm. As I prepare to enter my fourth decade (I ...
Futures torn away while the planet burns or sinks; Choking on excess ...
The Independent reports that senior Conservative MPs have dismissed concerns over US food practices such as chlorinating chicken and allowing a certain amount of fly eggs in drinks as "tired old lefty rhetoric" as the government looks to tear away from the hygiene standards expected by the EU to broker a trade deal across the Atlantic. They say that former trade secretary Liam Fox and former party leader Iain Duncan Smith took turns to jibe at Labour's Jeremy Corbyn after he decried US government regulations on acceptable levels of maggots in orange juice: The US food and drug administration (FDA) ...
With things calming down approaching what in 1980s UK terms used to be called Chrimbo in North Bury (Labour seat turned Tory), I thought I'd share some US-UK cheer in the spirit of Trump, the Brexit salvationist. Your author teaches in a Title 1 school in Hinesville, Georgia, USA. Title 1 offers extra Federal Funding for school's students disproportionately in poverty. Our school, because Hinesville is an Army base, gets generous federal funding. Statewide 2015-16, Georgia paid 46% of education spending. The Georgia Department of Education (GaDoe) ranks us on a 100-point scale. We are a 75.3 CCRPI (College and ...
Sat, 12:56: Paul McGann Doctor Who series would have brought back old Doctors https://t.co/TDZnhVyVS1 Alternate Who. Sat, 20:01: My week on Twitter 🎉: 147 Mentions, 53.2K Mention Reach, 455 Likes, 155 Retweets, 574K Retweet Reach. See yours wit... https://t.co/UGWxD7ew0K Sat, 22:10: It's Gauda Prime Day - so here is my write-up of the fourth and final series of Blake's 7 https://t.co/kho21T5KZS Sun, 00:15: RT @theejimsteel: Helpful list of science fiction set in 2020. https://t.co/UoEDW19UK3 Sun, 00:21: RT @davidwhittam: I've just realised *that* moment in Carry On Camping was basically the 1969 equivalent of *that* moment in Basic Instinct. Sun, 08:46: ...
Responding to news that the government has now approved the sale of UK defence and aerospace company Cobham to a US private equity firm, Ed Davey MP, Acting Leader of the Liberal Democrats, said:"It is deeply concerning that the Conservative government is allowing this sale to go ahead, despite previously cited concerns that it could undermine our national security. While Andrea Leadsom claims these concerns have been 'mitigated', we have yet to see evidence of this. "If Boris Johnson's government are happy to sell off a leading UK defence and aerospace company to Trump's America, how can we expect his ...
I was in Sainsbury's this time last year when Gaudete came on. I groaned. Then I realised:I really like it;It was then 45 years since it had been in the charts;A lot of the people around me weren't even born then so it will be a novelty to some readers.Wikipedia explains that Gaudete dates from the 16th century and is doubly rare in being a UK hit single (it reached no. 14 at Christmas 1973, trailing behind Slade and Wizzard) that was a capella and sung in Latin.
All are welcome at the Logie & St John's (Cross) Church Family Friendly Christmas Eve Service!
Lord Bonkers' Well-Behaved Orphans were originally a bit of a joke against myself. Because of an unhappy period in my own childhood, I used to be overfond of Oliver Twist and other tales of wronged children. I have largely cured myself of that taste, but still watched Responsible Child this week. There is no doubt where the play's sympathies lay, but as Jasper Rees said in the Telegraph: there was no one making the case for trying children in adult courts. Perhaps that's because there isn't a good one to make.Another Telegraph article, this one behind its paywall, reveals: Lord ...
