It appears that Rutland's alternative medicine sector is robustly competitive. There really was a Wise Woman of Wing and I for one am not going to try telling the Elves of Rockingham Forest they don't exist. Tuesday Lunch with the High King of the Elves of Rockingham Forest, who tells me of their plans to help during the new lockdown: "We like to think of ourselves as putting the 'elf' into 'welfare'." In my experience these fellows seldom do anything without there being a profit in it for them, but I keep my own counsel as it wise not to ...
Two more short comics from the Neil Gaiman Humble Bundle that I invested in some years back. Neil Dreams is in fact a compilation of two issues of Rick Veitch's series Rare Bit Fiends, in which he asked well known comics creators to retell their dreams. Both are pretty brief. The second frames of the third pages of each are as follows: It's as interesting as most cases of people telling you about their dreams, which is to say, not very. The other short, An Honest Answer and Other Stories, brings together three very brief meditations on the creative process, ...
There are several new Government Support Grants available for businesses, which have been affected by, or experienced hardship due to local and national Covid restrictions. The details of these grants are listed on the Council's website as linked here To make the application process as simple as possible for businesses, the Council have created a single application form which covers all support grants. Businesses should first review the different Grant criteria on their website to check for eligibility before completing the form. All applications will then be assessed to determine whether they meet any of the Grants criterion. Where a ...
This worrying effort from the Shropshire Star wins our Headline of the Day Award. The judges also appreciated the precision of the story's first paragraph: Residents in Telford are now outnumbered by rats as lockdown has boosted their population to 358,616, according to a pest control company.
This Friday, Christmas in Ireland will officially begin. The institution that is The Late Late Toy Show will be aired live on RTE One and internationally on the RTE Player. It is the job of the Irish emigrant to explain to her non-Irish friends exactly what the appeal of The Toy Show is. Why do grown adults drop everything to get the goodies in, get settled in for the evening and pretend that they are children again? Why does Ireland stop for this one night, and in this Covid world we currently live in, why is the Irish Government desperately ...
Tue 24th
14:30
LibLink: Norman Lamb - Government's neglect of social care and mental health has been exacerbated by...
The Guardian has a full interview with, and feature on, Sir Norman Lamb, who has recently joined a new cross-party group of former health ministers demanding more funding for care workers. In it, Norman calls for a resilience taskforce to reduce the psychological fallout of the pandemic: This current crisis simply strengthens the case for confronting it [the social care funding gap]. But the combination of failing to confront it and the state of public finances makes me very worried ... then so many more people across our country will be failed by the system... ...I'm relieved that there is ...
The Mangrove restaurant in All Saints Road, London W11, was a Notting Hill institution for two decades from 1968, serving Caribbean curries and acting as a meeting place for the local West Indian community, white radicals, artists and musicians. Its Trinidadian proprietor, Frank Crichlow, tried to keep the place drug-free, but that didn't stop the [...]
I was only seven years old when the Second World War ended in 1945 so my memories are probably more attuned to the immediate post-war years than the war years themselves. Nevertheless I think they make a valuable comparison to what so many of our population feel is their entitlement today. I can recall no great family gatherings on Christmas Day. My father had four brothers and two sisters, my mother one brother, all living within easy reach. All but the two sisters had families. However our Christmas Day was very much a matter of the nuclear family, though that ...
Tue 24th
12:47"How many children will die?" is the question we should be asking on international aid.
Just half a decade after the Coalition enshrined 0.7% of GDP spending to go to international aid into law, the Conservative government looks set to rip it out this week. Given Johnson's penchant for populism and his Chancellor's desire to get public spending back to pre-Covid levels, it is not surprising to see international aid attacked so passionately and so disproportionately. 'Foreign aid' has long been the whipping body of the right-wing press, Nigel Farage, and the Tax-Payers Alliance. Much like the European Union and freedom of movement, international aid has gone largely undefended. Whilst we see obvious merit in ...
First thing this morning I got a message from a friend of mine to the effect that the relatively new memorial bench placed atop Clieves Hill in Aughton as a tribute to Melling cyclist and Parish Councillor Allison Doyle was in a sorry state. Alison was killed in an accident on Bold Lane in Aughton a couple of years ago and the bench was errected in her memory by friends and family. I've blogged about this previously of course. So off I went on my daily bike ride and when I got to Clieves Hill this is what I found:- ...
The Oban Times reports on the selection of Denis Rixon, who in 2018 took a seat from the SNP in a council by-election.
Mon, 12:07: RT @bbcdoctorwho: It couldn't be #DoctorWhoDay without the Queen of Evil having a say... a very happy birthday to @MichelleGomez ! 🎂 https:... Mon, 12:07: RT @GilbreathDustin: Georgia's gone from a top performer in spring to the highest per capita COVID infection rate in the world this week:... Mon, 12:56: Dutch reporter gatecrashes EU defense ministers' videoconference https://t.co/JLGTJGi1JW Hilarious footage. Mon, 14:38: Webinar on European space policy on 2 December 1430-1545 CET organised by @APCOBXLInsider @apcoworldwide - feel free to sign up! https://t.co/cCeZcpvS7N https://t.co/5vkddzVad1 Mon, 15:44: The Separation by Christopher Priest Excellent stuff, dopplegangers, altered timelines and the ...
With the certification of Michigan's 16 electoral votes yesterday, Donald Trump finally bowed to the inevitable and signalled his administration to co-operate with the incoming transitional team of Joe Biden. No concession though, you'll note. John T Bennett, Washington Bureau chief of the Independent writes today: For all the worries among Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans about a Constitutional crisis or even a coup d'etat, those who have watched this president so closely knew it would be this way. In the end, the president who roared and accused and insulted for four years like a lion seemingly at war with every ...
At long last Trump has agreed to let the transition go ahead and Biden will be able to access Federal funds to put in place a more sensible and stable government in the United States. That has not, however, prevented his supporters and him continuing to hawk around their conspiracy stories as to how the election was stolen from him. For those interested in how these stories emerged and the role of social media in spreading them, then I highly recommend following the Twitter account of Marianna Spring, who is the BBC's specialist reporter covering disinformation and social media. Having ...
This week it looks likely that the Chancellor will announce a freeze on public sector pay and cuts to the foreign aid budget. There are also murmurings of more harsh spending cuts and tax rises on the way. If Sunak and the Tories are planning on a return to austerity then this would be a huge mistake, and the Liberal Democrats should oppose it. There is no urgent need to cut spending or raise taxes right now. Borrowing is currently extremely cheap, and bond yields are likely going to remain low for a while. Even in the event that interest ...
i) births and deaths: 24 November 1999: death of Hilary Minster, who had two rather minor roles as Thals - Marat in Planet of the Daleks (Third Doctor, 1973) and an unnamed soldier in Genesis of the Daleks (Fourth Doctor, 1975), but is of interest to me as the only person to have been semi-regular character in both Secret Army, where he played Hauptmann Muller, and Allo! Allo!, where he played General von Klinkerhoffen - a high ranking Wehrmacht officer in both cases. ii) broadcast and webcast anniversaries 24 November 1979: broadcast of first episode of Nightmare of Eden. Two ...
It all sounded so easy when the Tories announced they were going to level up so that 'The North' would no longer be at a disadvantage to the south. So far not much levelling up has happened but then again we are living through a badly handled (by the Tories) health crisis/pandemic so they do have some excuse for the lack of anything tangible happening. However, that excuse won't wash for long. The other problem is that Johnson's government seems incapable of handing just about anything well or even for that matter adequately. On that basis there can't be much ...
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