The Liberal Democrats are making the same mistake that doomed the Liberals a century ago, argues Nick Barlow. Ian Dunt says liberals can redefine national pride and reclaim the flag from nationalists: "Liberal patriotism ... It starts and ends with the individual. It is a personal love story which springs from within, not a slab of uniformity imposed from above. It therefore cares about every individual in the country." Dominic Dyer on the politics of the badger cull. "Next Thursday 18 February 2021, it will have been eight years since the town walls fell at the back of St Laurence's. ...
Rail Advent reports: Network Rail has announced that restoration work on the Traeth Mawr Viaduct begun on Saturday 13th February. As part of a multi-million project to upgrade the Cambrian Line, Network Rail has chosen Traeth Mawr to help improve the overall line. The work will take place over a nine-day closure of the railway. Work will include the replacement of wooden timbers, which Network Rail says is the main priority. And why am I passing this on? Because I once got eaten alive by mosquitos taking a photo of this very viaduct, that's why.
No, I've not joined the long list of politicians taking a pot shot, for party political advantage, at those who need welfare support to get by. Indeed, as regular readers of this bogsite will know, I'm very much in favour of universal basic income (UBI) to tackle poverty and reliance on benefits once and for all. This post is actually about companies who get government/public sector money to run public services or provide goods and services which the public sector requires. That our government is mired in all sorts of controversy regarding contracts being handed out to companies, sometimes without ...
Second paragraph of third section of first chapter:Professor Redwood was one of those scientific men who are addicted to tracings and curves You are familiar — if you are at all the sort of reader I like — with the sort of scientific paper I mean. It is a paper you cannot make head nor tail of, and at the end come five or six long folded diagrams that open out and show peculiar zigzag tracings, flashes of lightning overdone, or sinuous inexplicable things called "smoothed curves" set up on ordinates and rooting in abscissae — and things like that. ...
When someone is elected to the United States Senate he or she takes an oath: I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: (my emphasis) So help me God. When a President is impeached the House of Representatives act ...
As noted some time ago, I signed up for the genetic analysis company 23andMe and have got some interesting new connections as a result. 23andMe gives you a bewildering amount of information, not always hugely useful, but enough that you can do your own playing around with it. One chunk of information that I have been browsing is the precise list of what bits of DNA I share with other 23andMe users. The site allows you to download data on your 1500 or so closest DNA relatives in its system, including the actual chromosome sequences that you share with those ...
Yesterday I went and had my first coronavirus inoculation. There are good and bad sides to the story but although I know that for some there is a down side I would still have no hesitation in going. Why did ... Continue reading →
Let's be honest here, Conservatives don't believe in free speech. They don't even really believe in freedom of speech within the confines of what might generally be accepted as reasonable, i.e. restrictions on hate speech, or topics that would offend the overwhelming majority. In truth, most Conservatives tend to believe in freedom of speech to say things that they approve of. They are, unsurprisingly, now attempting to intimidate academic institutions to express only those opinions which meet with their view of British history - for which one should almost certainly read "English history", given that most teaching of British history ...
The Guardian reports the latest on the fines levied against Leave.EU and one of Arron Bank's firms: The Leave.EU campaign and the insurance company owned by the political group's key financial backer, Arron Banks, have lost an appeal against £105,000 of fines for data protection violations in the wake of the EU referendum campaign... The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) had said then that the two organisations were closely linked, with "ineffective" systems for segregating the data of insurance customers from that of political subscribers. Leave.EU was also fined £15,000 for using Eldon Insurance customers' details unlawfully to send out almost ...
Liberals can disagree on a lot (as the joke goes, put four Liberals in a room and you'll land up with six different opinions), but one thing that unites every Liberal is the concept of Individual Liberty. In very broad strokes, most of what Liberals do - at a local level, with oppressed groups, internationally, or wherever else - is about empowering individuals: equalising power between people, and distributing power away from where it's been concentrated. I suspect many Liberals have forgotten their own power - and to recover, we must find it again. Let's start with a thought experiment. ...
This time tomorrow, anyone arriving into the UK from certain countries, and from any country into Scotland, will have to undergo ten days of mandatory quarantine in a hotel, an experience for which they will be charged £1,750. I get that these measures are necessary. We do need to make sure that we limit the spread of new variants of Covid-19. My issue, to be honest, is that I don't think we should be charging for this if we think it is necessary to save lives. It's arguable that it should have been done months ago. Typically both governments are ...
Sun 14th
12:09
Ludlow's collapsed town wall should be registered as a Monumental Failure and become a tourist attra...
Next Thursday 18 February 2021, it will have been eight years since the town walls fell at the back of St Laurence's. There is no sign of the repairs beginning this year. What hope is there of the collapsed section being completed before the tenth anniversary? Almost none in my opinion. I would like to be proved wrong. The failure to repair one of Ludlow's principal monuments is an embarrassment to our town. St Laurence's churchyard is still disfigured by Herras fencing. It's a disgrace. Unless there is action soon, we should perhaps register the collapsed wall as a Monumental ...
With the government intent on saving as many statues as possible, irrespective of their history and context, and with Ministers seeking to use whatever means they can, Mussolini-like, to embed their own distorted view of history into the national consciencious, it takes a cat to come to the rescue of those monuments that are worth saving. The Times reports that Lord Roscoe has become the National Trust's first guard cat, tasked with the job of protecting statues of Roman gods in the grounds of a 17th-century stately home from being defaced by a scurry of squirrels. The paper says that ...
Sat, 13:11: RT @EuanTaylor4: @nwbrux And where are his helmet and pads?! Sat, 14:38: RT @hamlynm1: If you'd ask me to guess which British PM had used a skateboard, I would not have guessed Ted Heath. https://t.co/SVjKnaq0wi Sat, 14:49: RT @PJM2010: @hamlynm1 @nwbrux They were all at it https://t.co/mWeyJOcRgG Sat, 15:24: Rain Man https://t.co/SwiiXVXd91 Sat, 16:44: RT @ceemage: @EuanTaylor4 @nwbrux Ted Heath was clearly a risk-taker compared to modern, staid politicians. Round the world yacht sailing,... Sat, 16:51: RT @Alasdair_CM: I know, I know it's serious Sat, 17:07: RT @Direthoughts: @JAHeale I assume you've seen this, which apparently features Sir ...
One of the current international ironies is that Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are on trial at the same time. The two men have one of the closest personal relationships on the world stage—dating back to the 1980s when Netanyahu was in New York as Israel's Permanent Representative to the United Nations. Now he is on trial at the same time as his American buddy for bribery, fraud and breach of trust. In true Trumpian style, Netanyahu claims that the trial is a "coup to oust a sitting Israeli Prime Minister." The trial takes place in the ...
Sun 14th
09:28Covid Watch: Cases in Shropshire and Telford are still declining but not as fast as elsewhere
We are getting there but Shropshire infection rates not falling as fast as the rest of the country. Infection rates plateaued in late January and early February. This might be a product of the testing regime but overall the trend is in the right direction. Downwards. The same is true of Telford & Wrekin where infection rates are falling steeply through around two weeks behind the national picture. As vaccination rollout continues to accelerate, it can only get better. Comparative 7-day infection rates The graph above shows comparative trends since the start of the second wave. Infection rates across England ...
The Conservative Government promised to produce a White Paper on its 'National Data Strategy' before the end of 2020 - one of the many initiatives shelved or delayed by the coronavirus pandemic. But digital issues offer both enormous economic benefits and considerable social and political risks, and technological innovation is opening up new advantages and dangers as time passes. Now that the UK has left the EU, there are divided opinions within our government about staying close to its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or loosening its restrictions to make it easier for security services to investigate and entrepreneurs to ...
i) births and deaths 14 February 1942: birth of Michael E. Briant, who directed Colony in Space (Third Doctor, 1971), The Sea Devils (Third Doctor, 1972), The Green Death (Third Doctor, 1973), Death to the Daleks (Third Doctor, 1974), Revenge of the Cybermen (Fourth Doctor, 1975) and The Robots of Death (Fourth Doctor, 1977). ii) broadcast anniversaries 14 February 1970: broadcast of third episode of Doctor Who and the Silurians. Quinn, who is shielding the wounded Silurian, is found dead by the Doctor. 14 February 1976: broadcast of third episode of The Seeds of Doom. The Doctor and Sarah return ...
From the Curator of Museum Services at the University of Dundee : I'm delighted to advise of this special event on Tuesday 16th February at 5.30pm. It is a free online event co-organised by the D'Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum, University of Dundee and Tufts University, Massachusetts D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson is best known for his ground-breaking book On Growth and Form, which laid the foundations for the science of mathematical biology. However that was just one of his many publications, and this special live event focuses on an exciting interdisciplinary project led by Tufts University in Massachusetts, exploring D'Arcy's 1895 book ...
