Great news! Arts Fresco returns in full on Sunday 11 September 2022. As the Arts Fresco website explains: Often described as a 'mini Fringe festival', Market Harborough's Arts Fresco is a free street theatre festival, that for one day every September, transforms the town centre into the biggest street arts festival in the Midlands. When Covid hit, we had to leave the roaming dinosaurs, mad chefs and wheelie bins that drive themselves back in their own crazy world, and move to a virtual festival. However for 2022, we're back where we belong - on the streets of Market Harborough. You ...
The latest edition of my weekly political polling round-up, The Week in Polls, is now out. As it says: A good tip when interpreting a poll figure is to look at its mirror image. If a shocking 19% of people have eaten chocolate in the last hour, that also means that a rather overwhelming 81% haven't. (Excluding don't knows etc. of course.) Rather less shocking. Now let's apply that tip to this poll finding about Boris Johnson... You can read The Week in Polls in full here, and you can sign up to receive future editions here.
Liz Truss was a British Republican when an undergraduate. Now she's much more an American Republican than a British Conservative. Her rhetoric about tax cuts, paying for themselves through increasing economic growth, is straight out of the Reaganite textbook; which is hardly surprising, since she is on record as having asked right-wing think tanks in Washington while visiting what lessons she could learn from Reaganomics and their attacks on regulation and red tape. It is surprising that commentators in Britain have not paid more attention to the long-term colonization of the Conservative Party by the American right. I first caught ...
Two new political parties have started talking to the media about their plans for the next general election. First, Gina Miller's True and Fair Party, launched to a muted reaction earlier this year. The Independent reports on its plans now to fight thirty seats on a platform of political reform. But, its plan is to target safe Conservative seats which neither Labour nor the Liberal Democrats will be pushing hard to win. In some ways that's a sensible focus, though targeting only Conservative seats with larger majorities reinforces the point about how unlikely it is to win seats. If the ...
With its layered sound and elusive lyrics, this was a no. 2 hit for the Bronx-based girl group the Jaynetts in September 1963. They were famously due to take part in an edition of American Bandstand to be broadcast from Dallas, Texas, on the evening on 22 November that year. But it never went out, because President Kennedy had been assassinated in the city earlier that day. Maybe that's one reason why the Jaynetts remained as one-hit wonders. Wikipedia (with lots of references) says of Sally, Go 'Round the Roses: Sally, Go 'Round the Roses was unlike other pop songs ...
It always concerns me when we have complaints about noise in the town centre. People generally deserve a quiet life. But some people seem to have moved here thinking the town centre is a quiet, sleepy place. Town centres that are quiet and sleepy are senile and they are at the edge of survival. They lose shops, they lose footfall and lose more shops in an ever declining vortex. Eventually all that is left are the charity shops, a pub or two and some downbeat cafes. You can see that fate in town centres across the country. That's not Ludlow ...
Sat, 12:56: RT @AdAstraSF: My "We at CERN are not communicating with demonic entities and opening a portal to hell" T-shirt has people asking a lot of... Sat, 14:38: RT @duncan3ross: My conclusion: if @RFU are serious that it is the differential of body size and mass that is the key thing in terms of saf... Sat, 14:48: RT @MSmithsonPB: This election is actually about who will be the next Tory Leader of the Opposition Sat, 15:23: Daily #167 0️⃣4️⃣⬛0️⃣5️⃣ 1️⃣8️⃣⬛1️⃣9️⃣ 0️⃣6️⃣⬛2️⃣0️⃣ 0️⃣9️⃣⬛0️⃣8️⃣ 1️⃣0️⃣⬛1️⃣1️⃣ 1️⃣2️⃣⬛1️⃣3️⃣ 1️⃣4️⃣⬛1️⃣5️⃣ 1️⃣6️⃣⬛1️⃣7️⃣ https://t.co/1E46GFXTgD #sedecordle Sat, 15:39: Saturday reading https://t.co/mugzlp630C Sat, 16:05: RT @Frances_Coppola: The RFU's ...
Historically, it has been traditional for British monarchs to use their position to enrich themselves and their retainers by accepting funds from dodgy sources, but is that model sustainable in a modern democracy, albeit that the money is now destined for royal charities instead of personal bank accounts. Prince Charles has already been involved in controversy for personally accepting €3 million in cash stuffed into bags from a Qatari sheikh during private meetings between 2011 and 2015, which was then handed over to the Princes Foundation. According to this report, the gifts from controversial Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber ...
The sanctions gamble Ukraine and Russia are engaged in a weapons war. The West in Russia are engaged in an economic war of attrition. The West's main weapon is sanctions. Putin's main weapons are European dependence on Russian oil and gas, food supplies to millions and the perceived decadence of Western populations. Europe had hoped to build up a reserve of stored gas supplies for the winter by importing as much Russian gas as possible until December. But Putin this week scuppered that plan by cutting piped exports by 80 percent. Germany has stopped lighting public buildings at night and ...
Residents highlighted to us that it was difficult to safely exit Oxford Street onto Blackness Road as the tree branches blocked sight lines. We therefore asked the City Council to attend to this and this work was thereafter promptly undertaken.
Trollies are being wheeled out of supermarkets stacked with booze. The BBQs will be lit to sear burgers and sausages to the point of incineration. It's party time because it's coming home. And the final is against Germany, our nation's favourite enemy in what used to be called the beautiful game. Today's newspapers are not only full of coverage of the Lionesses, they cover the other contest gripping the nation (or probably not actually). The battle to become Tory leader and the prime minister of our nation. With the backing on Ben Wallace, Tom Tugendhat and Brandon Lewis, Liz Truss ...
