Does anyone read newspaper editorials? I never got the habit. But this one from tomorrow's Guardian in praise of Ed Davey's approach to politics is something else: The Lib Dem leader wants to rewrite British politics - not with the language of crisis, but that of care. In a Westminster hooked on "tough choices" and resistant to compassion in policy, he offers something rare - moral clarity rooted in lived experience. He understands that care is not a luxury to be considered after the economy is "fixed". It is, he says, the core economy. His new book is both memoir ...
An old edition of the Hypnogoria podcast put me on to this. Praising the new, expanded edition of Philip W. Errington's book Opening The Box of Delights, it mentioned he had discovered that ITV broadcast an adaptation of The Box of Delights in 1962. The Amazon blurb for Errington's book mentions "The 1962 ITV Story Box adaptation of The Box of Delights." This enabled me to find it in this listing of the next day's television from the Halifax Evening Courier, God bless its woollen socks, for 8 November that year. Story Box appears to have been a programme for ...
Here lies the deceased. The Conservative Party, 1834-2025. Or, to borrow from a certain former Prime Minister who encouraged the use of a handbag in less than diplomatic negotiations, This is an ex-parrot. It is not merely stunned. It has ceased to be, expired, and gone to meet its maker. It is a parrot no more. It has run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is a late parrot. That of course was Margaret Thatcher speaking to the Tory Party conference, about the Lib Dems and our then new party symbol, "a bird of some kind" as ...
[IMG: Campaigning with Camden Lib Dems] Campaigning with Camden Lib Dems. I regularly finding myself spending time on a form of political matchmaking, trying to help would-be new Liberal Democrat activists find the best way to get involved in the party. I've written before about how existing activists can best get newer people involved, but this process has also made me increasingly aware that there's a set of tips about how to get involved that pretty much no-one ever tells would-be new activists. So this post is an attempt to put that right. Do let me have your feedback on ...
One of the increasingly troubling trends in modern life is the use of AI as a tool to gather and utilise information. Now, this might merely be the concern of a late middle-aged bureaucrat whose caution is inevitable. On the other hand, it may reflect an entirely reasonable fear that people are too trusting of the information presented to them by unaccountable algorithms. But what if those algorithms are being used to surreptitiously influence what we think and how we perceive the world around us? We've already seen X turn from an entertaining, and occasionally useful, social media platform into ...
Writing for Lion and Unicorn about the film No Room at the Inn and the death in 1945 of the foster child Dennis O'Neill, which inspired the play on which it was based, I said: Sir Walter Monckton's inquiry found what every such inquiry has found since: a need for different services to work together more effectively. Could it be that government has finally noticed? Here's Jacqui Smith - Baroness Smith of Malvern, now a minister in the Department for Education - speaking during the Lord's committee stage of the government's Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill: My Lords, since the ...
The day dawned bright and sunny and it was time to take a stroll through Mainz, the birthplace of Gutenberg and the seat of the Archbishop-Elector, a key figure in the Holy Roman Empire. There's a nice statue of Friedrich Schiller, which stirred me to hum "Ode to Joy", and the walk past the cathedral down towards the River Rhine is quite nice. Time was short(ish) as my day's fixed point was the Eurostar back to St Pancras, and I wasn't intending to miss it. But what could be the harm in a short stop in Koblenz on the way? ...
There's a difference in solo consulting between working in the business and working on the business. Working in the business is the work you do on consulting assignments with your clients. It's the bit that actually earns you the money. And, quite probably, the bit that you most enjoy doing. Working on the business is everything else. It's the stuff that goes on behind the scenes. It includes setting your business goals and figuring out how you're going to achieve them. It includes marketing your business, cultivating relationships with potential (and existing) clients, writing proposals and securing new projects to ...
Patients "left in the lurch" as month long waits for last minute cancelled ops to be rearranged more than double Scot Lib Dems to lead debate calling for immediate teacher workforce plan Patients "left in the lurch" as month long waits for last minute cancelled ops to be rearranged more than double Close to 20,000 operations cancelled at the last minute took more than 28-days to rearrange last year, in breach of the NHS's own standard, research by the House of Commons Library commissioned by the Liberal Democrats has revealed. It means that 23% of the 85,400 elective operations cancelled ...
Over £3 million has been put into the pockets of Dundee pensioners, thanks to city-wide efforts encouraging people to apply for Pension Credit. The council's Council Advice Services Team has been running a campaign with Dundee Citizens Advice Bureau and Brooksbank to maximize the income of as many citizens of Dundee as possible over the state pension age. Since the launch of this campaign, over £3,148,494 has been awarded to the citizens of Dundee through various benefits. With the average Pension Credit award being £68 per week, and an average backdated pension credit award of over £900. The council continues ...
The problem with critical ICT systems is that if you don't spend serious money updating them regularly then they beccome vulnerable to hackers. This is a particular problem with those systems designed to enable the delivery of public services as not only are they critical, but they are also large scale and therefore expensive, while the organisations who run them tend not to have a lot of cash to spare. This could explain why the Legal Aid Agency is under fire after a major cyber attack saw potentially millions of pieces of personal data stolen, including criminal records. The Independent ...
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