11:48 pm
It was always my ambition in life to be the dark, brooding romantic type and, although it often surprises people, I achieved it in a way that I might never have expected. Romanticism and bureaucracy are not words that are immediately associated by many and yet, I have become a slightly unstable combination of the two. Tonight, I am crouched in front of the keyboard in a room lit only by the
10:26 pm
Reviewing some of the news this weekend, two issues gave me food for thought. All the hoo-ha about John Prescott, I just don't understand why he's not been sacked before now. I can't really see him staying in power for much longer - he's really recoming a public embarrassment. Doubt he can last another week - it's getting ridiculous. The Independent article Calamity John: A trip to a ranch may mean that Blair's deputy bites the dust sums it up. Sex in the office, policy blunders, perks, and punch-ups. And now ...
9:53 pm
What do you make of this? edna burtin [20/7/2005]i am a mother of 2 boys, and it is very important that they get smacked when they are naughty, which is very often. once when i was in a supermarket with jason, my oldest son (11) he was baing very cheeky and rude so i pulled down his trowsers and his pants, bent him over and smacked his bare bottom very hard. And once when i had friends round jason and alex were fighting so i grabbed alex's arm, apologised to my friends pulled down his trowsers and pants and ...
9:50 pm
David Cameron's latest PR stunt, a speech empathising with hoodies is going to leave a lot of us stratching our heads as to what he's up to. On one level the point he's making is trite, its unkind to assume someone is a criminal just because they happen to dress like one. On the other hand it's really trite, people don't have a negative reaction to hoodies or men in bling or cars with dark windows on the grounds of fashion or youth prejudice, it's because whether we're talking about our safety, job interviews or dating we send signals ...
9:45 pm
There is more than one way of getting close to your ancestors. Follow the Old Road and as you do, think of them; they climbed Chillingbourne Hill just as you did. They sweated and paused for breath just as you did today. And when you see the bluebells in the spring and the wild thyme, and the broom and the heather, you're seeing what their eyes saw. You ford the same rivers, the same birds singing. And when you lie flat on your back and rest, and watch the clouds sailing as I often do, you're so close to those ...
9:25 pm
In today's Observer Tristram Hunt claims that Philip Gould's The Unfinished Revolution is being "devoured by Cameron's inner circle". Gould's book is one of my favourite political reads. It 's a great campaigning guide, as well as being a part autobiography of Philip Gould and dips into poliltical ideology without becoming too heavy going. I've read it cover to cover at least twice and have frequently pulled out extracts of it for my course essays. It was especially useful in a module I did last autumn called 'Spindoctors & Electioneering', which wasn't quite as interesting as it sounds. Actually I ...
9:24 pm
Councillor Jardine-Brown at the Southwark Event on Saturday discussing pet care with a Boa Constrictor owner out for a stroll at the Southwark Park event. Helen owns two pythons herself, I have been banned from nicknaming them Peter and Fiona. Councillor Zuleta with python food at the same event. Mayor Kyriacou, Helen, Lorraine and Simon Hughes leading the parade to the event.
8:51 pm
I tend to concentrate on national issues on this blog. That is because readers are overwhelmingly not from Yardley. Over the summer recess, however, I think I will get together some pictures of constituency issues and put them on the blog. I am particularly pleased with a play area we had installed on the Hob Moor Road side of Oaklands Park. This is continually full of 3-10 year olds and a
8:41 pm
Public Affairs News (which I'm still waiting for my free sample copy of!) reports that the Handsard Society is going to look at the role of lobbying in UK politics. The title of the study, 'Lobbying: friend or foe?' sounds a bit too much like a university essay but I look forward to reading the report in November.
8:12 pm
Story in the Sunday Times today saying that the government might not be able to introduce ID cards after all. Good. Apparently there are all sorts of problem.. and even a suggestion that there is a sort of mini iD card scheme for 2008 won't work. This is mainly about technical problems.. rather than objections of principle.. but given that the government wouldn't listen to principled argument.. perhaps the practical difficulties will stop them. Wrote a while ago about how renewing your passport now will put off ID card for a while. A colleague tells me ...
8:12 pm
Story in the Sunday Times today saying that the government might not be able to introduce ID cards after all. Good. Apparently there are all sorts of problem.. and even a suggestion that there is a sort of mini iD card scheme for 2008 won't work. This is mainly about technical problems.. rather than objections of principle.. but given that the government wouldn't listen to principled argument.. perhaps the practical difficulties will stop them. Wrote a while ago about how renewing your passport now will put off ID card for a while. A colleague tells me that when she was ...
7:42 pm
Saddleworth, West Riding Yorkshire Day Country Fair Sunday 30th July 200611.00amAt the Ammon Wrigley statue, Saddleworth Museum,Uppermill 11.31amReading the Yorkshire Declaration of Integrity" Brass Band leading a Grand Parade to the Back Meadow Where there will be... County Crafts Dry Stone Walling, fencing, potting, wood turning,sheep shearing. Country Fayre Home made ice cream, cheeses, oat bread,Yorkshire pudding,Saddleworth local beer. Country Skills Quilting, sewing, knitting, patchwork.Farm AnimalsSheep, lamas,calves, donkeys. Plus... National Trust,Quality Plant Stall,Bouncy Castle,Face Painting,Grand Raffle,TombolaLots of fun for the children.
7:21 pm
Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council’s Yorkshire Day celebrations this year take place in Redcar High Street on Saturday 29th July, between 10am and 4pm, with something for everyone... Music concert, high pole juggling, free face painting, inflatable assault course, balloon modelling, local theatre group team players, Old Glory Band, circus skills workshop, magicians, fairground (at Coatham Enclosure), street entertainment, and much, much more! EVENTS ORGANISED BY THE YORKSHIRE RIDINGS SOCIETY... Saturday 29th July 2006Flat Cap FlingWinner will receive the DJ Tucker Ltd CupPlus prizes for the first three FREE ENTRY11.00am to 12.00 noon Redcar High Street (near ...
7:19 pm
East Riding of Yorkshire Council are holding an event in the gardens of Burnby Hall, Pocklington. Admission to the gardens will be free after 11.00am. There will be music and readings of the Declaration of Integrity, including one by the Chairman of the Council. On 5th August the East Riding Dialect Society will be presenting an afternoon of East Riding Prose and Poems at Burnby Hall, Pocklington from 2.00pm to 5.00pm. There will be a charge of £2 which will include refreshments in the interval. In Goole, the City and County Pub, in Boothferry Road, will be hosting a celebration ...
7:04 pm
Coventry and Warwickshire Acute Services Review - NHS The local papers in Warwick & Leamington have stirred up a lot of controversy over the future of Warwick hospital over the past few weeks. From what I have read and the people I have spoken to, as far as I can tell, the reason Hospital is Millions of pounds overspent because the hospital attempted to meet government targets and bring down waiting lists, they undertook a number of treatments and the money to pay for all this work did not appear from the people who's job it is to pay ...
7:01 pm
Yorkshire Day, August 1st 2006, will see members of the Ridings Society reading the Yorkshire Declaration of Integrity around the walls of York for the 30th time, since the tradition was started by Colin Holt in 1976. Sadly, this will be the first year that Colin, pictured right, who sadly, died in April, will not be present leading the proceedings. The Declaration of Integrity is read in the four languages used in Yorkshire since the earliest known reference to the Ridings, in the Anglo Saxon Chronicles of 876. old English, old Norse. Latin and modern English The readings start at ...
6:44 pm
The usual recommendations can be found here and here.
6:35 pm
Ainsley Harriott was a ballboy at Wimbledon in 1972, says The First Post. "Game to Nastase." "Huh, huh, huh. What are you like?"
6:29 pm
The BBC reports: Liberal Democrats leader Sir Menzies Campbell said he would support plans to send more UK troops to Afghanistan. He said there was "no option" but to send more because current troop numbers were not enough to complete the job. Fine, but wouldn't it be a good idea to decide what "the job" is first?
5:59 pm
BBC Scotland reports that Labour in addicts' children plan: Labour MSP Duncan McNeil has proposed that addicts sign a "social contract", obliging them not to have children until they have beaten their habit. ...which begins to sound like Sweden's infamous eugenics program of sterilising young women they felt oughtn't to have children. Now, whilst we should of course do everything we can to ensure that we don't inflict on children a home-life from hell, how on earth would withdrawing benefits from women who "slip up" and breach their "contract" and pop out a sprog (and ...
5:38 pm
With the Charity Shield only weeks away I am told that the Welsh Assembly team that will be playing in the fifth McDonald's sponsored Parliamentary Shield has already started practise sessions. What has not been revealed is which fast food restaurant they are practising in.
5:22 pm
So David Cameron is apparently going to explain that we need to learn to understand the "hoodie culture" better - that for many it is a way not of hiding aggression and criminal intent but of "keeping your head down" retreating into anonymity in an hostile world. That instead of opprobrium youngsters need nurturing to make the correct life-choices in a fast moving bewildering (and I'd add very unequal) society. It reminds me of Germaine Greer's "The Boy" of 2003, a book extolling the real beauty of teenage males that got her some bad press with some decrying her ...
4:32 pm
As a hall warden, I usually only get to know students during their first year when they are residents in my hall. Not being teaching staff there isn't a lot of scope for following people right through their courses here. But having a bar on site means that sometimes a few stay around the place as student staff at the bar. Last night the bar manager threw a party to celebrate his big three-oh and invited as many of the students that have worked for him in his eight years here as he could contact. Many old ...
3:31 pm
This morning's Sunday Times carries good news about the future of the Government's ID card proposals. They report that the flagship identity cards scheme is set to fail and may not be introduced for a generation. The problems are so serious that ministers have been forced to draw up plans for a scaled-down “face-saving” version to meet their pledge of phasing in the cards from 2008. However, civil servants say there is no evidence that even this compromise is “remotely feasible” and accuse ministers of “ignoring reality” by pressing ahead. One official warns of ...
3:21 pm
The last episode of the current series of Dr. Who was awesome and well-worth waiting for. BBC Wales and Russell T. Davies fully deserve all the accolades they have received for this long-awaited revival. As ever however, there is always somebody waiting in the wings to spoil it by taking the phenomenon that little bit too far. Matt Withers of the Wales on Sunday is, as ever, in there with the scoop. He reports this morning that Plaid Cymru AM, Leanne Wood, is demanding that mini Tardises are placed all around Wales to attract Doctor Who fans to the ...
2:34 pm
MKNE political information has a good post reflecting on the death of a long time Liberal in Milton Keynes. This leads on to contemplation of the debt we as Liberal Democrats owe to those who kept the Liberal party alive in the dark years, the years when each year the hearse turned up at the Liberal Assembly and went away empty. Without these people we'd have an even more difficult job ahead of
12:30 pm
Awake to Steve Richards interviewing Alex (Recess Monkey - Labour) and Iain Dale (blogging Conservative). The traditional media has decided that blogs are the big news and it would seem that these days bloggers lead the field and the media follow our agenda. Of course Alex and Iain both write really great blogs and their audiences are huge. They are more overtly political and somewhat different to the blog I keep. They are really political commentators, and whilst national politics certainly features in my blog I also try to use it to communicate with my constituents. Having a distinctive geographically ...
12:19 pm
Life without e-mail may be considered pretty unimaginable; but occasionally life with e-mail is unmanageable. Desmond Swayne, David Cameron’s eyes and ears in the House of Commons’ tea rooms, may today be reflecting on the unwisdom of committing so explicitly to writing his robust views on Tory policy and personnel. The Sunday Times has helpfully uploaded them all to their website, and they
12:16 pm
Today’s Sunday Times carries the welcome news that: Tony Blair’s flagship identity cards scheme is set to fail and may not be introduced for a generation, according to leaked Whitehall e-mails from the senior officials responsible for the multi-billion-pound project.Of course, I would prefer it if Labour had seen the light, and recognised that the ID card scheme is wrong in principle. But it’s
10:34 am
The Tory executive Mayor of Torbay and his all-Conservative cabinet is clearly 'improving' the fortunes of the bay. I have been a staunch critic of the mayor and believe Marcus Wood (Torbay Tory PPC) to have been less than fulsome publicly in support of his Tory Mayor on the council. This prompted him to write on his blog : "I think Nick Bye is the best thing to happen to Torbay in a generation - and so do a large and growing number of the people who live here - and I would hate to think that anyone ...
9:25 am
So, we're back from holiday - have been for a week actually. We walked from Plymouth to Dartmouth, crossing a number of river estuaries by ferry and one by wading, but abandoned the last 20 miles or so because of the blazing heat and caught a steam train to Paignton where we played pitch and putt instead. We were on the platform of Torquay station waiting for a train home when the England / Portugal penalty shoot-out took place - and I was on the phone to Dad while he commentated with commendable restraint on the TV pictures for me. ...
7:34 am
We owe them a lot, all those determined lone Liberals who refused to stand aside and leave politics to the Tory and Labour class war regiments. People like Peggy Grantham who was a lone Liberal voice on the old Bletchley UDC so many years ago, and even up to her death last week was a sharp and focussed commentator on the goings-on in the Labour-infested parish politics of Bletchley. Without people like Peggy to keep the Liberal spirit alive in the 1950s and 60’s, we would need to re-discouver from scratch what it takes to be a Liberal in politics. ...
2:02 am
To Bromley Highlands, aka Crystal Palace, for a night celebrating the birthday of a friend. Jo Christie-Smith is a comparatively new addition to my circle of friends, and I met her through politics (how else?) in my role as Returning Officer to Lewisham West Liberal Democrats. My first task was to tell her that she was ineligible to stand as she remained unapproved to take part at the close of
1:49 am
One of the results of the work of the Boundary Commissioners is that the boundaries of the various Local Parties change. Normally, this isn't a particularly difficult task but I've been drawn into the debate on one of London's trickier changes, the creation of the new constituency of Lewisham West Chislehurst and Orpington). Lewisham members want to remain a borough-wide group and as for Bromley,
Saturday 8th July 2006,
Friday 7th July 2006,
Thursday 6th July 2006,
Wednesday 5th July 2006,
Tuesday 4th July 2006,
Monday 3rd July 2006
