“What are you doing in here? are you bored?” - the words of a friend of mine as he slumped in to the adjacent chair at the back of the conference hall in the Blackpool Winter Gardens in September last year. My friend had been on one of his annual conference rituals - the exhibition freebie [...]
Yesterday was pretty busy, with five consecutive engagements. The final one took me to 7th Malden Scouts. The two guys standing on either side of me showed some enterprise in mounting an exhibition of their photos, and got the support of friends on either side to make it happen. They are raising funds to attend the World Scout Jamboree which will be held in England in...
There is news of yet another human rights activist being taken for questioning and likely imprisonment. Hu Jia, a prominent human rights and AIDS activist was taken from his home for questioning last Friday by police in Beijing. Latest reports suggest that he is still being detained. He is the latest in a number of activists who have been taken by police and eventually prosecuted. Human rights appear to have nosedived recently in China. I think that serious questions need to be asked about what is going on by the international community. I'm going to be ...
More exhibits from Surbiton Horticultural Society....(I visited their summer show back in June) How do you get parsnips to grow like that? Well, it was explained to me and it involves drilling down two feet and carefully shaping the hole. Hope I'm not giving away too many trade secrets.
Despite our mate Dave's best efforts, it seems that the readers of Conservative Home are stuck somewhere between the primordial soup and the bad part of the dark ages. Read the below, posted on an article about prision places, and weep at "the next Government".Mandatory execution for many offences including various varieties of execution with torture to ensure that punishment was proportionate to the offences committed would reduce the number of extra places neccessary, if execution was mandatory for Murder, Rape, Manslaughter, Crimes under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, Breaching National Security, Theft\Fraud and\or damage to property amounting to in ...
Watched Gordon Brown being interviewed by Andrew Marr and trying to be nice and cuddly. Problem is, as William Hague put it, no one can possibly believe he has had nothing to do with the events of this last week. Most damning was his too long silence. But I guess when you have kept silent for a decade and let TB take all the knocks - you don't really know how to step to the front. It was evident
When I asked Boris Johnson if I could write his biography, he laughed for a long time before saying: “Such is my colossal vanity that I have no intention of trying to forbid you.”Judging by Andrew Gimson's article in the Sunday Times today, he would have done well to curb that vanity.
One of the issues which continues to divide the two main parties on Oxford City Council is where planning applications should be decided. The Lib Dems have always said that such decisions are best taken in open meetings in local area committees by councillors who represent the community and understand its issues. Labour, by contrast, appears increasingly keen to re-centralise planning
After going a bit further than I’d planned over the last few days, I’ve almost got to Hartington a day early. Almost as I’m actually here, but I’ve only walked as far as Pomeroy, a few miles north of here. Still, it means I can take the next couple of days at a more relaxed [...]
For the third time I have ended up behind bars for a good cause. Previously, I was locked up with Cyril the Swan and Amanda Protheroe-Thomas for the RSPCA and on my own at Neath Carnival for Amnesty International. Today, it was RSPCA revisited as I came back for more punishment. For those conspiracy theorists amongst you, yes I am locked up with Labour Minister, Carwyn Jones and his two children. However, we only discussed pacts and coalitions in the context of the Western Mail story earlier this week and then only to speculate about whose vivid imagination made the ... 
CROSSTALK EDITORIAL OCTOBER 2006-Simon Wilson There was once a man who had grown tired and cynical. Nothing brought him wonder or joy, and life itself held no magic. One day he decided to leave his own home town, where everything was familiar, and search for the perfect Magical City where had heard that all was different, new, full and rewarding. So he left. On his journey he found himself in a forest. He settled down for the night, prepared a fire and had a bite to eat. Before he retired for the night he was careful to take off his ...
The protest walks from St Leonards Square and East Kilbride town centre took place today, and were a great success. Several hundred local people marched through the streets to the threaten park to show their displeasure at Labour's determination to break it up and sell bits off to private housing developers. Speakers from all parties (with one exception...) addressed the assembled rally, as did
One of the irritating phrases New Labour threw around when they came to power was "joined up government". I don't think they have managed it much - but joined up thinking is necessary. Over on the excellent Liberal Democrat Voice, Alex Wilcock has a piece about the Meeting the Challenge Paper (a chance to think in a joined up way, in principle at least...). Alex complains that the paper defines inequality purely in economic terms: If you think I’m exaggerating, just read it. Non-economic inequality simply doesn’t exist in Chapter 3. The very first paragraph claims “One of the most ...
A question –does the BBC employ fact checkers when it buys in foreign made documentaries? The drama-doc due out tonight (Sunday 10th Sept) ‘Paths to 9/11’ advertises itself as a sober look at history as documented in the official findings of the 9/11 Commission. But key scenes in that docudrama, highlighted in trailers, are complete fictions, directly contradicting Commission findings. This is most evident in the scenes involving former President Clinton. Is it a coincidence that the programme was apparently made by virulent anti-Clinton activists in the USA? Has the BBC been bamboozled by US Republican dirty tricks ...
Just back from a service at Garston Park Church where the new methodist superintendent minister was being officially welcomed. A lovely service. There were reps from other churches and methodists from all over the South Liverpool circuit (which is pretty big taking in Halewood and south liverpool right the way in to Princes Park). The local councillors were all invited. It worked out quite well as Peter Millea was there too - so although there were just the two of us there as local politicians, they had someone from speke garston (me) and someone from cressington ...
Sunday morning so planned on doing some garage tidy work and trimming the hedge at the front garden. Our Yew hedge is getting quite tall now so I need to use the step ladder. Fell off and went head first into the soil. Ouch! bit like a rugby crunch tackle I used to give and take - however now in my mid-50s it shook me up bad. So had a long bath and then slept. Sadly missed the RNLI charity...
It had to happen. The pro Blair website ‘Keeping The Faith’ website (http://www.keepingthefaith.org.uk) has been spoofed at http://www.keeping-the-faith.org.uk/. Childish but funny!
The ‘Decurlify RSS’ plug-in for Wordpress has now been updated to fix a couple of bugs. This is the one that removes curly quotation marks from the title of posts in RSS feeds. You can download it here.
Some criticise the youth of today but in my experience there are a lot of very good young people out there who are willing to put something back into society. Take Alex Tucker for instance. This young man lives just down the road from me. His grandmother died not long ago and was looked after by The Duchess of Kent Hospice which is run by The Duchess of Kent House Trust. He decided that he wanted to give something back to the charity and so he organised a Charity Football Match which took place yesterday at Padworth Village Hall. He ...
The Observer reports that the ipod is no longer cutting edge and has started to go into decline. Just as I was thinking of getting one as well!
The Sunday Times thinks it has caught Gordon Brown with his hand in the cookie jar: Gordon Brown met one of the key Labour rebels demanding Tony Blair’s resignation just a day before the plotters’ letter was delivered to Downing Street. The chancellor was visited at his home in Scotland on Monday by Tom Watson, the junior defence minister who resigned last week over the failed coup to unseat Blair.Ah, but there is an innoncent explanation: Watson said yesterday: “I dropped a present for the new baby. I saw Gordon, but it was a purely social visit and ...
A second person has had a copy of Craig Murray's book Murder in Samarkand confiscated by airport authorities. There was an account of the incident in yesterday's Guardian, which quoted Murray as saying: "The lawyers said that the first time it might have been just a mistake, not policy," he replied this week, to an email from the Guardian asking how far this course of action had gone, "but twice at two different airports looks like a policy. We are strongly minded to go to the High Court for an injunction under the Human Rights Act."I was so ...
Saturday: It is ALL Mr Councillor Stephen Tall's fault! (Though, be FAIR: I am not the ONLY person to be COPYING him!) I have GOOGLED "millennium elephant" and I am only THIRD! Actually, I have not "googled" because the people from Google will not let us call it googling any more and want us to call it "doing a Google™ search". I THINK that the "TM" is optional. The Google people say that this is because they do not want their trade name to go the same way as hoovering, xeroxing or tarmacing. Because OBVIOUSLY ...
Received a complaint from residents in the Logie area about worn junction lines - see below! This example is at the east end of Logie Avenue (at its junction with Glenagnes Road) and I've reported it to the Planning & Transportation Department for attention.
Bird flu hasn't gone away as the lack of reportage might suggest. Already this year there have been as many human deaths (mostly caused by bird-human infection) as in 2005, and that's before the period of maximum flu infectivity starts (about now). The human case fatality rate for H5N1 is around 58%. The virus hasn't mutated into a form that will readily spread human to human but the next few
'Hughes certain to be challenged for party Presidency' is the tantalising rumour posted on the excellent new Liberal Democrat Voice website: … weeks before the position had been advertised in Lib Dem News, party officials in Cowley Street received a call requesting a copy of the nomination papers for party President - the caller was not acting on behalf of Simon Hughes. Word also reaches us that
As summed up by the FT’s chief political columnist, Philip Stephens, in today’s Observer: A Parisian friend asked me: Who's the biggest player in the coming French presidential election? I ummed and aahed about Segolene Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy. Wrong. The answer was Tony Blair. Royal and Sarkozy, the self-declared modernising candidates on the left and right, were casting themselves in the image
I try not to be the person who responds with a jerk of the knee to ill-informed newspaper chatter about “the latest scientific survey which proves” X, Y and Z. (You know the kind of thing - “Bicycles make you shorter”, “Eating twigs can cure baldness”, “Metals are just shiny wood” - all suffixed with the killer phrase, “claim boffins”.) But that, I confess, was my visceral response to this
I'm thoroughly fed up of BBC presenters talking to journalists about what other journalists have written. That's not high-quality political analysis: it's easy, lazy programme planning and it seems to be happening more and more. Today's 'Worricker on Sunday' programme was a case in point (today hosted by Matthew Bannister). Throughout it there were comments and newspaper reviews from Kevin
Fresh evidence straight from the 'Horse's mouth' that the window of consent from the civil populous open to us after the initial deployment to Helmand has now firmly shut in the Taleban's favour. These defeats in the 'War on Terror' may be taking place in far away countries of which people understand little and care even less, but I believe that they have played as the backdrop to the public distrust and general discrediting of Tony Blair, and in the slightly longer term the effects will be felt back here in the UK in our domestic life. We must re-think ...
I’m waving sleepily this morning at Liberal Democrat Voice, Rob Fenwick’s new nearly-official-but-still-gossipy Lib Dem ‘place to talk’. Do pop over and have a look; I should warn you that, while neglecting here for a few days, I’ve been writing a piece for this new site. It’s Lib Dem Conference in a week, and I’d carefully read through key papers Fairer, Simpler, Greener and Trust in People: Make Britain Free, Fair and Green. My copies are now covered in red biro, from which I drafted an article in which you can read what I make of them, It’s About Money. ...
Mr Fenwick has launched a very promising new site called Liberal Demcrat Voice (http://www.libdemvoice.org). It’s intended as a space on the web for LibDem members to chat, share ideas, and keep up with what’s going on it the party. There’s a private forum for party members and a blog with news and articles, plus tantalising future [...]
The other interesting article in Matt Withers' column is that identifying Leighton Andrews' part-time researcher, David Taylor, as the mastermind behind the Keeping the Faith website. There are also rumours that David was involved in the Natwatch website and in the ejection of Walter Wolfgang from the Labour Party Conference. Like Gareth Davies however, I believe that the last allegation is a conspiracy theory too far. The Bloggerheads website has gone to town on David Taylor in the last few days here, here and here, all of which must be leaving him feeling a little beseiged. It also alleges ...
Matt Withers' column in today's Wales on Sunday draws heavily on blogs for its inspiration including an interesting article on links between the eight Labour Government resignees which bears an uncanny resemblance to this post on Dizzy Thinks. Matt correctly identifies that former Defence Minister Tom Watson shares an office in the House of Commons with Alyn and Deeside MP, Mark Tami. Khalid Mahmood, Sion Simon, Mark Tami, Wayne David and Ian Lucas are all linked through Amicus. Whilst Watson, Mahmood and Simon are also West Midlands MPs. Telford MP, David Wright also has his constituency in the West ...
I haven't blogged for ages ... apologies, but the summer has been so busy with the boys and various work things taking over every spare minute. I am however managing to escape for the conference ... only because my hotel has got wireless internet .. .otherwise it would probably be impossible! I don't really know what to expect ... well I do actually but how best to manage the vast quantity of choice is another matter. I am really looking forward to it and just hope I manage to find my way around all the different venues without missing things ...
For the past couple of months I’ve been tinkering at weekends with a site which has just gone live - It’s called libdemvoice.org It’s a sort of ‘Conservative Home’ style site, for Liberal Democrats - I’ve captioned it ‘our place to talk’, as that neatly sums up it’s mission - it has no policy agenda, no [...]
Another unique experience - Yesterday attended the Who wants to be a Millionaire styled residents forum (trial run). What an innovative idea - residents were asked to vote on set questions then discuss the outcome. The makeup of the participants naturally involved a great range of people. The vibration from the room - everybody found it exciting. As confidence grew, several people, especially the elderly who under normal circumstances might not have stood up and spoke actually developed confidence to speak. Many usual faces (noise-makers) but the chair didn't allow them to hog the event. That's an acomplished ...
Alcohol level: Punch Drunk Mmm LIME DUCK ICE CREAM Not a comment on some new weird duck based deep fried lime ice cream at all, though I did buy some limes the other day… but a comment, not on Tony Blair, but on the Chancellor, Gordon Brown. Watching Andrew Marr’s Sunday AM program was quite revealing; Brown on the defensive, not a great start to a leadership campaign. ‘I used to
Last weekend my mother was down visiting me in Oxford. On Sunday, for lunch, we wandered into town and went to the Castle/Prison site. Apart from anything else I haven't been up the castle mound to see what the view is like. These days, I thought there was a promise to make publicly funded museums free to access. I was surprised therefore to find that the little museum at St George's Tower was apparently charging to get in, and that you had to pay to get up the castle mound itself. This whole development, resulting in ...
“Having a big old fight is pointless and just making things worse,” said Captain Leo Docherty, of the Scots Guards, who became so disillusioned that he quit the army last month. “All those people whose homes have been destroyed and sons killed are going to turn against the British,” he said. “It’s a pretty clear equation — if people are losing homes and poppy fields, they will go and fight. I
Hot on the heels of discussions about banning possession of BSDM material as discussed by Stephen Tall comes news that a charity is called for a ban on pro-suicide websites: Suicide is a major cause of death in young men The government should make it illegal for internet sites to incite or advise people on how to commit suicide, a charity says. Papyrus, set up to tackle young suicide, said the risk posed by pro-suicide websites was not being taken seriously enough. The charity said the 1961 Suicide Act should be amended to make it illegal to publish ... | < | September 2006 | > | ||||
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