The Voice is supposed to cover good news and… not so good news, so as it’s late on Sunday night lets get some not so good news out of the way: Bad news for Ming Campbell in headline figures of a GfK NOP poll Bad news for Nicol Stephen as he faces a police probe in to [...]
We’re now listing PPCs for Hornsey & Wood Green, Edinburgh West, Streatham, Colchester, Filton & Bradley Stoke and Rochdale. Congratulations to all those selected or re-selected, and thank you to those who supplied the information. Seats advertising for PPCs will appear on this post soonish. PPC news
Matthew Turner points us to the Virtual Stoa and Chris Brooke's cat Enkidu.
A significant and alarming post from US Librarian Roger Owen Green: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is frantically dispersing its library collections to preempt Congressional intervention,according to internal emails released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Contrary to promises by EPA Deputy Administrator Marcus Peacock that all of the former library
Norwich voters have in recent years elected a few Green councillors. I am friends with one of them, and a very nice person she is, although I'd would never vote Green. The real reason for this is that I know what they stand for, and it's not just caring for the environment (all political parties do that now to a greater or lesser degree). So I was pleased to see Joe Otten highlight some details about the Green's new joint principle speaker on his blog HERE. It really should be read by all potential Green voters, especially those living ...
I don't know if people have seen this already, but this is unbelievably stinging in its criticism of Bush from American TV. It is well worth listening to it and much of it also would apply to Tony Blair also !
Inspired by the Damn Interesting website, here's a puzzle for you. How many of these creatures are imaginary? The Amazonian Giant Centipede, Scolopendra gigantea, grows to about 35cm long, climbs onto the ceiling of big caves, hangs on by some of its back legs and catches bats to eat. The crustacean Cymothoa exigua is a shrimp-like parasite that attaches itself to the tongue of a fish called
Yes, surfing through some of my favourite gadget and gizmo online stores today, I found that www.ebuyer.co.uk have got about 50 Nintendo wii consoles on order and have yet to sell out their pre-orders. Click HERE to get to the wii page. If you want one, you have to but the whole package (extra controllers, games, etc), but it's all good value and you have to set up an ebuyer account. This has been a public service announcement !
I'm getting a bit embarrassed about how infrequently I have been blogging. I could blame it on my intermittent IT connection, but I have lost the habit. I set up this blog as a means of holding myself to accountable to residents, but if that were true, you'd think I wasn't doing anything. I've just completed my October timesheet and was quite surprised by how much I had been up to....
Prague Tory reckons half of his visitors are Lib Dems - and he's worried. Andrew Sullivan is looking into Mormon underwear. My favourite Tennessean Republican Bob Krumm is coming back to life after losing in the state senate elections, with an interesting post on blatant racial discrimination in the US Navy
Watching the evolving events surrounding the death of Alexander Litvinenko over this weekend - including TV cameras camped outside his house in Osier Crescent, which is in my constituency. I had previously texted Richard Sumray, who is Chair of Haringey Primary Care Trust and also the person charged with the health brief in our local emergency planning team. I just wanted to be sure whether there
Alan Watkins is one of my favourite political commentators. Always a pleasure to read, he is steeped in political history, and has an artfully judicious sense of perspective. I’ve rarely quoted him here owing to the Independent’s absurd firewall policy, behind which his cadenced words of wisdom slumbered happily, undisturbed by potential readers damned if they were willing to fork out a quid an
Following on from yesterday's story about Tait's Lane, a resident advised me earlier today that Scottish & Southern Electric must have been in Tait's Lane yesterday (they definitely hadn't been by Friday night) - and the hole residents are rightly complaining about is now filled in. The only problem is that the light is still not working! Am following this up with the City Council.
Great piece in last Sundays Observer about whether or not we should switch to eco bulbs. According to this piece compact fluorescent light bulbs use five times less electricity to do the same job and produce 60-70 per cent fewer CO2 emissions than normal lighting. I was also amazed to be told at the Green Tea in Newbury (which followed the showing of "An Inconvenient Truth") that if every household fitted one of these bulbs we could shut down one power station! Some good examples are shown here and here and given the green score for our household we will ...
Well, the weekend’s shopping didn’t go quite according to plan. Despite spending six hours in Manchester on Saturday afternoon / evening, I didn’t manage to buy a single present, and spent fifteen unnecessary pounds on food from the Christmas Markets instead. I think I suffer from some kind of "Shopper's Bewilderment." There's so much choice that I go a bit mad, and am incapable of any kind of 
Just over a week ago I spoke at the e-Democracy 06 conference. In fact, I was all prepared to give a presentation on the National Project and ICELE at a workshop, and then I was asked at a couple of days' notice to also speak at a plenary session. So I talked about participation in Kingston - our devolution to Neighbourhoods, the way we encourage citizens to speak at meetings, our...
A couple of weeks ago I started a list of things that annoyed me about Christmas. The second thing on my list is - Americans ! Well, not American's "per se", more the American obsession with "Happy Holidays !". I thought America was supposed to be a Christian country, obsessed and filled with Conservative Christians banging on about god, Jesus and the devil, yet the same country that celebraes halloween (bizarre and contradictory in itself), fails to wish people a "Happy Christmas" and is obsessed with "Happy Holidays ". I go on my holidays in ...
The Times reports today that the Department of Health have come in for severe criticism form doctors over the sloppy way they have organised the ordering of the annual flu vaccine. Only 37% of the at-risk group had been vaccinated by the end of October, the official start of the flu season, leading to fears that there may be much more cases of flu this winter than there might normally be. According to health care professionals, the flu vaccine simply isn't available. What is of particular concern, and something The Times does not bring up is that a mutated pandemic ...
I found this disturbing and rather extraordinary story on the BBC website today. You really couldn't make it up and all very sad.
Amongst the various petitions on the 10 Downing Street website is this one calling for STV for public elections (as Scotland is getting for its local elections in May). elections stv
I’ve been visiting family this weekend, and we had a quick trip to Dungeness I’m not sure if Dungeness features in a book I have somewhere called “Bollocks to Alton Towers - Typically British days out”, but it certainly should. Built on a vast expanse of shingle, with its own miniature railway operating in the shadow [...]
Andy, Nich, Mark and others have all been listing ten things they’d never do - just when I was afraid I was going to be left out of the fun (after all, it looks mad to do a meme if you haven’t been tagged, no?), Will tagged me. I find myself with the nagging feeling that [...]
Here’s an interesting counterfactual to conjure with - how might the media coverage of Princess Diana’s death have been different in today’s ultra-connected world? The question is prompted in my mind by a story in today’s Telegraph, ‘BBC had regrets over Diana coverage’: Confidential BBC documents show that nearly half the population (44 per cent) felt alienated by the blanket media coverage of
Following my tagging by Duncan Borrowman on the "top things I'd never do" meme, here's my list, carefully edited down from my initial 134-point list: 1. Walk by Fortnum and Mason’s without buying a luxury bone2. Grow a beard3. Take advice on dog walking from the leader of a political party4. Enter the Eurovision song contest for a second time5. Date an Alsatian6. Date an Alsatian (no, really)7. Get an ear pierced8. Miss an edition of Just a Minute 9. Send a false leg to someone as a “joke”10. Tag anyone else with a meme
If there is one word that is over used in the English Language I believe it is sorry. Sorry is a hard word to use sincerely, but much easier to use to avoid an adverse reaction. Now I know we all use, or most people use the word sorry out of politeness; bumping into someone when in a crowded place or when you mis-dial and call someone by mistake. But for someone to say sorry and to mean it is
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The Telegraph today highlights a poll claiming that up to 68% of the population want an English parliament. At least I think that's what the various, slightly confusing, figures say. It might mean that 68% of Scots want an English parliament for all I can work out. No worries. Suffice it to say that I find myself, once again, in the minority. But not, I hasten to add, because of any particular devotion to Westminster, far from it. I loathe the place and all that it stands for personally. But because I do believe ...
Afghanistan is, from an anthropological perspective, a segmented society. The primary patterns of political loyalty are to families, clans and ethnic groups. Fundamentalist secularists tend to see religion as a cause of problems. It is in fact human nature that is a cause of problems religion tends to temper the worst aspects of human nature. It is important to remember that religion tends to
When {The Queen's Speech only covered one aspect of security} Labour talk about security these days, it's all about fighting criminals and battling terrorists. But there is more to security than that ... as I wrote about in my latest newspaper column, which came out this week: Amid all the pomp and circumstance (of which there is a lot when Her Majesty pays us a visit in Parliament) the airways were overwhelmed with the Queen’s Speech and the pending Blair Switch Project, but the latest unemployment statistics were published with relatively little comment. The rise in unemployment itself was ...
The news has just broken in the last half hour of Berlusconi collapsing while giving a speech to his youth movement. The video could not be more dramatic, as he slumps on the rostrum and his bodyguards try to lift him away shouting 'Let go' as he clutches to the podium as if his life depended on it. Romano Prodi has wished the man they call the cavaliere a speedy recovery, which is perhaps a graciousness beyond the call of duty in the usual mud-garden of Italian politics. Presumably, Berlusconi will recover shortly -- his spokesman promises he'll be ... 
Now, we may not be at the end of a war in the conventional sense in which national planning was necessary to keep up the war effort, but have a look at this and see how many of the captions can still be applied to today's political establishment and direction. It's quite scary really: Courtesy of revver.com after F A Hayek & Look magazine. Is T Blair the "strong leader" brought in to enforce obedience to the plan whom they thought they would one day be able to dispense with I wonder? Is there any ...
Christopher Herrick is one of the world's leading organists. He was at Westminster Abbey for ten years, and since then has made a very successful solo career, playing and recording around the world. And Kingston can claim him as their own, because he lives in the Royal Borough and practices on the famous Frobenius Organ in Kingston Parish Church. So it was a great delight to hear him...
Back in September I wrote about seeing our glorious Oxfordshire leader, "Kaiser" Keith Mitchell, on the southern region section of the Politics Show attacking Land Value Tax. He was on again today, talking about one of his pet subjects - car travel and road transport. He made a wonderful case for Land Value Tax. He pointed out that once upon a time the M40 stopped at Oxford, and from then on it was a network of slow country roads. And then they extended the motorway and you can now zip right through to Birmingham and that "it ...
The Sunday newspaper offers more food for thought than normal.
So what was I opening? Not the usual mayoral duty - but one I was so pleased to do. With me is Howard Greenoff, the Bereavement Service Manager. He is in charge of Kingston and Surbiton Cemetaries. If you have been to Kingston Cemetary recently you will have noted many improvements to the grounds. Now the reception and offices near the gate have...
Young and Disabled and Positively Artistic - the name says it all. The show at the United Reformed Church in Eden Street showcased the work of children and young people from across the Borough, giving them both the opportunity to display their work and also a chance to get their voices heard. Chloe Parsons wrote this about her treatment for cancer: And here she...
This article on the dissolution of the UK is quite an extraordinary one for a newspaper like the Telegraph to place as a leader on it's front page. Possibly it's preparing to align itself against Gordon Brown's solidly pro-union stance which will only get stronger as Labour increasingly relies on Welsh and Scottish seats to sustain it's numbers. The Union and all it's connected issues such as West Lothian, subsidiarity, historical tradtition and transfer payments still generates some political heat. The question is whether the issue is getting hotter, or if the establishment of devolved political structures of various types ...
Tony Blair has made a partial apology for Britain's role in the slave trade hundreds of years ago. However, some people are still calling for a full apology. All very noble I'm sure, but I personally did not profit from slavery, I never have supported slavery and I had no control over it, so why should the government feeling obliged to apologise on my behalf. I wouldn't expect the child of a murderer to apologise for what his or her parents did, I wouldn't expect Joseph Stalin's children to apologise for the excesses and terrors of Stalin's regime in ...
Nich has tagged me with Iain’s “Ten Things I Would Never Do” meme. This has taken me a while as I’ve found it quite tricky, being more of a “Never say never” chap (but definitely not a Never Say Never Again chap), so some of the list are on the Grumpy Old Men side. Without [...]
And though it’s true, like all the other guests at the convention, I’ll be selling the pictures I’m signing, I liken fans to pilgrims, and pilgrims have a tradition of being ripped off. Getting robbed on the way to Mecca or Canterbury, then sold terrible statues and other religious souvenirs when they get there, is [...]
News from Russia is becoming increasingly bleak. I was watching Andrew Marr on Sunday AM interviewing a friend of the late Alexander Litvinenko this morning. During that interview Marr observed that the Russian Duma had recently passed a law which effectively made it legal in Russia to order the death of dissidents abroad. If true, this is a monstrous law that should have triggered strong protest from European governments. Russia, having shed communist tyranny only a decade ago, is now rapidly sliding towards fascism. It is not only the murders of Litvinenko and Anna Politkovskaya that suggest that ...
Yesterday I wrote that Peter Hain was reported as having shifted from card-carrying member of CND to a supporter of Trident on the grounds that unilateralism had cost Labour votes in the past. Today, on Sunday AM, he gave Andrew Marr a different reason for his U-turn. Rather than crass opportunism, as it appeared on Friday, he now says that "...since we are where we are, and the history of having an independent nuclear deterrent, I do not think that people in Britain will accept us giving that up." So basically, the reason for replacing Trident is because it ...
I don't usually comment on polls. The problem is that within a week or two whatever I have said becomes out of date with the publication of a new survey. Indeed, because polls use different samples and methods they truly are snapshots that could well change within a week or two. What is normally reliable however are those trends that can be ascertained consistently from polling data. Thus, the Conservatives this morning may well be taking comfort from a poll that shows David Cameron ahead of Gordon Brown but all the detail worth taking notice of is in the Observer. ...
“Tory leader’s satisfaction ratings are comparable to that of Howard, Hague and IDS … The revelation that only 25 per cent of the electorate consider themselves satisfied with Cameron’s performance as leader of the opposition - rising only to 45 per cent among Tory voters, down from 60 per cent in February - will be [...]
The latest polls show Cameron floundering. Will the Tories notice?
My colleague Mark Valladares has tagged me in some on-line viral game where you list 10 things you'd never do... well o.k. then, it's been a slow week... 1. Join the Labour Party 2. Go hunting 3. Discriminate 4. Buy a Little Britain DVD 5. Tap-dance 6. Let my girlfriend add comments to this list 7. Subscribe to Hello magazine 8. Borrow on a credit card 9. Think that the TV licence fee is a good idea 10. Support Londoners forking out for the government's Olympics balls-up I tag Richard Thomas... and Peter John... Peter a ... | < | November 2006 | > | ||||
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