Not a story I've seen widely reported, so many thanks to David Farrar of kiwiblog for this piece about the Israeli Ambassador to El Salvador. It appears that the Israeli Ambassador had more that Ferrero Rocher at his receptions. Ah, you are spoiling us Ambassador !
Greetings from Glasgow. I am wondering if Blair, for all his Scottish heritage, has even an inkling of the degree of anger about Trident in this country. Today the Scotsman - headline "The Trident Rebellion" has six pages devoted to the subject. But then...........Faslane is a good way from London. As is Plymouth. So if it all goes belly up and there is an accident (because of course we would never use the damn things) its only Scotland and the South West get it. I do feel angry, angry that Blair will get his wicked way, angry that ...
Having read Ellee Seymours blog, it appears that she has discovered that her blog is blocked in China. I've checked mine and my blog is fine. Indeed, I knew this to be the case because Google analytics shows that for some bizarre reason, a couple of people in China regularly read my blog. Ellee does ask why he blog is blocked. Come on Ellee, your blog is great and you come across as a nice person, but at the end of the day, you are an "evil" Tory, what do you expect ;-)
The great British film actress of the 1940s is 90 today. Thanks, Hooting Yard.
Welsh Liberal Democrat Assembly candidate for the Vale of Clwyd today branded government plans to cut civil service jobs in Wales "senseless". Mark was speaking before today’s Assembly debate on Public Services Employment in Wales. Wales is set to lose 5,000 civil service jobs by 2008, according to figures established by the Public and Commercial Services Union. The cuts are set to hit jobcentres, Department of Work and Pensions offices and tax offices in particular. Cllr Young said: "These plans are centralisation without sense. PCS members tell me that in the tax office, the building ...
Commenting on the Defence Committee’s report on the Nuclear Deterrent White Paper, Lembit Öpik, Leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats and MP for Montgomeryshire, said: “Just as we expected, the Prime Minister has been unable to offer any sensible justification for why the debate about whether to replace Trident needs to be settled by 2007. Anybody who looks at the facts for more than 30 seconds can see that this decision does not need to be taken for many years yet. “One is left with the impression that the timing is forced upon us ...
On the subject of bringing in compulsory language teaching for children from the age of seven showed just how ignorant he is for a minister of education on BBC Radio Five Live at teatime. I'm in favour of the policy (I already teach French to year sevens), but have real concerns about how this extra lesson will be fitted in to the timetable. We are only able to teach it to year sevens because there is more flexibility in Key Stage Three. Anyway, he was asked how it would be fitted in to the timetable, and his ...
I don't suppose the great man ever came here, but I have found another of those connections which please me so much. As I recorded recently, I have contributed the entry on Popper in the new Dictionary of Liberal Thought. Like many people, I first discovered his ideas through Bryan Magee's excellent short book in the Fontana Modern Masters series. I knew from his Confessions of a Philosopher that Magee was evacuated to Market Harborough during the war. I now know - having bought his latest volume of memoirs Growing Up in a War - the he stayed ...
And we're off again. The BBC is reporting this evening: One of the PM's closest aides Ruth Turner wrote of her concerns that "Lord Levy had asked her to lie for him".This emerged in court when the BBC was granted permission to report the reasons an injunction was served about a cash-for-honours news story. The judge who granted the injunction at the police's request said "there is a substantial element of truth in what the intended BBC broadcast was to say".Guido Fawkes suggests that the actual words used were rather stronger. There were also a couple of interesting ...
Last night BBC2 showed the first part of The Trap: Whatever happened to our dreams of freedom?, a three part series by Adam Curtis that argues that post-war initiatives that aimed to set mankind free have in fact created new means of entrapment. Curtis was the producer of The Power of Nightmares, an excellent three-part documentary that showed how the neo-conservatives and Al Qaeda both exploited fear of enemies abroad and moral decline at home to dominate the political agenda and promote their own conservative beliefs. In the first part, subtitled F*** you, buddy!, Curtis discussed how various different ...
My local Tories spent the last Full Council meeting rattling their sabres. They made it very clear that Labour’s current budget would just be an “interim” budget, because after May, the place would be full of “young, professional Conservative Councillors” with new brooms ready to sweep the place clean. This is quite a tall order. I [...]
Listening to David Cameron squirm this morning on Radio Four when questioned about John Redwood's blog was amusing, but also brought back memories of Andrei Previn and Eric Morecambe. John Redwood's blog has, apparently, made clear his doubts about the arguments in favour of man made CO2 emissions being responsible for global warming. As the interviewer pressed Cameron on why Redwood was in charge of the panel looking in to economic matters if he does not agree with Cameron and the vast majority of the scientific world, Cameron was loathe to say what Redwood was saying ...
All of the evidence suggests that Patrick Mercer is probably not a racist. What he said was ill advised, but I think in the reaction to it we have failed to look at the implications of what he said. In my view the real problem, and it is far from exclusive to the military is macho [...]
Forgive the heading, but this is a question the Bush family really need to be able to answer in the affirmative. Firstly George W Bush choked when trying to swallow a pretzel. Now, George Bush Senior has been admitted to hospital suffering from an inability to swallow water (dehydration). Perhaps it is a job for Bill Clinton, after all, he never had problems getting people to swallow !
Dear old John Redwood has been singing the praises of Global Warming: We will benefit from the better weather for tourism, agriculture and outdoor sports. Fewer people will die of the cold and from snow and ice in the winter. Excellent! 
Climate change tax policies seem to be the order of the day, as everyone compares what the Tories have said with what Brown will say in the next Budget. The FT saysDavid Cameron and Gordon Brown will on Monday set out sharply conflicting visions of tackling climate change, with the Conservatives proposing a raft of new taxes to penalise air travel while the chancellor prefers a carrot rather than stick approach. Brown criticises the plans, obviously, as “ill-conceived, short-termist, unworkable and unfair”:However, Mr Brown’s attack may have been blunted by praise for Conservative plans from Matthew Taylor, Tony Blair’s former ...
An interesting debate has been taking place in the media today about which party has the strongest “green” credentials, after David Cameron’s policies on flight taxes were unveiled yesterday and both he and Gordon Brown spoke on the issue today. Noticeably lacking from the discussion though were policies from the Lib Dems. This was pretty annoying because we Lib Dems have long been the
I waved goodbye (well, actually, I kissed her hand and called her “ma’am”) to one of my icons on Saturday. This was fairly unexpected: until a few days before, I hadn’t even known Jacqueline Pearce – famous as Servalan from Blake’s 7 and in Hammer horrors – was moving to South Africa to work with endangered monkeys, but thanks to a fab little shop in Edinburgh, I got a chance to see her. So, if you feel like wishing Jackie luck, drop by her blog, and if you visit Edinburgh, saunter all the way down Lothian Road to visit Voga. ...
So the worst-kept secret in motoring has finally been made official, Aston Martin has been sold to Prodrive and co. It gives Ford a much-needed cash injection, but make no mistake, it won’t make much of a dent in the $23bn “restructuring mortgage” they recently took out. Now Ford have got the taste for it, are [...]
My final job on Friday, still pretty tired from the by election, was a meeting with a group of residents in East Speke. There is a particular problem of anti social behaviour that they are worried about. I said I'd take this up for them and help in whatever way I could.
Friday just gone was the stakeholder meeting for the neighbourhood agreement we're working on. Councillors, officers and representatives of various groups in South Liverpool got together to look at priorities for a number of themes. The idea is that this then gets approved by the neighbourhood committees and then starts to form the priorities the council and partners agree to work too. Its a sort of local version of the bigger liverpool wide agreement. We have to have the liverpool wide one (government says) but Liverpool's also taken the decision to have the local agreements ...
Because I’m a sad geek who spends far too much time thinking about electoral systems, since last Wednesday I’ve been pondering the question of how to elect members of the Upper House of Parliament. So, assuming that the role of the Upper House is primarily one of review, scrutiny and amendment rather than a primary [...]
With the Trident vote due this week we are likely to see a number of Labour MPs vote against the Government. Today we have had the first resignation over the issue. Nigel Griffiths, the Deputy Leader of the Commons, said he was quitting "with a heavy heart... but a clear conscience".
According to today’s Indy, David Blunkett’s weighty memoirs, The Blunkett Tapes, is one of the top five unfinished reads - books everyone owns, but no-one’s read. I have to confess, I’m surprised: I didn’t know anybody had bought it.
Did any British star of stage and screen ever have such a marvellous name as Googie Withers? Say it… Googie. Withers. Googie Withers. Here at Hooting Yard, we salute Googie, still unwithered, for today is her ninetieth birthday. 
The City Council is currently consulting on proposed improvements to the Bristol Road area in Northfield between the junctions with the Relief Road (under construction) and Frankley Beeches Road. This section of the Bristol Road is obviously some way south of the Selly Oak Ward, although the consultation will be of interest to local residents who shop in Northfield. However, it also gives some
FA Cup draw just done this lunchtime. If we beat Chelsea in the replay on Monday night then we play Blackburn for a place in the first cup final to be played at Wembley (hopefully...). The other semi will be between Watford and the winner of the Boro/Utd replay. A good draw. Annoyingly I will have to miss the replay at White Hart Lane - it clashes with Full Council. I know where I'd rather be, but this is one of those times when I'm going to have to miss out. Bad news following yesterday's match - ...
...in the Cheltenham Festival week tory cock-up stakes. Mercer and Mundell, a pair of unknowns, are running half a length clear of their leader. Is there a moral to this? Perhaps.
Last week I wrote about the Wrexham, Shropshire & Marylebone Railway (WSMR) and its attempt to run a direct service from Shrewsbury to London. So far, had found itself stymied by the weird combination of private monopoly and centralised control that now runs Britiain's railways. Now, reports the Shropshire Star, the company is trying again. But see what contortions it is being forced into: The new plans do not affect the link from Shropshire, which will still go ahead, but WSMR trains will not take passengers to London from Wolverhampton, instead they will stop at Tamebridge in Walsall. ...
It is the first birthday of my blog today - err, Happy Birthday to me .... The Courier called me yesterday following on from the earlier article about the Magdalen Green damage/parking issue (click on headline above to view earlier article) and in the news item in today's paper, I emphasise the need for any solution to include residents' priority parking - consultation on which will take place later this Spring. Thought I'd use the first anniversary of the blog to promote another local blog and website, very impressively created by a West End resident: ...
When Kerry Lewis and Neil Young began dating, there was one extra caring commitment for them both to consider... And just as their love has blossomed, with a May wedding on the horizon, so their relationship with 14-year-old John* has flourished through their dedication as carers. Redcar and Cleveland Council is highlighting their partnership and John's progress to promote Share The Care Week, from March 19-March 25, hoping more people will be persuaded to follow the couple's shining example. Kerry's links with John, who has special needs, dates back nine years. She remembers: "I was giving ...
I am still bemused by a discussion I had over the weekend with BBC Welsh affairs editor, Vaughan Roderick. On Good Morning Wales on Friday he was previewing the Welsh Liberal Democrat Conference and referred to predictions I had made on this blog as to the outcome of the forthcoming elections. With characteristic, but misplaced generosity, Vaughan praised my knowledge of proportional representation systems, describing me as 'having a brain the size of a planet' on such matters. Unfortunately, I misheard him and thought he said that I had 'a brain the size of Thanet'. It was only ...
Surely it is symptomatic of how little the Conservative Party has changed that a Tory of David Davis' seniority can predict the eventual return of Patrick Mercer to the front bench almost as if nothing of consequence had happened. Patrick Mercer's comments were not in the same league as Enoch Powell's back in the 1960s, but they were nevertheless inappropriate and showed a view of racism that is unacceptable in twenty first century Britain. Irrespective of the situation as it exists in the armed forces, Mr. Mercer's job was to show leadership by condemning racism in all its ...
There is a wonderful site called "Chairmans Comment" which is subtitled "The senile ramblings of Ken Bates" The site posts up the utterances of Chairman Ken particularly as printed in the Leeds match day programme. The latest offering is reproduced below. If anyone can actually understand what the message is other than "we are screwed" then please do let me know. The Forward Sports Fund is a fund incorporated in the Cayman Islands. The Fund’s UK representative is Ken Bates but the Fund is administered from Switzerland. In January 2005, Mr Bates was approached by Leslie Grayling ...
It was the critical look at ‘Yes Minister’ that gave me the biggest jolt in a thoughtful night. The suggestion that it was a deliberate attempt to put across a specific economic and political agenda- that there is no such thing as ‘Public Service’. ‘The Trap – what happened to our dreams of freedom ’ (BBC2 Sunday nights) is adult TV - and the maker Adam Curtis presents clear challenges to us all in the political world. Core idea – a paranoid view of selfish individualism is perverting our society and threatening our freedoms. We now ...
The policy announcements from the British Conservatives on the environment turn out- as usual- to be as badly thought out as ever- VAT on domestic flights and a "frequent flyer tax". I am a frequent flyer myself, and if there was another way to conduct my business, which did not involve bleary eyed, early morning flights then believe me I would do it- but as yet there is no substitute but for the personal inspection of a business and with it face to face meetings with management. The idea that something so vital to the investment process can be ...
{Arnie} Am I the only one who's concerned that the UK's new military satellite system is called Skynet? Couldn't listen to the news this weekend without a chill running down my spine.
Nich Starling brings us news of how one Tory plans to beat the Lib Dems. For me, though, the most interesting snippet is the advice that ‘New Tories’ should sneak into their constituency offices in the dead of night to hang a picture of their party leader on the wall. Stealth picture hanging tells you [...]
Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council's Mayor, Councillor Mary Ovens, is holding a civic reception for the latest winners of the annual Mayor's Community Achievement Awards on Wednesday, March 14. Councillors have nominated 15 individuals and groups from across the Borough for the awards in recognition of their voluntary work. The ceremony is being held in the Mayors Parlour at 7pm. Councillor Ovens said: "The work these people do is simply fantastic and I'm delighted to be able to officially give them the recognition they deserve". The full list is: # Carol Anderson & Sue Franks: ...
A special gentleman and Chair of Governors of one of our local primary school died on Friday - a committed parent and active community worker, we'll really, really miss miss him. Sometimes life twists in strange ways. Saturday found me at our local Bury North Labour MP's inaugural coalition climate change initiative meeting - he said he wanted to work with everybody interested in combating
Dunston Hill and Whickham East is one of the marginal wards we hold in Gateshead. It should be Labour with a comfortable majority but we gained it when the boundaries were redrawn three years ago.Labour have put out a claim that we do not consult people, bizarrely on decisions of the Labour run council. The claim is rubbish. We spend a great deal of time carrying out surveys in the ward.So the
I have had an interesting weekend of looking at the issues of culture and conflict. On Sunday there was the usual St Patrick's Day Parade in which as usual I played the guitar as part of the Tipperary County Association. The song played most frequently is "Its a long way to Tipperary" which was written by a Londoner about soldiers. Tipperary was probably chosen for the number of vowels, but when
This morning's Western Mail reports that an empty passenger jet has been flown from Cardiff to Heathrow and back six times a week for the past five months simply to retain a runway slot at the London airport: The 124-seat British Airways Airbuses, under contract to BMed, have flown the 240-mile round trip six times a week since last October, (daily flight times vary) with each flight producing more than five tonnes of carbon dioxide.They are estimated to have produced the same level of emissions as 36,000 cars undertaking the journey on the M4, despite not transporting any passengers.This ...
Watching BBC Breakfast, first we had a story that since GCSE Languages stopped being compulsory the number of people taking them have dropped. Followed by David Cameron talking about policies, but not actually giving any details.
LibertyCat: If you wanted to know whether Newton's Principia is phallogocentric or not, you might be better off studying who Newton was and what he did in the rest of his life rather than trying to deconstruct the text. On the other hand, this wouldn't help you in this particular case. Probably because whether or not the Principia is phallogocentric is not a useful question. Knowing whether or | < | March 2007 | > | ||||
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