Today was Gordon Brown's day; and the common media consensus appears to be that he did enough to ward off the immediate threat to his leadership from Labour rebels. All of which took me back a year to the high praise which greeted Ming Campbell's speech to the 2007 Lib Dem conference - here at [...]
Newsnight has just claimed there is to be a Cabinet reshuffle next Friday. They say that Geoff Hoon will be sent to Brussels as Britain's new European Commissioner and that Ruth Kelly has chosen to stand down. The programme is tipping Liam Byrne and Jim Murphy as the ministers to be promoted. Geoff Hoon is being interviewed at the moment and has certainly not contradicted any of this.
Gordon Brown did his best today but the plaudits should really go to his wife. My favourite politician is Vince Cable, gravitas, substance and everything that 'new' Labour has long since lost. Judge for yourself.
In the Western mail today there was an article dealing with Stonehenge and the Welsh stone that was used for the inner ring of Stonehenge. Its an intriguing thought that man carried these dolerite monoliths 250 miles from North Pembrokeshire to Wiltshire. It is also a romantic theory. Whether he did or not will remain to be seen but I find it very unlikely. The likeliest culprit was a glacier 10,000 years ago which originated in Ireland and spread across South West Britain . The stone itself is particularly interesting. I was given a piece a few years back and ...
A rather nice one, I think. This time it's Councillor Ed Butcher (Stroud Green), Lib Dem Environment spokesperson, with Charlotte Schmitz. Charlotte's dad David is the Lib Dem propective Parliamentary Candidate for Tottenham. She seems to be pondering a tricky political question from one of the other guests....
It really is amazing how timid the British authorities are in the face of financial meltdown, despite what Gordon Brown said this afternoon. The Americans really understand finance - they have a culture and history dominated by financial innovation and banking collapse. The British naively swallow all that stuff about sound money: they really think it's real - as if anything that cascades round the world at the rate of $3 trillion a day can ever be sound. The authorities watch with fingers crossed as the markets plummet, believing they are watching the free market in action - when actually ...
My big brother is considerably richer than me. This is by dint of both hard work and good fortune, and although I can't deny a bit of jealousy on occasion, I'm mostly bloody proud of him for where he's got to, given some of the places he's been. However, because he's considerably richer than me, he can occasionally afford to splurge on the sort of thing that is not even on my horizons (he has a Wii, for example). Today, he has splurged rather impressively: The picture isn't very clear, because it was texted to me. In case you can't ...
How do you combine in a single blog post something about Lib Dem conference photo ops, my cookery plans and Gordon Brown's speech to the Labour war zone? Well, here goes. Brown's speech was pitched today at Labour members, rather than the country as a whole. It pressed all the right buttons in that respect. Other than some soothing prose suggesting Brown was an ordinary guy who recognised the
I have just finished reading 'The Last Oil Shock' by David Strahan. He sounds like an American but he is a British journalist so the book is readable and coherent. What he explores is the expected peak in oil production which many people expect very soon but which the oil companies and governments tend to want to ignore, for obvious reasons. The book is excellent and made me think hard about the future, despite the fact that I remain quite sanguine about what lies ahead and I question the essential theory that the world is running out of oil as ...
A woman in Cheltenham who bit her son's arm has been sent to prison for five months. She admitted to doing this, told police it had been a knee jerk reaction as she believed her son had hurt her daughter and attended anger management classes. She is a single mother and had admitted struggling of late. She has gone to prison, her children have gone into foster care, there has been a lengthy court case and countless hours of police and social service involvement costing many thousands of £s. Meanwhile, sad to note, there are probably tens of children in ...
Speaking as a Haringey resident (let me be very clear), I'm finding the dishonest outpourings of the Labour candidate in the Alexandra by election rather hard to swallow! First, Joanna tries to make religion a party political issue by blaming the Lib Dems for 'calling' the by election on Yom Kippur. It's a lie. This terrible and totally unnecessary decision was taken by the Labour-run Council despite behind-the-scenes protests. Labour could probably have stopped it if they had bothered, and the Council had ample choice of dates. On top of this, Joanna now claims to be riding to the rescue ...
That's how Nick Robinson's piece for BBC TV on Gordon Brown's speech to Labour Party conference broke down. The 4 minute 50 second piece was 42% Nick Robinson speaking, and only 58% Sarah or Gordon Brown speaking. Add to that the preceeding and suceeding segments - more BBC journalists and presenters talking about the speech - [...]
He's a White Sox fan (in other news, the Cubs have secured the best record in the National League giving them the home field advantage in the playoffs. The Sox go into a 3 game series against the Twins which could decide the AL Central division - a Chicago derby is still a possibility for [...]
On Sunday Duncan Borrowman posted a video by Ronnie Fearn that made it clear he is supporting Ros Scott as Party President. Since then Lembit's campaign site has had a redesign, but Ronnie is still included in its list of supporters. A comment on Duncan's posting suggests that Jonathan Fryer should not be included in that list either.
I am not normally a big fan of John Le Carré's political views but, speaking to the Telegraph today he has hit the nail on the head as to the way that this Labour Government have undermined our civil liberties over the past eleven years: The writer, who admitted he has a reputation as "an angry old man", said he was furious that the Government had been allowed to get away with a sustained attack on civil liberties. "Partly, I'm angry that there is so little anger around me at what is being done to our society, supposedly in order ...
Gordon Brown says today that today's difficult global economic situation is "no time for a novice." Cue to shots of Miliband looking about 12 years old and to footage of Cameron looking like he's never run anything more than a bath in his life. Gordon presumably wants Barack Obama to win in November - can't imagine the McCain/Palin ticket exciting too many Labour people. John McCain's big line against Obama - is precisely the one Gordon is using against the pretenders to Number 10 - that he has no experience. Of course this logic slightly falls apart when you consider ...
I added a Link to the Blog of Paul Mckenna and he added me a Link. He has now removed my link but I want to keep some Cross Party Relationships I will Leave it on. Paul Why did you remove it, is it because you cant stand a Lib Dem or did your party tell you to remove it?
Like my colleague Stephen Glenn, I too found Alex Neil's comments about seeking an alternative to the Lloyds-TSB deal for HBOS to be extraordinary. Stephen's comments are well made and I would only add that yet again the Gnats are more concerned with largely symbolic issues rather than the realities of financial regulation and ownership. Let's face it: as a publicly-quoted company, HBOS's ownership hasn't been in exclusively Scottish hands for some time. Why should a collection of the Scottish banking great and good necessarily be a better option to run HBOS than Lloyds-TSB? There's no particular reason to think ...
It seems so long ago, but in fact it's just over a week since Lib Dem Voice asked our readers whether Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne were right to signal that that the party is going to drop its passionate commitment to campaigning for the UK to sign up to the European single currency. As [...]
I listened to the speech and felt it to be Brown's most explicit pitch to the left I've ever seen him make. It had the usual New Labour gloss but really this was a speech for the party, not the public. Still, the promises he's making make me feel... uncomfortable. A phrase popped into my head today. It's "Emotional Blackmail". He is taking our money and promising to do something so incredibly virtuous and noble with it that you can't complain or you're a fucking evil bitch from hell. I, dear reader, dislike being manipulated. I dislike being coerced. I ...
The BBC wins Cutest Video of the Day for this effort. And it also wins Worst Grammar of the Day for the text that accompanies it: A pig has been rearing three tiger cubs on a farm in southern Ukraine after being abandoned by their mother.
I am pleased to see that Vince Cable will be the guest at Harborough constituency Lib Dem's 1st Logan Dinner on 19 March 2009. The dinner, which will be held at Raitha's Indian Restaurant on the A6 at Kibworth, is named in honour of J. W. "Paddy" Logan, who was Liberal MP for this constituency 1891-1904 and 1910-16. For more about him, see an old House Points column of mine.
The Conservative PPC for Pendle went for a walk big huff. The Lancashire Telegraph really know how to be biased don't they. Afzal Anwar hasn't just been on a walk he has been doing many other things that impact the society in Pendle and across the Country, but have they given him a mention Nope. Not at All. Afzal not only sits on the Whitefield Community Forum, Is a Governor for Ghausia Girls High School, Played Cricket for a Charitable Cause and even joint a group of walkers at Pendle's Walking Festival 2008. But not even one of these things ...
Having watched the 6 O'Clock news I see that wall-to-wall uncritical coverage and adulation is the BBC order of the day...sigh.
The closure of the North London line has been accepted by users and residents as part of the essential work needed to make the line better and crucially make it more able to carry freight - something I'm hugely in favour of. But the costs, efforts and communications of the closure have been a bit more tricky. Overground and Lorol are all pretty new creations but the management of this scheme has been laden with decent folk and good intentions but somehow it falls short of the mark. The cordons closing stations have been pretty lame. The signage (as shown ...
The BBC is reporting that Government Under-secretary of State Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch, apparently, since you ask) was singing the praises of ID cards at a pro-card conference fringe meeting yesterday. It appears she believes that ID cards should be forced on younger children and that, by 2010, it might not be possible for an incoming Conservative government to back out of the scheme. The reasons to oppose the scheme are covered in detail in numerous different places. I'm not going to repeat them here and few people can seriously believe the "if you've done nothing wrong, you've ...
Gordon Brown tried to reassert his authority today and to be fair, his conference speech was better than most people expected. For me, the start and end was classic Blair and felt that it had been written by one of Blair's ex speechwriters. It lost its way in the middle as Brown reverted to type with lists of promises and achievements on health and education as though he was presenting a budget speech. But it had a theme his party could unite around for the week and the attacks on the Tories were his most devastating to date. The speech ...
Will the credit crunch and the sudden downturn in financial markets fundamentally change our politics and bring in a more confrontational era? Since the collapse of communism, the Left has been ideologically lost. Across the globe, all of the arguments have been won by the Right. In response, Left wing parties embraced capitalism. The rhetoric of state control has been replaced by a 'third way', and vacuous notions of 'fairness' and 'governing for all, not the few.' In doing so, they enjoyed their best electoral success in years, ending years of Conservative rule. In turn, the Conservatives were forced to ...
At City Council committees last night, Christmas lights displays across the City this festive season were agreed. I'm pleased to say that the Christmas trees and lights for the West End - at both Seabraes and West Port - are again included. At last week's Christmas Week meeting, the committee agreed that this year's West End Christmas Week will run from Saturday 22nd November to Saturday 29th November. The week will start with a Community Safety Event, with the Annual Christmas Lights Switch On and Fireworks on Wednesday 26th November. There will be numerous other events, culminating with the Christmas ...
Few in a Labour party currently riven by civil war and threatened with electoral wipe-out will be giving much thought to the relationship with the Liberal Democrats. For their part, the Lib Dems are busy putting as much distance as possible from the government as they seek to take advantage of Labour's current political weakness. [...]
I am doing a Poll to try and estimate what the results of the European Elections of 2009 will be. For this I have a Poll that you can Vote on HERE. The Poll will Close in a Week and the Results will be released giving how many seats each party will have. To Vote Follow the link http://www.polldaddy.com/p/946184/ P.S. If you have a Blog please put a Link up to the Poll!
I have been feeling a bit snowed under with one thing and another, and suffering the corresponding painful low that comes after being so utterly manic at conference. I have a few posts half written and saved as drafts (including the interview with Nick Clegg), will finish them and deliver them to you all when I'm feeling back up to speed. Thanks for your patience...
Not much time so brief outline of the facts: Man sentenced to be executed at 7 pm tonight. 7 out of the 9 witnesses whose evidence led to his conviction have recanted. This has never been tested in Court. The conviction isn't safe by anyone's standards. So where exactly is this happening? You guessed it - the good old USA. There's probably not much chance of success, but if you feel as strongly about this as I do, you can do something about it
You must be joking! Brown launched an attack on the Conservatives, saying they could not be trusted to run the economy. "I am all in favour of apprenticeships, but let me tell you this is no time for a novice," Mr Brown told delegates to loud applause. That is from the report the BBC have done on the speech by Brown at Conference. Brown really was giving it death at Conference in the hope that his Party wont ditch him before the next general election. His Speech has been put into a Word Cload that you can see at the ...
2007 saw Brown present himself as "Strength", as competence and as authority. The emphasis was on just how tough he was going to be, how strong and powerful this new Chancellor was. He told the Tories exactly what Brown was most afraid of being exposed: His lack of strength and authority, and his lack of competence. Look how quickly those attempts to say the opposite of the truth were unravelled. It took days. This new Chancellor is Serious and Experienced. Oh dear oh dear. What's he telling us this time? Let's break this down. Brown refusing to 'apologise' for being ...
In the lead up to next Tuesday's public meeting on the Regional Spatial Strategy, Bath MP Don Foster has stressed how important it is that purpose built student housing should count towards the Government imposed target. Don said, "I have been informed that there are at least 1500 properties within the Bath constituency that are exempt from Council Tax because they are lived in by...
Most of the commentary on Gordon Brown's speech will no doubt be about what it means for his future, what the plotters will make of it etc. But when history looks back at his speech there will be one section which I believe will be of lasting significance. In his speech, Gordon Brown said he would be asking the Climate Change Committee to report 'by October' on whether the CO2 cut target in the climate change bill by 2050 should be increased from 60% to 80%. The significance of this is that MPs are due to debate the bill in ...
Due to extraordinary traffic, it would seem as if politicalbetting.com is down. As per when this happened before, commenters are welcome to invade this space as a temporary forum for exchanging views. Now for a photo of Gordon:
Tue 23rd
16:15
Clemency Denied for Troy Davis - Scheduled to be Executed TODAY at 7pm TAKE ACTION NOW
In the face of an overwhelming public outcry the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles shockingly refused to grant clemency to Troy Davis last Friday. Troy Davis is still scheduled to be executed by the state of Georgia on September 23 at 7pm. Mr. Davis' serious claims of innocence, which include the recantation of 7 out of 9 witnesses, have never been heard in court. Further, no murder weapon was
So, what did you make of it? Comment away...
Regardless of whether it was backed up by the facts or record, I thought Brown's conference speech just now was good. Now it will be interesting to see how the media covers it... (is Andrew Neil that negative post-speech for all parties?) It will be interesting to see whether there is a post-conference bounce for Labour. Unfortunately or fortunately depending on your viewpoint, I'll miss it as I'm off on Holiday, Wohoo! Bah, (FX: dons tinfoil hat) I reckon this Labour leadership plot was all a plot to divert coverage from our conference. Was he really ever in danger?
The following information is being distributed to residents in the Borough of Redcar and Cleveland by letter. From Wednesday 1st October, the kerbside recycling collection service will transfer from an external contractor to the Council. This transfer will mean a slight change to the way we collect your green box (glass and cans) and blue bag (paper). From Wednesday 1st October, two vehicles will collect your recycling. One will collect your glass and cans and a second vehicle will collect your paper (these two collections will take place on the same day). Please take your green box and blue bag ...
Just back from Chessington Community College for the opening of Phase 1. It was great to see this stunning new building in use, and the pupils seem to love it. The ribbon-cutting honours went to.... ... Patrick Leeson, Cllr Tricia Bamford, head girl and head boy, Edward Davey MP, David Kemp (Principal) They have...
Bath and North East Somerset School Food Forum is holding its first event for schools on Thursday 25 September at Broadlands School in Keynsham. The event, from 4 - 6.30pm, aims to challenge and support all Bath & North East Somerset Council's schools to improve school meal uptake by July 2009. It will include presentations about new nutritional standards for school lunches that came into...
Plaid Cymru's John Dixon has been banging on about the funding of the Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire Conservative Party for some time, notably here and here. Now the Western Mail has caught up with the story, proof that blogging can have benefits in the dead tree press as well as other more conventional media. Mr. Dixon writes on his blog: 'I still don't know why a New York based company would be so interested in what happens in Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire that they would want to bung £40,000 into the local Tory coffers; but I do know ...
In the lead up to next Tuesday's public meeting on the Regional Spatial Strategy, Bath MP Don Foster has stressed how important it is that purpose built student housing should count towards the Government imposed target. Don said, "I have been informed that there are at least 1500 properties within the Bath constituency that are exempt from Council Tax because they are lived in by...
The Scrutiny commission on Job Evaluation scheduled for Thursday night has had to be cancelled. The Chair of the commission rang me this lunchtime to say that The Leader of the Council, who was first informed of the commission's wish to speak to him over a month ago, and who received his formal invitation over a week ago, has said that he has not had enough notice. Therefore he cannot attend due to a prior engagement, and has decided instead to go to a dinner held by Manchester Enterprises. I am very sad that the Leader has chosen not to ...
Following a tip-off from a constituent of Richard Benyon, Conservative MP for Newbury, I took a look at his website, which states: This site is the responsibility of Richard Benyon MP and is paid for from his Communications Allowance. [Click here for screenshot] The Communications Allowance is one of the pots of public money MPs are [...]
Following Michael Medwin's appearance on Heartbeat the other day, here is an interview he gave to the Radio Times back in 1980. It comes from a site dedicated to television series Shoestring. This was the programme that brought Trever Eve to fame. He was a private eye with his own radio phone in, and Medwin played the station's boss.
While I was on my way back from Bournemouth, Rich was still busy with a work conference in Vienna. And this weekend we met up there to enjoy the city on a short post-conference break. Vienna may be the small capital of a small country, but it has more than its fair share of grand palaces [...]
There was a huge upsurge in the quantity of posts during conference, so for your convenience, here is a quick recap of some of the technology news we featured during the week. There's a new Lib Dem website. Same address as the old one, but with buckets of new functionality. Hopefully, it will be [...]
As you will see from the last posting, I attended the Car Free Day in Hastings town centre yesterday. I came away having learnt number of things. One of the key points was a reminder about offsetting my carbon emissions. I am usually not bad at remembering to offset any flights that I take, but I am less [...]
I know there is some debate within political circles about the worth of opinion polls. It is often said on Liberal Democrat Voice that although polls are reported little store is set by them. My view is that they have some value; especially when they uniformly report the same data. Of course, any poll only reflects the views of it's sample and although polling companies are supposed to weigh their samples properly there is often huge margin for error; that should be taken as a given with anything. If the culture in reporting polls was changed from trying to predict ...
Environmnental writer Mark Lynas and Green Party leader(!) Caroline Lucas debated nuclear power on the today programme this morning. It brought what I thought was the most astute question I've heard for a while on Today: [Is there something] almost dogmatic in the theological sense about where the Green movement stands on this question, in that people are perhaps looking at the facts through
1, Happy Celebrate Bisexuality Day. 2, Why aren't you all reading pink_weasel? She is awesome. 3, Skientific proof of John Stuart Mill's maxim that although not all conservatives are stupid, all stupid people are conservatives: only conservatives are more likely to believe a lie after it has been comprehensively debunked, and the more proof you give them that they are wrong, the more they will insist that they are right.
I didn't expect you to be getting beat by John McCain and a Lancôme rep who thinks "The Flintstones" was based on a true story, so let's call it even. Barack Obama gets some advice from President Bartlett.
No apologies for returning to the Gurkhas' case (see Monday posting). The Gurkhas' legal team urgently (by end of Wednesday 24th September) need to find an example case of a soldier recruited directly to the British Army from a Commonwealth country to disprove statements being made by the Home Office. Peter Carroll says: "We need to find a person who joined the British Army between 1962 and 1997 who was a citizen of a Commonwealth Country and joined the Army directly from his own country - that is, they had not entered and settled in the UK before applying to ...
George Will has written a very astute oped regarding McCain's pronouncements on the economic crisis in the Washington Post, summarised as follows: It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected,
Tue 23rd
09:50
LDV post-conference members' survey (1): why you did - and didn't - attend the Lib Dem conference
Over the weekend, Lib Dem Voice emailed the members of our private forum (open to all Lib Dem members) inviting them to take part in a survey, conducted via Liberty Research, asking a number of questions arising from last week's party conference in Bournemouth. Many thanks to the 187 of you who completed it; we'll [...]
Peter Carroll is asking for help: Gurkha Justice campaigner Peter Carroll has issued an urgent plea for evidence to back up the legal team representing the Gurkhas in the current High Court hearing on the lawfulness of the 1997 'cut off' date for citizenship. The case received huge coverage earlier this week when [...]
One bit of news that seems to have slipped past most people is that a number of the Gulf states have decided to launch a single currency - similar to the Euro.
Our office watched the Miliband speech yesterday and we were immediately struck by how little foreign policy was raised and how much he roamed over the portfolios of his colleagues. This was clearly a speech that was positioning himself as the leader-in-waiting.Yet he knows that he is in for the long haul. A leadership election in the next few months would see him defeated. I can't imagine Labour
We are told that this afternoon's speech is "Make or break" for Gordon Brown. There are, indeed, myriad risks for Gordie. Just think of what could go wrong: - He could just not turn up. They announce him but there is silence and everyone looks around but he is nowhere to be seen. He has chickened out. Or he has got the date wrong. He thinks his speech is tomorrow. -On the way to the lectern he
Press release is pretty self-explanatory, so here it is: Haringey's Liberal Democrats are calling for the resignation of Labour's finance boss and former Council leader Cllr Charles Adje following the publication of a damning report into how, as Alexandra Palace Chair, he pushed through the controversial licence for Firoka to operate in the building. The Liberal Democrats say the revelations in the report show he can't be trusted to run the boroughs finances. The report into affairs at Alexandra Palace was published late last week for consideration at an emergency Alexandra Palace board meeting this Friday. Among the most scandalous ...
One of the motions debated at Lib Dem party conference last week was tabled by our neighbours in Hackney; opposing deportation to states which persecute on the grounds of sexuality and gender identity. Britain is a signatory to the Convention against Torture which not only prohibits torture within the UK but also bans sending people [...]
During the party conference in Bournemouth, a group of Liberal Democrat bloggers interviewed me. The first write-up is over on Gavin Whenman's blog.
This is the party political broadcast we Liberal Democrats put out during our Conference last week. I have two comments. The first is to ask whether it would not have been more impressive with real people rather than actors. The second - more importantly - is to wonder whether people want politicians who will "listen". As Simon Titley points out in the current Liberator, politicians have never listened more in history and have never been more despised. I can't help thinking that in the current climate we Liberal Democrats should be talking. What voters want is politicians who know the ...
Today's Guardian reports: "David Miliband yesterday wrecked Gordon Brown's carefully calibrated and confident attempt to woo the British public" Well actually it doesn't. The sentence is taken from the Guardian's pages of 26th September 2006, which stated: "Cherie Blair yesterday wrecked Gordon Brown's carefully calibrated and confident attempt to woo the British public when she was reportedly overheard [...]
I wouldn't normally blog merely to post a link from a newspaper, and particularly not a link that I got from Matt Drudge, but everyone should take a look at this piece from the LA Times because it's the point where Gordon Brown's remaining economic credibility gets flushed firmly down the toilet. In the government's spin of the global financial crisis, the most consistent line from Numbers 10 and
I've blogged before about the campaign to get better - or rather any! - access to Kings Cross station from the Islington side, once the station redevelopment is complete. At present, Network Rail will close the existing Wharfdale Road and York Way entrances to Kings Cross, without any replacement. Camden Council imposed a planning condition that [...]
So Alex Neil is assembling the 'banking elders' to look at a possibly alternative to the Lloyds TSB takeover of the Bank of Scotland. Yet why is the SNP back bencher so determined to look at an alternative when the HBOS chairman is convinced last week's deal was the right thing to do. For starters one of the things he's claiming as a stength is a very strong and diverse wealth of business knowledge. I'm sure Lehman's, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley can all have claimed the same as with much of the rest of the banking sector that is ...
Now before some clever clogs points out that Glasgow East was the last by election and I'm heading the wrong way I'd just like to clarify that the reason is that the team I missed seeing Livingston play in a pre-season game have drawn us in the Corporate Insurance Cup. So there may be a little bit of rivalry with Scottish Tory Boy and others over tonight's game. So having been around this stadium a few times on my way to and from the previous by election i'll be going inside this evening to see the team who top the ...
In 2003, the Indy complained that the then Chancellor's tax credit system was too complex, meaning it was hard to administer. The Times, writing in 2007, said that: Gordon Brown's big idea looked good on paper but has become a byword for confusion, maladministration and misery for some claimants So I'm shocked to find that Brown hasn't learned from his mistakes in five years. Yep, he's now
Ever dreamt what The West Wing's Jed Bartlet would say to Barack Obama? That TV show's scribe, Aaron Sorkin, has. (Linked to by James Graham and Gavin Whenman too).
President Jed talks to President Jedi in an imaginary conversation in the NY Times (via Gavin Whenman). Over on Wardman Wire, Dr Pack unveils his plan for world domination.
The Evening Post picked up my Conference intervention about crime reporting via the TVP non-emergency number today. There was also an article about plans by Thames Valley Police to allow people to report issues via text and email. I sent a letter into the Post about this as it's connected to my campaign for a better Police response to public reporting. I think it could be a fine idea if these text and emails get to the Neighbourhood Police teams, but not so good if they get lost, or they generate 'out of office' replies, or worse still, these messages ...
I've been playing Civilization 4 a lot recently, so my first reaction on seeing this story was to worry that Tokugawa was going to build a Wonder before me... More seriously, it's interesting that someone appears to be taking steps to make a space elevator happen, but we could be waiting a while for physics and engineering capabilities to catch up with imagination. Even then, the resources and the will needed to build it might not be around.
