This blog does not carry advertising and I generally try to avoid commercials, however I am currently enjoying this advert for PG Tips enormously and thought it was worth sharing.
I'm staying with my brother in St Ives, Cambs. He has a flat in a listed building, and is insulating the loft over his bedroom. After a lot of kerfuffle with the planning officers (more to do with staff turnover than anything else), he's finally got permission to go into the loft and insulate it. He's used a recycled plastic fibre, which you use like rockwool insulation. The advantages: 1) it's very nice to use. In fact, it's like a fleecy blanket, not at all itchy. 2) it's 90% recycled bottles. The disadvantage is that it's still plastic, and 10% ...
As a teacher, can I make plain that I think the headteacher in this case is daft ! I guess local road signs will also need to be changed to "Place of Learning" too ?
In August 1996 I did a terrible thing that risked the future of my first born. I was due to give birth on 24th October and Party Conference was less than five weeks earlier. As a then member of the party's Conference Committee had joked with conference doyen Vera Head that I might go into [...]
Irrelevant addition but great track by Shapeshifters
Once more I've had the opportunity to observe the NHS in action in recent days. Sitting for hours in a hospital while someone you love is waiting for treatment gives an unrivalled opportunity, though not one that I'd wish on even my worst enemy. I've got 3 New Year Resolutions that would improve the NHS no end, and not cost a penny: 1. Train managers to manage people and work properly rather
There's one old Doctor on radio and a whole bunch of them in both documentary Thirty Years in the TARDIS and an East End anniversary knees-up, but it's New Adventures firsts that really make this year brilliant. There's Gareth Roberts' clever, funny debut The Highest Science; Kate Orman's The Left-Handed Hummingbird, mixing the Sixties, drugs, pain and the Titanic; Blood Heat's gripping alternative universe of Silurians and multiple endings is a superb second novel, though the author's first beats it... Doctor Who: The New Adventures - Lucifer Rising "Everything is history, if you look at it from the right perspective." ...
Well, it's actually more than a fortnight since the last one, but given the circumstances, I hope you can forgive me. (There are a *lot* of people searching for Doctor Who today, aren't there? And I appear, when I look at the WordPress tag 'doctor who' to be the 'featured blog', whatever that means. So for [...]
You have to laugh at the reporting on ITV news this evening. I don't doubt that Julian Mannion is actually in Israel reporting on the invasion of Gaza, but his constant repeating of the line "you can probably hear the explosions in the background", didn't alter the fact that you could hear no explosions, see no explosions, and to all intents and purposes it looked as if he was stood in a field just off the M25.
I'm not going to say a lot about Gaza. I want though to point at a rather good article by Steven Klein When and how will Israel end Gaza operation? (הארץ). There are two things worthy of praise here: a refreshing pragmatism instead of the usual moral windbagging and a proposal for short term measures by which Israel can address the situation. These also tend to be lacking in favour of the usual recitals of long term solutions about which there is wide consensus. His proposal is not without its faults. What he is proposing is a (probably illegal) collective ...
I find it hard to see how any libertarian can support the actions of the Israeli government against Palestinians, yet many do, and many are actively supporting the IDF in their actions. Some try to dress up support for Israel in terms of 'they were attacked so must respond'. Most responses to this are about the [...]
Does anyone seriously believe anything that is printed in the Daily Mail ? We all know that most of what they print comes straight from tory press releases and very little get printed about the Lib Dems unless it is an attempt to discredit the party. I'm more likely to believe Russia Today, the Russian government's propaganda channel than I would the Daily Scum.
I have always watched Doctor Who, most of the time. I did literally hide behind the sofa during the Patrick Troughton and John Pertwee days. I occasionally watch it nowadays. The rest of my household are so hooked on it that they watch every episode about eight times and have watched each Doctor Who Confidential for a similar number of times. I occasionally get sucked in. But it would be fair to
finding balance (bit of a teaser this post, I'll name that place in one/two/three pictures?) Wordgame, new word: Ferengi
You might say that the efforts to get the game on were worthwhile. The Cornish All Blacks beat Waterloo by 103-5 and scored 16 tries in the process - it's only worth a single bonus point though! Only three games made it to kick off in the league and Redruth drew and Mounts Bay lost, so we gain lots of ground on the Reds. An added bonus was that the Rugby Paper rang me at half time begging for photos - so more coverage for the club an more cash for me. Almost everyone seemed to score a try and ...
Steven Johnson's follow up to The Ghost Map is a tour de force of science, politics and religion. The Invention of Air centres on Joseph Priestley, while taking in the founding of America, the development of environmental science and the renewal of a friendship torn apart by political difference. Johnson offers the reader a way of understanding events: a way that could replace the Hegelian view that everything depends on individuals and the Marxist dialectic that change is about the clash of the classes as they struggle through different periods of production. This way of looking at the world matches ...
There is no point my pretending that what I write here will make any difference. But there are two things we can draw from Kantian ethics that I believe are relevant to the current war in the Gaza Strip. {Jordan and surrounding area. Countries picture...} Image via WikipediaKantian ethics does not think there is anything particularly special about land. What matters are the autonomy claims made by autonomous moral agents. Having an historic connection to a land obviously gives someone a claim to that land. However those living there have a much stronger claim. Questions of security and livelihood also ...
Well I'm sure most people were merely content watching the announcement of Matt Smith's taking over the controls of and keys to the Tardis on Doctor Who Confidential but I know, cause I was one of them, that many of use were Tweeting, posting on forums, blogging, hitting websites and looking it up all at the same time. The fact that my reveal of the name Tweet posted as soon as Matt Smith's face appeared on the screen is actually ahead of the BBC Breaking News Tweet was something I quite enjoyed. The fact that like a good Agatha Christie ...
Chaos nearly occurred to the BBC News schedules on Radio 4 when an 8 minute interview with Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg went missing at short notice. Without it, political balance would mean that the World at One would not have been able to broadcast similar interviews with other party leaders, resulting in a knock-on effect throughout the Christmas news schedule. Shaun Ley has the rest of the story.
People have for some time been saying that there was one thing that would save the Playstation 3 from failure, and that thing was its blu-ray disk player. However, it seems that instead of Blu-Ray being its saviour, it may well be the thing that kills the PS3. With the collapse of HD-DVD, the only rival format for high definition DVDs a few months ago, it seemed Sony had a clear run and was therefore the only console that could offer both a high def DVD and a games system, and with Blu-Ray players themselves being so expensive at the ...
This is just a fact. Young Doctors don't work. Davison was OK, but far better in the audios, when he'd got some gravitas. Tennant has been awful. The Doctor should be, *at a minimum* in his mid-forties, and ideally in his sixties. I've not seen this Matt Smith in anything, but it's a shame the [...]
Phew! My heart sank when they said he was the youngest ever Doctor. Oh no, the BBC have nobbled Moffat we thought! Then it was revealed, Matt Smith. Sorry for having doubted you Mr Moffat. This, IMHO, is a good choice. I loved Party Animals (and it was a absolute travesty the way the BBC didn't advertise it all and then didn't renew it...if I ran the BBC I tell you...) and he was good in it. Also, I think announcing it with an interview with the actor in the Confidential was a good move as it allowed the audience ...
Wow. That was a bit of a shocker. I was getting so annoyed with the build up, though. Any other time, you would love to see these old clips of previous doctors and episodes, but there came a point when I was screaming, at nobody in particular, "just f***ing tell us". We knew it wasn't Paterson Joseph within the first 10 seconds, cos they said it was somebody young, which just made it all worse. And then all of a sudden, with no fanfare, this strange hairstyle attached to a quite beautiful face pops up, and your eyes are drawn ...
Can't say that I'm terribly impressed with the casting of 26 year old Matt Smith as the new Doctor Who. I know that he's going to have one hell of a job in filling David Tennant's shoes but am left somewhat deflated by a pretty unadventurous choice. Personally I would have preferred a female or black candidate. Think of the really imaginative plot line that could have seen Billie Piper becoming the new Who. Aw well, it'll be a case of watch and decide. Rumour has it that Vice Cable was in the running but was too busy as he's ...
...which will prompt the question from many: who is Matt Smith? (Aside from the Eleventh Doctor.) Here's a quick factfile to save your fingers and eyes from search engine fatigue. {Matt Smith} At just 26 years old, Smith will be the youngest Doctor ever, beating Peter Davison, who was 29 when he was cast as the Fifth Doctor. Brought up in Northampton and initially planning to become a professional footballer, Smith studied drama and creative writing at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. Since then he has carved out a very respectable theatre career, his stage roles including Lockwood ...
Well done to him. Here's the BBC announcement. Here are more details on him. Producers often go for very talented actors who are not particularly well known, and therefore not expensive, and are young enough to mould. Look at Daniel Craig. I think it is an excellent decision. Watching the young chap on Dr Who Confidential, you can see he is oozing with the sort of British, cranky, eccentric
17:37 Has DT just hinted this is the youngest Doctor ever. 17:40 Stephen Nolan says youngest, been around TV, not that famous has had leading roles. 17:41 Twitterers suggesting Matt Smith from Party Animals and Ruby in the Smoke. 17:49 You sense this that run through the Doctor's should have led to the reveal. 17:50 26 year old Sounding awfully like Matt Smith then. 17:58 the Reveal is that it is Matt Smith The eleventh Doctor is Matt Smith. SN likes the hair. An hour into the audition process they had already seen the eventual actor to take on the ...
William, Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davidson, Colin Baker, Slyester McCoy, Paul McGann, Christopher Eccleston, David Tennent... So who is it to be next. We'll find out soon.
The right-wing blogosphere is fairly wetting itself today, picking up on the 'exclusive revelations' of the Daily Mail's Peter Oborne that Labour is allegedly cosying up to the Lib Dems in anticipation of a pact which would see Ming Campbell elected as Commons Speaker and Vince Cable installed as Chancellor: Although the PM recognises that it would be inconceivable to elect another Labour Speaker, soundings have been taken among the Liberal Democrats. The Whips' Office has already launched a campaign to get Labour MPs to back former LibDem leader Sir Menzies Campbell to become the new Speaker. This arrangement would ...
It's easily done. You know the sort of thing. You can't save anything on your computer. Then you find out that the hard drive is full. So you do a mega-dump of all the rubbish on the drive. Then, in the case of the BBC's World at One, you find that you've deleted an eight minute interview with Nick Clegg which is needed for broadcast the next day. D'oh!
Yawn - now what do I have to do at 5:35 - oh, that's right go to the shops!
...Not David Morrissey* (look, I think we all knew that before Christmas, didn't we?) ...To be revealed this evening at 5.35 on BBC1, in a special edition of Doctor Who Confidential called The Eleventh Doctor (but mainly celebrating the first ten**) ...Not actually going to appear in an exciting adventure on TV for another year yet, so don't get too excited today ...Oh, who am I kidding, the most exciting announcement since, ooh, Christopher Eccleston was cast or Tom left ...Paterson Joseph, according to the smart money. Or James Nesbitt. Or Matt Smith. Or Rupert Penry-Jones. Or Chiwetel Ejiofor. Or... ...
Further to what I posted yesterday about the A660 yeaterday it has been confirmed that the scheme is to be 're-thought' which for those of you who don't know is council officer speak for cancelled! The YEP has written about it with comments from the Friends of Woodhouse Moor group and Lib Dem Cllr Martin Hamilton.
Wondering what to do with your real Christmas tree once you take the decorations down? Here's the advice from South Glos: Providing they are not too large, then Christmas trees may be chopped up and put into your green bin. Branches or the trunk should not be more than 4 inches in diameter. Please make sure that you remove all decorations and that the bin lid closes. If your tree is too big for your green bin then it can be taken to your nearest SORT IT!* Centre where it will be separated out for composting.
If the government have not yet realised that their approach to alleviating the recession is not working then this morning's news will have given them cause to pause for thought. Their reliance on macro-economic measures such as cutting interest rates and stimulating demand through cuts in VAT is proving to be ineffective, a sledge hammer to crack a nut. The £12.5 billion spent on cutting VAT in particular is looking to be poor value for money in the light of the latest Retail Insight Report, which suggests that retail footfall was down 3.1% in December from a year earlier, whilst ...
Political Betting has commented on the article from the Times Online about how Labour and the Liberal Democrats might make a coalition and freeze out the Conservatives. If this plan was to take place, Vince would become Chancellor and Ming would become Speaker. These are interesting predictions from the Mail's political columnist but are they believable. No one actually knows who the Lib Dems would make a coalition with except probably the shadow cabinet and Nick Clegg but with out a doubt you have to remember that the next government will be a coalition! Maybe my previous post about a ...
The disappointment comes from the fact that I am here at my laptop and not in Edinburgh going round the Winter Wonderland after going to the demo against Israel's increasingly appalling action in Gaza. I have got a bug the details of which you are best left ignorant. Unfortunately, though, it looks as though I will have further opportunities to demonstrate as the Israelis just seem to be getting more and more aggressive. Presumably because they can. Anyway, the anticipation is because of the annoucement in less than two hours of the name of the actor who is to replace ...
What a beautiful view as the tide ebbs into Newhaven Harbour.In the picture you can see the old lighthouse, now disused, in fact it now has coloured lights at night!But, the small domed tower to the right is in fact the original lighthouse! ------------------
Throughout the festive season, LDV is offering our readers another chance to read the 12 most popular opinion articles which appeared on the blog during 2008. The third most popular opinion article was by our resident secularist Laurence Boyce, and appeared on LDV on 14th January... Et tu, James? Recently, James Graham has called me a bigot on Lib Dem Voice. (gasp!) As James is a blogger whom I admire and respect - blogger of the year no less - I have been stung into writing a riposte to this scurrilous charge. It was in the context of yet another ...
No, not THAT exciting news. Dan Dan the Wikio Man has sent me a sneak preview of this month's politics chart. Now, I realise that there are those of you who are reading this who are thinking so what? Well, the Wikio charts are compiled in an interesting way. They don't measure how many readers you have, or how many subscribers you have; they measure how many people link to you from the body of their posts. So it's not a measure of how many people are reading you, but of how many people consider you an authority. With that ...
"AOL Hometown", a service that AOL used to run where their customers could publish basic web pages, has gone away. Many users are, predictably, angry and upset (as well as badly spelled and lacking grammar), despite, I am absolutely certain, AOL doing everything that they were contractually obligated to do.For example, one LOLAOLUSER said this, which is crying out to be made into a lolcat: WHERE IS THE HOME PAGE IT TOOK MONTHS FOR ME TO BILL [sic]. I DID NOT RECEIVE ANY NOTICE VIA THE MAIL OR E-MAIL. PLEASE HELP ME FIND MY WEB PAGE SO I CAN COPY ...
"Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has added his voice to concerns that the government's temporary 2.5% VAT reduction has been a 'waste of money'." Read also start-of-13-month-vat-rate-today
We went to the pub last night and watched the Spurs game. After it finished, the pub switched over to coverage of the darts world championship - the Sky version. It was totally enthralling. I'm not a massive fan, but the match between Raymond van Barneveld and Jelle Klaasen was incredible. It was played at such a huge pace as to be hypnotic. And as for Barneveld's 9 dart finish - perfection.
Last month, as you may recall, Jacqui Smith was in trouble for trumpeting apparently positive knife crime statistics, in a release of information described by the Chair of the UK Statistics Authority, Sir Michael Scholar, as "premature, irregular and selective". Sir Michael has now called for all statistics to be released simultaneously to "all sides of the political debate". Currently ministers have a 24-hour headstart to prepare a response, and this is damaging public trust in statistics. The politics should start, he told the World at One, after the full release, and not while the final figures were still being ...
Will Howells tribute act, "The Howls" have discovered an old manuscript featuring the third verse to his biggest hit: "I didn't clean the flat" Alex Foster's also done a cover version. EDIT: Yes, that is a 'Flying V' ukulele. Because I'm hard. LATEST: Rob Fenwick's singing puts us all in the shade!
This year, I want the devolution debate to move forward. If I'm honest, I'm not really one of those people desperate to hear what some arcane convention decides. I want Welsh parties to get out there and start a campaign to bring further devolution to Wales. And not just the devolution that's in the Act, but full, Scottish-like devolution. Loads of people have said to me it's the wrong time for a debate on devolution. During the credit crunch, we've got to hunker down in a bunker. We've got to succumb to the temptations of centralisation. Only in the mighty ...
Nick Clegg on Radio 4's Today this morning: Mr Clegg said that his party would "rebalance" the tax system so that the country comes out of the recession "in a fairer state than we went into it" ... Later Mr Clegg said that the EU should reconsider its trade arrangements with Israel over the bombing attacks on Gaza. "The western reaction, the reaction from the international community has either been wrong in the case of George Bush who seems to be giving more or less a green light to carry on bombing no questions asked, or weak in the case ...
I thought this was all meant to be done and dusted on the 31st? Why is the electoral process in the US so laughable at times?
The suggestion by Danny Alexander MP that public buildings such as libraries should be considered for use as outreach services for Jobcentre Plus appears to me to make a whole lot of sense. (See to read the story in today's Scotsman). He points out that there is no reason that Jobcentre Plus services cannot be provided in places such as community centres and council buildings. The 2004 Government Spending Review announced an efficiency savings programme which planned to reduce the numbers of Jobcentre Plus staff by around 14 per cent and lead to dramatic changes in the way Jobcentre ...
The Conservative peer Lord Laidlaw was criticised by the Lords Appointments Commission last year for failing to keep his promise to stop being a tax exile if he was appointed to the House of Lords: The commission said it had informed the prime minister of Lord Laidlaw's situation and said it would not have approved his peerage if it had known that he would not honour his promise. And how have the Conservatives reacted to this broken promise and public criticism? By continuing to take money from him, as today's Daily Telegraph reports: In March, June and September last year, ...
I'm trying to declutter a bit, and have put a whole loada books on BookMooch.com, a place where you offer to post books to strangers for free in the hope that someone will post you books you want. There are rules and things to try and keep it fair, and I can't get any books until I offload some. If you want some of my books, there's a page here that should list the ones I have knocking about. I buy too many books - usually the very cheap second hand ones from Amazon that cost £0.01p plus P+P. And ...
The conservative President of the USA, George W. Bush has blamed Hamas for the violence in Gaza, I don't understand why the president is supporting Israel. Yes I know the USA and Israel are close allies especially with Bush being president but that doesn't give the President any rights to blame Hamas! The violence is hitting the Palestinians, they are suffering with the casualties and as blogged by Chris Davies MEP the Death Toll is 1 Israeli:100 Palestinians! Personally I think that George Bush is one of the problems behind the whole peace deal and when he has gone from ...
Despite a ruling by the Israeli Supreme Court on Wednesday that a limited number of foreign journalists should be allowed into the Gaza Strip to report on what is happening there, the Israeli government and military have refused to comply. So much for the Jewish state's much-vaunted respect for Western values such as press freedom [...]
My holiday reading this year included 'The Gilded Age' by Mark Twain (writing then as Samuel Langhorn Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner. It gives a fascinating insight into the development US politics. And while much has obviously changed since it was published in 1873, echoes of its themes can be found in the recent cases of Ted Stevens and Rod Blagojevich. Its depiction of negative attitudes towards 'lobbyists', while the whole town of Washington DC is engaged in this activity in one way or another, could also stand today. But where it's really on the money is in the descriptions ...
This week's Gazette reports that children have been playing chicken on the Rodford Way dual carriageway even though a 13 year old girl was killed in an accident nearby only two months ago. Local schools have been offered extra road safety training sessions and parents are being asked to warn their children of the dangers. Rodford Way - despite an underpass and a safe crossing point, children still play chicken
Based on the amount of traffic they've passed on to www.libdems.org.uk in 2008, the top five local Liberal Democrat sites (excluding blogs) were (with changes in brackets from last year's top five): stevebeasant.mycouncillor.org.uk (NEW) vincentcable.org.uk (+2) brentlibdems.org.uk (-2) henleylibdems.org.uk (NEW) gloucester-libdems.co.uk (NEW) Steve's new entry at the top of the list is very impressive, particularly as his site is based on his ward, rather than a whole Parliamentary constituency or council area. It's a bit of a borderline judgement whether or not his site counts as a blog, though if it did, it would still appear in the blog top ...
Blogging is going to be light over the next couple of days while I venture out into the real world of leaflet delivering etc and spend some quality time with my partner. Conservative Home brings us news of David Cameron's call for a more 'ethical capitalism'. He explains this as meaning a capitalism where business is 'not just about making money'. Business should recognise that it has 'real responsibilities'. Of course, this sounds very nice and wholesome but as we should realise is the case with Cameron in just about everything he says concrete detail of what the fluffy words ...
Thanks to our new furniture, we are able to lounge comfortably in the living room and watch telleh. We therefore spent this evening being proper old fashioned couch potatoes (much Clarksonness was viewed), and now I have eleventy billion emails and a shedload of stuff to backread and it's 2 am and I am still grumpy as all hell (yay insomnia, and hangovers, and lack of holiday when I should be on holiday, and people PISSING ME OFF and other such gloriousnesses), and frankly? I can't be arsed. Sorry. However. If you stick around till tomorrow I'll have a dead ...
