Firstly let me say that I am a big fan of the X factor, I have watched it each and every year and along with Harry Hill's TV burp, it is the only programme I watch on ITV. But does anyone for one minute actually believe the contrived series of events that they put out each week when they show the auditions. Firstly, you only get to perform for the two judges if you are either very good or very bad. Everyone else is filtered out at a series of pre-auditions. You are expected to stand around and wave like ...
I've not been particularly well the last couple of days (terrible acid indigestion in the evenings, my usual writing time) and so I've not yet finished the latest Hyperpost, but I hope to have two up tomorrow – one on 52 and fanfic, and one on The End Of Time. In the meantime, some links... ...
Last Thursday a teenager knifed seven people in Keighley. First Mohammed Nazam was attacked in Victoria Road and was taken to hospital. The attacker, teenager Rahim Nawaz, then ran off before he could be apprehended. The victim's brother-in-law, Majid Hussain, went to Airedale Hospital to assist him and on his way home Majid spotted the teenager again. This time Nazam was attacking some women outside The Livery pub in the town centre. Majid Hussain rushed over to help the victims. He was knifed in the neck and arm whilst trying to stop the attack. Meanwhile staff locked the doors to ...
I was intrigued to see Mark Littlewood's suggestion that Nick Clegg's latest "In The Know" initiative is evidence of his innate classical liberalism. Maybe Mark is right and inside Clegg there is a slash and burn tax cutter struggling to come out (it certainly seems like that at times), but the idea that saving money is ...
One of the other books I managed to finish on holiday was David Melding's 'Will Britain survive beyond 2020?' It was a fascinating experience demonstrating the very impressive range and depth of David's knowledge of Welsh history, politics and culture. This is not intended as a review, more as some random thoughts on the book itself. David is particularly exercised by the concept of dual national identity. Indeed in the introduction he seeks to define how that operates, stating that 'although British national identity has been associated mostly with political institutions and symbols, it has had a cultural dimension too.' ...
There is a good village trail leaflet (pdf) available for Husbands Bosworth, but it barely mentions the building above. It is the Roman Catholic chapel next to Bosworth Hall. I do not know if it is open to the public, but I explored it today. Unfortunately, there was a wedding on, which prevented me studying the interior. Really, if they are going to keep holding services in churches it will make things very difficult for me. Bosworth Hall brings to mind the darkest episode in the village's history - the execution of nine witches in 1616. John Smith, the young ...
I am really feeling lousy tonight and not up to writing a full report of qualifying from the Belgian Grand Prix. I massively overdid it earlier today and am paying the price - to the extent that when I watched my infernal-wickedness-of-Sky+ recording of what was a thrilling session, I actually fell asleep. If you want to read more comprehensive reports, these nice people at Autosport and James Allen oblige with some excellent articles so I'll leave you in their capable hands. However, I couldn't head off to bed without commenting on two things. You really do have to be ...
The fuss this week over Barnet Councils proposals to use the business model of a budget airline for running council services has caused quite a reaction. Indeed I had LBC radio phoning on Friday morning asking me to be interviewed by Nick Ferrari about the proposals. As I explained in the interview the problem is that we don't actually know what these proposals entail because at the moment it's all 'blue sky' and 'out of the box' thinking based on an expensive external consultants report as part of the Councils Future shape project. The future shape project is really just ...
And wasn't he very, very, very good! Also liked Rozelle from Trinidad and Tobago.
On holiday in a fairly remote part of Croatia I find myself surrounded by a variety of different nationalities: Czech, Slovak, French, German, Polish, Hungarian, Montenegrin, Serb, Croatian and my own Bosnian hosts. Inevitably the subject of what makes us different comes up- and in a variety of different languages we explore the issue. One asks me "whatever became of the "English [sic] gentleman?". "Once", he continues, "the British would not show their emotions", this was, he submits, an amazing advantage, because "one could never tell when the British were beaten". They would not show emotions whether faced with triumph ...
A modern West Riding sign at Eastoft village. On the other side Lindsey which historically was also divided into three Ridings. Similar North Riding signs on the boundary roads maintained by Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council were paid for by the Yorkshire Ridings Society.
This time about their PM item regarding the Japanese election. So many negative references to the `Liberal Democrats` without one mention that they were referring to the Japanese Liberal Democrats. I also asked whether they had considered the opportunity of bias before the programme and also whether the Party had been consulted. If we hadn't then I consider ...
I've just watched President Obama's eulogy at Senator Ted Kennedy's funeral. It's not often you see a standing ovation at a funeral, but on this occasion it was perfectly appropriate. Obama gave a moving, dignified and informative tribute which was superb in summing up the remarkable life of this towering figure.
Continuing the historic road sign theme started by Jonathan Calder over at Liberal England, here is another Lincolnshire road sign photographed at Winterton this morning, originally erected by the former Lindsey County Council. Having read Jonathan's reports of his tour of historic Lincolnshire this week we decided to have a day out around the marshland and villages of north Lincolnshire, along the south bank of the River Humber. It is amazing the number of original road signs that have survived. As far as we know the yellow bellies do not have an equivalent to the Yorkshire Ridings Society, who have ...
This week I read Salmon Fishing in The Yemen by Paul Torday. Sprinkled with interesting facts about salmon, and fishing terms, the novel combines emails, newspaper reports, diary entries, and interviews to tell the story of why a government scientist is "put up" to see through an impossible project to introduce salmon fishing in the Yemen. The story gets behind the news to inform the reader about how government and diplomacy might work, and how the little man is easily walked over by those in the upper echilons. Peter Mandelsohn is easily parodied in the story as "Peter Maxwell", while ...
£10 charge to see your GP, what do you think? That's what the Conservative spokesman on foreign affairs in the European Parliament has suggested as a reform for the NHS. This has lead to an internal row in the Tory party with the Tory spokesperson in Westminster, Andrew Lansley being against the idea. The problem with the Conservatives is that they don't understand the term 'being ready for government'; the MEPs in the Tories knock the NHS back and make it out to be something which it clearly isn't. But then the Parliamentary Tories are at times very supportive of ...
There has been, for as long as I can remember, generalised unhappiness with the way we select Parliamentary candidates. Too complicated and long-winded for smaller, weaker Local Parties, too restrictive for candidates, too quasi-legal for Returning Officers, the list goes on. Well, things are going to change. The third draft of the proposed new rules has reached 'Liberal Bureaucracy' and, I must say, I'm pretty pleased. Much of what I've called for is in, and major issues addressed. A further drafting exercise is under way, and I expect the next draft to be discussed at the meeting of the English ...
Today's "Courier" has an article about the increasing graffiti problem and assurances I have received from the City Council's Waste Management Department that further steps were being taken to tackle the issue. Click on the headline above to read the article. Let's be clear - graffiti is pure vandalism - it damages both public and private property and in the past few weeks it has been the subject of by far the most complaints I have received from constituents in the West End. There have been complaints about graffiti vandalism from right across the West End Ward - from Marketgait ...
I blogged this morning on Freedom Central about Tory AM Jonathan Morgan's piece on Wales Home calling for the modernisation of the Welsh Conservative Party. In this article Jonathan argues that it is time that his party addressed its overwhelming male image by positively discriminating in favour of women candidates. A reference to my blog piece on my facebook page produced a curious response from at least one former Conservative candidate: Felicity Ann Ledgerwood Elphick As an ex candidate (female) I have decided it is not worth my while battling against odds to get a good seat. I asked to ...
There's been plenty of reaction to yesterday's Guardian story in which Tory-controlled Barnet council revelled in their plans to adopt the practices of no-frills airlines like Ryanair in their delivery of local services: Barnet wants householders to pay extra to jump the queue for planning consents, in the way budget airlines charge extra for priority boarding. And as budget airline passengers choose to spend their budget on either flying at peaktime or having an in-flight meal, recipients of adult social care in Barnet will choose to spend a limited budget on whether to have a cleaner or a respite carer ...
Mister Stephen is off up in Edinburgh to see about his fringe, heaven knows where he'll find it it's been missing for years now. Anyhoo, as I wrote last night the young cubess of British Tennis Miss Laura* is playing in Blushing Meadow between the showers we'd be expecting at SW19, but didn't get this summer. She made a promising start leading 5-2 in the first set of the final qualifying round against world number 128 Miss Eva 'Lck of Vwls' Hrdinova. Unfortunately for British Tennis fans the Czech came back to force a tie break which she won 8-6, ...
Living in a flat is a costly business. If you brought one like I have and believed it was cheaper than a house, think again. Firstly service charges can be more than the council tax (mine is). The flats I live in are mixed with leaseholders and housing association tenants. Therefore leaseholds can't really take control of the service costs and manage them for themselves under the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform 2002. Not all of the leaseholders can commit the time to such a thing anyway. I also suspect that when things go smoothly no one will recognise it but ...
My thanks to LDV reader Andrew Harrison (with a hit-tip to b3ta) for bringing The Voice's attention to the Glum Councillors website, which is dedicated to "doggedly collate images of councillors looking glum whilst pointing at holes in the road, wearing hard hats or presenting oversized cheques." We can take pride in the fact, sort of, that so many Lib Dems are prominently represented. As Andrew notes, pavement politics at its finest.
We were slightly worried that the Thursday before Bank Holiday would not be the ideal time to attract a crowd to a political meeting. We should not have been concerned. Three hundred people packed into the Marlborough Road Methodist Church to hear Nick take questions from all comers. He uses no intermediary to pick the questioners. My role was simply to introduce the meeting and then close it, and in the interim try to look graceful. Nick chooses the questioners in batches of three and of course he does not know who anyone is - so he really is putting ...
They are building a new swimming pool at the bottom of our street. In general I think that this is a good thing, as Mat and Holly and I all like swimming, and I have missed the local pool since it closed. But there is a tiny issue... The local bat colony lives very near to the building site, and I worry that they might be disturbed or upset in some way by the building work, or by the pool once it's built. Hence, I am looking into bat conservation and things to see if there is anything I can ...
Wallington South Safer Neighbourhood Team Ward Panel Meeting I attended this quarterly meeting together with Cllr. Colin Hall and we gave the panel an update on environmental issues in the ward, including the lighting plans for the Ross Parade alleyway, issues around the recent flooding under the railway bridge and action to be taken following the ...
Sat 29th
12:49
The Tories think raising the Inheritance Tax Threshold is more principled than having Tax Credits...
With the news that the Tories want to scrap Tax Credits, it is interesting to remember the conflict caused within his own party a few weeks ago when Cameron said that middle class Tax Credits would be stopped. This therefore, looks as though the Tories have pragmatically decided that instead of appearing to attack the more comfortable in society, that they will instead take the sometimes-crucial means of support away from the poor as well. Polly Tonybee is right when she says that policies such as scrapping the Tax Credits will make social inequities more engrained, and that in order ...
My eye was caught today by the lecture that James Murdoch gave for the MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh TV festival. The Guardian also reproduced his speech on it's Comment is Free site; which struck me as slightly ironical given the content and given the fact that, despite any of Murdoch's protestations to the contrary, ...
Having spent most of the week I am now heading up to Cambridge. This required a journey across London this morning. This was a human obstacle course par excellence. It started on arrival at Victoria Station where the queues for ticket machines put wartime Britain in the shade.That would not have been relevant for me if I did not have to recharge my oyster card. So I joined a queue, took ages to
An intriguing row has broken out in Shoreham, West Sussex, in the lead-up to a by-election to fill a vacancy on the parish council. The local paper tells all: CONTROVERSY is stirring in grassroots politics, with the nomination of a Liberal Democrat to stand in a Rustington Parish Council by-election. Jamie Bennett's punt at parish politics has rippled the normally tranquil waters of the council, on which all 15 current members sit as independents. Lib-Dem Jamie will contest the West ward seat vacated by former parish council chairman Mike Warrington, who has moved away from the area, in a two-horse ...
Off to the Lake District for a week, so no fresh blogging until I get back next week. I have scheduled a few posts to appear during the week, just to keep my new posting schedule up, but if you want to know what I'm doing for the next few days you'll have to follow me on Twitter, where hopefully I won't be posting 'raining again' too much.
As a keen, if aging, cyclist, my attention was drawn to an article in the Local Heroes section of this morning's Northern Echo. 69 year old Miff Anderson from Darlington Cycling Club has just completed a 600,000 kilometre ride in under 40 hours. It seems he set off from Darlington at 6am and followed a circular route to return to Darlington at 2am having riden 400,000 miles. The Echo reports
So, yeah, staying in bed won. Who's surprised? Still, Happy Pride Day, Manchester. Sorry I can't be with you. In the meanitime, I'd like you to have some Fresh Squeezings from the veins of the internet! [IMG: [info - personal] ] staceyuk has a very important post which you should all read. Seriously. I know our current government likes to baby us all so that we lose the capacity for independent thought, but doing it to the disAbled seems particularly venal. Skience News: molecular imaging. I am stoked that the people at IBM Research Zurich are doing this. It makes ...
The Guardian yesterday had an article about Barnet Council - - and how it plans to offer the basics and let 'customers' buy other services.
Over on Wales Home, the Welsh Conservative's leader-in-waiting Jonathan Morgan sets out his stall in a way that may not be the best for attracting the votes of South East Wales Conservatives in any future leadership contest. Jonathan calls for positive discrimination for female candidates so as to overcome the backwoods' tendencies of most Conservative constituency associations. He wants the Welsh Conservative Assembly leader to also lead the party in Wales so as to catch up with the Tories' rivals and compete on a level playing field and he wants automatic re-selection for regional list AMs so as to put ...
Eek just found this still as a draft and it should have been published on the 15th. But having sent Ruaraidh to see the show it's a shame that mores haven't seen my review of this show. Pleasance Beside 18:20 Even the build up to this show at The Pleasance's 'premier porta-cabin' is used for comic effect, the normal dour safety notices are springled with joke. Then when the lights finally go down we are introduced to the first of Pippa's three character of the night, the recently widowed cabaret performer. She sings some of the songs dedicated to her ...
Yesterday I wrote a post about the complete failure of the political class to be honest with the voting public about the nature of the environmental challenge ahead, and how it is going to radically change the way we live. Today I'm going to continue on this theme by looking at why the politicians appear to ...
Europe's biggest FREE annual music festival is set to be the best yet - thanks to a new sponsorship deal with some of the world's biggest companies associated with The Beatles. And as a result of the deal, supporters of this weekend's Mathew Street Musical Festival (August 30-31) will have a chance to win some amazing fab prizes when they answer questions posted on the official festival website www.mathewstreetfestival.com which also gives full listings for the main festival and the fringe venues. They prizes are: A VIP trip for two to see The Beatles "Love" in Las Vegas. A guided ...
The sun's shining at the moment though it's a wee bit breezy out there and not very warm yet. Preston Park is the place to be in Eaglescliffe today. Stockton summer show takes place all weekend. There's something for everyone - sheep shows, dog show, circus, trapeze acts, falconry, theatre, craft stalls, food, drink and flyball demonstrations. If you don't know what flyball is, now's your
Welcome to the return of our regular Saturday fix of a trio of videos doing the political rounds. You can catch up on our previous outings by clicking here. First up, this week's news over the pond has been dominated by the death of Senator Edward Kennedy – here's an excerpt from his famous "The Dream Shall Never Die" speech to the Democratic Party's 1980 national convention in which he formally ended his Presidential aspirations: Secondly, US comedian Jon Stewart is on top-form in this clip from his Daily Show, exposing how Fox News has (whisper it gently) gone all ...
Another photograph from my recent travels. The Crowland Abbey (originally Croyland Abbey) website explains its unfortunate early history: Croyland Abbey was a monastery of the Benedictine Order in Lincolnshire, sixteen miles from Stamford and thirteen from Peterborough. It was founded in memory of St. Guthlac, early in the eighth century, by Ethelbald, King of Mercia, but was entirely destroyed and the community slaughtered by the Danes in 866. Refounded in the reign of King Edred, it was again destroyed by fire in 1091, but rebuilt about twenty years later by Abbot Joffrid. In 1170 the greater part of the abbey ...
Deveronvale Perfection became the worlds most expensive sheep yesterday when he was sold for just £231,000, the previous "most expensive" was apparently only £128,000. The sheep was reared in Banffshire and you can see a video of him courtesy of the BBC website. The eight month old lamb will now go on to meet the ladies of Banffshire. We may well see his lambs on sale and maybe even his sperm, ewe couldn't make it up could you?
My main worry leading to the next general election is a Tory government with Cameron as the Prime Minister, and that's why I ask the above question. I think Brown and party have seriously made a mistake with the release of the Lockerbie bomber Megrahi, which they will live to regret. The problem is Brown doesn't even have the support of a large number of Muslims in the UK, even Muslims are fed up with terrorists and them destroying the image of Islam and for that reason think Megrahi shouldn't have been allowed out. Brown and the SNP made the ...
Gordon Brown's Labour Party are now proposing to reduce housing benefit by £15 a week for around 300,000 claimants. It is easy when you are earning £65,000 a year to forget how hard it is to survive on benefits. I know from personal experience the difficulties, and no, I don't earn anywhere near that kind of money, when I moved up to Edinburgh with my new job it was a new start for us, unfortunately my partner worked for 10 weeks then the recession hit and hit bloody hard and didn't work from 22nd November last year until 3 weeks ...
I only ask because I wonder whether or not Dave Cameron is under the thumb of another showy incompetent arrogant elite. First, he doesn't sack Alan Duncan and picks and chooses who he castigates. Second, he does nothing about the `noises off` people like Hannon nor addresses the `Barnet Formula` new narrative coming out of that Council. Having ...
If you are looking for a good family day out this Bank Holiday weekend why not go over to Buile Hill Park on Eccles Old Road Salford for The Salford Show. The attractions include Circus Workshop, Horticultural Show, Lancashire Hawks and Owls, Tug of War, Dog show, Art & Music Workshops, charity & community stalls, tombola & raffles, rugby display and of course all the fun of the fair. There will be a car boot sale from 8.30am on both the Sunday and Monday. MANY THANKS TO CLAREMONT/WEASTE & LANGWORTHY/ORDSALL COMMUNITY COMMITTEES FOR THEIR GENEROUS CONTRIBUTION WHICH HAS HELPED THE ...
Look! My name on a scientific paper. Woop! That is all.
Arsene Wenger feels that one of football's oldest principles, that the referee is always right is being called into question because video evidence is being used against the footballer Eduardo. After looking at the video evidence (watching the news) I have to say that it looks like Eduardo was diving. Now referees do not always get it right and I don't think the referee made the right decision this time, but nobody is saying that the result should not stand or even that the referee should be reprimanded. I know that referees can be criticised from the terraces and from ...
