Lenny Harper, the police office in charge of the investigation into alleged abuse at the Haut de la Garenne children's home on Jersey, has written a long post on Stuart Syvret's blog defending his conduct of the investigating and exposing the pressure put on him by the island's government: It was during this process that builders who had worked on the site told us that a few years before they had found bones they were convinced were human but had been told to 'forget them' and "let bygones be bygones." (This phrase became a catchword among my team whenever the ...
You may have seen the rumour about Fox News presenter Glenn Beck. According to "some" people he "might" have committed a whole bunch of unspeakable crimes nineteen years ago. As rumours go these are even more preposterous than the ones that the "birthers" promote so so I have great difficulty imagining anybody getting worked up about them. It's so obviously a joke, even the official web-site that tries to promote this fake controversy admits quite explicitly that it is satire intended to poke fun at Glenn Beck's tendency to make wild accusations and then demand that his victims present evidence ...
I must admit I do feel a little sympathy for Cameron on some days. There he is deperate to prove his 'green' credentials-riding his bike, re-designing his logo and jetting off to have his photo taken watching the ice cap melt- then the whole project is undermined by his unreconstructed membership.How his heart must sink when one of his members elected to public offices chooses to buy a gas-guzzler with the carbon footprint of a small nation. Sod the environment, sod the common good if you feel that you need that sort of status symbol then you declare a lot ...
Had an amazing evening last night at a remarkable house in the middle of Soho – an 18th century house with many of the original features, including the cesspit in the basement! The occasion was a reception for Lancia Club Italia who are here with their beautiful cars on a rally, and the venue (this amazing ...
A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that my Lib Dem colleague Caroline Pidgeon AM was going to meet with users of the Greenwich foot tunnel. I wasn't able to make the meeting myself, but I understand it went well, and Chris Maines and Pete Pattisson were there representing the Lewisham interest. Caroline's now written to Greenwich Council, who are responsible for the tunnel. Letter from Lib Dems to Greenwich Re Foot Tunnel Closure 4th Sept
I was saddened to hear of the death of Keith Waterhouse last night, though happily peacefully in his own bed. Keith was one of my favourite authors, not only Jeffrey Bernard..., but also Whistle Down the Wind, and of course Billy Liar (Britain's own ...
Since I posted my photograph of Market Harborough Congregational Church in May* I have lost a stone. Mostly this is due to eating less (an important medical discovery), but it is also because taking up photography again has encouraged me to get out and about more. (The photograph above was taken this afternoon at Aylestone, a village that has now become a southern suburb of Leicester.) The moral is clear: if you want to lose weight, buy a digital camera. * A couple of weeks ago I found a copy of Betjeman's First and Last Loves - the book referred ...
"Words are only postage stamps delivering the object for you to unwrap" So said George Bernard Shaw. Apparently the four words used above, in the title, though they did come from the SNP's Cllr. Rob Merson's mouth this Tuesday during the Formartine Area Committee were not unwrapped correctly by a fellow Councillor. His email to Debra Storr posted here does seem to admit he did use those words: "Debra, I did not use those words in the context in which you presented them." Yet he objects to Debra using his own words said in a committee meeting on her blog ...
I signed up to the 10:10 campaign today. That means I've committed to cut my carbon footprint by 10 per cent in 2010, to combat climate change. Before signing up I used WWF's online calculator to work out what my emissions were. Apparently in the last 12 months I've put over 10 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That's unsustainable. I believe that fighting climate change isn't just a job for governments. People need to act too. If we do not change then nothing can change. Thankfully the 10:10 website also includes some helpful hints and suggestions about ways ...
Goodness knows. But the question ought to be asked. He had a spurt of popularity in the Seventies with "Dancing on a Saturday night" (see video below with our Bazza in his signature blue silk cat suit and a remarkably unmoved audience behind him) and "Do you wanna dance" (see also below - this time with the attachment of blue and white frills on his catsuit) and other hits. He's been a producer and songwriter ("I eat cannibals") but goodness knows what he's doing now. I doubt whether he wears a blue silk catsuit any more, that's for sure. Here's ...
When you strip away everything else, this is the most important thing I can say while I am lucky enough to be alive on this planet: I am extremely lucky to be alive, to be able to enjoy life and be free to fire off my views into the ether. As they say in Private Eye: ...er....that's it. I'm moved to write that in the wake of the commemorations of the 70th anniversary of the Second World War. My grandfather was involved in the First unpleasantness. In fact, he was lucky to survive one of the biggest culls of that ...
We had a lovely time at Victoria's today, where she was hosting Kina's 75th birthday party. Unfortunately we forgot to take our camera, but others took pictures on their mobiles which ae promised. Kina was telling me about her campaign to inform US Democrat friends that the National Health Service, for all its faults, is infinitely better than the private health system in the US, and she gave me permission to quote her email to a US correspondent: Everyone I know here, in all political parties and none, are appalled at the distorted descriptions of the British National Health Service ...
I'm probably stealing Caron's thunder but I've just noticed that this months political Wikio Rankings have been counted and verified and updated on all out sidebars. So how are the Scots doing in the political realm (as I know others are looking at the Lib Dems). So taking a quick look down the top 100. 1 = Tom Harris: And Another Thing... 6 (10 +4) 2 = Cute Greek Baby 15 (18 +3) 3 = Subrosa 43 (64 +21) 4 +1 SNP Tactical Voting 46 (69 +23) 5 -1 Stephen's Linlithgow Journal 52 (68 +16) 6 = Caron's Musings 61 ...
Back in May of this year, I mentioned on the blog that the record of the SNP government on its promises made in opposition to bring further civil service jobs to the city has thus far proved a lamentable failure (click on headline to view the earlier article). Bringing more public sector jobs to Dundee is vital and at the latest meeting of the City Development Committee of the City Council, I proposed the following motion : City Development Committee instructs the Director of City Development to prepare a report on the actions and procedures of his department during the ...
Anyone fancy coming along to help elect a Liberal Democrat mayor in Bradford? Come along to the Liberal Youth action weekend on the 10th October.
Seems someone has done a (not so flattering!) history of the Labour Party. However, coming from a Conservative, it seems slightly pathetic to attack the Labour Party for being authoritarian given their own parties history!
The Guardian has the story: The 10:10 campaign to encourage Britons - and Britain - to cut carbon emissions reached the seat of governmenttoday, with a public call on the Palace of Westminster to sign up. Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat energy and climate change spokesman, wrote to John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons, to ask for his support. The paper quotes from Simon's letter (which I can't find online at the party's website): I am sure you will agree that taking action on climate change is not just about government policy. It is also about individuals, ...
The announcement by the Welsh Government that it is to carry out a review of music education in Wales following concerns about patchy access for children is not just an admission that they got it wrong on this issue but also evidence of what happens when Ministers do not listen. In this instance I am not talking about the current Education Minister or even the One Wales Government, but the minority Labour Government that was in position in 2005 and yes, the present Education Minister was a member of the Cabinet with a different brief but had collective responsibility for ...
A little vignette from yesterdays cabinet meeting of Sefton Council. Firstly by way of background I should let you know that our Tory leader sees herself as a no nonsense commander of her troops. She doesn't like people doing things she disapproves of and feels free to say so. A few weeks ago she was up at a council meeting demanding to know which of our councillors had failed to attend a particular visit or meeting. At the time I thought it was a bit rich coming from her as of the various Tories who have been designated (and paid) ...
Sat 5th
17:45
Farron blasts as "ridiculous" Tory council's refusal to protect allotments from vandals
The Mirror has the story: Gardeners are so furious with their council they feel like throwing in their trowels. The growers have been banned from using barbed wire to deter allotment vandals – in case they hurt themselves. Property at the Muddy Bottom East Allotment is being damaged up to three times a week. In one attack 15 sheds were smashed, water butts were overturned and taps were left running. But when allotment holders asked Southampton council to put up the wire, it said no for fear of being sued. ... Lib Dem environment spokesman Tim Farron said the decision ...
I'm not sure that Arnold Schoenberg would resonate with this splendidly irreverent summary of his mammoth Gurre-lieder by members of the Hertfordshire County Youth Orchestra (CYO) after their performance of the work last week. By any standards it is a gargantuan piece of music and it was a hugely brave undertaking for the CYO under the baton of Peter Stark. Once the fierceness of the air conditioning with consequent music flapping hazard had been solved, it was an extraordinarily rich and intimate experience even though we were in the huge space of Westminster Central Hall in London. I do not ...
Yesterday saw Gordon Brown's statement on the UK's continuing involvement in Afghanistan, in which he defended the government's strategy, and maintained its goals were "realistic and achievable". It earned short shrift from Nick Clegg: The situation in Afghanistan is on a knife-edge. Yet today we have heard little in the way of fresh, new thinking from Gordon Brown. After pursuing an overambitious and under-resourced strategy for eight years it's hard to believe that increasing the training of the Afghan police and army will now do the trick. We need a bolder change of strategy to turn things around. When it ...
Just back from a few days in Paris - I did look out for this lot on the Metro, but didn't see (or hear) them!Still, fabulous musical musical highlights did include: an a capella concert on the Left Bank, an 18-piece string ensemble busking in a tunnel at Gare du Nord and an accordionist playing a mashup of "Over the Rainbow" and the Can-Can on a train near Bir-Hakeim. Posted via email from Helen Duffett's posterous
I have alot of time for Trevor Phillip's; the much-maligned head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. His face doesn't fit (more accurately his repudiation of liberal sacred cows like multiculturalism doesn't fit) and for that he is terrorised by the establishment. True, he has failings, but his willingness to speak out over issues ...
Some of these reviews can also be found on Amazon.In August 2009 I read the following books: 1. People of the Wolf, by Michael and Kathleen Gear This book could have been so much better. It is apparently the beginning of a series of fictionalised accounts of the peopling of the Americas, this first volume covering the arrival of the first humans. There's even a kernel of a good story in here. Unfortunately, it's just hopelessly incompetently written. Let's start with the handy map right at the beginning. It bears so little resemblance to what actually happens in the story ...
In previous installments I have touched briefly on the App Store and on multi-tasking. I shall now criticise in more depth.In the past, I have criticised attempts to put Linux (for example) on phones, saying that for the sort of limited user interface that is possible on such a small device, a full-blown multi-user OS like Linux is pointless overkill. I now realise that I was - at least a little bit - wrong. While multi-user is indeed pointless, with multi-user comes multi-tasking, which is far from pointless. Yes, a small screen means you can only realistically expect to see ...
Sociology Lens has an interesting post today regarding Georg Simmel and his view of how money shapes interactions and social relations such as subordination and domination, in a rational and objective way. He states the importance of money, in how it forms the central aspect of the nexus of social life. He is known for influencing George Ritzer who replaced Simmel's money analysis with credit cards and stated how their introduction in the 50s has lead to an increasingly depersonalised and rational society, drawing on Weber's view of rationalisation. Simmel's views around the way and how money is exchanged in ...
If there was an Olympics for graffiti reporting, I'd rather fancy my chances in the final (137 items reported so far this year to Islington Council; let's not get started with Haringey, Westminster or Hackney Councils). But despite my enthusiasm for getting graffiti cleaned away, there's some I regularly pass that I've never reported. It's the graffiti that really counts as art. Banksy is by far the most famous example of someone who paints items that add to the location rather than detract from it. His paintings are inventive, humorous, famous and widely praised. His Bristol exhibition this year has ...
The Liberal Democrats have launched a campaign for 20mph limit for King's Cross, following concern from residents that traffic is going too fast on their streets. Local people are backing the campaign for a lower limit, so that people can enjoy where they live without speeding traffic putting them at risk of being hurt. The campaign was ...
The Planning Committee which will decide on the application by Jack Allen Holdings to put a waste site at Garston Docks (right by some houses and a busy road) is on 15 September. The recommendation, which is put together by staff at the City Council after going through all the relevant information including what Jack Allen says, what various organisations like the Fire Service say and what members of the public say, is for the committee to say no to the application. There have been thousands of objections to this scheme and these have helped make the crucial arguments against. ...
Onslow Gardens Residents Association (OGRES) AGM I had been invited as a local ward councillor to give a talk at the Onslow Garden Residents Association (fabulously known as OGRES) AGM. My briefing was simply to talk about Wallington. Not only is this my specialist subject but there are a number of exciting projects currently in progress ...
There's been plenty of interesting Lib Dem internet chatter asking whether – now Ukip's soon-to-be-ex-leader Nigel Farage is breaching normal convention and standing against the incumbent Speaker, Tory MP John Bercow, in Buckingham – the Lib Dems should follow suit. Opinion is divided. Some say we absolutely shouldn't – here, for instance, is Stephen Glenn: ... while the 'convention' for not standing against a sitting speaker is not as set in stone as some people may have you believe, it is none the less a precedent symbolising the apolitical nature of the role. Indeed it seems to be one, that ...
London Midland Trains - http://bit.ly/7xfzh - rearrange these words in no particular order - up piss brewery in couldn't organise
To participate in the Meme Award, you need to: - link back to the person who gave you the award; - reveal seven things about yourself; - choose seven other blogs to nominate and post a link to them - let each of your choices know that they have been tagged by posting a comment on their blog; - and finally let the tagger know when your post is up. So thanks to HappyMouffetard at The Inelegant Gardener for tagging me for this... I'm in two minds as I'm not sure I know seven other bloggers to link to so ...
A lot has been written about the proposed 'Leaders Debate' that Sky News are organising before the next general election. However not much has been said about the effect that this debate will have on young peoples voting patterns. The most common reason that the older generation give for not voting on the doorstep is 'you lot are all the same' however the main reason given by young people is 'I don't really know what you all stand for'. This debate is an oppurtunity to change that. It will be the first time ever that most young people will have ...
Just got sent an email by Catch 21 productions asking me to post their latest video on this blog. Poltitics is becoming increasingly alien to people of my generation. This is for all sorts of reasons, one of which is that it's not easy for young people (or anyone for that matter) to understand how legislation affects them. Catch 21 seems to want to make politics more accessible for young people which can't be a bad thing. However I hope that Catch 21 don't fall into the trap that other projects like this have done. Namely to become patronising towards ...
Whilst the potholes at the southern end of Stroud Green Road look like hanging on for a good while yet, there is good news off the northern end of Stroud Green Road - for the potholes on Crouch Hill are about to get a thorough tarmacing. The work will be on the stretch between Trinder Road and Shaftesbury Road: The improvements are in two phases, first we will reconstruct the road base and in the second phase we will lay a new surface. The reconstruction works are due to start on 14 September 2009 and will last for approximately 4 ...
I was surprised that not more was made of the death by fire of the two apprentice jockeys in North Yorkshire. OK it wasn't quite of the same scale as the Lakanal House fire in Southwark yet that incident was a big feature in that days news. Perhaps I'm being naive – not in London, in ...
Mister Fred (why was he never dubbed by a monarch?), the last British winner of a Grand Slam, may not be sure whether to job for joy or turn in his grave. In his centenary year the new British hope Mister Andy is preparing to break away from his clothing label replacing the laurel crown for the three stripes of Adidas. Mister Andy of course is currently trying to get a Grand Slam win wearing Mister Fred's gear, though Herr Roger and Senor Rafa may have a thing to say about that in the final and semi respectively. But having ...
Nick Clegg and David Cameron have agreed to participate in the above debate, so the question is will Gordon Brown agree?
There has been a long-running debate over the years in road safety and advertising circles about the merits of road safety films which try to get the message over by shocking the audience with the impact of accidents. The main reason for doubting the effectiveness of such adverts is the question of whether the audience they need to persuade is largely made up of people who don't believe an accident will happen to them. It's rather like the debates over crime: is lengthening jail sentences an effective deterrent to crime or is the issue that people don't think they'll be ...
The BBC offer a solution to an age-old mystery by reporting research published in the New Scientist, that suggests that women have a genetic aversion to dangerous animals, such as spiders. The research says women are born with character traits that were ingrained in our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Researchers say that as child protectors, they have to shun animals that threaten them or their young off-spring. Previous research suggested women were actually up to four times more likely to be afraid of creatures like spiders: The new research was headed up by developmental psychologist, Dr David Rakison, from Carnegie Mellon University ...
Saturday 29th August Andrew Reeves asked if Labour will ever learn in reference to their plans to cut housing benefit. Sunday 30th August Moments of Clarity asked if the housing benefit proposals fallout will be as bad as the 10p tax debacle. Letters from a Tory was not happy about Michael Martin's peerage and he thinks it is symptomatic of a wider decision by politicians to shun parliamentary reform. Monday 31st August Peter Black AM discussed the rise of the career politician. Liberal Bureaucracy thought that the idea of "Drink ASBOs" shows the government missing the point, yet again! Stumbling ...
The question "Why are there so many different media formats?" would detain me for hours of ranting. However, I have recently found a website which is very useful for most file conversions. media-convert.com really is an excellent little FREE site. It operates all on page. You browse to enter the file you want to convert, be it video, audio, image, document. Then you enter the format you want the file in. Hit the button. It takes a few seconds and then your file is ready to download in the format you want it. After spending years downloading individual bits of ...
I hate it when on the news, via TV, online or even Twitter (yes, I know that's online) I hear that another one of our gallant servicemen or women have tragically lost their lives in Afghanistan. I feel for their families and loved ones, however their families also need to realise they lost their lives to secure our safe future. To ensure a better Britain. Before everyone jumps up and down and screams it's another woolly Liberal going on about the war, I could well have ended up in the RAF back when I was 17, but I didn't pass ...
Whilst in London earlier in the week I noted from the Evening Standard that Mayor Boris Johnson is calling for every home to have a water meter.
This won't mean anything to anyone outside the inward looking world of the Lib Dem Blogosphere, so if you're not one of those people please bear with me. I'm sorry that Irfan Ahmed has left that esoteric group. His blogs were great at getting people thinking and discussing. Best wishes Irfan.
A few years ago, a group of us decided to organise a Liberal Drinks at federal conference in Brighton. We were building on James Graham's simple but successful model: nominate a pub, decide a date, publicise it; then have convivial chats with whoever turns up. In Brighton, we followed the same model, deciding on that nice-but-tiny real-ale place near the station. We arrived, a small but respectable number of people turned up, chatted the night away, and at some point moved on to a Chinese restaurant in the vicinity before winding up back at the conference bar. A good time ...
From Jamie, an example of Japanese anti-politics:
Just as sometimes it is necessary to be cruel to be kind, on the issue of drug and alcohol abuse, I feel it may be necessary to be illiberal to be liberal. In the run-up to my presentation at the fringe event "What can be gained from thoughtful drug policy reform?" I have been struggling with the question of how to regulate the sale of drugs. I have to balance the goals of keeping drugs away from children, eliminating illegal markets, protecting our European neighbours from hard drugs from our cheap, legal market, discouraging drug tourism and presenting a regime ...
Most people now appreciate that, in comparative perspective, Westminster really is not the mother of all Parliaments after all. We may have thought that in the era before mass communication simply because we were ignorant to all the alternatives. These days, however, there is no excuse. Especially as we have a beacon of best practice right ...
Remarkable news pops in to my inbox from London Midland: If you're travelling by train this weekend, please be aware that there will be no London Midland trains running on Sunday 6 September 2009 (except between Birmingham and Liverpool) due to a staff shortage. Trains will run normally from Monday 7 September. For the majority of London Midland on train staff, working on Sundays has always been voluntary. This weekend, so few have volunteered to work, that we have had no choice but to cancel services. It sounds pretty disastrous for a railway company to have to mostly shut down ...
This week I was proud to be alongside Simon Hughes MP and Islington's own Cllr Greg Foxsmith at the national launch of the 10:10 campaign - pledging to cut our carbon emissions by 10% by the end of 2010. Islington is one of 9 councils nationwide to sign up at the start; there were to ...
I'm the first to admit that I used to be lighter, that I don't like the slight bulge of middle aged spread around my middle. But I used to be an athlete, I was eating the required calories to complete the training and racing and my body though thinner was tuned muscle. I don't have an issue with a little extra poundage, I know the work I went through before was not for body image reasons but for sporting achievement, however that isn't always the case. When Jo Swinson launched her campaign about Airbrushed ads leading to unrealistic images only ...
Reuters reports: Hamas condemned the United Nations Sunday, saying it planned to teach Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip about the Holocaust ... the movement's Popular Committees for Refugees said: "We refuse to let our children study a lie invented by the Zionists." Hat-tip: Matthew Harris
Liberal England is currently running a quiz with two copies of Graham Rinaldi's biography of Will Hay as prizes. To win one of them just email me the answers to these three questions: What is the name of the 1942 film in which Will Hay satirised Nazi Germany?Which two actors regularly appeared in films as Will Hay's sidekicks?Who played "Will Silly" (an affectionate parody of Will Hay) in Harry Enfield's television special Norbert Smith - A Life? The competition closes at 2359 on Monday 7 September. To encourage you to enter, here is Jack Watkins writing about Will Hay on ...
The Conservatives seem to think that a few key placed, if misused, words can help the branding of their party. They have been using the words 'clean' and 'honest' in the Norwich North by election then they were far from transparent but successful. So they are repeating the mantra in Glasgow North East. They are also attempting to use the word 'progressive' to describe their past, present and future. Though interestingly seeing as the Lib Dems don't do well in polling to come equal top of the parties with the Tories in one poll on progressiveness slightly above out voting ...
Many people bemoan the standards of modern education. Modern childen are out of control, don't learn the basics, aren't up to the standards of their forebears. If only we still had corporal punishment and good old-fashioned chalk-and-talk teaching techniques, kids today would have the knowledge beaten into them, and be grateful for it. Others tell a tale of transformation. Modern teaching methods and technology have improved standards and the proof is in the exam results with more kids getting better grades year after year. A study being reported today suggests that, for maths at least, neither may be true. Researchers ...
We're on Adelaide Road in Belsize and there is - surprise surprise - the Adelaide Pub. The building is actually very striking and quite dominant and stylist - I had a sense that it was mid victorian build and a bit of digging suggests that it is about 1850. It's named after Queen Adelaide, wife of William IV. She was born in Germany in 1792, married William in 1818 and was crowned Queen Consort in 1831. William had died in 1837 but the popular Queen Adelaide survived him for a further 12 years, eventually dying on the 2nd December ...
Yesterday's Western Mail reveals the shocking truth about the way that Wales is failing to utilise the potential of its graduates. They report that nearly a quarter of graduates are unable to find full-time work three-and-a-half years after leaving university. They add that data released by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa) yesterday show a further fifth of graduates in work were not in a graduate-level profession, and more than one in 10 who completed their studies in 2004/05 said they had faced unemployment at least once in their career. Just over 23% of those asked said they had been ...
In the phoney war between the end of the silly season and the reconvening of the Assembly, it seems that the BBC's Welsh Affairs Editor, Vaughan Roderick has been proving the power of the blog in setting the news agenda. I was amused therefore to find this little gem, which deserves to highlighted. Vaughan reports that a recent Plaid Cymru publication in the Vale of Glamorgan takes cheek to new heights. He says that the spinning is a good as in a a laundrette: In a leaflet, Plaid Cymru boast of coming 'equal first' with the Tories and Labour in ...
In the introduction, I outlined key elements to a set of accounts (I'm not finished yet...), referring to Section 226, Companies Act 1985. To the profit and loss account and the balance sheet, it emerges that you need notes too. Schedule 4, Part III explains what should appear in the notes. Most of it won't apply to the average one person business, but here are some key elements that you should be aware of: Paragraph 36 requires that; "the accounting policies adopted by the company in determining the amounts to be included in respect of items shown in the balance ...
I wouldn't normally go out of my way to support any initiatives by Sky TV, but I was sitting near the television (4th Sept) and by chance I overheard an advertisement on Sky asking people to sign an online petition, one inviting party leaders to take part in a televised debate prior to the next election. I looked at their website for more details. The initiative appears to be the brainchild of John Ryley, the head of Sky news. He has written to the Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Conservative leader David Cameron and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg to invite ...
One of the failings of the modern day politics, is the lack of ethnic minority representation in Parliament. There are only fifteen MPs of colour, whereas proportionately, there should be four times as many. I bring this up because today is the ...
Saturday: And now, onto a story where one or two cunningly placed words in the media can change an opinion, shift an agenda, and mutate a Great and Bountiful Empire of a million Worlds and a million species into a retarded, xenophobic monoculture ruled by a blob of evil. Is it just me, or does this remind you of something? Alex spotted it: the first thing that the Doctor says to Adam in this episode, just after the titles, is "open your mind". I think we can be pretty sure he didn't mean that to be taken quite so literally. ...
