As this is my first general election where I'm actually engaged with politics and active on a campaign team, I will do a blog series over the next few months about the experiences along the way! Should be fun!
You may have noticed Flock Together is using a new URL shortener in its Twitter posts. For example, if you enter floc.to/6030 in your browser, it will expand to http://www.flocktogether.org.uk/event/6030. It also works with local parties as well (although you need to know its number). For example, if you enter floc.to/p632, it will expand to http://www.flocktogether.org.uk/winchester. I've also expanded it the party's survey site, Liberty Research. Enter floc.to/s742 to link to http://survey.libdems.org.uk/take/742 Should save space in Focus leaflets if nothing else!
Oh, to have the time. Time to read books. To clean my house. To play with Gwen. To go to the cinema. To do loads of things that I really miss, but that somehow fall further and further down the 'to do' list. This blog certainly falls into that category. I'd love to have the time to populate it with witty and insightful things, but alas 'reality bites'. I can't dedicate the time to this blog that I'd like, but I don't want to to die completely either. Over the coming weeks I'm going to be asking people to make ...
I got complimented today on my musical taste. For those who don't know it goes from modern jazz to heavy rock, with a centre point of Talking Heads, Bowie, Lou Reed, Brian Eno etc. But as the comment centred on the heavier stuff. Here are Queens of the Stone Age, a band Grace, Jes and I saw a few years back now, at the Brixton Academy with Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters. Such a tight track!
I've had a cold wet towel wrapped round my head this weekend whilst I've gone through the application for outline planning permission for the Academy and Sports Centre. In amongst the papers I found the observation that the Academy building is to open in 2014. That's right, not 2012 as originally stated, not 2013 as stated when the decision to start as a split-site Academy in 2011 was announced, but 2014. If you don't believe me, take a look here and look at paragraph 9.4.6 I hope it's wrong, or it will make a monkey Of Durham University; the minutes ...
K, this evening, I decided to make a steam pudding, and due to a rather dried out orange, it ended up being a lemon and orange steam pudding. Which got us talking. [IMG: [personal profile] ] amazing_holly isn't that familiar with the rhyme and, as is usual, [IMG: [personal profile] ] miss_s_b seems to know a completely different version to me, which is again different to the ones I've found online (and neither of us can remember the exact lyrics we knew as a kid anyway). I've found several online sources, best two seem to be Wikipedia and rhymes.org.uk, which ...
Don't get me wrong. I love British folk music. I can't get enough of people walking out on May mornings or of drowned sailors. It's just that the genre sometimes seems to lack a sense of humour. So it is a delight to find two of the stars of the 1960s' British folk revival singing like this. A little Googling suggests that this song is not by Peter Sellers, as the poster on Youtube claims (though Sellers did perform it), but by Sammy Fain. And this recording is taken from a 1965 documentary for Danish television. Elsewhere on this blog ...
Racist UKIP in racist policy shock. I've actually seen racist UKIPers on Twitter saying they want UKIP promoted as a libertarian party. Because when I think 'libertarian' I always think of denying people the freedom to dress as they like for racist motives. Alex previews the Peladon Tales boxset. Google and China in battle to enslave you. An ...
The Tories are proposing a tax break for married couples. This statement from Nick Clegg on the issue says it all. "What does is mean for the poor woman who has been left by some philandering husband who goes on to another marriage and gets the tax break and she doesn't?"
A parish notice here from the LDV editorial collective ... Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that a new person has recently joined the Voice's team - Sara Bedford. Sara joined the LibDems as a student in the 1980s, becoming National Chair of YLD (the predecessor to LDYS and Liberal Youth) between 1990-92. After serving as a member of the Federal Executive and Federal Conference Committee between 1991-95, in 1996 Sara settled down to motherhood and serving as a councillor for Abbots Langley on Three Rivers District Council, which has been majority Lib Dem controlled since 1999. She is also an ...
Finland's government is planning on banning smoking in cars where there are minors present (anyone under 18). This is wonderful news. Together with requiring removal of tobacco products from prominent displays in shops, the Finns are taking the next step toward eliminating the scourge of tobacco. As liberals we should support personal choice absolutely. But minors travelling in adults' cars don't have "choice". They deserve and we should demand that they enjoy the right to breathe air free from smoke. Pollution caused by smokers in cars carrying children are, on a micro scale, just as offensive as the factory pumping ...
Targeted immigration, as described by Nick Clegg on The Andrew Marr Show this morning might just work. As Lib Dems we tend to not be in favour of curbs on freedom of movement for people, but we must be realistic. We need to understand the scale of public resentment toward immigrants and immigration. Our policies must respect this feeling and find liberal solution to the "problems" that result from it. By imposing regional limitations on work permits for immigrants we are not compromising our beliefs to offer sanctuary to those fleeing oppression. Neither are we denying those who wish to ...
Baroness Scott of Needham Market, who has been President of the Liberal Democrat Party since January 2009, was the guest speaker at the party's constituency dinner at the Royal Victoria Hotel in St Leonards on Friday night. Following an afternoon's work on the stump in Winchelsea, Baroness Scott's speech was a personal account of how she ...
The video above is from last year's "Garden Of Light" event at Dundee Botanic Garden. At the request of Steve Page, the organiser (see http://tiny.cc/gardenlight2010) here's his update on the 2010 event next month : "On 27 and 28 February, I will once again deliver the Garden Of Light event at the Botanic Gardens in Dundee. The event aims to help raise funds for the Garden and raise awareness of this important tourist attraction and resource for the city. This event was run for the first time in 2009 and was well attended, whilst successfully gaining publicity on national radio ...
Memo to Eric Pickles (and for the frail and confused I've included a video to remind you who he is): I read in the Sunday Times today about your ageist abuse of Paddy Ashdown where your sort to draw attention to his age and called him 'frail and confused'. My colleague Alex Folkes a councillor in Cornwall first drew my attention to your regrettable behavior earlier in the week. Now not only is Paddy remarkably fit, his mind is agile, he is impressively well informed and works well with his colleagues. I've never know him to get the wrong end ...
On a walk through Salford this morning I spotted my first David Cameron election poster, most pleasingly daubed with an alternative slogan underneath. It was a nice surprise as although the Tories aren't exactly popular in Salford, it's hardly a bastion of Liberal Democracy either. Good to see that, despite the myriad of parodies of ...
Tomorrow, another Doctor Who DVD boxed set goes on sale, starring Jon Pertwee's Doctor in The Curse of Peladon and follow-up The Monster of Peladon. If you think a 1972 tale about joining the Galactic Federation could be making a subtle political point, I couldn't disagree more. Curse isn't subtle (except in comparison to its crass sequel), but it's a highly entertaining shaggy god story packed with memorable aliens, and one of my favourites of the period. Monster... Isn't. If you want to watch something for free, though, here's my pick of the last week's brand new TV, repeated tonight: ...
Eric Pickles has, we hear, labelled Paddy Ashdown "frail and confused". It seems an odd charge for the lifelong political hack and current Tory chairman, Mr Pickles, to level against Paddy – a former Marine, diplomat and spy, who's placed himself in danger in service of his country more times than Eric's had hot dinners (no mean feat). Here's a picture of Eric. And here's a picture of Paddy (taken just last week, I believe). And now let's see Eric in action – in his infamous car-crash appearance on BBC1's Question Time. A cruel person might observe that Eric seems ...
Banning the Burka in Britain? That's what UKIP want. They are showing their true colours. This is ridiculous, extreme right wing, pull up the drawbridges, Little Englander policy at its worse. As I have said before, the freedom to wear what we like, and therefore for people to wear a burka if they wish, is a Great British freedom. It is unBritish to ban people from wearing certain things unless there are vast safety issues. UKIP past-leader Nigel Farage says: we can't go on living in a divided society Well, there's nothing more likely to increase divisions in our society ...
Baroness Scott of Needham Market in the County of Suffolk, who has been the President of the Liberal Democrat Party since January 2009, spent time listening to voters concerns in Winchelsea on Friday last week. The new year has seen the start of campaigning in earnest by the political parties, and Baroness Scott was in the ...
The above cartoon from Peter Brookes in yesterday's Times sadly speaks a lot of truth. Following the tropical storms that hit much of Haiti in 2008, the shanty areas of Port-au-Prince were swiftly rebuilt. Those that had died were reburied. In one of the early news reports I remember reading that the buildings in Haiti of course weren't built like those in Japan, ready to withstand earthquakes. You only have to look at the various buildings that have been destroyed to see that, the Presidential Palace, the Cathedral, the UN Offices, hospitals, schools. Key parts of the nations infrastructure what ...
The right-wing press wouldn't miss a chance to argue that Clegg and the Liberal Democrats are more inclined to partner the Tories than Labour if there was a hung parliament, would they? The Telegraph take the view that Clegg's comments about Brown's proposals for electoral reform being "worthless" signal that he is more likely to ...
OK, so my new year's resolution to blog more hasn't got off to the most auspicious start, but then I do have the excuse of a theatrical production I had to take down to that London. Nonetheless, I need to get myself back into the habit. I could be writing something terribly exciting about, for ...
Welcome to the 152nd of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (10th – 16th January 2010), together with a hand-picked quintet, usually courtesy of LibDig, you might otherwise have missed. Don't forget, by the way, you can now sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox – just click here – ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging. As ever, let's start with the most popular post, and work our way down: 1. Lib Dem PPC resigns ...
First of all, Burkesworks takes issue with the Prime Minister's latest vain attempt to struggle up from the governmental deeps and break the surface of reality. Brown has announced that the "middle classes" are to be his party's election battleground, which seems to me to be less an act of campaigning and more an act of ...
I didn't watch Nick Clegg's interview on Andrew Marr this morning live. I couldn't face getting out of my nice warm bed. Not for the first time, I cursed myself for sticking so rigidly to my no tv in the bedrooms rule. Anyway, it was being captured on the Infernal Wickedness of Sky Plus. I wasn't however, able to resist a peak at Twitter where I found some Tories pulling him apart on what he was saying on immigration. I reckoned that had to be a good sign and when I watched it back, I was proved right. Nick deftly ...
After a long campaign by Leeds University Union and local Lib Dem Councillors Tariq Zaman and his brother have been banned from holding a HMO license. This is really great news and Leeds University Union have a press release on it here. Watchdog have also been following this case and have a few comments too. It is a shame that despite pressure from councillors to remove Mr Zaman from the councils list of HMO license holders, this has taken way too long. It is a symptom of the complexity of the governments HMO legislation.
Let's imagine a woman called Angela, who has two young children, between the ages of six and eight. She is married to an abusive man. In 2010, it is incredibly hard for any woman suffering domestic violence to leave a home. There are so many obstacles placed in the way. Many worthwhile charities have shown just how hard it is for anyone suffering domestic violence to leave. Indeed, there are already so many financial obstacles to overcome. So many emotional, terrible choices to make. Does Angela leave her children behind with an abusive father, because she is scared she cannot ...
My favourite artist, and friend, Annemarie Wright has been entered in to an "Artists Wanted" competition. Artists Wanted is a collaborative project working to build new lasting opportunities for emerging talent. We have experienced first hand the difficulties in breaking into the professional art world and it is our mission to make this process more welcoming, dynamic and open-ended.
Nick Perry, the Lib Dem parliamentary candidate for Hastings & Rye, has welcomed the decision by the Crown Estate at the end of last week to include the Hastings Zone in the list of Round 3 offshore wind development partners. The expansion of electricity generation from offshore wind represents a massive long term investment opportunity which ...
I thought it might be a good idea to make sure some key facts were in the public domain about the decisions for the Southport Cultural Centre. The decision- supported by the Tories and Labour and opposed by the Lib Dems -to rule out all the options on the table for a temporary Library meant that officers of the council stopped looking for premises. As the Labour Leader made plain 'the cabinet voted against a temporary Library'. We were furious about this decision and challenged it by calling in the cabinet decision. Lib Dems -led by my Birkdale colleague Richard ...
I have been bemused this week by the culmination of a saga which could have been resolve in 5 minutes over 2 months ago if our dentist's reception staff had been less control freaky in their approach. We registered with a local NHS practice when we moved back here in 2000. We were somewhat annoyed when they went private a few years ago, especially when they wrote to us saying that unless at least one of us signed up to their plan, they wouldn't take our daughter as an NHS patient. They very quickly retracted that, but still. We decided ...
On the one side, you have Gordon Brown still triangulating like hell and claiming that Labour is "the party of the middle classes" in direct contradiction of what John Denham said the day before in his no-shit-Sherlock statement about "the white working class", and what Keir Hardie would make of that is anyone's guess. On the other, there's Ken Clarke claiming on Question Time that he likes "to think of British society as classless, as meritocratic" (h/t Claude) - fine words indeed, but ones which I suspect would cut no ice on a Nottingham sink estate coming from a grammar ...
I walked past the Peacock (where I worked as a barman during one university summer vacation) this morning and it looked thoroughly closed. Sure enough, the Harborough Mail website reports: The Peacock pub, a centuries old coaching inn, shut on Wednesday (January 13). Landlords Adrian and Sharon McCarthy said a mutual decision was recahed (sic) with themselvs (sic) and brewery Marstons to close the St Mary's Place pub.The Peacock has been closed in the past and housed an ambitious teashop called the Nutmeg Tree for a while in the 1990s.
In 1972 Geoffrey Hoyle wrote a children's book called 2010: Living in the Future. Well 2010 is now the present, so take a look at the book on Tumblr courtesy of Daniel Sinker and see how close and far out some of the predictions are. Also see how some mix futuristic ideas with old school technology. You can even add a comment if you want. A interesting thing to have stumbled upon on a Sunday afternoon. Indeed reading it I have a feeling that I actually have read this before, back in the 70s. It would have been the sort ...
[IMG: Snowy wall] Here's my latest column for the Muswell Hill Flyer and the Highgate Handbook: By the time you read this, I am assuming (hopefully rightly) that the snow has melted and gone and life has returned to normal. But all did not go that well during the two snowfalls - the ones before and after Christmas. Haringey Council say that they have 'agreed priorities' with their contractors on what gritting should happen when it snows. However, those priorities don't seem to have been met judging by the picture painted by local residents. I'd been expecting that - as ...
Here. Thanks to a comment on an earlier post for the tip.
The next meeting of the South of the Borough Neighbourhood is on Wednesday 20th Jan at 7.30pm at the Hook Centre. As usual, you are all welcome to attend, and to join in the discussion (for most items). On the agenda, the planning application that is likely to attract the most interest is the one for the White Hart site, where the Fircroft Trust wants to build a supported housing scheme. You can see the plans here. The committee will be determining this application on the night, so the quasi-legal rules about participation apply. We are also hearing five planning ...
That's something I never thought I would write! Seems that Lord Tebbit agrees with the Lib Dem proposals to take the very poorest people in society out of the tax system altogether and, as he points out, it wouldn't even cost very much. I really don't understand why the other two parties don't agree wth us on this. Anyone care to point say why?
Stephen Tall reports that a poll of teachers that puts the Liberal Democrats far behind the other parties. I am not surprised. because at the moment there is little that separates the main parties when it comes to education policy.Now one of the biggest appeals of the Liberal Democrats is that is radical. It is not afraid to introduce policies that the country needs. It is not afraid to speak
4) W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2003, ISBN 159308014X). This was first published in 1903 (although some of the essays it contains had previously appeared in other publications) and is one of the classics of the early Civil Rights Movement. Du Bois was the first black person to be awarded a Harvard PhD, and one of the most moving chapters is his semi-autobiographical account of a young black graduate returning to his home town and finding he cannot, as he hoped, persuade his fellow black people of his political views because the ...
There are some really clever billboards here. Ones that break the boundaries of the billboard site are clever but breaking the rules is often the easy way of grabbing attention. It's the ones - such as the butter one - which stay within the rules and yet still look completely different from conventional billboard posters that are the cleverest in my book.
As some of you may know, I am a Councillor on the Greater Manchester Fire Authority. The good work of the Authority makes me proud, reducing fire deaths dramatically. I woke bleary eyed on Wednesday to find there had been a devastating earthquake and that we had sent out 8 firefighters to help in the rescue operation. They have done a fantastic job over the last few days. Councillors had a run through of many of the search and rescue techniques in September and I think we were suitably impressed. Dog handler Mick Dewar was one of them, I think. ...
Daisy Benson – selected for Reading West Richard Gadsden – selected for Worsley and Eccles South Martin Land – selected for Hungtingdon Good luck one and all.
The long saga of the unlawful car sales from Clayton Road Nursery seems to be coming to an end. Last March the Council issued an enforcement notice against the owner, requiring him to stop the car sales, remove the cladding from the polytunnels and remove all the scaffolding stored on the site within a month. The bungalow can only remain in place to support either a nursery or a livery stable. Just at the end of the period for compliance the owner appealed against this enforcement. The whole issue then transferred from the Council to the Planning Inspector. Against advice, ...
Just 377 DNA profiles were removed from the DNA database last year despite there being an estimated 1m innocent people's profiles held, research by the Liberal Democrats has found. More than 5m profiles are held on the database in total. The European Court of Human Rights ruled in December 2008 that the retaining of innocent people's DNA is illegal. Commenting, Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesperson, Paul Holmes said: " It is a disgrace that we have got a million innocent people on the database in the first place and it is a disgrace that people are not being taken off. ...
Research by the BBC has found that pupils in Wales are regularly taught by staff who are not fully qualified teachers. They say that weekly timetables in more than a quarter of 172 schools who responded include lessons which are taught or supervised by teaching assistants. One Swansea school uses supervisors for 150 hours of classes per week. Despite this the Welsh Government say that support staff and teachers are not interchangeable: "Raising Standards and Tackling Workload: a National Agreement clearly states that support staff at any level and teachers are not interchangeable and, ultimately, it is the duty of ...
One of the more significant bits of public space is here in NW3, at the end of Eton Avenue, just outside the Hampstead Theatre and the Central School of Speech and Drama. The School has an amazing schedule of alumni and a proud track record of providing high quality education and training. But the building itself has considerable history and hosts the Embassy Theatre. The Theatre accomodates about 700 people and is a former Music Hall and dates essentially from 1928 when it was converted by architect Andrew Mather. It was previously Eton Avenue Hall from 1890 then Hampstead Conservatoire ...
Last year the SNP Government was only able to get its budget through after a highly dramatic Holyrood showdown. Will the various groups in the Scottish Parliament be able to conduct themselves in a constructive manner this year, working together to pass a budget that meets the needs of the people of Scotland? After reading the articles in today's Sunday Herald where the Party Leaders set out their positions, I'm not convinced. We need more from John Swinney than what amounts to a plaintive wail that the big boys in London ran away with our money. If I in my ...
We're used to self-styled futurologists getting their predictions hopelessly wrong, so it's impressive to come across this, from architect Sir Aston Webb. Made in 1914, Sir Aston imagined taking a journey a century into the future, to 2014. I asked why everything looked so bright and clean, and my companion said that was because they had done away with the smoke and only used smokeless fuel materials now. In a bird's-eye view I obtained of London, I noticed that, besides the railway tracks out of London, there were great arterial roads stretching out in all ways. They were 120 feet ...
We have scanned them inhttp://www.odddownlibdems.org.uk/leaflets/scan0001.gif
In 1997, one of the things that underlined how much Tony Blair had changed his party from the one that had lost in 1979 (and been out of power for 18 years) was how few members of his shadow cabinet had been members of that previous administration. I did a bit of research on this last night and as far as I can tell, the only members of Blair's Shadow Cabinet in the run up to the 1997 General Election that had been a member of the 1979 losing government were: Margaret Beckett: She had held a number of junior ...
I think I have already made my scepticism known about the efficacy of a minimum pricing regime for alcohol and whether it will really have an impact on binge drinking and alcohol-related illnesses. I certainly believe that there should be changes to the licensing laws and to the way that booze is sold in supermarkets etc to make it more difficult for under-age drinkers to acquire it, but all the evidence points to demand for alcohol being fairly resistant to price increases and I find it difficult to see how a minimum price will break through many of the cultural ...
On Wednesday this week you can take part in Nick Clegg's online forum on young people's issues. Click on this link to find out how: Nick Clegg Forum:
I've had a response to this complaint. Damn, my slightly ranty scattergun approach isn't foolproof (I will try and improve). Can anyone point me to BBC interviews with Nick which were annoyingly bogged down with talk of hung parliaments? I remember seeing/hearing them but can't remember where/when. -------------------- Thanks for your e-mail regarding 'Today' on BBC Radio 4. I note you were disappointed that David Cameron wasn't asked about the possibility of a hung parliament during his interview with Evan Davis on 7 January. We do realise that listeners have many questions that they'd like to be put to an ...
If 'Yes, Prime Minister' is to be believed (and everybody I have heard on the issue acknowledges that it is eerily accurate), it is often the case that top civil servants believe that it is they who are running the country, not the politicians. In some instances this is the case, in others it is very far from the truth, but in a large number of real life situations the reality must fall between the two. It would be very easy therefore to dismiss this report in the Sunday Times as frustrated Mandarins venting their grievances at an outgoing and ...
I have been participating in a small conclave of very senior foreign policy experts: by experts I mean Foreign Minister (several were present) and Senior Ambassadorial level. It was one of those informal meetings that drives much of the opinion forming on key issues in international relations. I was one of those few present in an unaffiliated analytical capacity, since I have direct experience of several of the topics covered. The conference was conducted under the Chatham House rule, which limits what I can say to reporting the tone of the meeting and does not reveal attendees or ascribe views ...
Recently one of my contacts used a Freedom of Information request to UK Border Agency to find out how many non-EEA workers companies plan to bring in over the next year. This relates to my ongoing reports on IT contractors and other professional contractors (such as Accountants) whose jobs are being unfairly taken in the UK by lower paid foreign contractors from outside of the EEA. As the Bracknell Blog articles reported here, here and here. Britain is celebrated as having one of the most versatile and effective IT sectors in the world. But this sector, like so many others ...
Quentin Davies is my MP from where I grew up in Grantham, the most true blue part of the UK. Whatever anyone says about Comrade Quentin, he's certainly had an interesting few years. When Gordon Brown became leader of the Labour Party he defected from the Conservatives to join him. Since then he has held a junior minister role at the ministry of defence. A couple of months ago it was alleged he tried to claim expenses for the repair of his bell tower. What an in touch and down to earth guy he is! Then this week we learn ...
You can survive for weeks without food, but you can only survive a few short days without water. Dehydration is a major issue now in Haiti, but on top of that there is a need for clean water. With infrastructure ruined a lot of the water that comes from pre-existant sources is now contaminated. So the option for many is either to not take the water and dehydrate or drink contaminated water and risk disease. The DEC appeal lists some of the amounts that you may be able to contribute and what difference it makes. If you haven't already please ...
It's an issue that arouses passions on either side. For some, home schooling is an absolute right, for parents to be able to educate their children in the manner of their choosing without interference from the state. For others, the concern is to ensure that children whose parents are not suitable to home school do not suffer for the rest of their lives as a result. Where, as liberals, do we draw the line between the rights of parents to know better than the state; and the rights of children to achieve the best possible education? Lynne Featherstone wrote about ...
This year we're celebrating 80 years of Scouting in Gatley - we'd love anyone who was in Gatley Cubs or Scouts in years gone by to get in touch. To kick things off, I've received this wonderful photo of bob-a-job in 1949. [IMG: Gatley Scouts 1949 (small)] This was sent to me by Bill Mansell, then patrol leader of Peewit Patrol. In the photo (as best as Bill's memory serves) are: Mr Mottram who owned the shoe shop outside which the photo was taken. Colin Wyatt, doing the polishing and being closely watched by Peter Renshaw (without hat) and Derek ...
There's a couple of fascinating historical political portrayals coming up. Rupert Everett as Jeremy Thorpe is apparently in production as a film – which I am not particularly looking forward to. And Julie Walters will be Mo Mowlam in a Channel 4 biopic, covered by Guardian Weekend here. There are reports today that Mowlam kept the truth of her illness from Tony Blair. The part is a big challenge for Walters. She doesn't obviously look or sound anything like Mowlam. So I looking forward to how the "Mo" turns out. I suspect it will be brilliant. Everything Julie Walters does ...
The Q&A in Guardian Weekend is usually worth flicking over, but this week there's real quality: the subject is Steve Coogan. His comedy and philosophy combine seamlessly. The highspot is this: Who would you invite to your dream dinner party? Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George Bush, that weird Christian who runs the mercenary organisation that used to be called Blackwater, and Jesus just to hear him tell them all that he was never on their side. The Guardian also had an excellent article on the Aleksandr meerkat adverts which have revolutionised advertising, apparently. The article answered a question I have ...
Colin Breed, the Liberal Democrat MP for South East Cornwall, has issued a challenge to Eric Pickles, the Chairman of the Conservative Party. A few days ago Pickles described Paddy Ashdown as "frail and confused" after the former Lib Dem leader said the South West had been "trampled on" by previous Tory administrations. Now Breed has challenged Pickles to: "visit Cornwall and Devon and meet Mr Ashdown. Perhaps first they could 'yomp' across Dartmoor."Turning the irony up to 11, Breed went on: "I can assure Mr Pickles we have very long memories in the South West and we would love ...
The Esoteric Curiosa introduces us to Nancy Keene Perkins, whose second husband was Ronald Tree, the Conservative MP for Harborough between 1933 and 1945. Nancy was born near Charlottesville, Virginia, and brought up in Richmond and New York. She was the niece of Nancy Astor and a cousin of Joyce Grenfell. She was first married in the United States in 1917. Her husband Henry Field, heir to the Marshall Field department store fortune, died five months later following an operation to remove his tonsils. Her second husband Ronald Tree was Henry Field's first cousin. Esoteric Curiosa follows Wikipedia in describing ...
Information from Bury Council Now that waste collections have started again, the council is aiming to reach all households on their usual collection day. If the weather continues to improve, the council intends to collect grey bins, blue bins and green bags next week. Brown bin collections are still suspended so that we can put extra effort into clearing the backlog of other waste.
Prestwich Farmers Market is back! [IMG: picture-1] Sunday 24 January 2010, 9.30 - 3.30, Longfield Centre, Prestwich Village. As well as loads of stalls and produce, there will be a free giant raffle, Squeaky the Clown and a Town Cryer.
Creating an Office for Budget Responsibility. We will create a new Office for Budget Responsibility to assess independently the sustainability of the public finances and hold the Government to account. It wouldn't be a Conservative manifesto without something stolen from the United States. The US Office of Management and Budget states that its mission is; to assist the President in overseeing the preparation of the federal budget and to supervise its administration in Executive Branch agencies. In helping to formulate the President's spending plans, OMB evaluates the effectiveness of agency programs, policies, and procedures, assesses competing funding demands among agencies, ...
Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor Vince Cable MP has attacked London's Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson's claim that a banking tax would see top bankers leaving Britain, describing Britain as "desper...
It's Sunday. It's 7am. It's time for a trip down political memory lane, but first the news. 2 Must-Read Blog Posts What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here's are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator: Is there anyone more vile than Rupert Murdoch? asks Nader Fekri. Go and read the post to find out what prompted the question. Mikey, The Terror Suspect gets a write-up from Stephen Glenn. There's just one problem with him being a terror suspect as the photograph on the blog post reveals. Spotted any other great posts in ...
One of the most evocative, opening lines of any book ever writte. No need to tell you that it is those of Don Quixote. It is one of my favourite books and tells you as much about the "human condition" as any of Shakespear's plays. The full quote goes: En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no hace mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo de los de lanza en astillero, adarga antigua, rocín flaco y galgo corredor. In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call to mind, ...
One very witty reader decided to take a note for Satan this evening in response to his insensitive and inappropriate comments to the earthquake disaster in Haiti. it's so good that i thought it was worthy of a post of its own: Dear Pat Robertson, I know that you know that all press is good press, ...
I want to put a theory to you. That theory is that there are two historical `establishment structures` in British society derived from old-fashioned duopolist thinking. The first revolves around wealth and corporate interests that militate against `big government` as that is a competitor of its own interests. In fact it's not in itself interested in Government ...
David, we love you, please stay. Go to them and you will get half the matches, less chance of being spotted by England and will be asked to play god damn boring Rugby. Same goes for Ugo, Danny, Nick, Tom, in fact all you guys. I know it is that contract time of year, rumours are rife, brinkmanship comes into play etc. But David, just remember the committment the club has given you. The belief
I think that you have to be clever to be a comedian. You need to understand what you are talking about to such a depth that you can make a joke about it. I think this is why Shappi Khorsandi was on the Question Time panel this week. I wrote about her yesterday but thanks to the comment from John, I feel I should spend a little longer on this subject. John called her comments outrageous and I agree. She commented that Conservatives and Liberal Democrats would have led us into war just like Tony Blair did. I think her ...
