That was the verdict on research by the Sutton Trust, however, it did say that with good parenting that gap can be closed. In this day and age a child's future shouldn't be determined by birth, but it does and I am proud that the Liberal Democrats recognise this and is proposing an extra £2.5bn on education, ...
At least that's the verdict by the Economist who disagree with the notion that Britain is in a mess and getting worse. I have spoken to many public sector and charity workers in Bromsgrove who deal with the people the Tories describe as part of the "Broken Society" and they don't recognise the term. Sure the ...
News that Teesside Cast Products is definitely shutting down has been greeted with dismay by local Liberal Democrat campaigners. Ian Swales prospective Liberal Democrat MP for Redcar constituency said, "I am shocked that, despite all the talk, there has been no solution to this problem. With the right intentions from the company and the Government, this site could have been saved and turned back into a world class steel producer. Closing the site is industrial, economic and social vandalism. The news is devastating for the area. "It's now time for urgent government action. The package they have already announced will ...
So how does the diary look today? Friday 19 February Meet Rachel, a road safety campaigner, to discuss a council report Saturday 20 February Deliver leaflets - not sure where yet Sunday 21 February Have photographs taken for literature around constituency and alongside councillors and council candidates Monday 22 February Attend parliamentary candidate's all-party environmental briefing at the House of Commons Tuesday 23 February Meeting with campaign manager to update latest literature Wednesday 24 February Continue to draft local policy documents and catch up on party correspondence Thursday 25 February Attend strategy group meeting of local party executive Friday 26 ...
The Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council (JLC) have issued a joint statement welcoming Nick Clegg's sacking of Baroness Tonge as the party's health spokesman in the Lords. I am very pleased that the Board and the JLC have issued this statement in response to what I would indeed also call swift and correct action on the part of Nick Clegg.
Firstly, let me make this clear; I do support the governmental campaign to highlight the problems around domestic violence. However, I do not understand how you can tackle a power divided problem through a power divided approach. Put simply, I take issue with the inability of the recent governmental campaign to tackle domestic violence not ...
A brief discussion of the TUC's unrealistic banking transaction tax document.
Campaigning began this morning at 9.30am, talking to residents in the polling districts that come into Southend West from Southend East. This is quite an odd change. Southend West has traditionally been a much stronger seat for the Liberal Democrats than its eastern neighbour. So you might expect areas coming from the East to be a handicap. But this isn't the case at all: these polling districts form part of Prittlewell Ward, where there are three Lib Dem councillors and a great Liberal tradition - stretching back to the 1950s. So we got a warm response on a bright but ...
Flybe has announced a new daily service connecting Kent International (Manston), to Edinburgh brilliant. "Tickets are on sale now at http://www.flybe.com/ from £24.99 one way including taxes and charges for travel effective May 27th through to 30th October. The new route, with a flight time of just 80 minutes, will be operated by Flybe's fuel efficient 78- seat Bombardier Q-400 turboprop aircraft." This is great news for East Kent, and adds to the benefits of those who are already considering this part of the world as somewhere worth living in, adding to our recently improved high speed rail services to ...
A month ago, LDV launched our comments policy experiment, appealing to our readers to 'make nice'. As I explained at the time: ... though we reckon this site is better than most political blogs in offering a space where all can feel free to debate with mutual respect, it doesn't always happen. And those few occasions when LDV's comments become overly personal and abusive (and invariably testosterone-charged) can deter others from ever daring to join in. So for the next month - leading up to Valentine's Day, appropriately enough - LDV is going to try and 'love up' our comments ...
Yesterday Nick Clegg allowed the "shopping list" he will take into negotiations in the event of a hung parliament to be known. Split Horizons complains that an important item is missing from it: the restoration of civil liberties. Liberal Youth Scotland catches the chair of their Conservative counterparts apparently justifying attempts at deception as "PR". He'll be in the cabinet within in a few years. Cicero's Songs offers a charming little picture of Tallinn in the snow. "Yet another example of how existing copyright laws appear to do more for protecting corporate interests than in protecting the rights of artists" ...
No surgeries today because of the school holidays but very busy with constituents' issues. Tonight's "Evening Telegraph" featured the feedback I recently received from Digital Radio UK about the proposed digital radio switchover. See http://tiny.cc/digitalintele. At tonight's City Council Development Quality Committee, I moved refusal of a retrospective application in Minto Place that had been the subject to residents' objections. Although recomended for approval, I won the vote 15-12.
So I've gone and read the report that 54% of people are talking about! Sorry, I mean 0.54%. In short, it is uninformative rubbish. Yes, there are lots of number about how much worse the worst areas in the country are compared to the best areas in the country, but, well, so what? Sure, life is going to suck in the worst places and be awesome in the best places. Here are some examples from page 7: • Children are six times more likely to grow up in a household dependent on out-of-work benefits. • Young people are almost twice ...
The best thing about blogging is feedback and I believe myself to be as liberal as anyone in what I accept but occasionally I find some contributions to be off topic and unsubstantiated. I take the view that comments made on this site are the responsibility of those who make them and accept no liability, I sometimes take the view that some comments are so fantastical or malign that the its reasonable to delete them, some are just plain boring, off topic, abuse or links designed to promote special interest. From time to time I enable comment moderation just to ...
My Sharona by The Knack was a great song from my youth. 1979 to be exact. I'm saddened at the death - announced today - of Doug Fieger, who formed The Knack, and co-wrote and sang lead vocals on My Sharona.
Given that Norfolk County Council are threatening to stop gritting roads where I live in Thorpe Marriott (Taverham), you would imagine that they would do everything they can to at least make sure that local grit bins are full of grit so that locals can use them. Well imagine our surprise the the other day when looking at the state of some of the damaged and empty grit bins in our area with our excellent PPC Dan Roper, we opened one bin and found it absolutely full, not of grit, but with dirty water. Only Norfolk County Council could think ...
You can't help but marvel at the irony and hypocrisy of the BNP throwing a journalist out of their recent meeting because, they claim, he told lies about them. I wonder if every person had been judged by the same rules whether the BNP leader Nick Griffin could put his hands up and say he has never told a lie ? I think we all know the answer to that question.
If you visit Market Harborough's leisure centre, whether to use the gym, hear Spencer Davis or have a swim, you may be disconcerted by an inscribed block that stands outside it. Although the centre is clearly a recent building (in fact it dates from 1991), that inscription reads: MARKET HARBOROUGH URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL THESE PUBLIC BATHS WERE OPENED BY J.W. LOGAN ESQ. M.P. OCTOBER 1ST. 1896 The explanation is that the block came from the town's original swimming baths, which stood in the Northampton Road. The site is now occupied by a block of retirement flats called Marshall Court. Mr ...
It's a mark of a good piece of analysis that it is still sound even if the particular news story that prompted its publication doesn't stand up for long. And so it is with Stephen's piece over on Comment is Free, triggered by the Guardian story – firmly rubbished by the party – about the party's attitude towards coalitions. So although The Guardian story has been ridiculed – after all the paper has variously reported that the party wants a coalition with the Tories, wants a coalition with Labour or doesn't want a coalition at all – Stephen's three tests ...
I'm normally an optimist: I believe that economies grow naturally; that this is generally good for us; that we don't normally need governments guiding them, that things rebound naturally. But the evidence is building that this year may see a nasty flirtation with renewed recession. In a rushed blogpost, what is my evidence? Business pessimism. ...
Release notes 04.150210.004 New pages added: wordpress tutorial I Minor tweaking and recoding completed sud domains will be available in few days navigation STILL buggy and therefore not available - please be patient and utilise your 'back' key lol Release 005 due at end of week (or earlier if I get 2-3 hours peace and quiet at home to complete the ...
Today Labour-run Reading Borough Council Council issued a press release urging low-income families without a computer to apply for a grant to buy one. According the PR, the government's Home Access grant "will provide grants for 270,000 low income families across the country to have their own computer and Internet access." The packages available to local families who apply are as follows: 1. Full package (a computer, one year's internet access, service and support) 2. A computer with service and support only 3. One year's internet access only The Council is encouraging lower income families whose children are not on ...
I was very encouraged to read the headline on today's Guardian: "Lib Dem rules out coalition government": The Liberal Democrats are planning to rule out forming a coalition government with either the Conservatives or Labour if Nick Clegg holds the balance of power in a hung parliament after the general election. As Whitehall's most senior civil servants and Buckingham Palace make detailed preparations to clarify the Queen's role in the event of a hung parliament, senior Lib Dems are making clear that Clegg has no interest in taking cabinet posts and would focus instead on winning support for four key ...
After work I have spent an hour with a future constituent helping them with a problem, part of which is problems with the decent homes programme which is meant to ensure that social housing is brought up to a minimum level of habitable living. There are real problems with this programme, from which the government has raided money from to fund affordable housing construction, a noble aim but not at the expense of existing tenants. Then I returned home and read, on the BBC, about the Tory plans for public sector workers to be able to set up workers co-operatives ...
[IMG: Pile of bin bags on Ferme Park Rd] Over the last few months I've had lots of residents and shopkeepers complain to me about refuse sacks piling up by the shops on the Ferme Park Road. This photo was emailed to me this weekend by someone annoyed that the bin bags put out by residents on Saturday morning were not collected all day. Apparently this photo was taken at 11am and the pile grew all day. These piles of rubbish are not a great advert for shopping in Ferme Park Road and I can understand why people get annoyed. ...
The Liberal Democrat MP for Falmouth and Camborne is the latest to answer questions from The Independent's readership, including: Is Britain Broken? Wouldn't it have been better if you'd had a proper, substantial career before going into politics? and Was Gordon Brown right to cry on television after saying "My children aren't props, they're people"? To find the answers to these and others go and take a read.
Next Monday the new bus service to Hinchley Wood School will finally start, after three years of untiring campaigning by the parents. I've written about this before, and how they had to involve me as they were getting nowhere. I found that communication with Transport for London was dire, so brought in Edward Davey MP, and Caroline Pigeon, who chairs the Transport Committee on Greater London Assembly. Finally we managed to cut through all the nonsense, and TfL accepted that there was a business case for a new bus route. So every school day, morning and afternoon, the 267 route ...
I've an article published today on The Guardian's Comment Is Free website looking at the newspaper's report that Nick Clegg is set to rule out a coalition with either Labour or the Tories in the event of a 'hung parliament'. I reckon this is the best and only strategy open to Nick and the Lib Dems, and was impressed with the way the party secured such good headlines for the move. Then the leadership rather went and spoilt it all by insisting to the BBC "they have not made up their mind about what they would do if the general ...
Time to empty out the "things to link to" folder again:Politics and religionHow evil are you? [IMG: [livejournal.com profile] ] andrewducker has a checklist and a handy poll so that you can tell the world. I'm not that evil, really. Sadly. John Q Publican dissects the Broken Britain rhetoric. Beau Bo D'Or has done some fabulous spoofs of the new Tory electoral posters. Tee Hee Hee. Heresy Corner does his usual superlative dissection job - this time on Charlotte Gore ;) FeminismKatie West and Penny Red are doing a collaborative art project. See the first fruits of it here. Awwwww ...
Okay, so I'm not sure how much tax you pay on bets, so my calculations may be a bit "off". But last year, when my student loan came through, I decided to be brave and fork out £20 as a sort of long-term investment. If it doesn't pay off, well, none of my 2010 income has been devoted to the failure, so I can write it off as the folly of a previous year. I placed two £10 bets with Ladbrokes. One, I did as a hopeful safe bet. For Sarah Teather to win Brent Central. I've always liked Sarah ...
Apparently the Lib Dems will not go into a coalition, but would support a minority government who makes concessions in four key areas - the Lib Dem 'shopping list': • Investing extra funds in education through a pupil premium for disadvantaged children. • Tax reform, taking 4 million out of tax and raising taxes on the rich by requiring capital gains and income to be taxed at the same rate. • Rebalancing of the economy to put less emphasis on centralised banking and more on a new greener economy. • Political reforms, including changes to the voting system and a ...
Have just heard Camden plan three weeks or so of consultation pre planning application on the rebuilding of the Fortune Green Play Centre which will have dual use as for play and for the Sington Nursery which will move off the Mill Lane Open Space later this year. Part of the scheme will be to do up the football/multi sport pitch and make it more accessible for local young people. But quite a lot of thought will need putting into a plan for the carrying out of the building works. Access is limited to the play centre and consultations will ...
Today's Beyond Belief is talking about poly relationships, and the interview with the poly guy was quite interesting. He didn't make enough of communication for my liking, but he did ok. Unfortunately, they are having a post match discussion and the monogamous Christian guy is making me want to scream and throw things at the radio with his level of Not Getting It. He is going on about how broken promises hurt people and things, and ignoring the fact that in a poly relationship you don't make promises of monogamy by definition. The wanker. There's a very reasonable woman called ...
So it looks like Nick Clegg has decided to go for option 3 as I highlighted in this post back in November. He has ruled out a formal coalition with either of the other main parties. Instead he would look to support a Queen's Speech that included the following: 1) Investing extra funds in education through a pupil premium for disadvantaged children. 2) Tax reform, taking 4 million out of tax and raising taxes on the rich by requiring capital gains and income to be taxed at the same rate. 3) Rebalancing of the economy to put less emphasis on ...
As many of you may be aware the Conservatives have announced that they will scrap the so-called "death tax", after launching a campaign poster saying that "Gordon Brown wants £20,000 off you when you die. Now, as much as I doubt that the Tories even have a running chance in Blaenau Gwent (I doubt they would even poll above 5% to keep their £500 deposit), as they may be running the country I thought I'd look at how this campaign would work and the kind of people it will help financially. I will look at three houses currently for sale ...
I was having a look today at the Formby First website which belongs to Sean Brady an independent Parish Councillor in Formby. (One day someone will have to explain to why the Sefton Borough Councillors for the patch loathe the Formby Parish Council. Their contempt is scarcely cloaked) Sean was the Labour candidate in Southport in 1983 when I fought the General Election here. He was very effective in that role and even though we squeezed Labour down to 8% his efforts stopped us gaining more. In 1987 a less impressive Labour candidate let the vote slide further 6%. Paul ...
A week ago, Lib Dem Voice invited the members of our private discussion forum (open to all Lib Dem members) inviting them to take part in a survey, conducted via Liberty Research, asking a number of questions about the party and the current state of British politics. Many thanks to the 200 of you who completed it; we've been publishing the results on LDV over the last few days. Today, we turn our attention to the performance of the Liberal Democrat shadow cabinet, and a handful of other senior Lib Dems. Reproduced below, in alphabetical order, are the full results ...
Here are two of the hard working 'unsung heroines' who are so essential to the operation of political parties. Seated is Edna a long standing member of Norwood Ward. Standing is Vera who among her many other contributions is a leading light in the Women Lib Dems.
It is now only weeks from the General Election. It is a general Election that the Conservative Party is expecting and indeed is expected to win. Why then is the Tory Party in such an incredible mess? There is no sense of coherence anywhere- policies are made up with great rapidity, and abandoned within a few days of announcement. It is not just that the Tories are "keeping their powder dry" for government- they genuinely don't know what they are going to do. They insist that they will be fiscally disciplined, then return from Davos feverishly back pedalling on what ...
"Where have all the good times gone?" That old song by The Kinks often comes back to my ears when I am in Britain -quite regularly, that is. The economy is not only going down, it is just not up to what it used to be. The Cadbury flop The takeover of Cadbury by Kraft Foods is just the latest in a long series. In less than three decades Britain has lost many of the jewels in its industrial crown. One of the most spectacular examples is of course the car industry. When The Times writes about Jaguar Land Rover ...
This sounds fun. On 20 March Five Leaves Publications from Nottingham and the Creative Writing Team at De Montfort Universty are holding an independent press day. The event takes place at the Clephan Building, De Montfort University, Oxford Road, Leicester. According to the States of Independence website: Forty writers, mostly from the East Midlands, will be reading from their work at an events programme to accompany an equal number of independent publishers and writers' organisations staffing bookstalls and displaying their work. Authors include nationally known figures including children's writers Berlie Doherty (twice winner of the Carnegie Award) and Chris D'Lacey, ...
I have been a fan of The Beautiful South for over 15 years (yes I know, make me sound old!). So it was great to hear that the reformed group, albeit without Paul Heaton, were going to play at my old stomping ground, Walthamstow.So I bought a ticket for my dad (who is also a fan) and myself and last Saturday we went to the concert. Luckily we got just before the doors opened and we were able to
This morning's Western Mail highlights the impact that the recession will have on front-line policing. They report that the predicted cut in the Home Office grant of up to 20% annually from 2011, as part of a programme of public sector savings, will leave chief officers facing difficult decisions. All four police authorities are set are set to raise the local council tax precept by around 5%, which means council taxpayers will pay around £7 or £8 extra for policing next year. The increase will keep the forces on a more-or-less even keel this year. But they are likely to ...
If you ever needed proof that Cameron's Conservatives remained out of touch with the realities of British Society then their recent pronouncement on teen pregnancies is the perfect example. In their "Two Nations" document published at the weekend they claimed 54% of girls in the worst deprived areas get pregnant before they are 18. A startling fact, in fact a startlingly incorrect fact. The real figure is 5.4%, Ok so they got the decimal place wrong, but the fact that they accepted the figure as correct just shows how out of touch with reality they really are. Clearly they have ...
So the Tories mislaid a decimal point? So what, you might say. Mistakes happen. It's embarrassing that the error wasn't picked up, but no-one's perfect – certainly not the Tories. So whilst this headline gives some temporary amusement, it isn't in itself proof that the Tories are unfit to run the country or are generally ...
A few years back, when the which party will they support in a coalition question was being asked again, I argued that we shouldn't duct the question, we should simply answer that the more votes we get, the more Lib Dem MPs that are elected, the more influence over the agenda Lib Dems get.Well it seems that is exactly the line Nick Clegg is taking. Many Lib Dem bloggers are reporting Nick Clegg
Seldom have I seen such distasteful drivel that Bruce Anderson espouses in today's Independent. Bruce Anderson: We not only have a right to use torture. We have a duty. You hve to read through Anderson's lamentable justifications of torture before arriving at the penultimate paragraph were he advocates the torure of women and children. "Let's take ...
Google has set a trend in labelling products "Beta" and then leaving them largely unchanged for long periods of time because actually they've been good enough to use and often better than 'finished' alternatives from rivals. Ironic really then that Buzz was rolled out without a "Beta" fanfare, as if it was a finished product. Yet since then Google has been busying making changes to respond to negative feedback about privacy. In other words, behaving just like you do when you have a Beta product...
Having looked at various blogs today about the Tory howler regarding teenage pregnancies I completely agree with Mark Reckons about his description of the complete casualness of the Tory research. He mentions about articles in the Economist and I'm sure high-minded people have shaken their head in disbelief. The problem is that NONE OF THIS IS ...
Over the weekend I watch the first episode of the BBC's series on the Great Offices of State, which focussed on The Home Office. At one point they had footage of Roy Jenkins visiting the wreckage of the Birmingham pub bombings. As he walked past the angry crowds, a voice (or it may have been two voices) shouted out "Bring back hanging!" "Your're too liberal!" At the time I just chuckled a bit. "You're too liberal" isn't a common critique in the UK, where (unlike the United States) liberalism is not conflated with socialism, and people tend to be practical ...
There is a bit of a hoo-ha this morning about an attack document that the Conservatives have produced called "Labour's Two Nations" in which they have claimed that in the most deprived areas of the country, 54% of women are likely to fall pregnant before the age of 18. They had misplaced a decimal point because the actual figure for these areas is 5.4%. This erroneous figure was mentioned three times in the document. Now anyone can make a mistake. However there should have been a review of this document before it was released. If there wasn't, then they need ...
With the general election looking to be heading towards a hung Parliament according to the latest prediction we've published from a group of academics, how are things looking for the Liberal Democrats? We've published three previews of the election: My view: Follow the yellow brick road? The Liberal Democrats' general election campaign My other view: The 2010 general election: it's a game of three halves Stephen's view: The Lib Dems and the 2010 general election ... 'The future's bright, the future's gold.' But regardless of what you think of the ability of Stephen and myself with the crystal ball, as ...
Unless I have missed it – I don't really read Guido, if read is the word – there seems to be a strange silence from the Conservative Blogosphere on their claim that in some areas 54% of Teenagers fall pregnant by the age of 18. Miserabilism is such a religion amongst some on the Right ...
As I wasn't happy with the BBC's last response to my QT complaint, I complained further and have eventually got this back: ---- Thanks for your further e-mail regarding the 26 November edition of 'Question Time'. Please accept our apologies for the delay in replying. We know our correspondents appreciate a quick response and we're sorry that you've had to wait on this occasion. We note that you were unhappy with the response that you received to your complaint of 27 November, in which you expressed concern that Liberal Democrat MP Jo Swinson had been dropped from the panel. Your ...
My joy was unbounded when I found that the Alicia Best Western hotel in Sefton Park, Liverpool had the Parliament channel on offer last Tuesday night. I watched the Commons debate on new clause 88 – the Referendum on Voting Systems, for which the government has proposed an Alternative Vote system. It is good to see a nudge in the right direction of voting reform. But my goodness, it was quite horrific to see the massed ranks of Tory dinosaurs desperately scrabbling around to find any possible argument against such a small change. I mean, in cheese terms, Alternative Vote ...
Liberal Democrats in Redcar constituency have set out plans to revitalise local high streets, protect the future of the Post Office, and help small businesses establish and grow in a fairer marketplace. The announcement comes as research shows that more than one in six Teesside shops is now empty after the recession. Middlesbrough and Stockton are amongst the worst hit centres in the country. Ian Swales, prospective MP for Redcar constituency said. "Even before the credit crunch hit, independent shops were disappearing fast from our local shopping centres. Things will only get worse if Corus TCP closes. "The Government's skewed ...
1. Be a tortoise, not a hare The fast-moving story that sweeps round the world may catch the headlines, but the reality of most internet campaigning is very different: it's the gradual, consistent and sustained effort that reaps the reward. Unless you're very lucky, it's a commitment to building up email lists, web visitors and so on over time which brings results. 2. Don't expect people automatically to come to you It's easy to stick something online – a Facebook page, a blog, a simple website or whatever. But that won't make people come to it. Just as there's no ...
The Guardian front page this morning says we have ruled out coalition with both Labour and Tories. In recent weeks I think they have had stories saying we will support coalition with Labour, coalition with the Tories - and now - no coalition at all. We haven't changed our position at all. The people, not the party leaders, are the kingmakers and it is completely pointless and wrong to try and predict the future until people have had their chance to vote. The voters will decide the result of the election and then all the parties will have to respond ...
The recent bad weather has left terrible pot holes on our roads and your local Focus team has been reporting them to the Council's Street Care department. If you would like to report a pothole directly to the Council you can do so online here.
Sent as follows: On the Week in Westminster the Liberal Democrats were given exposure only on an issue of PROCESS while Labour and the Conservatives were also given exposure on POLICY issues. Why is it that the Conservative and Labour parties are never asked `would you be willing to work with the Liberal Democrats should the situation ...
Yet another report this morning highlights just how important the early years for children are... Children from the poorest homes are almost a year behind middle class pupils in language skills by the time they start school, research suggests. Labour's immediate defence (not yet though) will be to say that it proves their SureStart programme ...
Work has finally started on the new office/utility room, and our builder and his team have dug the trench required for the foundation. The trench is 1400mm deep for the most part, but following the interesting discovery that part of the site was once occupied by the village pond, the remainder is 2100mm deep (about 7 feet). As a result, a large amount of Suffolk clay has been removed from the site, and we have a rectangular hole in the garden with an island in the middle. Perhaps we should build a very small castle in the middle... The garden, ...
Happy Monday morning! And as it's the fifth anniversary of YouTube, find out why Paddy chose to appear with a couple of puppets back in 1997. But first, the news and blogs. 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: The difference between Lord Ashcroft and Lord Paul on Rob Parsons' A comfortable place blog: These episodes demonstrate the character of the Conservative Party – people who make all sorts of promises in order to get what they want with the firm ...
After the thorough dismantling of the Tories' "broken Britain" claims by the Economist (and I can do no better than quote ChieferMadness here: "Trotskyist rag The Economist perverts fact of BROKEN BRITAIN with 'analysis' and 'statistics'"), you'd think that the Tories would be a bit more careful with the figures they publish. But no they go and plonk both feet in it with a stratospheric claim about teenage pregnancy. From the Guardian: "It claimed - three times - that women under 18 are "three times more likely to fall pregnant in the most deprived areas compared to the least deprived ...
A survey of a thousand men and women in London reveals that most women asked believe that the victim of rape is sometimes at least partly to blame. Almost three-quarters of women said if a rape victim got into bed with the assailant before an attack they should accept some responsibility. One-third blamed victims who had dressed provocatively or gone back to the attacker's house for a drink. More than half of those of both sexes questioned said there were some circumstances when a rape victim should accept responsibility for an attack. These figures are nothing new. A 2005 survey ...
Ok, what I'm about to tell you is hardly in the same league as Tory Bear describing Gordon Brown as looking "like paedo" but then that is pretty grim. It's almost going back to the days of the Federation of Conservative Students who were a blight on my student days. I remember they had a faction called Students Against Sodomy at Aberdeen University. Eventually FCS became too much of an embarrassment even for Norman Tebbit, who disbanded them. The thing is that these days those types have blogs from which they can pour out their poisonous bile. I wonder if ...
The Guardian on Saturday has a feature on the effects of having children on Climate Change. Someone has worked out having a child costs 9,441 tonnes of CO2 which equates to 2,540 return flights London to New York.
Highways House 41-45 Broadwater Road Welwyn Garden City Hertfordshire AL7 3SP Tel 01707 356200 Fax 01707 356380 ADVANCE NOTIFICATION OF CARRIAGEWAY RESURFACING WORKS INFORMATION BULLETIN No.1 Issued on 11th February 2010 Beechwood Avenue, St. Albans As part of Hertfordshire Highways' programme for maintenance of the county's road network, Beechwood Avenue is to be resurfaced between Sandpit Lane and the A1057 Hatfield Road in March this year. Works will commence on Monday 8th March 2010 and last for approximately 2 weeks If we experience adverse weather during this time, the timescale could be extended. The works will involve the planing out and ...
The revelation that the Liberal Democrats are planning to rule out forming a coalition government with either the Conservatives or Labour if Nick Clegg holds the balance of power in a hung parliament will be widely welcomed within the party. Today's Guardian tells us that Clegg would be prepared to throw a lifeline to the Conservatives or Labour by allowing either party to pass a Queen's speech if the aspiring government makes concessions in the four areas, described as the Lib Dem "shopping list": • Investing extra funds in education through a pupil premium for disadvantaged children. • Tax reform, ...
Getting the numbers wrong seems to be becoming a habit among Conservatives. First we had those dodgy crime statistics, with the Conservatives claiming wrongly that violent crime had massively increased over the last decade. Today we discover the Conservatives have inflated tenfold the number of girls getting pregnant in deprived communities. What's a tenfold increase between friends? As the Guardian reports: The Conservatives launched the attack document, called Labour's Two Nations, to try to show the rise in inequalities under the current government. It claimed - three times - that women under 18 are "three times more likely to fall ...
I have to admit that despite being a keen watcher of Dr. Who for most of my life I had not noticed the phenomenon described by Sylvester McCoy in this morning's papers. In fact did anybody notice? The former Timelord alleges that left-wing scriptwriters were hired by the BBC to pen Doctor Who plots which undermined Thatcher's Conservative government: At the time Tory party chairman Norman Tebbit claimed the BBC was in the hands of the "Marxist mafia". "The idea of bringing politics into Doctor Who was deliberate, but we had to do it very quietly and certainly didn't shout ...
The most gobsmacking thing about the Tories initial claim that 54% of young women under 18 in deprived areas end up pregnant, compared with 19% in better off areas is that they seemed to believe it in the first place. Now I live in what might be described as a deprived area (it is in the bottom 10% for wealth), and even a split second's thought would tell me that it simply isn't true. There is a high teenage pregnancy rate (compared with the national average), but nothing of the scale suggested. Most young girls are not getting pregnant, nor ...
From James Forsyth on the Spectator's Coffee House blog: The Tories are facing embarrassment tonight after a document they released claim that 54 percent of young women under 18 in poor areas get pregnant when the actual number is 5.4 percent.The fact that the Conservatives can make such a gross error and not notice it confirms the impression that their Broken Britain narrative is more a lurid fantasy than a reaction to reality.
Last week I emailed Kent County Councillor Nick Chard to ask why roads in these parts were in such a bad state after experiencing perhaps the worst driving conditions (wednesday evening around 8.00) I've ever encountered thick ice, from Brooksend through to Margate, despite claiming that Kent Highways keep logs of their gritting lorries I am surprised that Nick has not got back to me, since Kent claims to be a 4 star council you'd think they'd be able to get straight back. KCC did issue I understand and rather partial press release but didn't acknowledge how poorly they'd performed ...
Ground hog day has come and gone and seems to predict another six weeks of winter- at least for Pennsylvania. Here in Estonia we don't really need rodents to tell us that the winter is going to stay for a while longer. Yet the quality of the winter is changing. The extraordinary darkness of December is gradually giving way to lighter days. At this time of the year, the length of the days grows very rapidly- a good five minutes extra daylight each day, so that even over a week or so, the feeling grows stronger that the near total ...
"Anyone contemplating fraud against the NHS should be aware that they will be caught, and if they are caught, they will have to face the consequences of their fraudulent actions. "Let me be clear today about what is a zero-tolerance approach to fraud and to fraudsters. Fraud perpetrated against the NHS is, in my view, a fraud perpetrated against each and every one of us and that is why it is so important to combat it. So it does make sense for all of us, in our own ways and in our own roles, to act as counter-fraud champions." So ...
For those people who were listening to the news yesterday and heard that the BNP were now prepared to accept non-whites into their organisation and that the world was somehow popping off its axis, it's okay, everything is back to normal. At the Emergency General meeting of the BNP in Hornchurch, Essex which had been called following the decision by the courts that the BNP membership rules were not complying with British law, the decision was made to accept non-whites, as long as they agree that this country should stay British. The BNP had also invited journalists to the EGM, ...
The disgusting and thoroughly uncuddly Tory Bear has made a tweet too far. During the Gordon Brown interview with Piers Morgan he tweeted. "Brown looks like paedo". (I see that Tory Bear has deleted the post put I'd taken a sceen print in case he deleted without apology, no apology so here it is) Of course of those involved in acts of child abuse 30% are as likely to be family members not just the strangers you'd meet on the street. Up to 20% of offences may be perpetrated by women rather than men. Maybe in light of this Tory ...
Alexandre Bilodeau is the name that will go down in Canadian sporting folklore. After two full Olympic games on home soil he is the man who has broken the golden drought, every Valentine's Day he is bound to be remembered. Having just missed out in the female moguls on Saturday with Jennifer Heil only taking the silver, Sunday saw Bilodeau succeed in the men's event. He finished ahead of the Canadian born Australian defending champion Dale Begg-Smith with American Bryon Wilson in third. Bilodeau and Wilson were the only finalists to attempt a double twisting back-flip off the top kicker. ...
I really like to think that people who get into politics are going into it for the right reason - to improve society and represent people. My aunt on hearing I was running said "I hope you're doing it for the right reasons, unlike a lot of politicians!". I truly am doing it for the right reasons ...
Happy Chinese New Year, year of the Metal Tiger. We're off to Chinatown in Manchester for lunch later today for some dim sum. Yum Yum! Another thing to commemorate today is the formal use of the term The Labour Party on this day in 1906 by MPs of the Labour Representation Committee. An interesting footnote was the election of Keir Hardie, as Chairman of the PLP, by one vote over David Shackleton, "The Lancashire Giant".
The Daily Telegraph has an interesting story about a Surrey Conservative Councillor who didn't appreciate having one gay man, two black men and three women on the shortlist imposed on them by Conservative Central Office to select the East Surrey Westminster candidate. Beverley Connolly, a Tory councillor in Tandridge, Surrey, said: "I'm sure they are all eminently able candidates, but some of these people have been parachuted in from out of the area. We have a black candidate, a gay candidate. "I'm not remotely homophobic. It's not a reflection on their abilities or personalities but you have to ask if ...
I received a comment on Friday asking for my views on http://www.tpuc.org/node/34 Basically it is quite a long article that contains a list of politicians who have been involved in scandals. I did reply that I was going to be busy for a couple of days (see my photography blog where you will find some photos of the two weddings for which I was the photographer) so I couldn't give a considered reply. However I can give my general thoughts even though I still have some work to do on the photos. We are all human and prone to human ...
