An excellent report collaboration between 'The Bureau For Investigative Journalism' and Channel 4 News, shown tonight, detailing the findings of its joint investigations into the gagging of NHS Whistleblowers. The evidence indicates that secretive NHS trusts have been flouting the law designed to protect those in the NHS who 'blow the whistle' on bad practises and highlight the confidentiality gagging clauses which in turn costs the NHS millions; whilst putting patients lives at risk. The Public Interest Disclosure Act (PIDA) is supposed to protect whistleblower's from being sacked but bribes, threats and other under-hand measures such as slander appear to ...
One thing I'm going to keep doing on here on occasion, despite the fact that no-one cares, is voicing my love for the music of the Beach Boys. As the band are coming up to their fiftieth anniversary, various ideas are being floated of how they should celebrate this (Mike Love wants to do an ...
[IMG: MVI_5418] [IMG: Creative Commons License] photo credit: thomas brasington Well, it must have seemed a good idea at the time. Ask people for their views. What policies do you want?, was the question. Nick Clegg and David Cameron launched the idea with great fanfare. Crowd sourcing, it's called – apparently. Except now 9,500 people have taken the trouble to respond to the government with their ideas, the government has told every single one of them to bog off – basically. All the replies from the relevant government departments to the responders say "Thanks but no thanks" – in Sir ...
[IMG: Cllr Edwards' new recycling bin on Bathwick Hill] The first public recycling bins on the streets of Bath have been installed on Bathwick Hill. Cllr Armand Edwards has funded the bins from his devolved funding for pocal projects. There are three bins; by St. Mary's, Tesco and a third planned for the Cleveland Walk junction; they take paper, bottles & cans plus normal waste. There have been recycling bins in the Parade Gardens park for several years as part of a pilot project but this appears to have stalled. There are also recycling bins in several locations on the ...
I first heard this amazing story of the unknown Democratic Senatorial candidate Alvin M Greene from the BBC radio 4 doc Americana. It's an extraordinary interview about his strategy for becoming a senator of South Carolina. It also gets cut off at the end after a question Mr Greene doesn't like. Hes certainly no politican which is a little refreshing. Mr Greene won with only a $200 dollar campaign. He is unemployed and lives with his father, who he is a full time carer for. Vic Rawl requested a re run of the Democrat primary after a number of controversial ...
If you are looking for a website about animals that's a bit out of the ordinary, try Ugly Overload. Their strapline is:"Giving ugly animals their day in the sun. We avoid the simply tragic, diseased, or maimed." That's where I found the above picture of a Kitefin Shark.As the authors so ably put it:Its creepy skin and having its eyes where its nostrils should be might be impressively ugly enough
The Liberal Democrats have launched a petition to protect the town centre's car parks from development. Most of the pay and display car parks in the town centre are considered to be available by the Conservative controlled borough Council. The Conservatives have made it clear they want the town to grow, they have said they want to create 15,000 jobs in the town centre, invested millions in the Malls to bring more shoppers to the town centre. Now in a bid to build more flats in the town centre they seem prepared to sacrifice the public car parks. We should ...
A year ago, I wrote this blog in which I trumpeted the achievements of the British Athletics team at the World Championships in Berlin. Yesterday in Barcelona, this years European Championships came to an end. The target for the team was 15 medals; the result was 19 (6 gold, 7 silver and 6 bronze) and a third place position behind Russia and France. My congratulations go to the whole team for their efforts and to all our medalists and those that set personal bests. Here's a gallery of our Gold Medalists: Mo Farah - 5,000m and 10,000m Jessica Ennis - ...
I have blogged before about various incidents that have taken place between the Metropolitan Police and journalists before and unfortunately, despite ACPO issuing guidance for police officers, it appears some of them cannot read or perhaps it is the case they don't want to. It states "Members of the public and the media do not need a permit to film or photograph in public places and police have no power to stop them filming or photographing incidents or police personnel." It goes on to say under both Sections 43 and 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, that "Officers do not ...
After the cricket finished on Saturday, I set off to walk back into the city. On the way I came across this sign and so discovered a new Leicester attraction. It is more or less where Aylestone meets Knighton. This park is a wedge-shaped piece of ground on either side of the Wash Brook beside the Midland mainline. I have been passing it twice a day on the train to work and back for more than 20 years, but never noticed it. I looked today and found that it is hard to see more than the treetops, which explains why. ...
I link to a lot of bloggers. I don't read all of them that regularly but try to keep an eye on most. They bloggers that I link to are there for a number of reasons: they might influence politics, write well or have something interesting to say. If you are lucky, it might be all three. I have noticed that some of the bloggers I am linking to have fallen silent. I know that David Chiverton has decided to take a summer break. I hope some of the others are doing likewise and will be back in action soon. ...
Last month I posted a British Transport Film from 1955 showing a CTC outing from London to the countryside around Market Harborough. I have watched it again and noticed something interesting. About 11 minutes into the film the party of cyclists passes a gypsy caravan that is standing on the grass verge. What is notable that there is no mention of it in the commentary, suggesting that a gypsy caravan was still a commonplace sight in the English countryside in the mid fifties. I did see such a caravan when a family of gypsies camped on the old Market Harborough ...
Another day, another case of the police riding roughshod over photographers rights and abusing the law instead of upholding it. This stop is of an accredited journalist on the public highway taking photos of a crime scene. I must admit not my cup of tea as far as photography goes but well within the law I highlight these cases (and will keep doing so) because things will only change when there is a widespread realisation of police abuses of the law. And maybe some decent disciplinary measures! Mark Thompson has the story here
The "consultation" on plans to introduce car parking charges in Prestwich ends in one week, on August 9th. You have until then to let the Council know your thoughts. I use inverted commas in "consultation" because, as ever, it's not a proper consultation. The Conservatives running the Council have decided their policy and voted it through already. Now they are just concerned with the detail of the charges, not the principle of them which everyone I've spoken to disagrees with them about. The time to tell them what you think about that approach to running Bury is at the ballot ...
HSBC chief executive Mike Geoghegan has made raised the predictable complaint about Vince Cable that his call for 'restraint' - rather mild when there are over a thousand City bankers earning more than £1m a year - might drive bankers abroad. "We pay for talent and we have to pay the market rates," he said. But what is talent here? This is the question the political world needs to ask. Is this a good use of talent, to set it loose in the corrosive, speculative world, and deprive the real world of its imagination and knowhow? There might be an ...
I have just finished reading Iain Sinclair's Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire: A Confidential Report. Sinclair shares some of this blog's obsessions with place, obscure writers and cult British films, which can be dignified with the term "psychogeography". One reviewer's description of him as "a gonzo Samuel Pepys" is about right. A couple of years ago I reported that Hackney Borough Council, displaying the combination of Stalinism and an obsession with image that characterises municipal Labour these days, had withdrawn its invitation to Sinclair to launch the book in one of its libraries. This happened when Hackney discovered he had written ...
The Core Strategy document is very complicated, but that means that there's lots you can say about it. If you would prefer to have a starting point for your comments, please feel free to copy and modify the text from this page - it's the text from the leaflet that was handed out at the Steve Webb meeting. Please remember that you need to get your comments in before 6th August - that's Friday! • There's no need to use the official forms - you can write a letter or email • Write to Spatial Planning Team, SGC, PO Box ...
Leicester City Council expects to have to cut its budge by £100 million and lay off up to 1000 members of staff, but still intends to buy an iPad for every councillor after next year's elections. The devices are currently being tried out by a few councillors, and the Leicester Mercury quotes a "senior councillor" as saying: "As soon as we all heard that three councillors were getting iPads everyone started asking for one."It all sounds very childish. I am also puzzled by the comments of the Conservative group leader Ross Grant. He is quoted as saying: "I've asked for ...
Your browser does not support iframes. A couple of weeks ago I brought you the kidnapping of Tony Stephens, 12, from Earl Shilton - a crime that hardly fits with our image of Britain in the 1950s. Thanks to the British Pathé site, here is another. As ever, click on the photograph to go to the newsreel footage. I can find no reliable mention of this case anywhere else on the net, so I don't know if charges were even brought.
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 180th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere ... Featuring the seven most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (25th – 31st July, 2010), together with a hand-picked quintet, normally courtesy of LibDig, you might otherwise have missed. Don't forget: you can 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. Double ...
One you may have missed -a posting from September 2007 The biggest swearer of them all? I've presented myself, on behalf of the Liberal Democrats, at the odd doorstep. Suffice it to say that I can do the various spiels in my sleep. For example, I take great pride in being able to do the residents survey spiel in record time and without pausing for breath: "Hello/I'm/ calling/on/ behalf/of/ the/lib/ dems/doing/ a/ survey/of/ local/views/ if/you/ are/able/ to/fill/ it/in/ please/leave/ it/hanging/ out/of/ your/letter/ box/and/ we'll/pick/ it/up/ in/twenty/ minutes" (It has to be said like that, without pauses - very fast. Otherwise ...
Now that the main story and conclusions are done, Volume IX looks at some issues of evidence and legality, a couple of which struck me as important enough that they should really have been included in the main findings of the report. Although at 253 pages this is by far the shortest volume, the points raised are interesting and I go into them in great length below, with some pretty full quotations from both the report and the evidence given to the inquiry. Fully a quarter of the report is taken up with examining the procedures by which the Royal ...
About an hour's drive west out of Algiers is the coastal town of Tipasa, best known for its extensive Roman ruins and seafood restaurants. Algerois tend to make a day-trip out there to get a taste of both, though I was sad that the best restaurant — the Romana — seemed to be out of ...
From Political Wire: This is going to result in the largest tax increase in U.S. history and again it's idiotic. My palm isn't large enough to write all my notes down on what this tax increase will result in. - Sarah Palin, in an interview on Fox News Sunday, referencing words written on her hand with a black marker. Here is the exchange on Fox:
In March I blogged about a Manchester Councillor who wanted to make all films with smoking be given an 18 rating. Not content with looking a bit odd over this the Telegraph reports the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities is looking at implementing minimum alcohol pricing across the area. I am not really sure how the AGMA are going to implement this given that Under the EU competition legislation it's illegal to price fix a product or service and according to this blog post from the anger of a quiet man. "indeed the European Court and its Advocate General have ...
According to their website: The UK Border Agency is responsible for securing the UK border and controlling migration in the UK. We manage border control for the UK, enforcing immigration and customs regulations. We also consider applications for permission to enter or stay in the UK, and for citizenship and asylum.OK... How exactly do they accomplish controlling migration and managing border control without knowing who has come in to the country or who has gone out? Are these the non-jobs that are to be cut? Nope. They are people who need to be allowed to do their jobs. Without knowing ...
I'm interested to know why Bob Crow thinks having national strike days will benefit the country or those of us who live here? Its easy for a Union official such as Bob Crow to call for a national strike but instead Mr Crow, why not propose some alternatives that the Liberal Democrat- Conservative Coalition Government could explore? And that is where we lose Bob Crow and the Unions, its much easier for him and others from the Union movement to just snipe from the sidelines about the Coalition Governments actions rather than do anything positive. Given the Coalition Government is ...
Over the weekend I visited my parents back home, and while I was there I happened to bump into one of my younger brother's friends, a now 16-year-old young adult who once played for the youth football team I used to run. He was always one of the more amusing characters in the team. Lots ...
[IMG: sunnyday]
David Cameron is coming under increasing pressure over his comments, made last week, with regards to Pakistan. He said: "We should be very, very clear with Pakistan that we want to see a strong, stable and democratic Pakistan. "We cannot tolerate in any sense the idea that this country is allowed to look both ways and is able, in any way, to promote the export of terror, whether to India or whether to Afghanistan or anywhere else in the world." Whilst some may argue it wasn't diplomatic, I'm somewhat concerned people appear to be siding with Pakistan over the very ...
This morning's Recess Sub-Committee of Dundee City Council was a bizarre affair, with the SNP administration pushing through expenditure of £15 000 out of council contingencies to pay for an open air screening of Last Night of the Proms in the City Square, in the face of opposition from myself and Labour councillors. I say bizarre because, leaving aside the expense to the taxpayer of this proposal at such a difficult time for council budgets, the SNP seemed awfully keen to support non-vital additional expenditure for an event that - if my memory serves me correctly - features such timeless ...
The Jon Venables case – one of the two children convicted in 1993 of the murder of James Bulger – raises challenges both to liberals and for liberals. This is apparently a high profile repudiation of rehabilitation, particularly given enhanced levels of resources dedicated to supporting and apparently "curing" this individual. A second challenge for the liberal is how to respond to the baying sections of the press and public demonising a single offender. The natural liberal reaction is to reject the "demands of the mob" as the way offenders are treated carries multiple messages about the values of a ...
I am getting tired of having to highlight these cases but they keep on happening, despite the statements from senior police and politicians. This one happened at the weekend and is reported in full on the NUJ website: Carmen Valino had images deleted from her camera by police and was threatened with arrest whilst photographing the scene of a shooting in Hackney, East London. The incident happened on Saturday 31 July as Valino photographed a crime scene from outside the police cordon whilst on assignment from the Hackney Gazette. She had identified herself as a journalist and showed her UK ...
Before May's general election, leading former New Labour supporter and former editor of the New Statesman, John Kampfner, publicly backed the Liberal Democrats. Writing in today's Guardian, he explains why he doesn't regret backing the LibDems and that : "Those of us on the centre left who ditched Labour weren't wrong. Fighting hard for electoral reform is how Clegg will prove it." An interesting article available at : http://tiny.cc/Kampfner
Andrew Lansley, according to this morning's Guardian, is removing the cap on NHS hospitals making money from private health provision. Concerns have been raised as to whether this will create a two-tier system of health provision and reversion to longer waiting times for NHS patients with private patients jumping the queue. If those concerns could be addressed - would it be a good thing to reap the profit for the NHS given that it is NHS training that our doctors and consultants get? If private money could be poured into the NHS rather than watch those profits go to private ...
There will be plenty to tantalise the tastebuds when Prestwich Farmers Market returns to the Longfield Centre on Sunday August 22. The market has become a regular fixture in the Prestwich calendar offering a range of locally sourced foods and products to suit every taste. On offer will be traditional, quality goods ranging from speciality meats, pies and cheeses and home-made cakes to pastas, chutneys, jams and drinks. There will be plenty of opportunities to sample the food, enjoy entertainment from Squeaky the Clown, and enter a draw to win a hamper worth £50. Cllr Vic D'Albert, chairperson of Prestwich ...
I am one of those people that firmly believe that, if you are to have laws, then you have to have enforcement. After all, failure to do so tends to lead to a view that laws can be broken, and the inevitable undermining of public order. Immigration law being one of those emotional issues that it is, enforcement is all the more relevant. So, the news that the Home Office was failing to ensure that it was represented at 41,141 successful appeal hearings against rejected asylum applications, deportations and refusals of entry between 2006 and 2009 comes as a huge ...
On July 29th there were three principal council by-elections and six contests out in the towns. There was good news at all levels, on the former we gained a seat in Bath and North East Somerset, and in the latter we romped home with four gains out of the six! Our gain in the Radstock ward of Bath and North East Somerset District Council has taken us to within four seats of the Conservatives, who currently enjoy minority control with thirty-one seats overall. That said, the Tories were no threat in this particular ward and their attacks on the 'Bath-centric ...
Jonathan Calder has written a lovely little observation on Sarah's Law this morning. I agree wholeheartedly when he says the idea that every contact between adult and child needs to be licensed or policed by the state seems to me a totalitarian fantasy. I adore my seven-year-old daughter, I would obviously hate for her to come to harm. But to expect to monitor every movement she makes and every person she meets is clearly nothing short of ludicrous, and doesn't actually do her any favours. She's growing up and learning, and there's no lesson learned more powerfully than by direct ...
From the Council: Stockport Council has been awarded a Silver Gilt at this year's National Flower Bed competition at the RHS Tatton Flower Show. The entry, which was designed and created by the Council, took inspiration from Stockport's historic market, which is celebrating its 750th birthday later this year. Judges and visitors alike were impressed with the interesting and creative display, which included bright rainbow stripes of summer bedding plants, a rustic cart of plant produce, and a metalwork representation of the Grade II landmark market hall.
The London Photographers Branch of the National Union of Journalists has a case study on its website in which a journalist was threatened with arrest and forced to delete images on her camera. They write: Branch member Carmen Valino had images deleted from her camera by police and was threatened with arrest whilst photographing the scene of a shooting in Hackney, East London. The incident happened on Saturday as Valino photographed the crime scene from outside a police cordon whilst on assignment from the Hackney Gazette. She had identified herself as a journalist and showed her UK Press Card to ...
Haven't been blogging much of late but thought I would put up an interview I did for BBC Radio Scotland. I'm interviewed by Penny Junor who was formerly a speechwriter for Margaret Thatcher. She's also written books on John Major, Cliff Richard, Richard Burton and Eric Clapton. In the interview I talk about growing up ...
The decision by what remains of the Labour high command to vote against legislation bringing a referendum on the Alternative Vote is one of the most hypocritical and staggeringly self-interested political decisions in recent years. After 13 years of promising reform, in which precious little materialised, each and every Labour MP campaigned at this election on the promise of a referendum on AV. That referendum has now been proposed by the Coalition Government and a Bill to make it happen put forward, yet Labour's shadow cabinet has now decided to oppose the legislation. What an astonishing decision. It is even ...
I am pleased to see that at long last we have a Government that is prepared to start taking tough decisions on retirement age and pensions. This issue was tinkered with by the last Government but they avoided tackling the issues head on - especially regarding pensions. We have to face facts that people are living longer and retain far greater mental and physical attributes and powers much later in life than past generations and this trend is set to continue. Depriving individuals the right to work when they can and want to makes no sense whatsoever, and of course ...
Last Tuesday, Cornwall Council unanimously agreed a Lib Dem motion in favour of a Cornwall Local Enterprise Partnership where we would invite the Council of the Isles of Scilly to take part (but couldn't take their involvement for granted). We also made clear the need for genuine democratic accountability. Since then, it appears that some people from the business community have been trying to take control of the project and the Council's own website appears to take the involvement of the Isles of Scilly for granted. So I have written to Council Leader Alec Robertson asking him to make sure ...
Residents may have noticed that all sorts of markings have appeared all over a number of roads in Launceston. These are surveyors marks which have been made in order to plan for resurfacing of the roads. I've just received a road closure notice which sets out when some of the works will be done. The roads affected will be Wooda Road, Dockacre Road and the continuation of that road past the junction with Ridgegrove Hill almost to the Prout's Corner junction. In total, the works will take around 5 weeks starting from 18th October. There will be a diversion route ...
The famous footbridge across the Kensey between Riverside and Westbridge Road has been closed as Cornwall Council staff have found that it is partly collapsing. The works to repair the bridge are scheduled to start next Monday. This bridge is one of Launceston's more famous landmarks. I hope that it will back safely open as soon as possible. The photos are kindly supplied by Cornwall Council.
Tom Clement is a friend of mine and fellow Liberal Democrat activist. I first met him way back in 2005 when he came to help on the Livingston by-election campaign. He originally wrote the piece below on Facebook in March last year. When we met for the first time in ages at a party last week, I asked him if I could reproduce it here and he agreed. It definitely deserves to be seen by a wider audience. I'm thrilled that the question of same-sex marriage is finally re-entering the public domain. I had feared that the introduction of the ...
Following on from my post yesterday where I suggested that the Lib Dems should separate out the AV part of the constitutional reform bill in order to help Labour support a "yes" vote in the ensuing referendum I would like to expand a little on one of the points I made. I highlighted how whoever wins the Labour leadership election will just have been elected using AV. This is not a trivial point. It actually goes to the heart of the mandate that they will have. It would be incredible if, having just been elected using that method they then ...
(Classic) Chris Kamara showing grace under pressure
Back in March, former editor of the New Statesman and current Chief Executive of the Index of Censorship John Kampfner publicly came out as a Lib Dem supporter – as reported by Lib Dem Voice here. Fast forward five months, does he have any regrets? Doubts – yes, citing the Lib Dems' failure to gain credit for Ken Clarke's liberalising justice reforms, and the Tories' zeal for austerity: ... in spite of various opportunities to do so, I have not repudiated my original decision. For sure, a number of attributes and decisions of this coalition government have left me feeling ...
Though LabourList is in my reader, I've stopped paying attention to their articles due to some real idiocy in the past (the defence of civil partnerships was without any sort of balanced debate on the actual differences between civil partnerships and marriages, for example). But today's article is one that needs to be read by everyone. Coalition politics might not be here "to stay" but it's certainly here in this Parliament right now. Want to stop the Coalition from doing something you don't like? Then it'd be best to follow the advice in the article below: In the coalition politics ...
[IMG: QR Moo Cards] Click for Full Size Moo Cards seem to be the darling of the UK tech scene. Cute business cards which you can personalise with whatever you like. Some people are boring and use company logos, others dump their best flickr images on there. Me? I'm all about phones and QR codes, so..... ConsiderationsFind some free templates or stock photos of phones you want to use. I've used a Nokia 6680, two generic phones (roaylty free from Clker) and a Nexus One (from Mike Clarke). Choose phones which are relevant to your industry.Make the images the correct ...
Some really major work is starting in Garrison Lane today. The whole road has to be reconstructed - not just a tarmac resurfacing but a full rebuild of the road's foundation. This is going to cause some problems because it is a bus route. But then the problems have been partly caused by the buses anyway. The best advice is to avoid the area if you can, but if not to read the information on traffic diversions etc on the Council website.
The BBC reports: New nuclear plants will be built in the UK as part of the move towards a green economy, Energy Secretary Chris Huhne has said. Mr Huhne told the BBC that breaking the dependence on traditional fossil fuels was vital. The minister said the market would decide which types of low-carbon energy would be used, but he believes nuclear investors are waiting to come forward. He ruled out specific government subsidies for the new power stations. Chris was speaking on the BBC1′s Andrew Marr programme, Sunday AM, and confirmed: My position and my party's position was always one ...
Today Alex 'Hurricane' Higgins is being laid to rest after a ceremony at St. Anne's Cathedral, Belfast. We sadly heard over the weekend that the two times World Snooker Champion died of malnutrition in one of the UK's major cities. However, let today be one of remembering the man for the joy he brought to fans of the sport. That is why I am sharing this cartoon tribute from the Belfast Telegraph's Stevie Lee from last week.
We're into August, the dead political season, so doubtless we can expect plenty more media stories about the collapse of the Lib Dem vote, the imminent collapse of the Coalition, the collapse of Nick Clegg's ratings etc, etc. The latest miniplosion of noise has been sparked by YouGov's latest poll, showing the Lib Dems polling 12% (compared to the Tories' 42% and Labour's 38%). For some, strange reason the papers seem much keener to report this poll finding than they were to report ICM's 19% rating for the party a few days ago. We'll be looking back fully on July's ...
This weekend we took 15 Cubs and 5 leaders to Chamboree, a big once-every-four-years Cheshire camp at the county showground near Knutsford. I was never in the scouting movement as a kid so I've never really known what to expect from camps. I started helping out at Beaver Scouts because my children were going and now help out at 1st Gatley Cubs as an Assistant Leader. In total there were over 4,000 Beavers, Cubs, Scouts, Explorers and leaders on the site on Sunday afternoon. The Beavers were there for the day, the Cubs for the weekend and the Scouts and ...
During the campaign, one gentleman on his doorstep told me he was going to vote for us but had now changed his mind and will vote Tory. The reason, he said, is that 'they will keep our defences strong' because of Trident. David Cameron, in his 'offer' speech, also referred to strong defences and Trident. The very first question at the Churches Together debate in Sheerness in May was directed at me on this topic and keeping our defences strong. So clearly there is public concern on the issue of Trident and our defences and how the perception is that ...
Basically a fairly standard adventure of the Eighth Doctor and Sam Jones arriving in the middle of a conflict on an alien planet; time eddies and nasty villains complicate the situation (though some of the characters seem to have remarkable powers of surviving major injuries). Remarkable for insisting, more than I remember previous volumes doing, on Sam's falling in love with the oblivious Doctor, which is of course now standard fare for New Who but was a new departure back them. And of course it turns out that this is a set-up for the ending when she and the Doctor ...
The fact that one of the Milliblands has got headlines for jumping on the Save Our Pubs bandwagon that Greg Mullholland and other Lib Dems have been successfully piloting for years, or the fact that Mike Smithson, famed sage of politicalbetting.com thinks that my livelihood and the lifeblood of many communities (not just rural ones) is trivial and laughable. OK, so Millibland's "bold" plans are nothing more than to appoint a minister for pubs, and not to do anything about the beer tie, or the stupid over-regularion of the market, or the ridiculously complicated duty regime (here's an idea: differential ...
This morning's Western Mail article by the new MP for Pontypridd was the worst example of self-serving nonsense that I have read for a long-time. He gets off to a bad start by demonising some modest proposals to empower parents and NHS staff in England so as to enable them to determine the future of the local services they rely on. Clearly, as far as some Labour MPs are concerned, unless the state has its tentacles in everything and is running a command and control public sector economy then we are in meltdown and heading to Armageddon. Nothing could be ...
The way that the One Wales Labour-Plaid Cymru Government is managing the health service has come in for some sustained criticism in recent months, not least the fact that following a substantial reorganisation, not a single senior executive was made redundant. Instead they were either put on gardening leave or redeployed to another job on a protected salary. It has been estimated that this has tied up £4 million in public money that might otherwise be spent on frontline services such as nurses and doctors. Such stories have struck a chord with the public, so much so that even senior ...
It's been, in many ways, a good week. For those of us who believe that giving people more freedom is a good thing, proposals to remove the mandatory retirement age and abolish the age limit for purchasing annuities are to be applauded. Yes, people should have the right to retire at a fixed age but there are many who would like to work on as long as they are enjoying it. And as for having to buy an annuity on your seventy-fifth birthday, it seems nonsensical that you cannot be trusted to calculate for yourself when you would like the ...
The Radiology Degree blog today has a list of 25 reasons to legalise cannabis and 25 reasons to keep it illegal. Whilst I would argue quite strongly against many of the reasons given in the latter half of the list to keep it illegal, e.g. "Smoking pot doesn't cure brain cancer" (by that logic we would ban every substance on earth!) it is an interesting read which also includes links for every single point made to the source information.
It seems that the pilots of "Sarah's Law" have led to no outbreaks of vigilante violence. This is a useful corrective to the view, paradoxically popular on the left, that people cannot be trusted very far. Certainly, as Brendan O'Neill once showed on the BBC website, the story that a mob attacked a paediatrician, having confused the term with "paedophile", grew greatly in the telling. But I still have doubts about this law, because of the way it encourages people to talk of adults "having access" to children. Isn't that the normal way of things in a free society? The ...
webcast anniversary 2nd August 2002: release of the first episode of Real Time on the BBC website. The Sixth Doctor and Evelyn Smythe land on a deserted planet to investigate rumours of Cybermen. One of the scientists who they encounter there closely resembles Chang Lee from The Movie because they are both played by Yee Jee Tso
Polls, Reporting on "Ground Zero Mosque" May Mislead Nate Silver talks sense (tags: islam usa religion) A Street-Level View of the "Ground Zero Mosque" Nate Silver talks even more sense (tags: religion usa islam) Jansson's Illustrated Alice — Crooked Timber Snufkin as the Mad Hatter? (tags: books art)
Nominations for my blog awards are now closed. Polls will be coming up in the morning. And I have a new Sponsor. Who will have a graphic when he gets back to me on what he wants for his graphic... And now, back to looking at phones (my phone contract is up tomorrow and if I renew I get a new phone. I want an HTC Desire, but might have to settle for a Wildfire...). Review of Sherlock coming up later.
Last week the Coalition Government announced that a Pupil Premium, funded from outside the schools budget, will be introduced next September. It will mean that from next year, schools taking disadvantaged children will get the additional money they need to provide them with the extra support they deserve, no matter where they are in the country. This could mean more individual tuition or catch-up classes, but it will be for the school to decide; thankfully the Government won't be telling headteachers how to spend the money. This is a real Liberal Democrat achievement. It was the centrepiece of our education ...
Prisoners have rights. When Ian Huntley had his throat cut by another inmate it may have been that the prison authorities were partly to blame and that they failed in their duty to protect him from harm. I don't know the details but let's say for a moment that he wins his case and receives £100 000 (which would be ridiculous). I don't think he should receive an amount that is far in excess of that received by the families of his victims. If there is a legal case for this then the law needs changing. The reaction that I ...
Dear Shabana Mahmood,
