After several years of happy blogging on Readmyday I am now moving to blogger as I cannot afford the new proposed fee structure. I wish everyone at Readmyday well for the future and readers can continue to read about southdown at http://southdownwhiteway.blogspot.com/
My name is Andrew, and I am living with HIV. You might think that I am HIV positive - I am not. I am living with HIV because my boyfriend*, Michael, the man I love, is HIV positive. I am living with HIV because HIV has a direct impact on my life. I am also, ...
Still too jetlagged (and first day back at work) to write properly – the E&E posts *ARE* coming, I promise – so some links. Spotibot uses data from last.fm to create Spotify playlists based on either last.fm listener stats or artist similarity. Here's a few I got it to generate – Van Dyke Parks, Kristian ...
List of the 54 books I had marked as unread on 31 December 2006, which I did not already own at the end of 2005 (which were accounted for previously), in the order that I read them; with links to my write-ups, size according to how much I liked them and struck through if I couldn't finish them. 2007 Sourcery, Terry Pratchett The Secret Visitors, James White To Engineer Is Human, Henry Petroski From Behind a Closed Door: Secret Court Martial Records of the Easter Rising, Brian Barton Variable Star, Robert A. Heinlein and Spider Robinson Endgame in the Balkans: ...
Wed 29th
20:11
December Books 21) The Space Opera Renaissance, edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer
Huge anthology (941 pages) of mostly excellent stories, very few of which I had actually read before (Lois McMaster Bujold's "Weatherman", Peter F. Hamilton's "Escape Route" and Allen Steele's "The Death of Captain Future" - all great stories), tracing the space opera sub-genre through the decades. It's not always my favourite mode (and I found myself choking at short stories by a couple of writers whose longer works I have also bounced off) but the selection is generally good. In particular I appreciated the early stories from Edmond Hamilton, Jack Williamon, Clive Jackson and especially Leigh Brackett ("Enchantress of Venus") ...
The Mennonites, like the Quakers to which I belong, have often suffered for their beliefs, especially their pacifism. As a result, many fled their homes in Russia, Ukraine, Germany and elsewhere and found sanctuary in the Americas. In Paraguay, where I've been spending the past week or so, they established a number of small 'colonies' ...
Second "I loathe" article of the week: Why I loathe articles based around ideological structures of gender identity. Following a lot of Feminist News on Twitter, one gets a vast array of rubbish. This article proclaiming women to be the future of the internet is no exception. First and foremost, it is not an article about the future of the Internet nor women's role in it. It is an article about
If there's anyone at BT reading this...I am generally one of your happier customers. But I am not overly amused, upon attempting to call your Customer Service department, to be put through to a recorded message that says that you are closed "for the public holiday". Today isn't a public holiday. I don't begrudge anyone some annual leave over the festive period, but - today is not a public holiday. So it doesn't sound very impressive for BT to be closed with "the public holiday" as the reason.
My piece about the Fourth Doctor is up on Tor.com!
Throughout the festive season, LDV is offering our readers another chance to read the 12 most popular opinion articles which have appeared on the blog since 1st January, 20109. The eighth most-read LDV op-ed of 2010 was by new party member Chris Jones, and originally appeared on 12th May ... Opinion: I've joined the Liberal Democrats Last night I watched as the helicopter above central London followed and filmed the new Prime Minister David Cameron's car as it drove from Buckingham Palace back to Downing Street. I watched as Mr. Cameron arrived at number 10, made a speech outlining the ...
I watched the second DVD of Spike Lee's DVD epic about the destruction of hurricane katrina on the new orleans area. What I found striking were the comments of the civil engineering. It transpires that the army corps built the existing levees - and over the last few decades they have not been adequately maintained. When this came to the fore the people were admitedly a little cross. The insurers and FEMA dragged their feet. People were promised trailer homes to put on their land - but these took at least 6 months to transpire - sometimes more. Even then ...
I, together with a number of other Southport councillors, met with senior Council officers today to try and get answers on why there has been such poor performance locally in clearing main roads and town centre pavements of snow and ice. The councillors including both Liberal Democrats and Conservatives asked a wide range of questions about the Council's response to the severe weather including why no snow ploughs were sent to the main roads in Southport, why Chapel Street and Lord Street were left like ice rinks, why the large snow fall didn't appear to be classed as an emergency, ...
I have a letter in today's Independent about the ongoing debate about an Independent article by Christina Patterson that might (or might not) have been antisemitic (Christina Patterson's own latest contribution to this debate is here). Incidentally, this is not a debate about free speech: I'm not disputing Ms Patterson's right to write what she wrote, I'm disagreeing with what she wrote - there's a difference. I cannot help reflecting upon the fact that when, during the General Election campaign, I wrote something that gave people a mistaken impression of my views on gay adoption, I didn't winge about how ...
If like me you are a cricket fan you will have been suffering from a distinct lack of sleep over the Christmas break. I managed to stay up all night for the first day of the Melbourne test, and I've ... Continue reading →
Apparently, there are plans underway to replace the No. 10 petition website with a mechanism that would allow petitions to be debated in parliament. Labour MP Paul Flynn has been criticising this. One of his loquacious gems was: The blogosphere is not an area that is open to sensible debate; it is dominated by the obsessed and the fanatical and we will get crazy ideas coming forward. Well, that's certainly put me in my place. After all, here I am, sitting in my parent's basement (actually I'm in a living room in front of a log fire), frothing at the ...
[IMG: Wpl] Even during the holiday period we like to keep busy. I have reported the mud on Whitley Park Lane and asked the Council to do a clean up and sort out the issue with the owners of the lane at the back of the shops. I have also asked for an estimated time to fix for the lights on Shinfield Rd/Redlands Rd: my hope is this will already be done by the time you read this (but one never knows....) I've also asked about the roadway/footpath works in Allcroft Rd: it looks like gas or water board, ...
After many years of complaints work is finally starting on improvements to the Enham Arch roundabout. Works will be carried out by contractors appointed by Taylor Wimpey as part of the legal agreement agreed when permission was granted for the Augusta Park developments. Work will be concentrated on the large Tesco roundabout throughout January and move onto Newbury Road, (south of the railway bridge) in February. The work to the roundabout will reduce the central island to form additional lanes and will be combined with traffic signals on all apporaches to the roundabout to control the traffic flow. This I ...
59) James McBride, The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother (New York: Riverhead, 1996, ISBN 1573225789). McBride's mother was a Jewish woman who married a black man, converted to Christianity after being rejected by her birth family - even co-founding a church with her husband - and came to feel more at home in Brooklyn's black community than the Jewish community of Virginia in which she had been raised, marrying within that community again after her first husband died. Here, McBride alternates between segments of his oral history interviews with her and chapters from his ...
I began fiddling around with this post before play had even started on the final day of the Fourth Ashes Test in Melbourne, and that is probably another indication of how annoying fans of English cricket will become to Australians over the coming days, weeks and months. Cockiness has probably become part and parcel of ...
Excellent news from Mark Thompson: I have been largely silent on this blog since mid-August when I announced that I would no longer be blogging. There was one exception earlier this month when I blogged about tuition fees (I felt like I *had* to say something!) and I have done a couple of guest posts for other blogs too in that period. Apart from that though it has been a nice break for me to be able to watch the news and follow politics without always thinking about how I am going to blog the latest story ... However I ...
Christmas has been and gone, and you probably already have a beautiful wilting Christmas tree in your home if you decided to go for a real one! Just in case you did, I wanted to make a short note of what to ... Continue reading →
The BBC reports: A senior Lib Dem who abstained from the vote on tuition fees has been appointed by the government to help encourage poorer teenagers to go to university. Simon Hughes was among Lib Dems to raise concerns about a hike in the cap on university tuition fees in England. David Cameron and Nick Clegg said it would be a tragedy if youths were put off applying due to "misinformation". Labour said the appointment was "window dressing" and showed they were worried students would be put off by the rise. The Lib Dem deputy leader has been appointed to ...
I'll be writing about this in more detail when I have a final report, so please treat this as interim information. Pam King, Mark Hunter and I have been working to find ways to improve the Kingsway junction, in particular for people turning right from Cheadle & Gatley onto Kingsway. The junction is one of the busiest in Greater Manchester - a typical rush hour morning sees more than 7,000 vehicles pass through in just one hour. The junction is controlled by two bodies: Manchester Urban Traffic Control and the Highways Agency. The Council doesn't have control over either of ...
This morning Andrew and I toddled up to Belfast's Royal Victoria Hospital once more, after last night's abscess burst, and sat around whilst the normal business of the CUM glinic went on about us. Eventually, Dr Killian Quinn, called for me - and off I went. He didn't take any swabs from the abscess which ...
[Originally posted on Liberal Democrat Voice, 29/12/10] Yesterday, I suggested that it would be valuable to piece together the housing policy jigsaw in order to reflect on the picture that emerges. Policy in this field speaks directly to our fundamental values -freedom, equality and community - and how they are to be reconciled. My aim ...
So nearly half of Labour MPs are against a change in the voting system for the House of Commons to the Alternative Vote. When this is combined with most Tory MPs it is looking like well over half and perhaps more than two thirds of MPs want to stick with the status quo rather than move to a preferential system. I'm not sure that this is particularly interesting or important news. What it essentially boils down to is that the majority of people whose jobs depend (to a greater or lesser extent) on the current electoral system want to keep ...
Liberal Democrats at County Hall have published a list of New Year Resolutions for the Conservative Administration to adopt. Lib Dem Leader Chris White said: 'We all saw the dreary self-serving broadcast to the county by the Tory leader. This is our response: get real and get listening.' New Year Resolutions for the County Council: when dealing with the budget settlement target management overheads and leave front-line services intact stop being so complacent: no-one really believes the county council is wonderful - certainly not Ofsted get in some accountancy help so that you can publish the council's accounts on time: ...
My public timeserver has been playing up a bit lately, but I've not been certain whether it is a machine hardware issue or a weather-related ADSL networking issue. As I've been pondering changing the machine which I use for the NTP service I've now done so, putting it on to a SunFire v100. They'll be some stability issues for the next few hours as it stabilises, but I'm hoping it will be better after that.
Over at the Institute of Welsh Affairs blog, Welsh Liberal Democrat Leader, Kirsty Williams argues that 2010 was the year that the Liberal Democrats brought stability to government: 2010 has been a challenging year for many. There are some positive signs but the economic recovery will be slow and uncertain. The Liberal Democrats made the right decision to be part of turning things around in Government. Of course, in government, some decisions will be controversial, particularly at a time when there is not as much money as we would like. But having a stable majority government to steer us through ...
Those who still back 'First Past The Post' are rather like turkey's voting for Christmas.
In the year 2000 Chief Executives got 47 times the national average pay. By 2010 this had risen to 81 times. If you are a left wing Lib Dem distressed at some of the things coming out of the Coalition please don't delude yourself that you have a spiritual home in the Labour Party. Their record on social justice made even Thatchers jaw drop open.
Wed 29th
14:10
"The blogosphere is not an area that is open to sensible debate" - Labour MP dismisses online petiti...
Yesterday I mentioned the moves afoot to replace the mothballed 10 Downing Street petition website with a new system, whereby if 100,000 registered electors signed a petition a debate could be secured in Parliament. Labour MP Paul Flynn has since poured scorn on the idea: This seems to be an attractive idea to those who haven't seen how useless this has been in other parts of the world when it's tried. If you ask people the question 'do you want to pay less tax?', they vote yes. If we get the e-petitions in there will be some asking for Jeremy ...
The first six months of the year, as seen on this blog. Part 2 tomorrow. January The connections between rock music and the Shropshire hills were an early concern. The post cited one musician who recalled hanging out with a lethal combination of rock and roll A-list and Shropshire farmers. Nick Clegg's Demos pamphlet The Liberal Moment inspired a series of posts, which were the source for a review article for Liberator. Talking of Nevill Holt, I delved into the strange history of the prep school at Nevill Holt, the house that is the model for Bonkers Hall. I later ...
In the first of a series of three, school governor Alex Feakes looks at elements of the recent education white paper. The Importance of Teaching schools White Paper published by the government last month has lots going for it and has attracted the qualified support of many in the teaching profession. As a discussion paper, however, there are still quite a few wrinkles to be ironed out. Here's one: Exclusions Like many secondary school governors who have been on disciplinary panels, I occasionally have had to confirm the headteacher's decision to permanently exclude a student from the school. If the ...
[IMG: Radio Free Albemuth by Philip K Dick - book cover] It's become a Christmas tradition of mine to read a Philip K Dick novel, so this year it was Radio Free Albemuth, a book that is in many ways an autobiography in novel form. PKD himself appears as the narrator in the first and third sections (and a key character in the second section), with the events of the book mirroring his own personal experiences in 1974. In that year he experienced a series of strange visions, initially the likely result of medication but increasingly less likely. In the ...
I have been largely silent on this blog since mid-August when I announced that I would no longer be blogging. There was one exception earlier this month when I blogged about tuition fees (I felt like I *had* to say something!) and I have done a couple of guest posts for other blogs too in that period. Apart from that though it has been a nice break for me to be able to watch the news and follow politics without always thinking about how I am going to blog the latest story. After almost two years of pretty intense blogging ...
I have written before about opposition to Leicester City Council's plans to site an AstroTurf sports pitch and an accompanying clubhouse and parking on Aylestone Meadows. Yesterday's Leicester Mercury revealed that a report commissioned by the city council's own planning department shows that Aylestone already has more sports pitches than any other part of Leicester. This strengthens the protestors' case that this new facility should be built somewhere else in the city and leave Aylestone Meadows for everyone to enjoy.
Yesterday, I suggested that it would be valuable to piece together the housing policy jigsaw in order to reflect on the picture that emerges. Policy in this field speaks directly to our fundamental values -freedom, equality and community – and how they are to be reconciled. My aim today is to identify more fully the key pieces of the current policy jigsaw. So what can we make of the way policy towards housing is developing? The key proposals on social housing reform in the Local Decisions consultation paper were heavily trailed. Many are embodied in the Localism Bill. They have ...
I remember reading this Doctor Who annual first time round, when I was ten; probably 33 years ago this week, in the gap between the broadcasts of the last episode of The Sun Makers and the first episode of Underworld, which coincidentally is exactly where I had reached in my current rewatch of Who when this copy arrived from eBay. The drawbacks first: the annual features Sarah Jane Smith as the companion, though she had left the show more than a year before most people would have read this, and in addition she is once again very poorly portrayed in ...
News from David Allworthy, the Deputy Acting Returning Officer: Nominations are now open for the election of: · Chair of the Federal Finance & Administration Committee (FFAC)* · Five members of the FFAC · Party Treasurer · Chair of the Campaigns & Communications Committee (CCC) · Chair of the International Relations Committee (IRC) · Two members of the IRC · One representative on ELDR Council · Two representatives on ELDR Congress · Two representatives on the Liberal International (LI) Executive · Two representatives to the LI Congress · Chair Campaign For Gender Balance · Two Vice Chairs Campaign For Gender Balance · Three members of the Diversity Engagement Group *The Chair of ...
Wed 29th
09:38Whoniversaries 29 December: Bernard Cribbins, Time Warrior #3, Horns of Nimon #2, Girl in Fireplace
i) births and deaths 29 December 1928: birth of Bernard Cribbins, who played Tom Campbell in Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 AD (1966) and Wilfred Mott in various Tenth Doctor episodes starting with Voyage of the Damned (2007) and ending for now with The End of Time II (2010); also Arnold Korns in the 2007 Eighth Doctor audio Horror of Glam Rock. ii) broadcast anniversaries 29 December 1973: broadcast of third episode of The Time Warrior. Irongron's attack on Edward of Wessex's castle fails; the Doctor and Sarah infiltrate Irongron's castle, but are caught by Linx. 29 December 1979: broadcast ...
I recently contacted the City Council's Director of Housing about the Scottish Empty Homes Partnership - an excellent initiative that includes COSLA on behalf of Scottish local government, Shelter Scotland and Scottish Government and aims to get many of Scotland's empty homes back into use and thereby further help tackle homelessness. I was keen to ensure that Dundee City Council signed up for the Empty Homes Initiative and very encouraged by a detailed and positive response from the Director, the main points from which I detail below : "The Housing Department contacted Kristen Miller from the Scottish Empty Homes Partnership ...
Lib Dem Manifesto p.41 "Integrate health and social care to create a seamless service, ending bureaucratic barriers and saving money to allow people to stay in their homes for longer rather than going into hospital or long term residential care." Around 35,000 people will benefit from a £70 million cash boost announced by the Coalition that will enable the NHS to support people back into their homes after a spell in hospital. Lib Dem Manifesto p.40 "We will... scrap Strategic Health Authorities" The Government White Paper on Health states that we will scrap Strategic Health Authorities. Lib Dem Manifesto p.43 ...
The Bechdel test: it's not about passing : The Hathor Legacy The indispensible hathor legac explain what the Bechdel test is actually all about. (tags: feminism media)
Another achievement for my little blog in 2010, although this year I have slipped some 32 places to 93, sitting in between a journalist William Green and an Archbishop Archbishop Cranmer. I am sure there is a joke there somewhere. The top 100 tweeting blogger's list can be found here on A Very public Sociologist.
Dear Fraser Well what a year! A white-knuckle election; a new coalition government; Liberals in power for the first time in 70 years. I've recorded a short message reflecting on the events of 2010 and looking forward to what Liberal Democrats will deliver in Government in 2011. Some people will continue to predict the worst for our Party - the same people who have been underestimating the Liberal Democrats for as long as we have existed. But we prove them wrong at every single turn. The next twelve months will be no different, because we will continue to build the ...
Courtesy of a tweet from Matt Raven, this is a fascinating employment opportunity being advertised on the Directgov Jobs and Skills search: Psychic Readers Do you want to earn money using your natural gift from the comfort of your own home? We require up to 20 psychics to take advantage of our home worker opportunity, you will work in a self employed basis via our payroll partners. All HMRC deductions and running costs will be taken care of by our back office. All we require is that you have a landline . telephone, broadband/internet connection, pc literacy and of course ...
The Third Doctor | Tor.com | Science fiction and fantasy | Blog posts Paul Cornell's take on the Third Doctor (tags: doctorwho) tansyrr.com» Blog Archive » A Modern Woman's Guide To Classic Who: THE THIRD DOCTOR YEARS (1970-1974) Tansy's take on the Third Doctor (tags: doctorwho)
I am still taking advantage of the time at my mother's to catch up on some reading and have all but finished David Laws' 22 Days in May. It is an excellent read and offers many insights on the negotiations that led to the formation of the UK Government coalition. One paragraph however stands out as misconceived. Writing about the reluctance of some Liberal Democrats to embrace the chance to go into government David says: 'And in Wales in 2000, Alun Michael suffered the indignity during late night negotiations with the Lib Dem assembly members of sending up to them ...
The Liberal Democrats have published a list of 67 manifesto commitments delivered or on their way to be delivered in eight months of government. Below and in subsequent posts we reproduce that list: The Liberal Democrats have been in government for only eight months, but we have already implemented many of our manifesto policies. Below is a list of these policies and what we are doing to make them happen. The list does not even include those of our policies that are in the coalition agreement but have not yet been implemented - so this list is just the first ...
The latest news from the Coalition Government in Westminster is a scheme whereby customers using bank cards could give money to charity. As a trustee of The HIV Support Centre, a local charity, this sounds like it could be a source of welcome money. But I have quite a number of questions. How would such ...
Video also available on YouTube here. Nick Clegg has released his New Year message to Lib Dem members, a simple and positive riff on the party's four key manifesto commitments from the 2010 General Election. In fact, for a New Year's message, it's very much about continuity; there are no fireworks or surprises, as I found when I played a little game earlier with a couple of colleagues – "Guess what's in Nick's New Year message?" And we guessed correctly, almost to the word: a reiteration of the party's "big four" commitments, with examples of where we've delivered (more examples ...
Yesterday I wrote about political apathy because all votes are not equal in our present system and many will not vote because they see their vote as not counting. The obvious answer is to change the system but another idea has made the headlines. According to http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12084525 "a plan to allow popular online petitions to be debated in Parliament within a year has been given the go-ahead by the government". I have written previously about trying to reverse the decline in voter turnout by such things as changing the way we vote with the aid of technology. Perhaps changing the ...
Almost from the moment I became a youth worker there has been a political advocate for young people who has stood head and shoulders above the rest, who has been an inspiration, not only to me but to so many others in the field - that person is Simon Hughes. So I am absolutely thrilled to hear this evening that he has been appointed by David Cameron and Nick Clegg as "Advocate for Access to Education" with a brief to engage with young people in secondary education about how to deliver the government's objective of increasing educational participation, particularly those ...
