Today Nick Clegg announced £400m to combat the stigma of mental health. As someone who has suffered from depression and knows people who are suffering, this is a big win for me. My own experience was awful, I chickened out ... Continue reading →
A good death, not a cheerful title - or is it ? Death is part of life. A presentation tonight really made me think about how we view preparation for death, and make it part of not only how we deliver services, but how how whole society reacts to death. Where does it take place, is it where people want, is the right support given to people and their loved one's in the last years, weeks and hours of their life. We found that as a result of research and consultation 61% of deaths in Stockton take place in hospital, ...
That was the title of a presentation this evening on the kind of care which makes a difference in the last few weeks or months of life. There were some sobering statistics. In just 100 years we've moved from dying at an average age of 46 from infectious disease, childbirth or accidents to dying at an average age of 78 from cancer, organ failure or dementia. 60% of us would rather die at home
This evening, I attended the February meeting of the Community Spirit Action Group, the residents' group for the north of the West End Ward, including Tullideph, Ancrum, Cleghorn and the Pentland area. There was an interesting presentation by Professor Andy Grieve on credit card fraud and identity theft and there was also a community safety update. I updated the group about the parking pilot to improve parking in housing estates and also about the site visit Community Spirit's secretary and I had with City Council officers earlier today about pedestrian safety at the Tullideph Road/City Road junction (see above right), ...
You wait eleven hours for a Hibs goal and then two come along almost at once. This is the first Hibs goal and win of the new year and it eases a little of the pressure. Hopefully this is us turning the corner. Elsewhere Luis Suarez made his debut for Liverpool. For me he was the best player in the World Cup (see previous postings) and had he not been suspended for the Semi against the Dutch then I think Uruguay may have won it! Kenny Dalglish swept him up the other day, for £24 million, from Ajax, in the ...
Wed 2nd
21:37
Call for budget meeting to be postponed to allow all party discussions with Head Teachers
As reported in tonight's Evening Telegraph, I called this morning called for next Thursday's City Council Policy & Resources Meeting at which the Council Tax is set to be postponed to allow proper and all-party discussions to take place over alternatives to SNP proposals to dramatically cut the number of Depute Head Teachers in Dundee schools. Dundee Primary Head Teachers' Association has put forward to the Director of Education a series of alternative proposals for consideration and I think these alternative proposals should be properly discussed in detail with the Head Teachers in an all-party setting to ensure we get ...
I've been reading up a lot over the last few years about a large variety of subjects, not science as such but how we do science and how we actually know what we know. I've written about some of these things before, in Sci-Ence! Justice Leak!, but there I was looking at stuff for its ...
Just back from the Friends of Arbury Library meeting at the Arbury Community Centre. A good number of residents managed to attend the meeting, and there was a good discussion about the library, as well as the business of the evening: to formally adopt a chair, secretary and committee. Unfortunately Andy Pellew was unable to attend due to a family illness, so the meeting started with a brief outline of the background from Mike Todd-Jones. This was followed by passionate defences of the role of libraries from East Chesterton Lib Dem Cllr Clare Blair, and local residents Liz Brennan and ...
This morning Nick Clegg and Paul Burstow launched the government's new strategy No Health Without Mental Health. You can watch Paul explain the strategy in the video above. No Health Without Mental Health will see an extra £400m put into mental services, with particular emphasis into helping service veterans and children. It is legitimate to count this announcement as a Liberal Democrat achievement in government, as mental health was the subject of one of Nick Clegg's first speeches as leader. There is, however, widespread agreement on the way forward: Nick was even praised in a blog post by Alastair Campbell ...
Firstly I want to thank everyone that left such heartfelt comments on my post about 'Toxic Parents' yesterday. It was incredibly supportive and I know I made the right decision to post it despite the bile that has headed my ... Continue reading →
Working out what is happening within Harborough Conservatives is the preserve of former Kremlinologists. But I thought it worth noting this story from last week's Harborough Mail: Decades of tradition at Harborough District Council is set to be broken this spring after the Tories decided to dump a Fleckney councillor - the council's vice-chairman - ahead of the upcoming local elections. For many years, convention at the council has dictated that the vice-chairman will always take on the chairmanship the following year. But news emerged this week that Harborough Conservative Association had deselected Cllr Smith ahead of the May 5 ...
Less than two months after he was elected as leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg made a widely-reported speech at the Guardian Public Services Summit in St. Albans, on the subject of mental health. Nick pointed out that "One in four Britons suffers from a mental illness at some point in their lives. One in six is suffering at any given time. Mental health issues directly affect most of Britain's families today." It was laudable and maybe surprising for Nick to use a keynote speech so early in his leadership to highlight such an unfashionable subject. For there is ...
Good news today as the Coalition Government published its new mental health strategy No health without mental health. It was refreshing to the Deputy Prime Minister say that mental health is going to be placed on a par with physical health under the new Government's health policy. From the official press release: "The No health without mental health Strategy outlines how a new emphasis on early intervention and prevention will help tackle the underlying causes of mental ill-health. It sets out how the Government will work with the NHS, local government and the third sector to help people recover and ...
Via the New Statesman website: An email, forwarded on behalf of Ed Miliband's director of strategy, Tom Baldwin, to all shadow cabinet teams warns Labour spokespeople to avoid linking hacking with the BSkyB bid, to accept ministerial assurances that meetings with Rupert Murdoch are not influencing that process, and to ensure that complaints about tapping are made in a personal, not shadow ministerial, capacity... It goes on: "Downing Street says that Cameron's dinners with Murdoch will not affect Hunt's judgement. We have to take them at their word." ... The guidance concludes with the warning, "We must guard against anything ...
An important private members' bill is coming up in the House of Commons about the ridiculously high payback rates on pay-day loans and similar (look at the small text on the screen when these are advertised on TV!) The initiative has come from a Labour MP but I am involved in a Lib Dem group that wants to make sure as many MPs support it as possible. I am sure we can all think of communities where this type of lending is causing huge problems. A link to the Lib Dem article about this is
Authors and locals have launched a war of words against the closure of public libraries. A national campaign began today to highlight the importance of libraries in local communities. We Love Libraries is being 'flash mob'd today in London and will be shown this week in Glastonbury, and Shepton Mallet. I am proud to be a part of the campaign and to have done the web work for the project. Check out the video here.
Last year I had a bit of an internet rant about the failure of the Liverpool Poverty Commission to start. To be fair, Labour Councillor Nick Small did get in touch and explained the delay. We also discussed the change of the name - to Fairness Commission - and some of the potential ideas we could explore. I felt that actually some movement was imminent and looked forward to being able to participate. We discussed the fact that once it started it would want to "get on with things" quite quickly. Well, sad to report that unless this is taking ...
Ron Gould, who represents Mossley Hill, and I have a motion at the next Regeneration and Transport committee about parking. We've both been contacted by residents worried about problems caused by overspill parking when there's a big event at the cricket club on Aigburth Road. So we are calling on the Council to look into what the problems might be and see what can be done to deal with any safety issues. The committee meets on 10th February. Details about agendas for this and other council committees are available here. The motion is pased below: (text starts) "Committee notes that ...
At the back end of last year, the Lib Dems in Liverpool agreed to work jointly with other parties on the Council on developing the Council's budget. We have some disagreements about some of what's been said about the figures, but putting that aside the group voted to try to co operate over discussing the various options. I went to a Councillors' briefing last week about this and there's one tomorrow night also. Last week I have to say I was impressed by the attitude of just about everybody. Liberal Councillor Steve Radford spoke very well I thought when he ...
Image: Network Rail A week may be a long time in politics but as far as I'm aware, it is still only seven days long. I fear the Conservatives however may have over estimated what can be achieved in a few weeks. I recently wrote to the local MP, Jason McCartney, expressing my concerns about the apparent lack of progress that the Government were making to make Network Rail subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). I noted how the Conservatives had said in late April that the organisation would be made subject to the FOIA "within weeks" of ...
On Thursday February 3rd 2011 MPs will vote on a motion tabled by Stella Creasy MP (Lab, Walthamstow), on whether to introduce caps on lending rates charged for payday loans and other unsecured debt – the Social Liberal Forum supports the motion, as well as the wider campaign to end legal loan sharking run by Compass. The motion will be voted on a day before Ms. Creasy's Private Member's Bill [Consumer Credit (Regulation and Advice) Bill] gets its second reading in the House of Commons, and is worthy of support on several grounds: As the Compass campaign highlighted so effectively, ...
So I didn't blog at all last year. Not that I didn't have anything to say, if anything I had too much to do, too much to say and no time to do it. Not that I have huge amounts of time now, and sometimes I worry about what I want to say on a blog that anyone can see. Last year was chaos. New job - total risk, moving from somewhere I loved and somewhere I am passionate about that had given me breathing space and a chance to re-focus. Took the risk - it didn't pay off. I ...
Looks like someone forgot to think about what birds do in trees when it came to locating this bike hire rank at the corner of Northumberland Avenue and Whitehall Place: [IMG: Boris bikes and trees don't mix]
Wirral Council is currently consulting the public between now and 18th February (along with other Merseyside authorities) on a minimum price of 50p/unit for alcohol. If you (or any group you represent) have a view on this, you can participate in the consultation online. The results of the consultation will then go to a future ...
I wanted to update the story I posted about library opening hours last week. First of all an apology. We had previously discussed library hours at a scrutiny committee in closed session because the issue had not yet been raised with library staff. Of course, I did not break that confidentiality. Councillors last week got the detailed plans on papers which made no mention of the need for confidentiality. I assumed, therefore, that staff had been made aware of the plans. As it turned out, they had not and councillors received a hasty email asking them not to go public ...
There are some areas of Lib Dem policy that I am really rather attached to. They tend to be policies that help people or have affected me or I have spoken on at conference. Today's announcement on Mental Health funding by Nick Clegg is one of those policies. I spoke about mental health at a conference several years ago. I told the story of a young man I knew who suffered from depression. For years he was palmed off with the 'easy' option - medication. This would work with varying degrees of success, but never was a long term solution. ...
Whilst the Government talk a good game about the 'Big Society', there is already a thriving corner of the voluntary sector matching volunteers up with community needs. In Stowmarket and Haverhill, to name but two far from large Suffolk towns, Ros has met with people whose efforts underpin a culture of volunteering. Besides, you can hardly hand over key services to volunteer groups without helping them to build sufficient capacity, can you? And it would be worse if the Government attempted to build new support frameworks rather than use the existing ones, wouldn't it?... Ros thinks so, certainly... 27 January ...
Wed 2nd
14:30
Nick Clegg announces new funding and services for mental health - a personal account of why this wil...
Nick Clegg made me cry today. In a good way. His announcement of an extra £400 million of ring fenced funding to help people with Depression and Anxiety, with specific emphasis for children and veterans is another example of Liberal Democrat policy being put into practice and is a big Liberal Democrat win within the coalition. That sum is of course just for England, but there should be Barnett Consequentials for Scotland, too. One in four adults will experience, at some point in their life, some form of mental illness, and one in ten children between the ages of five ...
[IMG: Nuttery planting - 13th February] If you would like to advertise a community event on the website, email nicholas_coombes@bathnes.gov.uk
[IMG: Poling Station sign] I've got two more speaking slots coming up - one on Thursday night at Enfield Liberal Democrats (sold out) but also one where tickets are still available. It's being organised by Shas Sheehan, one of our London Assembly candidates for 2012. Here's her blurb for the Merton Liberal Democrats event: The AV referendum: why we've got it and how to win it Mark Pack will give a talk entitled "The AV referendum: why we've got it and how to win it", followed by a Q&A session. Mark is well known and respected by many in the ...
Wed 2nd
13:48
Council Excellence Overview and Scrutiny Committee - 31/1/2011 Part 11 - Strategic Change Programme ...
Cllr Brighouse said that he welcomed the report. He said it was "driven by the actions of the Chancellor of the Exchequer". He said it was also about "how we innovative and find new savings" in removing "the dead hand of bureaucracy". He wanted to look to simplify systems. He asked how Wirral Council would ...
Last year, a friend of mine's child was knocked down by a car near his home in Gainsborough. Thanks to the support and care given to him over the last months, by the Sheffield Children's Hospital, he has made a full recovery. Completely by his own volition, he has decided to do a sponsored run to raise money for the hospital. He has a justgiving page at http://www.justgiving.com/Jordan-Atkinson. I hope you all can, like I have, support this cause and make a small donation.
Wed 2nd
13:39Council Excellence Overview and Scrutiny Committee - 31/1/2011 Part 10 - Strategic Change Programme ...
Cllr Green continued that that DASS was learning a lesson in how they needed to speak to people earlier enough. Communication was important. Mike was the project manager and could provide added reassurance. He was confident the program had not improperly added undue haste to the timescale. They had to make sure the changes were ...
The new crime rate site police.uk lists 55 burglaries for Newbury for December 2010. That compares with just 4 for Abingdon and 8 for Wokingham. Even Swindon, which is much bigger than Newbury, had only 25 burglaries in that time! Basingstoke had just 24 burglaries. What the heck is going on? I notice that the figures are particularly high in the West Fields/Enborne Road area...there were 19 burglaries in that small area in December alone!
I'm more than aware that in writing a blogpost comparing extravagant expenditure by football clubs to the money needed to support vital medical research I may make comparing apples and oranges feel like, well comparing apples and apples, but here goes nonetheless - forgive my rather tortured premise if you may... As the January transfer market in football players came to a close, two dramatic signings caught the spotlight - firstly, Andy Carroll moved from Newcastle United to Liverpool for a (then) British record transfer fee of £35 million - not to be out-done, Chelsea promptly smashed that record by ...
Wed 2nd
13:30Council Excellence Overview and Scrutiny Committee - 31/1/2011 Part 9 - Strategic Change Programme u...
Cllr Salter then asked if he was confident of a quality service? Cllr Green replied that a key element of the consultation had been providing the same if not better. Seven people had been permanently in the respite home. Consulting better as to how to meet their needs meant better placement. A couple were being ...
Wed 2nd
13:21Council Excellence Overview and Scrutiny Committee - 31/1/2011 Part 8 - Strategic Change Programme u...
Cllr Gilchrist referred to the Cabinet report of the 15th October 2009. He stated that this report had said by April 2011 the target was for 30% to have personal budgets. He then referred to project 33. He said Social Services reform had been more difficult. There were people that we had to help and ...
I never wanted to have to write this post, but I just can't do it any more. I can't go on while being kicked in the face by the government and still support it. I have to admit, I'm not very happy with the coalition from a personal prospective. I earn just a few hundred pounds over the new 50% tax band threshold* (this was an error I meant 40%). Which in itself is fine, I don't mind paying 50% tax on this income. But this put me in the squeezed middle. The movement of the threshold will result in ...
Wed 2nd
13:14Council Excellence Overview and Scrutiny Committee - 31/1/2011 Part 7 - Strategic Change Programme u...
Cllr green continued by saying that next Friday there would be pressure over some of the projects with £0 gains. If additional capacity was put towards these there would be added benefits. He said he was being honest and clear. He said he was to trying to be clear and careful regarding achieving the benefits. ...
Wed 2nd
13:03Council Excellence Overview and Scrutiny Committee - 31/1/2011 Part 6 - Strategic Change Programme u...
Mr Green answered that he was very confident. Regarding the status across all project, the project manager had signed off as had the Chief Officer. In addition so had the Director of Finance and the SCP office. He said analysts had gone through, so had accountants and it had been signed off by all parties. ...
Late last year, the police told MPs that they thought 10 year olds should be allowed firearms licences for all types of firearm, not just shotguns. Despite growing up in rural England, I'm not a fan of this position and personally I would not let my nearly 10-year-old daughter even handle my air rifle unsupervised, let alone something like a shotgun or rifle. In fact, doing so would be illegal – You can now be prosecuted if an under-18-year-old gains unauthorised access to your air rifle (18 seems a little old given you'll be trusted with a fully automatic 5.56mm ...
Julian Glover, writing on the Guardian website, has called the situation in the House of Lords well today. "This is a ceasefire not an armistice," he says. As of midday today (Wednesday), Lord "Charlie" Falconer appears to have retreated from the undertakings he was giving earlier in the week to expedite the Parliamentary Voting Systems and Constituencies (PVSC) Bill. Labour Peers are apparently determined both delay and elongate the Report Stage, so making it impossible for the AV referendum to take place on May 5th. As Julian Glover says, "the behaviour of a gang of timeserving Labour MPs turned peers ...
Vodafone have submitted 2 planning applications for mobile phone masts in the Holyrood Ward of Prestwich. The details are as follows: 1) Application number: 53607 Type of application: Telecom Determination (56 Days ) Date Registered: 31/01/2011 Applicant: Vodafone UK Ltd Location: Prestwich AFC, Sandgate Road, Whitefield, Manchester, M45 6WG Proposal: Prior notification for 15 m high monopole including 6 no. antennae and equipment cabinets to facilitate site sharing 2) Application number: 53608 Type of application: Telecom Determination (56 Days ) Date Registered: 31/01/2011 Applicant: Vodafone UK Ltd Location: Pedestrian island between 470 & 471 Bury Old Road, Prestwich, Manchester, M25 ...
OK....I have good days and bad days.....today happens to be a bit of a bad day......to be a Lib Dem. I understand that coalition is about compromise and the art of the possible - honest - I do. What I don't understand is when we sign up to stuff that is totally contrary to what we say are our values. Does the preamble to our constitution count for absolutely nothing now? Er......."no one should be enslaved by poverty" was the bit I was particularly thinking about. So can someone explain to me why we think it is OK, at a ...
I dislike the Kindle, for a variety of reasons, but it's hugely popular and Amazon sold more ebooks than physical books last year on it, so I've made my books available that way. Please note, I do not have any Kindle software myself, so have no way of checking these files – they're mechanically converted ...
Liberal Democrat leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, together with Care Services Minister Paul Burstow, today announced the new "No health without mental health" strategy, which re-prioritises mental health services and outlines how a new emphasis on early intervention and prevention will help tackle the underlying causes of mental ill-health. It sets out how ...
If you've been to Yate Shopping Centre recently you will have noticed the rapid progress on the temporary Tesco store next to the toilets on East Walk. It should be finished in time for the main store to close on Sunday February 27, with the temporary store opening on Monday February 28. The old store, which dates from 1975, will then be demolished and the new Tesco Extra superstore will be built on the same site, opening by Christmas. The Gazette has more details of the Tesco rebuild here.
There will be up to seven new political parties campaigning for your votes by 2014. But these new parties won't be short-lived 'here today, gone tomorrow' affairs. They will be guaranteed 25 seats in the European Parliament elections. That is the proposal being put forward by a group of MEPs and apparently backed by all the main parties. In what will surely dismay all but the hardiest pro-Europe campaigners, the EU could change the rules so that 25 MEPs will be elected from what is described as a 'pan European constituency'. In other words, these people will be elected by ...
As mentioned yesterday there were initial problems with the new "crime map website". However the problems have since been fixed and you can go to the website to see what types of crimes have been reported in your neighbourhood (for the month of December 2010) and the location. Clearly there's probably nothing new for people ...
Congratulations to rawedge for this QR campaign for Sky Atlantic. [IMG: Sky Atlantic Newspaper Advert] A simple QR code, pointing to a URL (with source=qr for analytics), a mobile website, and a 3gp video. [IMG: Sky HD Mobile site] Almost perfect. Why Almost?I'm a nit-picker – but here are a few suggestions to make the campaign better. Make the code bigger. When dealing with newsprint and its fuzzy images, it's always better to make the QR as large as possible – or as large as your advertising team will allows. Larger images are easier to scan. [IMG: Sky QR Detail] ...
You can now get information on crime and local policing in our area from www.police.uk The picture for Swinton is here. The picture for December is of 290 incidents (reported) of crime and anti-social behaviour. The breakdown is as follows: Burglary 14 Anti-social behaviour 136 Robbery 5 Vehicle crime 20 Violent crime 43 Other crime 72 The crime map doesn't map to ward boundaries ...
I've just been pointed to this headline: Takeaways face £1,000 'fat tax' in a bid to overcome obesity. Which apparently refers to an idea of Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council to a. charge any new food take-away £1,000 to put to litter collecting [IMG: "healthy eating initiatives" because more than the national average of kids in Oldham are supposedly "obese" and b. to adopt a planning policy restricting the number of take-away food stores that can be open. This from the same town that wants to make everyone stand in a single file at every bar in the town centre ...
Listen to Liberal Democrats make speeches and there are frequent references to historical figures, but drawn from a small cast. Just the quartet of John Stuart Mill, William Gladstone, David Lloyd George, David Penhaligon corner almost all of the market, especially since Bob Maclennan stopped making speeches to party conference. Some of the forgotten figures deserve their obscurity but others do not. Charles James Fox's defence of civil liberties against a dominating government during wartime or Earl Grey's leading of the party back into power and major constitutional reform are good examples of mostly forgotten figures who could just as ...
Democrats 66 is a Dutch progressive, social-liberal and radical democratic political party. It is a well-established party with parallels with the Lib Dems in its position in the political spectrum. It has had some success over the years which offers lessons for the Lib Dems. In the 1989 election the party increased its number of ...
I have finally got a replacement for the hated HTC Desire. I has a Nokia N8. Oh god, it's SUCH a relief. The speaker is a little bit tinny, as opposed to unlistenably awful like the Desire's. Podcatcher is a free podcast client that actually works. You can easily set up different notification tones for email, tweet and text message. You can easily rearrange menus, stop and start applications, delete applications, etc. Contacts (those that I have left, anyway) have synched seamlessly with google, and there is a fabulous contact merge function, as opposed to "linking". Most important of all, ...
Two important bits of news in this field. Nick Clegg will today announce £400 million of ring-fenced spending to help treat people with depression and anxiety. Read more in The Independent. The government is planning, at Clegg's insistence, to repeal section 141 of the Mental Health Act. The section can lead to an MP losing their seat if they develop mental health problems. There is no such provision should an MP become physically ill. This is an important equality development. Long time mental health champion Alistair Campbell writes about it today on his blog. Around 40% of the population will ...
As part of LGBT History month, Michael Carchrie Campbell calls on the Irish FA to support the Justin Campaign's Homophobia v Football event on 19 February what would have been the 50th birthday of Justin Fashanu.
With attention understandably focusing on events in the Lords, the actual progress of the campaigns for the electoral reform referendum has had less coverage in the last few weeks. So here's a quick score-card: Funding: the No campaign has taken to the media to protest about "big money" funding the Yes campaign. Even as reported by the Telegraph the attacks are pretty thin going, but revealing in one respect. Many expected the No campaign to be well-funded by the sort of large donors who have heavily funded the Tories in the past (not to mention, possibly, trade union funding). However, ...
Press Release From the Leader of the Liberal Democrats in Local Government Kemp Welcomes WSF Report on Rationalisation of Council Buildings Cllr Richard Kemp, the Vice Chair of the LGA and Leader of the Liberal Democrats in Local ... Continue reading →
Good to see that Simon Wright, Liberal Democrat MP for Norwich South, is now on Twitter as @SimonWrightMP. You can follow all 31 of the Liberal Democrat MPs on Twitter via the list I curate at http://twitter.com/#!/markpack/libdem-mps
The extent of anxiety in the Conservative camp that Britain might actually opt to reform the voting system on 5th May was evident this morning in criticism of David Cameron that he is soft-pedalling on opposition to the change. The Independent says that senior Conservative MPs fear that David Cameron is diluting their party's opposition to electoral reform in an attempt to boost Nick Clegg's chances of winning a 'yes' vote in the referendum due in May. The paper says that Conservatives have so far earmarked only £250,000 for the No campaign, which is a small proportion of the £5m ...
Funny things memories, I arrived home after 9pm last night after attending the Save our Civic Hall meeting in Conwy with a bag of chips for supper. Up this morning just after 6am, girls off to school, dog and rabbit fed and the crow who screams out every morning around 7am. Chauffered the wife and her colleuge to work and then travelling home I started to grin and was remembering my eldest daughter at an early age one Christmas eve saying to my wife and I, "I can't wait for Father Christmas and his Radiators to come to our house". ...
You are, I am certain, thirsting to know how the Meerkat Harborough campaign is getting on. Well it's good news. From yesterday's Leicester Mercury:More than 1,000 people have backed an online campaign to twin Market Harborough with the mythical Russian village of Meerkovo. The move comes after the Mercury revealed insurance company Compare the Market wanted to change the town's name to Meerkat Harborough for a day for its latest advertising campaign. A Facebook page devoted to Meerkat Harborough has attracted 1,000 supporters and a website has also been set up ... More than 500 nominations have been submitted for ...
Let there be linkage: A Vision Of Foreign Policy Only Beck Can Provide – That's Glenn Beck, but reading out the lyrics to Devil's Haircut might make more sense. Watch the video for something that looks like a dramatic reconstruction of the thought processes of a crazed conspiracy theorist, except it's for real (via) A Guide: How Not To Say Stupid Stuff About Egypt – Something worth checking, just to see if you're guilty of any of them Soccer clubs central to ending Egypt's 'Dictatorship of Fear' – Something I've not seen mentioned anywhere else, and interesting that all football ...
I was rather pleased to find that I had already read three of the novels on this year's BSFA Award shortlist, and it seems eminently possible to assess everything on the list; though I would appreciate guidance on Notes from Coode Street - any particularly good episodes to recommend? I doubt I will have time to listen to all of it. The short fiction category in particular is easily digestible - only four stories on it this year, and all are now available online. I thought they were all very good - even "Arrhythmia", which I did not find especially ...
i) births and deaths 2 February 1930: birth of Don Houghton, who wrote Inferno (1970) and The Mind of Evil (1971). ii) broadcast anniversaries 2 February 1974: broadcast of fourth episode of Invasion of the Dinosaurs. Sarah is indoctrinated by the People; the Doctor is framed as the man behind the appearance of the dinosaurs. 2 February 1982: broadcast of second episode of Kinda. The unhinged Hindle takes over the base; Todd returns, equally out of his mind; Tegan, possessed by the mara, takes over Aris. 2 February 1983: broadcast of second episode of Mawdryn Undead. The Doctor meets the ...
While Salford City Council started to publish a breakdown of their expenditure (more on this later), as per the coalition's new initiative on transparent government, a council house rent rise three times the rate of inflation went largely un-noticed. Salix Homes tenants will be faced with rent rises of around £4 per week, which may not sound much – but if you are a minimum wage worker or struggling to survive on benefits, it's a significant rise. The rent rise is doubly annoying when you look at how Salford Council spends your money – they bleat about government cuts, but ...
It's a haunting song, sang by the maestro Sam Cooke. It spoke of the Civil Rights Movement in the USA in the early 1960s. But for those in Egypt today who feel that President Hosni Mubarak's words in his recent address didn't go far enough and to those who are fighting inequality and injustice around the world, these words sang by Cooke feel particularly apt right now. 'A Change is Gonna Come'.
Scale on Vimeo Scary Jupiter! (tags: astronomy space) Copernican or Tychonian? (tags: astronomy space)
I thought I would share my photography blog with you today - well it does have a photo of the Palace of Westminster in the background. You may like to take a look at http://photographyfornovices.blogspot.com I mentioned in my politics blog yesterday that I am reading a comedy book by Al Murray. I am also reading Stephen Clarke's 1000 years of annoying the French and I have just read the section on the siege of Calais. The burghers are supposed to be French heroes who gave their lives for the inhabitants of Calais. As it turns out these same leaders ...
