Friday's Guardian/ICM Poll shows that 35% of the nation believe the cuts are too severe... That's down from 45% last November.. but wait there is more.... 28% believe the Coalition has got it right on cuts and another 29% believe the govt should cut deeper and faster.!!! These figures suggest that 57% of the population concur that there is only "Plan A" – to cut Government spending at least as fast as it is doing. And in so far as there might be a "Plan B"- it is to execute "Plan A" harder and faster. This does not surprise me. ...
I was watching Mike Harding at the Lancaster Grand Theatre a few hours ago. He is still hearing waves of laughter after all these years. I was speaking to the people sat next to me and they saw him in 1983. I saw him in 1978 at the Manchester Palace. Doesn't time fly! The reason why I am mentioning him is because he spoke about the big society. Some things get him mad and this is one of them. He told the audience that we have always had a big society. If someone's car breaks down then people go and ...
I've just read a blog post being linked on Facebook in which the author says "The black bloc are not closing libraries. The kids in balaclavas are not cutting disability benefits. The ones who threw paint bombs and flares ... They are not the bad guys here." Sure, they're not the only bad guys. Councils cutting public services and blaming it on the coalition government are rubbish as well, but when I've tried to point out that no, actually, people who throw glass bottles and lit fireworks at other human beings are inescapably bad guys because they throw glass bottles ...
Hurry over to Duck of the Day. York students will understand.
Paper people The Queen Edith's Forum is planning a fun and informative environmental family day in May. There will be loads to do: junk modelling, nature walks and games - plus visits from the Queen Edith's City Ranger, the people from Cambridge Carbon Footprintand the Council's Recycling Bus. Put the date in your diary and watch out for posters.
Census day today, and I can't help wondering what people will make of the data and documents in 2111 when they are opened to public view. When the rules about keeping the census forms secret for 100 years were written it would be inconceivable that people entered on them as young children would still be alive when the 100 years were up. Now, I wonder how long we'd have to set the rule to ensure
School books has been christened! This will be a sister school to the Queen Edith Primary School in Godwin Way, opening next September. Building has begun and is scheduled to finish in July. The school takes children from the combined catchment areas of Ridgefield, Queen Edith and Morley Primary Schools. Here is a update from the Federation's website.
Having kept a running commentary on the early weeks of this series of Dancing on Ice, I've fallen behind in recent weeks but wanted to conclude with one final post to cover tonight's final. As I blogged about in those earlier stages, it was no surprise to me that Sam and Laura reached the final. They have been the two outstanding competitors so far and were joined in the final by Chloe Madeley who has also showed a great ability as ther series has progressed. The Final 3 Sam's opening performance tonight was sensational and he well deserved the first ...
Spread the word! Just launched is the energyshare grant fund with up to £500,000 for community renewable energy projects? They're calling for communities across the UK to register their interest . energyshare is a 100% renewable energy community giving everyone in the UK the opportunity to get involved in sourcing, using, and generating their own renewable energy. This is just the beginning. energyshare's founding partners, River Cottage and British Gas are committed to finding more funding. As a start British Gas are committed to distributing a further £3m to community renewable projects through the energyshare fund over the next 3 ...
I wonder whether there is a scientific experiment whereby someone times how long it takes for a seasoned election leafleter to permanently render his arms in the position required to post a letter through a letterbox. I guess the government has probably cut the funding for such experiments, but if one is still going ahead ...
Seymour Avenue is on the City Council's unadopted footways adoption programme for 2010/11, but, as the financial year reaches it end later this week, the street's pavements are not yet made up to a good standard. I asked the City Engineer for clarification and he has replied as follows: "Due to the severe winter, some footway works have been delayed and require to be carried out in the new financial year. Seymour Avenue is programmed to be carried out in May 2011."
Sutton Housing Partnership Disability Forum I attended this first meeting of the Disability Forum. The main item for discussion was the new system for Aids and Adaptations. It was a useful opportunity for me to find out more about how the system operated and hear about tenants' experiences first hand. It was hoped that the ...
So that's where the cake when after today's Haringey Liberal Democrats Q+A session with Home Office Minister Lynne Featherstone: [IMG: Robert Gorrie and Lynne Featherstone make off with the left overs of Lucy Rea's cakes] Robert Gorrie and Lynne Featherstone make off with the left overs of Lucy Rea's excellent cakes. Not for them, but for their families I'm sure...
Let's Dance - Donna Summer - 1978 - a Fraser favourite!
On Tuesday, I had much pleasure in attending a meeting of the support group for Jericho House. This project is extremely worthwhile, providing care and support to men recovering from alcohol problems. We discussed various projects being undertaken by Jericho House of benefit to the residents and I am really pleased to join the support group to assist the project. I then attended a meeting of the Finance and Operations Committee of Dundee Contemporary Arts, where we discussed and agreed DCA's budget for 2011-12. Thereafter, along with a number of fellow councillors, I attended a civic reception to thank all ...
Thanks to fjm's hospitality, and a fortunate alignment of timetables, I was able to visit the British Library on Friday and investigate some of the papers dealing with my dubiously illustrious ancestor, the sixteenth-century Sir Nicholas White. The most exciting document I found was the original of this letter written by him and bound into volume 21 of the Lansdowne collection of William Cecil's papers, describing the death of the second Earl of Essex from dysentery. The sentence I was particularly looking out for is the one transcribed thus: Emong others he had care of my seconde son, which is ...
Sun 27th
19:01
"You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done wi...
Last week's council meeting produced some interesting and revealing moments. There were three motions on the order paper and we shall return to the first two later but for now let us look at the one moved by my fellow Birkdale Councillor Simon Shaw. We trailed this motion earlier in the week. It charted Labour's abdication of responsibility over the budget in Sefton. They have voted against almost all the proposal for reductions and championed every aggrieved lobby group without moving any coherent alternative. The question that is inevitably raised by such conduct in the context of Sefton's all party ...
I'm finding writing my TMA02 essay on 'the self' one of the most difficult and frustrating things I've had to do for my OU psychology degree to date. I now have about half an essay (in terms of word count), but it feels like I have no essay at all really. 64% for TMA01 really sucked; but this essay is far, far suckier at the moment. Why can't I get my argument to flow? Why does it currently read like a heavily plagiarised piece of descriptive nonsense? Just WHY? I'm throwing in the towel for this weekend and hoping that ...
My first thought, in reaction to the news that Canada is going to have a federal election, was gratitude that I'm not a citizen, which means I don't have the dispiriting task of choosing which of the lack-lustre parties to vote for. My second thought was to wonder why the three opposition parties think it ...
[Originally posted on Bristol Running Resource, 27/10/11] Are you a runner who is a slave to the stopwatch? Tyrannised by the timer? I have to admit that I am. I don't keep a proper training log to track my efforts, but I always run with a stopwatch. I've got a good enough memory to be ...
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 214th 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 (20th -27th, 2011), 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. Is Nick Clegg ...
I slept 9.5hrs on the sofa at Hackspace last night, woke up with a crick in my neck and an adrenaline hangover. After talking to people who had arrived whilst I slept, and then leaving via Tesco for food with Mark, I got the train home on my own and actually began to think about it all. Reports of the day and evening are starting to filter through; I'm glad I wrote my previous post before sleeping, or I may have forgotten some important details. There's also not that many "inside views" of it all, plenty from protestors but not ...
This was the caption that the Herts & Essex Observer put on my colleagues Melvin Caton's letter published this week. Melvin argued that Conservative controlled Uttlesford District Council has a history of omitting income from their budgets. In 2009 it was income of £400,000 from Government planning and housing grants. This year unlike other Tory-controlled councils, they decided to omit more than £700,000 of New Homes Bonus money from the budget. The net result of these decisions has been that Uttlesford residents have been charged too high a council tax and received poorer services. Melvin concluded "It is about time ...
The protests went as anticipated. The majority of people, many of whom will be redundant in 4 days, marched calmly through London surrounded by Union Officials, Police Officers and press. The BBC has been quite good at maintaining the "majority were peaceful" line. However, inevitably, the [violence] [anarchistic] {scuffles] [turmoil] or [tempest] as various journalists have referred to the less
Just a reminder whilst I am posting that you can learn a lot from Mark Pack about what is going on inside the Liberal Democrats by visiting his informative newsletter here. Also, I am aware that my blogging has been a bit non-existent recently. Next week the Protection of Freedoms Bill starts its passage through committee and myself and James Brokenshire will be taking it through. I hope to be able to blog its passage – time permitting.
OMG 4.30am - is that a sensible time to be up and about? Read on...... This weekend I did the training course WGL (Walking group leader). The campsite was in a fantastic part of Dartmoor. It was by Brat Tor and Widgery Cross. Brilliant views curing our two days there. The campsite was behind a pub called the fox & hounds - with rustic homecooked food and log fire. The only resounding feature of the camping field was its flatness. Apart from that it was grim. It seemed like it was a mecca for 10 tors training groups. teenagers prepping ...
just a quick post to let everyone know that Alexandra ward Liberal Democrats now have their own website which you can visit here.
We have asked the council to have a look at the speed bump at the Junction of Sulis Manor Road and Wellway Park in Sulis Meadows one of the edging stones looks loose
This morning I walked away from the Praise Band at church, for some reason or another I was just not in a fit state to perform with them. Perhaps that is the real problem it felt like we were gearing up for a performance instead of leading worship. Anyway, during the service I ended up [...]
Here's a simple question: how bad do events have to get in a country before it appears on the mainstream political agenda in this country? Is having the UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimate that up to half a million people have had to flee their homes as a result of violence enough? Or is having the UN High Commissioner for Refugees double its estimate in the last few days to a million people having fled (out of a population of 22 million)? Or is having credible reports of sexual violence, summary execution and people being burnt alive? Or is ...
One thing we have been concerned for a while is the crossing on the Wellsway. The bus stop was quite close to the crossing so if a bus stopped the cross was obscured. There is little that can be done now to improve that situation.We were also worried about the light the council has looked at this and this is their response."issued a works order to Siemens to install longer hoods on all 6 lenses
Isn't it ironic, don't you think? If the UK general election had been May 2011, rather than 2010, the 'March For The Alternative' would have been against the Labour government in its final death throes. No longer able to conceal the structural deficit or to avoid implementing the Darling cuts or otherwise facing higher interest rates and a currency crisis, Labour would have been facing the same 3rd party fate this May as Fianna Fail in the recent Irish election. The Independent and Guardian would be desperately begging all progressive voters to abandon Labour and support the Lib Dems to ...
An Eighth Doctor Adventure that didn't really grab me - the plot, involving an artificial cosmic doom threatening an entire solar system, very similar to the last book I read in this series, and Mortimore's writing rather undisciplined - I normally like his books and scripts more than I did this one. Poor Sam gets messed around with in mind and body.
The Daily Telegraph seem to have been trying to push the Lib Dems out of Government from the get go. Perhaps the budget earlier in the week was just too Lib Dem for the paper, who knows, but today's rebrand rumours mark a new level of nonsense. The paper claims that "the rebranding exercise due to ...
One of the two Torchwood audio books just released, both I think by Goss (who I find a tremendously impressive writer) and read by Kai "Rhys Williams" Owen, set in the gap between Torchwood series 2 and 3. Ghost Train is told as a first person narrative by Rhys, who gets sucked into a peculiar alien invasion with added time travel paradoxes, and ends up pilfering from himself. It's slightly retconning to put Rhys, whose great virtue in the TV show was that he was a lightning rod to normality, as the central character in a tale of the creepy ...
Resilience is a much abused word. What does it really mean? It is best described as the "capacity of a system to resist external shocks". So what shocks are out there waiting to pounce on us? The usual suspects are flooding, cold snowy winters, and financial turmoil causing recession, fuel price hikes and pandemics. We have had a taste of these over the last few years. Swine Flu, petrol price hikes, snowy winter months and flooding have all shocked the town to a degree that upset our relatively peaceful existence. So what is the biggest shock of all that we ...
It was my birthday on Friday, so I am allowed a Spencer Davis Group track. In the course of an interview with Steve Winwood that is a bit on the exhaustive side even for me, Vintage Guitar Magazine says: Probably the best example of Winwood's guitar playing from his Spencer Davis years is "Stevie's Blues" - almost inexplicably authentic and mature, with a gutsy, distorted guitar tone that's amazing even by today's standards.
At the Welsh Liberal Democrat conference earlier this month Nick Clegg made the following comment. And of course we've even had a Liberal Democrat celebrity flying the Welsh flag in the depths of the Australian jungle! Now that's one forestry disaster we're not responsible for! This comment was then reported as the lead paragraph later in a post by Mark Pack with the following comment : Nick Clegg's speech to the party's Welsh conference contained much in the way of summarising the party's current official position on politics and government priorities - and also a reference to Lembit Opik. His ...
There's an excellent opinion piece by Thomas Darnstädt in De Spiegel which neatly summarises both the importance and the danger of intervening in Libya: The intervention of some European countries and the United States in Libya's conflict marks a turning point in international relations: The world community has shown that it values human rights over peace and that the era of the unaccountable sovereign state is over. Still, the UN's move could have unpredictable consequences. That is a useful description of the problem: human rights and peace are unfortunately in conflict, and sometimes a choice has to be made. This ...
Should the Coalition abandon its public spending cuts in the fact of yesterday's demonstration? No, says Free Radical. Bagehot of The Economist attended the Labour Party's "People's Policy Forum" in Nottingham on Friday: "The speakers reeled off, with expert ease, the names of the programmes and allowances and schemes that they currently use, or work with. This was Gordon Brown's social democratic client state on parade. Inside the walls of the policy forum, all public spending was good, and private companies exist to pay more taxes." Stephen's Liberal Journal is sad that Hugh O'Donnell ("the voice of common sense") is ...
Seems like the tories are getting confused about voting again. The director of the No2AV campaign has done a piece on Conservative Home saying that AV will mean an end to one person one vote. This is nonsense of course but the tories are lapping it up. But this has prompted Mark Thompson to ask when they'll switch to FPTP to elect their party leader: In the 2005 Conservative leadership election there were two rounds of MP voting before the candidates were whittled down to two to go to the country. In the first round the results were: David Davis: ...
I have my reservations about the UN sanctioned operations against Gaddafi's Libya, particularly what might be seen as our hypocrisy vis-à-vis Bahrain and Gaza, for example, and how this might then be capitalised upon by extremists or understood as our limitations by existing leaders to usurp or to trample the flowering of freedom in this Arab spring. That we are now committed, and thankfully with UN and regional backing, the intervention must be successful to leave any credibility for the international community's range of responses in the future and so the deterrence to a dictator using military force to put ...
The Economist has a blog post about the timing of Ed Milliband's speech to the March 26 rally. Whilst there is an interesting analysis of why Mr Milliband spoke so early, far more interesting is 3 paragraphs that neatly sum up the range of opinion about how and when to get the public finances back under control: I think Mr Miliband's problem boils down to this. Most people in this country, including a lot of people I met on the march today, think that Britain faces a period of painful decisions and choices, because the country has been spending too ...
If there is one thing Lib Dems know how to do well, it's grass roots campaigning. Recent chats on Twitter identified a habit of photographic evidence of pointing and frowning at various ubiquitous images of public discontent, from graffitti to potholes. So we jumped into the fun, and appropriated a domain name to collate a range of these photographs, embracing the hegemonic grassroots photograph
Produced just as Tom Baker was changing to Peter Davison, and featuring Adric as the sole humanoid companion, along with K9 for the earlier stories (this is presumably K9 Mark III, being run in before the Doctor sent him off to Sarah Jane Smith). The first two stories are rather memorable - one has Adric reduced to miniscule size and forced to take part in a war between inhabitants of a world which is actually a carbon atom; the other has the Tardis afflicted by the sort of spatial bending that crops up in both Logopolis and Castrovalva, this annual ...
I thought this was an excellent Seventh Doctor novel, achieving the rare feat of writing a decent Cybermen story, in this case by the guy who actually played the Cyberleader on screen in the 1980s; set in 2006 and unifying the continuity of the various Cybermen TV stories set in the twentieth century. The Doctor is separated from his usual companions (who are off having the adventure described in Birthright) and teams up with a feisty investigative journalist called Ruby Duvall; if Big Finish are casting around for more characters to revive they could do worse than her.
In the last few months I have lost count of the number of senior Conservatives who have gone on the record as claiming that AV gives some voters "more than one vote". Indeed the No2AV campaign which is being led from the front by the Conservatives is soon to launch their next phase entitled "Keep One Person One Vote". Look, Matthew Elliot the No2AV campaigns director has just been given a plum spot on ConservativeHome today to evangelise about this. Now I have always thought this argument is a load of rubbish. AV just gives one vote to each person ...
Liberal Democrat Candidate Sanjay Samani for Angus North and Mearns has revealed that 102,500 in Aberdeenshire and 53,200 people in Angus will pay reduced income tax from April this year, thanks to the Liberal Democrat-led increase in the personal tax allowance. In addition, over 2,500 people in Aberdeenshire and 1,560 people in the Angus will not pay ANY income tax. Liberal Democrats in the UK Government will be increasing the personal tax allowance to £10,000, meaning no-one will pay any tax on the first £10,000 they earn. The allowance will rise by £1,000 this April, with a further £600 rise ...
Angus and Mearns candidate Sanjay Samani has welcomed the major concessions to this year's Scottish Budget secured by Liberal Democrat MSPs which will help Aberdeen, Angus and Dundee Colleges. Concessions made to the Liberal Democrats include: Additional funding for FE bursaries of £15 million, spread across 2010-2011-12 to provide additional student support for current student numbers. Additional funding of £8 million in 2011-12 that would support an additional 1,200 college places and associated student support. 1,500 additional Modern Apprenticeships, including 500 places for the renewables sector, at a cost of £2 million 2,000 additional flexible training opportunities Sanjay commented, "40,000 ...
I attended the public meeting at the Mechanics Hall in Brechin to discuss the Town Centre Regeneration Fund project. I would like to thank Jim Milne for chairing the meeting and Angus Council for organising it, in the hope of giving Brechin residents the opportunity to hear the background and delivery of the project and to raise their concerns. I was disappointed that so few local residents got the opportunity to air their views. With Councillors from all around Angus, MSPs and political party activists turning the event into a political circus. I attended with a view to listening to ...
For once this is not a rant about the former Labour Government or even the current One Wales Government. It is more of a sigh of despair at the way that Government institutions and civil servants can stifle initiative and work against Britain's best interests. It may be that I am overreacting but in my experience these anecdotes from former UK Trade Minister, Lord Digby Jones's new book, Fixing Britain are fairly typical: In a tale which sounds like it could have come straight from a Yes, Minister script, Digby Jones, the former head of the CBI, reveals this weekend ...
Extract from the 1982 Doctor Who annual:
Looking through this week's new planning applications, there are a couple in the village centres. 46447 is to convert the vacant office at 12A High Street, Cheadle into two flats. It's a first floor office on the High Street near the junction with Ashfield Road. 46325 is for two new air conditioning condensers to be fitting to the rear of Barclays Bank in Gatley. There are also several new applications for house extensions, especially around Gatley.
So, I've been looking at the statistics for the number of pageviews this blog has received and there's something puzzling me. For the past few days dozens of Americans have bee visiting my blog despite no new content being uploaded. I don't mind, in fact, I'm rather flattered that our cousins from across the Atlantic are reading my blog. It's just that I'm a bit puzzled as to how and why they got here. So, if you're a visiting American, please could you leave a comment to tell me what brings you here? Are you lost? Did you come here ...
Taking a break recently absorbed in a bit of culture, the thought occurred as I looked at a few old masterpieces, that in days past artists must have had either very long arms or access to shed loads of scaffolding, to create the works that still amaze us centuries later.
Have uploaded my thoughts on the coming Assembly election to my elections site. East Belfast (2007: DUP 3, UUP 1, Alliance 1, PUP 1): particularly volatile at present, with Alliance having got more than double its 2007 vote in the 2010 Westminster election, and Dawn Purvis, the sole successful PUP candidate last time, having left her party and contesting as an independent. It seems reasonably certain that the DUP will win at least two seats, and the UUP at least one; on their Westminster result, Alliance should comfortably win two as well. But it is not at all clear who ...
The pollsters MORI have recently re-released some of their polling data from January and the question of whether or not people like a party paints a very different picture from the usual voting intention figures. Overall it shows the Conservatives the least liked party, Labour (despite its voting intention poll ratings at the moment) only marginally in the positive and the Liberal Democrats in the negatives, but with still a very healthy chunk of the population liking the party. For the Conservatives and Labour these figures reinforce comments often made about them – that the detoxification of the Conservative brand ...
It never ceases to amaze me quite how uncharitable people at all points on the political spectrum can be toward those who don't happen to share their perspective. Such tribalism isn't the exclusive preserve of those who occupy any one part of the political terrain. And there's quite a bit of it about at the ...
i) births and deaths 27 March 1935: birth of Julian Glover, who played King Richard in The Crusade (1965) and Scaroth in City of Death (1979). ii) broadcast anniversaries 27 March 1965: broadcast of "The Lion", first episode of the story we now call The Crusade. Barbara is captured by Saracens; the Doctor, Ian and Vicki ask King Richard to rescue her. 27 March 1972: broadcast of third episode of The Claws of Axos. The Doctor and Jo are captives of the Axons; the Master offers to blow them all up, and the Brigadier agrees.
smhwpf: Logic fail 'There are plenty of good, valid arguments against the current western military action in Libya... But I do wish opponents of the action would stop resorting to the bone-headed type of argumentation that runs "Why aren't they bombing the crap out of Bahrain/Saudi Arabia/Syria/Yemen/Côte d'Ivoire?"' (tags: libya war) Boy, Did You Pick the Wrong Professor to Mess With. : Lawyers, Guns & Money When the student asks you to write their essay for them, part 1. (tags: internet) "As An Educator, It Is My Professional Responsibility to Contact Your Professor. I Appreciate Your Cooperation. Best of Luck ...
We are 'Liberals' first and last; whether we're social liberals or economic liberals we are, all of us in our party, liberal.
Today was... interesting. (It still counts as today; although it's gone 5am, I haven't yet slept.) I arrived at Hyde Park at about 9.30am and helped get the treatment centre up and running next to the TUC stage. I stayed on post all day, mostly looking after a single patient. At about 3pm, the post was locked down and only Forward Incident Team were let out into the crowd due to fears for our safety; we sat in the ambulance listening to reports of fires in Oxford Circus on our radios and gazing out of the window at the carnage, ...
I recently bought a cheap e-reader from Waterstone's, and am very happy with it so far. I've been using it to read books from Project Gutenberg, papers from the Arxiv, ebooks from Baen, books by Charles Stross and so on. One thing I will be doing very little of, unfortunately, is buying new books to ...
A large number of people have taken to the streets of London to oppose cuts. The first thing that needs to be said is that it's an understandable sentiment: there will be a lot of very real pain. Some of the decisions were easy: scrapping ID cards, for example - though presumably there were people who lost their jobs as a result even of that. Most decisions, however, are less easy. So, with that in mind, are the protesters right? Should the government abandon the cuts? Is this all some ghastly mistake which should be stopped at the earliest possible ...
... as seen by Philip K Dick. We live now largely as adjuncts to our computers, as fallible back-up hard-drives made of meat, subservient one day - and perhaps already - to them and their evil sisters, the TV and mobile phone, with half our minds online, and all our experiences mediated by screens of glass and the ebb and flow of binary code.
The idea that the consequences of a mild tightening in fiscal policy can be compared to liberation struggles would be laughable if it wasn't so insulting to people who actually suffered with their lives and liberty. But that's indeed the message Mili minor wanted to convey to the thronged masses of the um above average earners with publicly subsidised final salary pensions at the whinge fest in central London today. But the real question is that given the marchers clearly contain huge numbers of well educated people in good jobs why they didn't see through the vacuousness of the 'Alternative' ...
I returned from a visit to Glasgow yesterday. You may know that I have a keen interest in art and photography and I did visit the art galleries as well as look at Glasgow's many items of street art. I noticed no signs to stop flash photography which would damage the paint on canvas. It wouldn't do any harm to statues but there are often restrictions stopping any form of flash photography anwhere in galleries and museums. I didn't see any signs and I didn't see any flashes. I took some photos without flash and I'll show you some of ...
