This isn't going to be about what you expect it to be. Magic Theory Other than Mister Miracle, Zatanna is probably the most explicit statement of the basic themes of Seven Soldiers that Morrison could make, and yet people have been so confused by its form (a parody of another comic) that they really haven't ...
Nearly 19,000 signatures have been collected at libraries across Suffolk and they were all handed in yesterday to the County Council. This shows some of the strength of feeling about maintaining the network of 44 libraries and six mobile libraries. The story is in the East Anglian Daily Times today Supporters of Suffolk libraries come from all political parties and none, as was evident on the Ipswich march last month. Libraries are used by all age groups across the social strata and they are not just about books. They are also social meeting places. In addition many people still don't ...
Well only seven days to go to polling day on Thursday 5 May. Both Melvin Caton and myself have been pleasantly surprised by the welcome we have received on the doorstep from residents of Stansted and Ugley. One major issue has been the possible development by Bloor Homes on agricultural land at Walpole Farm. We have had a huge response to our petition protesting against this. The run up to polling day is important making sure that we speak to as many people as possible and making it clear what we stand for. However, it is what has been done ...
Yesterday Shropshire Council announced the results of its consultation over its proposals to close village schools in the county. It still intends to close Stiperstones School. According to the Shropshire Star: Faye Moore, lead member of the Stiperstones School steering committee, said the community had been left "absolutely gutted" with today's council report. She said: "We have all worked so hard to save the school. The council is not looking at the bigger picture and the effect this will have on the community. "The standard of eduction here is very high and proven by the Ofsted report. I just can't ...
This afternoon, I attended the latest committee meeting of Blackness Area Residents' Association (BARA). In addition to updates about Dundee West Communities Association (a group that brings together tenants' groups in the west of the city) and Dundee Federation of Tenants' Association, we also discussed local issues including parking problems and the continuing issue of grit on pavements (following winter maintenance) - I have raised this with the City Council, both in relation to the BARA area and in many other streets across the West End.
Unite (Transport & General Workers Union, in old money) are conducting a campaign to highlight conditions of migrant workers (as reported on BBC today), in this instance those who have the luck to work at Thanet Earth. The suggestion by Unite, made in a recent press release, is that migrant labour is being exploited, I would point out, that such conditions are not exclusive to migrant labour unless they are also suggesting racial discrimination. Assuming Unite's points are valid it, it leaves a bad taste, particularly given all the implied environmental benefits, we have previously heard in connection with Thanet ...
The UKIP leader was in Leicester yesterday, reports the Leicester Mercury, to survey the smoking ruins of his party's contribution to the city's politics. This, you may recall, features a Mayoral candidate who has disappeared and a candidate in the Leicester South by-election whose disappearance would be widely welcolmed. The latest news from the by-election candidate, Abhijit Pandya, is that he has: issued a statement yesterday apologising for including the phrase "forced repatriation" in his blog. He said: "This does not accurately convey the point I was trying to make and is not in any way part of UKIP policy. ...
Yesterday's Leicester Mercury featured a crime story involving youths who turned out to be children. Today's paper has the headline: Grandfather beaten to the ground by youths as he walked home in Leicester But if you read the story it turns out that these youths are 20-year-old men. The term "youth", at least as employed by the Mercury, seems to mean "someone vaguely young of whom you should be afraid". We would be better off without it.
Another lesser-known Tintin book, this time from the exact opposite end of Hergé's career: this is the story he was working on when he died in 1983. It is a strange and convoluted tale - Captain Haddock wakes from a nightmare, goes shopping and almost accidentally buys a giant plastic letter H, a piece of a new sculpture style called 'Alph-Art' (hence the title of the book); mysteriously dead art experts and a new age cult which may be led by Rastapopoulos in disguise bring Tintin and Captain Haddock to an island near Naples, where Tintin is captured by the ...
If you are in or near London tomorrow and wanting to avoid the television for any reason, I can heartily recommend the Doctor Who Experience at Kensington Olympia, who are offering "a limited number of tickets" at the knockdown rate of £4.29 per person. There's an excellent multimedia show which lasts for about half an hour, then a decent exhibition covering both Old and New Who (including the authentic Tardis exterior and console from the 1980s). It's worth the standard £20, just about. (I can't see how to book the cheap tickets on the website; probably you'd have to phone ...
The Welsh Liberal Democrats today called for a new approach to regenerating town centres and high streets across Wales. Visitng Llanidloes with Lord Carlile, the former Leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats, Wyn Williams, the Welsh Liberal Democrats candidate for Montgomeryshire put forward proposals to begin the renewal of high streets and town centres across Wales by: · Freezing business rates for a year while we reform them completely. · Giving councils more powers to require an impact assessment of large supermarket developments. · Cutting red tape for small businesses by introducing a 'one-in-one-out' rule whereby no new regulation is ...
A few weeks ago, my flatmates raised the possibility of celebrating the Royal Wedding. I was more than slightly alarmed to find myself agreeing with them. Firstly, I genuinely do not care about the wedding of two people I have never met. Good for them, but it has little to do with me. Not just that, ...
I've spent the day with the residents of Kensey Valley Meadow discussing a number of issues surrounding the formal adoption of their roads and drainage systems and also the possibility of putting a play area onto the estate. As I've blogged countless times, residents have been very concerned about the apparent slow progress being made towards adoption and so I organised today's event to get some answers. I was delighted that a representative from Elan Homes, the developers, was there, as were council legal and highways officers, someone from South West Water and a council officer to discuss street names ...
Doris Ansari has announced that she has decided to stand down as Leader of the Lib Dem group at County Hall. Doris has been a formidable political animal for more than 40 years on Truro City Council, Carrick, Cornwall County Council and now the unitary authority. In that time she has been a great advocate for our party and was also a magnificent Chairman of the County for four years. At one stage she sought to move 'up' to seek the selection for the Truro Parliamentary seat after the tragic death of David Penhaligon but was beaten to the nomination ...
Over the past four decades Sir Robert Worcester has established himself as the doyen of opinion pollsters in the United Kingdom. Though Kansas-born he took on British citizenship and lives happily in Kent, of whose University he is Chancellor. This lunchtime he was the guest speaker at the Kettner's Lunch at the National Liberal Club, ...
There are many arguments in favour of diversity in the workforce in terms of freedom, liberalism and equality (mix in varying measures according to your political viewpoint). But my colleague at MHP Communications, our Chair Gay Collins, has also written a strong piece pointing out how diversity in the boardroom also makes for more successful companies: The McKinsey study also looked at performance comparative to a number of women in senior management functions. This clearly showed, out of nine pre-determined organisational criteria, companies with three or more women in senior management functions scored much more highly than companies without women ...
I see of the 500 odd members who responded to the Lib Dem Voice survey, just 1% (ie 5) are planning on lining the streets to cheer on the happy couple tomorrow. I am one of them. My daughters have insisted, and to be honest, I think we'll have a right old laugh. Until it rains. Anyway, if the other 4 Lib Dems attending are reading this, look out for 3 kids probably dressed as Disney princesses and two parents carrying a lot of support gear. That'll be us. See you at Horseguards....
This image, sadly, seems to be far more successful at persuading people of the case for AV than anything the official Yes campaign have come up with. Reposting to boost the signal. (Not sure of the source of this, but @zombywuf on Twitter is the earliest person I can find to have posted this.) Zatanna ...
This is one of the three pre-war Tintin books which are not in general circulation in English, and for fairly good reason; it's not all that good. Tintin goes to America in 1931, briefly captures Al Capone (who was still just about at liberty in real life at that stage), is himself captured by the Blackfoot tribe, and then has a series of unlikely and disjointed adventures ending with him rolling up the entire Chicago Syndicate of Gansters and sent back to Belgium as a hero. The only African-Americans in the book (at least in the current version) are lynched ...
Very nicely done:
Hilarious.
I liked this piece by Nick Clegg in the Standard about AV. Particularly good on why AV would be bad for the BNP, hence the BNP campaigning for a No vote in the referendum. No electoral system is perfect. Certainly not First Past the Post and certainly not AV. I have voted by post in the referendum and I have voted Yes to AV, because AV is a great improvement on the current system. When we vote in a constituency at a General Election, we are not voting for a party to form a government, we are voting for a ...
There's one week left until local elections on May 5th. The Central Hove team will be working hard as usual, canvassing and talking to people across Central Hove. If you have any questions or concerns, do get in touch via this blog or rebeccataylorhove [at] gmail.com (replace [a] with @). We have a packed week ahead, out every night in a different street, delivering literature and reminding people about the election. See you on the other side! [IMG: vote]
Anticipating the sequence of bank holidays has created a demob happy atmosphere in the Lords. Not an acceptance that life peers will soon be gone after the Coaltiion's package of Lords reform, but a more temporary jollity. I came in to my office to find two e-mails, one inviting me to a session of Lords vs Commons "full bore target rifle shooting" and another requesting my attendance at the All Party Parliamentary Basketball AGM. Disinclined as I am to either sport, I went into the chamber where a very brief debate took place on a procedure report. It makes a ...
Regular readers of this blog, if there are any, may have discerned a slight slackening of effort on my part over the past few months. No posts since February. This is of course shocking, and my only excuse is ill-health. I have been suffering from flu which turned into turbo-charged eczema, no doubt thanks to the stresses of the coalition (yes, I know, I flatter myself). Still, I am feeling better now and really must put in a bit of effort. The reason I feel better is two weeks in the extraordinary village of Avène in the Haut-Languedoc region of ...
Want to know how the cats would vote next week in the Referendum? Having been shown the video below we've also found another cat's take on Humans and Voting. The humans are thinking about changing the way they elect their MPs. At the moment, they use a simple system called first past the post. Everyone ...
[Originally posted on Bristol Running Resource, 28/04/11] The early burst of warm weather we're experiencing this year will no doubt be welcomed by many runners. But it is deeply frustrating for those of us sidelined to the armchair. It would be great to be putting in a few miles in the sunshine. I'd been planning ...
I am an Eastrop Councillor, very proud of it. I happen to be a member of the Liberal Democrats (and I'm proud of that as well) but first and foremost I represent Eastrop. The Liberal Democrats didn't elect me, they support me, train me and advise me and that helps me perform my role better, but Eastrop residents elect me. I represent them. In the past 3 years I have witnessed many votes in the
Our Council meeting was rather short this morning. We didn't have a single division which must be some kind of record. Even the Council questions which are usually a bloodbath were quite muted. I had two up on our Advice Services Review and on Garden Aid. The former has been a long saga due to the difficulty of finding suitable premises for our service once the lease of the existing premises expires. The latter is an issue that Labour have tried to grandstand on in the past until it is pointed that they voted for any changes which have taken ...
From 6th May 2011 we have two great discount in ALDC membership. New Councillors' Discount All NEWLY ELECTED Lib Dem Councillors will be able to join ALDC in their first year for HALF PRICE! As all of us know their first months as a Councillor are important. We want to make sure as many of our new Councillors benefit from the advice and support that ALDC offer from Day 1. This makes ALDC membership for new councillors only 75p a week! The new offer is only available in May and June 2011 - after that it's back up to the ...
Best I've seen so far. brilliant.
Even here on the sunny streets of Tallinn in the spring, there is new attention being given to Britain as the Royal Wedding preparations proceed. Such occasions are not quite as unique as the Brits believe- after all there was similar interest in the marriage of the Swedish Crown Princess which took place only a few months ago- but nonetheless there is at least a degree of interest. In fact several of the bars usually patronized by ex-pats will be showing the great occasion and doubtless offering some festive drinks to accompany it. Yet what the Royal Wedding is doing ...
Perusing the Scotsman's election coverage I came across this article. Patrick Harvie is an experienced parliamentarian and leader of the Scottish Green Party. He, like the rest of his party, are always keen to highlight their honesty, caring and niceness and contrast it with the typical deceitful mainstream politicians. In the introduction to his party's manifesto Mr Harvie writes, 'We have consistently brought a fresh approach to politics...Greens have argued for years that business-as-usual politics could not last.' So it comes as somewhat surprising to see see him engaging in business-as-usual politics by dissembling with the rest of them. Let's ...
This year's Hugo shortlist for the Best Short Story category is rather easy to digest - there are only four nominees , all of them are already available online, and one of them is very short indeed; to further simplify matters I had already read one which had been nominated for the BSFA award. Since I'm spending a few days horizontal and unable to concentrate on anything of great length, I have formulated my views as follows: 4) "Amaryllis", by Carrie Vaughn. Nice enough writing style, but the plot is simply that the bloke in charge of weighing the fishing ...
I'm fairly sure that David Cameron was only intending to be boorish, arrogant and dismissive to Angela Eagle yesterday, rather than sexist, and when he did his (rather poor and incomplete) Michael Winner impression I'm sure he thought he was being hilarious. He was certainly visibly nonplussed at the vehemence of the negative reaction he got. He may not even have realised the sexism inherent in the original commercial; this is a function of his vast privilege, being white, male, very rich, able-bodied, hetereosexual, etc. etc. etc. In just about every group where there are privileged and marginalised, Cameron falls ...
A new bus service will appear on our roads shortly. From Tuesday 14 June Kingswood-based operator will run a peak-time service between Yate and central Bristol. The X2C service will have one trip in each direction on Mondays to Fridays and is aimed at commuters. The morning journey will run from Yate Shopping Centre at 08:00 and operate via the A432, Downend, Fishponds, Eastville Park, Muller Road, M32, Newfoundland Street, Bond Street, The Haymarket (arriving at 08:40), continuing to St Augustines Parade, Park Street, Whiteladies Road and terminating at Black Boy Hill at 08:58. The afternoon journey starts at Black ...
Recommended reading for Liberal Democrat councillors and local campaigners from the last seven days. (Please note no column next week, due to the elections!) In the last week the 'debate' over Fairer Votes has intensified: 'This is our chance to hurt Cameron' says Peter Mandleson in the Independent David Cameron accused of making incendiary remarks about Lib Dems over AV, reports the Telegraph Political Betting (.com) asks: Are Labour voters going to stay 50:50 on AV? and read in full Nick Clegg's speech in Norwich last week at the AV rally. Confirmation that we're not in recession from the BBC ...
The advantages of the Alternative Vote explained in one poster. If you would rather have a beer vote YES. You can also watch a video explanation here Bookmark on Delicious Digg this Recommend on Facebook Share on Reddit Share with Stumblers Tweet this
As a follow up to my last 'Cameron - the mask slips' post, here's a great quote from Osborne and accompanying comment from Johann Hari 'He said recently that his school, St. Paul's (annual fees: £30,000 a year) was "incredibly liberal. It didn't matter who your parents were. Your mother could be the head of a giant corporation - or a solicitor in Kew." That's his internal vision of the social spectrum in Britain, with those pauper solicitors in Kew begging at the bottom.' Quite. They don't get it, do they? Or at least, George doesn't...
The NHS, probably rightly, is one of the main controversies in current British, or rather English, politics. The Coalition government has put it there after Labour, by dint of a massive increase in spending, had managed to take most of the heat out of the debate, bar a few controversial hospital closures. Personally I am a bit perplexed. From one side I am being constantly lobbied by the Social Liberal Forum, a Lib Dem pressure group, to express disapproval of what looks like almost the entire reform process. On the other side is 18 years experience as a business services ...
Filed under: Blogging, Fairer Votes Tagged: #yes2av, #yesinmay
Yesterday, the President of the United States had to make an announcement to declare he was an official resident of the Union and born in the country. Yes, a President had to yield to the odious anixety of a minority, ... Continue reading →
I grew up in Sleaford and I know that it is a really great place to live, I moved away to Lincoln for three year while I studied at the University of Lincoln. I moved back to Sleaford after my study to find Sleaford's Town Centre had emptied and its market left bare. I understand ...
Quite a few media outlets (for example, here and here) are this morning reporting figures produced by the Department for Work and Pensions that show four out of ten applicants for Employment and Support Allowance failed to qualify for assistance and, hence, are 'fit to work'. This is taken by Employment Minister Chris Grayling as ...
Page under construction Results in the wards with elections Change in Councillors   Composition of councils with elections after the Result - only those councils with elections in 2011, NOT all councils.  
As simple as going to the pub...
As you may have heard, Prince William is marrying Kate Middleton this year. Middleton is the name of a Manchester suburb only one along from Prestwich, so I feel a definite connection to the occasion. I was quite nervous before my own wedding last year, which makes me think with a fair amount of confidence that ...
Thu 28th
10:50
I've warned in the past about how good David Cameron is with words. I'm big enough to admit that I m...
Whoops! I've blogged in the past about how David Cameron uses language very well, in order to mask his 'not-from-our-world' ness by using both the words and the phrases of everyday folk. He was at it again today. Using a familiar phrase, one that his spokesman has defended by saying 'I think you will find it is a popular advert'. Cameron wasn't just trying to put down his opponent, he was also subliminally trying to send out a message to the public, 'look, I understand the language of everyday culture, I watch the TV, I even know the adverts.' But ...
Supporting the Call to Action of the global youth movement What about HIV? to the meeting of world leaders at UN HQ, New York on 10 June
The AV campaign is in full swing but strangely, I've only received campaign literature from the No campaign so far. As a Yes supporter, I find this amusing but disheartening: with only a week to go, where is the Yes literature? It is really squeaky-bum time now. In any case, they're going full frontal on the Nick Clegg attack angle, after seeing no joy in the BNP argument. As the new Private Eye so eruditely summarises: Yes to AV's arguments are about cleaner or fairer politics. The No campaign's argument is a picture of Nick Clegg. And they list so ...
David Cameron is many things, but he is not a sexist. His 'calm down, dear' put down of Angela Eagle at PMQs yesterday was, as Eagle herself put it, 'part of the rough and tumble of politics'. It wasn't big, it wasn't clever, it wasn't even funny, but it wasn't sexist. The real problem with ...
Cross-posted from Liberal Democrat Voice During an answer on the NHS, David Cameron made his now infamous "Calm down, dear" remark to Angela Eagle (available via Channel4News on YouTube). He followed it up with the words "Calm down" repeated several times, including to "the most annoying man in politics" (Cameron's words), Ed Balls. It was a relatively inconsequential, if ill-advised, remark. However, I don't get the "it's a joke from an ad" defence here. The full catchphrase is "Calm down dear - it's a commercial". "Calm down, dear" on its own is only half a catchphrase. The reason why the ...
The Scottish Green Party have adopted a "2nd Vote Green" Strategy, using the list ballot paper to put forward named candidates (despite the list being a vote for a party) like the SNP's 'Alex Salmond for SNP' wheeze. However, this is the first time I have seen the Tories try something similar. The party lost vote is on a peach ballot paper in this election and from this statement it appears that the Tories are trying to shore up their list vote ahead of winning more constituency seats: "It is common sense to boost Scotland's third sector and that's exactly ...
Next week, I get to vote in a UK referendum for the first time ever; hardly surprising, as there's only been one before in 1975, and I'm not that old. I'll be voting in favour of AV [1]; I don't like it much, but I like it more than I like our current FPTP [2], and I do like being able to express small, nuanced preferences. Incidentally, in another first for me I'm getting to cast two votes, because I have a proxy vote for [IMG: [personal profile] ] lizw, who will be on a pilgrimage to Spain on polling ...
I am neither a republican nor a strong monarchist but, I must admit, I'm quite looking forward to a bit of pomp-and-ceremony tomorrow and a couple of parties later. On the monarchy, it seems to me that it more than pays for itself in tourist revenue. More importantly, the monarch still has an important constitutional role. Imagine what would happen if the Queen refused Royal Assent! Your view may differ, but I'm fairly sure the government would fall. Okay, it hasn't happened here since Queen Anne in 1708, but it has been refused as recently as 1937 in Australia (excluding ...
Nice cover here, hat tip to the Berklee Music Blog. Hip hop lends itself to sparse arrangements; this is as sparse as it gets. Absolutely love Amy Heidemann's performance. Beautifully expressive expressions, if that's not too redundant. Of course, the reason this is getting huge numbers of views is probably yet another example of the success of whitified versions of black music...
We, or certainly I, complain about personal politics in the UK, but it is nothing compared to the day of lunacy in the US.Casting aspertions, Donald Trump appears to have launched his presidential bid by attacking Obama for potentially not being born in the US.His argument has been on a subtle nuance in the US Constitution that he must be born in the country.Such a detrimental argument has helped
One Israel built its 'security' wall through the West Bank town of Baqa Sharqieh in 2003 Residents in one part were cut off from their neighbours in the other, although quite how dividing Palestinians from Palestinians improved Israel's security is ... Continue reading →
The latest Lib Dem Voice survey poses a series of adjectives and ask us which we are happy to describe ourselves as. To be honest I was blithely ticking loads of them when suddenly I got pulled up short by one in particular. Pragmatic. Now I've blogged on this before. In adland we say that good is the enemy of great. That you shouldn't just settle, you should always fight for the very best. In politics we say something rather different. Yes, we'd rather have PR - but we'll settle for AV if that's the best on offer Yes, we ...
The Welsh Liberal Democrats will expose an example of the waste and inefficiency of Labour and Plaid Cymru in government on each day of the Welsh general election campaign In Autumn last year, under pressure from Kirsty Williams, the First Minister was forced to reveal the £500,000 shocking cost of commissioning McKinsey to produce a report on the future of the NHS. The report was never published and was described by the Government as 'a little discussion paper' and 'a compilation of slides'. The UK government spent just £46,000 commissioning a similar report from McKinsey.
For the last year the Welsh First Minister has deflected attacks on his government and virtually refused to cooperate with legitimate scrutiny, preferring instead to answer questions with attacks on the UK Coalition. Now, the UK Prime Minister has caught on and spent much of yesterday's question time attacking Labour and Plaid Cymru in Cardiff Bay. No wonder people are disillusioned with politics. By all means compare and contrast but the point of these sessions is meant to be effective scrutiny. You cannot have good government unless the opposition start asking awkward questions and insist on an answer. These tactics ...
It's well known that some dubious regimes specialise in re-writing history. Durham County Council is taking a different tack by re-writing geography instead. As a result I enjoyed a trip Spennymoor – who wouldn't – to attend the "Area General Licensing and Registration Sub-Committee (North Durham)." Fortunately Geography returns to normal tomorrow for the Area Planning Committee (North Durham) which will be held – probably for the last time – in Consett Civic Centre. And that's the real point. It won't be long before all meetings on local issues like planning and licensing for North Durham take place away from ...
i) births and deaths 28 April 1977: death of Anthony Coburn, who wrote An Unearthly Child (1963) and the never-produced story The Masters of Luxor. i) broadcast anniversaries 28 April 1973: broadcast of fourth episode of Planet of the Daleks. The Doctor and Jo are reunited, and the Thals disagree about how to tackle the Daleks. 28 April 2007: broadcast of Evolution of the Daleks. The Daleks' experiments are destroyed by the Doctor and Dalek Caan escapes. ii) date specified in canon 28 April 2008: Martha Jones and Sarah Jane Smith are killed on the Moon, in the negated timeline ...
In seven days time the polls will be open!! Unlike in recent years I am actually having to schedule in a trip to my polling station to cast my vote. Getting a postal vote here in Northern Ireland isn't quite as universal as it would be in Scotland. I will be presented with three ballot papers, two which for the Assembly and Council I've still to work out my lower preferences, seeing as I get to elect six people with each preferences down the list do matter. The other ballot is one I've known for months exactly how I'll be ...
Royal Wedding Dalek Does what it says. (tags: doctorwho funny)
Local community website SalfordOnline have asked all candidates standing in this year's Salford local elections three questions. As it's taking them a while to post the answers, I thought it'd be worthwile me posting my own answers on my blog:- 1) Why have you decided to stand? As a resident of Langworthy I really care about my neighbourhood and feel that we are under-represented in the community and on the council. I want to make a difference to the quality of our lives in Langworthy, by ensuring that Salford Council are more pro-active in helping to reduce crime and finishing ...
Over the last two nights we've watched these two films, plus all the special features on the dvds. I think it's safe to say I've reached a conclusion about their relative merits. Tron Legacy has better special effects, cooler motorbikes, better acting, arguably better gender representation (although arguably worse too in some respects - both feature women whose sole purpose is to service male characters, but at least in the sequel one of them gets to 1, kick some ass, and 2, teach the male lead something), and cost a metric fuckton more money. But Tron is a far more ...
Before reading this, sign up for Yes In May Get Out The Vote campaigning on the fifth of May. You can come back and read why later. I've not been online much for a couple of days, but even so I've seen quite a few people, in the lead-up to the referendum in May, complaining ...
It is at least a year ago when I was speaking with someone from Ireland. I asked about the voting system and how they managed with STV. Isn't it difficult to cope with a numbered system rather than a cross for one candidate? The answer he gave me, of course, was that it was easy to place numbers against the candidates. Yesterday I was again talking with someone from Ireland. She was telling me how it was important to get fair proportions of elected representatives to the votes that were cast. Religious bigotry was evident and reflected in the religious ...
