For a recovering bureaucrat, one of the biggest challenges is coming upon a situation whereby you need to create some guidance, some instructions, for a necessary task. As a cautious soul, for what else would you be as a bureaucrat, the temptation is to be thorough, to reduce risk, to make it easy to manage. I was reminded the other day that our Regional Vice Chair, a truly wonderful person who has been an inspiration to me in so many ways, a soulmate and a friend, had persuaded the Regional Executive that I should chair a small working group to ...
Today it was Vince Cable in the Observer: tomorrow it will be Danny Alexander in the Guardian. Substantial interviews with Liberal Democrat cabinet ministers are the flavour of the month. The silly season? A new Lib Dem media strategy? Or a recognition by the press that their Liberal Democrats face electoral oblivion narrative no longer rings true? Danny defends the Coalition's policies on tuition fees and makes the usual attacks on Labour's economic credibility. But the political lessons he draws with his own Hebridean and Highland background are more interesting: Alexander hymns the rootedness of Highland life, and that commitment ...
Well, kind of...almost! The link was made recently when I was told of the connection between Cool Runnings and Madonna. Having blogged about Hans Zimmer and Cool Runnings in recent weeks, it jogged my memory of this revelation that I learned about. As a fan of the big screen, but an even bigger fan of music, I could not believe that I had never made the link between Madonna's (in) famous 'Like a Prayer' music video and the cast of Cool Runnings. Leon Robinson Because yes, the actor who played the controversial 'Black Jesus' in Madonna's hit video in 1989 ...
Yesterday I was in York, for that wonderful city's annual Pride. I like Pride probably for the same reasons that I love Lib Dem conference - the diverse and interesting people, the lively personalities and the way the event unifies and inspires. York Pride has been running for five years now and attracted about 1,000 people but while I have been to larger Pride events (i.e. Glasgow) I've not been to a better one than York's. There was a tangible sense of it belonging to the local community and the friendly, fun atmosphere would be hard to replicate anywhere. It ...
It is simply months since we had any Steve Winwood or Traffic, so let's put that right with this track from Traffic's LP Last Exit. This was, in the words of Wikipedia, "a collection of odds and ends put together by Island Records after the initial breakup of the band". Feelin' Good was one of two tracks recorded live at a concert performed at Filmore West in San Francisco. There are lots of versions of it around, but there is not another one with organ like this on it. There is also a live Canadian video of the song from ...
In nine months or so, Londonders will go to the polls to select the new face of their city for the next four years. Except it won't really be a new face because it's going to be Boris again. And even if it wasn't Boris again, it would be Ken again. But it won't be Ken again. It will be Boris again. The idea that anybody is even entertaining the notion that Ken stands a chance is whimsical. Short of some catastrophe like being caught stabbing kittens, Boris can't really lose. 20% of Labour voters* are planning on voting for ...
They have gone and done it again!
Brent Liberal Democrats were blessed with fine weather at their annual summer garden party this afternoon, but also with the presence of all four potential London Mayoral candidates, who were strutting their stuff, as they have been doing valiantly around the region for the past couple of weeks. There was an unusual twist to this ...
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 232nd 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 (24-30 July, 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. Mike Hancock vs ...
Non-fiction 3 (YTD 35) Manufacture and Uses of Alloy Steels, by Henry D. Hibbard The Faerie Queene: a selection of critical essays, edited by Peter Bayley Terre des Hommes, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Non-sf 3 (YTD 28) Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison The Decameron, by Giovanni Boccaccio The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Anne Shaffer and Annie Barrows SF (non-Who) 6 (YTD 43) I Am Not A Serial Killer, by Dan Wells The Magicians, by Lev Grossman A Feast For Crows, by George R.R. Martin The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis The ...
It's not often you get posters stuck all over the place putting the clearest of Liberal messages. Still less, when it's an advert for a shop and a big-budget movie. Yet that's exactly what this Daniel Radcliffe poster (advertising HMV and Harry Potter) did. After publishing the London Mayoral hopefuls' answers to 'What the Liberal Democrats stand for' on Friday and with today Harry Potter's birthday (a week after Mr Radcliffe's), this poster sprang to mind - with its admirable quotation chosen by Mr Radcliffe as his inspiration and as blatant a statement I've ever seen that 'I'm a Liberal!' ...
Yeah, I know they happened three months ago; but I have now updated the summary page with full first preference votes, and also projected the local council votes onto the boundaries of each constituency. I had not realised that both the UUP and SDLP did significantly better in the council elections than in the Assembly election held on the same day. One would normally expect it to be the other way round - there is often a bigger choice of candidates for the council elections, and in a second-order election voters may be more inclined to vote adventurously. But the ...
The following document from Buckingham Palace, signed by Her Majesty herself, has recently come into my possession. I understand that Wikileaks are absolutely livid that I got to it first. I can't guarantee that it is genuine, but I believe it will come into effect if the USA defaults. Anyway, here it is: Whereas Our Royal Ancestor King George III was pleased to sign the Treaty of Paris of
SNP rapped by water regulator – Scotland on Sunday: [IMG: JS] MINISTERS have been told that their insistence on keeping Scottish Water in public ownership is hampering the company's efforts to fix the country's antiquated pipe network. Documents released under Freedom of Information legislation reveal that Sir Ian Byatt, the former water industry regulator, sent a memorandum to finance secretary John Swinney two years ago to warn him that bosses at Scottish Water were "increasingly concerned" they would not be able to afford repairs if the company remained funded solely by the government. Still concerned about the way that the ...
I never got round to writing up my interest in fake owls as the story petered out, but someone else has stumbled on my Freedom of Information request and blogged this (see comments for some extra information from myself).
Extraordinary scenes at Trente Bridge today. The final ball before the tea interval was played away to the boundary by Eoin Morgan which was stopped just before the rope by Kumar. A bit of confusion entailed as Ian Bell thought that it had gone for four and started walking towards the dressing room, at the same time the ball reached the Indian captain/wicket keeper MS Dhoni, who through to a team mate who was stood over the stumps. They were subsequently removed and Ian Bell was clearly run out. By the letter of the law the dismissal was clear, by ...
[IMG: Morgan Freeman in The Dark Knight] This week's New Scientist features an article entitled Smartphone surveillance: The cop in your pocket (kerching). In it, a rather breathless Nic Fleming waxes lyrically about how, thanks to our smartphones, "we are all set to gain unprecedented crime-fighting abilities." Sadly, however, it is not through being able to download mad martial arts skillz via our phones Matrix-style but by using the sensors on our phones to create a near-universal level of surveillance. The residents of Boston, for example, will soon be using their phones to record potholes in the road (thus rendering ...
Today I posted over at Dale & Co: In the run up to the Parliamentary recess the country was transfixed by a scandal involving the Conservative contingent of the Government, the media, powerful private companies and a Select Committee exerting itself. The scandal gained momentum when it was clear that particularly vulnerable people were being ...
Having been to the London Mayoral hustings last week in Wimbledon (and written about it for LDV) I thought it would be interesting to go to the official hustings last night in central London to see how (or if) the candidates had changed. I don't know if it was the different audience or the extra week and taking on board the various comment people made but all four candidates made better speeches and all seemed more confident of why they wanted to represent us. By far the most improved was Lembit Opik. I could see why he has had such ...
[IMG: John Stuart Mill] John Stuart Mill: as happy as a pig in the proverbial Thus far, I've been a little disappointed by the lack of open debate about how we might want to reform British journalism post "Hackgate". By that, I don't mean the discussion over what should replace the PCC (although I've seen precious little of that either, aside from journalists shrieking about the horrors of government regulation). What I mean is, a debate about whether we ought to revisit the ethics and standards which are taken for granted. That opening paragraph was a rather hamfisted way of ...
Last year The Student Community Partnership worked with Somer Housing and the Awards organisers in B&NES Council to introduce the category of 'Good Neighbour' with a subcategory of 'Student Good Neighbour'. This is a great opportunity for students to be recognised for the positive contributions that they make.Perhaps you know a someone who helps their neighbour with their gardening? or
Rene Kinzett, one of my fellow contributors over at Dale & Co, posted Nudging or Nannying last weekend. The argument was perhaps a little cryptic, but the point was that relying on the subtlety of trying to "nudge" behaviour in the right direction is not an adequate policy response to certain types of problem. His ...
The English Democrats party is forcing Salford to hold a referendum on an elected Mayor for the city after they handed in a 10,000 name petition. Under the Local Government Act introduced by Labour, if 5% of the electorate petition the council and the signatures are correctly matched to names on the city's electoral roll, a vote on the issue will be triggered automatically. Last September at their party conference, the English Democrats launched a bid to increase the number of directly elected mayors across England, and Salford has become the first city to receive a referendum as a result ...
Who are the top 10 Twitterers in the House of Commons? That's the question the Mail on Sunday answers today, following a survey by Westminster Public Affairs. The list looks not at number of followers, but at the volume of tweets each MP has sent out. Heading the list is Labour's Kerry McCarthy with well over 27,000 tweets. Cambridge's Lib Dem MP Julian Huppert — elected to Parliament just last year — comes in at number six, having sent over 10,000 tweets, and now with over 4,000 followers. My Co-Editor Mark Pack has compiled a public list of all tweeting ...
In Seeing like a State, the academic James C. Scott explores why "certain schemes to improve the human condition fail". Scott is a professor of political science and anthropology. He chronicles the way the State needs to map land, identify where people are, be able to count them in order to tax and organise people. Scott doesn't argue against the State, although he does discuss how the State takes things from people leaving off the question of whether if it has the right to. Scott makes the point that this behaviour of the State crosses the political spectrum. As Scott ...
As an advanced warning this will be one of those self-indulgent posts where I muse about my own life. If you're not interested then don't worry - I don't intend to be doing these kinds of post on a regular basis so if (inexplicably) you actually like reading my opinions on political events then normal service will resume shortly. After all, I don't normally talk about my private life as I tend to keep my private life separate from everything else so you have no need to worry about this turning into a "dear diary" kind of blog. Anyways, love. ...
Earlier this month, I mentioned residents' complaints about the overgrown state of the roundabout at the entrance to Ninewells Hospital on Ninewells Avenue. I raised their complaints with the City Council. The City Engineer subsequently advised me : "The grass on the Ninewells Avenue roundabout at Ninewells Drive was left uncut to allow the daffodils to die back as is standard with all daffodil panels on Dundee City Council maintained grassed areas. The grass on the roundabout has subsequently been cut and is included in the cyclical grass cutting regime carried out on a 2 to 4 week cycle."
In 2008 I attended the IPA President's debate at BAFTA on the importance of the creative industries to the UK economy. It was held just as the banks were crashing around our ears and Will Hutton made the point that the broader creative sector represented the second largest industry sector in the UK after finance - and that the future prosperity of the country rested in the hands of those present. I see that when he made that speech he had been making the same point for a year or more already. And his prescience in highlighting the dangers of ...
I agree with large parts of this article by Melanie Phillips. But I do not agree with her when she writes: "While some people of course have a baseless and hateful prejudice against Muslims, most of what is labelled "Islamophobia" is instead an all-too-rational concern about Islamist extremists." It is the word "most" from which I demur; had she replaced "most" with "much", I might not be demurring. It reminds me of those people who, quite mistakenly, would write: "While some people of course have a baseless and hateful prejudice against Jews, most of what is labelled "antisemitism" is instead ...
With thanks to gavbrum's YouTube channel, a piece of Dundee history in the making - from a few minutes ago :
Care of @paulwalteruk, a still relevant clip of Ronald Reagan talking about raising the debt ceiling in the US. Reagan raised taxes as well as the debt ceiling, it should be noted. Over thirty years – including here in the UK – conservative thought is turning into an empty caricature of itself. They are letting themselves down. And taking the rest of us with them, unfortunately. Here's a transcript: Congress consistently brings the government to the edge of default before facing its responsibility. This brinksmanship threatens the holders of government bonds, and those who rely on social security and veteran ...
Lord Lamont, Chancellor when Britain came out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism in September 1992, is reported to be campaigning for the 50% tax rate to be scrapped. The old argument about inhibiting growth & stifling initiative is being trotted out as an unchallengeable truth. But it is NOT true. Quite the reverse. I have met hundreds of businessmen running small start ups over the last ten yrs or so and not one has cited income tax as a disincentive simply because very few actually get anywhere near the £150000 a year needed for the 50% to kick in. To ...
The Bahraini authorities routinely arrest any demonstrators who attend the state-run hospitals for treatment of injuries caused by the security forces. So the wounded demonstrators kept away from hospital and have remained untreated until Médecins Sans Frontières opened a clinic. On July 27 Hassan Al-Eskafi turned up at the clinic with a severe injury to his head after being attacked by riot police with a canister -possibly teargas - while taking part in a peaceful protest. MSF called an ambulance, al-Eskafi's injuries being too severe for their resources, and the patient was taken to the hospital. The following day, security ...
More on Merseytravel's 'Gravy Train' On Thursday I reported how the BBC in the North West were starting to take a serious interest in the "Gravy Train" antics of the Labour Chair of the Merseyside Integrated Transport Authority (MITA), Bootle's very own Councillor Mark Dowd. Arif Ansari, the BBC's Political Editor for the North West, reported the latest news on Cllr Dowd's £47,665pa position, which makes him one of the highest paid councillors in the country. However, I now learn that Cllr Dowd received rather more than that (pretty impressive) £47,665. In fact, his pay and expenses for last ...
Everything you needed to know about the current 'epiphenomenal imbroglio' ((C) Will Self at 0:48 here) engulfing the US economy, courtesy series 6 of The West Wing: (Also available on YouTube here.) And as a special treat, here's a bonus West Wing clip of presidential contenders Santos and Vilnick debating 'liberalism' — all together now: "I will pick up that label and wear it as a badge of honour." (Also on YouTube here.)
I have written many times about how utterly fabulous I think the BBC's Formula One coverage has been over the past two and a half years. The passion of presenter Jake Humphrey, the precision of Ted Kravitz, the empathy of Lee McKenzie, the delighfully hilarious commentary of Martin Brundle, the top quality bitching between Eddie Jordan and David Coulthard. They maybe focus on McLaren, Red Bull and Ferrari a tad too much, but I'm nitpicking. As soon as you hear "The Chain" come on, you know fine you're going to enjoy pretty much every minute. The way Jake has interacted ...
Yesterdays Financial Times [30th July] ran a big feature about private luxury yachts. Some of these can cost up to one billion USDollars and indeed provide highly skilled work for people. But some folk are never content. According to the article one such yacht remains anchored in Cap d'Antibes with just a skipper on board because, due to the price of fuel, it would cost some £300000 to fill it up with diesel. My eyes welled up with tears at the thought of the deprivation suffered by the poor owner.
Thats what Stephen Tall's blog post on LibDem Voice got me thinking about this morning. He wrote an excellent piece about Andrew Rawnlsey's column in the Observer talking about 'uncoventional men who make you think'. It was this particular point ...
I spend yesterday wandering around London and, as is my wont, spotted some QR codes which I think may interest readers of this blog. Tracey Emin The Hayward Gallery are having a Tracey Emin retrospective. At the start of the exhibition is this rather odd QR code. [IMG: Tracey Emin QR] Why odd? Three main reasons. It leads directly to a 14MB MP3 file. The code is really quite small considering it's a low-lit gallery. Rather that being printed directly onto the wall, it appears to be a separate sticker. The MP3 is an audio guide to the exhibit. That's ...
Android's Dirty Secret: Shipping Numbers Are Strong But Returns Are 30-40% | TechCrunch "the return rate on some Android devices is between 30 and 40 percent" - I am not at all surprised! (tags: phone) Kafka, by Wodehouse « Elberry's Ghost "I came across an odd PG Wodehouse story yesterday, 'The Castaways'...it reads like Kafka, without quite the same volume of brooding dread." (tags: humour)
Jack of Kent: On capital punishment What he said. (tags: law) DC Comics in Response: We Hear You Words are easy. Lets see some action. With GIRLS in. (tags: comics) A-Z Superheroes I want one of these. It's got Oracle on! (tags: comics)
Andrew Rawnsley, writing in today's Observer under the surprisingly un-PC title In praise of unconventional men who make us think, sticks up for those iconoclastic thinkers who challenge their parties' conventional thinking, citing as paragons the Tories' Steve 'Big Society' Hilton and Maurice 'Blue Labour' Glasman: Conventional is not a description you could apply to either of these eclectic thinkers. ... There are many big differences between these two men and their philosophies, but something interestingly common to them is anti-statism, a deep antagonism to bureaucracy and managerialism. ... It would be a shame if either were to be silenced. ...
As you may know, Coptic Street used to be Duke Street, though as it was renamed in 1894, I am very impressed if you did know. It was renamed in order to avoid confusion with other Duke Streets and the new name was chosen in honour of the British Museum's Coptic manuscripts. The Pizza Express is in the building which was built for the old Dairy Supply Company and still retains many of its art noveau features, including the big arches at street level that were used for easy transport access. It also has some more modern touches that reflect ...
[IMG: How absolutely fascinating]
One of the Liberal Democrat standpoints on justice has been to have an elected commissioner of Police, it is one that I agree with in principle and one I think needs especially now needs to be looked at seriously. This does fly in the face of my friend Councilor Tristan Osborne (lab) who wrote a very interesting 'blog post that is firmly against it and I will attempt to engage with his arguments further on. You can read his 'blog post here... Currently each constabulary is run by a Chief Constable with whom all the power and responsibility rests. ...
So the press have dug around into Louise Mensch MPs past and discovered, shock horror, that she 'probably' took some drugs at a nightclub when she was in her twenties. Why this is news is frankly beyond me but why this has come out now, is not. The press are doing their thing, taking on someone that has taken them on. The 'probably' is a bit of a give away. There are lots of 'probablys' floating around the News of the World scandal. True or not, a 'probably' can hurt. In the case of Louise Mensch I doubt it will ...
Cambridgeshire Lib Dems have criticised a glaring oversight in the Conservative administration's plans for the county's libraries, which means the Libraries Review has to be completely rebooted. The Conservatives initially planned to make savings of up to £1M by converting the libraries to "Trust status". This would have made the libraries eligible for dramatically reduced business rates to central government and was the core of the council's plan to make savings. However, forthcoming changes to taxation, which would see local government keeping the majority of business rates, mean that the Trust idea simply would not work any more. Savings made ...
It is here at last - the fifth volume in Martin's epic Song of Ice and Fire series, taking the dynastic struggles around the realm of Westeros on, with yet more journeys of destiny, hidden heirs appearing, viewpoint characters meeting untimely and painful ends, and horrible violence of every variety. And the end of the book does seem to be setting us up for a climax in the next volume, though don't read this one expecting a lot of resolution. Spoilers below the cut, but see also rozk's spoiler-free review in The Independent which pretty much nails what's good about ...
In his summer e mail to Tory Party members David Cameron highlights the defeat of the AV referendum as one of the key achievements of the last few months.
The footpaths in parts of Seafield Road are in a very poor state, especially on the south side opposite numbers 52-60 (see right). On behalf of residents, I have asked the City Council's Roads Maintenance Partnership to undertake repairs and consider future full resurfacing of the pavement. I have received the following positive response : "A Roads Maintenance Partnership Inspector has been out to inspect the footways in Seafield Road as a result of this works to make safe have been ordered and the footways will be considered for structural works."
... another fab Elkie Brooks' hit from 1982 (the Chris Rea original is also rather good!)
How did I miss this ice cream when it was introduced onto the market? According to the Daily Telegraph Del Monte Superfruit Smoothie created this purple "licence to chill" lolly back in 2009 after asking more than 1,000 women which male celebrity they would like to see on the end of a stick. Apparently, they "worked tirelessly" to recreate a sculpture of 41-year-old Daniel Craig in the scene where he emerges from the sea in Casino Royale. The lollies come in blueberry, pomegranate and cranberry flavours and are under 100 calories each. Common decency prevents me from expanding on the ...
The one thing that kept many liberals reading the increasingly strident and reactionary Guido Fawkes blog was that he claimed to be some sort of libertarian and stood up against vested interests and corruption. However, his latest campaign (if it really warrants the name) is to reintroduce hanging and he hopes to force the government to have a debate by getting 100,000 names on his petition. Aside from the cant and hubris in his belief that his website is some sort of moral crusade - his campaign does two things: Firstly, it confirms Paul Staines and his side kicks are ...
[IMG: [personal profile] ] jd and [IMG: [personal profile] ] ryan, and explored SF (Union Square and Coit Tower)Lots of geocaching (fairly successful - 16 finds over the three or four afternoons I spent caching, but four DNFs, largely due to really tall buildings causing spotty GPS signalWent to Berkeley to hang out with Kitty again, and she recommended me erotica in a used book store and then took me out for sushi :)Also in Berkeley: met a friend of Kitty's, X, and had some really interesting chats about consent in the community.Visited the Golden Gate Bridge and the Raygun ...
Votes at sixteen – quite possibly the foundation of a real democratic society and then perhaps seconded by a proportional voting system. In 1969, the Representation of the People Act was amended, reducing the minimum voting age in Britain from twenty-one to eighteen, but why did Harold Wilson not take the necessary steps and make it sixteen? There was much support for ...
This morning's Independent on Sunday has an in interview with the man who is, again, everyone's favourite politician: Mr Cable is not triumphalist about the spectacle of the Murdoch empire crumbling, but takes time to point out that his "instincts were right and they are shared by the majority of people". He says it "looks like" Murdoch's days as an overbearing media mogul are over, and Ofcom's "fit and proper" test of ownership of BSkyB will be "critically important" in deciding if the Aussie octogenarian has a future in Britain. Mr Cable hopes the forthcoming reviews will lead to a ...
As a child I always loved the smell of coffee (though not the taste†) and would stand outside the cafe in the nearby High Street on a Saturday morning just to be enveloped in the aroma of roasting coffee.. Now, I roast my own . [IMG: A handful of freshly roasted coffee beans] † except in the form of chocolate-covered coffee creams.
No it wasn't being midway down the parade as seeing it still heading round to the front of City Hall having circumnavigated it. Nor was it the crowd who stood in front of most of the Church protestors to lend us their support. Indeed it was nothing to do with the parade at all. But it was after the event, once the Party in the Square had closed down for another year and people were heading home or on to the after parties and it happened on the concourse of Great Victoria Street Station. It was two teenage young men ...
It's quite a narrow band of people who turn up for a Derwent Valley Partnership (AAP) Board Meeting, but I'm impressed that as many as twenty or thirty Forum members do, in addition to the board members themselves. Usually there's too much on the agenda, some of it really important stuff, and you end up feeling that we haven't done justice to the topics under discussion. That was true, as ever, at the July meeting. Good things do come out of it, however, and a variety of projects will be delivered in our area at least partly because of funding ...
