He may not have been a John Cleese or a David Jason or a Ronnie Barker, but the name John Howard Davies for me resonates throughout my youth as a man who from behind the scenes, played an instrumental part in the golden era of British Comedy. It was with great sadness that I heard this evening that he passed away yesterday at the age of 72. An Extraordinary Career in Comedy Having been a child actor, John Howard Davies became a BBC producer from 1968 and he produced the first episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus, The Goodies and ...
With the Fringe cold taking hold, I needed a pick-me-up and fortunately found two. John Kearns' Dinner Party is an odd show, in the best way. Not really stand-up; not really sketch. There's lots of audience interaction (or at least the appearance of audience interaction) as the slightly deranged John Kearns attempts to host a dinner party (you may have guessed that part). The show also features newly-crowned Amused Moose Laugh Off winner Pat Cahill as John's friend Pat. It's a strange, funny concoction that reminded me of Simon Munnery – and that's definitely a good thing. My other pick-me-up ...
I was sorry to hear of the death of John Howard Davies today. As a couple of paragraphs of his Daily Telegraph obituary make clear, we owe him a debt for his work on some of the very finest television comedies: He was made a producer in 1968 and worked first on Misleading Cases, a legal satire starring Alastair Sim, moving on to The World of Beachcomber, starring Spike Milligan; and All Gas and Gaiters . Then came Monty Python; The Goodies; Steptoe and Son and Frankie Howerd's Whoops Baghdad. In 1973 Davies left to become managing director of EMI ...
Today, I took part in the Jericho House Support Group latest meeting, at which we discussed and planned events for this very worthwhile project, including a dance during November and also a play Jericho House is planning on the subject of recovery from alcoholism. It is hoped the play will run during West End Christmas Week. The recent sponsored walk for Jericho House raised nearly £1000 - an excellent result. Later on, I attended the West End Schools Project Board - the board set up to oversee the building project on the former Logie Secondary School site on Blackness Road ...
Heard on the radio recently ... the rather superb version of Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever by Nick Kamen, from 1987. Earlier versions by the Tremeloes and The Four Tops are also superb!
The fall of the Qaddafi compound in Tripoli may not be the precise end of the vile regime, However, I -for one- will mark the fall of the lunatic Colonel with a certain savage delight. The wreckage of the fuselage of Pan Am flight 103 looked like small pieces of paper on the hills around Lockerbie. The gouge in the highway looked like a giant bite into the carriageway. Now, maybe we can find the truth behind that vile and cowardly act. Though it is still a difficult and dangerous time for the Libyan people, it really does seem like ...
TweetWell it finally happened, the SocialBookers has been a victim of its own success. We ran out of our 50GB bandwidth, we are now looking towards new hosting. However, for this week you can listen to our podcast here for this week. Podcast.
Keith and Iain have reported a knocked-down bollard in Cheadle – at the corner of Cheadle High Street and Ashfield Road – and asked for it to be swiftly repaired.
Yesterday I published a guest post about Nikolaus Pevsner and Leicestershire by Susie Harries. She is the author of the newly published Nikolaus Pevsner: The Life. Her biography has been favourably reviewed by one of this blog's heroes, Jonathan Meades, in Country Life. He writes: From this tangle of contradictions, Susie Harries has fashioned an outstandingly good biography. It is thorough, detached, humane and exceptionally skillful in its depiction (or creation) of a protagonist who is constantly mutating. The antipathetic Saxon prig of the early chapters gradually evolves into husband, father, expatriate, internee, rubble-shoveller, journalist, wit, editor, polemicist, historian, broadcaster ...
"As the cuts hit, unemployment rises, and inflation goes up, the expected 30% increase in rail fares over the next three years will see increasing numbers of people priced off the railways, with those at the bottom of the income scale being affected the greatest." Turnip Rail points out that 19th-century governments were careful to protect poorer passengers. Gaping Void is giving up Facebook and Twitter to concentrate on blogging. Writing on British Politics and Policy at LSE, Sally Broughton-Micova argues that the government's plans for local TV puts too much of an onus on stations to provide content for ...
As one wit has noted on Twitter, this might explain why they can't find Gadhafi anywhere...
And I NEVER thought i would see myself write those words in a blog post. Ever. But the thing is, people have gotten themselves in a muddle over something called a compromise agreement. More to the point, Andy Coulson's compromise ...
Please help me Persuade Time Magazine to make a Tunisian fruit seller called Muhammad Al Bouazizi their 'Person of the Year 2011' Time Magazine gives the title 'Person of the Year' to the individual who 'for better or for worse...has done the most to influence the events of the year'. They are clear that the title should not in itself be a prize, but an acknowledgement of influence on world events. Recent winners include Mark Zuckerberg, Ben Bernanke and Barack Obama. I think in 2011 that title should be given to a Tunisian street vendor called Muhammad Al Bouazizi. It ...
Tue 23rd
16:40
The economy is flatlining, Cameron's embroiled in scandal, England's been rioting, we're bombing Lib...
ICM is the gold standard of VI polling. If they say the blues are one point ahead of the red, I'm inclined to believe that the blues are one point ahead of the reds. The yellows creep up to a relative high of 17%. This should, by definition, be the most unpopular point of the Coalition. Cuts are starting to be felt. It's questionable whether the economy's picking up at all. The Tories should be miles behind Labour right now. Just looking at this graph, I can't see any way, short of some unexpected disaster for the Coalition or Conservatives, ...
Credit to @LukeBozier
I know I normally do these things on a Friday, but hey when you have the biggest outdoor gig in Northern Ireland happening on your doorstep and disrupting your bowling activities. I thought I'd better hightlight today's performers (there are more tomorrow). So here are some of the artists that will be performing in Ward Park this evening for part of Tennents Vital 2011. There will be The Wombats, I choose this video as an 80s music geek because of the Moog synthesiser, especially as the 6th Anniversary of Robert Moog's death was on Sunday.. There is also local band ...
Whether I'm a success or not is for other people to decide. My career has stagnated in the past few years because I've branched out into something else. My journalism days might be behind me but I still dabble from time to time. One thing I have never done is left anywhere on bad terms. From working on FTT all the way through to my times with Fubra you take the best you can on and try not to burn any bridges. I had many ups and downs when I was Sports Editor over at Fubra but we left on ...
Chris (Lord) Rennard wrote a great piece the other day for Lib Dem Voice about the perils of trying to guess what would happen in 2015 from here - looking back four years to illustrate his point... This seems especially salient today as everyone gets very excited about the ICM poll giving us 17% share - and as the always sensible Olly Grender has tweeted, you have to look at polls over time, not instant snapshots - unless it's the actual election. Anyway, I thought, never mind 4 years ago - what happened this time last year? Any ideas? No? ...
With the inexorable rise in fuel bills, I'd like to record a minor victory against one of the chief culprits, British Gas. I received a message yesterday telling me that my latest bill was ready, showing me in credit by a small amount. I was also advised that my monthly Direct Debit would increase by a whopping £14 a month, or £168 a year. I immediately looked out my 'Disgusted of Oxfordshire' hat, set it at a suitably aggressive angle and typed a truculent message to the huge profit-making multinational to point out that I was in credit and that ...
TweetAt a time when policing is high on the agenda, after riots and protests, and with the Lib Dems needing a real meaty, chime with the public type of subject to grasp and run with, I believe the answer is to look towards policing. I believe we as Liberal Democrats need to look back to a famous Tory and his ethical policing to gain inspiration. Sir Robert Peel set down 9 principles of policing, and I believe that they still ring true today, as they did when they were set. The Principles in full are: The basic mission for which ...
The more I indulge in politics, especially concentrating on the local scene, the more I am seeing more and more incidents where debates can end up being platforms for point scoring or rapidly descending into blaming everyone else. It has become more and more of a phenomena over the last few years- or maybe I'm just noticing it now! Maybe it has been going on for centuries. During the war of 1812 was Lord North's administration blamed for losing the colonies in the first place? As the bombs fell on Berlin, did Interior Minister Frick release a press statement blaming ...
"It's complicated," the Facebook status that says it all. That was how one young person described life as a political activist in Tunisia to me this morning at a seminar organised by the Westminster Foundation for Democracy. Overthrowing an evil corrupt dictator is difficult and dangerous but its fairly simple to explain and to package for the media. There is one baddie and everyone else is good. With a satellite dish plugged into a car cigarette lighter, it can be presented cleanly to the watching world. The young political party activists from Egypt and Tunisia I met this morning are ...
What to do when you're struck by just how different two pieces of data are? Why, draw a graph of course. Hence this, triggered by the very differing picture of Liberal Democrat fortunes told by the latest YouGov and ICM polls: Liberal Democrat ratings in all the published YouGov and ICM polls since the 2010 general election, dated by first day of their fieldwork
Whilst on my weekly perusal of Lib Dem Voice I spotted an interesting article by my lovely colleague Stuart Bonar. He was discussing inheritance tax; an issue that I hope will not affect me for a while, but nonetheless, an important one to many of us. I was initially inclined to agree with Stuart's view that individuals should be taxed on these 'wind-falls' but then I got thinking... Inheritance tax used to be a tax on the rich, something not relevant to most of us. But it's now a tax paid by many, as house and asset prices have risen ...
The Suffolk Green Buildings Network are taking part in English Heritage's Open Days 2011. A range of buildings are open to the public between 8th to 11th September and the brochure is attached: SGBN Heritage Open Days booklet You can visit a number of private homes including a 19th century cottage in Ipswich. Other venues include the HQ of Suffolk Wildlife Trust, the iconic waterfront building of University Campus Suffolk, West Suffolk House in Bury St. Edmunds and the Mill Green Brewery in Edwardstone. Some need to be booked in advance and full details are in the attached brochure and ...
When I saw Nick Clegg speak to a packed audience the other week on a sunny Wednesday lunchtime, he made the excellent point that everyone in attendence was a little unusual, with a rather-more-than-average interest in politics - choosing to spend their lunch hour in a hot stuffy room talking policy rather than being out in the sunshine talking about almost anything else. This has just home to me again when I glance at what are currently the most read stories on the Guardian Website. They are, on this day of more than averagely sized momentous events: 1. Manchester United ...
I am guessing that when politicians are asked to complete pro-forma questionnaires for magazines and other publications the idea is to get some insight into their character. What then can we conclude from this survey for Politics Home that has been answered by Michael Ellis, the MP for Northampton North? These are his top six: Biggest inspiration? Winston Churchill. What ambition would you most like to fulfil? "My main ambition is to do my best to help all my constituents in any way that I can." What has been your best moment? Getting elected. What has been your proudest moment? ...
Guardian/ICM Poll- CON 37, LAB 36, LIB DEM 17 Some 70% of respondents believed that those convicted of riot-related offences should receive a tougher sentence than they might ordinarily expect. A recent ComRes poll has the Tories on 38% and the Lib Dems on 11%. The question is the Liberal Democrat support; the higher it ...
Over at the Huffington Post, I have written a longer piece about Nick Clegg's speech about the Arab Spring. This is another defining moment for Liberal Democrat foreign policy. I'd be really pleased to hear others' views if you want to post comments, either here or at the HuffPo piece itself.
Party conference is a great time to take part in training to help you succeed as a Liberal Democrat campaigner and councillor. Training in Birmingham is all free and available to all Party Members. Most of it is just outside the conference "secure area" so you don't event have to be registered for Conference to attend. Download and print out ALDC's Conference Planner for our full guide to training and fringe events for this year's September Conference. Thanks to Jonathan Swift for kindly giving permission to use this photo. Here's just a small part of ALDC's 50 hours of training. ...
The "G8 Grants" Committee is now seeking applications for funding for "Stage 1" grants in England and Wales. Separate information will be sent out for grants in Scotland. The application process is simple and the criteria for grants are kept as basic as we can! HURRY - the deadline is 29 August 2011. Rewarding Early Campaigning If you have elections in May 2012, we will give you a grant for the work you are already doing - we just want you to start early! To be eligible for a grant we will need to see most of the following in ...
This morning's Daily Telegraph is quite rightly exercised by news that Town hall chief executives have seen their pay packets rise by as much as £17,000 while cutting front-line services, including libraries, care for the elderly and bin collections. They say that a survey of local authorities has established that 114 town hall chiefs earn more than the Prime Minister, despite calls from Eric Pickles, the Communities and Local Government Secretary, for them to take a 10 per cent pay cut: They include chief executives who won plaudits by publicly announcing that they would slash their salaries last year but ...
Fish where the fish are, go to existing communities, chase the eyeballs - whichever turn of phrase you prefer, it is a widespread and powerful idea that in online communications you should go to where your audiences are and engage with them there. But what if appropriate locations do not exist and you therefore have to create your own medium and bring the audience to it? Penguin's Anna Rafferty gave a great talk last year about just this problem which Penguin faced when it wanted to reach a teenage audience who were interested in reading but not in bookshops. You ...
So it seems as though Dominique Strauss-Kahn will be a free man later today after state prosecutors decided that they had no realistic chance of conviction and therefore will ask a judge today to officially dismiss all charges. This isn't a shock to me but it will not go down well in certain circles. I have no idea what really happened in that hotel room. Only two people do and neither of them are people that I know. There was a sexual encounter that we know but whether it was consensual or not we just do not know. Was this ...
Last night was the regular meeting of the Council's Executive Committe. This is the Committee which brings together the eight Executive Members of the ruling Labour Group in Bury, together with the two opposition group leaders as 'non-portfolio' members. This year there is a policy of touring the Borough for Executive Committee meetings, so last night we were at Radcliffe Civic Hall. (Next time its in Prestwich...) Homeless Hostel Relocation Most of the members of the public had come because they were concerned about what turned out to be the most controversial report for decision – a proposal to consult ...
Just a short note to let people know that the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police will be in Chorlton next Thursday, August 25th, for a question and answer session on the 'Future Delivery of Policing Services'. This will be a great opportunity for local residents living in the South Manchester area to ask questions and discuss a whole range of issues concerning local policing in our area. I strongly encourage people to take part and I look forward to seeing you there. The meeting will take place at: Chorlton Irish Club, 17 High Lane, Chorlton, M21 9DJ. Date: August ...
Earlier in the year, I penned a series of posts profiling forgotten liberal heroes (to which a couple of other people also kindly contributed), looking at some of those who achieved great things for liberalism in their time but have been unjustly forgotten - such as Margaret Wintringham, the very first female Liberal MP. There is also another group of people who I think are often unjustly obscure - those local campaigners who are often at the heart of their local community and local party, delivering liberalism and helping others, but as their stage is a local one they are ...
The empire is crumbling all around him. Like the Romanian Ceausescu back in 1989 or with Saddam Hussein back in 2003, slowly but surely we are seeing the regime of a tyrannical tyrant, falling to pieces. As I blogged here back in February, I supported the United Nations resolution to provide air attack to stop Gaddafi's regime from inflicting any further horrors on its own people. It hasn't been an easy 6 months since but it was the right decision at the time and events are proving that in retrospect it was the right decision also. The relative ease to ...
I have a confession to make. I might be a Liberal Democrat, but electoral reform is not an issue that gets me really excited. It's not that I don't believe in it. Far from it. I think electoral or more precisely political reform, is hugely important and I have strong opinions on it. It's just ...
Atos moves to shut down criticism | Tentacles of doom Why does our government do this to the most vulnerable members of our society? More to the point, why the EVER LOVING FUCK is my party allowing this to happen. (tags: genuine-evil)
Tue 23rd
10:00
Elswick Park consultation - Kennedy Way, Shackleton Avenue and Mulberry Crescent - Waiting Restricti...
South Glos is consulting on restrictions associated with the Sea Stores development: At the junction of Kennedy Way / Normandy Drive (the new entrance road) to protect visibility; In the new layby in Kennedy Way (constructed for refuge collection vehicles) to prevent parking in the area; In the culs-de-sac of Shackleton Avenue and Mulberry Crescent (part of the new development) to prevent parking in the area around the emergency access to the development It is proposed that vehicles leaving Elswick Parkwillonly be able to turn left towards Yate. They will not be able to turn right onto Kennedy Way. Full ...
The Telegoons was a TV version of The Goon Show, using puppets. It ran from 1963 to 1964 on the BBC. I seem to remember it was shown early on Saturday evenings. This clip is a wonderful curiosity.
The front page of this morning's Western Mail uses up two thirds of its space with individual pictures of the Wales Rugby Union World Cup Squad above the headline 'Gaddafi goes missing'. Personally, I had not expected to see Gaddafi in the squad though there was some expectation that Martyn Williams might be there. Maybe it is just me.
So, last night I was very proud of myself. Managing to get technology to work is such a mystery to me that I always feel some sense of achievement, even if it's something any self respecting geek could do under anaesthetic. All I'm referring to here is successfully managing to get Skype working on my iPad. Not an easy feat given that I had a wee bit of a problem remembering my log-in information. I've only ever really used Skype for F1 podcasting so I'd forgotten how, but I wanted to get it up and running so I could talk ...
On the streets of Tottenham, Croydon, Clapham, Hackney and Ealing, we saw what happens when adequate numbers of trained police are not deployed at the right time and in the right way. And we heard how numbers on the streets were subsequently boosted from 3,000 to 16,000 only by drafting in back-up from neighbouring forces. In fairness, it must be said that riot control is very hazardous and officers must have the right training before they are deployed. Yet Londoners can still be forgiven for wondering where all the police are, that they've been persuaded to pay for in higher ...
So far the highlight of my Edinburgh Festival was last nights mesmerizing performance of Evening Raga's by Ravi Shankar. The great man appeared on stage with his band at the Usher Hall. The last piece he performed was a half hour raga which at one stage involved what I can only describe as a musical conversation between the three drummers on stage with him. Their understanding was telepathic. The whole show was utterly sublime showing that, at 91 years old, age hasn't slowed his fingers down! I have often found there to be parallels between Raga and Jazz. Both are ...
Yesterday's court hearing brought into the public domain more about the case relating to Vicky Haigh. It, however, has not brought into the public domain all of the issues relating to this case and the judiciary retain control of those aspects of the case. I am not making any statement as to the details of the underlying care issue. The Judge who took the hearing yesterday was also the judge
More good digging by Liberal Democrat London Assembly Member Caroline Pidgeon over the true cost to Londoners of the long-running (and very often over-running) Tube engineering works around the capital. This time it is the total cost of all the replacement buses she has unearthed: London taxpayers will foot a total bill of £46.7 million for replacement bus services for the Tube, the Standard reveals today. More than £13 million has been spent on buses to take the place of Jubilee line trains alone during engineering works and signal problems. Caroline Pidgeon, leader of the Lib-Dem London Assembly group and ...
Means banning political opponents from 'community' meetings, and saying to the public that you are working cross-party when you are doing nothing of the sort. It could be, of course, that this is the 'brainchild' of one Jon Hartley, who has temporarily been listed as being of 'Katesgrove Ward' on the Reading Labour website (I disappointingly note that this has been taken down). Or it could not. The Friday before the Lok 'n' Store appeal saw a 'cross-party' meeting organised not by the Katesgrove Labour councillor but by one Pete Ruhemann, a man never known to put the interests of ...
[IMG: RNLI] [IMG: Creative Commons License] photo credit: Reemul That was the question from @cornishjim last night. It was somewhat indignant, born, it seems, from the experience of being told unceremoniously where not to swim by an RNLI staff member. Some background. Years ago local councils and/or Surf life saving clubs employed the lifeguards on tourist beaches. Now the RNLI tend to do it. That's a good thing in terms of the co-ordination of rescue efforts. People also tend to recognise and respect the RNLI. Many years ago, I was walking on a Cornish beach with my dad, who was ...
For all of the overuse of the word 'jubilation', the celebrations in Tripoli seem presumptuous. Gaddafi has not been located yet. It now seems as though his son was not in custody at all. With misconceptions bandied about, one begins to wonder if there is, in fact, any fighting other than with words. Of course that is flippant. The relentless speculation over the future of Libya fails to address the thousands dead in gun fire, air strikes and other acts of war. The chaos is far from over, as much as pacifists like myself are keen for it to be. ...
As those of you in the Lib Dem blogosphere will know the Lib Dem Blog of the Year awards are now open for 2011. I am a Lib Dem blog therefore I shall be taking part and putting forward some nominations for the various categories. It wouldn't be a total shock if I vote for similar blogs to the ones I voted for in the Total Politics Awards the other day. As for me and this blog getting any glory. Well I'm not sure this is the best blog out there. Scratch that. It flat out isn't. However I do ...
CBC News - Jack Layton's last letter to Canadians My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we'll change the world. (tags: canada death) Photos of Abandoned Housing Complexes in Ireland - NYTimes.com The emptiness symbolizes the country's degrading economic situation. But it goes beyond visual representation. The estates have had a very physical effect on the face of the open landscape. (tags: ireland) 3quarksdaily: Reflections on an Airport Groping Eager hands caressed the small of her back, made their way over ...
After the turmoil surrounding David's accession had calmed down, he asked "Is there anyone still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness for Jonathan's sake?" (2 Samuel 9:1). David was able to trace Mephibosheth and summoned him to court. Read the rest of the article over at Faith and Pride ...
I just saw this on the BBC website. Same-sex pairs of monogamous birds are just as attached and faithful to each other as those paired with a member of the opposite sex. The post revealing which person in the Bible ad two dads will be next – I just thought that story was too interesting ...
Most English-speaking Catholics are looking forward to when they will be able to use the new translation of the Roman Missal for the first time. Some of us are very lucky that the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham is already using that text. I was fortunate to be able to attend the Ordinariate's ...
I try to eat healthily, five portions a day of fruit and vegetables. I prefer veg to fruit, generally of the traditional British type like cauliflower and sprouts. Yes, I love sprouts. But I was surprised to learn recently that 60% of the veg and a staggering 90% of the fruit we eat in Britain ...
Well, that was a very well organised mass canvassing session by Kingston Liberal Democrats this evening for their council by-election in Surbiton Hill. Made sure everyone signed-in? Check. Provided instructions? Check. Made sure people actually read the instructions? Check. Provided maps? Check. Organised social meet-up after canvassing? Check. None of this is rocket science of course, but you'd be surprised / amazed / depressed (delete according to your personality type) how often basics such as this are not got right. Kingston don't quite score full marks... Two copies of canvass cards so people can leapfrog in pairs down the same ...
