It is very nearly time for Liberal Democrat Autumn Conference, but many of us who would normally know by now that they are attending do not. Some know that the Party that they have served for years does not now want them to attend on the advice of the Greater Manchester Police. One of those ...
Since the Conservatives gained a majority in parliament there has been a worry that the Human Rights Act may suffer a redraft or complete revision. The first was when Priti Patel asked in PMQ's; "When will the government overturn the Human Rights act?" More than a few Libdems began to worry what they had got themselves into but all went quite on this front until recently, with the bout of Civil disorder which gripped the country. Reports of offenders hiding behind the Act and using it to escape justice has lead many to question its use in public life and ...
[Originally posted on Bristol Running Resource, 29/08/11] We're now less than two weeks away from the Bristol Half Marathon. If you're running then I hope your training has gone well and you've managed to stay injury free. As Ben mentioned in a post a couple of weeks ago, the conventional wisdom is that if you ...
Today, immediately before my weekly surgeries at Harris Academy and the Mitchell Street Centre, I took part in a very productive meeting with the Western Cemetery Association and the City Council's Environment Department to move forward the decision of the City Council from May to create a new cremated remains section in Western Cemetery. It is planned that the new remains section will open later in the autumn. After my surgeries, I attended a committee meeting of WESHA, the West End Sports and Heritage Association, at which we discussed ways the project will improve sports and environmental facilities in the ...
This press statement explains it all! First Council homes for a generation up for top award The project which will see the first new council homes built in Edinburgh for more than a generation has been short listed for another major housing award. The 21st Century Homes for Edinburgh programme is one of the six finalists in the 'Excellence in Housing Finance and Development Category' of the 2011 UK Housing Awards. There were more than 250 entries for the awards with the winners being announced in November. The nomination follows the Gracemount phase of the programme winning the Community Partnership ...
The City Council is about to launch a consultation exercise on possible changes to polling stations in the City Council. I am advised by the council that in relation to the West End :"The boundaries of WBD, WBJ and WAJ will be re-aligned. Electors in WBD (north of Hawkhill) who currently vote at Park Place Primary will vote at the Al-Maktoum Institute, as will electors in the southern section of WBJ (Brewery Lane etc) who currently vote at Mitchell Street Centre. Park Place Primary is available for elections in 2012 but will no longer be available thereafter. Following the 2012 ...
The County Council and Natural England are about to build on a highly successful 25-year partnership to further improve the County's rural path network (footpaths, bridleways & byways) across Cambridgeshire. The oldest footpath in Cambridgeshire was first recorded in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I and helping to maintain this ancient network can take many forms. Over the last quarter of a century an army of volunteers has been working across the county to keep paths clear, report problems, put up waymark arrows and to organise walks in the countryside. Now thanks to a £2,000 grant from Natural England, the ...
On Sunday, First Bus increased the price of adult and children, single and return tickets between 5p and 20p depending on the length of the journey. They have also introduced three new season tickets and are reducing prices for a limited period on some of the existing ones. More information on the First Bus website.
TweetThis morning I saw a comment on Twitter that made me very angry. Dr Evan Harris is the smiling face of evil in this country. The sleight of hand he employed in the Sky interview defies belief. I've seen this ... Continue reading →
My attempt to complete DD307 TMA06 and the SD226 EMA in a bank holiday weekend has now finished. Strictly speaking, it's ended in failure, but only just. At the end of the weekend I now have a complete DD307 TMA06, a complete Q1 for the SD226 EMA, as well as draft answers and notes for the remaining two questions and experimental project writeup. A couple more evenings work this week should get me there I think. Which should leave me in a more relaxed mood for the OUPS DD307 revision weekend at Warwick University on Friday and give me a ...
Along with Mary Reid and Kingston Liberal Democrats, I've been putting together an amendment for the Community Politics motion set to be debated at the Liberal Democrat conference in Birmingham. The idea is to take the good ideas in the motion and take them a little further, especially into practical follow-up. The text is below and if you are a voting conference rep willing to put your name to the amendment, please email your name, membership number and local party to Mary on mary@maryreid.org.uk - thanks! Amendment to F41: Community Politics Line 33, replace 'organise' with 'empower, enable and encourage' ...
As promised: (Picture from "Wikimedia by Ian Duffy, apparently under Creative Commons license)
As readers of this blog will know I am an Arsenal fan, and as you can guess this weekend hurt. What made it really hurt is that it wasn't unexpected. I was lucky that a family celebration meant I was ... Continue reading →
Mon 29th
18:32
Abortion: Do Labour and Frank Field supporters really believe in a womens right to choose?
Whilst most of the fire has been on the devil herself Nadine Dorries, there was another proposer standing shoulder to shoulder, it was Frank Field. The level of anger directed at Dorries hasn't been remotely replicated in the response to Field. Part of me thinks Labour are spinning this like mad to avoid the focus on the increasingly social conservative Frank Field. Over my time running this blog, i've increasingly been able to find examples of just how conservative the Labour party are. Frank Field and his crew often help me out with this. However, I've just found this poll ...
Ingredients: 4 fresh rainbow trout, emptied, 180-240 g each Salt and pepper to taste Adequate amount of vegetable oil 80 ml fresh orange juice 30 ml fresh lemon juice 30 ml fresh coriander, chopped zest of one or two oranges zest of one lemon zest 2 cm fresh ginger, chopped 30 g brown sugar Then you: Pre-heat oven to 180° C. Open the trout and season. Mix the remaining ingredients in a bowl. Set aside. Cut out four rectangles of aluminium foil measuring 35 x 30 cm each. Lightly brush with oil. Place a trout on each sheet of foil ...
Gordon Jackson demonstrates the wrong approach.
If dog owners have to pick up their dog mess why don't horse owners ?
I've had a couple of reviews on Amazon of my Beatles book which are outright lies – specifically, one says "The author is obviously not much of a McCartney fan, and seems to dismiss much of his work up through Sgt. pepper, and beyond, claiming Lennon superior to McCartney.", while another says: "However, his disdain ...
There's two clichés I can think off when it comes to the Devil. The first is that his greatest trick is convincing the world he doesn't exist, the second is that he'd be a handsome man. The truth is SHE does exist, and she is in no way attractive. I'm pretty sure the devil is Nadine Dorries. So to start, Dorries started on a moral crusade against sex education for girls, (Not boys, just girls) and the belief they should only be taught abstinence. Teaching abstinence as a form of birth control is a poor idea that leads to higher ...
Back in 2010 there was a high-profile local campaign, in which the Liberal Democrats played a key part, to save the 1929 building housing Kentish Town's Pizza Express from demolition. Originally built for the then North West London Polytechnic it still has many of its period features, including a graceful balcony and an attractive dome in the middle of the ceiling. All that made the plans extremely controversial in the local community. The campaigners won that round of the battle to reject proposals to replace the building with a rather bland piece of modern construction that would have seen the ...
Special Council, Thursday, 8 September 2011 10.00 am This is a really important meeting. The purpose of this meeting will be to discuss the NUMEROUS concerns that have been raised across the County in relation to the Local Development Plan. I have received many representations regarding two plots of land in the Marl Ward and will make my and the Marl Ward Residents views known at this meeting.
Ian Marber, Supereating: A Revolutionary Way to Get More From the Foods You Eat (London: Quadrille, 2008, ISBN 9781844006281). I picked this up to pass the time on a train journey after I had accidentally left my Kindle behind. "Revolutionary" is about as much of an exaggeration as you might suspect; this is actually a fairly standard popular nutrition book that explains the function of various nutrients in the body, the foods that contain those nutrients, and how those foods might be incorporated into a meal plan. The "new" approach is supposed to be that the book pays greater attention ...
Lib Dem councillors Kathy Pollard and Sue Carpendale are calling for action from Transport ministers after compiling a report which shows a shockingly high number of accidents on the A12 South of Ipswich between the Essex border and the Copdock Mill roundabout in the last 5 years. The report, which was compiled with the help of Stratford St. Mary resident Lorraine Clark, is to be sent to Government ministers and a summary has already been sent to parish councils to inform them of the findings. In the period from 1st January 2006 to 31st December 2010 there were a total ...
Waste Treatment Consultation The North Wales Residual Waste Treatment project (NWRWTP) has been set up to manage residual waste (the waste which is left over after recycling and composting as much as possible) generated in the five local authorities, and reduce landfill as much as possible. The Partnership is now undertaking a consultation process, where we want to hear your views on key aspects of the project. A series of drop in sessions have been organised across the partnership area for residents to come for an informal chat and ask any question you may have. Conwy Drop in Session Tuesday ...
Collected links from around the webThe Grand Moff's inspiration? - I did post some links to a Dr Who blog that might interest I called what the title meant ages back (and if anyone can tell me where I did it as it wasn't a post I can find I'd be very grateful), but the Wikihistory story is just brilliant *anyway*, so you should read it. (tags: Doctor+Who steven-moffatt) Automatically posted from Delicious using [IMG: [personal profile] ] matgbs updated Delicious Glue script. [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
Way back in June I posted about the waste of money being imposed on this year's Liberal Democrat Federal Conference to exploit fears about insecurity. (If it was anything to do with security, then why was I able to walk into a members-only Question and Answer session with Nick Clegg in Newbury, a couple of weeks ago at the height of the riots, with no search, no 'accreditation' apart from David Rendel welcoming me as I walked in.....?) The issue has now hit the national media. See The principal reasons it has done so are twofold. Firstly, opposition to ...
Mon 29th
15:51
Dr Evan Harris, David Allen Green & Chris Bryant are all sexist for being mean to poor Nadine Do...
Sometimes I look at these names and wonder how they sleep at night or even look at themselves in the mirror. I mean Dr Evan Harris is a former MP for pete sake, David Allen Green is a lawyer and Chris Bryant is a former man of God and even he is a sexist eejit. Going after poor Nadine Dorries. What has she ever done to them? I mean really guys you should all know better. Oh hang on...my brain is calling, 'what's that? You mean that Nadine Dorries often talks out of her rear end and is a fair ...
Whilst surfing facebook, I have just come across this event "Burn A Quaran day outside a mosque." quite frankly I'm disgusted. The event comes with the following description "burn a Quran outside a local mosque see how they like it.thats all really except we will also be having bacon sarnies food music and of course keeping warm by burning a quran.plus there will be more in other cities and town" Where do you even start with that? Burning a Qu'ran is a highly offensive action to anybody of faith. To show that level of disrespect to a religion or group ...
Ros and I are still in Scotland, minding our own business and doing some tourist stuff, and yesterday was an opportunity to 'stretch the legs' of our trusty hire car, as we set off out of Perth to the north-west, up the A9 and then off towards Loch Tay, following the river. Our destination was the Scottish Crannog Centre, just outside Kenmore, a village where the Loch becomes the River. Now, as you all know, a crannog is a small, reclusive member of the weasel family, and extremely hard to spot in the wild. Actually, a crannog is rather more ...
This is a photo that is currently doing the rounds on Facebook and on blog sites (eg Daily Maverick). I don't know if this picture is a fake or not. I do hope the child is pretending to be dead and wasn't really shot by the man in the photo or someone else. However, fake or not it demonstrates how children are used and abused all over the world.
I've just discovered an online book club for food-related books: The Kitchen Reader (h/t Jules at Stone Soup. I've been wanting to read more food books anyway, and several of their upcoming choices are already on my to-read list, so I e-mailed them and asked to join. I got a lovely welcome e-mail back from Sarah, who handles their membership requests. It might help to prompt me to keep my book blogging up to date in general, too!
Today's reports that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi is close to death and the row over whether he could or should be returned to prison Scotland all skirt around the most fundamental question. Was he guilty of causing the Lockerbie bombing in the first place? An article by Gareth Pierce, published in the London Review of Books two years ago, makes a powerful case that he was not guilty.
There is a bit of a TV theme to this collection of 'Random Thoughts'. I was pleased to see that BBC4 are repeating 'The Killing' (available on iPlayer here) which means that Dectective Sarah Lund and her extraordinary jumpers are back on our screens. This is not the US remake that Channel 4 have been showing, but the original Danish series where the hunt for the killer of a young girl gets mixed up with political intrigue, difficult personal relationships, and chunky scandanavian knitwear. Despite it being a thoroughly enjoyable drama I've not decided whether I want to rewatch the ...
Last week I watched "My Mum and Me" the inspirational documentary featuring Tulisa Contostavlos and exploring the challenges faced by young carers. She not only traced her own experience of growing up caring for a mother with schizoaffective disorder but introduced us to other young people in similar circumstances. It certainly struck a chord with me, having grown up with a bi-polar father and having a sister with schizoaffective/bi-polar disorder, I am only too aware of the impact living with someone with a mental health condition has on the whole family. For me, even at 14, it was terrifying when ...
One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. - Friedrich Nietzsche Share this: [IMG: Share this page via Email] [IMG: Share this page via Stumble Upon] [IMG: Share this page via Digg this] [IMG: Share this page via Facebook] [IMG: Share this page via Twitter]
An interesting little toy has appeared on the Guardian website that I haven't noticed before. It might just be that its been there a while but this is the first time I have seen it so forgive me for my ...
Yesterday our normally-very-dry cellar flooded. Mostly we are ok, but among the things damaged beyond repair were 2 full boxes of my comic collection (bye bye several years' worth of 2000AD) and lots of books. My dad is coming down later to help me take lots of Precious Things to the tip. :( Truly the path of my life is strewn with cowpats from the devil's own satanic herd. [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
Finally I've received the mobile phone bills for the council Blackberry phone the council provide me for the period December 2010 to May 2011! I spent just under £50 which to avoid any errors or dispute about were any of the calls personal I'll be paying back. This should mean that councillors phone bills will be published in the near future – good for transparent honest local politics. Separately I've heard via a Freedom of Information request that three councillors are behind with paying Council Tax. Two Labour and one Lib Dem. I'd like to reassure East Dulwich voters that ...
Every now and again, I check my blog stats just to see which sites my readers are coming from, what posts get the most readers and where in the world they come from. According to my Google stats, the majority of readers (since the blog has been running) come from the UK. Here are some stats that I didn't expect: USA - 8,500 Russia - 577 Iran - 282 I also have readers from France, Germany, Romania, Canada and South Korea. This month, I have had readers from China, Latvia and Brazil. I was very surprised to discover that and ...
From today's Leicester Mercury: The two most senior officers at Leicester City Council were involved in the cancellation of parking tickets for a senior councillor, a whistle-blower claims. Earlier this month, Lord Mayor Rob Wann, a former cabinet member, was reported to the council's standards board over claims he had several parking tickets cancelled or written off in questionable circumstances. Documents handed to the Mercury by former council parking employee Chris Hughes, 63, appear to show that both former chief executive Sheila Lock and her deputy Andy Keeling were involved in getting a parking ticket cancelled for Coun Wann.In all, ...
Although several friends are great fans of the graphic novel, I have never read many in the past. However, my eye was caught by Bryan Talbot's Grandville when visiting the British Library's current science fiction exhibition, in which it features. So off to Amazon it was to get a copy - and I'm mighty glad I did for it is a fantastically inventive and sumptuous graphical treat. There are some niggles about this steampunk tale for sure - the plot is little more that a caricature of a left-wing conspiracy theory and the cover of the book is poorly done ...
A piece of good news at the BBC: a sick penguin is well enough to go home. An Emperor penguin, named "Happy Feet" has recovered from surgery. He washed up on a NZ beach, only the second Emperor to reach ... Continue reading →
The Leicester Mercury picks up our prestigious Headline of the Day Award. Later. This story has since got more serious, with reports on the local television news that a body has been found in the wreckage of the shop. Even later. See report here.
Is anyone else sick and tired of the state and local councils telling us what we can and cant do and what is safe and what isn't? I know I am which is why I got a little bit more ...
Details of this planning application can be found by following this link: The case officer is Steve Isaacson - please email comments and objections to him at steve.isaacson@lewishamgov.uk, and don't forget to copy us in.
Well it never really went away but its website disappeared for a little while. It is now back. The website, and seemingly the party, has had a bit of a make-over after some local difficulties. Last year, I offered the party some free PR advice. I have no idea if any libertarian party members read that post. Now though, the party says on its site that party members should not subject others to personal abuse. Whether they took my advice or came to that conclusion independently, it is good that they have realised things needed to change. The party message ...
A short clip which captures the magic of Bob Hope.
What is it with Nadine Dorries and what power does she hold over this government? That's the question I find myself asking this morning as I wake up to read the Guardian and find her picture all over the front ...
There was some joy on the internet yesterday that the Observer had managed to report accurately on an important Welsh issue without patronising us and without alluding to a view commonly held by desk-bound London journalists that Wales is a country of coal mines and heavy industry. Alas that time is in the past. The article in question referred to the controversy over Carmarthenshire's Local Development Plan, which is proposing 11,000 new homes over the next decade or so, including 1,200 on the edge of Carmarthen itself. That would produce a 20% increase in the size of the town. They ...
[IMG: take a letter...]
The accident that led to Swansea City defender, Alan Tate breaking his leg is a terrible blow for the football club and the City. I hope that he gets better soon. Crashing a golf buggy is a bizarre and rather freak way to suffer such a misfortune. Having said that I am beginning to come around to the view that the humble golf buggy is attaining a much more significant place in the annals of Welsh sport than it deserves. After all this is not the first time that a major sports figure has hit the news after a misadventure ...
The Lib Dems have published a paper which will form the basis of a discussion in a Consultative session at their Conference about the results of the referendum and the local elections.
Michael Gove proudly announce over the weekend that 24 "free schools" would open their doors in September "free from local authority control." This statement is highly misleading in two senses. Firstly it as been pointed out umpteen times that local authorities no longer have much control over any schools. What control they had has been whittled away over many years by governments preaching decentralisation and practising centralisation.What local authorises still do is provide services: for example, facilities for disruptive pupils excluded from mainstream schools, and financial services. A few years ago there was outrage that headteachers had lost millions of ...
AS Byatt tells Edinburgh audience why she loves reading Terry Pratchett | Books | The Guardian speaking at the Edinburgh international book festival, AS Byatt has declared Terry Pratchett her hero, for having "caused more people to read books than anyone else - because he tells them something they want to know, that they can laugh at, and because he writes really good English". (tags: sf)
I have just been listening to Stephen Nolan's "fierce and feisty topical phone-in debate" on Radio 5 Live. The topic was how some nurses were wearing red tabards bearing the words "Drug round in progress. Please do not disturb", and the debate was fierce and feisty. On the one hand we had commentators telling us about the importance of getting the medications right. Consequences of error could be highly significant. On the other hand, and Stephen himself was in this camp, patients were being told not to speak with nurses and this may be really significant in their care. There ...
