I'm fortunate to work with some pretty cool people at Music EduTech company ArtistWorks. Our team members in Napa, New York and LA are re-imagining music education for the 21st Century and it's all because our company founder David Butler has a vision for how anyone, in any country, can learn from some of the ...
I've been reading the third volume of the magisterial New History of Ireland, mainly for the Tudor bits, though it goes up to 1691. The last of the chronological chapters has a certain amount about Sarsfield, James II's dashing young general, who was created the first Earl of Lucan (the most recent Earl of Lucan, of course, having disappeared back in 1974). I was taken aback by two details of his biography which I must have forgotten. First off, his wife appears to have been a relative of mine, Honora de Burgh, of Portumna in Mayo, whose much older half-brother ...
Welcome to Broxtowe Enews, brought to you by the Liberal Democrats and edited by David Watts, the leader of the Lib-Dems on Broxtowe Borough Council. It's a quiet week news wise this week, but there are a few things going on. 1. Twitter I'm now on Twitter and will start tweeting (I think that's the right phrase) from this week. If anyone wants to follow me I'm DavidWatts12. Updates from the newsletter will be tweeted as often as possible, including any significant decisions straight after council meetings. I hope people will join me there. 2. Paint Thanks to a reader ...
The Royal Fleet Auxiliary Association needs our help in opposing the plans Tower Hamlets Council to allow City bankers to hold parties in the memorial gardens for the merchant seamen who died in two world wars. Predicatable Paradox attends the Scottish Lib Dem Conference in Dunfermline. "Now apart from the logistical problems of trying to get a six year old to safely transport soup to school, one wonders if those at the Schools Food Trust have actually tried to feed said child cous cous, chickpeas or wholegrain crackers?" Living on Words Alone tells the School Food Trust where it can ...
I can understand that there is a social aspect to religion. We should be looking for a peaceful world and care for those who need support. It is even better if the support means that individuals can look after themselves. So a great example would be for the state to provide employment rather than unemployment benefits and it is not difficult to understand if an archbishop should make a public statement along these lines. However there is a problem if those jobs relate to weapons of destruction. The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu has called for the government to ...
On her blog, Lynne Featherstone points us to an article by Carol Morley in today's Observer. It deals with the life and death of Joyce Carol Vincent, who was found dead in her North London flat after her body had lain undiscovered for three years. Her story has been made into a film, Dreams of a Life, which is to be shown at the London Film Festival. Lynne herself features in Morley's article, having tried without success to interest the authorities in the case, but I was struck by a very minor point in the article. Morley says of Joyce ...
TweetThe Centre Right is objecting significantly to Gay Marriage as the Coalition moves closer and closer to implementing it. The Telegraph published this week an article entitled; "Gay marriage is not as simple as David Cameron believes". Seeking to rely upon conservative (small c) notions of man and woman, archaic and entrenched ideas based on ...
Am I the only one who is getting increasingly annoyed at the two-faced Cameron that seems to be emerging ? On the one hand he urges us all to engage with his Big Society project – insisting that this is about "treating adults like adults" and asking people to "take responsibility for their lives" – but falls back on nannying and legislation at the first sign that society isn't marching to his new tune quite as quickly as he would like. Back in 2009 – before he was elected he was very clear that society was broken because big government ...
... Scotland's International Film Festival for Young Audiences Another fantastic programme of world class films for children and young people will begin on 22nd October. From the opening film, A Cat in Paris, to Steven Spielberg's highly-anticipated Tintin and this year's crop of animated Shorts for Wee Ones, it's shaping up to be another great year. Saturday 22nd October, 3.15pm - Opening Film: A Cat in Paris Ever wonder what your cat gets up to when you're not around? This charming and visually stunning animation follows the double life of Dino; a loyal tabby to Zoé by day and a ...
Further to my recent article about the worn lining of the parking bay markings at the Pennycook Lane car park, I am grateful to the City Council's Head of Transportation who has responded to my request for re-lining very promptly as follows : "I have arranged for the Car Parks Maintenance Assistant to repaint the defined parking bays in the Pennycook Lane Car Park."
Another free weekend, somewhat of a rarity for me, and rather irrationally I feel I should put finger to keyboard and bang out some torturous posting about what....... A scan of the papers has produced little to get my goat, Sunday Times has big bribes scandal in Saudi Arabian business deal, I think so what, it's generally that way in a country that routinely abuses women ruled by some royal elite. The Liam Fox thing, seems overblown set against world crisis and I wonder if there is a as little bit more to this as does the man himself quoted ...
This is an imaginary story (which may never happen, but then again may) about a man who came from the sky in a big blue box and did only good. it tells of his twilight, when the great battles were over and the great miracles long since performed, of his his enemies conspired against him ...
Sunday: Having a job is a good thing, I suppose (I'm a baby elephant; I wouldn't know!), but it doesn't half get in the way of Daddy Richard writing up my diaries! It's a bit of a BUGGER though, wot with having spent last week taking pops at Hard Labour for talking rubbish, that this week the Conservatories have been giving me JUST AS MANY opportunities to mock, but daddy's had no time to write 'em up. It all LOOKS a bit PRO-Conservatory. Ugh! So here, to set the record a BIT straight, is a taste of what we've missed: ...
Today's revision efforts have been focussed on production of knowledge. Of all of the blocks in the module, this has been my favourite. I enjoyed writing the final TMA on individual differences (and really enjoyed the mark that I got for it) and both of the two probable exam chapters are fascinating as well. If I get a choice on the exam, I'm still leaning towards writing about bystander intervention and Francis Cherry's critique of Darley and Latanės work. There are so many angles to critique and counter critique from, the course themes of power and situated knowledges are everywhere ...
[IMG: Lynne & Katherine talking to parents outside a school] Stroud Green councillor Katherine Reece has joined local MP Lynne Featherstone on a last minute push to get local parents to back the campaign for fair funding for our schools. The Government are holding a consultation on school funding formulas which ends on Tuesday 11th October – and this is an opportunity to end the long-standing unfairness of Stroud Green schools receiving less funding than those in nearby boroughs. Schools in Haringey receive as much as £1,500 less per pupil than schools over the border in Hackney and Islington, because ...
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 242nd 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 ( 2nd-8th October 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. Breaking news: ...
Want to party around a war memorial that is lined with the names of dead merchant seamen. Well now you can, thanks to Tower Hamlets Council and specialist events organisers Moving Venue. Tower Hamlets Council claim they can't stop this happening because objecting to a party around a war memorial on the grounds that it is a desecration of their memory and only scum would party in such a place are not valid objections under the Licensing act. Whilst this may be true ( I never did licensing so I don't know) the Council is the landowner and they can ...
So as English interest in the rugby World Cup ends we can be certain that none of the team will feature in the shortlist for BBC Sports Personality of the Year. Notwithstanding the claims of Mo Farah, Andy Murray, Jenson Button and various Northern Irish golfers, the stand out candidate for SPOTY has to be ...
For a number of years I've been working towards a brand new Grove Vale library. We had a scheme ready but the banking collapse killed that one. The latest scheme gained planning permission earlier this year. But getting a sensible section 106 that details the library has proved shall we say 'ellusive'. Council officers wanted to include a clause about deciding whether to take a library or money instead with realy complicated ocnditions and clauses. So complicated that lawyers have been having a field day. The uncertainty this caused meant its been hard for the developers who have to keep ...
As some background to the current debates, I thought it useful to revive and update an old post of my on the subject as there has been relatively little coverage of the reasons why it has been supported by all parties (including Labour, who even talked up their achievement in introducing the first legislation for individual electoral registration before 2010, in their last general election manifesto). The current electoral registration system is based on one registration form being delivered to each household, with the head of the household completing the form on behalf of everyone there and sending it back ...
Alex Carlile has a much more nuanced view on the Human Rights Act than the Home Secretary in this morning's Mail on Sunday that is worth a read. He points out that the Treaty on which the Act is based came into effect on November 4, 1950. Its purpose then was to ensure that there would never again be the vile human rights excesses of Nazi Germany. He says that many aspects of life we take for granted today were unknown then. The world was a different place. He acknowledges Teresa May's case that the Human Rights legislation is causing ...
A decent cup of coffee. For me it's one of life's top little pleasures. You can overdo it, of course. My usual ration is one large one with caffeine in the morning, followed by a smaller decaff at lunch, and again in the evening. More than that I tend to get a bit hyper, followed by a late afternoon low. If you are restricted as to quantity, quality is sacred, and especially for that first cup (mug) of the day. So seeking out good coffee is a bit of an obsession. As a student (in the late 1970s) I soon ...
There is a silly piece of research, funded by the wine company Lindeman's, reported in today's Daily Mirror: The majority of books on British bookshelves never have their pages thumbed, a survey has revealed.Research from Lindeman's wine suggests up to 70% of all household books remain unread, resulting in book 'waste' of 80 books per household. And a third of owners even admit they have no intention of reading their books.Somewhere behind this nonsense lies the idea that reading and owning books is a form of showing off. Why an aspirational brand like Lindeman's wants to identify itself with it ...
This post originally appeared on 9th October on Liberal Democrat Voice: The one group I'd most expect to be drawing up a roadmap to a debt-free Britain would be true-blue Tories. Some of them at least understand the problem. In a new book by five Conservative MPs - After the Coalition: a Conservative Agenda for Britain, dubbed by the Independent as the Bible of the new Tory right wing, there is an entire chapter on the National Debt and the risk it presents. As I have argued elsewhere, it is wrong to think that debt doesn't matter... that so long ...
Welcome to a new series of posts, each of which will look to give three tips about commonly asked campaign issues. Thanks to Louise Shaw for prompting the idea and also supplying some of the questions I'll be using in the next few weeks. Do get in touch - mark.hat.libdemvoice.org.spam.com (this is spam bot hidden email address, replace .hat. with @ and remove .spam.com for the real one) if you have any questions you would like to suggest. Today's Campaign Corner question: Not many people in my local party like canvassing and when we go door knocking the 'outs' always ...
On Thursday night I appeared alongside Stuart Bruce on CIPR TV talking about the impact of social media on public affairs work here in the UK. Watch to find out what our top tips are for anyone working in public affairs (our section starts just over 31 minutes in):
Humans have devised hundreds of thousands of languages with which to express themselves. Some, like Cornish are on the verge of extinction. Others, like Catalan and Welsh, are only used by a small number of speakers. Some, like New Norse, are created for political purposes. All these languages are valuable and hugely important to their communities. Many have Wikipedia version written in their language. Unfortunately, very few phones support these languages. [IMG: Phone showing list of languages] This poses a problem for QRpedia. They way the system works is this: Read the phone's language Look for a suitable translation in ...
I am still away from home helping the Dowager Lady Bonkers and do not have my copy of Electric Eden to hand. So my tribute to Bert Jansch will just be this Sunday video choice. Angie was written by Jansch's fellow Scottish acoustic guitar pioneer Davey Graham, who died in 2008. Graham's Wikipedia entry quotes Ralph McTell talking about it: here was a tune that combined a quirky rhythm figure with a tune of simple beauty with sexy blue notes with a hypnotic descending bass line. The hard part of this was that there were two beats to every bass ...
In this chapter, Timour / Tamerlane leads a Central Asian army to victory in Persia, Georgia, Tartary, Russia, India, Syria, and Anatolia, capturing the Ottoman sultan Bajazet (Bayezid I). But his conquests disintegrate when he dies, and the Ottoman Turks rebuild their realm and besiege Constantinople (on this occasion, unsuccessfully). See also reflections on war and peace, the dangers of iced water, the sultan in an iron cage, variant rules of chess, why good governance is not enough, and the Moghul Empire.
Sitting at the bar in a public house is a rare treat for me nowadays as it is not often ...Continue reading »
TweetThe Independent on Sunday ran a story today on boys v girls and gender equality. Although the article mainly reports the results of the study, like all research it fails to address causes or solutions. The less shocking information is that 97% of children believe childcare should be shared by parents. Other than that, the ...
The idea of an extra tax on high-fat foods has been in the news lately, since David Cameron suggested that the idea was worth looking at. Now I've argued before against activism through the tax system. I think most of the time it creates too much administration cost and avenues for avoidance for any good that it does. And I am skeptical of the psychological value of small incentives to do the right thing, which it turns out can often be counterproductive. In this case the fat tax is intended to tackle the "epidemic" of obesity. But it is not ...
This comment on Comment is Free tickles my fancy, corny though the film reference may be. This particular Bill Murray is a physicist at CERN: For almost 20 years, Bill Murray has been hunting the Higgs boson, the elusive subatomic particle that is thought to give mass to the basic building blocks of nature. Every day is the same as the last.
Last weeks Conservative conference speech by David Cameron included a comment and commitment to allowing 'gay marriage'. This has caused comments for and against from within the Tory Party as well as elsewhere. I was listening on Friday to a ... Continue reading →
Labour are renewing their attack on civil liberties today ahead of the protection of freedom bill getting another airing in the commons. They have conveniently obtained unpublished research from the Home Office that suggest that 23,000 people who under the current regime of mass DNA retention would be on the DNA database will go onto to commit further crimes. This perhaps is not that surprising given that 1 in 10 people are now on the mass database of citizen's DNA. What isn't clear is whether having DNA on the database would prevent or help detect any of these yet to ...
"Moving American Forward" Tour – where the President announced an economic depression was no longer a threat...
This is a longer version of a post of mine which has appeared over on Liberal Conspiracy. To be honest I prefer this version, but if you're pressed for time and can't be bothered to read 1100 words then please read the LC version instead :) I recently opened a bank account with Britannia, which is a subsidiary of the Co-operative Bank. I've also signed up to become an official member of the co-operative group and, as such, I'm expecting my membership details in the post some time soon. But this got me thinking. You see, the co-operative movement has ...
Perhaps something will come out that makes the Liam Fox story look less incredibly suspicious and steeped in corruption and back-room deals. Perhaps it won't, and David Cameron still chooses to keep the discredited Dr Fox as Secretary for Defence while the UK remains embroiled in Afghanistan. Neither seems likely, however. Regarding the first possibility, the bare facts regarding Dr Fox and Adam Werritty appear sufficiently damning in their own right. Video footage, misleading comments to the House, business cards claiming a relationship not acknowledged officially – how do you come back from all that? Regarding the second, it would ...
The one group I'd most expect to be drawing up a roadmap to a debt-free Britain would be true-blue Tories. Some of them at least understand the problem. In a new book by five Conservative MPs - After the Coalition: a Conservative Agenda for Britain, dubbed by the Independent as the Bible of the new Tory right wing, there is an entire chapter on the National Debt and the risk it presents. As I have argued elsewhere, it is wrong to think that debt doesn't matter... that so long as you can keep getting enough out of Peter to pay ...
TweetIt's funny how the Liam Fox liaison has neatly distracted the whole country from the banking crisis. Catching up on podcasts from the week's BBC Radio 4′s Today Programme, we have Alastair Darling at the beginning of the week addressing rhetoric on why he believes Quantitative Easing is wrong at this point. In Darling's opinion, ...
Joyce Vincent was found dead in her flat in Wood Green Sky City. She had been dead three years. The TV was on and there were Christmas presents still wrapped on the floor. This was a case that completely mystified me – and the rest of the world – when it went public. How could a woman lie dead for three years in her flat with no one – absolutely no one – knowing or caring? Outside of her personal life – for you never know why someone will retreat from the world for their own personal reasons – what ...
Police in Prestwich & Whitefield are trying to raise awareness in relation to vehicle crime, with the following advice to the local communities who live, work or travel through Prestwich & Whitefield. Vehicle crime – don't become their next victim – protect yourself Did you know ... Almost all vehicle crime is preventable. It can take as little as 10 seconds for a thief to steal something from your car. An opportunist thief will be attracted to your vehicle if they believe there is something of value they can steal. So if at all possible, leave nothing on view. Never ...
It is the venue where F1 folklore has been written and another chapter was written today. The Japanese GP at Suzuka witnessed those epic tussles between Prost and Senna in 1989 and 1990. It witnessed an emotional World Championship win for Damon Hill in 1996. It was also the venue for World Championship success for Mika Hakkinen and Michael Schumacher. Amidst such an illustrious list, it is apt that Sebastian Vettel today won his second consecutive F1 crown at the circuit by the fairground today. It had been written on the wall for much of the season and today, with ...
Next year, as I'm sure you know, London will host the Games of the XXX Olympiad and the XIV Paralympic Games. As they get nearer, the various sponsors and partners of both the Olympics in general and London 2012 in particular are increasingly promoting the games and their connection to them. Some, like Lloyds TSB, are even incorporating the 2012 Olympic logo in their branch fascias! Many of the principal sponsors are supporting both events, the organisation of which is being fully integrated for the first time. That said, a number of these are choosing to only, or at least ...
About 20 years ago someone, (I forget whom, but the quote used to appear on NUJMB economics exam papers,) said that trying to steer the economy using monetary policy only was like trying to play golf using only one club. Not only is it a "one club" policy, but it is an ineffective club. Expanding the money supply, which is what we used to call Quantitative Easing before this fancy new term was coined, is an ineffective method of stimulating the economy for two reasons and, in the current circumstances, is also highly dangerous. It is ineffective because: 1. There ...
Celeriac and sausage salad
A speech or a suicide note... you decide The day started at about 7am. After a raucous and alcohol assisted Parliamentary Debate at the GUU, and just three and a half hours sleep, I hauled myself out of bed in time to catch my lift to the Scottish Lib Dem Conference in Dunfermline. My total lack of organisation meant I had to get registration for Conference sorted out, including having a mugshot taken for my voting card that reflected quite accurately my lack of sleep. A brief bacon sandwich properly restored semi-consciousness and it was straight into the hall to ...
