My reader may not be familiar with Moshi Monsters - but if you have young children you will be. Moshi Monsters is an internet phenonenom where kids can adopt pet monsters, play games and generally indulge in the sort of scatalogical silliness that more straight laced adults disapprove of. So it isn;t really surprising it has gained 50 million members in just three years. It's cast of characters includes Lady Goo Goo, Dr Strangeglove, Coolio (an ice cream cone obviously) and you can shop in Horrods or play the Iscream game - you get the picture. The idea that anyone ...
I can't help feeling that Wales should be in next week's final of the rugby world cup. I have previously written blogs to say that rugby is far superior to football for many reasons, one of which is the respect that is shown to referees and I will still show respect to this rugby referee even if he made a mistake but I have to say that this referee got it wrong and the wrong team is going to the final. Alain Rolland did have options but he took the one that ruined the game. A spear tackle is when ...
I bet you thought the Prime Minister sat down in his office on Friday afternoon, surrounded by advisers and briefing notes, then carefully carried out his cabinet reshuffle to replace Liam Fox. Um....no. According to the Telegraph: In an impromptu reshuffle, David Cameron replaced Dr Fox with Philip Hammond, who had been the transport secretary, and promoted Justine Greening into the Cabinet to take Mr Hammond's post. It was so rushed that Mr Cameron promoted ministers from a railway platform surrounded by morris dancers. On a railway platform? Surrounded by Morris dancers? I see. David Cameron photo credit: Some rights ...
Bath and NE Somerset has launched a partnership protocol with a local Social Enterprise Bath and West Community Energy whichb has arisen out of the Transition Bath movement. I attended the share offer launch to give the Council's views on the ititative and at the Cabinet we approved the partnership protocol. My Notes which formed my speach at the launch:- Cllr Crossley: BWCE Launch Council hosts launch event for new initiative with carbon reduction community company Pleased to be able to host this event as part of future cooperation with Bath & West Community Energy Background- the challenge and aims ...
Welcome to Broxtowe Enews, bought to you by the Liberal Democrats and edited by David Watts, the leader of the Lib-Dems on Broxtowe Borough Council. 1. Web Site Broxtowe Lib-Dems have a new web site. The address is the same as previously, www.broxtoweliberaldemocrats.org.uk but every aspect of it has been redesigned. We will be adding more pages in the next few weeks as well, so please drop by and have a look. 2. Cabinet by internet I'm trailblazing on Tuesday. It's the cabinet meeting at the council on Tuesday but I have to be in London for a business meeting ...
Here. You couldn't make it up. [IMG: Post to Twitter] Tweet This Post
A while back I wrote about public policy and web technology. I was asked via Twitter what would the challenges be for public policy. I promised to return to this and am only now getting around to it. The web is speedy, flexible, co-operative and global. This technology is already effecting how we work, learn and live. The more business becomes web-focused and web-delivered the more likely it is that we will decide we need to run our education system differently. For all the noble aspirations of a liberal education, a core part of learning is to equip people with ...
TweetPeople are protesting across the world regarding the upper echelons of society's handling of the financial crisis. At the same time, in the UK, a cabinet minister has resigned following inappropriate beneficial relationships organised by his friend. Such relationships allowed defence companies unlimited access to the most senior defence minister in the country, there is ...
There's no prize at stake - just the opportunity to prove you're wittier than any other LDV reader... (Hat-tip to @RichardOsley.) Here's former Defence Secretary Liam Fox and colleague, joined stage left by a mystery hand. What do you think they might be saying or thinking? And the winner of our last caption comp is... Some fantastic entries for our most recent caption competition, Julian Huppert "it's all a bit of a blur" Edition. The winner, according to The Voice's judging panel of one, was this one by Neil McGovern, with highly commended offerings by Rachel Coleman Finch here and ...
Betty Driver - best known as Betty Turpin from Coronation Street - has died at the age of 91. She had a long life and a long show business career, but it still seems extraordinary that she was thrown off George Formby's first film Boots! Boots! Matthew Sweet tells the story in his Shepperton Babylon: A teenage dancer named Betty Driver - who would later spend decades on Coronation Street, preparing hotpot for the regulars of the Rovers Return - was also booked for the picture, and became the first casualty of Beryl Formby's jealousy. Her rapport with George was ...
This week, I attended an Editorial Intelligence debate on who frames the public conversation. It was a fascinating discussion. An audience member made this observation: the ruling class no longer want to rule. I didn't get a chance to talk to the person who said this so I can't say why he came to this conclusion. It certainly is an interesting proposition. As several commentators have said, the party conferences this year were rather flat. For many years, the parties have staked out the centre ground and this trend does seem to be continuing. In the last few weeks Labour ...
Today was my first free day in Market Harborough for some time. I was pleased to see that nothing has changed in my absence.
I see the ring wing of the Tory party is joining the Labour Party in suggesting that Lib Dems have not joined in the Fox hunt for fear of what might happen to Chris Huhne. On the assumption that is not true there are some key questions that need to be pursued. Craig Murray was on Radio 4's Week in Westminster this morning. Craig is a former British Ambassador (and YL). On his website earlier this week he posed some of the questions that need to be addressed in a form of a letter to the British Ambassador to Israel: ...
A quick reminder about our competition, with prizes from MOO. It closes at midnight on Sunday – so don't forget to enter before then.
Details of the October Fright Night I'll post further details after the Tuesday Events Committee meeting
Just a couple of things. Firstly, you may have noticed that I've not been replying much to comments recently. This is because I've not been very well (I'm currently signed off work ill with various things including high blood pressure, chest problems, insomnia and severe headaches) and have enough energy to either write blog posts ...
The last Monkees album to feature Nesmith until the 1990s, and to all intents and purposes the last Monkees album full stop, this is a much better effort than Instant Replay, as everyone seems to have realised this would be the band's last chance to make an album on their own terms. While still not ...
My first piece of coursework is due in this week. It's a "self reflective" piece of a thousand words on one's own political socialisation: how, when and with what influences did you become aware of politics. It will be a challenge for me - I have twice as many years to cover as most of my classmates for a start! And have written many tens of thousands of words about my "political journey". But it will be an interesting exercise for later today. But in the lectures leading up to it we've been exploring the mechanisms by which people acquire ...
I've just blogged about Chris Huhne's speech to the Royal Society on nuclear power... and jolly good it was too. Especially for what may be one of the first deliberately accurate yet ironic uses of the word 'fulsome' I've seen in a long while. 'Fulsome' is one of my pet peeves. It's increasingly used in a positive sense — praise is often said to be 'fulsome' — yet the word itself is negative: 'fulsome praise' is excessive, overdone, insincere. So has Chris used it? Here's the money-shot from his speech: Such is the extraordinary inventiveness of the British scientific community ...
This week saw Lib Dem energy and climate change secretary Chris Huhne make a major speech to the Royal Society on the future of nuclear power, with the Coalition committed to a series of new reactors adjacent to existing sites. The Coalition's policy has long been trailed — a year ago, Chris put forward his views here on LibDemVoice.org, 'Myth-busting: what the Coalition's plans for nuclear energy really mean'. Here Chris acknowledged his shift from opposition to nuclear power to support conditional on no public subsidy — a shift which has majority support from Lib Dem members, at least according ...
At conference, I had the pleasure of meeting many members of the party who, to my surprise, reacted positively and largely in agreement when I described myself as a classical liberal and sympathetic to free market economics. A few weeks before conference, I had heard that some party members were considering forming a grass roots organisation that aims to bring together and facilitate discussion and policy development amongst those in the Liberal Democrats who are sympathetic to economic liberalism, i.e. the 'Orange Bookers'. I believe that there is definitely a demand for such an organisation, and a large number of ...
If Joanna Lumley wishes to join the Garrick Club (which does not admit women), then can I apply to join the Townswomen's Guild? Can I go to women-only networking sessions? If I had a son, could he join the Girl Guides? Is it the end of the world if men or women sometimes club together socially in groups that are separated by gender? Instinctively, it feels to me that such gender-based separation is different from separation based on ethnicity, which I would never attempt to justify. Right, having thus further endeared myself to my fellow Liberal Democrats by justifying men-only ...
Sauteed veg and eggs Lentil gratin
[IMG: Hyped up] No doubt the new Iphone, is blimin marvellous but I have to say for a company firmly placed in the quality end of the market, their new operating system is not as it should be. They claim to have taken the iphone/pad operating system to a new level, which in my case has proved to be the basement, a long winded process to install, while irritating is not unexpected, however unlike the seamless transfer of information from my original 3gs to 4, this "upgrade" didn't transfer my apps and added a half hour to the process as ...
The subversive trilogy about Borribles, children who have grown pointy ears and live in a gritty subculture of London; less supernatural than Neverwhere, more urban and poorer than Bevis, but sharing some context with both of those, and apparently an inspiration to China Miéville. The first book, The Borribles, is a direct attack on Elisabeth Beresford's Womble novels. Fighting off incursion by the evil rat-like Rumbles, a crack team of Borribles sets off to assassinate the Rumble leadership, Vulgarian, Napoleon Boot, Chalotte, Sydney, Bingo, Stonks, Torreycanyon, and Orococco. On the way they encounter the evil Dewdrop and his son, who ...
Sat 15th
11:42
If everyone in the UK had to take the citizenship test to stay here, the only person left would be S...
Oh dear. I have failed the UK Citizenship test. I only got 17 out of 24. The pass mark is 75% or 18. So, missed it by one. It's really quite difficult. You can take the test online here. These are the ones I got wrong: 7. In which year did married women get the right to divorce their husband? Correct answer: 1857 You answered: 1882 8. Is the statement below TRUE or FALSE: adults who have been unemployed for six months are usually required to join New Deal if they wish to continue receiving benefit Correct answer: False You ...
Over the last week or so, there's been plenty of speculation on the fate of Liam Fox. Most of us called it as inevitable that he'd resign but wondered why the hell he was taking so long. Compared with the swift egress of David Laws, Liam Fox looked rather Gordon Brown - esque, clinging on to his position for every day he could in the hopes that he could stick it. Now that he's finally gone, a new theory is emerging. Liam Fox presents a very dangerous problem for David Cameron. Thoroughly popular among the Right of the Conservatives, considered ...
Paul Hindley writes: Neoliberalism is a right-wing form of economics that promotes expansive free markets, deregulation, and unfettered privatisation. It has been the prevailing economic outlook of the global economy for over thirty years. It is disputable the extent to ... Continue reading →
Those of you whose friends use the twitter-to-LJ daily post feature will have noticed that for some reason the subject line has been coming through in Russian, as: Мои твиты which is Russian for "my tweets". (Transliterated, "Moi tvity", "tvit"/твит being Russian for "tweet" and "tvity"/твиты being the plural; for completeness I should note that although мои is usually transliterated "moi" it's pronounced more like "mai" or the English word "my", which conveniently is what it means.) Some Cyrillic italic/cursive letters look rather different from normal letters, much more so than is the case with the Latin alphabet. In particular, ...
Ian Hollingshead's collection of unpublished letters to the Daily Telegraph, Am I Alone in Thinking...? is a great little collection of amusing or strange letters which did not make it into the paper's printed edition. It is a bit pricey at the nominal cover price for a short book with large font and acres of white space, but at a discounted price it makes for a fun book to dip in and out of for a few minutes of entertainment now and again. You will also get to discover why one reader wrote, "I fear that my next missive will ...
"Tory bashing" has been a key phrase this autumn as the Liberal Democrat rank and file use conference to let off some steam. The Daily Politics' Andrew Neil notably dropped his warm, fuzzy style when grilling Tim Farron over his premonitions of 'divorce' - but we seem to be retreating back to ours. "Cuddly Liberal Democrats," as the Prime Minister put it to his own party conference. And David Cameron may be outlining the message of the Conservative party for 2015 - with a theme of "Leadership for a better future," his party are opening up a dialogue between the ...
So I reach the last of the Rebus novels, which starts a few days before our hero is due to retire, with a dissident Russian poet found battered to death late one Edinburgh night in November 2006, followed soon after by the murder of his sound engineer friend. Rebus's impending retirement echoes the impending end to the hegemony of the Scottish Labour Party, with the SNP and possible independence looming in the wings, and the investigation takes him to investigate the intimate relations between government, opposition, bankers and Scottish oligarchs, before twisting into an unexpected but entirely satisfactory resolution. I ...
This morning's Telegraph carries an interesting story that hundreds of police officers are being privately funded to patrol shopping centres, schools and carry out other specific tasks despite concerns there are not enough on the streets. They say that officers across the ranks are being paid for by councils, the NHS and other bodies. Some have their salaries met to patrol hospitals, town halls or work alongside trading standards or fire officers.One chief inspector is even paid by the EU to advise Palestinian police. The Police Federation believe that this trend threatens the operational independence of the force but it ...
PR Week reports: Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has thrown his weight behind a campaign being launched this week by PRWeek and the PRCA [one of the PR industry trade bodies] to end the practice of unpaid internships. To launch the campaign, the PRCA will today take the step of placing a list on its website of all PRCA member agencies who commit to paying at least the National Minimum Wage to interns. The list, researched in June, includes just 21 out of 264 member agencies – a mere one in 13. Among the handful of big agencies committed to ...
I take it all back. In June 2010 I got terribly steamed up about Cameron hoisting the St George's flag above Downing Street while England played in the football World Cup. I said this was wrong, unless equal treatment was to be given to the other constituent nations of the UK. Well, sort of, equal treatment is now being given, at least to Wales, as they face France today in the Rugby World Cup semi-final. The Welsh flag is flying above Downing Street today! Superb! Welsh flag photo credit: Some rights reserved by meeni2010 [IMG: Post to Twitter] Tweet This ...
Governnment School Building Programme; Public Health function moves to Council. Wednesday night was the regular meeting of Bury Council's Executive Committee. This committee brings together the ruling Labour Group's eight Executive Committee members, together with the two opposition leaders sat on the end (we literally do get made to sit at the end!) School Building Programme The Committee considered a report where we agreed to bid to Government for funds to rebuild Elton High School (in Bury) and Radcliffe Hall Primary School. The Coalition Government has agreed a national scheme to pay for rebuilding of between 100 and 300 schools ...
John Redwood says that the "right" of the Tory party will be watching Hammond and Greening very closely in their new roles. He doesn't seem to realise that the "right" of the Tory party have been crippled by Fox. Liam Fox was the standard bearer of Thatcherism. The Chosen One. Maggie turned up at his 50th birthday. He had The Blessing. Rightly or wrongly, because of Fox's behaviour, the "right" of the Tory party have been severely tarred with the Fox brush, as well as losing a big chunk of power in the cabinet. What this means is that we ...
The County Council has paid a heavy price for its cavalier decision last February to cut 100% of bus subsidies. No research had been conducted on people's transport needs, and there was no plan in place for those who lack transport of their own and would end up stranded, though the council said it expected Community Transport to make up the difference. In May an application for Judicial Review was lodged against the Council on several grounds, including lack of consultation. In July the Council's bid for £5 million from the government's Local Sustainable Transport Fund was denied, specifically on ...
From Scottish Water's Regional Community Manager to local councillors : Scottish Water is launching its new campaign to encourage our customers to ensure homes and businesses across Scotland are protected and prepared for the winter. Communities throughout the country are being urged to follow Scottish Water's winter code - a set of simple steps to protect your pipes, be prepared and heat, insulate and protect your home and business. The campaign, which is being supported by Sean Batty, the STV weather forecaster, is being spread through a range of measures including advertising, leaflets, videos, social media channels and partnerships with ...
Sat 15th
01:26
Christian Institute bullies its way over homophobic bullying education pack - then rejoices
Apparently the Christian Institute are rejoicing because they think they have squashed a homophobic bullying help pack which has been taken down pending looking into their complaint. In their article they wrote that the pack "was styled as guidance on preventing bullying", before the Institute's Mike Judge went on the say "a hierarchy of victim has seeped into our education system where some forms of bullying are taken more seriously than others". Strangely that is just the reason why material looking how teachers can deal with homophobic bullying is needed. Teachers in our schools everywhere know how to deal with ...
