From 1979 onwards, Britain endured 31 years of centralising government, but since May 2010 a new doctrine has been in place, as yet little referenced by the political commentariat, bedazzled as they are by distractions such as the putative EU referendum. With Eric Pickles, no less, the Minister in charge, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition government has ...
This morning Lindsay and I attended an Open Day organised by Leukemia and Lymphoma Research (LLR), one of the main organisations that funds this research, at UCL Cancer Institute. There were seven presentations on the research being conducted, followed by demonstrations in the laboratories. It was a steep learning curve for us, having no previous knowledge of the science beyond articles in the media. We heard, for example, about how T cells, which play an important role in getting rid of viruses, can be modified to hook onto cancer cells and destroy them. The equipment needed for this research is ...
This is an old edition of Melvyn Bragg's discussion programme In Our Time. It deals with the ideas of Karl Popper, for my money the most important Liberal philosopher of the 20th century. A few years ago I wrote the entry on Popper in Duncan Brack and Ed Randall's Dictionary of Liberal Thought.
I have been steaming through my large collection of unread sf anthologies this year, but often finding it difficult to say much about them. I'm reviewing here primarily for myself, and since most of the anthologies concerned are long past their sales peak I can't imagine that it makes much difference to anyone else. Most of these collections are of generally decent to excellent stories, and I do feel a slight twinge of conscience if the only ones I single out are for negative reasons. But only a slight twinge. Anyway, this is another good collection of decent to excellent ...
The Friends of Garston Park are working to create a Garston skyline mural which will not only celebrate some of our buildings, it will help make the walls round the sports pitches in the park look less like prison walls! The first planning meeting, where we hope volunteers will come along to share ideas, will be on 24th November. More details will follow but if you want to be involved (as an ideas person , or an artist, or photographer or anything really) please keep this evening free.
We've managed to get some national attention for our ATM Campaign. This is the campaign highlighting the lack of fee free cash machines. If you are very short of money, every time you have to pay a fee to get your money is like an extra tax on poverty. And given the lack of machines that don't charge, this is becoming less and less unavoidable. Anyway, after quite a bit of work trying to highlight this, the BBC TV's "Rip Off Britain"programme is going to give it some exposure. I recorded an interview with them earlier this week. More interestingly ...
This was the first of the BBC Past Doctor Adventure novels, from 1997, featuring the Third Doctor and Liz Shaw with the core UNIT team of the Brigadier, Benton and Mike Yates. It has its moments, particularly in injecting a past history to the Brigadier and Benton and attributing (separate) sex lives to Liz and Yates. But there's a lot of Stuff here, some of which works OK - Chancellor Goth was responsible for sending the Doctor to Peladon, apparently - and some of which doesn't - the convoluted international back-story to UNIT, the fifth Beatle, the aliens of the ...
Band leader and singer Edmundo Ross passed away today, just over a month short of his 101st birthday. Radio 2′s Desmond Carrington made a superb tribute to the great music man when he celebrated his 100th birthday. One track which Desmond played, which sounded great to me, was Wedding Samba. Here it is from 1947 by Edmundo Ros and his Rumba Band: [IMG: Post to Twitter] Tweet This Post
The Leicestershire village of Smeeton Westerby was originally two hamlets: Smeeton and Westerby. Today it (just) retains separate from Kibworth Beauchamp and the smaller Kibworth Harcourt... But you know all this. Because you will have seen Michael Wood's television series The Story of England (which was really the Story of Kibworth), read the book and watched the DVD. Today I was in Smeeton Westerby to look at this building in Pit Hill, which is very much at the Westerby end of the village. It was originally the poorhouse, established under the Gilbert Act of 1782. Later it was split into ...
Jim Swire, father of a Flora, a Lockerbie bombing victim, reacted to the death of Gaddafi with typical calm dignity. An example to us all. I am not a fan of post-revolution summary executions. The killing of the Ceausescus struck me as particularly stupid. Even going back to the killing of the Romanovs. It is always idiotic. It doesn't start new, supposedly civilised regimes on a good footing. It doesn't help get to the truth of what has happened. A lengthy trial is a far better retribution than a swift bullet. So I do not welcome the killing of Gaddafi. ...
Sat 22nd
19:26
Martin Horwood: the real issue facing Europe today is an unprecedented economic crisis
Earlier today, we ran a guest post calling on the Liberal Democrats to back the forthcoming Parliamentary vote on a European referendum. Here is the press statement issued today by the party's International Spokesman, Martin Horwood MP: The Conservative right and UKIP seem hell bent in stoking a row which will threaten our stability. The real issue facing Europe today is an unprecedented economic crisis. For Britain to start a constitutional argument at this critical moment would be fantastically irresponsible and could damage Britian's ability to influence. Billions of pounds of European investment in Britain is at stake as we ...
Mills Observatory A busy West End Saturday also saw the Friends of Balgay AGM take place at the Mills Observatory this afternoon. A very well-attended meeting at which Murray Nicoll of the Tay Valley Family History Society and the Tay Rail Bridge Disaster Memorial Trust gave a highly informative and very entertaining talk about the victims of the 1879 disaster.
...A bit of a controversy this week about Ricky Gervais and some comments he made. I watched the Office and Extras. An uncomfortable titter is about all that emitted from me as I watched them. Since those triumphs, full marks to Ricky Gervais. Hailing from an area (Whitley in Reading) I know well (mainly because it emits what is known locally the "Whitley whiff"), he has grown very rich and been hailed across the globe as a comedy genius. Good luck to him. I just don't find him very funny at all. His insincere grin is painful to watch. Ho ...
A superb Friends of Magdalen Green Coffee Morning today - extremely well-supported by local residents! Here's a few pictures from the event : Coffee Morning in full swing! Fraser on the dishes! Some of the Friends of Magdalen Green team congratulate Gerry Lavery (front, right) on winning our Christmas Card competition
She thinks that if she smiles a lot she can get away with fog-horning out the most ludicrously reactionary views. Well, she was made to look very silly on Have I got news for you last night. First, Ian Hislop mullered her argument that Liam Fox was the victim of media misbehaviour. But it is this wonderful massacre of her view on the St Paul's cathedral protesters which should be particularly savoured: The programme can be watched in full on BBC iPlayer here. Hat-tip: Liberal Conspiracy and @latentexistence. [IMG: Post to Twitter] Tweet This Post
Another satellite is crashing to the earth - the German-built X-Ray astronomy probe, ROSAT (short for Roentgen Satellite), launched in 1990 and crashing to a planet near you tomorrow morning. It could basically hit anywhere between 53° north and 53° south, which covers most of the inhabited world (Dublin is safe; Nottingham is not.) There is a twitter account tracking it at @ROSAT_Reentry (how do I get a twitter user icon for that?) and from there and elsewhere it looks to me like it will come down tomorrow mid-morning European time. So, keep an eye out for a 1.7 ton ...
This is the autobiography of an 18th-century slave, sold from his home in West Africa as a child to work on the West Indian fleet and around the Anglophone Atlantic shores, before becoming a freeman, missionary and political activist. (I'm using the Sierra Leone flag for this entry's userpic because Equiano spent some time there as part of the British project to resettle freed blacks living in England.) It's an absolutely riveting first-hand account, not only for the awful conditions of slavery (and indeed for freed blacks) in the British empire of the day, but also because of Equiano's unabashed ...
Pictured above are Mr Martin Marmy, IRU Secretary General; myself, Julia Fahey, Southport's Travel Trade Officer and Mr Graham Smith, Vice President of the IRU(International Road Transport Union) Julia and I were guests of the IRU to accept their City Trophy Award 2011. Southport is therefore officially the Worlds Most Friendly City for Group Tourism. This year's runners up were Heisingborg, Sweden. We were praised for having almost doubled the number of coaches to visit Southport over the last 10 years and the care we give to looking after our coach drivers and their passengers. Contrary to expectations the trip ...
Peterborough City Council have notified local Lib Dem ward councillor for this area, Darren Fower, that the willow trees in Werrington Meadow are to be cut back in the next couple of days, resulting in their appearance - to quote an officer at the Town Hall - becoming "awful". According to the City Council the willow trees in Werrington Meadows are due to be cut back, which happens once every 10-15 years as is appropriate for willow trees. Commenting, Darren said: "They will look like they have been severely chopped back but we are advised by specialists that this needs ...
If there is one thing which Liberal Democrats need to be careful about after the tuition fees debacle, it is being seen to renege on any of our manifesto commitments. But this appears to be exactly what Nick Clegg is determined to do with the news that he has imposed a three line whip to vote against an EU referendum. This is an area where he has a clear and very unsatisfactory track record already. The 2005 manifesto promised a referendum on the EU Constitution but when it came to a vote on the Lisbon Treaty (identical in virtually every ...
News of the death of Edmundo Ros has sparked a childhood memory. The first records I can remember playing at home in the early 1970s were from my mother's collection of 78s. For all the young people reading this, 78 rpm records were pre LPs, pre CDs! They were quite heavy and had to be ...
We were watching this week's edition of "Would I lie to you?" this morning. Victoria Coren (Alan Coren's daughter) was on. She's a professional poker player, and certainly brought some interesting body language reading skills to the game. David Mitchell and team thought she was telling the truth when she said she regularly phones Tim Henman to get the answer to difficult crossword clues. We often guess along with this game at home. I said that it was absolutely preposterous to think that a member of this country's most famous literary families, who earns her living from writing (as well ...
In the latest from Big Finish, the Eighth Doctor returns to their main sequence of audio releases with a new companion - the writer Mary Shelley, who joined him in 1816, at the end of a short audio episode released in 2009, but whose adventures in the Tardis we had otherwise not seen or heard. This is an excellent start for the new team. The two pitch up in Vienna in 1873, where mysterious murders are taking place and a showman is demonstrating the marvellous Silver Turk, a metal humanoid that can play musical instruments and also chess. The cover ...
Parents of children who are due to move up to secondary school in September 2012 have until midnight on Monday 31 October 2011 to apply for a school place. Applications for children who were born between 1 September 2000 and 31 August 2001 can be made online on Peterborough City Council's website Jonathan Lewis, Assistant Director for Education and Resources within children's services, said: "The admissions process is important for parents and it is vital that they apply before the closing date. Those who apply after the closing date may not get the school of their choice. "Applying online for ...
A few weeks ago, our autumn conference passed a motion on the Employment Support Allowance (ESA). This motion was passed near unanimously and party policy is now for us to push for significant changes to the government's welfare reforms. The reason behind the new policy is that the government's changes, as currently formatted, would put two million long term sick and disabled people through a system which treats them like scroungers and cheats rather than vulnerable people in need of support. At present, 11,000 people a day are being put through a deeply flawed assessment process, which gets the decision ...
Its been a week since the Scottish Boundary Commission released their initial proposals for the Scottish seats come 2015. The proposals can be seen here. In the Highlands & North West Scotland we lose one seat. Charlie Kennedy's seat has effectively been split 3 ways. Ross going to the Caithness seat held by fellow Liberal ...
I cannot work out how to paste into a Blogger page on my blackberry. I copy text from elsewhere and then there is no paste option on the drop-down bar. I tell you this because I was just looking to see if Chris Leslie is a Shadow Minister, when I found a Wikipedia page about a DC superhero comic called the Shadow Cabinet, which is unintentionally funny and I was going to paste from it here to hilarious effect, but it won't let me. Chris Leslie is a Labour MP (and a graduate of Leeds University, which will become tangentially ...
William Shatner - Bohemian Rhapsody There are no words. (tags: music ) Nescafe Gold Blend ads The complete run. (tags: ) PUNKADIDDLE: On Awards Adam Roberts on why it matters when awards go to bad books. (tags: sf ) And the winner is « Through the dark labyrinth Paul Kincaid on how awards go wrong. (tags: sf ) Wouldn't It Be Cool if Shakespeare Wasn't Shakespeare? - NYTimes.com ...except that he was, of course. (tags: shakespeare ) The Woman Who Knew Too Much | Politics | Vanity Fair Profile of Elizabeth Warren and what has happened to the US middle ...
Warning this blog post contains a link to the Daily Mail So the Daily Fail has a headline Woman passenger's jet rage at Nick Clegg over his support of Human Rights Act. The article contains the line "David Cameron pledged while in opposition to scrap the Human Rights Act (HRA), which he said prevented Britain from deporting foreign terrorists." While talking about a passenger who had to be physically restrained from an onslaught against the Deputy Prime Minister. Apparently according to the Fail the physical assault and terrorism by one woman is a sign that many are angry at the ...
Sat 22nd
12:21
MP's long-held opinion shockingly shocks the Catholic Church at fringe event #equalmarriage
There has been uproar from the Catholic Church in Scotland about comments made by Pete Wishart MP at a fringe event at SNP conference yesterday. Mr Wishart said: "What I believe will happen is that our government, over the course of the next few years, after this consultation, will bring forward legislation which will ensure we will have equal marriage in this country. I'm proud of that, I'm proud that this is the party that will be leading us forward, and I look forward to that new Scotland that we're trying to build." Seeing as the Scotsman say it was ...
Slow news day at The Sun: "Woman in jet rage at Nick Clegg" screams the heading. Read the article beneath, however, and you discover that actually, they had a conversation which ended with an invitation to eat at her house, ... Continue reading →
We can all rejoice that the Arab world has lost another brutal tyrant despite the grizzly manner of his downfall. But only the most politically jejune would say 'freedom' has arrived in Libya. Drawing on his experiences in Bosnia, Lord Ashdown has stated that the rule of law is the most important factor for building the peace in Libya: "The establishment of the rule of law - perhaps even martial law at first - which then develops over time into a reliable legal, judicial and prosecutorial structure based on the cultural norms of the country, is the essential framework for ...
This morning's Western Mail outlines some of the consequences of the decision by the Welsh Government to stop the European funding to the University of Wales' Prince of Wales Innovation Scheme, without first putting an alternative in place. It is now the case that there is no Welsh government funding scheme that takes good ideas arising from research by first class scholars and helps to turn them into high quality, high value jobs. The paper says that Wales appears certain to lose out on an IT development centre, which could have created up to 100 jobs, following the decision to ...
Following completion of the improvement works to Wallington Town Centre as part of the Wallington Integrated Transport Package the Council is carrying out a survey to gain some feedback on what people like about the enhancements to the town centre. The survey is available online at http://www.opinionsuite.com/sutton/consultation_finder and copies can be collected from Wallington Library. ...
Sat 22nd
10:37
A local Liberal hero who knew why Liberals still banded together to continue-extended and amended th...
'The truth is that Liberalism is the only hope of a world in which dictators still rule; in which preparation for war is the only insurance against chaos; in which men can be victimised because of their colour or creed; in which there is one law for weak and another for the strong. It is because we know this that we Liberals are still banded together to continue the struggle.' David Bentliff January 1952 In those difficult days for Liberalism Southport Liberals still commanded significant support in the town. Local newspapers described 'the old world part of the town (Churchtown ...
Sat 22nd
10:17
First Sure Start director has a positive verdict on new government's children policies
Naomi Eisenstadt was the first director of the Sure Start program when it was created under Labour and in a press push around the publication of her new book has some interesting things to say about both Sure Start's origins and the current coalition government. On Sure Start's creation and then rapid expansion, she points out how it didn't fit the claimed public emphasis of the time on evidence-based policy because the expansion was rushed through before the initial pilots have been evaluated. However, she thinks pushing ahead regardless was right: The speedy expansion of the scheme from an initial ...
Whilst I freely accept that I voted for the Coalition Agreement, having never actually had to make difficult decisions in government myself means that, sometimes, I can be a bit blase about the implications. It's the old story, being in power is nice, having to compromise, not so. And yes, there are parts of the Coalition programme that I'm not wild about. However, raising personal allowances and taking the some of the poorest people in society out of income tax brackets altogether is a thoroughly good thing. Last week, like many Liberal Democrats across the country, I got an e-mail, ...
Of course you do. So listen to Asquith here. (And you can find out more about the 1909 People's Budget and why it is so famous courtesy of the Liberal Democrat History Group website.)
"Terrorists in disguise" is apparently what China's officials have started calling Tibetan monks (and nuns) who set themselves on fire in protest at the communists' continued occupation of Tibet. Terrorism, in so far as it is defined (since it's an etymological misnomer,) is generally held to refer to an attack on a state which damages citizens or infrastructure or both. Setting yourself on fire as an act of protest is pretty much the ultimate peaceful demonstration. I would say it's pointless, but it was just such an action which sparked the Tunisian revolution, and this arguably the entire Arab Spring, ...
Here's your starter for ten in our weekend slot where we throw up an idea or thought for debate... Over on the BBC, Noel Gallagher has been talking about the last election and attempting to explain why he almost didn't vote at all. In the end he voted for the Pirate Party because "there's nothing cooler than a pirate". He went on to say: The Labour Party have managed, proved themselves to be just as sleazy and horrible as we all know the Conservatives are. There's nothing left to vote for anymore. Now as Liberal Democrats we know there's an ...
As played on Classic FM this morning for the returning Welsh rugby squad after their brave, battling World Cup heroics. Cymru am Byth
[IMG: Postal ballot being posted] Tuesday, 27 March Last day for publication of notice of election Wednesday, 4 April Last day for submission of nomination papers (noon) Tuesday, 10 April Last day for publication of nominations (noon) Wednesday, 11 April Last day for withdrawal of candidates (noon) Last day for appointment of election agents (noon) Wednesday, 18 April Last day to apply for a new postal vote (5pm) Last day to amend / cancel an existing postal vote arrangement (5pm) Last day to amend / cancel an existing proxy vote arrangement (5pm) Wednesday, 25 April Last day to apply for ...
Local parents are being asked for their views on information for families as part of a consultation by Cambridgeshire County Council. The research ties in with Parents' Week this week (October 17 to 24) - which has the theme Family Friendly... what's the story? Research has suggested that families sometimes struggle to find the information they need. This could be related to childcare, education, health, behaviour - anything around families and parenting. The problem can be even worse for parents with a child with special educational needs or disability, who often find they have to search hard for information that ...
Did you know that you could receive a £1000 fine and points on your licence if you fail to stop for a School Crossing Patrol? This is the message that is being advertised on Facebook to remind drivers in Hertfordshire that they are legally bound to stop when requested to by a School Crossing patrol. The message will also appear on motoring related websites such as Auto Trader. As part of the digital campaign, drivers are being made aware that the law was changed in 2001 to allow School Crossing Patrols to cross adults as well as children and that ...
