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. A special welcome to the news readers that we have this week. We had pretty much plateaued in terms of readers for a number of weeks but over the past two weeks we've had a big increase in readers. 1. Bramcote Hills Golf Course Readers in Bramcote may be very familiar with the problems at the golf course. It closed a few years ago and since then the owners have been trying to persuade the ...
Tomorrow morning I will go to St John's Birkdale . On Remembrance Sunday young people read out the names on the War Memorial of men who died in two World Wars.
Liberator subscribers have just received the latest edition of Liberator magazine (issue no.349 - November 2011). For those of you who are not yet subscribers, here's a summary of the contents: • The editorial column Commentary explains why Liberator is re-publishing Really Facing the Future (the alternative to the party's 'Facing the Future' policy paper). It also argues that the party should contest the forthcoming police commissioner elections. • The insider gossip column Radical Bulletin begins with a report on the party's search for a new chief executive to replace Chris Fox. • 'Money mad' - Julian Huppert (Liberal Democrat MP for Cambridge) ...
Tweet from an hour ago from @Duirmuid: A friend just texted me saying people are in front of the #Italian president's building singing Handel's Hallelujah #Berlusconi #Italy [IMG: Post to Twitter] Tweet This Post
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Here's a party press release worth sharing... 140,000 disadvantaged two-year-olds to benefit from free early education Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Liberal Democrat children's minister Sarah Teather have published proposals to give 140,000 disadvantaged toddlers 15 hours of free early years education. This is a key Liberal Democrat policy delivered by the Coalition Government. It builds upon our achievement of extending free childcare to 15 hours a week for all three and four-year-olds. Liberal Democrat Leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said: "Giving children a fair start in life is at the heart of what I and the ...
Today myself and fellow Southfield Councillor Harvey Rose attended the second session held by the developers of a proposed bridge across Bollo Lane coming from Chiswick Business Park. The development will also include a large complex of 1,2 and 3 bedroom flats sited on Colonial Drive. They had a 3d model with a number of drawings and illustrations to show what the development would look like. My initial views are that the bridge is better than the design I saw about 3 years ago. There may be some overlook issues given the height of the proposed flats. More questions will ...
I was delighted this morning to attend the Pennycook and Sinderins Courts Sheltered Housing Coffee Morning at Pennycook Court - very well attended, excellent stalls and the home baking was superb, as the piece of Victoria Sponge that I took home to have with my tea is testimony to!
It should be news to nobody that things are a bit worrying on the economic front. The Eurozone is trying to drag Greece back from the brink, and it remains to be seen how much trouble Italy will have refinancing its debt (though the fact that the austerity package has been passed is reassuring). Hugely important decisions have been made over the past weeks and months, and there are more to come. Even if nothing else goes wrong, there are big decisions to be made about the future governance of the Eurozone. Britain has a huge amount at stake. The ...
A quick round-up of four Lib Dem stories not otherwise covered here on Lib Dem Voice this week... Lorely Burt MP has welcomed the announcement by Jaguar Land Rover that it will create 1,000 new jobs in her Solihull constituency: "This is exactly the sort of private sector growth that the Coalition are looking for and have been supporting through schemes such as the Regional Growth Fund." Full story here. The party has seen three separate defections this week... (1) In Norfolk, county councillor David Callaby has joined the Tories — see here; (2) In Montgomeryshire, Powys county councillor Richard ...
Our week at Bonkers Hall continues... Thursday Who should I bump into today but Lembit Öpik? When I commiserate with him over his failure to become the Liberal Democrat candidate for Mayor of London (I tactfully fail to mention that he came bottom of the poll), he replies: "I think like every great politician you have to have some wilderness years. Nelson Mandela had them. Many other people had them." I may have been a little short with him after that, but who can blame me? My old friend Nelson Mandela spent his wilderness years imprisoned on Arjen Robben Island; ...
If you want to join in the Garston Park Art project, do come along to our first meeting on 24th November at 6pm at the Leisure Centre (off Long Lane) We are looking for people who want to get involved in generating ideas and generally helping with our project to create a mural around the outside of the sports pitches on the park. These walls look a bit "prison like" so we want to paint some of them and do some planting to soften the lines of the others. You don't need to be an artist to take part.. simply ...
Focus on Bar Hill celebrates progress in Belinda Brooks-Gordon and Sal Brinton's campaign to win a fairer deal for part-time university students. "The House of Commons is full of lawyers, isn't it? Not really, not any more. Last night I was at a Cambridge seminar presented by David Howarth, the former LibDem MP for the city and now an academic, on the 'decline and fall' of lawyers in Parliament. The statistics he presented were (if you like the idea of the people who create the law knowing something about it) sobering." No wonder this blog is called Heresy Corner "If ...
Our Liberal Democrat News Story of the Day award goes to the Daily Mail.
This morning we were invited to a remembrance service at the Yeshurun Synagogue in Gatley – politicians, police, members of the local christian and muslim communities and others. The Yeshurun community are very good and pair up every guest with a regular who can tell them what's going on (especially helpful as a good deal of the service is in Hebrew of course). This is the third annual service I've been to and I think I'm starting to get the hang of it, though my Hebrew hasn't come along much, I'm afraid. The Orthodox Jewish service is very different to ...
Five towns, not One city. Before I start this I should make clear that I am not writing this as a Liberal Democrat party member or on behalf of the party. I know as a group the Medway Lib Dems are opposed to city status but I have arrived at this position by myself and just happen to agree with them. I am instead writing this Appeal to Reason as a citizen of Gillingham who was born here, lived the first few years of my life here and the last four years, whose family lived here for at ...
Garston Park Church is starting a lunch club from this Monday. Information is available on 0151 427 2574. The Church has also got its Chrismas fair next weekend (19th)
In this chapter, the carefully negotiated union of the eastern and western churches does not last, but the pressure on Constantinople is relieved for a few years by the Hungarians, to the north, and Scanderbeg and the Albanians, to the west. We end with Constantine Palæologus on the throne; but not for long. See also my notes on Siberian shamanism, life in India, transliteration, and Albanian geography.
My week of leisure and business in London is now over. I am on the train heading back to the North East. It was quite an enjoyable week. I saw the new party HQ, walked past the "occupation" of St Paul's Cathedral (watch out for my forthcoming photos), got blockaded into a pub because of a passing demonstration and visited a significant number of hidden historic sites around the City.Tomorrow I
[IMG: A spring] Over the last few weeks I've been dealing with a very frustrating case, trying to get a window fixed in a flat in Woodstock Road. I was contacted by the leaseholder who lives in a former Council flat which Haringey Council still owns the freehold for. The terms of the lease state that fixing the windows is the Council's responsibility, so when his window jammed open he contacted Homes for Haringey, the semi-independent organisation that manages Haringey's housing stock. The first Haringey repairman quickly identified what the problem was, and described it in layman's terms to the ...
I've had a run of excellent reading over the last week or so, and thoroughly enjoyed Moll Flanders, or to be more precise The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, etc. Who was Born in Newgate, and during a Life of continu'd Variety for Threescore Years, besides her Childhood, was Twelve Year a Whore, five times a Wife (whereof once to her own Brother), Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew Rich, liv'd Honest, and died a Penitent. Her life is indeed one of "continu'd Variety", as she lurches from exploitative ...
The Romanian Foreign Minister, Teodor Baconschi, gave the keynote address at this morning's Bucharest AEJ Congress session on 'Freedom and Responsibility in the Mass Media', though his remarks were so brief that they served more as a starting point for discussion. He said that after the fall of Communism in Romania there was a great ...
Remember the Simpsons episode where Chief Wiggum dupes Homer to the police station by saying he won raffle for a speedboat? If your not as geeky as me then probably not. Its in the episode Lisa the skeptic Anyhoo, it looks like Derbyshire police have been inspired by our favourite yellow family and pulled off the same sting but using the lure of free beer. You couldn't make it up, you really couldn't. If you fancy a laugh read on... H/T the angry exile
It is with great delight that I link to the is Daily Mail story. The reason is in the opening line where the Daily Fail say: "Senior Liberal Democrat MPs have escalated their controversial campaign to force the Government into decriminalising drugs." The controversy of course is that Tom Brake has laid down parliamentary Early Day Motion 2404 which states: "That this House notes the serious harm caused by drugs; recognises the need for evidence-based policy making with a clear focus on prevention and harm-reduction; and calls on the Government to establish an independent panel tasked with carrying out an ...
This short book, published by Demos and mostly written by Jamie Bartlett, Jonathan Birdwell and Mark Littler, presents the results of a large and detailed survey of Facebook supporters of populist far-right movements in various western European countries, including the EDL and BNP in the UK and Vlaams Belang here. (Hungary's Jobbik was included in the original project but dropped for reasons not really explained.) The results are interesting in various ways. Supporters of such groups tend to have much less trust in the judicial system, their own government, the European Union and the mainstream media than most people do. ...
Earlier this week I listened to one of the most moving speeches I've ever heard. Bereaved parent Roger Crouch told a silent audience at the Speaker's apartments about the suicide of his 15 year old son Dominic. He'd taken his own life by throwing himself off a car park roof after suffering homophobic taunts at ...
I stumbled upon this rather interesting graphic on the net a few days ago (it is taken from the Browne review so not perfect but illustrates the gist of the changes): One increases with income, one levels out, which would you say is progressive? What this basically shows is the lifetime effect of the change in tuition fees policy on new students. Bear in mind this is over their lifetimes - all students who earn over £15,000 a year will be better off in the short run (£9 per extra £100 they earn until they hit £21,000, a maximum of ...
The County Council is currently rolling out it's RTPI project across Cambridge. This is the system you see on bus stops with the electronic signs that tell you how many minutes till the next bus arrives; this information is either based on the busses actual location (via a tracker installed on it) or is just the repetition of timetabled information.I have been asked to express a view on the order in which the bus stops along Milton Road should be upgraded with RTPI. The view I have expressed is that the Downham's Lane and Union Lane stops, based on north/south ...
Gillian Cross was a new writer for me; I enjoyed this children's story of sinister headmaster with supernatural powers planning to Take Over The World, a blended family, commentary on children's TV game shows, and knowing winks to Nineteen Eighty-four. Will look out for the sequels if F enjoys it too. Thanks to chess and redfiona99 for recommending it.
A great turn from comedian Jay Foreman, discovered during one of my reconnoitres on YouTube. Jay Foreman, together with Paul Kendler, made the excellent Unfinished London films. [IMG: Post to Twitter] Tweet This Post
Having already indulged myself once this week by blogging about Silvio Berlusconi's top ten gaffes, japes and pranks, it seems only right that I should also make reference to Republican Presidential Candidate, Governor Rick Perry of Texas and his Top 10 excuses for a disastrous debate performance. The Daily Telegraph refers to what it describes as excruciating footage of Mr Perry, once the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination and seen as the main challenger to Mitt Romney, struggling for 53 seconds during the debate whilst failing to remember the third government department he would abolish: From the moment the ...
With the announcement that Black Sabbath are going to reform and tour here is something to wake you up this Saturday morning - I wonder if you can use a free bus pass on tour buses?
Here's your starter for ten in our weekend slot where we throw up an idea or thought for debate... With the looming debt crisis in the Eurozone and Eurosceptics from across the political divide baying for blood, the LDV weekend debate couldn't resist the pressure any longer. So, with people openly talking about the possibility of the end of the Euro as we know it, and Europe seemingly in crisis, are Lib Dem Ministers taking the right decisions for the party and the country as a whole? The party has long been proud to proclaim itself the most pro-European of ...
You may never have heard of David Testo, but here he is scoring against AC Milan. The reason you may not have heard of him is that until now he has he only was a member of a Major League Soccer team, Columbus Crew, for two seasons of his career 2004-5. For most of the first season of that he was injured. But since then he has played for the Vancouver Whitecaps and Montreal Impact in the second tier of American football the North American Soccer League. However, the out of contract player has announced on Radio Canada that he ...
Every so often I find a device which – inexplicably – doesn't include Linux support. I've been very impressed with how well Ubuntu runs on the Lenovo ThinkPad X200. Everything worked out of the box – with the exception of the fingerprint reader (AuthenTec AES2810). Now, I know that fingerprint readers can easily be defeated by jelly-babies, but it annoys me when something doesn't work. The manufacturer of the fingerprint reader has a great developer community, so I contacted them. Here's their response: Linux support for AES devices is not yet available. But based on the increasing number of requests ...
A Cambridgeshire County Councillor's campaign to get a fairer deal for part-time university students under the government's education loans scheme cleared another hurdle last night (Tuesday, November 1). In the House of Lords, the government agreed with the Liberal Democrat amendment for the move, clearing the way for it to be written into the government's Education Bill and become law. It was then also supported cross-party in the Lords. Dr Belinda Brooks-Gordon teamed up with former Cambridgeshire County Council Liberal Democrat leader, Baroness Sal Brinton, to make sure part-time students were not discriminated under the scheme. From 2012 eligible part-time ...
Whippet Coaches have informed the County Council that theywill be making changes to services 14 and 21. The 14 is relevant to us in NorthCambridge and will from the 5th December have a revised route;currently this is via Bridge Street and Histon Road, and will switch toVictoria Avenue and Milton Road. It will also serve Howgate Road in Arbury. Timetables are available from Whippet, although sadly when Ichecked their website to put together this post the 14 Service seems to becompletely missing (and the only service that mentions Arbury is the T4 FreeBus to Bar Hill Tesco!). Hopefully all will ...
A Cambridgeshire County Councillor's campaign to get a fairer deal for part-time university students under the government's education loans scheme cleared another hurdle last night (Tuesday, November 1). In the House of Lords, the government agreed with the Liberal Democrat amendment for the move, clearing the way for it to be written into the government's Education Bill and become law. It was then also supported cross-party in the Lords. Dr Belinda Brooks-Gordon teamed up with former Cambridgeshire County Council Liberal Democrat leader, Baroness Sal Brinton, to make sure part-time students were not discriminated under the scheme. From 2012 eligible part-time ...
The County Council is currently rolling out it's RTPI project across Cambridge. This is the system you see on bus stops with the electronic signs that tell you how many minutes till the next bus arrives; this information is either based on the busses actual location (via a tracker installed on it) or is just the repetition of timetabled information. I have been asked to express a view on the order in which the bus stops along Milton Road should be upgraded with RTPI. The view I have expressed is that the Downham's Lane and Union Lane stops, based on ...
This is a brilliant account of the 2008 US presidential election, concentrating particularly on the Obama/Clinton dynamic (since that turned out to be much more important and durable than the Obama/McCain dynamic). The authors claim to have got detailed accounts from campaign insiders of key conversations and exchanges right up to the level of the candidates, and it rings true without revealing anything about the two key personalities that I had not already guessed. (It seems to have been published as Game Change in the USA.) Three aspects of the narrative really struck me. First, that the candidates themselves tend ...
As I had hoped, an excellent novel rounding off the Tiffany Aching series, with a surprise appearance from someone we last saw much earlier in the Discworld stories. It deals with some pretty heavy subject matter in Pratchett's trademark combination of humour and profundity. Some day soon I shall go back and read all four Tiffany novels in sequence. Excellent final quote from the author on the importance of history: It is important that we know where we come from, because if you do not know where you come from, then you don't know where you are, and if you ...
A new production of Five Pound and Twa Bairns, featuring several of the original cast, is to be staged at the Dundee Rep Theatre during the week of 9th January 2012. This production will help to raise awareness of and funding for the Tay Rail Bridge Disaster Memorial Trust and consideration is also being given to the musical play being performed as part of a Gala night at Balgonie Castle, Fife. Further information is available at the Dundee Rep website at:https://tickets.dundeerep.co.uk/public/show.asp.
Many congratulations to local resident Shahbaz Majeed who, in the Take a View Landscape Photographer of the Year 2011 Competition has recently won the Network Rail 'Lines in the Landscape' Award. And isn't his winning photograph of the Tay Rail Bridge superb :Shahbaz was winner of the West End Christmas Week photographic competition that we ran in 2009 and all of us involved with West End Christmas Week are delighted at Shahbaz's latest success!
Ever wonder what goes on inside the mind of Julius Nicolson types? Well thanks to a FOI release of the weekly blog of top civil servant Permanent Secretary Sir Peter Housden, all is revealed! Originally for the consumption of Scotland's civil servants via their intranet site, Sir Peter updated his colleagues on matters ranging from traditional mandarin activities to his tedious middle class existence outside of office hours. They read very much like a 21st Century version of Grossman's Diary of a Nobody. You can view the released files in full here* but below includes a selection of his finest ...
I hope that my blogging surrounding this story will wane in the coming weeks and months. No doubt at some point is will flare up but I hope to be blogging again on political matters and random stuff that pops into my fron soon. Heck it was the Southend Lib Dem AGM on Monday and I have exciting (well semi exciting, well news, well something) I have reaction to that and other stuff that really should be blogged about but other things have been the priority this week. Ok so if you've read this blog or read, seen or heard ...
Tonight's London Evening Standard reports what should be unalloyed good news that toddlers from poor backgrounds will be guaranteed a nursery place. And it's thanks to the Lib Dems that it is happening at all. So why ruin it with this utterly crass statement 'that free education for toddlers from the most disadvantaged homes will now be a right and not a privilege.' It's student union posturing at its worst (and wrong - toddlers are not educated - they play) - and if this is a result of the sort of outputs of Clegg's strengthened team of seven new tax ...
