I was going to write a long rambling post about my uneasiness concerning the direction in which remembrance is moving in, but as they say pictures are more powerful than words. Remember the men themselves, not the collective image they have become. While their sacrifice has ensured that we can never let them be shrouded by time, we shouldn't turn their memory into something they were not. They were people like you and I, and that's what made it all the more tragic. Lest we forget. It should have been the war to end all wars.
Cross-posted from Liberal Democrat Voice Here's a superb clip of Nick Clegg in full, passionate flight as he attacks Sadiq Khan regarding links with the GMB union. There is some background to this story on order-order.com here. Here's the exchange in full from Hansard: Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab): The Deputy Prime Minister has previously endorsed the long-held convention that issues of party funding should—as he has just said—be resolved by cross-party agreement when that is possible. He has told us that the Committee on Standards in Public Life will report shortly: in fact, it will report next week. Is he ...
This evening's Newsnight carried a report by Greg Palast on the vulture funds that profiteer from the debts of developing countries. If you saw it and want to join the campaign to stop these funds evading British law by bringing their cases in Jersey, see the Jubilee Debt Campaign site. Like several people I follow on Twitter, however, I was bemused by Palast's decision to dress like a character out of a pulp detective novel. Take it away boys...
The Moor End Road Bus lane fiasco has now clocked up 25,112 penalties and more than £500,000 in fines. This sum was not disputed when an Associated Press reporter spoke to Herts County Council yesterday. What a badly designed scheme! However we now learn that for some 50 motorists appealing through the Traffic Penalty Tribunal, Herts County Council did not contest the appeals and waived the penalties. "We have not had sufficient staff to process the appeals within the statutory timeframe", said the council's Executive Member responsible for highways. Hmm... The times allowed is 56 days. And the council's "profit" ...
Salford today took one step closer to the possibility of an elected Mayor on the same day Leicester City Council announced it was increasing their elected Mayor's salary to £100,000 per year. Leicester's Labour-controlled council also decided it would pay Deputy Mayors £75,000 per year and "assistant Mayors" would also get a pay increase. Leicester elected their first directly-elected Mayor in May of this year; could that city's voters have guessed their Mayor would get a £44,000 pay rise barely half-way through his first year in office? At today's full session of Salford City Council it was announced that January ...
Tomorrow Evening is the 2011 Chorlton U Decide event where local residents get the opportunity to vote on how £7500 of funding should benefit local community groups. At the event fourteen Chorlton community groups will explain their projects to local residents in a two minute pitch. Residents who attend the U Decide event will then be able to vote on which of these projects they think should be given the thumbs up for up to £750 of funding. The fourteen projects competing at this year's U Decide Event are: 1. Chorlton Big Green Festival - £750 for workshops, sound system, ...
Interesting report on the BBC News channel today. The dictatorial and perem(tory) British Medical Association (BMA) is calling for a ban on all smoking in cars. The BMA has said that an outright ban, even if there were no passengers would be ... Continue reading →
Chunks of Consett's steelworks site are to be de-allocated as employment land. So run the recommendations of the cabinet report presented today, but you'll have to look to page 247 of the Cabinet's papers in Appendix 3 to the report to see that Project Genesis (a) and Project Genesis (b) are listed for de-allocation. The first on the grounds that "There is little evidence of recent development activity on the site and agents have indicated that there is little prospect of the site being developed out in its entirety." The second because "It is understood that the site is affected ...
A careers fair for people aged 14-24 will be held at The Phoenix Centre, Wallington on Wednesday 23 November 2011 from 1-5pm. The fair will help those who are thinking about their careers or looking for a course, and will give young people the opportunity to speak directly to employers. All up to the age of ...
Michael Crick, always a sage judge, writes of "the excellent Liberator magazine". He does so while discussing the decision by the Federal Executive of the Liberal Democrats not to fund any candidates in next year's police commissioner elections and to encourage local parties to endorse independents. I blogged about this myself last month. Crick writes of the elections in general: I keep asking Labour and Tory people whether anyone is interested in fighting for these jobs, and no names are mentioned - apart from Col Tim Collins, who came forward a few weeks ago, and may end up being the ...
When I saw the headline: Bristol MP backs BMA call for smoking ban in cars I had a sinking feeling. Sure enough the MP in question turned out to be the Liberal Democrat Stephen Williams. When asked, we Liberal Democrats usually say that we stand above all for individual liberty. But the reality is that some of are always to be found on the side of the argument that wants to curtail liberty for the sake of other desirable goals. The problem is not, as Liberal Vision claims, that Stephen Williams is not a Liberal. It is that we have ...
The Liberal Party has promoted various forms of co-ownership for nigh on a century. The chief example used by Liberals in the time of Grimond/Thorpe /Steel was the Northamptonshire employee owned firm of Scott Bader. It is sad the Liberals do nor speak with such conviction about the advantages of employee ownership and if it is mentioned at all it seems to be in relation to public service reform or a marginal measure of mutualism The model developed by Scott Bader and other forms of employee ownership are more relevant today than ever before. In the aftermath of the collapse ...
UNEMPLOYMENT in the North West has dropped by 2.3% in the three months to September, official figures have revealed.The Office for National Statistics (ONS) data showed that a total of 293,000 people were unemployed in the region between July and September, 7,000 less than in the previous quarter.The region's unemployment rate was 8.5%. Read More
Squeee! :D That is all. As you were :) [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
Wed 16th
20:31
Kerching! Pay rises proposed for Leicester's Mayor, his deputies and all the city's councillors
From today's Leicester Mercury: City mayor Sir Peter Soulsby is set to get a £44,000 pay rise, it has been revealed. His current wage of £56,000 will jump to £100,000, if the increase is approved by the city council. Sir Peter's deputy, Rory Palmer, is due to see his pay rise by £41,000, from £34,000 to £75,000, while the six assistant mayors are likely to see their annual income rise from £26,000 to £40,000. The remaining 47 city councillors are in line for a 20 per cent pay rise, too, with the basic councillor allowance set to increase from £10,000 ...
I've just got back after speaking at the Planning committee on the Hatch Farm Dairies application. The committee approved it. Not a surprise, but disappointing none the less. However, in the four weeks it was deferred we did get somewhere. The developers have agreed to fund some extra pedestrian crossings. And the council appears to have finally got its act together and is putting a business case together with a view to getting approval for the full go-ahead for their half of the relief road in February. Going to have a consolatory cup of tea now!
While out knocking on doors this evening I came across a lady who is involved in a charity called Down Syndrome Liverpool. I hadn't heard of this group before but from what she said they do really good work. Anyway, when I got home I looked them up and they certainly seem very active Here is the link to their website.
Ed Miliband's Labour party has made much recently of the "lost generation" due to the economic climate, so Bignews Margate has decided to investigate and track down three of Labour's lost generation, to put a face to the current employment crisis of course resources are limited, so the following is based much on my own prejudices and contempt for Labour. Tony Blair former figure head of Labour, had the sense to scarper before the sh*t, hit the fan, having been befriended at an early age by American media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, who encouraged his editors help to Blair, who soon ...
That is all.
Cornwall's two top councillors combined today to prove they are, between them, under-briefed and losing their memory. First up was council Leader Alec Robertson who, opening the debate on the budget, referred to a decision made by the courts to allow two other south west councils to close libraries. Whoops! Today the High Court gave a judgement which prevents Somerset and Gloucestershire councils closing branches because the two Tory run authorities have failed to properly consider the impact on vulnerable people. Next up was Deputy Leader Jim Currie who claimed that he didn't know where Lib Dems got the idea ...
Here's a superb clip of Nick Clegg in full, passionate flight as he attacks Sadiq Khan regarding links with the GMB union. There is some background to this story on order-order.com here. Here's the exchange in full from Hansard: Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab): The Deputy Prime Minister has previously endorsed the long-held convention that issues of party funding should—as he has just said—be resolved by cross-party agreement when that is possible. He has told us that the Committee on Standards in Public Life will report shortly: in fact, it will report next week. Is he concerned about the objections from ...
Lib Dem Business Secretary Vince Cable has today announced a raft of new measures to build on a successful year for the national apprenticeship scheme. Apprenticeships reached record highs in the academic year 2010/11, with Manchester seeing an 77% average increase in apprentice numbers over the previous year. In Manchester Withington constituency, 610 learners took on an apprenticeship in 2010/11, an increase of 75%. Manchester Central constituency saw a 72% increase and Manchester Gorton constituency a massive 97% increase, all substantially higher than the England average of 58%. The Lib Dems are now looking to strengthen the apprenticeship scheme even ...
Wed 16th
17:15
Blogged elsewhere: Condemnation of desecration of Derry wreathes to city's and family dead
The war memorial in the diamond in Londonderry/Derry has personal significance to me as one of my Great-Great Uncle's names appears on the south eastern face. He was killed on the second day of the first 1918 Battle of the Somme. The Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers with whom he was serving reported heavy losses on the first day, his death is recorded as on the second say of action of that spring offensive. The Irish regiments were a mix of men of protestant and catholic background. Indeed looking through the list of names of fellow Inniskilling Fusiliers who died in that ...
The link is to yesterday's debate on fuel prices. I raised my concern that we need to look at the issue of all energy prices in a scarce environment.I think the idea of having a quota of cheap fossil hydrocarbon would be a sensible way forward as part of an international plan to manage demand and keep down capital transfers.
The war memorial in the diamond in Londonderry/Derry has personal significance to me as one of my Great-Great Uncle's names appears on the south eastern face. He was killed on the second day of the first 1918 Battle of the Somme. The Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers with whom he was serving reported heavy losses on the first ...
Pleasing as it was to see Thanet Council, take a principled stand on animal welfare recently, I would just like to see whether they might like to consider the plight of victims of China's occupation of Tibet. Since tonight councillors will be consider once again the China Gateway proposals and I appreciate this has nothing the Chinese government, however I think it might be an apt topic for TDC to consider some time soon. Knowing that China has an abysmal record over the years of human rights, anything from imprisonment to murder, would the council perhaps convey the sentiment that ...
Stephen Williams may be a member of the Liberal party but he is no liberal. Yesterday he wrote a piece for Lib Dem Voice championing the nanny state with the bizarre piece entitled, chillingly "How to damage tobacco brands". Why would any liberal (and especially a member of Parliament) living in the free world wish to damage any legal company's brand? I have pretty much said my piece over on the comments page so I won't repeat it here. What I did think worthy of mention was the reaction to the piece in the comments section. Overwhelming the contributors were ...
Feltham and Heston's Labour MP Alan Keen tragically died this month. Known as a strong constituency MP, he held his seat in 2010 with only a slightly reduced majority, a testament to his popularity with his constituents. Feltham is a mostly white area where most residents own their own homes. While it has traditionally been Labour voting, in recent years, as prosperity has found it, it has begun to vote Conservative. Heston, on the other hand, is home to one of Britain's largest Sikh communities. As of the last election, no party other than Labour has a strong presence in ...
This morning I had post. First time in a while. Alas it was an energy bill but along with that was my new cashcard. HSBC had sent it to somewhere I last lived nine years ago and although they have my new address as all other correspondence comes here they still send my new cashcards to my Dad's – nice one HSBC. So I ring up my old man to say thank you and to see how he was and all that jazz. Unsurprisingly he's dealing with aches and pains, he's always dealing with aches and pains although he didn't ...
All Liberal Democrat campaigners will agree that there's no worse feeling at the end of a hard-fought election campaign than losing by a handful of votes. In the 2010 General Election, we were less than 1000 votes away from winning in 10 constituencies. Analysing these results, it was clear that our campaign technology had fallen behind the other two main parties. Tasks that our opponents took for granted, such as linking a campaign system directly to a website, or organising a nationwide volunteer phone bank, were beyond our capabilities. Connect is the cutting edge in campaign technology that will put ...
Restored Libyan Flag Soon to be Syrian flag again The Libyan revolution saw the restoration of the pre-Gadaffi flag . Today in yet another tumultuous demonstration in Syria, I saw that the crowds had swapped the Assad-era flag of Red-White-Black with two green stars on the white stripe, for the flag above. As the news comes in of a major attack against the feared Air Force intelligence by the Free Syrian Army, it is increasingly clear that Bashar Al-Assad is losing his grip on power. An ambush earlier this week, again said to have been carried out by the FSA, ...
Yesterday there were some rather worrying developments in the market for Euro area bonds, affecting even French and Dutch government stock. This caught the journalists on BBC Radio 4 off guard, including the famed Robert Peston. They quickly fell into the lazy habit of describing the markets as if they were thinking and breathing people, albeit in a plural form, like "Bond markets looked on the Italian government's plans sceptically and yields rose over 7%". This formula is usually used to link the movements in market prices to some new information or news event, regardless of whether any such link ...
What we're witnessing today is the great success of the euro, and the most concrete demonstration of that success is Greece, which is being obliged to take on the culture of stablity with which it's transforming itself. -Mario Monti. After Italy bond yields hit over 7%, stock market declines, admittance of financial instability in the ...
I've received the following alert from Trading Standards. While it's unclear what the motives of the bogus official actually are, one can asssume they're not honourable! Please take care answering the door therefore. 15/11/2011 Council Officer Warning Kenilworth Warwickshire Trading Standards Service is warning Kenilworth residents about a man who is reported to have been door knocking in the area, claiming to work for Warwickshire County Council and offering to 'reduce residents council tax'. The caller is believed to be wearing a Warwickshire County Council badge. Warwickshire Trading Standards is not aware of any legitimate reason for a member of ...
Buried in the Review Section of The Observer of 30th October under the section 'Lab Notes: Dispatches from the World of Science' (hardly likely to hit you in the face is it?) is a report of a study from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. According to the Observer "This study identified an elite core of 147 transnational corporations, (TNCs), mainly financial institutions, that together control 40% of the wealth in the entire network of 43060 TNCs worldwide despite representing less than 1% of the whole. This level of interconectedness raises serious concerns about financial stability" It is ...
[IMG: Malcolm Bruce MP in Bangladesh] Photo courtesy of The Gavi Alliance. I have just returned from Dhaka, Bangladesh, where I was part of a parliamentary delegation looking at Bangladesh's rapidly improving healthcare system and in particular their immunisation programmes, which the UK Government through bilateral aid and the GAVI Alliance is helping to support. Pneumonia and diarrhoea together account for about 40% of all under 5 mortality in the world and yet most of these cases could be prevented through the use of vaccines. The GAVI Alliance was established in 2000 to help developing world countries like Bangladesh gain ...
Have you seen Fahrid Abraham acting. Or have you heard of the exploits of John Hoover or read the books of Francis Fitzgerald. You may well have but until Ahmed Rushdie suddenly found his Facebook page blocked as it wasn't using his real name then there were issues. He raised the issue with them listing the three gents above as examples of why the policy didn't make sense*. No doubt Clive Lewis or Joanne Murray would have considering some witchcraft was afoot. You see none of the above famous people use their first given name, just like our last Prime ...
UPDATE - Council Leader Alec Robertson has just announced that the toilets issue will be put on hold for a year to allow for further discussions and consultation with town and parish councils. The post below was written before that announcement. I think this U-turn is very welcome and sensible considering the huge amount of disquiet from local councillors and towns and parishes. Last night I wrote about the decision by Launceston Town Council to save the public toilets in our town by taking them over from Cornwall Council which had issued a 'take them or lose them' ultimatum. This ...
I came across this poster outside the Ritz on Saturday. I thought it was a demonstration which hit the nail on the head but it turned out to be a band filming a video.Mark Steel, on the other hand, sums it all up beautifully in the Independent.
There are many models of policy-making in the literature. Some are simplistic. Some are tediously over-elaborate. At the moment I'm reading Malcolm Dean's new book, Democracy under attack, in which he offers his own informal, institutionally-oriented definition. Dean manages to convey the imperatives, intricacies and intractability of much real world policy-making in a sentence (p76): Policy-making is a complex process, a mix of new events, old promises, bureaucratic loyalties, party allegiances, manifesto pledges, pressure group campaigns, think tank or select committee reports, research findings and legislative cooking time among other factors. We may all think the world would be a ...
WARNING: This lunch time I've decided to write a self-indulgent, introspective post. Normal service will resume tomorrow with blogpost about the scandal of the people advising the DWP on disability issues. Last Friday marked exactly one year since I started the Potter Blogger. My first blogpost was about my experience of going on the first tuition fees protest and of my feelings about the subsequent violence. So, one whole year of blogging. A lot's changed in that year. Over the past 12 months I fell in love for the first time, attended my first Lib Dem conference, campaigned for the ...
People on my dreamroll have been talking about holiday cards and gifts for a few weeks, and now that my mum has started on her annual "what do want for Christmas?" questioning, I'm sat here thinking "what do I want?". (I know I should count myself lucky that at 24 I still get presents, but thinking about what I want is hard.) Especially as, having started a healthier eating mission about 2 months ago and seeing my body change weekly, I've temporarily removed all the webcomic/Threadless shirts off my wishlist, which has left it looking decidedly bare. But, I discovered ...
The British Medical Association are calling for a ban in smoking in cars. Some facts to start the debate off: Just over a fifth of adults in England smoke; the figure is slightly higher in other parts of the UKIt is estimated that between a third and half of smokers will light up while in a carIf they do so the concentration of toxins is much higher in a car than a smoky bar; some research has put it at 23-fold, although others have suggested lower figuresIf windows are open, the concentration levels can be lowerSmoking is already banned in ...
As I've mentioned before, I hate SMS Spam. Last night, I received this unsolicited message. [IMG: SMS Spam] Now, I can try to unsubscribe using STOP ALL – and I have forwarded the text to VSPAM. But that's not enough for me. I want to stop them sending any more spam SMS to anyone. Let's do a little stalking investigating and find out what we can. Who Supplies Their SMS Gateway? The people who provide the SMS gateway services ought to do a better job of policing who uses them. PhonePayPlus allows us to look up any SMS short code ...
Today's news, that youth unemployment has topped the one million mark, is worrying. I feel desperately sorry for our young people. They have been dealt a miserable hand by us 'baby-boomers' with our fixation on property prices and our insistence that our political leaders give us the goodies now, even if it meant borrowing huge amounts of money because we weren't prepared to stump up the extra taxes. We have left our youth with huge debts, less work opportunities, an education that doesn't prepare them for work and little chance of having their own home because we drove prices beyond ...
Two reports out today have sparked a debate on how best to protect children from the affects of adults smoking in cars. The cross party group that I chair has called for government consultation on the various options. The BMA, the doctors' union, thinks the answer is a total ban on any smoking in cars. ...
Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem takes place on St George's Day. Like everything in the play, this is not a coincidence. Butterworth explores a lost England where freedom was celebrated and the representatives of the State banished. But now, the State cannot be dismissed and this inevitably leads to the tragic end for our anti-hero Johnny Byron. Mark Rylance dominates the stage as Byron. He is a sizzling actor at the best of times and Butterworth's gives him plenty of opportunities for pyrotechnics. The audience were wowed by it all. While the writing is sharp, the play is let down by its ...
I'm normally quite jaded about "let's kick up a controversy and call it a clever marketing move" type campaigns, but this one from Romania is very clever. And it features chocolate: Rom, a popular Romanian chocolate bar that prominently features the Romanian flag on its packaging, evoked patriotism and national pride to fuel sales and build brand awareness for the product. In an elaborate hoax, Rom changed its packaging to feature the American flag, launched advertising centered on American ideals and imagery, and created videos that justified the decision to distance Rom chocolate from its Romanian heritage. (Explanations included a ...
The Guardian report that the Deputy Prime Minister has ruled out extra state funding for political parties for the whole of this parliament. Nick Clegg believes that it is impossible to ask taxpayers to provide more money for politics at a time of austerity, though the paper believes that this pronouncement raises questions over the value of a report due to be published next week setting out plans for a reform of party political funding. They say that one of its central proposals will be an increase in state funding by as much as £100m over the course of a ...
Wed 16th
10:25
Book review: 'Peace, reform and liberation' - "the first port of call for anyone wishing to learn mo...
There has long been a need for a single volume history of the Liberal and Liberal Democrat parties covering the entire period from its roots in the constitutional struggles of the seventeenth century to the present day. While Liberal history has received plenty of attention from historians, previous studies of the party have been limited to a specific eras or themes. In many ways of course the party has several histories. This includes the origins of the Liberal tradition in the Whigs of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the heyday of Liberal government in the middle of the nineteenth century, ...
I have not seen last night's episode – I'll watch it tonight – but I understand that there was a scene in My Transsexual Summer that some people have expressed surprise at where Drew is refused employment in a Bridalwear shop on account of being a Transwoman. Unfortunately, this is not only permitted under the Equality Act (EA2010), it's one area where Trans folk had rights stripped away as a result of the new legislation. Prior to the EA2010, if someone had a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) then they could not – except for a tightly defined set of circumstances ...
Tomorrow, voters in Glasgow Hillhead go to the polls to elect a new Councillor. The Liberal Democrat candidate in this election is one Ewan Hoyle. I may have mentioned this guy once or twice in passing before. He is a thoughtful, genuine, fiercely intelligent man who literally never gives up. Political parties can be a bit timid when it comes to drugs policy, fearful of upsetting the Daily Mail, and while our party was always the most likely to challenge the orthodoxy, it took some doing to persuade it to do so. Ewan, over several years, did that at Scottish ...
A chilly Monday morning saw me at another sod cutting. The event was to get work underway for the Wester Hailes Healthy Living Centre. This project will combine, for the first time in Edinburgh, a wide range of Community Health Services, a GP Practice and council services under one roof. Over the years it has struck me that in spite of the NHS having a very strong commitment to reducing the inequalities relating to health - where your quality of life and indeed length of life can vary significantly depending on your ethnicity, deprivation and where you live - the ...
I've come across shrill articles about the financial crisis being an excuse, opportunity or, if you're into conspiracies, a cunning plan to replace elected representatives with technocrats across Europe. This thinking seems to imply that there is someone planning, scheming and pulling strings ... it's a comforting thought, but I doubt there's anyone in charge. Merkel is playing a dangerous game and
The Guardian recently reported that children born in August do consistently worse in school than their peers born earlier in the year. That equates to 10,000 children doing worse because of when they were born and nothing to do with their ability. We have created a system that allows 10,000 to do worse in life each ...
The interview this morning with Brodie Clark, on Today, gives us a chance to reflect on where we are with the whole "Arrivalsgate" episode. I felt rather uneasy about Justin Webb pressing Clark on the matter of whether Theresa May knew about the waiving of fingerprint checks for health and safety reasons, which has been in place since 2007. It was gallant for Clark to concede that he probably should have checked whether May knew about the waiving, but when all's said and done, it is the responsibility of ministers to ensure that they have sufficient knowledge of what is ...
To a liberal the idea of banning anything is instinctively something that has to be scrutinised within an inch of its life. To us, the state has to have a compelling reason to interfere in someone's private life and people should generally be free to go about their business as they choose so long as they are not infringing the rights of others. And, so, just because doctors call for a ban on all smoking in private cars, this does not mean that one should be enacted, in much the same way as when the Police said they needed to ...
A government proposal to allow councils to scrap council tax discounts for second homes would give Cambridge an extra £88,000 in lost income. The move, for which the Liberal Democrats have long campaigned, will help Cambridge residents says MP Julian Huppert. In addition to ending the mandatory discount of between 10 and 50 per cent on council tax on second homes they would also allow councils to charge an Empty Homes Premium of up to 50 per cent on any home left empty for two years or longer. Cambridge has 614 second homes and the owners are entitled to an ...
Cambridgeshire Tories have been accused of making money out of teaching youngsters to cycle even though the full cost of the courses are funded by the government. The Conservative-run County Council has started charging schools £15 for each pupil taking part in its cycling schemes - Bikeability and Safer Cycling - despite receiving a government grant to pay for the training. In the past, the cycling courses had been offered free of charge to Year 5 and 6 schoolchildren. Susan van de Ven, Lib Dem Shadow Cabinet Member for Transport has questioned the county council on why it has suddenly ...
I have previously mentioned the need to trim foliage across the footway in Pentland Avenue that made the footway difficult to negotiate - see below :I am pleased to say that, after numerous reminders, the City Council has now got the trees trimmed (and at another location in the estate) - the picture below was taken at dusk yesterday, but the improvement is obvious :
So, I turn on my radio ( today programme) this morning to hear the BMA calling for a ban on smoking in cars (whether there is someone else present or not) citing research showing that the level of toxins present are 23 times higher than a smokey bar. I then turn on my PC and within minutes I find an article published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal from April last year entitled second hand smoke in cars how did the "23 times more toxic" myth become fact. It's only a three page article and well worth a read but ...
Mindwarp is one of the most extraordinary-looking Doctor Who stories ever made - sometimes brilliantly, sometimes just breathtakingly '80s. Bright pink! Bright blue! Bright orange! And as well as the scenery, some of the people look like that, too. Today* is officially Peri's birthday, and this was her final story with the Doctor, building up to a shock ending... Or is it? Add a memorable villain, guest stars who return with David Tennant, and behind it all, the Doctor's still on trial: has the evidence here been falsified? Why is he behaving so strangely? And can he out-act Brian Blessed? ...
