Watching Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and suddenly reminded of an event during a childhood holiday in Morecambe. My only memory of it is standing at the top of a castle-type structure in the children's playground, and shouting "I'm the King of the castle, and you're the dirty rascals!" at the other children. One of the others shouted back at me "But you're a girl! You can't be a King!" and I replied "I can do whatever I want to do! And I'm not a princess, or a dirty rascal, so there. I have to be the King!" The ...
It seems to be all the fashion come this time of a year, so much like Ed Miliband, having seen the nearest bandwagon I'm jumping on it. In reverse order 10. What is the point of Liberal Youth?! - Asking the important question what is the point of Liberal Youth, and can it ever be fixed, I caused much controversy and a little bit of hand wringing. The question still remains though, and as predictably as I stated, nothing about Liberal Youth changed in 2011 9. Is this the end of Johann Hari? #Interviewswithhari I tackled whether Hari's career was ...
BBC News confirms that the Conservative Party has Doubts about Rupert Matthews and that those doubts are centred on the book that he published for the UKIP member Bill Etheridge - complete with golliwog on the cover. Elsewhere, I rather like the way New Europe puts it: Matthews was discovered to be a sceptic over the EU, but on precious little else.That blog also quotes a source as saying that Helmer is threatening not to retire as planned and "foaming at the mouth" with anger. How can they...? You can see where this is going.
Should money from the sale of Council houses be spent on affordable homes? The first memory of politics came as child in the early 80's when my parents were invited to buy their Council House. It was a Conservative government and the then Labour party were opposed to such things. A Labour canvasser knocked on the door and told my parents that they were doing a terrible thing as they would be
SomeBeans refuses to be outraged at the proposal to allow NHS hospitals to obtain up to 49 per cent of their income from private patients. David Cameron's proposal for a minimum price for alcohol is defended by Labour blogger Representing the Mambo. "Miliband cannot see that he is taking a profoundly ideological position here - the idea that centralised leadership can find solutions even though it hasn't done so in the past." The assumptions behind Ed Miliband's new year message are unpacked by Stumbling and Mumbling. Somewhere I have an old London Underground map showing an extension of the Bakerloo ...
TweetFellow blogger @puffles2010 referred me to a piece entitled Sex trafficking in the digital age: is it becoming a legitimate business?. I commented, but thought I would express my views in more detail on here. The digital age is also known as the information age or era and represents the instant accessibility of information through ...
TweetIt's a phrase I've only recently come across, largely used to describe many young activists within the Occupy and UK Uncut movements. However, the definition could be loosely; A person who has reached maturity at the beginning of the 21st century who is keen to challenge the status quo, Pareto's Law and social policy and ...
As a historian and in my earlier years, a particlarly keen Royal historian to boot, there there were a handful of dates that intrigued me because after all, we all like a good mystery. What happened to King Edward II in 1327? What happened in 1399 to King Richard II? To what end came of King Henry VI in 1471? How was it that King Charles I met such a gruesome end in 1649? They all of course run in a similar vein - the unglorious deaths of once glorious monarchs. The Princes in the Tower But there's one mystery ...
F had to do a report on this book for school, and invited me to read it too. It's quite a fascinating package, and very short at only 100 pages; Kuijer gives a very strong sense of a repressed Dutch society of the early 1950s, still coming to terms with the recent war and occupation (Thomas, the central character, is 9 so would have been born in 1942), combined with some startling magical realism as Thomas and the slightly sorcerous neighbour call down the plagues of Egypt on his wife-beating father. The line that sticks with me is from quite ...
Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Some 564 party members responded, and we are publishing the full results here over several days. Vince, Danny and Chris: the Lib Dems' top trio in government LDV asked: In your opinion, which Lib Dem government minister has had the best year? Unusually for our Voice surveys, this question allowed an unprompted, free-text response, which 408 of our respondents rose to. And here's what you told us: 1. Vince Cable — 67 ...
Regular readers will be aware of mine and George Potter's campaign against the Government's proposals to put Cancer patients undergoing radiotherapy and chemotherapy through work capability assessments. At the moment, if you have Cancer and are undergoing IV chemo, you don't have to undergo the assessments, but if you're on oral chemo, you do. Macmillan Cancer Support and others highlighted this discrepancy and the Government decided to make the system the same for both groups. Unfortunately, they've done it the wrong way round. Instead of extending the exemption to the people on oral chemo, they've taken it away from those ...
I've taken a bit of a break from blogging, largely due to increased workload and family commitments in the run-up to the festive period. In fact, so detached have I been from political developments that I was was completely oblivious to the fact that I was mentioned by Alex Salmond during FMQs on 22nd December. That is simply typical - I watch FMQs all year religiously and then miss the only one in which I am personally mentioned. Fortunately my MSP Derek Mackay alerted me to this rather unexpected reality and I have spent the last few minuites watching last ...
Thu 29th
16:32
Election Expense Simon Holbrook Page 7 Prenton Wirral Council 2011 B Unsolicited material to elector...
B Unsolicited material to electors Item Receipt/ Item/ Name and address of supplier Date paid Value £ Amount Notional Disputed no invoice service (unless on invoice/receipt) paid £ value £ /unpaid 1 YES PRINTING PRINTING.COM@GUD DESIGN 20 BALLS RD PRENTON CH43 5RI 24/5/11 £151 00 £151 00 2 YES PRINTING PRINTING.COM.@GUD DESIGN 24/5/11 £180.00 £180.00 ...
Over on the BBC News site, Gary O'Donoghue has a decent overview of what 2011 has meant for the Liberal Democrats. The only line I'd really take issue with is this: A referendum on the voting system was the price Nick Clegg demanded for entering coalition... Actually, of course, the price Nick Clegg demanded for entering coalition was the implementation of 75% of the Lib Dem manifesto. Anyway, that's a relatively minor quibble and the rest of the piece is worth a read.
A Advertising Item Receipt/ Item/ Name and address of supplier Date paid Value £ Amount Notional Disputed no invoice service (unless on invoice/receipt) paid £ value £ /unpaid NIL Sub-totals Filed under: Election Expenses, Lib Dems, Wirral Council Tagged: Cllr Ann Bridson, Cllr Bridson, Margaret Ann Bridson, Prenton, Simon Holbrook
A decent enough audiobook read very effectively by David Troughton; aliens intrude into an 1827 British expedition on the Amazon, with some fairly horrific experiments being carried out on their captives - not really one for the younger listener!
Last year I went to the trouble of searching through my Facebook posts of the past twelve months to see which had attracted most comments. But Facebook's interface has now become so user-unfriendly that I will not waste time on that exercise. Twitter is a different matter; there are a bunch of different metrics out there (of which my favourite, despite its imperfections, is Crowdbooster) which enable you to see which of your tweets has been picked up by the Twitterverse at large. My most retweeted tweet ever was on 7 November 2010, a link to a Livejournal entry:What happened ...
Thu 29th
15:44Election Expenses: 2011 (Wirral Borough Council) Prenton ward Candidate: Simon Holbrook Agent: Marga...
Section 4 Donations Please tell us about any amount of money provided by the candidate to meet election expenditure – if no money has been provided enter 0 (zero) Total value £ 0 Enter the total value of all donations worth up to the cash value of £50.00. No further details are required about these ...
A set of Welsh Political Figures Playing Cards has just been released, featuring hand-drawn caricatures of 54 Welsh figures from across the political spectrum and across the decades. No prizes for guessing who one of the jokers is... There are some lovely pictures in the full set, including David Lloyd George, Ramsay MacDonald and James Callaghan. The set has been put together by political historian Professor Russell Deacon and artist Dan Peterson. The Welsh playing cards are available from Protest and Survive.
Thu 29th
14:18Election Expenses: 2011 (Wirral Borough Council) Prenton ward Candidate: Simon Holbrook Agent: Cllr ...
Signature of agent: M A Bridson ...
The nation is getting more and more rounded as time goes on. I'm guilty of it, I can't say no to a KFC dinner with Miss Bell or to a Double Cheese Burger after work on my way home, this coupled with pass times that don't involve me leaving my house and a job where I spend my day sat down has led me to put on a bit of weight. Obviously when Sophie gets older and I'm chasing her boyfriends up the street wielding a rolled up newspaper regularly I'll be a bit more spry! Seriously, it is an ...
2011 has most certainly been a year that has kept all of us busy - elections to the Assembly, referenda, journalists following us around making sense of it all and the people of Wales playing an active part in Welsh political life. As the Arab spring was sweeping through the Arab world bringing with it elections and democratic accountability, Wales was also playing its part in making its voice heard. This time last year, I was a few months away from leading my party into my first Assembly elections as leader. The media was predicting a wipe out for the ...
Thu 29th
13:38Election Expenses: 2011 (Wirral Borough Council) Prenton ward Candidate: Simon Holbrook Agent: Marga...
Page 3/18 Election expenditure form for election to Wirral Borough Council. Prenton ward. Simon Holbrook. 2011. Original form text in black, handwriting in red here (for emphasis) but not on B&W photocopy is in black. Mark as on candidate's declaration PR/SH Return of candidate spending: Local government election in England and Wales Section 1 Details ...
You would expect, wouldn't you, that a public service broadcaster with a deserved reputation for quality as the BBC has, would be very careful to make sure that it didn't discriminate against any one group of people. Unfortunately not. This year, the Corporation has fired off one insult after another at women and seems to be enjoying it. The Corporation is more than happy to put together all or mostly male panels to discuss the issues of the day. Question Time is the biggest offender, but other current affairs programmes are as bad. How often have I watched Politics Scotland ...
People are often impatient of ceremony. I was when I was young, although I could see the beauty in some ceremonies and a half-hidden meaning in some. Ceremony seemed to get in the way of thought and so often to reinforce the status quo in ways you couldn't question rationally, only ridicule - and that was a great time for satire in the UK. I still feel moved to remind myself (and others) that something isn't true or valuable because it's wrapped in ancient or impressive ceremony. Ceremony does not make a royal wedding either important beyond the couple, or ...
The period between Christmas and New Year always seems rather slow. The year is not yet finished, but I always feel rather reluctant to start something new, when I know it will be interrupted by yet another holiday- and also in my case, my return home to Tallinn. It has already been the longest trip to the UK this year, albeit that I have been here only 9 days. I find that I do not feel particularly alien- why would I? Yet I can not say that I am still in touch with the zeitgeist in Britain now. There is ...
Another of those lovely little unplanned trips yesterday. A friend texted me and asked if I wanted to go out on his and his wife's boat for a little jaunt down the river and a pub lunch. Now as someone ...
Its fair to say that for the last few years I have not been a fan of Christmas and given what happened 4 months ago I wasn't particularly keen on this forthcoming one either. My friends on the other hand ...
I probably should have written this post two weeks ago but Christmas has kept me busy and this post deserves to be written properly. As most people will know, I lost my Jack Russell Terrier Mickey almost 4 months ago ...
Translink tell us that there will be a 'Special holiday timetable' on Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Indeed. It is so special that there are No Trains. Filed under: Blogging
Whenever you visit the Isle of Wight on England's south coast, there is usually not a fantastic view very far away from you. One of the best ones, in my opinion though, is hidden in a place that not many ...
The important thing for Government is not to do things which individuals are doing already, and to do them a little better or a little worse; but to do those things which at present are not done at all. The answer is after the jump. Answer: John Maynard Keynes. (Which does, incidentally, make me wonder how many people who now call themselves Keynesians really are. Many on the left outside the Liberal Democrats, certainly, view such attitudes to the role of the state – when expressed by 21st century politicians – as something to abhor. But in that respect, Keynes ...
.....today, my lovely Granny, Annie Souter, was born. Here she is with me when I was a few months old. I've written about her and her wonderful influence on me many times before. When I was a little girl, every day she and her cairn terrier Cheeky would meet me from school and we'd walk back to her and my grandad's flat. There, she would make endless cups of tea in a china cup with a saucer, poured from a metal teapot. I actually decided to sharpen up my ideas a few weeks ago and bought a proper teapot, although ...
The end of the year is always a good time to right a few wrongs...so can I say 'sorry' to Mary Portas? I was mega critical of the decision to commission her to rejuvinate our High Streets earlier this year - and said so on here. But since then I've seen David Mitchell put his hands up and say he may have got this wrong... Ans since then her report has come out, making numerous sensible and progressive suggestions, to general applause all round. While she may not have all the answers, she has produced a detailed, well thought through ...
Here's something slightly different. Many bloggers post a list of their top posts for the year . I plan to do so. But I was just as interested in reflecting on what I read as what I write. I've got a stinking cold at the moment so as I lay awake this morning, in between sneezing and nose blowing, I tried to compile a list of my top ten blogs for 2011. If this gives the impression that I'm some sort of character from a well-known Nick Hornby novel then that wouldn't be entirely correct. Honest. One thing I concluded ...
Welsh Ministers have been fairly consistent of late in berating local councils for allegedly failing to collaborate to save the public money. However, today's Western Mail points out their own record is far from perfect. It seems that when the Welsh Government built their new £21 million offices in Aberystwyth, next door to those of Ceredigion Council, they declined to work with the local authority so as to save money. This was despite the fact that the two sets of offices were conceived as 'twins' with staff expected to share facilities such as the canteen and meeting facilities. Instead the ...
You know what I love about the streets of London? The pavements are so clean. Many is the time I crawl around on my hands and knees – rubbing my trousers into the walkways of my beloved city. Hardly anyone kicks me up the arse, either. You feel the same way too, don't you? What? You don't? But... but.... What else could explain the advertising industry's love of putting QR codes as close to the floor as possible? [IMG: Bottom Corner QR] [IMG: Cycle QR] [IMG: Eurolines QR] [IMG: Fear Index QR] [IMG: Ghost QR] [IMG: Heathrow QR] [IMG: James ...
As recently reported in the Courier, around £3.4 million of further budget cuts are to be considered by the SNP-run administration on Dundee City Council. As I indicated in the Courier, I would take issue with the claim that the grant settlement is better than anticipated. Anyone looking objectively at the actual settlements announced by the SNP government for each authority can see that Dundee has a cash terms cut when other councils have seen a cash terms increase. The SNP government has badly let down Dundee in terms of its disappointing settlement for Dundee City Council. The SNP continually ...
Thu 29th
04:01Election Expenses (Prenton ward) Wirral Council May 2011 Candidate Simon Holbrook Agent Cllr Margare...
Click on images for a larger version. Filed under: Election Expenses, Lib Dems, Wirral Council Tagged: agent, candidate, Cllr Ann Bridson, Prenton, Simon Holbrook
