(For parts one to eight of the good doctor's investigation, click on the Doctor Watson Investigates tag). I stared, dumbstruck, at the hair for a length of time that felt like an eternity but must only have been a few seconds. This was the woman who had visited me the previous morning (was it merely ...
Argentina is at it again! One would have thought they would be remembering their dead as the 30 year anniversary of the Falkland Conflict approaches. Instead they are engaged in their favoured nationalist pastime of sabre-rattling and intimidation of the Falkland population. Lately the Argentine president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, has been spending her time convincing the South American neighbours to join in the perpetual diplomatic bullying of the islanders. In December, she managed to convince the Mercosur trade federation which includes Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil to ban ships bearing the Falkland's flag from entering their ports. It does ...
Just published, ahead of a meeting on Friday morning, is the Liverpool City Council's cabinet proposals for the future of the libraries in the City. Woolton library is under threat of closure if an organisation to take it over can't be found. The proposed changes at other South Liverpool libraries are less drastic - Garston for example would open five days a week although for shorter hours. Given the short period between the publication on line and the actual cabinet meeting, I wonder how many people will notice this decision coming up. I also wonder why the suggested opening hours ...
Yes, the high street is in trouble. But something else is going on there which is important for the future - a new division between would-be monopolies trying to sell us everything, and local enterprises with a personality behind them. If you're not one of those, you;re in trouble:
Scottish Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader and MP for East Dunbartonshire Jo Swinson, has again urged advertisers and retailers to use models covering a diverse of sizes, ages and shapes in their advertising and media campaigns to reflect the reality of different body shapes and to promote healthy body image. Co-founder of the Campaign for Body Confidence, Jo is currently chairing a Parliamentary Inquiry into the causes and consequences of body image anxiety. Her calls come as the retail market floods with health fads and "miracle weight-loss products screaming out at people to diet as part of New Year resolutions. Jo ...
Cambridge Carbon Footprint is starting the year 2012 with an exciting program! This winter you can, for example, learn about seasonal cooking, get new clothes in an eco-friendly fashion or combine entertainment with climate change information with Danny Chivers, just book your place quickly as these events are very popular! Our January eco-renovation tour is now fully booked (get in touch to join the waiting list), but we have another eco-renovation event taking place in February. Find our more below! Contents Carbon Conversations starting in JanuaryNew Year Resolution with a difference!The Work that Reconnects 7 JanuaryCosy Cottenham 14 JanuarySwishing Party! ...
It would be very easy for me to revel in Ed Miliband's unpopular leadership of his party and to be as opportunistic as possible at the revelation of his unpopularity amongst party supporters, but such temptations must be resisted. For whilst it makes Government that little bit easier knowing that the main opposition leader poses ...
Today, I ask you as fellow Liberal Democrats to sign the Grant Alan Turing a Pardon petition on the number 10 website. The petition reads: "We ask the HM Government to grant a pardon to Alan Turing for the conviction of 'gross indecency'. In 1952, he was convicted of 'gross indecency' with another man and was forced to undergo so-called 'organo-therapy' – chemical castration. Two years later, he killed himself with cyanide, aged just 41. Alan Turing was driven to a terrible despair and early death by the nation he'd done so much to save. This remains a shame on ...
Dear Sir, Amol Rajan writes that the public wouldn't forgive David Cameron calling a snap election. More to the point, the law no longer allows him to call a snap general election. Parliament passed the Fixed-term Parliaments Act in 2011. Yours etc.
Liberal Democrats in Southport are calling for localresidents to help save the resort's tourism industry. As part of the drive to save £20 million next year, SeftonCouncil is looking at all its services to see if savings can be made. Oneproposal is to review the Council's Tourism function with the "possible outcomeof ceasing to provide a Tourism service". The consultation process is shortlycoming to an end. John Dodd John Dodd said: "Tourism is vital to jobs and to the economygenerally in Southport. Research showsthat tourism is worth hundreds of millions of pounds a year to the localeconomy, and supports 5000 ...
I have just done the stats for 2011 and have found that during the year, my videos were viewed 625,638 times on YouTube. And though my travel videos continue to have the most individual viewings (the one I shot in a former Soviet submarine base in the Ukraine has nearly 240,000 viewings though only 40,000 of these are from the past year), my gardening and cookery videos are now breaking into my
I read this while finishing Gibbon, who is of course far superior, and in anticipation of tackling Diarmuid McCullagh's much more impressive-looking survey later this year. It's an assembly of short and very short essays, aimed at evangelical Anglicans in the UK, originally published in 1977 and revised in 1990. The one thing I really did learn from it was the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century, which I now realise was a hugely important step towards American independence in religious culture, leading to the political reality. But there was a lot that set my teeth on edge: the irritating ...
Liberal Democrats in Southport are calling for local residents to help save the resort's tourism industry. As part of the drive to save £20 million next year, Sefton Council is looking at all its services to see if savings can be made. One proposal is to review the Council's Tourism function with the "possible outcome of ceasing to provide a Tourism service". The consultation process is shortly coming to an end. Councillor Lord Ronnie Fearn was Southport's MP for 9 years, during which time he was the Liberal Democrat parliamentary spokesman on Tourism. He said: "Tourism is vital to jobs ...
Are the Occupy protesters on to something? Or is theirs just a hopeless battle against abstract nouns? I have been rather exercised about some abstract nouns recently. First was the word "Neoliberalism" selected by Simon Titley of the Liberator as one of three Bad Ideas to have infected British politics over the last 30 years, sweeping along the Liberal Democrat leadership with the rest of the mainstream. The other ideas were the "Westminster Bubble" (the idea promoted by a lazy media that only ideas that have taken hold in Westminster matter), and that the Westminster elite have a monopoly of ...
Good sleuthing by Liberal Democrat Assembly Member Dee Doocey has brought to light the large sums the Met Police is spending on sending its officers on business class flights: Figures show that Met officers took 1,497 business class flights in the last financial year at a cost to the taxpayer of £2,675,768. A total of £44,000 was spent flying Met staff first class – mostly accompanying VIPs requiring constant police protection. Officers flew first or business class to 77 destinations last year, including short-haul trips to Ireland, France and Austria. Liberal Democrat Assembly member Dee Doocey today said the purchase ...
And educational retelling of a number of ancient Egyptian myths, aimed at a readership of about a fifth of my age, so didn't quite grab me. I knew far fewer of these stories than I had expected, but wasn't sure that this was the way to treat them most effectively.
The end of the four-volume Sharing Knife series, in which the romance / action plot, of mutual suspicions between two human cultures, equally threatened by an 'orrible supernatural menace, resolves in entirely satisfactory manner, with much character-building wisdom being imparted to the foolish younger relatives. But I found myself a bit dissatisfied with Bujold's use of the very rich background she has developed, for three reasons: first, the story got way further into the technical details of her world's magical system than I was interested in; second, my niggling concern about the uniqueness of Dag and Fawn's mixed marriage was ...
Last night I stayed up, almost to the end of the Caucus results in Iowa, it was 99% declared and at that point we knew it was going to be no more than 100 in it either way, but I just ran out of stamina and fell asleep. In the end Mitt Romney won by 8 votes over Rick Santorum both on 25% of the Caucus. I was sitting there with 10 taps open in Chrome including two maps. One from WYNC spliting the various counties by demographic and Google's in which you could drill down to see the strength ...
Wed 4th
17:35
Iowa: A totally amazing infographic, 2 totally amazing facts, and how the convention delegates get s...
1. New York Times has an amazing graphic of the vehicles and personnel used by each candidate in Iowa. Full graphic can be found here, but for a taster, compare the rather different resources of the two 'winners'...(click to enlarge) (H/t to @sunny_hundal who tweeted this out earlier). 2. The two candidates spent very different sums as well... ...but as my good friend @tommorton pointed out earlier - the Iowa election overall makes us all look like electoral paupers... 3. While Iowa operates a proportional system for dividing delegates to the electoral convention, things are not exactly straightforward from here ...
Wed 4th
17:10
Planning Committee (Wirral Council) 3rd January 2011 Part 11 late list & report (8/1/2009)
Late List Page 1 of 3 Page 2 of 3 Page 3 of 3 Filed under: Planning, Wirral Council Tagged: late list, OUT/2005/7764
It's wild and windy but there's just 120 days till polling day on May 3rd 2012 so why should I appoint my agent now? Being the agent for an election candidate is a highly responsible and legally significant position (see the article below) and one that many candidates (and local parties) leave to the beginning of the regulated election period (27th March). True, you have to appoint an agent as part of the nomination procedure between 27th March and noon on 4th April 2012 or else act as your own agent (not at all advisable) but an agent can be ...
One trial that has caught mine (and apparently Twitter's) interest over the past two days is the #ObscenityTrial. Now I don't know all of the ins and outs (pun not intended) but according to the defence lawyer in the case the trial will: "...ultimately clarify the law on the representation of gay fisting, urolagnia as well as BDSM." The problem I have with this trial is that in order to be found guilty the material must be able to "deprave and corrupt" a viewer. I personally am at a loss to see how anyone could be depraved or corrupted by ...
Wed 4th
16:53
Three quarters of the Republican party reject Romney time after time - therefore how can he be a suc...
Joshua A Tucker makes an excellent comment on Arena about the Iowa showing last night: Yes it is a disappointing showing (for Romney), but yes he is still the front runner. No Santorum can not win a protracted fight. But the most interesting question still remains when Mitt Romney is going to break out of the 20s in a state that is not one of his "home" states. Despite the self-destruction of all of his rivals to date, three-quarters of Republicans still refuse to endorse him. It is very difficult to see anyone else getting the Republican nomination at this ...
We are in real difficulty over the NHS Bill. Spring conference showed the party at its best. The membership expressed concerns and the leadership responded deftly with the "listening exercise". This aimed to reassure NHS and public opinion by securing substantial changes to Andrew Lansley's proposals, without too much loss of face within the coalition. We have not succeeded. The changes to the Bill have failed to quell fears that the NHS is being fragmented in pursuit of market dogma. There is no serious support or enthusiasm for the Bill within the NHS; indeed opposition among the health professions is ...
Wed 4th
16:45
A new year - time to take stock: What Opinion Polls teach us from being in Government and what it sa...
Really interesting looking at what caused what in the opinion polls. Really worth a read! "The upward poll ratings are more interesting. January 2011 to March 2011 saw the largest improvement in poll rating since we have been in Government yet this was perhaps the period where the leadership was least in control. " ...
Wed 4th
16:24Planning Committee (Wirral Council) 3rd January 2011 Part 10 Local Development Framework for Wirral ...
The Chair apologised that David Ball was not able to present the report which was about section 106 as opposed to the Community Infrastructure Levy. Cllr Dave Mitchell said it was for noting. Cllr Brian Kenny said he was happy. The Chair referred to 4.2.7 and that they had to work out a charge, but ...
One of the key objectives of the Yes campaign was to make as many phone contacts as possible. I, and the North West team, as well as all the other regions, put in a lot of time and energy in getting people into the phonebanks to try and get the numbers of contacts required to achieve the millions of identified ...
Wed 4th
16:11Planning Committee (Wirral Council) 3rd January 2011 Part 9 APP/11/01147 (6 Hazel Grove, Irby, CH61 ...
The Chair said with regards to planning application APP/11/01147 (6 Hazel Grove, Irby, CH61 4UZ – Single storey rear and side extensions with front porch) that issues on page 76 had been raised about the accuracy of the boundary as well as privacy and the gap to a neighbour's garage. In his view there were ...
Wed 4th
15:59Planning Committee (Wirral Council) 3rd January 2011 Part 8 APP/11/01279 - 457 Borough Road, Oxton, ...
The Chair said item 13 (APP/11/01279 – 457 Borough Road, Oxton, CH42 0HB – Change of use of the ground floor unit from A1 (retail) to C3 (dwelling houses) to convert the building into two flats with associated alterations to front and rear elevations, including an external staircase to the rear.) and item 14 (APP/11/01282 ...
Last week The Times ran this piece from me as part of a trio, also featuring Mehdi Hasan and Tim Montgomerie: This year has certainly not been short of Harold Macmillan's "events, dear boy, events". Political and economic turmoil disrupted even the usually quiet periods deep in August and the final shopping days before Christmas. Yet at the end of the year the political rollercoaster has left all three main parties in remarkably similar situations to those in which they found themselves at the start of the year. Politically, it has been a year of treading water. Labour still has ...
Just to let people know that I've had notice from Essex County Council about roadworks that are going to be carried out on Westway (the A134) between the Balkerne Hill and Colne Bank roundabouts. These are some important safety works, centred around fitting in a proper barrier system on the central reservation, but they might cause delays while they're happening. They're scheduled to start next Monday (the 9th January) – weather permitting – and will continue for about six weeks, though the work is only scheduled to take place during the day from 9.30am until 3.30pm, so it should hopefully ...
Wed 4th
15:45Planning Committee (Wirral Council) 3rd January 2011 Part 7 APP/11/01302, 18 Melford Drive, Prenton,...
The Chair said that item 11 APP/11/01302 (18 Melford Drive, Prenton, CH43 3EX) for internal alterations with new window layout was the start of a series of applications by SDA. Therefore there would be no presentations. He said it was recommended for approval, however he commented that the one objection referred to on page 68 ...
With the summer 2012 drawing ever closer, it is no surprise that the amount of column inches devoted to the London Olympics is increasing. What has surprised me, though, has been how much of this coverage has been of the controversies that seem to be multiplying around the Games, and just what may be done in the name of the Olympics next year. Flatly, I am worried that the Government is importing dodgy methods of event management to Stratford and the rest of London. The security measures recently announced are especially concerning. I hope no Liberal in Britain is reassured ...
Wed 4th
15:24Planning Committee (Wirral Council) 3rd January 2011 Part 6 APP/11/01208 - St Bartholomews Church, C...
The Chair moved the Committee onto item 9 (APP/11/01208) – St Bartholomews Church, Church Lane, Thurstaton, CH61 0HW – Renewal of planning permission APP/2008/6027 for new entrance for disabled access incorporating ramped access, wheelchair w/c facility, tea point and meeting area. He said it would be a repetition of the past. Matthew said it was ...
This leaflet is all about the proposed changes to the Kingsway junction and the sliproad off the M60, and has pretty much the same information as we posted on the website a couple of weeks ago. Cheadle & Gatley Keeping in Touch, January 2012
sammymorse: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, It Will Be On The Internet Today's great information technology goes out onto the streets with us on our smartphones. It does not only convey information from top to bottom, but also from bottom to top and side to side. It continues to convey information, however, from top to bottom. A lot of information. In the internet age, those at the apex of politics, business or civil society still have enormously more leverage to convey information to the world at large than the average person. Barack Obama's 2008 Presidential campaign is living proof ...
Wed 4th
14:57Planning Committee (Wirral Council) 3rd January 2011 Part 5 APP/11/01118 - Land to the North , South...
The Chair said that item 8 (APP/11/01118 – Land to the North , South and East of Gasholders, Hind Street, Birkenhead, Wirral CH41 5DA – Application to replace an extant planning permission 2005/07764 – Erection of non food retail, office, trade sales, restaurant/public house, car showroom and crèche (Outline)) had been before the Committee before. ...
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for my Alter Ego blog. I add it to remind me to blog more often as I have started to enjoy it again. Here's an excerpt: The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 11,000 times in ...
Why not join hundreds of other Lib Dem Voice readers in getting our latest headlines by email? Some people like regularly visiting a site to see if there's new stories of interest. Some people like subscribing to its news feed (RSS) and checking that way. But if you prefer email, you can instead sign up to get a daily early morning email with a summary of the previous day's posts from Lib Dem Voice, complete with a note of how many comments each post has got and convenient links to click on if any take your fancy and you want ...
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog. Here's an excerpt: The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 17,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 6 sold-out performances for that many ...
Last February, I chaired a conference on Asking for Major Gifts organised by the Institute of Fundraising. Other than trying to keep the day's speakers to time — something at which I failed almost as badly as they did — my principal other task was to offer a 'keynote speech' to kick off proceedings. I've dusted it down, and here it is... (The text accompanies the inevitable PowerPoint presentation.) Stephen Tall – Asking for Major Gifts (Institute of Fundraising, 7th Feb 2011) I expect most of us in the room today have at some point been asked to come up ...
Wed 4th
14:16Planning Committee (Wirral Council) 3rd January 2011 Part 4 APP/11/01050 - Manor Place, Bromborough,...
Matthew introduced item 7 (APP/11/01050) – Manor Place, Bromborough, Wirral, CH62 4TU. This was for forty affordable homes two stories high. The planning application covered four sites, site 1 (land to the South of the Green), site 2 (a former allotment site on Manor Place), site 3 (land on Manor Place) and site 4 (land ...
For many years I have done the end of year meme on LiveJournal about how the past year went. This year that meme has been promoted to the blog as I slowly let me LJ wither and die. Here is my review of 2011 in the form of the same 40 questions I have answered year in, year out for the past decade or so. 1. What did you do in 2011 that you'd never done before? I commentated on a live football match for radio. That has to be up there. I went and stayed in a hotel on ...
Yesterday's post on The New Statesman has already proved the most commented on I've ever achieved, and the comments are coming thick and fast. Do click on the link above and go and see the fun for yourself. Also, do feel free to add a comment there (good or bad) , here, and (if you are so inclined) click the 'like' post at the bottom of the piece on the NS site. Thanks for all the supportive comments from within the party, both on the article and directly on Twitter - much appreciated, as I wrote the piece with a ...
How often do you encounter something important and find yourself thinking "how is it that I didn't know about this already?". It happened to me last week when reading an FT piece (£) by Gillian Tett on the flash crash experienced by the US equities market in May 2010. On the afternoon of 6th May the market lost nearly a $1tr in value in half an hour, only to recover most of that value by the close of the day's trading. An enquiry followed, but no one has yet established precisely what happened. Tett's article draws on a Foresight report ...
Wed 4th
13:26Planning Committee (Wirral Council) 3rd January 2011 Part 3 APP/11/00044 (Bay View Nursing Home, 69 ...
Matthew introduced agenda item 4 APP/11/00044 (Bay View Nursing Home, 69 Albion Street, New Brighton, CH45 9JG). He said there had been an outline application for ten apartments in 2008 and that it was a primary residential area. He said policies HS4 & SPD 2 applied and the main issues were design and demonstrating whether ...
Here is my sixteenth monthly round-up of blog figures for anyone who is remotely interested in who reads my little blog. These stats for the month of December come courtesy of google analytics. A Busy Month / A Quiet Month In one way, December was a busy month, in another, it was not. My output for the month of 33 blog posts was the highest since March. This was due to my daily Musical Advent Calendar countdown to Christmas which accounted for 24 of the 33 posts. Despite this, because that bulk was of a niche interest, my December total ...
Welcome to Liberal Democrat Voice's coverage of the House of Lords, where we'll be flagging up some of the forthcoming events at the more reflective end of the Palace of Westminster. So, without further ado... The House of Lords returns to work next Tuesday after its Christmas recess, with a heavy legislative schedule to be dealt with before the end of the Session, and the first fortnight offers a hint of what is to come. Days 2, 3 and 4 of the Committee Stage of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill will be taken on, with Lord ...
Claims that assisted dying legislation would put the lives of thousands of disabled and vulnerable people at risk have been dismissed as "scaremongering nonsense with no basis in fact" by an MEP expert. A report by the independent commission on ... Continue reading →
Lovely bit of compilation and analysis done over on Bibliophylax's blog, putting together all the front page main headlines from the Daily Express for 2011. In that list they are sorted by theme, which made me wonder which words crop up most often. And so this word cloud:
Wed 4th
12:16
The Daily Mail and Stephen Lawrence. Why the newspaper still gets it so horribly wrong.
I have been on a bit of a bandwagon recently over what the role of the media is not only in this country but around the world. Is the media there to drive the news agenda or is it there to report the news? I know my thoughts but I am a lone voice in the wilderness with the wind howling back into my face so my voice is only heard by me. So yesterday two men were convicted of the murder of Stephen Lawrence. They will be sentenced shortly and will be sentenced as juveniles as they were 16 ...
Local business Hobbs House Bakery are featured on a programme on Channel 4 at 8.30pm tonight.
Wed 4th
11:45
No recount when the result is within 8 votes! We could easily have woken up to winner Santorum...
As the US presidential campaign continues to roll into progress in the minds of the political classes in Britain it has been well underway in the States for months. Possibly the most surprising aspect of the results from the Iowa Caucus last night is not that Rick Santorum came a close second, though he has spent a ...
The news that First Great Western are applying for a new franchise to run rail services between Cornwall and London is not really a surprise. But the question for the company is what they can offer local passengers in terms of service improvements or price reductions so that we should support their bid. First Great Western pulled out of their current 10 year contract three years early in order to avoid paying the final tranche of money to the government and in order to seek a longer - 15 year - contract. Why the previous government allowed such a break ...
For me, this year is starting as it is for millions of our fellow citizens - dealing with a complete change, having found myself redundant. I am though, one of the lucky ones. I don't need to worry about getting a new job for a while. I have the luxury of taking my time and hopefully finding something that suits me rather than being forced to take something, anything, to keep the wolf from the door. But most don't have that luxury, for our young people coming out of school or university with all the enthusiasm and aspiration of youth ...
Terence Eden specialises in helping organisations craft amazing QR campaigns. Contact Terence for a consultation Wander around the London Underground and you're likely to see safety posters from the British Transport Police (BTP). This is the first one that I've seen with a QR code on it. [IMG: BTP QR Poster] It's a fairly good poster. A good call to action, a URL in case your phone can't read QR codes, and the code itself is well sized and has a high level of error correction. Scanning the code, however, leads to a rather disappointing user experience. A non-mobile mobile ...
[IMG: Parliament - Big Ben] There used to be an odd omission in the generally accepted electoral ethics of British politics. Let the Prime Minister unilaterally pick who can vote in an election? Absurd. Let the Prime Minister personally appoint all the returning officers? Never. Let the Prime Minister unilaterally relocate polling stations to suit his or her interests? Of course not. But let the Prime Minister unilaterally pick the date of the general election just to suit his or her own election prospects? Of course, no problem - that is the British way. Or rather, that was the British ...
A very belated congratulations to three local people who were recognised in the New Year's Honours list. Author E V Thompson MBE was kind enough to appear at last year's Causley Festival in the town and is one of the most borrowed local authors from our library. Andrew Brown now lives near our town after a career in advertising including a spell as Director General of the Advertising Association. He has been made an OBE But most of all, congratulations to Mary Butler MBE who has given more than 50 years of volunteer service in a wide variety of guises. ...
Our business focus is on you, the passenger. Our staff are trained to ensure you have a safe, comfortable and enjoyable journey, and you should find them helpful and courteous at all times. If you have a problem at a station, please speak to a member of our staff, who will always be willing to help you. Our staff can be easily identified by their uniforms and name badges.During times of severe service disruption, ScotRail will deploy Customer Action Teams to help station and ontrain staff provide the best possible information and customer service for our passengers.During service disruption we ...
The Leader of Reading Borough Council has confirmed Council Tax will not go up in Reading in April: I looked on their website to see what they are doing about consulting on next year's budget, but to be quite honest, since it changed it is virtually unusable. No idea how you are supposed to find anything! Bracknell Forest's budget consultation says Council Tax will not go up in Bracknell either: West Berkshire aren't saying – but they have been running an extended consultation on their budget strategy, with an explanation of where the pressures are: http://www.westberks.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=24336 And Wokingham? ...
News that David Cameron is planning on imposing minimum alcohol pricing has not produced anything near the level of disgust that it should have. This policy has the fatal flaw of expecting alcoholics and binge drinkers to behave in a rational and financially prudent manner. It's self-evident that both groups will continue to purchase alcohol at a higher price, sacrificing other parts of their budget to make up the difference – perhaps clothing, perhaps food, perhaps their children. And let's not forget, this policy will penalise all drinkers, not just the minority who commit crimes whilst under alcoholic influence. NHS ...
Lib Dem Transport Minister Norman Baker has just introduced a new secure Blue Badge starting this week (1 Jan). He states it's "as secure as a banknote". The previous Blue Badges were made from card and they were handwritten. Easy to doctor and forge. So the new ones with security features similar to latest driving licences - holograms, digital photos, etc should make stealing Blue Badges much less attractive. That's the theory. Fingers crossed that's the practice. Some boroughs traffic wardens when they see a Blue Badge call the telephone number of the Blue Badge holder. Sometimes they find they're ...
Wed 4th
09:23
A new year - time to take stock: What Opinion Polls teach us from being in Government and what it sa...
As we say good bye to 2011, it is time to take stock and look forward to what we need to do in 2012. As politics is all about the poll on polling day lets have a look at what we can learn from the polls since we have been in Government. Polls are relative ...
Monmouth MP, David Davies' assertion in today's Western Mail that large scale immigration is having a huge environmental impact by increasing the demand for new homes in Wales, lacks one important element, proof! Mr. Davies claims that the demand for 350 new housing units in his own constituency due to net migration underlines his case. However, there is a significant difference between migration and immigration. Indeed it is likely that most of the demand will be due to people moving into Monmouthshire from England. It is clear from the MP's remarks that he does not consider the English as immigrants, ...
A Facebook friend of mine last night summed up my feelings about the Republican caucuses in Iowa perfectly when he said: Looking forward to finding out what flat earth, anti-woman, homophobic, creationist, global warming denier the Republicans vote for in #IowaTruth is, any of this bunch is enough to give any self respecting liberal, anyone who cares about equality, the absolute creeps. The most radical of them favours same sex civil unions, but would still implement a constitutional ban on abortion. He only got 1%. A quarter of the Republican voters of Iowa voted for a man, Rick Santorum, who ...
To mark the start of 2012, we're running a series of posts over consecutive days on the main challenges for the Liberal Democrats in 2012. I've already written about the four priorities for the party's new Chief Executive, Tim Gordon, but as the Liberal Democrats are more than just the one man whilst he has four, this series sets out six for the party. When the May 2012 set of seats were previously contested in May 2008 the party made net gains – up 33 seats overall – despite a 4% fall in the party's notional national vote share* – ...
This week's choice would have been a hard one if one of my all time favourite songs hadn't been one of the options. I'll be revealing that later (at c. 5pm GMT) but, tell me, what would you have chosen? Here are your options: Of course, there's a number of those that I've already used elsewhere on these pages... but would that have ruled them out? Anyway, that's all academic as the challenge is who would you choose, not guess what I've chosen, although you can do that as well! Andrew
Arising out of the recent consultation exercise, there have been some changes to polling stations in the West End (primarily in the east of the area) and the City Council has recently published a new map showing these. The boundaries of polling districts WBD, WBJ and WAJ have been re-aligned. Electors in WBD (north of Hawkhill) who have previously voted at Park Place Primary will vote at the Al-Maktoum College in future, as will electors in the southern section of WBJ (Brewery Lane etc) who previously voted at the Mitchell Street Centre. You can download the map by clicking on ...
Forgive me for the title; I've been on a Stieg Larsson bender over the past week or so, which you can blame on the Fincher/Craig/Mara movie. The English movie led me to the books and the Swedish movies. As of today, I've finished Hornet's Nest (the novel). It's relevant, I promise. My first post delved into the ideas of "subjectivity" on the wiki, and my second about the community. In retrospect, those two barely scratch the surface; this'll be a bumper post touching on some stuff which, themselves, may get a blog post unrelated to TV Tropes. The best place ...
A report in yesterday's Telegraph that the cost of subsidising bars and restaurants in the Houses of Parliament is actually increasing at a time of austerity is a further indication that MPs do not get it. In contrast the Welsh Assembly has made a huge effort to reduce its catering subsidy. Most public sector employers with catering facilities subsidise them, however few have the sort of deal available in Parliament, where prices are very generous compared with private sector providers nearby. The paper reports that the Commons Commission said in June 2010 that £500,000 should be sliced from catering costs ...
[IMG: Rambles of Neil Monnery] 100,000 Views for The Rambles of Neil Monnery So yesterday The Rambles of Neil Monnery reached a little bit of a milestone. Since March 28th when I moved to my own self-hosted WordPress blog I have received 100,000 views. That is many more than I could ever have imagined. I can't believe so many people read my inane witterings but it does make me feel as though it is all worthwhile. I know there is no real content structure and just what pops into my fron whenever I decide to write. For the foreseeable future ...
It's official. I am a politics nerd. I got up at 3am to examine the Iowa caucus results by county. Turnout is about the same as four years ago, suggesting that Santorum will do well, as the evangelicals will make up a high proportion of the voters. CNN say Paul and Romney tied in the entrance polls, but that's no sure indicator. The Iowa GOP site (linked above) is showing Santorum and Romney tied on 25% with Paul on 22%. Interestingly, Santorum seems to dominate the county map, but that just means the corn voted for him. Sorry, Iowa. One ...
So says Paul Carter Conservative Leader of KCC, as he muses on Kent Council's coming year, in fact so confident is he, as a new year dawns he himself is off on some motor rally throughout January, and of course, as we all know, Paul Carter also decided, from what can be gleaned from the murky and secretive world of the council, that at great cost to the public, it no longer to needs a senior professional officer to head up the organisation. The word anarchy springs to my mind, but then I haven't just said goodbye to many, many ...
An important lesson from Cory Doctorow on what the coming war on general purpose computation. The attempts by industry to censor the internet and control our computing devices are just the first salvo in a century-long conflict. The stakes are the freedom, fortune and privacy of the entire human race. I particularly like his upbeat ...
