If you want to know which parties are up and which are down, look at the changes of allegiance in council chambers, says Augustus Carp. It looks like an important political event took place in Britain last week. No, not that lady in Scotland who gave up a government job and a nice house in Edinburgh: rather, Cllr Afzal Ahmed of Valley ward, Waltham Forest District Council, became the 100th Conservative councillor to quit the party since the May elections last year. Serious political hacks like us get excited by the goings-on in local government, but perhaps we pay too ...
The Guardian wins our Headline of the Day Award for this disturbing effort.
As we all know by know February is LGBT+ History Month so here's some of my favourite LGBT media I think you might be interested in! Please share your favourites in the comments – Books, TV, Podcasts, Fiction and Non-Fiction. Whether it's taught you, moved you, made you think, laugh or cry let everyone else know about it! Books Boy meets Boy – David Levithan A wonderful YA coming of age story set in small town America that is almost fantastical in it's acceptance of LGBT+ people – this book gave me a lot of hope when I was younger ...
On the weekend that various SNP leadership bids are launched, Scottish Lib Dem Leader Alex Cole-Hamilton set out this party's priorities for Government. Two things have cheered him this week. First a poll suggesting that we would double our Holyrood group to 8 if there were a Scottish election today. Massive week, but still our standing in the polls is retaining the lift we'd had in recent months and even ticking upwards. We'd double our group on this basis, and still 3 years to go. When the SNP collapse comes- and it's coming yet, @scotlibdems are part of what's next. ...
The latest edition of my weekly political polling round-up, The Week in Polls, is out. As it says: This weekend saw a new poll appear from Opinium for The Observer. That's doubly good news. Find out more by reading this edition of The Week in Polls here, and you can sign up below to receive future editions direct to your email inbox:
The Independent reports that a cabinet minister has admitted what most of us have worked out for ourselves, that Brexit has harmed investment in the UK by creating new barriers to doing business. The paper says that Mel Stride's comments come as a string of top business leaders have ditched the Tories for Labour, citing the government's weak economic record and internal turmoil: Speaking on Tuesday Mr Stride, the work and pensions secretary, said he accepted that new "frictions" between the UK and the EU "will have an impact". Asked if Brexit had hit business investment, Mr Stride told the ...
The Walker Brothers were an American act put together to appeal to the British market of the Sixties. Fronted by Scott Walker's glorious baritone, they had two number one hits: Make It Easy on Yourself and The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore. This track from their 1967 album Images, with its appealing melody, changes of mood and allusive lyrics, shows us the path Scott Walker was about to take on his solo albums. The Walker Brothers would not record together again until 1975.
Sat, 12:56: RT @CountBinface: Nicola Sturgeon and Jacinda Ardern resigned of their own record when they'd had enough. Boris Johnson was kicked out by h... Sat, 13:17: My great-aunt's advice on how to live a long life, in today's @guardian. https://t.co/N7sa5lqGER Sat, 18:40: Agent Provocateur, by Gary Russell et�al https://t.co/9WVr09LfG9 Sat, 21:08: Doctor Who: The Eaters of Light, by Rona�Munro https://t.co/iXb71DFh1a Sun, 01:48: Martha Jones and the Fugitive Doctor. #gally1 https://t.co/btpbi1l1No Sun, 02:06: She rules. #gally1 https://t.co/JE0uazwbRH Sun, 02:11: RT @HeadOverFeels: "I was like, can you not be that good in EVERY scene?" - Jodie on Sacha Dhawan. #gally1 https://t.co/LtR6hhjuwY ...
The simple way of protecting an account for an online service is with a password. But passwords on their own are not very secure. Which is why 'two factor authentication' (2FA) also exists. For non-IT experts, that's rather an obscure name for what is simple idea: the idea that you need to prove who you are via two different routes. That's common in all sorts of offline scenarios too (such as for opening a bank account, where one form of identity from each of two different lists is usually asked for). For online services, it means not only knowing the ...
The Liberal Democrat Group on Dundee City Council has responded to the SNP administration budget proposals by saying it has 'very significant' concerns at many of the SNP cuts and it will be moving an alternative set of budget proposals at Thursday's crunch budget meeting. Group Leader Councillor Fraser Macpherson said, "Dundee SNP continually drones on about it 'being ambitious for the city' but even even the most cursory look at their budget proposals casts serious doubts on that claim - millions of pounds of cuts and a huge council tax increase to boot. "Its own SNP government shares much ...
Sun 19th
00:44
Roald Dahl's books are being edited for commercial reasons - just as they were during his lifetime
Successful children's writers generally get a couple of decades in the sun. My own favourite as a child, Malcolm Saville, published his first book in 1943 and got a little longer, but in his last years (he died in 1982) he was painfully aware that he had gone out of fashion. Enid Blyton's reputation has not declined to that extent, but there has been a price to pay. Because, for decades, her books have been edited and re-edited so that they can still be sold. So much so that these days you have no idea how many of the words ...
