I wrote last week about the odd situation in Gwynedd, where a lack of candidates forced a non-election in one ward, and that ward turned out to be crucial for overall control of the Council.
Nominations for the ensuing by-election have now closed, and the electors of Bryncrug/Llanfihangel sadly haven’t shown a continued spirit of anarchism by refusing to nominate anyone again. Instead, having not been able to find a single candidate a few weeks, this time they’ve found five, including three different independents.
However, it looks like the election won’t be as crucial as originally thought, as Plaid Cymru have now done a deal with Labour to run the Council. I’ll keep an eye out for other updates as this campaign rolls on, though.
To go one better than Jonathan Calder, and as a reminder that this blog will be reaching its tenth anniversary next year. Here’s what I was writing about on or about the 16th May in previous years:
18th May, 2011: Maths, Hanningfield Style proved that Essex is not larger than Croatia.
16th May 2010: I was about to head to the Birmingham NEC for the Liberal Democrat Special Conference.
15th May 2009: Poem: In search of a gilded benefactor found me singing the ironic praises of Hazel Blears.
10th May 2008: Some fly, some sleep with the fishes as I find an amusing line in a BBC News report.
12th May 2007: Just a simple question about Eurovision generates a huge nine comments!
15th May 2006: Where the road leads reveals the route I’ll be taking on my walk from John O’Groats to Land’s End
14th May 2005: The sins of the father is my review of the Doctor Who episode ‘Father’s Day’.
16th May 2004: We’re back to a Blogger-produced site with Dude, where’s my taste? In which I thought the US had scraped the bottom of the reality TV barrel with a series in which two men pretended to be gay. Oh, such innocent times.
16th May 2003: It was so long ago, posts made with Blogger didn’t have titles. In this post, I talk about PR in European elections and some of the disingenuous arguments around it. Of course, if I’d done this exercise yesterday, I’d have linked to this post about London bidding for the Olympics to show how nothing’s really changed in nine years.
See you again for the next version of this exercise in 2021!
It’s a little known fact that the Joker was originally known as the Scoremaster, until someone realised that was particularly silly, so they went for another extra card in the deck instead.
Greece: Trying to understand SYRIZA – Paul Mason provides some interesting background and context for the current political situation in Greece.
Meet the new boss – “Thus, in our fair city, we see a public manifestation of the petro-sheiks’ triumph over the leveraged buyout merchants.”
Top GOP Pollster to GOP: Reverse On Gay Issues – Andrew Sullivan with some fascinating internal Republican polling. I wonder if the same questions are being asked over here?
Seattle ‘supervillain’ Rex Velvet issues another warning video – Something rather silly going on in Seattle, though the video looks rather well produced, which makes me wonder if it’s all leading up to something. A new Starbucks flavour, perhaps?
Norway abolishes state sponsored Church of Norway – It appears that the Norwegian Parliament will be voting to disestablish their national church in the very near future.
There’s a lot of talk this morning about the Institute of Advanced Motoring going on a tilt against cyclists, trumpeting up the results of an unscientific ‘survey’ that supposedly shows 57% of cyclists regularly going through red lights. Until, of course, you go into the actual figures – as this Guardian article does – and discover that even on their self-selective terms, less than 2% say they do it regularly.
I’m not denying that some cyclists do jump red lights, but the idea that it’s some great problem has entered our national urban mythology as a fact, helped by prejudice-fuelling supposed surveys like this. Frankly, I find it amazing the hatred some people show towards cyclists, while completely ignoring the amount of comparable law-breaking car drivers too. The CTC and other cycling organisations are far too focused on their own issues to do it, but what might a similar survey of car drivers find. How many break the speed limit, especially in residential areas? How many plough on over zebra crossings despite their being pedestrians crossing or about to cross? How many have pulled out on roundabouts directly ahead of a cyclist, figuring that the person on two wheels will be able to avoid smashing into them? I see all of those frequently, but apparently it’s cyclists who are causing the real problems…
May 15th, 2012 in
Transport | tags:
cycling |
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I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned before that I’m a member of the Colchester WriteNight group at 15 Queen Street. We’re a group of writers that gets together twice a month (on the 2nd and 4th Mondays) to write, talk and go to the pub afterwards – all the traditional things that writers do.
As this week’s meeting was just two days before National Flash Fiction Day, tonight we had a flash fiction challenge, and as I’m trying to put more content up on this blog again, I thought I’d share what I produced. The challenge was to produce a 300-word story containing twenty words from a list (in order, if possible) on any subject, in any setting you wished. So, my mind came up with this:
“Green.” He said, satisfied.
A rather presumptuous statement, I thought, and wondered how to respond. It came in a flash.
“Archetypical opening.” I countered, hoping to inject a small bug into his processing. He grimaced like a disgruntled gargoyle, deep routines within him mulling over its meaning, staring through me as if I was transparent. Higher intelligences had a tendency to regard us humans as fleshy interruptions in their communing with the deep strata.
“The inevitable decline of Sparta.” He said, and the pencil in my hand snapped. My subconscious had ascertained the meaning of his talk, even if the near-infinite levels of complexity buried within his manner were incomprehensible.
My mouth was arid. Their simulacra were almost perfect, brash in their ability to replicate humanity to, but there was always something instinctively wrong, like an oval trying to pretend it was a perfect circle. Thoughts like that could make you psychotic if you kept them too long.
“Babble.” I said. “Balderdash, piffle and tosh.” Instinct told me the right response, and instinct was why I’d been sent here. I tried to relax, feeling like I’d sent my queen forward on an attack, then realising I’d not checked the location of his knights.
I was just to restore the balance with them, make up for the negligent way my predecessors had negotiated. I didn’t have to push for victory, just phone it in until sufficient respect had been paid.
The transition in him was sudden. “Policing.” He said, and I suppose that’s the closest his kind get to admitting error. Or announcing our immolation in seconds with barely a thought. That’s the problem with higher intelligences and symbol-based communication, it’s like us humans trying to talk to our gut flora and expecting witty repartee.
Not the greatest story ever told, but it uses all twenty words in order, and if you’re trying to work out what they are, I’ll point out that only one of them – ‘green’ – is used in dialogue.
Anyway, if that inspires you, National Flash Fiction Day is on Wednesday, and the next meeting of WriteNight is on Monday 28th May.
Now Pastor Maldonado’s won the Spanish Grand Prix to make it five different winners from five different teams in this year’s Formula 1 season, I took a look back to 1983, the last time it happened.
Interestingly, four of the five teams who won those races are still in F1 in one form or another, and three have won races this year: McLaren, Ferrari and Williams (and Williams were the fifth team that year as well). The other two winners of the first five were Brabham (no longer with us, even in team-who-bought-the-team-who-bought-the-team spirit) and Renault, who’ve had a convoluted time in and out of F1, but their last incarnation is now known as Lotus (who didn’t manage a win in 1983).
The streak ended at 5 that year, with Alain Prost and Renault picking up their 2nd win in the 6th race, but the 7th race added in a 6th winner, with Michele Alboreto picking up a win for Tyrrell in Detroit. And Tyrrell are one of this year’s five winners so far – they became BAR, who became Honda, who were pulled out of the fire and became Brawn, who are now known as Mercedes AMG.
And if you’re looking for more pointers from 1983, the title that year ended up going to the winner of the first race – Nelson Piquet for Brabham, who won two of the last three races. So get your money on Jenson Button’s late-season surge to the title.
May 13th, 2012 in
Sport | tags:
formula 1 |
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I happened to be glancing through Adrian Mitchell’s Heart on the Left
this morning (as you do) and rediscovered the poem ‘My Shy Di in Newspaperland’, in which he took lines and headlines from the press coverage of Charles and Diana’s engagement in 1980 and turned them into a poem. Having many better things to do this morning, but in need of an excuse to defer them, I thought I’d try the same with a different public figure in today’s news, and see what the result was.
(Each line is taken whole from media coverage of the event – thank you Google News – and the link in the first word of each line will take you to the story it came from)
Relaying their personal thoughts
Surely the most well-connected woman in the country
Had not predicted the Paulsgrove riots
She said “persuasion” was more accurate
She believed a donation was made
Messages sent by the aides of politicians, but relaying their personal thoughts
It is at least surprising that any one person could be cosy with them all
It was a question she raised herself
I happened to relate this gem to a reporter from the Daily Mail
She considered Mr Blair a friend
Messages sent by the aides of politicians, but relaying their personal thoughts
On occasion and not very often
They went sour after The Sun switched
Tended to look like she was going to the office party
Hardly the incendiary display that many observers had anticipated
Messages sent by the aides of politicians, but relaying their personal thoughts
Those who feel she is in no place to complain
This is the list submitted to the inquiry
Number 10 Downing Street, from Number 11, the Office of the Treasury, from the Home Office, from the Foreign Office
Who she said was not at the dinner
Messages sent by the aides of politicians, but relaying their personal thoughts
May 12th, 2012 in
General |
2 Comments
All three parties and some Human Rights Act too. It’s like Question Time in here.
Gay Marriage – Never expected to be linking to a Tory MP’s post on equal marriage, but here’s a well though through and Christian perspective in favour of it from Desmond Swayne.
How my riots tweet landed me in hot water – at taxpayers’ expense – And after a Tory MP, we have a Labour Councillor in Lewisham, talking about the iniquities of the Standards Board regime.
And I am not making this up… – Wiggy explains the Human Rights Act, and how criticisms of it are usually based on people not understanding what it means.
Case for snooping powers backfires for Theresa May – What? A Government minister using erroneous evidence to argue for more powers to snoop and censor us? I’m shocked – shocked! – to discover such things happening.
Happy Birthday to the Libera-Tory Coalition? – Alex Wilcock looks back on two years in Government from a Lib Dem perspective.
(Being the first, and possibly last, of a very occasional series)
From an Express and Star piece on the appointment of Norwegian Stale Solbakken as the new Wolves manager:
Like his nation’s record on human rights and equality legislation, he has a record for progressive thinking
