September 2009

The Archives

• Cotterill on the Council, Leisure and culture

  They should be ashamed of themselves

  09.29.09 | Permalink | Comment?

  I’m not sure I can quite believe this press release.
  West Lancashire Community Leisure Trust, which ’manages’ Serco’s contract to run leisure facilities in West Lancashire, has the gall to put out a press release about £1,500 funding for additional free swimming lessons, when it and the Tory Council turned its back on hundreds of thousands of [...]

• Uncategorized

  Just how stupid are rightwing bloggers?

  09.27.09 | Permalink | 6 Comments

  Just how stupid are rightwing bloggers?
  Really quite stupid, based on the following evidence:
  1) Iain Dale, noted rightwinger, says Tom Harris MP, noted rightwinger, is an influential leftwinger.  Tom Harris MP, noted rightwinger, agrees.  It only makes sense in stupiduniverse.
  2) Iain Dale, noted rightwinger, says people on the left have no sense of humour, and his faithful trolls applaud [...]

• Uncategorized

  Get your book reviewed here

  09.24.09 | Permalink | 4 Comments

  Seeing as how Graham Turner has been kind enough to send me a freebie copy of his new book, it would be remiss of me not to mention it here, and say thanks.
  It’s called ‘No way to run an economy: Why the system failed and how to put it right’.
  I’ve not read it yet, but a [...]

• Uncategorized

  Female circumcision, professional ignorance

  09.24.09 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  I went to the first part of my stage 2 Safeguarding Children training last night, in my position as Designated Child Protection Office for Bickerstaffe Children’s Services.
  As far as I could work out, I was the only person in a room of around 20 childcare practitioners (other than the trainer) who knew that female circumcision is illegal [...]

• Bickerstaffe Thoughts, Breaking News

  Doing detail pays off for Bickerstaffe

  09.23.09 | Permalink | 1 Comment

  I am pleased to confirm that my high level of anal retention, reflected in my detailed submission to the County Council about its (poorly conducted) review of speed limits on A and B Roads, has paid off.
  Well partly.
  Look at this report (appendix 2), and you’ll find that officers (and then the Cabinet member) have accepted my [...]

• Breaking News

  £183,737 is better than slap in face with wet fish

  09.22.09 | Permalink | 1 Comment

  Me and Ann wrote this bid, and we’re dead chuffed. 
  She did the sensible ones saying what we’ll do.  I did the long ones saying why.  She did all the numbers, I added them all up and stuck them in the giant spreadsheet.  She made the coffee.  I kept leaving my keys behind. 
  Excellent partnership approach.

• Uncategorized

  Alesha vs Arlene: a critical realist perspective

  09.21.09 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  Today’s big news is the fall out between Alesha Dixon and Arlene Philips over the TV show Strictly Come Dancing.  
  It’s important, I contend, to set out the emerging debate within an appropriate epistemoligical framework, and to take a considered view on the extent to which the debate is ontologically ’real’, and to set this against the claim that it is a [...]

• Uncategorized

  Exclusive: Tories planning to ‘cut monarchy’

  09.20.09 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  The blogopshere came of age this weekend, as one of its senior figures broke the news, exclusively, on the internet, that the Conservatives are planning to put an end to the British monarchy should they come to power.
  Top blogger David Semple, writing at Though Cowards Flinch, revealed that he had ‘decoded’ the astonishing plans set out [...]

• About me

  Thanks John

  09.18.09 | Permalink | 4 Comments

  Quite by chance, in that slightly spooky kind of way when you even think it may not be completely by chance, I happened upon this photo-journalism coverage at the New York Times.
  It’s all about John Trotter, an American photographer who was attacked as he worked in Sacramento back in 1997, suffered major head injuries and [...]

• Uncategorized

  Cricketblog XI, 2009

  09.17.09 | Permalink | 7 Comments

  In honour of an Ashes winning summer, we present the Cricketblog XI for the summer of 2009. 
  It’s been a fine summer’s blogging as well as cricket, and the players selected have done themselves proud with a mixture of solid defence, incisive hitting when needed, stout keeping, athletic fielding and penetrative bowling.  All but three of the [...]

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