Time Ticks By, But the Council's Not for Turning

The official line may be 'no comment' but the current actions of West Lothian council speak louder than any words and especially those two. Anybody who was present at the recent meeting to look at how to save Livingston FC (that excludes council officials and councillors who did not attend for legal reasons) know just what a grim state the books are in.

The Council may publicly state their intention to do all they can to retain senior football at Almondvale but to turn down any hope of an alternative deal doesn't seem like the way to go about it. If they are turning down a genuine offer from Neil Rankine and Gordon MacDougall that would change the way things are done at Livingston how can WLC expect to find any business willing to deal with them as landlords should the club enter administration or receivership.

The letter I sent off to my three councillors after that meeting has been met with stony silence, the exception is Jim Swann who at least had an out of office message to indicate that he is still away. Which is a pity as Jim is a football fan who follows Bathgate Thistle and I've seen him there on the occasions that I can get to Creamery Park.

The longer this drags on, and time may be running out, and the more it gets taken through legal channels the greater the cost, the greater the liability and the less likely is it that creditors will get any of their money, let alone the offer that was on the table with the Rankine deal.

Currently it looks like the council that brought football to Almondvale is quietly killing the club off, hoping that the few thousand who still count themselves as fans don't remember.

Young Soldier - In Memorium

Reading today that eighteen year old Rifleman James Backhouse was about to return home when he was one of the five soldiers killed in Helmand Province on Friday cast my mind off to Wilfred Owen. Owen the First World War soldier and poet was killed in the Battle of Sambre on 4 November 1918, a week later that war ended on Armistice Day.

Of course Rifleman Backhouse and other nine in the last fortnight who have lost their lives may not have been reaching the end of their days of war. At eighteen if he’d survived he would have faced several more tours in whichever war zone the 2nd Battalion of the Rifles found themselves. However, he was close to some much needed reprieve of the ravages of war. Some time with his loved ones in the normality of life.

You may know that Owen was sent away from the front with shell shock but Scottish, and indeed other, readers may not know that his recuperation took place in Edinburgh at Craiglockhart War Hospital. Here it was that a chance meeting with Siegfried Sassoon which shaped some of his later work. However, after recovery of course he was back at the front from where news of his death only reached his mother as the Armistice was being declared.

However, as the unfortunate soldiers in Antrim learnt, earlier in the year, life in a DMZ isn’t always a more secure place than facing the daily dangers of the job you have trained for. For them it was the eve of departure to the war zone for Backhouse almost the eve of returning. War is no respecter of anyone’s own personal timetable. Many on the D-Day beaches fell to the first angry fire they had ever encountered.

The Telegraph today also published excerpts of the all too short journal of Lieutenant Mark Evison who was killed four short weeks after his arrival in Helmand. In it he say:

'It is disgraceful to send a platoon into a very dangerous area with two weeks' water and food and one team medics pack. Injuries will be sustained which I will not be able to treat and deaths could occur which could have been stopped. We are walking on a tightrope and from what it seems here are likely to fall unless drastic measures are undertaken.'

So in honour of Rifleman Backhouse and Lieutenant Evision and all the soldiers, young and old, who have lost their lives here is Wilfred’s poem The Young Soldier as a reminder of the absurdity at times of war.

It is not death

Without hereafter

To one in dearth

Of life and its laughter,

Nor the sweet murder

Dealt slow and even

Unto the martyr

Smiling at heaven:

It is the smile

Faint as a (waning) myth,

Faint, and exceeding small

On a boy's murdered mouth.

Politics and me at Seventeen - Meme

Unlike a number of the others who have done this meme (Caron, Mr Quist and originator Irfan) I wasn't a signed up member of a political party at the age of 17. Maybe that was my naivety, maybe that was just an abhorrence to the political landscape around me.I turned 17 in 1986 and at the time I just couldn't fathom how the Unionist parties could attack Westminster for lack of attention to Northern Ireland's needs with one breathe and at the same time draw away from working with the Republic of Ireland which at that was starting to go through an economic revival.

As you tell from the above, it wasn't that I wasn't interested in politics that I hadn't joined a party it's just possibly that the thought hadn't crossed my mind, or I was too busy with getting my A levels and all the extra curricular stuff I was involved with to give it much thought. I'd like to do a meme about what you did in your student political life to fill in some gaps but maybe we can wait until Freshers' Weeks for that.

However, I was far from politically inactive. By the time I turned 18 I'd already written my first letter to an elected representative the Rev Paisley, I can't remember the content but I know I was opposed to something he'd said or done. I'd also met the man himself in Bangor market place in the lead up to the mass by elections caused by the resignation of every single Unionist MP in protest at the Anglo Irish Agreement. Plus both those and the subsequent 1987 elections were the ones I really started getting anoraky about watching result programmes. For 1987 I was sent to bed but had the radio on listening to the results coming through marking them off on the map from that day's Guardian.

I was a member of Amnesty International, CND and Greenpeace something that means I know that young people are often political active in causes and are still waiting to find the party that fits who they are if they haven't found that already. It wasn't by fluke that just after I turned 19 I joined the party I've been associated with ever since at my first Freshers' Fayre. So I was writing letter to all sorts of places, no email then at least not for the majority of us.

I was studying economics at 17, the school didn't offer politics as well or I may well have taken that as well. In doing so I got to see my first politician up front for an extended period of time. At the end of that first A Level year one of my economics teachers moved to another school and as temp we got Sammy Wilson, now an MP then Councillor and the DUP's press officer. I disagreed with his politics but realised through watching him that politicians never really turn off even in their working lives away from the political arena. He was the first person I saw with a mobile phone, admittedly a brick by today's standards but constantly in contact with a whole range of people even while teaching us. Somehow this didn't put me off getting actively involved in politics later, fool!

So there you go that's pretty much what I had and was up to when I was 17 as far as politics is concerned, feel free to have a go yourself.

Oh there is just one final thing, there was a game for the BBC B computer, if you can call it that, called GB Ltd and I managed to get the SDP elected to three consecutive terms of power. Admittedly it was pretty simple programming and didn't have a whole lot of parameters going on, but still come on give me some credit.

Hope Against Hope Against Violence

There are days that no matter which part of the UK you come from you hid your head in shame. For the English there are football and cricketing failures. For the Scots the general, annual malaise in most sports. But for the Northern Irish is usually comes some time in July as regular as clockwork.

Yesterday evening as the news started to break through of the annual trouble surrounding the marching I was wondering how bad can it get. Being somewhat closeted over in Scotland I went to bed hoping against hope once more that full scale civil unrest or war breaks out overnight.

You see in Northern Ireland shots being fired at the police and Molotov cocktails don't just exist in the world of Grand Theft Auto, oh no! They have long been an existence in reality for the youth growing up, even from the time before I could crawl.

On Saturday I blogged about 6 new style beacons that were lit on Sunday evening, beacons that were trying to recognise one part of the culture of the people and while not doing away with it bring it up to date for the modern age, bring it into harmony across the divides. But of course it is not the pyres that are lit at this time of year that are the most contentious issue it is the rights to march and the rights to not have sectarian triumphalism thrust down your throat if you don;t want it.

Of course there are signs of light on the marching issue, earlier in the week the First Minister Peter Robinson met with the residents' group leaders of the Garvaghy Road. Significant steps were made towards that 12 year stand off that often is the high or low light of the marching season. The nationalist residents said that the DUP leader was open minded and understood the residents' concerns.

Sinn Féin were also condemning the violence in the Ardoyne and Rasharkin yesterday, Gerry Kelly MLA saying:

'This evening’s actions expose very clearly the anti-peace process and sectarian agenda which feeds these factions. It has nothing whatever to do with Irish republicanism.'

'They [The Real IRA] chose to try and use the opportunity presented by this parade to further an agenda which has time and again been rejected by the republican community in Ardoyne and everywhere else.'

So looking at who is working together to forge a peace I am glad. The extreme edges of Northern Ireland society appear to be getting smaller. The majority wanting peace is getting bigger. However, that just makes the steps as Gerry said of an 'anti-peace process' all the more magnified as the people of Northern Ireland are striving for a greater normality than at any time in my lifetime.

Citius, Altius, Fortius...Oh Yuuuuuus

Swifter, Higher, Stronger may well be the Olympic motto but who'd have thought that it would come from the boudoir's of an Olympic hopeful to fund his bid to get to the games.

In New Zealand, where licenced prostitution is legal, Taekwondo hopeful Logan Campbell is running a brothel as a way to fund his return to the games in London 2012.

Probably a little closer to some of the ancient Greek original's practice than Baron Pierre de Coubertin envisaged when he restored the Olympic movement in 1896.

Four Years of Blogging

Ten days ago I actually missed the anniversary of my first blog post on the occasion of the Make Poverty History March. However, I think today marks the start of the time I could have been called a blogger. One blog post does not a blogger make writing regular updates does. So on the 12th of July 2005 I started the trend of writing more or less daily, which but for one long hiatus and a few smaller ones has carried on ever since.

That July looks vaguely similar in some ways to this. The boundary commission had just announced the new council wards for the multi-member STV elections for 2007, which sparked that second post. They are of course currently working out the new Scottish Parliament seats. Personally between the first and second publication of their proposals they have made some fundamental errors probably at the whim of some gerrymandering from either Labour or the Nationalists.

I was speculating about what next for Harry Potter and of course he has now just hit the cinemas again in that book from four years ago The Half Blood Prince.

Plus we had Simon Hughes looking to attract Westminster candidates through adverts in the papers rather than via recruitment of members who already hold our views enough to belong to the party, something of course that David Cameron is looking at doing now.

Back then Blogger had no tagging of posts, yeah I know I'm still working on my backlog. Also there wasn't an integral spell check. Blogging has come a long way, a lot more people are doing it. I think there were about 40 or so Lib Dem bloggers back then now there are now 223 active blogs listed on Lib Dem blogs.

Then is was just text, now we use video, audio, live updating on the move via Twitter or our PDAs. Who knows where the next 4 years of blogging will take us, but I intend to be around to find out. Indeed I have some plans to move things onwards over the next few months.

Ryan's Stats with Caveats

Ryan Cullen this morning published a look at the clicks out of the fabulous LibDemBlogs. It was inspired by the recent navel gazing following the June Wikio rankings coming out. However he did post some important caveats.

There are some major caveats in the stats:

a) these are clicks from LibDemBlogs.co.uk, this doesn’t include people who use the RSS feed, those who have sites in their own RSS feed readers/aggregators, sites which are accessed via bookmarks or those linked from other bloggers.
b) I only checked the “top” 50 blogs, as the current method needs me to enter each url in to the MyBlogLog one by one, and wait for the results. This means that a long tail blog could have been missed.
c) Those who post lots will have more clicks to their sites, this doesn’t mean that they are more popular.

So I got to thinking especially as I was quite shocked that my last appearance in the Golden Dozen was actually as one of the first seven on clicks through (I normally have to make the list through nomination). So I took a look at my blogs Google Analytics for sources.






You know I wasn't really surprised, it has been a while since every day LibDemBlogs and LDV dominate my statporn. As you can see LDBs is between about 12-15% indeed for the year so far it accounts for 13.3% of my hits, add on LBV at around the 6% mark and less than 1 in 5 of my hits from the big two central Lib Dem sources. As you can see in May I have a big bump from Google, I actually featured on their news feeds on a number of days that month. The same has happened on MSN and Yahoo News feeds in the past.



Over the last two weeks I've also had a lot of hits coming through Google Images, this is solely down to a good choice in the hours after Michael Jackson died and actually being a more influential global source than the source I lifted it from. My readership is definitely not solely or even largely Lib Dems that is a good realm of influence. So while it is good to get plaudits from inside the party that isn't the be all and end all, nor the main reason why I blog.

Update: Of course no sooner do I post this than a mention on Iain Dale's Daley Dozen shifts things dramatically overnight.

Women Died for the Right to Make their Own Decision

Admittedly when he was doing his fantasy Liberal Cabinet meme Irfan Ahmed said he didn't know a lot about history, so sadly yet again this morning we see a need to educate him a little about this. He writes:

'Many women don’t have a clue about politics so they need someone to make their decisions for them and for that reason its OK for the man to decide who the women votes or is it? I don’t see anything wrong with a man making the decision in the household to who everyone votes but then that is just me.'

Ouch! For a start many people of both genders don't have a clue about politics it is not restricted by gender, but we have allowed universal suffrage to both men and women on equal terms since 1928. Yet we don't ask people before they step into a ballot booth can they name all the leaders of the main parties (if we did we'd have even lower turnout). So that is not a valid reason to say it is alright for anyone not to vote, nor is it justifiable to hide the sexism or misogyny of his statement above. It does suggest he himself doesn't have a clue about certain aspects of life.

However, Irfan may be interested to know that that great Liberal mind John Stuart Mill was one of the early male advocates for women to have the right to cast their own vote back as far as 1865 when he presented just such a platform to the electorate.

Women hassled Asquith and Lloyd George in the streets of Westminster in the early part of last century after the women on New Zealand were given the right to vote in 1893. The chained themselves to railings, set fire to mail boxes, set off bombs on occasions, were imprisoned for their direct actions, went on hunger strike. In 1913 on Epson Downs Emily Davison even threw herself bodily and fatally in front of the King's horse Anmer as it ran in the Derby.

It took almost 60 years from when the movement started for women to get equality with men and their own voice at the ballot box. It is not a right they should give away to a husband of father to tell them how to cast it.

Irfan if you really want to describe yourself as a 'political commentator' you really are going to have to learn a little about the political, governmental and social history of the politics and country you are commentating on. Otherwise a lot of what you say is just shallow, ill-informed vitriol.

Think of a Number and Double It

Or should that be London 0 Brighton and Hull 4?

Either way by evoking the memory of Johnny Ball from my childhood television and the Housemartins from my youth is a roundabout* way of saying that good news is in the air.

Zoe Ball announced on her Radio 2 Breakfast Show this morning that she and husband Norman Cook are expecting a second child. So 8 year old Woody will soon be getting a little brother or sister. Just as long as the new child isn't called Buzz Lightyear.

*No not the magic one.

It's Bonfire Night - A Beacon of New Hope

Before any of my readers panic thinking they have slept Rip van Winkle-like through to the 5th of November I don't mean that bonfire night. It is the eleventh night, one of those traditions of the twelve fortnight in July. Yeah the Northern Irish have a twelve fortnight in a 31 day month and not due to being bad mathematicians.

Every year in the loyalist areas of Northern Ireland piles of burnable material starts to emerge into the open air in late June early July. Often nearby a sofa will also appear so that those that end up 'guarding' and building the wood etc into a stack have somewhere to sit. Sometimes these stacks will tower over the nearby houses. But on occasion they are taken down to form barricades when things get really heated in the marching season. Instead of a guy there is often a Celtic shirt, or Irish tricolour or some other symbol of Catholicism on top of the pile when the touchpaper is lit.

Not all of this burnable material is often environmentally sound as often old tyres and other plastics are found in the stack. The noxious fumes can come from the fire well into the 13th on occasion. The fires have long been a symbol of strength by the Loyalist side of the community followed by the noise and colour of the banners at the marches to follow normally the next day, unless the sabbath intervenes. So often seen as a dividing, harmful emblem rather than one of the renewal that Northern Ireland is trying to undergo.

However, this year Belfast City Council, in conjunction with the Conflict Transformation Initiative, are promoting a new friendship beacon initiative. There will be six willow beacons across the city this year, including one encouraging in the Lower Shankhill, after a trail one last year in the troubled Woodvale area. Willow is used as the wood cut from a willow with fully restore itself by the following year making it carbon renewable. The aim is to make it a family and community friendly gathering which is both environmentally and socially responsible. Of course 6 beacons of hope for a new start is just a splash in the ocean, but it is a step in the right direction.