Entries Tagged 'Uncategorized' ↓

There is a meeting of the South West Area Committee – Labour’s attempt to neuter local involvement. 

This will be meeting at 5.30 at Grafton House.  I know that this is a work unfriendly time but if you want to kill off local democracy like David Ellesmere does, you’d want to hold all four committee meetings in two evenings.  That way you’d get the unpleasant business of local representation over with as soon as possible.

On the 10th January the Council Executive will meet with a 6PM start at Grafton House on Grafton Way.  They should be discussing their plans to put voluntary groups out of business.

For some reason I found this story from Ben Gummer’s weekly column quite funny:

Being Recognized – sort of…

It’s the first time this has happened to me.  At a carol service in St Matthew’s church on Sunday a lady came up to me and said “has anyone ever told you you look like Ben Gummer”?  For once, I was completely lost for words.

If you want to sign up to get this email every week, you can do it on Ben Gummer’s site (link takes you straight to the sign up form).

It’s true.

Does that make you feel (a) youger or (b) older?

As two Liberal Democrat councillors have already talked about reporting Ipswich Labour councillors to the standards commissioner and I’ve said that I’ve got a limited interest in this I shouldn’t show Labour councillors acting in the commercial interests of one of their financial backers, the East of England Co-Operative Society.

But I will.

"I'm a bit like a sort of cab for hire," Stephen Byers

St. Mark’s Catholic church on Hawthorn Road is having its autumn Bazaar tomorrow, Saturday 12th November. It will be at St Mark‟s Church and Hall, starting at 10am and finishing at 1pm.

You can find a map here.

Gavin Maclure has a good piece on the proposal to move Britain to Central European Time.  A question came up as to “Why is it always “Berlin” Time and never “Paris” time from those against?”

So the inner nerd awakes.

Central European Time is centered around Berlin. When Germany unified it was under different time zones as Cologne was considerably to the West of Konigsberg. It started with the railways in 1874 when the train timetables in North Germany went on to what was known then as “Berlin Time”.  In 1893 the German Empire made one of their many unifying gestures (like the Kulturkampf) and by law put all of Germany from occupied Alsace to the Polish districts to the east under the same time. Naturally this would be Central European Time (one hour from GMT) which was only a few minutes off Berlin’s “natural” time.

The only reason that Paris is on Berlin time is that in 1940 it changed its time to the same time as Berlin.  I’m not sure whether that was a war time measure from the dying government of France or an act of unification from the German occupation authorities and the Euro-Federalist Petainist government.  Whatever it was it did not go back to its natural time.  The Low Countries also chanmged their clocks to Berlin Time in 1940. 

So it’s not Paris time. Paris and London are in the same natural time zone (ie when chronological and natural times are in tune). Berlin is in the next time zone along.

An interesting fact, when Luxembourg still considered itself a German state it changed its time to Central European Time in 1904.  After the defeat of Germany, and not co-incidentally the withdrawal of the German wartime occupation in 1918, Luxembourg went back to a more natural time.

 The Pink Aerobics and Pink Zumba will be held at the Maidenhall Sports Centre on 29 October in aid of Breast Cancer Care.  The suggested donation is £5 a class and there will also be a raffle.

To find out more please contact Shelley on 07887 684 577.

Street lights are just the start, Labour’s plan is to cut your services so that they can continue to employ their mates.  Conservative Home have a good piece on how Liverpool council are doing this.  And Ed Balls cited it as a model.

But we should not worry in Liverpool as in Liverpool the Labour party was a cosy and complacent party machine that got a shock when it lost power a few years ago.  While in Ipswich…  Oh dear, now I see the problem.

Not happy with nicking my chances for a retirement out of poverty when in government Labour are now nicking my ideas now they are in opposition.  Ed Miliband talked about getting anti-social tenants out of council houses.  That was my idea.

And Red Ed’s muse, Maurice Glassman, is calling for a unilateral embargo on European immigration.  Again they’ve been nicking my ideas.  An embargo on European immigration may be going a bit far, but bringing back border controls in the same way France has would be good for the country:

• It’s becoming clear that simply talking about non-EU immigration is simply scratching the surface of the problem and in an unintentional racist way at that
• Picking a fight with Europe is never a bad thing, particularly for the Labour Party
• The Labour Party was formed to look after the working class, not as a councillor job creation scheme for white collar public sector clock watchers with too much time on their hands.  It would be a good idea if they didn’t rely on fond memories of older members of the working class and started wooing the English working class rather than sneering at it.
• It’s probably something that the coalition would not be able to follow as the Lib Dems have such an advanced stage of Europhilia

Next time I will charge for my advice.