Fridays should be self directed
The first of a regular series of ‘dress down Friday’ posts from Paul, because… well, the weekend’s coming and whoever’s annoyed you on Slugger it’s, well, time to (try to) start chillin’…
Paul Evans
After the Election: The Hung Parliament Party
Perhaps it’s time for another prediction competition: How long before this embedded video shows the message ‘This video has been removed by the author’ when you click ‘play’? Catch it while you can… Paul EvansLiving in London, working as a trade union official in the film and TV industry (opinions my own). Author of “Save Democracy, Abolish Voting” (published by Demsoc in November 2017). Personal website with link to other writing here. On twitter as @paul0evans1 nevertrustahippy.blogspot.com
It’s Friday!
It’s 4.30pm and it’s probably nearly home time. Here are three websites that you might want to study while you wait for the little hand to sweep towards five: Is your IT manager as creatively destructive as the BOFH? [translation: Bastard Operator from Hell] NB: PFY = Pimply faced youth – BOFH’s underling. I’m always surprised at the large number of people who haven’t discovered The Daily Mash yet. Labour may not have a lot going for them at the …
Prediction Competition Winners – pt1
So we have the final results from Northern Ireland (OK, we’ve had them for a while, but spreadsheets aren’t my forte, OK?). And the winner of the first part of the competition is…. Liam O’Brien Thanks, by the way to Gavan McGibbon who answered a late-night call on Twitter for help on how to work the Excel to make sense of your entries. We broke it down into two parts. The first one was where we asked you to predict …
Remember the ‘Cyberlock’?
Given the intense coverage of the minutiae of the negotiations between Clegg and Cameron (one of the channels spent a lot of yesterday showing us aerial shots of Cleggy’s car so that the Kremlinologists amongst us could perhaps draw some significance from the way the radio aerial was waggling), why has no-one mentioned the Cyberlock yet? Twitter is largely silent on it and and none of the bleary-eyed commentators have mentioned it. It’s not factored in here either, but if …
Slugger reader predictions – latest
We’ve had 49 replies to our Prediction Competition so far*. Averaging the results, we’re collectively predicting a turnout of 61.8%, and the votes cast divide up as follows (rounded up to one decimal place): SF: 25.6% DUP: 23.5% UCUNF: 17.9% SDLP: 16.2% Alliance: 5.2% TUV: 7.3% Others: 4.2% What does this tell us? It isn’t polling evidence, and there’s no weighting (bookies have the benefit of knowing a bit about strength of sentiment because it’s hard-earned cash backing predictions). But …
Election prediction comp: The West Belfast error?
We’re nearly up to fifty entries for the election prediction competition, and there is one common answer that is coming in that suggests to me that many entrants haven’t understood one of the questions. For this reason, if any of you want to go back in and have another go, we’ll de-duplicate when we’re doing the scoring and remove one older answer from the same e-mail address. You will have to answer all of the questions again though. You will …
Are Tory bloggers an asset to their party?
Hindsight is a great thing isn’t it? Surely we all saw that the Tories weren’t on a winner going into an election with the promise of nasty medicine? I mean, I wondered if it would hurt them, but at the time, it was a consideration that got crowded out by others. But it hasn’t worked, has it? The bookies should be paying out already to Tory punters, given the state of the economy and Brown’s lack of charisma. So why …
St George’s Day and English tolerance
Walking around London today, on St Georges, there is little of the festivity or hype that can be found in Ireland around St Patrick’s Day. If you read the Poujadist tabloids, this can be explained by the betrayal of the Bruschetta-munching, namby-pamby, political-correctness-gone-mad, herd-of-independent-minds lupenintelligencia that read the Guardian. And the BMNPPCGMH0IMltrtG crowd will reply that the Flag of St George has been appropriated by the BNP or Empire Loyalists of varying descriptions. A few days ago, I posted a …
Slowly but surely…
As you’ve probably noticed, our new site is running a bit slow and it’s having intermittent teething problems. We kinda expected this, but it doesn’t make it any less frustrating for you and we’re working on fixing it. The slowness is largely because the database that holds the content is absolutely massive. There are nearly 19,000 posts and about 400,000 comments going back to 2003. It’s also because of the way that the site is served up to each of …
Don’t get too excited now, but…..
For those of you that have been reading promises of a new website – design, system, working RSS feeds and all, the glorious day is near at hand. But not *that* near…. We’ve disabled the site registrations though – no new users will be able to register just for a couple of days. Normal service should be resumed early next week … who knows … maybe on our lovely new platform? Paul EvansLiving in London, working as a trade union …
‘Hyperlocal’ websites
Something for your bookmarks list: The ‘Openly Local’ website seeks to aggregate information from websites that cover local issues -either local authority sites or the emerging ‘hyperlocal’ sites. They’ve now extended their coverage to the Irish Republic as well (though they need a nudge to change their ‘Hyperlocal websites in the UK’ heading) I’m not sure whether my own perception on this question of ‘hyperlocality’ is correct. In England, citizen–managed ‘hyperlocal’ community sites are – at least in part – …
The Lib-Dems: A few warnings from history
So the Lib-Dems are determined to impose a Cyberlock on themselves after the election. Led by Ben Orrel – former Cyberman actor from BBC’s Dr Who – this involves a complex set of mandates that the party negotiators will be subject to. This essentially means that – if they are going into a complex negotiation, they will have to agree and publish their options and won’t have any leeway to make trade-offs, be creative, take opportunities that are evident then, …
Iris Robinson: The Musical – on banjo!
If any of you are going to be in London tomorrow, you may want to round the day off with a trip to the 12 Bar Club in Denmark Street (a short walk from Tottenham Court Road tube) to see Mid-Ulster’s very own Cormac Heron performing ‘Iris Robinson – The Musical’ Now Iris is no longer in public life, Cormac anticipates her possible relocation into showbiz (or possibly the catering business) with his latest musical spectacular. From what I can …
Is that it?
So P&J’s all done and dusted? No 4am tweets from @eamonnmallie? No sullen visits from Gordon and Brian? The cup-a-soup vendor at Hillsborough has got to eat, you know? Paul EvansLiving in London, working as a trade union official in the film and TV industry (opinions my own). Author of “Save Democracy, Abolish Voting” (published by Demsoc in November 2017). Personal website with link to other writing here. On twitter as @paul0evans1 nevertrustahippy.blogspot.com
Michael Foot – 1913-2010
I doubt if there are many parliamentarians who could match the late Michael Foot in his oratory, and this speech is the one that the BBC have named as his finest hour. Do listen to it if you can – it’s deft and funny even if it failed to achieve what it set out to do (to save the Labour government in 1979). The Liberal leader of the time – David Steel – gets a particularly sharp ribbing from the …
Diddly diddly Dave
Sure, he loves a can of Guinness! There’s no-one as Irish as Dave Cameron! Via Left Foot Forward. Paul EvansLiving in London, working as a trade union official in the film and TV industry (opinions my own). Author of “Save Democracy, Abolish Voting” (published by Demsoc in November 2017). Personal website with link to other writing here. On twitter as @paul0evans1 nevertrustahippy.blogspot.com
Colin Ward – 1924-2010
Colin Ward, the anarchist writer has died. There’s a good obit over at the Fabian blog, but I’d like to add a few comments of my own. He was a fascinating – and sadly underrated – social commentator that I would urge everyone to have a look at. Colin wrote about the little ways in which anarchist approaches were being quietly implemented in everyday life. His articles on informal mutuality, squatting and the ingenuity of ordinary people in adapting to …
Time for the Robin Hood Tax?
I’d say so, wouldn’t you? It is supported by an impressive bunch of trades unions, charities and voluntary sector bodies. You can spread the word. On Twitter, on Facebook where you can ‘share’ their fan-page. You an even put a poster in your window (pdf) or ponce around in a green Robin Hood mask (pdf) as well, if that’s your style. But whatever you do, sign up to the campaign. Paul EvansLiving in London, working as a trade union official …
‘Growing your networks’
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we’re going to be running social media training in Belfast during March. The first session is entitled ‘Growing your networks’ and it will be happening on the Tuesday the 2nd of March. Full details of the whole package of sessions (currently four, but we’re already getting feedback suggesting other themes that people would like to see covered) are on the Slugger Consults website. I’ll be giving you a bit of detail here on …