Taking Out The Trash

A home isn't too much to expect

This also from the Total Politics local government blog (yes, I'm catching up on aggregating my posts from elsewhere).

Sian would love to stay in the village where she grew up. She’d love her daughter to go to the same primary school she did. But the finances don’t stack up.
So she, her partner and their young daughter live with her parents - but it’s not a long-term solution.
There are For Sale signs up in the village but they’ve been up a long time because no-one is buying and those selling can’t afford to take a hit.
There are places to rent but if you’re on an average salary then you’re simply not going to be able to afford it.
A local builder is just completing his latest project. It’s one of the few signs of construction activity in our community of 1,900. (The other is a huge villa some millionaire is sticking on the green belt).
This new house is a big one and really we need flats for people like Sian.
Sian is not alone.

You can read the rest here.

We need to talk about John

Now I'm up to date with my posts from the Total Politics site:

Let’s call him John because, well, it's as good a name as any.
He’s one of my fellow parish councillors. He’s white, retired, middle class, been a councillor since the year dot – pretty standard fare.
John made one of his rare visits to the parish council last month and sat and listened to a debate on a proposed parish plan. It’s something we have been working on for a several months. We’ve been trying to involve the wider community and establish an independent organising committee.
John wouldn’t know that because he only manages to attend about six months of the year and for long periods he’s on holiday.
So we’re all listening to an expert tell us how we can take this idea forward.
John leans forward and pronounces that it all seems a waste of time because it’s a duplication of effort. He then leans back and adds that he won’t vote against it though, he’ll just abstain. That’s his sole contribution for the evening. Not sure when we’ll see him again.
I sit there open mouthed.

You can read the rest here.

Save Tribune

When you call something venerable it can sound like another way of saying 'on its last legs'.

Tribune magazine is venerable but is making every effort not to go under. Its list of previous editors and contributors is astonishing in its quality. The fact that I sometimes to book reviews for them and have written some articles gives me a small egotistical glow in knowing that I have shared a miniscule bit of history with such exalted names.

But selling 4,000 copies a week and relying on trade union donations isn't enough to keep it going and it needs to find a buyer and soon.

There is an editorial in it this week asking about expressions of interest in a reader co-op. I dearly hope Tribune doesn't go to the wall.

It's interesting if you compare it with The Big Issue (another magazine I've worked for). TBI found itself leading opinion ten years ago when it married the rise in social enterprise with an eye for the stories ignored by the mainstream. However, it didn't adapt to changing circumstances and is now shrinking rapidly. Another outlet for alternative viewpoints has been muffled.

As a Tory government looks more likely and the neo-con approach to economics collapses we need a critique from the other side (left, green or just plain angry). There is a hunger, I think, for this kind of news. The web-based media can't supply it all and old-fashioned sectarian ranting doesn't cut it.

There is some news and comment on the Tribune situation on Paul Anderson's blog on mediaGuardian and on Compass.

The long wait for round two

Got some reading to do for tomorrow, feeling knackered and know there are some long days ahead - but now it's coming towards 11pm thinking "why not stay up for the presidential debate?"
The last time I didn't get to bed until 5pm and was wired on coffee. But this could be a ding dong affair tonight/tomorrow morning.
Saw Recount on TV last night having recorded it from Sunday. It's about the Florida recounts in 2000. Pretty good but a lot of liberal actors getting serious about the constitution and hanging chads only tells half the story. The scandal of black voters systematically disenfranchised by the state was sidelined. Also, the whole way the companies who made the voting machines won the contract and operated was ignored.
There were plenty of clips from television shows in Recount reporting on the story, but not explaining or digging into it. Not American journalism's finest hour (Greg Palast excepted).
And Mr Palast has an interesting way of countering electoral fraud this time round (you thought it only happend in 2000? Check out Ohio in 2004). A comic book called Steal Back Your Vote. Whatever gets people motivated I guess.

blue wire, red wire

Seem to be doing an awful lot of military stories at the moment.
Off to this place on Thursday to see some bomb disposal people at work.
The commissioning ed said I could do a Blue Peter-style first person report but I wouldn't let Phil "the shakes" Chamberlain anywhere near even a pretend IED.

And in other news...

This blog is named after the West Wing episode where they try to bury a load of bad news by getting it all out on a Friday.
Are we seeing a similar principle with the Glenrothes by-election?
The date has been set for November 6. Now I'm sure there's something else happening around that date? Dentist appointment? Recycling? Saturn in conjunction with Uranus?
Oh yes; on the 4th it's the presidential elections so on the 5th news will be dominated by whoever wins as will much of the 6th (along with whatever the economic crisis du jour is).
Brown's not going whatever happens in Glenrothes; but it doesn't strike a confident stance if they pick a day designed for burying bad news.

Abuse of language

One could say that if you dish out you should be able to take it.
But Newcastle boss Joe Kinnear's torrent of abuse to journalists is really a sign of someone losing their grip and not holding the media to account.
As a journalist I think the reporters' responses are laudable in their restraint.
As a football fan I feel sorry for Newcastle.
And it makes Giles Coren's recent and more famous abuse memo to Times subs seem all the more pathetic. He threw his toys out because of one word, Kinnear thinks his whole career is being trashed.

Grand Challenge ad nauseum

Just filed 2,000 words for Flipside on the MoD's Grand Challenge and about to start on 800 words covering a different angle on the same story for the newsletter of the group Scientists for Global Responsibility.
Which makes it four different outlets on this issue and I think I've would then have had enough of robot urban warfare systems.
Just posted up some images from the event which you can see here.
My SGR piece will consider the implications of involving school in these defence projects. One teacher I spoke to at the event said it did make him think twice about taking part.
His daughter wants to be a forensic scientist because of the CSI crime series - if we could see some programmes featuring engineers (like Robot Wars) then maybe more young people will want to take it up as a career.
Instead defence companies are filling the gap that exists in promoting engineering and technology in schools. As this press release from Thales shows.

Light touch in the public sector

I've posted previously on how a couple of councils have failed to follow the adjudication of the local government ombudsmen when they have been found guilty of maladministration causing injustice.

Perhaps the most egregious example was Trafford whose treatment of a young woman with disabilities and her family has been callous.

Some people have been trying to find how many other councils have ignored the findings of ombudsmen.

Documents posted here from a freedom of information request show that 143 and one school have ignored findings.

Now these date from 1974 to the present period and they also only cover the one rejected entirely. As the discussion on this board shows, the numbers not accepting these independent findings is likely to be higher.

You can read the rest of my latest post on the Total Politics Local Government blog.

Fishy business

Rather marvellous expose by Ben Goldacre on Durham County Council's idiotic plan to feed some children fish oil pills and see if they get brainer.
It's not so much the plan but the completely crap way they behaved when people raised sensible criticisms of it.
OK - the using children to test nonsense is pretty poor behaviour too.
Must be something about institutions as they're doing the same in prisons and it seems similarly pointless.