Dr Who or TerminatorYesterday I went to the Tyneside Cinema to see the Dr Who film released in 1996. The showing was to mark the 30th anniversary of the film. Back in the 1990s there was a great deal of hope and anticipation about the Dr Who film. Nearly a decade earlier the plug had been pulled on the TV series but Dr Who fans, myself included, hoped the film would kickstart the production of a regenerated TV (more) |
Olly Lambert's The Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby FrankeOlly Lambert's three-part documentary The Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke, which is currently on the BBC website, is a brilliant and horrifying piece of work. It's like a David Lynch film, every frame of which is true. Lambert has written about the making of it in the Independent: Last May, I sat in a Utah coffee shop with Chad Franke, the son of the infamous 'momfluencer' turned convicted child abuser Ruby. Once regarded as 'America's mom', Ruby and her family's former counsellor Jodi Hildebrandt are now both serving up to 30 years in prison for aggravated ... (more) |
Conference agenda now onlineLib Dem conference agenda and directory are now live on the party's website. I will be there for the whole of conference, indeed, for a bit longer still. I usually arrive at conference on either the Saturday or Sunday. This time I will arrive in Brighton on the Friday morning so I can attend an afternoon training session. I've also got a ticket for an event in the evening run by the Social (more) |
GUEST POST Why has the HS2 project been such a disaster?Peter Chambers goes in search of enlightenment about the ironic low-speed train crash that is HS2. Most people I meet have an opinion on HS2. Different opinions. It has been expensive. It goes to Euston. It was a plot by Labour or the Tories. It goes too fast. Or not fast enough. It was a sop to the North or a scheme to divert economic activity to London. What are the most useful points? Was it anything but a muddle? Some acquaintances have advised me to use these new GPT-LLM-RAG machines to produce a summary (AI). However, I know too ... (more) |
Are food price rises on the horizon?There can be no doubts about it: the drought is affecting the food supply and there is likely to be an impact on prices this autumn and winter. I keep sheep and goats on our farm but we also make our own hay. The hay crop is about a quarter of what it would have been if we had had a bit of rain in the summer. We have enough hay to get us into next year but we won't be selling much. The (more) |
Redirecting the funds to the jobs Britain cannot do withoutBritain has developed a curious contradiction in the way it values essential work. We routinely express admiration for soldiers, nurses, care workers and other public servants whose labour sustains the functioning of society, yet the material rewards attached to many of these professions frequently bear little relationship to their social importance. At the same time, the state commits substantial resources to supporting people outside employment. This raises a fundamental question about the architecture of welfare and public policy: should a proportion of welfare expenditure be reconceived not merely as a mechanism for supporting people outside employment, but as an investment ... (more) |
Cystatin-C some thoughts and some referencesCystatin-C has interested me for some time. It is used as a marker of Kidney function and in theory is a better marker than Creatinine. Creatinine has its problems, but it appears so does Cystatin-C. What I found interesting about Cystatin-C is that it is also a signalling molecule whilst Creatinine is a metabolic by product. Creatinine is produced mainly inside skeletal muscle by the (more) |
Israel and the West BankPlease note that, in accordance with our established policy on this particular area of international politics, comments will be moderated prior to publication. Last Friday, we heard David Mencer, an official Israeli spokesman, defending the Israeli government on the BBC Today programme, after increasing settler violence in the West Bank had been condemned by the British Foreign Office. It was put to him that failure to protect the West Bank Palestinians was a breach of Israel's legal obligation to protect people in territory where they were the occupying force. Mencer denied that Israel was failing to protect the Palestinians from ... (more) |
Could water companies put up prices to pay for drought?The Guardian reports that water companies could be allowed to raise bills for customers during periods of drought under proposals being considered by the sector's regulator for England and Wales. The suggestion is that suppliers would be permitted to factor "water scarcity" into bills as part of efforts to reduce consumption under Ofwat's plans, which are being likened to surge pricing - the practice where private hire firms raise taxi fares at times of higher demand: The proposals come just a few days after the prime minster, Andy Burnham, said he was angry with water companies and accused them of ... (more) |
How Joan Aiken fought to defend the wolves of Willoughby ChaseFor years the children's books magazine Books for Keeps published a series of interviews with authors - there was one of these 'authorgraphs' in each issue. Here is the wonderful Joan Aiken from issue 39 (July 1986):"The Wolves of Willoughby Chase was the first book to make money for me. I'd actually done two chapters just before my husband was ill but had put it away. Abelard Schuman, who'd published some short stories in America, accepted it (called 'Bonnie Green' then) but said it was too scary - could I prune it, take out the wolves? I said Never! My ... (more) |