Like generations of Tibetan nomads before him, Phuntsok Dorje makes a living raising yaks and other livestock on the vast alpine grasslands that provide a thatch on the roof of the world. But in recent years the vegetation around his home, the Tibetan plateau, has been destroyed by rising temperatures, excess livestock and plagues of insects and rodents. The high-altitude meadows are rarely mentioned in discussions of global warming, but the changes to this ground have a profound impact on Tibetan politics and the world’s ecological security. For Phuntsok Dorje, the issue is more down to earth. He is used to dramatically shifting cloudscapes above his head, but it is the changes below his feet that make him uneasy. “The grass used to be up to here,” Phuntsok says,...

Elliot’s of Borough is somewhere you should go. Except you can’t. And for this, I am sorry. It’s not open yet you see. How do I know you should go? Well, I was one of the lucky ones that wangled a seat at their Summer pop-up at the Pavillion in Victoria Park: Elliot’s in the Park. Don’t worry though, it opens early next year, maybe even before then, watch this space. I saw a tweet about it (Twitter is mighty useful!), and booked straight away. Way in advance of going. I really enjoyed it and asked to be put on the waiting list for another night. And I waited. I thought it would never happen but two nights before the last night, 4 people cancelled, and we got their seats. Hooray! Elliot’s chef, Isaac McHale, is one of the new breed of chefs, Noma...

To the casual reader of this blog it would seem that all I ever talk about is which social media bandwagon we’re jumping on to this week – Twingly here , Facebook there , Twitter over there …Now, I prefer to think of this bandwagon-hopping as ‘agile’, but there is also some method to it. The idea is simply this – if we can distribute our content (explaining policy, giving advice and information) as widely as possible, through as many popular channels as possible, then we increase the possibility that people will come across information of interest or use to them, in the digital spaces where they spend their time. We know that people simply don’t, habitually, visit government websites unless they have to, but that means they may miss out on valuable information.So we’re...

Original post Urbanears Review – Medis Earphones published on Digitpedia which writes about cool gadgets and electricals to buy. Urbanears are a Scandinavian company who create some cool looking headphones, I’ve been fortunate enough to test a pair out for a week and here are my thoughts. I have been sent a pair of black ‘Medis’ earphones. And I have a black iPod Nano, so for me they make a great pair looking very cool, much better then with my normal Apple earphones. Materials And Feel All aspects of the earphones feel very well made, with good quality materials. The cord is actually a bit like shoe lace, that makes it sound bad, but it is actually a great thing, very cool look and feel instead of the usual plastic feeling cord. The actual part you put into your...

Nick Clegg has confirmed that he is selling his constituency home, and will return any profit to the taxpayer – as promised earlier this year. From the Press Association: The Lib Dem leader, who has been the MP for the constituency since 2005, has referred to the house in Sheffield as “modest” and revealed he had bought it in a “complete state of disrepair”. Defending his expenses claims in respect of the house, he told the BBC’s Andrew Neil in April: “I think, unlike almost everybody else, I have said very clearly and very openly that my approach to this is that’s not my home, it’s a home on loan to me from the taxpayer and that when it’s sold every single penny of value gained is returned to the taxpayer.” On Friday, a...

.. as the Americans would say.I was first critical of the extradition treaty signed by Blunkett back in 2006 when the issue of the Nat West Three came up, I felt that it was both one-sided and poorly thought through. It seems that David Blunkett now agrees with me.I am already starting to get sick of the "in hindsight we were wrong" confessions coming from senior labour figures. Had they not...

… We’d say a big thank you to the 47,689 ‘absolute unique visitors’* who read Liberal Democrat Voice in August. Though that’s a touch down on our July figure of c.50,000, it’s up some 143% on the equivalent figure for August ’09 of c.20,000. This brings our absolute unique visitor readership for the last year to date (1 Sept 2009 – 31 August 2010) to 636,846, some 89% higher than the equivalent figure for 2008-09 of 336,902. The 5 top-read stories during the month were: Knowsley Council pays Labour over £250,000 for conference appearances (11) by Mark Pack Coalition puts up strong defence on IFS report (84) by Iain Roberts Tim Farron MP writes … Labour’s staggering hypocrisy on the Alternative Vote (66) by Tim Farron MP Opinion: why we should wish...

Many Londoners, at least members of certain unions and the Labour Party, will be receiving their ballot papers for Labour's Mayoral selection today. I'd just like to take this opportunity to wish Mr Livingstone the best of luck as I'm looking forward to voting for him (second preference) in 2012.An identikit politician like Oona King simply doesn't have what it takes to beat the Conservatives, and although she may well keep the loyal Labour vote no Mayoral election has ever been won on first preferences alone. Labour needs second preferences to win and Oona is just too uninspiring and, if I'm honest, shifty to win them in sufficient numbers.I wouldn't vote for her and she'd stand a cat in hell's chance of getting an official Green Party endorsement the way Ken did in 2008.In her campaign...

While she may be getting regular slots on Sky News and the Today program, “freelance journalist and Labour Party activist” Sally Bercow must know she has really made it when Chinese news channels are animating her colourful past… Can anyone translate? Tagged: Drunk, GuyNews.TV, Speaker...

Former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, ousted in this year’s election, is forming the Gordon and Sarah Brown Foundation, and has accepted three pro-bono appointments all with some connection to the Web. He’s joining Queen Rania of Jordan’s Global Campaign for Education. Queen Rania has 1,337,872 followers on Twitter and last year spoke at Le Web. Brown is also working on a new programme to bring the internet to Africa and joining the board of Tim Berners Lee’s World Wide Web Foundation. If you recall, just prior to the election in May, Brown launched a policy initiative to put £30m into a “centre for the semantic web” which would have been headed up by Berners-Lee. That centre has been cut dead by the new government, so perhaps Brown joining BL’s...

A new report assessing the state of the South West ahead of the October Emergency Budget, concludes that the region is in danger of being marginalised and becoming ‘the forgotten part of England’. The South West was the region that gave a higher proportion of its vote to the parties forming the coalition; all but four of the region’s MPs are either Conservative or Liberal-Democrat. But in the rush to dismantle the regional public sector, the South West risks being marginalised and taken for granted if it does not act now to make its voice heard, says the report Let’s Hear It For The South West. The report by South West Stakeholders, an alliance of social and economic organisations in the region from the Confederation of British Industry to Citizens’ Advice, points...

Let's stick with religion for a bit. This is Robert Fisk commenting on Tony Blair's interview with Andrew Marr on Wednesday:It was all so very schoolboyish. Yes, "people" disagreed about the war. "People always want to look for a conspiracy." And - my favourite - "this debate will go on." But it's not a bloody debate - it's a bloody, blood-soaked disaster, for which Blair should take responsibility. But he won't. He can't.Leaving aside the fact that Blair, in declining to apologize for his decisions over Iraq, has said more than once that he takes responsibility for them, has Fisk not noticed that there was a debate about the war? It was only the major debate dividing world opinion in the last decade. And though the positions of many people have shifted in the light of what happened, some...

Sometimes, it seems that there is not much to say about anything, but she goes ahead and says something anyway, usually when you have just got everything lined up nicely and you are ready to start your run up towards the day’s first slice of toast. It is always a time of ominous foreboding when mere reality intrudes itself between a man and his first slice of toast of the day. Deep down, the woman knows this, and she knows it well. It is down there almost at the level of instinct, a woman knows that she should always keep the man slightly off-balance, never quite sure if he is on solid ground, or about to tread off the path into one of those womanly traps that lie so cunningly hidden from the unwary and oblivious male. Of course, what he should do is put the toast down and make one of...

The Telegraph newspaper is reporting that Manchester United supporters are planning on staging a protest against the club’s owners, the Glazer family, in the upcoming clash against Liverpool at Old Trafford on September 19. In the past, United supporters have worn green and gold to show their dissatisfaction with the Glazer’s ownership of Manchester United. But now, at the upcoming Liverpool match, the United supporters plan on wearing old Manchester United shirts that pre-date the Glazers’ 2005 takeover. I can imagine the reaction from the Glazer family: Oooooo! Please no! Not the wearing old shirts treatment! Arghhhhh! Seriously, if Manchester United supporters want to show their dissatisfaction against the Glazer family, don’t go to the game against Liverpool, their most-hated...

About a month after my last post about knitting I lost my knitting mojo for which I blame various things, but mostly a scarf going wrong and suddenly finding myself with too many things I had to finish by the end of the year. So, logically of course, I put it all in a bag in the cupboard and ignored it! The scarf that went wrong didn’t technically go wrong nor was there anything particularly exciting about it, except that I was using two colours, however I didn’t think to check that two of the balls of wool had different dyes which was only obvious once I’d knitted more than half of a long scarf! I picked up knitting again a couple of weeks ago when I knitted a wristwarmer in the space of an evening after having spent hours on a scarf before and unravelling it. Moving...

(Eugene Volokh) How Appealing links to this Seventh Circuit decision, which includes very interesting opinions by Judges Easterbrook, Posner, and Wood (all among the most respected federal appellate judges in the nation, and all former University of Chicago law professors). Here’s the issue: American courts sometimes have to decide questions of foreign law. In the overwhelming majority of such cases, this has nothing to do with the controversial use of foreign constitutional law as persuasive authority in making American constitutional law decisions. Instead, it involves courts interpreting contracts that provide that they are to be entered into under foreign law, interpreting contracts entered into in foreign countries, making decisions about torts committed in foreign countries,...

The Fire Service do some fantastic community work across Greater Manchester, and as a Fire Authority member I think it is really important to do what I can to help support those community projects. Here in Salford I’ve seen first hand the fantastic work that our Firefly, FireTeam6 and Prince’s Trust programmes do for young people, many of whom may otherwise have fallen into a difficult life cycle. I’ve attended several of the Prince’s Trust presentations and it is fantastic to hear such inspiring and fascinating stories from those who have taken part. We also hold regular open days at fire stations here in Salford (please visit the Salford Fire Station open day later this month) and many of our fire stations now have community rooms which local groups can hire...

Originally posted on Vox, 2 Nov 2006During the last four days I've been attending the IGF conference in Athens, Greece organised by the United Nations to discuss the future of the internet. Sadly, however, I wasn't there in person but was an on-line attendee. There are, however, benefits to this like not having to queue for lunch or coffee (I can retrieve it while 'in the room') or, indeed, having to get out of bed in order to be in the main conference room and get a question put to the panel! Instead of sitting on an uncomfortable chair I am in my big comfy swivel one at home watching the proceedings via a full-screen video stream @ 331k with concurrent translation when I need it. I've also got access to an IRC-like chatroom where there are other remote participants plus some people in...

Standing in the crypt of St Mary’s Church Lewisham asking local Lib Dem members to select me as their parliamentary candidate last summer I did wonder if my very pregnant stomach would put them off. During the selection campaign only one had asked me how I was going to do it with a new baby. “With the help of my partner, several doting grandparents and how about you too?”, was my reply. Having fought an election campaign while pregnant, then through the first eight months of my baby daughter’s life, I want to let other women thinking of doing the same know that it is possible. It even has some advantages provided you get the help you need to do it. Why should other Lib Dem Voice readers care? Because as Dinti Batstone highlighted in her research for the party into the...

 This week: Apple unveils new social network Ping Advertising Age's top seven brand stories of the week Voice check in for FoursquareApple unveils new social network PingApplehas launched Ping which is “sort of like Facebook and Twitter meet iTunes” according to Steve Jobs. Google’s networks haven’t always been that successful, Buzz hasn’t really caught on and we recently said goodbye to Wave. Apple is the latest major player to try their hand. As a music based network Ping threatens the supremacy of MySpace which is now focused heavily on music and artistic content after losing out to Facebook as amore general social network.The potential for Ping is huge. If people share music and films they like with friends, which leads to the...

Video by World Cup group Freshlyground challenges Zimbabwe dictator to 'become the hero he used to be' – and step downRobert Mugabe has never been known for his sense of humour. So you wouldn't want to be the apparatchik at Zimbabwe's State House explaining to the president how a music video that lampoons him as a chicken is threatening to go viral.A latex puppet of Mugabe, redolent of 80s TV satire Spitting Image, is the star of a slick video by multinational African group Freshlyground, best known for their collaboration with Shakira on the official World Cup song Waka Waka (This Time for Africa).The song, Chicken for Change, has a bouncy and upbeat feel that belies its serious political message. The video depicts an aloof Mugabe riding in the back of a chauffeur-driven presidential...

A bit of good news today as I have made the top 30 Councillor blogs this year, coming in at number 15!Will stick the logo up later, thanks to everyone for voting for me!All blogs are the personal comments of Louise Baldock and should not be deemed to be official Labour Party policy, thoughts or responses....

The Italian press is giving Quentin Tarantino a hard time with 'conflict-of-interest' questions and the Lido looks like a construction site, but nothing can dampen the festival spiritThis year's Venice film festival has begun on rather a disconcerting note: the colossal construction project on the Lido, building a new addition to the Palazzo Del Cinema, is far from complete – to the dismay of festivalgoers who hoped that it might be ready in time for the beginning of this year's event. No such luck. So the red carpet premieres are happening next door to a huge, unsightly, screened-off building site, with everything but "No hard hat, no work" signs and men with jeans sliding down their buttocks asking for a cup of tea.And what makes it even more piquant is that more building work is...

Expanding my collection of Battle of Britain books, I made the mistake recently of buying the highly regarded "With Wings of Eagles" by Michael Korda.He is your classic "above the line" author, former editor-in-chief of Simon and Schuster US, a Brit living in New York with a host of titles to his name. And, in the acknowledgements to this one, he thanks his assistant, the "invaluable Mike Hall for his dedicated research skills" and Kevin Kwan "for photo research".I think, in this context, the general rule is that you should never trust an author who does not do his own research. This would certainly stand up here. In the centre of the book is a two-page full-colour version of the above photograph, with the following caption:A Hurricane Mk 1 (foreground) and two Spitfire Mk I's in the...

…Fabio. I haven’t said you were a “monster” either, just that you aren’t as good at the job as you and those that were sucked in by qualifying through a piss easy group – with some less than convincing displays against mediocre opponents that were glosses over by the scoreline – think you were and that when you faced a real side you’d be found out. Basically you’re just another Sven Goran-Eriksson. Something that’s made ever more evident by the team that’ll probably be picked to play Bulgaria tonight. Look at the side, think about the fact that if Lampard and Terry were available then they would be straight in the starting XI and therefore it would be exactly the same outfield ten who were thumped by German. Yes thumped...

When I first heard there were Labour MPs who had suggested changing the rules on choosing the party’s shadow cabinet, I immediately assumed they would be connected to one of the leadership contender’s campaigns.These were people, I thought, trying to smooth the way for the winning candidate to pick a shadow cabinet of their liking once they had taken the top job. But the picture emerging is different. At the moment, once the Labour leader has been selected, the party’s MPs have internal elections to choose who should have a job at the top table.It’s meant in the past that opposition leaders have been stuck with one or two in their shadow team whom they wouldn’t naturally choose, but who are popular with backbenchers.But now it seems there are two groups who feel the current...

I know that many of my regular readers are hesitant about voting for Ed Miliband because of the media narrative that he is somehow a left candidate with a core vote strategy.My take is he doesn't fit neatly into either left or right of the Party - he's fundamentally a modernising and change candidate.If you are on the right of the Party and haven't voted yet you should read these things that he said in a speech last week:"It’s not a choice between Old Labour or New LabourA core vote or middle England.The question for us in this contest is: can we have the courage to recognise the scale of the change needed after one defeat, not after four as we had to do after 1992.I believe that we must choose change.Ideologically.Electorally.Organisationally.Ideologically, because I believe we lost...

Original Home Page – And another very early post from this blog Current Latest Page All Contents of Site – Index Sign the Ban Blair-Baiting petition here Comment at end 3rd September 2010 Click to Buy Tony Blair’s ‘A Journey’ As the press compete to decide which is the biggest stick with which to beat Tony Blair into the pulp he clearly deserves to become – (the “animal”, the “indiscrete”, the “warmonger” over Iran, the “revenge seeker” , the nasty, twisted GW Bush lover – the SEX thing) - and as his memoir seems to be about to break all records,  this country’s most influential statesman goes about his business: being influential and statesmanlike. Irritating, isn’t it, littlies? Tony Blair appears...

For years a popular pair of comedians shared a bed during sketches shown in TV. There was never any thought or suggestion of them being ‘gay’ How times have changed. A political blogger wrote about ex-PM William Hague sharing an hotel room with a young male aide during the last electioneering campaign, hinting (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) at an homosexual relationship. In my humble opinion, Mr Hague should have ignored the innuendo, or if he felt the need to address the matter, made a simple , curt statement of denial. Instead, he choose (rather unwisely) to issue a deeply personal statement citing his wife’s repeated miscarriages as evidence of his heterosexuality (?) in rebuttal of the suggestion he is gay. This was an unmitigated PR disaster. He has now fanned the...

Way back in 2005 on this blog I ran a short series promoting the most famous men and women from Suffolk, England which is my home. I thought it was time to re visit this series starting with those famous men and women I originally added and then look to add more names. Though this has little to do with running I hope it will serve to broaden the knowledge of any interested readers in the people and the county where I run. After all it is Running in Suffolk. No 1 in the series was John Constable, No 2 was Robert Bloomfield which you can find in earlier posts. No 3 was an evil man. Matthew Hopkins the notorious Witch finder General was born in 1620 at Great Wenham in Suffolk. He was briefly a lawyer in Ipswich. Hopkins life was a short one as he died in 1647. In 1644 Hopkins gave...