No geek
is an island

Chris Black has coined the word “pleake”:

Pleake (vb.) - to leave a political party because of your blog

For the background, see Bloggerheads, Jonathan Calder and my old mate from NUS politics, Paul Leake himself.

This blog hasn’t had any comments for the last two weeks. I initially assumed this was the fault of an apathetic - or possibly vacationing - readership. Then I decided I just wasn’t writing anything interesting. But now I suspect there was a technical hitch eating comments. I’ve adjust the settings and they seem to be working again now. Apologies if you commented in the last fortnight and your message vanished.

Student leader suspended in row over Islamist debate - this is just the sort of issue where the NUS needs to come out for the student union against the university, but will there support for their own “No Platform” policy come first?

Belatedly (in my case, not his), here’s Jonathan Calder’s piece about blogging from Liberal Democrat News. This blog got a mention, for which I’m very grateful. It has made me worry about the impression I give of myself though

Will Howells’ No Geek is an Island reflects his status as a Dr Who nut and soduku grandmaster as well as a sound Liberal.

The last part is a particular compliment as Jonathan is a noted sound Liberal himself.

This post from Ryan has been spotted by the BBC:

Some bad news for those Lib Dem leaders who believe they have finally cast off the image of the party as full of anoraks and train spotters. One internet blog from a conference visitor - if not a windup - details the excitement he experienced driving to conference. “On the way across the country I managed to spot consecutively number plates 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287 and 288 a consecutive record for myself. The only problem was that I failed to find 281 first”. How on earth can Charles Kennedy compete with that once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Oh no, it’s not a windup.

Update: Former LibDem blogger Hazel’s on the site too - with photo.

Speaking of Ludditism… I made the mistake last night of watching a programme on the BBC about the MMR jab. It began as an apparently sensible documentary about vaccination but descended into stupidity. We had the presenter being given reams of paper saying that MMR was safe. He said he still wasn’t sure, blamed the Government for not being able to convince him, and then went on to demand that politicans be more equivocal. He noted that the media had worried people with little evidence before taking out magazine ads and putting up posters asking the public to raise concerns about MMR. I switched channels but went back to see if he’d decided to get his daughter the jab after all, and was faced with a thoroughly pointless stunt projecting a campaign slogan on the House of Parliament. Editorialising, incoherent rubbish.

The next show I watched was When Blue Peter Became ABBA. Another error, but another programme that started promisingly. Quickly though it became apparent that Zoe Ball’s chosen presenting style for this was “snide”. Cue sarcastic comments about the four ex-Blue Peter presenters’ admittedly poor attempts to sing, and various digs at the band they were “paying tribute to”. Topped off with a surprisingly successful finale - helped, as far as I could tell, by backing instruments that concealed the band’s weaknesses - and I wanted to throw something at the TV.

Which I almost did when I was then shown an ad for Spoons, a new sitcom starring Rob Rouse of The Top 100 Ugliest Comedians fame. (#1 indeed.) The usual response to Christian Voice types who complain about TV is the off button.

Reader, I used it.

It is unusual for me to come down on the side of backwardsness and tradition when these are pitted against modern technology, but I hope the authors suing Google win.

Being a massive corporation doesn’t come with a free pass to ignore the law - whatever precedents various big businesses may have set - and this applies to copyright as much as to fraud, insider dealing and waste dumping. In this case, Google is digitising copyrighted works without the permission of the authors.

Writers are, generally speaking, entitled to control how their works are published. Google rather arrogantly declared that it would respect the wishes of authors who wanted to opt out, but that’s not how copyright law works. Telling authors that the project

“directly benefits authors and publishers by increasing awareness of and sales of the books in the programme”

is a patronising, “mother knows best” attitude and the authors are right to object. Providing books and journals in electronic is useful and valuable - hence the wide range of companies now publishing online and the growing number of free electronic journals. The digitisation of popular books is welcome but authors need to be brought on side, not steamrollered into it.

Regional theatres have pooled their resources to enable the nationwide tour of Jerry Springer: The Opera to go ahead. Hurrah - and bad luck to Christian Voice and their ilk who can take heart that God moves in mysterious ways.

More from the BBC, or head to the official site for tour dates and to book tickets.

This optical illusion is just plain weird. (Via.)

Several LibDems, including Adrian Sanders MP, are jointly documenting this year’s autumn LibDem conference. See http://libdems2005blackpool.blogspot.com/.

As I’m not in Blackpool, I’ll be reading this (and others from LibDem Blogs) to keep up.

Petrol Direct - get petrol through your letterbox.

"Censored" ads from Sun Microsystems. (Via.)

Update: The blighter’s have taken this down

Of Glasgow Airport and "Glasgow" Prestwick Airport, only one is close to Glasgow. The other is 30 miles away. It is best to know this before booking flights.

Grrr.

Doctor Who praised at TUC conference

“The popularity of the series demonstrates that there is still an audience for quality family entertainment, and that distinctive UK television productions can still provide a talking point for the nation.”