No geek
is an island

My, it’s been a busy few weeks, so I will break my own rule of blogging (don’t apologise for not blogging), and apologise for being relatively quiet. As is always the case, when there’s lots to write about, you have less time to write it (and this is note to myself to blog about the two films I saw recently). There are several new videos on YouTube, including a video I recorded this morning of Ming launching our crime campaign (the website for which has been another recent busying task).

My favourite of our new videos, though, is this one, which is also available as a screensaver from the We Can Cut Crime website:


If you like it, do rate it positively on YouTube and pass the link on.

A couple of month’s ago I mentioned the Number 10 petitions, and in particular recommended a petition calling for individuals to have the right to copy material they own for their own personal use, for example by ripping CDs to MP3 format so you can listen on an iPod.

The Government has now responded, and it appears to be good news:

The findings of this review [into intellectual property] have now been published and recommend the introduction of a private copying exception for the purposes of format shifting. This would allow individuals to copy music which they have legally bought on compact disc onto an MP3 player without infringing copyright.

Truro Lib Dem MP Matthew Taylor, once the youngest MP, is standing down to spend more time with his family. Full story on the BBC site and on Guardian Unlimited.

In the background of the wedding reception scene in 2006’s Doctor Who Christmas special The Runaway Bride, you might have heard Neil Hannon (off of the Divine Comedy) singing a rather good little song. It’s called Love Don’t Roam and was written for the episode.

It’s available on the Who soundtrack album and really should have been released as a single, but hasn’t been. In the olden days, that would have precluded it from entering the charts, but now that downloads can make the Top 40, a concerted effort will get it the exposure it deserves.

So, if you’ve not heard it, go and pay your 79p on iTunes (or your preferred legal download provider), and bask in it’s catchiness; if you have heard it, you’ll already want to download it as I’ve done. (Hat-tip.)

One of the disappointing things about the United Kingdom’s entries in the Eurovision Song Contest - apart from, well, their quality - has been the reluctance of mainstream artists to put themselves forward; or perhaps of the BBC to ask them. Given the kitsch and potentially career-ending nature of the competition, it’s not surprising if acts aren’t tempted to risk their careers on it, but even so it’s odd that we don’t see them trying. Every now and again, though, someone shows an interest, and this time it’s Morrissey:

The former Smiths singer said he was “horrified” by the United Kingdom’s latest poor result in the competition. Rapper Daz Sampson could only manage a paltry 19th out of 24 countries in the most recent contest, which took place in Athens in May.

As a result of said trauma, Morrissey has been left troubled, with one issue in particular on his mind: “There is one question that I keep on asking: ‘why didn’t they ask me?’ That question keeps going round my head.”

A Song for Europe (or whatever it’s called now) with Morrissey vs Franz Ferdinand vs The Divine Comedy, say, would certainly be more entertaining than in recent years, assuming they made it past the Radio 2 listeners who choose the finalists. And that Coldplay aren’t involved.

Steve Webb, the Lib Dem MP for Northavon, has a track record of being down with new-fangled interweb technologies, which led to him winning the Hansard Society’s E-Democracy Award a couple of years ago. It should be little surprise then that he has become the latest of the party’s MPs to take up blogging, with his puntastic new site The Webb log. Welcome to the blogosphere.

Perhaps as a result of various New Year’s resolution, Steve takes the total number of active blog on Lib Dem Blogs to 111;, if we were mentioning cricket, which we’re not, it would be time for a superstitious hop of some sort.