Conference

Just spent the weekend at LDYS Conference in Bristol. Speakers included party president Simon Hughes and fellow blogger Peter Black. We were amused to find as we arrived that we had been condemned in Friday's Daily Mirror. There were some painfully close elections, lots of policy debate and some great karaoke last night.

It's a different tactic, certainly...

Via Anders, I bring you BetLiberal - a website encouraging people to vote LibDem in order to make an absolute killing at the bookies when we win the General Election. It's certainly a novel idea and I really do wish them all the best with it. Don't think I'll be having a flutter though.

I saw Saw

Reviewing Saw is tricky because I don't want to give too much away.

It's a well-paced, tense thriller with more than a few nods towards 1995's Se7en. Two men wake up in a room together with a blood-drenched body on the floor between them and soon realise, through the power of flashbacks, that they are the victims of a serial killer.

The cast are uniformly excellent and the direction suitably sharp. But for a film that is so much about the plot, it's astoundingly good. There are just the right number of hints to let you think you've got the whole thing worked out and apparent goofs which turn out to be clues.

If you like a clever thriller, I heartily recommend Saw.

Job

Thank you for the good luck wishes for the job - I got it :)

Interview

I'm phone blogging from my latest job interview. The first candidate is in at the moment and I've got half an hour to kill before I go in. The building is a very swanky new development funded, like so many university expansions recently, by the business school. Very good views from here which, thanks to my new camera phone, I can capture.

Pensions

So the Daily Mail the other day proclaimed from its front page that it was disgusting that in a 'civilised' (their punctuation) such as ours, it is "disgusting to even think about raising the retirement age". It went on to insist on "dignity in retirement".

I agree with the second point, but why should retirement begin at 65 and not later? But the Mail would go ballistic if taxes went up to pay for its pensions demands (the Express complained about drastic tax rises to pay for pensions rather than about the retirement age on its front page).

When Beveridge's contributory state pension was introduced, the life expectancy for men was 63 - two years younger than his male retirement age of 65. Now average life expectancy is pushing 80 and will be higher in the future (when the critical pensions will need to be drawn). In the Mail's world (and I know I should just ignore it), you should be entitled to 30 years retirement on a good income for working maybe 40 years previously. Is it surprising that that attitude has caused a crisis?

And now the PM is suggesting using incapacity benefit funds to pay for pensions. While I'm sure there are some claimants who could be helped into work, it sounds suspiciously like robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Albums

Via a number of bloggers, this particular version comes from Neil Fawcett. I'm tired so my three additions aren't as ingenious as they might be...

"Copy the list on to your blog, put in bold the ones you have listened to (completely from begining to end) and then add three more albums that you think people should have heard before they turn into their parents - remember, it isn't necessarily your most favourite albums but the ones you think people should listen to... and when we say listen we mean from track one through to the end...If you put a link to your follow-on post in the comments of the site where you found it, the chain will be trackable. You are also allowed to DELETE up to THREE albums on the existing list, if you feel a) that this is an album which should not reasonably be foisted upon anybody, or b) that one Radiohead album is quite enough for one lifetime, thank you."

This is Hardcore - Pulp
Moon Safari - Air
Elastica - Elastica
Never Mind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols - Sex Pistols
OK Computer - Radiohead
The Kiss of Morning - Graham Coxon
Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars - David Bowie
The Wall - Pink Floyd
Setting Sons - The Jam
Train a Comin' - Steve Earle
Come From the Shadows - Joan Baez
The River - Bruce Springsteen
The Very Best of Joan Armatrading - Joan Armatrading
What's Going On - Marvin Gaye
Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain - Pavement
Apple Venus Vol. 1 - XTC
Marquee Moon - Televison
Daydream Nation - Sonic Youth
Jagged Little Pill - Alanis Morisette
Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd
Leige and Leif - Fairport Convention
Afraid of Sunlight - Marillion
Dog Man Star - Suede
Work, Lovelife, Miscellaneous - David Devant & His Spirit Wife
Out of the Blue - Electric Light Orchestra

I added the last three and would remove:
Metal Box - Public Image Ltd
The Joshua Tree - U2
Untitled fourth album - Led Zeppelin

Conrad

Lots has happened in the last week while I've been too busy to blog, but the one thing I must mention is the death yesterday of the 5th Earl Russell.

I met Conrad only a handful of times but knew him enough to feel dwarfed by his intellect. When Conrad was called as the last speaker against the motion in the monarchy debate at party conference last year, I knew the motion would fall. With thirty seconds before my summation to come up with a counter to his points, it took me several days.

Committed to his students as a professor, Conrad took a strong interest in student welfare issues. He was a former vice-president of LDYS and a regular speaker at LDYS fringes at party conference. At the student funding fringes at spring conference in Southport, we shared a few thoughts about the impact of top-up fees on university libraries. As someone who had worked for many years as an academic in the US, he railed against the Government's attempt to Americanize the student funding system here.

Conrad was the liberal anchor of the Liberal Democrats. Although his hereditary peerage dates back to a Liberal Prime Minister, he was a true liberal in his own right and the party will have a permanent hole at its heart with his passing.

National Poetry Day

Nick has been encouraging poetry on blogs today. Spurred on by hearing John Hegley at the Edinburgh Fringe, I have written something especially. This is inspired by the pain at the end of the ring finger on my right hand. It's called

The pain at the end of the ring finger on my right hand

My finger is hurting
It started post-election
Maybe too much knocking up
Has caused the infection
Now I've got a precription

The doctor says I
Shouldn't bite my nails
And the treatment entails
Taking one pill in
Six hour blocks of
Flucloxacillin

No idea what this is about

...but I like it. Gollum Lookin' Chain?