March on Saturday

Well, I've just got my tickets, and hope not to meet anyone there I know (because it will be so big they will be impossible to find!)

In a pickle

http://www.localgov.co.uk/index.cfm?method=news.detail&id=96945

Eric of course. Thinks: some rich bloke very happy to make poor people poorer.

2 hrs from running out of cash?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/alistair-darling-we-were-two-hours-from-the-cashpoints-running-dry-2245350.html

 According to this report we were close to financial catastrophe a coupe of years ago.

While you can believe this or not as you see fit, it makes me think that while it is right to blame Labour for at least some of the financial mess we got in to, it is difficult to be overly critical of what they did when they were there.

To fail to save the banks was surely not an option?

It makes me shudder to think what Osborne might have got up to in the same circumstances. Some sort of thirties style economic solution? In fact, it also makes you wonder if they would have avoided the crisis i the first place. The Tory mantra has always been 'less regulation' - and yet it is arguably failure to regulate the banks which led to the dodgy  lending in the first place.

You also wonder if anything is really going to happen about bank regulation. Will anyone really actually control them? We seem unable to do anything meaningful about their bonuses.

It also makes me wonder if the socialists aren't right all along. The banks quite possibly should be nationalised. Too important to our day to day lives to be allowed to fail.

Tsunami

Looking at the Daily Express today (at the dentist, I didn't buy it!), I saw pictures of a part of Japan after Hiroshima, and after the Tsunami.

It showed one of the iconic pictures after Hiroshima f an area flattened except for what I presume is some sort of religious structure (basically an arch). The same picture is reflected after the tsunami.

It is a terrifying picutre of the sheer destructive power of the tsunami, which puts our local travails into a little bit of perspective.

Playing out

The Playing Out project, set up by Bristol parents to encourage and enable safe street play, is giving free workshops around Bristol in the week beginning 21st March. Anyone is welcome to come along and find out more about the project and explore issues around independent play, streets and neighbourliness. You should go away feeling fully equipped to organise playing out on your own street! To book a place at any of the workshops email: aliceandamy@hotmail.com or ring Alice on 07896 957141. Children and babies can be accommodated.

All the workshops will run from 10am to 12.30 and the dates and venues are:

Monday 21st March - Knowle West:  The Mede Centre, Marshall Walk, Inns Court (as part of the Knowle West 'HappyFest' see www.happycity.org.uk)
Tuesday 22nd March - Hotwells: Upstairs at the Spring Gardens, 188 Hotwells Road.
Thursday 24th March - Stokes Croft: The Community Room, Coexist, Hamilton House.

For more information about the Playing Out project visit their website: www.playingout.net.

Planning meeting yesterday

went as expected pretty such.

Hey ho.

Disappointed with the way Lesley Alexander didn't even attempt to stop the booing of virtually every speaker against the supermarket though.

Planning meeting tomorrow

Today is the deadline for submissions to the planning meeting re Ashton Gate, so mine will go in later.

Have to say I am not overly optimistic about the outcome this time.I'm certainly a bit bemused by the LibDem decision to replace all of its members.