We are all supposed to remember the registration number of our first car – mine was PWN 20R, a mottled brown saloon (mottled because of various amateur resprays even before it acquired a massive dent smack in the middle of the boot under my ownership when I reversed into a tree in Granville Road during [...]
Entries from February 27th, 2012
“Look! St Albans” is worth a look-in
February 26th, 2012 · No Comments · Sandy's blog
Tomorrow – Monday 27th February – sees the first public open meeting for the Look! St Albans initiative. It will begin at 7 pm at the Dagnall Street Baptist Church and I intend to be there and will be able to report back further.
Look! St Albans is the initiative of a wide number of local [...]
Tags:Look St Albans
How synthetic is the row about the Work Programme?
February 24th, 2012 · No Comments · Sandy's blog
It seems insulting to ethnicities with a history of slavery and to those who are genuinely enslaved currently when people receiving jobseekers allowance and then required to do work experience with expenses in a high street store are desribed as “slaves” – however mundane the experience might be.
Unless we are very lucky, we almost all [...]
Tags:labour market statistics·St Albans·Work Programme·Youth Contract·youth unemployment
“Quantitative Easing” explained – simples
February 23rd, 2012 · 5 Comments · Sandy's blog
Every so often we hear that the Bank of England has indulged in another bout of “quantitative easing” which is explained as a clever way to increase liquidity in the economy and thus encourage economic growth. QE is one of those terms that make one’s eyes glaze over, except for a nagging feeling that the [...]
Peter Oborne, Abu Qatada and the legacy of Winston Churchill
February 9th, 2012 · 1 Comment · Sandy's blog
The views of the Telegraph’s chief political commentator Peter Oborne are always interesting. His defence in that paper of the European Convention on Human Rights, prompted by the uproar over Abu Qatada, is robust and cogent – see http://tgr.ph/yEqlU9
Here are some choice extracts:
There is nothing on this earth more British than the instinct [...]
Tags:Abu Qatada·European Convention on Human Rights·Peter Oborne·Winston Churchill
What the Dickens?
February 7th, 2012 · No Comments · Sandy's blog
It’s Dickens’s bicentennial. While Bill Sykes lurked in Hatfield, following the brutal murder of Nancy, Bleak House is firmly in St Albans, standing behind its pineapple-topped gateposts at the corner of Normandy Road and Catherine Street. (How many Albanians still pronounce Catherine with a long ‘i’ I wonder.)
BH is now a chi-chi interior designer’s office. [...]
Tags:Bleak House·Catherine Street·Charles Dickens·Dickens Close·Normandy Road·Our Mutual Friend·St Albans
High noon for Park Street – official
February 3rd, 2012 · No Comments · Sandy's blog
The Secretary of State has considered carefully all the representations before him. On the basis of the submissions received, he is of the view that there are no substantive issues which require the Inquiry to be re-opened and he has therefore decided that he is in a position to re-determine the appeal on the basis [...]
Tags:Colnbrook·freight terminal·Helioslough·Park Street·Radlett·St Albans·St Albans Civic Society·STRiFE