Below are the 13 most recent journal entries recorded in andycaisley's LiveJournal:

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2005
10:50 pm	We all subscribe to this The well known European Organisation currently keeping me busy subscribes to some if not more of this weeks guest publications... http://www.agra-net.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=agra/puboptions&PageName=menu&pubId=ag016 http://www.fishnet.ru/news/?lan=2 (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, February 24th, 2005
10:49 pm	Kick Labour in the teeth and Michael Howard into the sea Whilst Nia's reasons for voting lib dem are similar to many folks she should not perhaps be as negative about the change it could provoke as she is... By voting lib dem in any seat the tories could realistically win one stands the chance of causing a 400, 140, 80 seat split. This assumes a general swing of between 1 and 2% and that a few extra "key issue" seats also turn yellow. A few seats in university towns seem likely to be captured by Lord Rennard's Guardian toting forces. In Cardiff Central the Labour majority is 659 in a seat with a student population of 15,873! Also likely to fall are Bristol West, Cambridge, Surrey South West and Taunton (2 Labour and 2 Tory). Nevertheless, winning 30 extra seats does not a government make. The most interesting thing about the 400/140/80 result is that the only party advancing are Mr Kennedy's yellow army. In achieving a tiny overall vote increase David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, Oliver Letwin, the Shadow Chancellor, Theresa May and Tim Collins all become Tory casualties. The deputy leader of the commons and four other ministers are also in trouble but no-one is likely to dislodge teflon Tony yet. In this case we can only hope that the petulant blue party gives up and sulks in a tunnel somewhere as its more left leaning folk abandon ship in M.P. shaped herds. Some are suggesting that this result could kill off the Conservatives by 2015. Right thinking politics will look increasingly comedic with protectionism, pollution and pensions the hottest issues of the next decade. The party of "somewhere in the middle" may no longer find itself somewhere near the bottom. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 23rd, 2005
10:52 pm	Food glorious food... I rarely consider Jamie Oliver's opinions. It is equally rare that he is interviewed on Radio 4. Recently the two combined with interesting results. On average, dinner ladies have between 35 and 45p to spend on food per meal. For 50p more, Mr Oliver believes that a balanced diet could be provided. Mr Oliver also highlighted the political fetish for letting everyone else decide. This is now known as "avoiding the Nanny State". Candidates to make the school dinnner decision appear to be: teachers, parents and private enterprise. Unfortunately none of the above can be relied upon to understand or care about child nutrition. The point a new campaign is making is that the government should both know and care. It is elected to make sure that children eat well. I don't care about banning smoking, base jumping or ice diving. People (by and large) choose these activities. No child makes an informed choice to eat poorly. Children in many cases cannot make informed judgements at all. How much? the cost would be £800m per year = 1 Millenium dome = 1/5 a Trident submarine = The cost to run Trident per year. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 15th, 2005
6:56 pm	Cumbrian Antics A colony of garden gnomes (complete with picket fence) has reappeared on the lake bed of Wastwater in Cumbria . They relocated to deeper water having been disturbed by police divers from their original home at 43m below the surface. Genius (Comment on this)
5:15 pm	"Nothing prepares you for how bad Fleet Street really is until it craps on you" - Ken Livingston Ken, Mayor of London, has been upsetting folk again. Unlike ex-Mayor Giuliani he is not going to be founding consulting houses any time soon and unlike ex-Mayor Chirac he will never be President. For this and more general unkempt buffoonery he can be endearing. Having compared a jewish journalist from the London Evening Standard to a Nazi he should have apologised, retracted his comment and replaced it with another noting that the guy's newspaper was a cretinously bigoted right wing rag which would have so disgusted such relative liberals as Mussolini, Hussein and Pol Pot that they would have found it politically unnacceptable to wrap their fish and chips in it. This would probably have got the boy unelected but would also have been funny. Of greater interest (and therefore not worthy of any column inches in the Mail) are Ken's absurd statements on renewable energy. In an article in the Sunday Times (a popular Murdoch owned lifestyle title) the mayor proposed that all 32,229GWh (DTI) of London's electricity needs should be met by wind farms in the Thames estuary and photovoltaic generation on every roof. Ignoring the obvious questions of what Londoners should do on calm nights, whether the unreinforced distribution network will collapse and that we would need 5,000 turbines (assuming VERY big 1MW units) this seems an excellent idea. Unfortunately Ken ruined the plan by suggesting that, once furnished with utopian generating capacity, London plc should then disconnect itself from the national grid. Ken is of course correct in his belief that such shared security systems are a bad idea. I therefore start the campaign for a separate Navy for London (and propose London Inshore Patrol Service or LIPS as a fine name for it to go by). London should certainly get its own aircraft carrier. The whole point of the grid is security and flexibility for all. Despite the lunacy of Comrade General Secretary Livingstone's remarks, he makes a worthwhile point. I certainly do not want to have to surf down my high street to draw my pension. Biomass, wind, solar and even nuclear will have to be adopted and now is better than later (see technology maturity etc.). But these will only make an impact when considered alongside the replacement of ridiculous short-haul flights with fast rail, the enforced re-use of resources and a ban on people driving formula 1 cars. This author waits on tenterhooks for the stupid suggestions to stop and the action to begin. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 26th, 2005
11:04 pm	The legacy of the magazine This evening I encountered my father, a reasonably intelligent man, absorbing knowledge. He spent a good 3 minutes riffling at about two pages a second through "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare". This would have been an impressive feat of speed reading by anyone's standards. I found it all the more extraordinary given that he started from the back and thus read the entire dramatic works and sonnets (with commentary) in reverse in the time it takes one to do something as useless as make a cup of tea. Needless to say he offered a stout defense of his tomfoolery when challenged. The words of today are herbidaceous, trundlewheel and guffaw. Hello to Mark and Lena in Ottawa. Did you guys fix our submarine yet? (Comment on this)
Saturday, January 22nd, 2005
7:57 pm	Tsunami Aid I've been watching this today and, for "the biggest thing since Live Aid" it hasn't attracted the level of megastar required. With no disrespect to Embrace, Aled Jones, Charlotte Church and Craig David they hardly make Status Quo, The Boomtown Rats, Spandau Ballet, Elvis Costello, BB King, Sting, Phil Collins, Bryan Ferry, U2, Dire Straits, Queen, David Bowie, The Who, Elton John, Kool & The Gang, Black Sabbath, Run DMC, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Bryan Adams, The Beach Boys, Santana, Madonna, Neil Young, Eric Clapton, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, Duran Duran, Mick Jagger, Tina Turner, Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, Ron Wood and David Bowie look C list. Also, its the wrong time of year for benefit concerts. They only work in summer, I guess that January is just too cold and miserable. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 12th, 2005
8:51 pm	Points I am so infuriated by the cretinous jabberings of clerics on the subject of Jerry Springer the Opera that I will learn the lesson of Henry II and pass no public comment of any kind… Except to say that one young lady in the company, whose name I shall not mention lest she be stoned to death on Shaftesbury Avenue at dawn, gave a splendid performance, congratulations ma'am. Onwards... I am not tiring of job interviews. Bizarrely I quite like them. They're great for meeting interesting people without the need (or incentive) to get drunk. People even ask you interesting brainteasers. Take the other day. I went to Oxford, had dinner with some cool guys that I hadn't met before and then met four people for conversation in French the following day, nice huh? A big thank-you is due to Mr Alexander Prideaux (who sounds French but isn't) for providing a Sofa and to Miss Claire Farquhar (who sounds classy but... :o) for providing lunch company whilst on my jaunt. On the subject of lunch, none of it was truly historic and I avoided taking my picture with the chef. I do, however, begin to realise that I should treat interviews more seriously than speed-dating. Things I have been reminded of this week are that it is better to be silent than wrong and that furtive and shrubbery are fine words. On a more serious note can we please stop fluffing around with "Be nice to Africa Week" or "Gordon's tour" or whatever it is and see some policy. It is my mission this week to find out how many serious pieces of legislation have been submitted to Congress and the Palace of Westminster aimed at reducing malaria and hunger. Goodnight all. (Comment on this)
Monday, December 27th, 2004
6:19 pm	Freedom Fighting Nia provides a more balanced discussion on freedom of speech. Myself, Adam and Oliver had put forward the suggestion that it was outrageous that a play be pulled purely since it upset a racial or religious group. Maybe I am more of a liberal (pejorative?) than I thought. Many would be annoyed if the BBC started giving airtime to the BNP. I think I would be annoyed if the BBC started giving disproportionate airtime to the BNP. It is the job of politicians to persuade us that their politics merit our vote more than another's. The BNP's beliefs are disgusting but they are legitimate beliefs. I agree that there should be a line between what is acceptable and what is not. Defamation laws will protect in a few cases where a specific charge is made. In the case of opinion and fictional material such laws cannot work. For me two questions cloud the water. Firstly, the lack of clear distinctions between fiction and opinion and opinion and fact. Newspapers rather than editors are now allied to a set of beliefs. Someone who produces material about sexually predatory, racist or otherwise unacceptable behaviour may be accused of promoting it. What people believe and why they believe it is important. Secondly there exists an imbalance of power between those who claim their beliefs as truths and those who do not. Religion falls into such a category. Why is it harder to joke about the Pope as God's messenger on earth than Dan Quayle, Charles Asnavour or Kim Il-Jong in that position? There must be limits of taste and decency in any society and, for myself, I know roughly where I would place them. However, to use Nia's phrase, I am buggered if I know who can impose such limits on others. (Comment on this)
1:33 pm	Mrs Beeton and the Guardian Christmas leaves me reading about fourteen books at once for about a week. This year is no exception. So far, I recommend The Guardian Stylebook despite the ninth entry under "i" (grrr). I also liked Mrs Beeton's Family Cookery for the following: "The most essential requirement for washing up is a constant supply of hot water" "Invalid Cookery - Consult the patient as little as possible... avoid serving the food in a manner which is known to be disliked by the patient... use a gay cloth, decorative china and perhaps put a flower on the tray" (Comment on this)
Thursday, December 23rd, 2004
10:08 pm	Off to join the EU As they say in the world of football "subject to agreeing personal terms" I shall be transferring to play for the European Commission in Brussels for the last five months of the 2004-2005 season. I've got an internship with their Innovation Policy Unit in the Enterprise Directorate. Time to start reading a bit about Belgium. In other news... Al Pacino and supporting cast including Jeremy Irons are excellent in "The Merchant of Venice" which (despite liberal cutting) manages to get across the genius of the writing. The film reminded me how surreal Venice is. It is the most beautiful and menacing place first thing in the morning or late at night when the quays are deserted. Kimberly Quinn (the woman who appears to have slept with everyone) has announced that she will be publishing her memoirs just days after she was practically dead with the stress of being pregnant and bringing down cabinet ministers at the same time. My tip for the sly Christmas press release is the University of Cambridge announcing the closure of its Architecture Department. (Comment on this)
Monday, December 20th, 2004
10:44 pm	Mob Rule The Birmingham Rep today pulled a production of a play called "Dishonour" because some nutters took offence that a work of fiction presented them in a bad light and threatened violence. The theatre said that it had a duty to protect its staff, audience and the public. It seems unfortunate that the police are overburdened with tiresome jobs when they could be ensuring that legal activities can occur unhindered. I have no wish to live in a society where important decisions are taken by the angry mob. (Comment on this)
Sunday, December 19th, 2004
7:50 pm	Faithless and The Christmas Friday was even better than Friday's usually are. The Brixton Academy played home to Faithless and the after party (beloved by the Finnish peoples who, not co-incidentally, gave us the Moomins) was thrown by my good friends at Imperial College Union. I bumbled away just as the sun was rising and at Paddington had just enough time to grab a 'paper before boarding my train. Thanks folks. My only postscript to the above is that it is extremely annoying to not be allowed to dance upstairs in music venues. Adam has been telling me about a plot hatched by Google to digitize the entire (non-copyright) content of six of the world's great libraries and make them freely available to all. Whilst this is an splendid idea, each of the libraries is in the English speaking world. How Muscovites, Parisians and the Population of China feel about their digital disenfranchisement I cannot say. In an effort to avoid descending into overly sarcastic, self-important, liberal rantings too early in the proceedings and given that it is Christmas I should like to share my favourite pudding recipe with the world: 8 oz raisins 8 oz currants 8 oz sultanas 8 oz peel 8 oz brown sugar 8 oz breadcrumbs 4 oz plain flour 1 tsp salt 1 grated carrot 3 eggs 4 oz chopped almonds 8 oz butter 1 tsp mixed spice grated rind and juice of 1 lemon grated rind and juice of 1 orange 1 grated apple 1 wineglass brandy Method: - Wash and prepare fruit - Mix all ingredients together - Stand overnight - If a little stiff in the morning add milk to soften - Place in greased basins, cover with greaseproof paper and cloth and steam for four hours - Allow to cool - Store until required - Resteam for one and a half hours and serve directly Points: - Cooking should always occur in Imperial Units - Brandy butter is the only acceptable pudding accompaniment - It is not necessary to remove the legs before carving, unless you are carving beef (Comment on this)