Curly's Corner Shop, the blog!

Picture from The Guardian

Another good guy departs

Alan was a regular contributor to my Curly’s Cornershop Message Board until he became ill a couple of years ago, his contributions were always witty and well informed, he was a veritable font of knowledge on most things connected with South Shields and the north-east, and yet I still managed to forget that he posted under the name of “Jerry”. He was unassuming despite being a celebrated teacher, journalist and Russian translator, one would never know how highly he was esteemed in such places as the British Library.

Alan Myers left an indelible mark in literary and educational circles, he was one of life’s great contributors and a mentor to many young school students, in short he was one of those men who South Shields can be proud of, and despite his careers taking him around other parts, this town and the north east were kept dear to his heart and he fought proudly to defend his roots.

Alan was a pleasure to correspond with and he always managed to enlighten and brighten, now that is a gift that many would wish to have – he will be sadly missed and I feel privileged that he used our local Sanddancer website to keep in contact with the folks of Shields.

• Obituary.
• Wikipedia
• Alan Myers’ website

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Is this just a euphemism for a privatised “Big Brother”?

Whilst I was happy to read of the demise of the national child database, as a sign that perhaps the coalition was earnest in its desires to sweep away illiberal poorly designed citizen databases, I was not amused to read about David Cameron’s ideas to use private companies to spy on the unemployed or the disabled.

Experian and Equifax have their place to help us build a credit history and provide banks and other financial institutions with the risk assessments necessary for making lending decisions, but there is no moral advantage in being used by the government to spy upon its citizens. The whole idea is repugnant and ought to be dropped as fast as possible. The “Big Society” is likely to very quickly become a privatised “Big Brother” with measures such as this which appear to have been filched from some old 1960s East German manual.

This is not what I would call a libertarian idea that a Conservative or a Liberal could proudly advocate.

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For the avoidance of doubt there are none!

Public spending, as I have already pointed out, is planned to continue increasing year on year over the life of this Parliament, public debt will continue to rise year on year, and the budget deficit will not be eradicated even by 2015, our government will continue to overspend and the budget will not be balanced.

You can see John Redwood giving Kirsty Wark a fun time here on Newsnight, and read his blog post here.

However some of the reports of reductions in the increase of spending make great headlines for journalists, public bodies, local councils, and other public quangos as they stake their claims for a slice of the still growing cake, this was all predictable as they paint the coalition government as evil and heartless. The battle is now more about generating publicity for those who depend upon the public purse for their lifestyles, and are determined to continue seeking a rise in their allocations of cash.

The only real cut around here is the amount of time that I have to spend at this keyboard, for which I apologise, posts may now appear here only at weekends as I balance my commitments between work, family, and photography.

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Do you remember these?

As far as I can recall they have all closed, disappeared, and gone out of business in the last ten years or been transformed into something else:

Winskells, The Albion, The Gold Lion, The Stanhope Hotel, The Commercial, The Alkali, The Turks Head, The General Havelock, The Look Out, The Eureka, The Nook, The Horsley Hill Hotel, The City of Durham, and The Commando. Are there others that I have missed?

So, isn’t it great to see that South Shields MP David Miliband, (favourite pint London Pride) has launched a campaign to save the British pub! His track record of looking after the pubs in South Shields  which have suffered under NuLabour’s years of taxing alcohol, raising excise duties, increasing Elfin Safety legislation, food hygiene regulations,  and banning smoking (without helping the licensed trade to build external shelters) will help his campaign enormously – not!

And he wants planning laws strengthened to help protect pubs from developers.

I guess he has seen the smart new flats at the end of Boldon Lane  then?

Mike Smithson at Political Betting calls it a Jim Hacker moment and mocks accordingly:

Meanwhile, my Greek friend is a little more scathing in his assessment, and I think our pubs need saving from the NuLabour apparatchiks who largely caused their decline.

Mr. Miliband, I can hardly remember a South Shields MP who was quite so hypocritical and two faced over a single issue! Has the grog fogged your memory?

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South Shields MP going off piste (Coleman Balls part 1)

Via Dizzy Thinks and Liberal Conspiracy

There are many grounds on which it is right for Labour politicians to criticise Cameron and the administration he leads.

But simply stating commonly-known facts in plain English in response to a question at a press conference does not strike me as one of them.

However, can someone explain exactly what Miliband can mean in this utterly non constructed sentence?

in three unscripted appearances at press conferences [he] has gone off script

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Most bizarre story of the weekend

Click picture for story

I guess the initial sifting interview will ensure that she doesn’t get the job:

Yesterday, when contacted by The Mail on Sunday, Ms Smith said: ‘How did you know that I had applied?’

Asked whether she thought her bid was likely to succeed, she said: ‘I have made an application, that’s all I know’, before adding ‘f*** off’ and terminating the conversation.

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