I have written a piece for later today on LibDemVoice.org about the senatorial by election in the US state of Massachusetts.

There will be helpful and proper discussion of the issues later on LDV, but there are a few less sensible things that occurred to me while writing.

Firstly – the Dem candidate is called Martha Coakley. Probably best not to refer to the former state Attorney General as Martha “Hokey” Coakley.

Secondly the Republican opponent. Was once a Cosmo centrefold, and is certainly a potential rival to Congressman Studly. Has certainly aged well.

So, this is entirely fluff and not important at all. Read the sensible stuff over on the Voice tomorrow.

In his post on last posting dates (basically, “RSN!”) Mark Pack over at t’voice very kindly linked to my post from a few years back about putting your address on your Christmas card.

We’ve been living in our house for a number of years now. We bought it after the person who lived here before died. But there are a few of her friends who haven’t heard even after all this time, and some are still sending Christmas cards.

Actually, there’s a good bit of news on that subject now. About the last person still to be sending cards sent one last year with a bit more detail – including that she was now teaching a rather specific subject at a named university. And thanks to the intarweb, I was able to find the university, find the web page for the subject in question and find their phone book. Only one person with that first name was teaching that subject, and her email address was on the website. So I was finally able to let her know the sad news about her friend.

But please, to save people like me having to do detective work, include your own name and address on all the Christmas cards you send. You clearly don’t think your friends have moved or died over the last year, but given the number of cards we all send these days, a number of them sadly will have. Including your own details will help people sort things out and let you know what’s happened.

Just been sent a press release with an interesting bit of info in the Notes to Editors:

Microsoft is today unveiling its own research highlighting the impact of counterfeit software on consumers. Microsoft has received over a 150,000 reports from consumers in the past two years detailing their negative experiences with counterfeit software.  That number is double the amount from previous years. Counterfeit copies of software expose customers to viruses, fraud, data loss or damage, critical computer failures and more. In many instances malicious code was found to have been deliberately placed on counterfeit products at the point of manufacture, begging questions as to who is behind these operations, and with what intentions.

Hmmm, sort of.

Are Microsoft saying that if you pay for their software in full, they’ll fully indemnify you against viruses, fraud, data loss or damage, critical computer failures and more? Thought not.

Today in committee I learned of  a simple step that local authorities (and private gyms!) can take to save money and energy in leisure centres.

Two simple words: pool covers.

If you don’t cover your swimming pools at night, then chemicals leak out of the pool via evaporation.  So too does heat from the pool. Leisure centres pay a small fortune in heating swimming pools (and indeed one major thing you can do to reduce leisure centre bills is drop the temperature of the water by just one degree C).

In Nottingham, apparently most of the pools aren’t covered, and many of the leisure centres have old, unworking covers.  It’s taken a little longer than it should do to get agreement to replace the covers, but once they’re in place, it should make a big difference with such a little change.

I’ve been reading the Weymouth Relief Road blog for the last few months, and I think it’s an excellent transport initiative. It keeps local people informed of the details of a complicated road-building project. It costs little or nothing to keep updated and running, but tonight’s post really proves its worth. A communication with the local press got misinterpreted – so they are easily able to set the record straight, almost immediately.

With many transport infrastructure projects, it’s often hard to understand just why it takes so long for things to happen. They’re currently widening the M1 around Nottingham, and it’s taking years. If they had a blog (actually, do they?) they could explain what it is they’re doing, why it takes so long, just which bits will be busy at any given time, what milestones they’ve reached, and people could be better informed. If there were problems or delays, they could tell us about that.

There are a number of major transport projects in the pipeline in Nottingham. Right through my ward runs Nottingham’s Ring Road, which jams up twice every day with the school run and commuter traffic. There is a plan to add an additional lane in one direction, along with massive work to pretty much every junction. The work will cause trouble while its on, but will hopefully make life better once it is concluded. Unlike the Weymouth road – I think, anyway – the ring road is both a major transport route, and a residential street. The people who live along it will be particularly affected – and they will also be consulted. If the Council gets organised enough to start the blog early enough it can be publicised during the consultation and keep local people informed right the way through the process.

And the ring road major scheme is just one of any number big transport projects planned for Nottingham in the next few years – others include Turning Point East, around the Broadmarsh centre and London Island; there’s also the major renovation project for the Station. And of course that’s not mentioning the multi-hundred-million pound project that is the next phase of the Nottingham Tram.

Earlier today, I read a post on Jennie Rigg’s Dreamwidth blog about women bloggers. That post itself comes about because of a discussion that began in LDV’s fringe meeting about e-engagement at the Bournemouth conference – and LDV still have an audio recording of that meeting if you’d like to listen. I’m responding to Jennie’s post because she calls out LDV editors on our unconscious (?) misogyny – but I’m responding in a personal capacity, hence these words being here and not over on’t Voice.

I like to think I’m a feminist, and in the Lib Dems, I strongly support the approach we are taking to increase our female representation (ie support, training and encouragement, rather than all-women shortlists. I remember listening to the debate we had at conference, and can keenly remember one woman speaker telling Baroness Williams she was plain wrong – “I want to be woman MP who’s got here on my own strengths, not been elected to parliament as a result of special pleading.”) Even so, I felt a little odd during our fringe meeting to specifically ask for women questioners when almost all of the audience members up to then had been men. Was that a good thing to do or was it tokenism?

Jennie specifically addresses herself to the LDV early morning post, which has two links to Lib Dem blogs. Her thesis is that more of us on the team are men than women, and when we’re selecting our links, we link to more men’s writing than women’s writing. We end up with a self-perpetuating unhelpful spiral that excludes women writers.

I went back and checked the choices I made myself in the posts I’ve written for Davily (eh? fingers. I mean Daily View) since we restarted after the summer break. My reckoning is that my links have been 14 men and 5 women, with one unknown. Unknown to me that is – I don’t know whether Nader Fekri is a man or a woman.

That’s not particularly good, but [fx struggling to find positive gloss] it’s better than the gender balance of the LibDemBlogs list from which we make our selections.

The whole point of DV2x2 was to help spread some of LDV’s awesome power to pull in readers out into the wider Lib Dem blogging community. (NB, if you’ve been linked by DV, do you have any stats on the sort of readership boost it provides?)

But, not to sound like a whiney whinger here, DV is a pain to write. Half the time I don’t know what day of the week it is, and I forget to make my contribution, which means I’m rushing to do it when I’m barely awake or half asleep.

And this is now the third criticism I’ve received for our selections for the second half. Those criticisms are a) you only/disproportionately link to “celebrity” Lib Dem bloggers b) you only link to “essay bloggers” not shorter posts and now c) you don’t link to enough women.

All of which is quite a lot to keep in your head when half awake, and in any case, only have two slots to fill! I will nevertheless endeavour to do so.

One other thing we can do to help: one of our thoughts behind 2×2 was to encourage people to use the comments to link to their own selections of the best writing that they’d like to share with people. I’ve amended our 2×2 template to remind us all to specifically ask for these contributions.

Finally on the issue of keeping a reading list – absolutely. I do use a feed reader (Google Reader) and it’s chock full of people I follow. It also has 2,000 unread posts… I couldn’t comment on the gender balance of the blogs in it, but I’d guess that Jennie is right and I read far more men’s writing than women’s.