Numbers

Here are some numbers from various committee meetings this week

  • 128,300 number of households on the council tax register
  • 103,270 number of households on the electoral register
  • 188,442 number of people registered to vote
  • 28,000 number of  properties owned by Nottingham City Homes (decreasing all the time, partly because of the right to buy.)
  • 86,000 number of properties in the private sector
  • Therefore… 14,300 properties owned by registered social landlords (can that be right?!)
  • 1.5 voters in yer average household – obviously not counting children under 16, foreign nationals, people who haven’t registered to vote, etc.
  • Therefore… 25,030 households not registered to vote.

Tweets on 2008-03-12

  • Looking down at my growing talons and wishing I could find my nailclippers. #
  • Not feeling quite so content with the world now the flu medication is wearing off #
  • Wondering what the dress code would be for a christening in Bucharest. #
  • @markpack Splitter! #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

New recordings from Alex Foster

I have been keeping a careful list of everyone who has been kind enough to email me and tell me they’ve enjoyed my voice recordings of various stories. I’ve been meaning for ages to write and say I’ve finished my next big project, except, erm, for actually having to finish my big project before I can do that.

So today, in the absence of completed big projects, I wrote out to tell people I had completed two small projects instead. Below is the text of the email.

I am writing to all those who have emailed in the past to let me know they have enjoyed one of my recordings. If you would rather not hear from me in future, do please let me know.

I have been somewhat lax at completing my current big project, Jules Verne’s 80 Days Around the World. After over two years, I am only half through the project.  It will be completed some day soon.

In the mean time, however, there are some shorter stories recently recorded you may be interested in:

Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
in the Short Story Collection 21 on Librivox

Award winning science fiction short story from the British Science
Fiction Association, and StarshipSofa.com (slightly racy story!)

You can find all of my recordings for Librivox here.

In particular, full works include
The Invisible Man, by H G Wells
The Mysterious Affair at Styles

(may not be available, subject to local copyright laws)

Happy listening,

Alex Foster
http://www.alexfoster.me.uk

The recording for StarshipSofa podcast came about because the author Tony Smith got in touch to commission it. I’m all in favour of people who’ve heard my recordings and liked them getting in touch and commissioning new material. I live in hope someday someone will want to pay me for it!

Tweets on 2008-03-11

  • Busy day. Estate inspection. Scrutiny meeting. Residents’ assoc meeting. Then out to see Richard Herring. #
  • And not approaching work with usual clarity with my head and face acheing, nose running and throat tickling. #
  • Onto final meeting of day – Richard Herring’s "F*ck, I’m 40" tour. #
  • I got cheered at resident for getting a pothole fixed – but I’ve still not moved the bus stop or overturned the planning #
  • @dr_nick quotient? #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

Une tache peut en cacher une autre

In France, the sign un train peut en cacher un autre is the equivalent of the English “Another train coming if lights continue to show.” In other words, don’t get impatient if the barriers at the level crossing don’t go up straight away. I’ve used the phrase in the past to demonstrate that French can be really elegant and compact, although of course, anyone who’s ever tried to write a business letter in French will also know there are moments when it can be monumentally long-winded. Je vous prie d’agreer Monsieur, l’expression de mes sentiments les plus distingués is the French for Your sincerely. Or at least it used to be the last time I actually learned any French.

Anyway, un train peut en cacher un autre means literally One train can conceal another. What I’m aiming for in the title is one task can bring on the next, although I may also be misremembering une tache for a task.

You see, earlier this afternoon, I wanted to get the cool WordPress plugin that automatically reposts today’s twitter messages in a new post without any need for my input. So I downloaded and installed Alex King’s Twitter tools. And it promptly broke my blog completely, so I uninstalled it again, and left to go to committee.

Hours later, after a brief interlude back home, then a further trip into town for a group meeting and a briefing from the chief exec of our ALMO (the town hall has been lousy with Labour councillors turning up en masse for a contested election for council leader and deputy leader, and I have not yet heard the outcome… I’ve been a councillor for five years, and we’ve only had one leader and deputy in all that time so if it happens, a change will be interesting) I tried to find out why the plugin didn’t work, and found it was because my installation of WordPress had been superseded dozens of times since I last upgraded.

So, I downloaded the new version (it’s free, after all) and went through the necessary steps to upgrade.

Now here’s where the extra tasks come in. The new version has knackered my old template a bit, with all the links on the side now appearing multiple times. So I’ll have to rewrite the template, or find a sexy new one – which is another task which could be quite time consuming.

And the new version of WordPress helpfully points out which of your other plugins are not au courant. Apparently, it’s nearly all of the ones I use. So I will have to download and replace each of those one by one, which will take a while.

Not tonight, however, I’m supposed to be typesetting a leaflet.

Voting in France

Former UK MP Jane Griffiths got to vote for the first time in France in the elections last weekend.

It’s apparently not a case of taking a stubby bit of pencil into a polling booth there.

Mind you, it’s not that I’ve done that myself in the UK for years, since I’ve almost always had a postal vote, as a person who’s normally a little on the busy side on polling day.

I’m at conference

I’m at Lib Dem conference all week in the lovely shiny new Liverpool Arena. I’m blogging like crazy over on LibDemVoice.org, and plucking up the courage to use my new podcasting thingy.

I always forget just how lovely Liverpool is. I’ve been here two or three times before, on a ringing tour in the 90s, visiting friends in Crosby, and probably one other time. P’s sister used to work here as a junior writer on Brookside (apparently one of the few streets in Liverpool not to get FOCUS leaflets).

And yet I never remember it’s a great place. I really must come back as a tourist some time and spend some proper time in the city – hopefully at a time when the city is NOT ram-packed with a conference and a home match, and the hotels are rubbing their hands in glee and charging top whack.

Lib Dem News and the Lib Dem walk out

Iain Dale is trying to find conspiracy theories behind the fact that the Lib Dem walk out of Parliament earlier this week didn’t make it onto the front page of the party newspaper, Lib Dem News.

Strangely, there is no mention of Ed Davey’s hissy fit or the LibDem walkout. Do you think they have now realised how ridiculous they made themselves look?

I suspect the answer is rather more prosaic.  The print deadline for Lib Dem News is Tuesday so that the printers can get the publication off the presses, folded, into envelopes and onto the doormats of Lib Dem activists and Iain Dale by Friday.  The walkout probably happened too late in the cycle to make it into this week’s paper.  We’ll know by waiting to see what’s in next week’s edition.  However, it might be such old news by then that it doesn’t feature much.

These are the perils of a weekly periodical. Perhaps he’ll understand better when his own political rag reaches the presses.