Anti-fascist protests, Monday 8th June

Just been told to pass the message on.

DEMONSTRATE: anti-fascist protests Monday 8th June

Liverpool, 5.30pm, Town Hall.
Manchester, 5.30pm, Piccadilly Gardens.
Sheffield, 5pm, Town Hall.
Preston, 6pm, Flag Market

Some sad news

http://www.sthelensstar.co.uk/news/4410461.Moss_Bank_councillor_Anne_Heyes_dies/

I've just been given news that one of the councillors for my ward, Anne Heyes, sadly died yesterday after a fight against cancer. Despite being on the opposite side of the political divide to Anne when she was elected in 2007, I felt she deserved to win the contest given her commitment, enthusiasm, and abilities. Cancer is a dreadful way to die at any age, but at the age of just 55, her young age makes her death a double tragedy.

I post here merely to offer my sympathies to her friends and family, and to say that they are in my thoughts and prayers at this dreadful time.

Who is to blame for MPs "flipping" houses?

Well, The Telegraph might be a good place to start:

Daily Telegraph, 26 June 2007

Second homeowners who bury their heads in the sand face crippling tax demands if they try to cash in on soaring property prices. But with a little shrewd planning potentially sky-high capital gains tax bills can be cut drastically, thanks to a range of little-known tax breaks.

...

2. Become a butterfly and flit between homes. Or in the jargon, switch "principal private residence" exemptions between properties. All gains on property are taxable with the exception of the home you live in which the taxman calls your principal private residence. However, if you own more than one home you can elect which you wish classed as your primary residence, provided there is some evidence that you have actually resided there, albeit shortly. If you live for even a matter of weeks at any stage in your "second" home, this enables you to write off the last three years of capital gains when you come to sell.

But the window for exploiting this loophole is tiny. You must elect which will be your primary residence within two years of the purchase of one of the various properties you own. Having made your choice, you can then change it. But if you fail to elect, the opportunity is lost.

Whiting says: "It is possible to play around with elections for a bit, but you need to be careful."

Warburton adds: "Say you had owned your home for 20 years, and a holiday cottage for 18 years, and then last year you bought a third property. If you hadn't already elected in respect of the first two, there would have been nothing you could do. But buying the third property opens up opportunities. You can still elect your main home your primary residence, but provided you elect within two years of the purchase of the new property, you can change the election on all three properties again in the future.

My thoughts on local community websites

So here’s the idea I’ve alluded to in the past, and promised I would post on Sunday. Sorry it’s a little late.

Simply put, it’s a blog aggregator similar in utility to bloggers4labour or libdemblogs, but with a focus on locality rather than political parties.

So, for example, take St Helens, where I live. There are a number of blogs and websites based in, or related to, St Helens. But none of them seem to be very popular with the residents of the town, none of them significantly impact on life in the town, and none of them seem anything other than outposts of vanity publishing, this blog included.

Wouldn’t it be better – economically, culturally, and socially – if each and every article written about St Helens was accessible from one site that had been publicised locally, and was easy enough to navigate that even the least web-savvy resident could feel at home with? I think so. And that’s why I came up with the idea to launch a site that catches the latest posts from St Helens corporate and personal websites and listed them all in chronological order, providing a link to each post and, say, the first three lines of the post.

If readers of this one site found something that took their interest, they could click through directly to the writer’s own post. In such a way, an internet one-stop-shop could be created, whereby all online St Helens news is easily accessible.

Publicising the existence of this resource would have the following benefits:

Communities would form between like-minded individuals. The social aspects of life in the town would be enhanced by people meeting to share their interests.

Shoe leather costs could be reduced across the town, as plumbers post updates on their own websites, and potential customers have an easy way of making contact.

Community activism could be more effectively administered, as more people become aware of local campaigns on political issues.

Networks between and amongst companies and individuals could be more easily cultivated, resulting in a greater sense of community, more efficient business practices and greater democratic potential.

No doubt other stuff I’ve not thought of too.

This sort of community-based website would be more effective than a centralised site commissioning articles, as it would be less based on one person maintaining their interest in keeping the site updated – the site would update automatically with new posts directly linking to other sites independently administered. For the same reason, it would be more likely to last longer than a centrally-run site.

Now, imagine that on a regional basis, with dozens of websites set up across the region – all of them gathering together the latest corporate and individual website updates relating to their own town. It would be a truly bottom-up approach to building more community-minded networks throughout the country.

As for the cost, the set-up and running costs would not be excessive. The Bloggers4Labour site which runs a similar scheme on political lines claims to have incurred running costs of less than £2900 since 2007, averaging at around £100 per month. A funding stream based on advertising to St Helens residents and businesses could cover this once the site has reached a tipping point in page impressions. Not only would the website be able to confirm page impressions, but the likelihood would be that the site’s readers are primarily based in one relatively small locality and be consistent with the sort of socio-economic groups likely to be involved in web activity – potential customers who local businesses would love to have access to.

There are a few problems still to be ironed it. Firstly, I haven’t got a pot to piss in, never mind £100 a month to invest into a website with the possibility – however slight – of it turning into a money pit. Secondly, I don’t have the technical know-how to write a blog aggregator. Both libdemblogs and bloggers4labour have confirmed that their code is available to use as long as they are credited, but I’m still completely in the dark as to the first thing to do to write this stuff; a professional web designer would need to be employed. And lastly, I doubt I’ve got the time to do anything about it.

So I write here purely in a spirit of collegiate enterprise. Hopefully, someone reading this can get in touch to discuss things further and move the proposal on into reality. I know that a handful of intelligent people blog about proposed community websites regularly, and I’m aware of the way numerous think tanks with influence on Conservative policy are in favour of both increased localism and digital advancement. Surely this is one way of combining both issues and encouraging local economies too at the same time?

So anyway, my phone number and email address are in the top right hand corner of this page. Get in touch if you’re remotely interested and can do anything about it. Cheers.

A post about blogging

It can be quite difficult when you can't be arsed, can't it.

Anyway, I'll be continuing with my transcibing of obscure seventies album tracks sooner or later. But before that, I thought I'd update an idea I had 18 months or more ago about community blogging aggregators.

The only problem is, I'm pretty busy for the next however long - I'm off out tonight to watch that Hollywood remake of State of Play, I'm out tomorrow night to see Eddie Izzard in Manchester and I'm out on Friday at some political Q&A thing at Liverpool Uni. Then on Saturday, I've got an appointment for an eye test, have agreed to man an anti-fascist stall for an hour or two, will be catching up on series one of The Wire, and am cooking something nice for me & my girlfriend.

So I doubt I'm going to get a minute to finish my draft post about my idea for community blogging aggregators until at least Sunday. So this'll have to do until then. Sorry.

Crash

Who's that coming round the bend?
One wheel in the air
Helmet, goggles, gloves and boots
Flies from here to there
Speeding everywhere

Crashing through the old screen door
Wheeling round the drive
Blond hair flying everywhere
Now he's in a dive
But he's still alive

Crash McBean should've seen
Poor old mommy's face go green
Crash come flying round the bend
Two wheels up and he's down again

Competition tricycle
Got to be the best
Runs on peanut butter fuel
Flies by all the rest
Headed for the West

Little Jack

I was raised in better days
Mostly by myself
And no-one ever took the time
Or was inclined to help
Mother dear, she was never here
She left me to the street
Her little boy was not too tall
with dirty hands and feet

Little old Jack he busted back
Suzy keep away
And though my life was lily white
It's all I heard them say

Now I'm grown, I'm on my own
Running free and wild
Not inclined to be entwined
With a missus and a child
Though, my dear, it may seem queer
It keeps me in the black
Should you depart to break my heart
Don't bother looking back