I will be starting as usual by sharing some important links, before moving on to some other stuff…
LINKS
To start with, a reminder that the autistic community is still awaiting an apology from Katie Hopkins. On this topic, a prominent supporter of our campaign is Lucy Hawking, daughter of Stephen and mother of an autistic child – check out this piece.
My penultimate link is to a list of demands to the next government on behalf of disabled people.
Last of all, courtesy of the Anti-bulliying Alliance comes a suggested anti-bullying charter for use in schools.
PICTORIAL INTERLUDE
Close up of a swimming cormorant.
MIDDLESEX SECOND INNINGS WOES
Middlesex demonstrated in their match against Durham that batting again rather than enforcing the follow-on is no guarantee against a disastrous collapse. Middlesex reached their eventual 2nd innings total of 83 only because Tim Murtagh, batting at no 11 and suffering with a hamstring strain top scored. Chris Rushworth and John Hastings each took five wickets in this remarkable display.
I was sitting outside listening to the commentary on this and periodically enhancing my collection of photos…
My best aeroplane shot yet……with this one a decent second
As usual, before getting to the main part of the blog I have some links to share…
First of all, a story in the Mirror about housing benefits profiteers (i.e. big landlords) accompanied by a link to list of 20 of West Norfolk’s worst offenders in this regard:
Shocking but not in the least surprising to anyone who knows anything about destructive Dave the debate ducker and his mate Gideon is this story about the effect of Tory cuts on the disabled from the New Statesman.
Now, some political dynamite from Vox Political in the form of story about how the Labour and Green party candidates were omitted from 480 ballot papers sent out to voters in Hull.
Katie Hopkins has been at it again, and is the subject of another petition on change.org demanding an apology to the autistic community for her latest offensive remarks. Please sign and share.
My last story is of a good outcome to a horrible event. The people who attacked and almost killed Malala Yousafzai have been jailed for life, and here is the story courtesy of BBC News.
THE WALK
This afternoon I went out for a walk, which turned out be full of glorious spring sights. The first camera moment came within minutes of setting forth, as I was crossing over the upper Purfleet, in the form of this Moorhen…
The Great Ouse rarely fails to provide some decent opportunities for pictures, and here are some from today…
Neither Hardngs Pits nor the Nar provided much of interest, but the parkland areas (the Walks and the Recreation Field) certainly did…
Opportunities to photograph the South gate with no traffic interfering are not common.
The loco pulling a goods train.Tree sculptures, at the Tennyson Road edge of the Recreation Field.
A front-on view of the loco showing a couple of trucks as well.
Between Tennyson Road and Bawsey Drain there were a few small things of interest…
Bawsey Drain provided two examples of a mother duck taking her little ones out on the water and some small birds of the beautiful but frustrating (because they are so hard to capture on camera) variety…
I took the way home that leads via two ponds and a section of river to the Railway Station and thence home. This last stretch provided some further duckling pictures and as my final shot of the day a blackbird…
This morning a letter was printed on the front of the Daily Telegraph. Appended to a few lines of body text about why they would be voting conservative were the names of 100 business leaders. Even if this had been entirely genuine, it would have been no more convincing than a letter to the Daily Mirror signed by 100 prominent trade unionists explaining why they were voting labour. However, it was not very long before it was discovered that the letter had been drafted in Tory HQ, and that a sizeable portion of the signatories were already known Tories, in some cases even Tory peers. As the day progressed, this was compounded by somebody noting the presence in that list of a 100 of a number of Mrs Cameron’s cronies (yes, they really are that stupid/ arrogant).
Various people made suggestions through the day about other selections of 100 people with a linked trait who could sign a letter about why they were voting labour (disabled people, and food bank users were two suggestions).
This letter was intended to boost the Tories and harm Labour, but I suspect that like the now legendary “Road to Recovery” poster that started the year its effect will be the reverse. The letter (unsurprisingly since it came from Tory HQ) was riddled with factual inaccuracies, as well as the problems already documented with the so-called signatories. It started out as a non-story given ridiculous air-time (“100 rich b**t**ds are going to vote Tory”) and un-ravelled from there.
Frankly, the use of this kind of tactic suggests desperation. To end this little section I have a couple more links to analyses of this story…
aspiblog 