Just a quick note to remind anyone who is still subscribing to this blog that I have now moved over completely to Dreamwidth.

The url is: http://miss-s-b.dreamwidth.org/ and it's syndicated to LJ as miss_sb_dw, for those of you whose preferred mode of reading that is.

Please to be updating your bookmarks, RSS readers, and blogrolls. Thank you!

I have now completely moved over to Dreamwidth, and this will be (probably) the last post to this journal. Please, please, please update your links, RSS readers, and blogrolls to reflect the change. If you are on LJ, the relevant syndicated feed name is miss_sb_dw. I know it's a pain in the arse to ask you to do this, but I won't be changing blog platforms again, or if I do it won't be for a long time, since I have top-whack-permanent-seed account on DW, and will be the premiumest of premium users over there.

If any of you are checking out Dreamwidth, by the way, there are a bunch of politics comms you might want to join/add:

• UK Politics community.
• Real Ale lover's community.
• Liberty in the UK - a non-partisan community for UK Liberals of all parties (name shamelessly nicked from Rob Knight - sorry Rob!).

I am also watching lots and lots of politics-related feeds - too many to list here - check my DW profile for details (for those of you who don't know, DW works as a feed-reader and blogging platform in one, so most of you will probably see your own blogs being fed to DW if you check).

As from today, I will no longer be posting to The Yorksher Gob, and my LJ account will only be updated with crossposts when I remember to do them and twitter updates (to make absolutely sure that my large LJ f-list will be notified when I post and won't miss anything unless they choose to). This is mostly what has been happening for the last week or so anyway. I will still be reading my LJ f-list and commenting and things. I am not abandoning my friends on LJ, or deleting my account, or anything over dramatic like that.

My new home is at http://miss-s-b.dreamwidth.org Please update your bookmarks and RSS readers as necessary.

If you have any questions feel free to ask them - but bear in mind that from hitting post on this to midnight I will be at work and I might not get back to you immediately ;)

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This entry was originally posted at my Dreamwidth blog. Please comment there using OpenID.

We're not actually going to be able to STOP swine flu, are we? Surely it would be better to LET it spread, get it over with, and then we would have herd immunity? Why are we prolonging the agony? It's not like the world isn't over-populated anyway...

Why yes, I AM feeling particularly grumpy today. I suspect it is something to do with having woken up at half past five in the frigging morning. Still, at least I have heard News Briefing and Farming Today for the first time ever.

This entry was originally posted at http://miss-s-b.dreamwidth.org/883162.html. Please comment there using OpenID, and add the feed of my DW posts to LJ at miss_sb_dw.

It's a Festival! Of Beer!

Less than a week to go to beer festival at work, and the nerves are starting to set in. Vicky and I have decided on wearing some kind of May Queen getup, since it will be MayDay on the first day of the festival. This might mean a trawl through the charity shops on Monday to find some not-black clothes...

Anyway, if anyone is free next weekend, and in the area, do feel free to pop in. We will have lots of beer and you can come and point and laugh at me behind the bar.

The Barge and Barrel Spring Beer Festival - May 1st - 4th inclusive. Bring your own Maypole. Wicker Men not supplied.

((X-posted Dreamwidth Real Ale Comm, here; miss_sb_dw here, theyorkshergob here. Comments disabled on all but the Real Ale post))

QT was remarkable in that I mostly agreed with David Starkey, even though he was somewhat hyperbolic. The Everyone Loves Vince thing continued (even on This Week where the party got a celebrity endorsement -YAY! ... from Janet Street-Porter -Oh dear) and the Tory was a complete non-entity, so I was fairly happy with it.

This Week went Star Trek MAD (Huzzah!) even to the extent of putting Quentin Twat (and his beer belly) in a Spock outfit (he SO should have been a nameless Redshirt) but Lord, David Gest, Janet Street-Porter AND Quentin Twat in the same show? That's got to be illegal under the Geneva Conventions, surely?

I have had much gin, and am down to 54 unread emails...

This entry was originally posted at http://miss-s-b.dreamwidth.org/882246.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Isn't the new Lib Dem tax policy grand? We got real proper news airtime and everything!

There, that's political blogging out the way for the moment. In other news, I have been v v v busy not posting all the stuff I keep promising to do and falling further behind setting up for the shiny new internet future! I have mentioned Dreamwidth already. The plan is to move over there lock, stock and two smoking barrels when my paid account on LJ runs out, in August.

At the moment, this is having a number of effects:

• I am not posting at theyorkshergob as much, because I am over at DW setting stuff up and such


• I have transferred all of my non-f-locked reading material over there as of today.


• I am randomly squeeing on twitter lots


• I have already started making substantive posts over there, but so far mostly memeage

This means that if you're not yet watching my Dreamwidth blog, you've not yet missed much. But you will, if you don't start watching it soon.

If you are on my personal LJ f-list:

You don't have to do anything. Courtesy of twitterfeed, everything I post will be shipped in once per day by LoudTwitter. Of course, if you have an irrational phobia of clicking twitterfeed posts, you'll miss stuff, but that's entirely your choice and I, as a Liberal, won't deny it to you. And besides, you can just add miss_sb_dw to your f-lists and then you won't miss a thing ;)

If you are not on my LJ f-list:

Then you need to start following the DW blog as well as theyorkshergob. I shall try not to crosspost too much, which means that you will inevitably miss stuff if you follow one but not the other. Eventually I shall be going over there completely, but not just yet.

Either way, if you fancy a DW account of your own:

Comment on one of my posts over there. Or Mat's. Or somebody's. Because (as Mat says in the comments below) they will offer accounts to validated openIDs as soon as possible when the site goes live.

I realise that this is a pain in the arse for many of you, but I promise it'll be better in the long run. Dreamwidth works kind of like I always hoped LJ would. The OpenID stuff actually works. Lots of other stuff actually work. I am deeply in love with it.

Oh yeah, and I already have a queue for invite codes. Ozzy, Del, Scarlettgirl, in that order. As soon as I get some, they shall be handed out.

So the Westminster Bubble is all still wittering on about smeargate, despite the fact that we now know that Ian Tomlinson died of abdominal bleeding and there are lot of other important things in the news. Still, smeargate has had one welcome effect. Alice Mahon, one of the wonderful and principled people who was still suckered into supporting the Labour party, has seen the light.

Come to the Lib Dem side, Alice. We have cookies (homemade by my own dear wife).

... ARE UTTER BAR-STUDS. Whose bright idea was it to make an advert for them based on the Magical Trevor song? I've only seen the bloody thing twice and now I can't stop going round the house going:

Everyone loves Magical Trevor
Cos the tricks that he does are ever so clever...

It's almost as bad as badgerbadgerbadgerbadgerbadgerbadger mushroom mushroom... But still nothing like the Little Red Monkey:

RIP Clement Freud: Liberal, wit, and raconteur.

:(

If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don't actually live longer; it just seems longer.

This morning I are been mostly wondering whose bright idea it was to commission an extremely unfunny sitcom about arms dealing...

I shall copy and paste the text of ( my first ever LJ entry, for those who don't have access to it... )
So, what has changed for me since then?

Well, I have a lot less money to play with.
I have passed my bike test, bought and lost two motorbikes, and am now bikeless.
I have a different home, a different job, and most importantly, a different 'im indoors.
I have an extra doggie, and have gained and lost two snakes.

And despite all that upheaval, and the lack of cash? I am much much much emotionally better off.

LJ, meanwhile, has started having adverts, has sold out and sold its userbase down the river, and if anything better had come along before, I'd probably have been off a while ago... So I am really crossing my fingers for Dreamwidth.

Hullo world! I am still trying to catch up with my mammoth backlog, and this is complicated by the fact that I have taken the plunge with Dreamwidth. So you all still know I am alive etc., have some linkies:

• Firstly, my beloved explains why Dreamwidth is so awesome and why we are both so stoked about it. Another clue is in their diversity statement, which reads like the preamble to the constitution to me...


• We are having a Beltane Beer Festival at work, and you're all invited, if you can get to it!


• Perse posts a nice discursive post about the writing of New Who in dw_academy. Also, Daddies Richard and Alex might want to nosey at this post ;)


• Mr Quist strikes again in his puncturing of government.


• And finally, Lidl's most tempting offer yet - via huskyteer. Suspect hairygit will be especially interested in that one.

And now I must go watch more Batman with my Small Person. Oh the trials of motherhood...

So, amazon are enabling LGBT and disability discrimination. It are all over the internet. Is there any reason why The Party is still supporting and promoting them via the affiliate scheme? All the ethical people are disabling theirs.

Oh yes, perhaps it's because all the Westminster-based Lib Dems are still banging on about the complete non-event of a bottom-feeding, muck-raking Tory blogger being holier-than-thou about a bottom-feeding, muck-raking Labour blogger bandying about some silly ideas in an email, and hasn't noticed that something important regarding actual oppression of actual people by a huge commercial giant is happening..

For fuck's sake.

The reason people pay attention to this bollocks is because we are all talking about it. You can't spend your life talking about Draper/Staines and then complain that people talk about them too much. Find another frigging topic. Preferably something that actually matters.

( It's one of those ones with lots of questions )

And now I guess I'd best be off to work...

Quarter of a bloody hour on male pattern baldness? On WOMAN'S HOUR? FFS! Here is the text of my email:

Why on earth is Woman's Hour devoting a large part of its broadcast time to male baldness? It is, by definition, not going to be of direct interest to women. Even those women who find it of INDIRECT interest are going to need to persuade their men to listen to a bit of Woman's Hour.

I hate to come over all feministy here, but the vast majority of the broadcast media caters to the male point of view and things that men care about. Why are we letting them take over the one hour per day we women get? It's just not cricket.

I bet you a tenner that item was suggested by a male researcher.

Still, the item on women who do falconry is interesting...

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Still poorly, still off work, but better than I was.

Today, I are bin mostly puking. With occasional bouts of the dire rear. And then more puking. Oh, and did I mention the puking? There has been a lot of puking.

Mat, also, has been puking. In fact, earlier, there was comedy synchronised puking. Meanwhile Small Person has a cough LOL.

I have had some interesting temperature fluctuations - feeling as though I am freezing while Mat tells me I am burning up is odd. I appear to be getting back to what passes for normal, though - I am not shivering AND sweating right now, at least - and I don't feel particularly hot or cold.

I rang in sick to work today, and will be doing so tomorrow as well, I think. I'm managing to keep water down at the moment, but haven't attempted anything solid yet; every muscle in my body aches from tensing-while-retching; and I don't think I will have the physical strength for work even if (as it looks at the moment) the puking is passing.

Still, in the past 48 hours I have eaten a slice of toast, a yoghurt, and a Clementine. Hurrah for a healthy balanced diet!

So now there is a video, showing Mr Tomlinson being batoned and shoved by a police officer in riot gear. Even if you agree with this kind of treatment for protesters, even if you think they are asking for it, surely you can't think that a man walking home from work deserves it?

Like John Q Publican says, it's time to set aside partisan bickering and stand together, with one voice, to call the Establishment to account for the death of an innocent man.

(inspired by a discussion with James and The Munchkin on Twitter)

Poll #1379548 Kippers
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 41

I think kippers are

Click to Embiggen

Make your own here, or look at Millennium's and Mr Quist's efforts. Thanks to the Award-Winning Alix Mortimer for breaking this to the LibDemosphere...

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Speaking of terror posters, witness Helen Duffett's horror that she is a textbook terrorist, given that she fulfills every last one of the criteria on this particular poster... Of course, she's not brown, so she ought to be OK.

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As an inveterate scratcher (apparently I do it in my sleep as well), I found this article on why scratching helps to relieve itches really interesting. Claude doesn't think it should ever have been published, but there we go.

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You'll find two of the above on today's netcast, which went up late today, partly because I was finding it REALLY difficult to pare down what I wanted to link to. I had 12 links which I thought were really interesting and well worth linking to, and I have a self-imposed maximum of eight in the post... Still, I'd like to ask for more people to send tips in because if I have more than eight I have a watertight excuse for rejecting some of them. Your tip will be given more weight if you are not tipping yourself but recommending someone else; although tipping yourself is allowed, even if it gets annoying if it's every five minutes.