I'm late, I'm late...

Chicky Yog has a timely warning about why triumphalism over the defeat of 42 days is a bit of a pyrrhic victory. If you'll forgive the mixed mettyfor.

Himmelgarten cafe has been inspired by the 42 days debate too.

But there is good news today. One might even call it awesome news. Neil Gaiman and Mitch Benn are writing a musical together!. I don't think there's any possible way this can be out-awesomed.

Anyway, ought to get out of bed; have to be at work in 20 minutes... I am working till 7 and then have LibDemmery, so don't expect too much responsiveness today.

So, plans for the beer festival at work are pretty much finalised, and it's for the weekend of Hallowe'en. YAY! This means dressing up and lots of beer with silly names and... Hangonaminute... There's something already happening that weekend, isn't there...?

Oh yes, Lib Dem Yorkshire regional conference. So, yeah. Will be working on the date of regional conference. Which is probably for the best because I'm not sure £54 (just over my weekly food budget for all five of us) is tremendously good value for a buffet lunch for two and a chat anyway... Apologies, therefore, to burkesworks, Ros and Mark, and Millennium and his daddies, all of whom we had told we would be there. Mat may well decide to go anyway, if someone can persuade him that £27 for one day really IS good value, but there is no way I can get time off during beer festival.

Still, Hallowe'en beer festival! YAY!

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Speaking of the barmaidness, eruvadhril posted this as a response to my open letter:
I LOLed.

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It is a little talked-about thing of blog etiquette, but having a huge header does tend to really annoy people. So much so that I am a style=mine nazi on LJ, and I feed EVERYTHING to LJ so I don't have to look at other people's layouts. This also conveniently gets me around the insane preference that most people seem to have for insanely bright/pale backgrounds (white is worst) that hurt my poor sensitive goth eyes. So, yeah, I joined the League of Curmudgeonly Whiners Who Hate Large Headers. I'll extend the same offer as the erstwhile starter of that group, too: if you have a large header and want it resizing, I'll do it.

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Via chickenyoghurt comes the news that Amnesty International have set up a neat petition against 42 days that will email each MP with the signers from that MP's constituency. Go, sign, and send your MP the message that 42 days isn't a questioning period, it's a disappearance.

They've found the deleted scenes from Metropolis! Sci-fi geeks rejoice! And pray Cthulhu we get a showing of it at the FFW next year...

matgb has a highly amusing post about the hypocrisy of the guy who sued the BBC for showing Jerry Springer: The Opera and upsetting his delicate religious sensibilities (related Facebook group).

Don't watch anything on YouTube which isn't allowed to be there, else you'll get got.

Creationism hits science classrooms in the UK. and we are funding it via the state school mechanism. *I* am paying for some poor kids to be taught complete bollocks as though it is fact. Amused Cynicism makes comment more eloquently than I ever could.

The Torygraph have picked their top ten ever Doctor Who episodes. No surprises that it's Ten-heavy, but perhaps surprising that it contains no Trout. And, obvs, Caves of Androzani should be #1.

James May is amazed that the BBC are upset with him for drinking a G&T, when really, they should be upset with him for putting slices of lemon in it. LIME, James, LIME!

Jeremy Thorpe says Robert Mugabe must die. I guess there's a limit to everyone's Liberalism, eh?

David Davies shows just how pro-liberty he really is. Hey ho. Is anyone actually surprised by this?

Chicky Yog imagines Gordon as a barman and finds him wanting.

The turkeys HAVE voted for Christmas: Mike at PB is right. Any PPC opposing any of the lot who voted for this is going to have a field day.

Is anyone here surprised that you can crack an Oyster card very easily? And this is the system they want to use for our one-stop-shop biometric ID Cards. Making identity theft HARDER? My arse.

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For anyone who still harboured hopes that the American remake of Life on Mars wouldn't be complete bobbins, here's a shot by shot comparison of a pivotal scene.

I have a fondness for Chief O'Brien Colm Meaney, but his Hunt is such a wussy next to Glenister... This makes me sad.

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After yesterday's Love-in with the BBC, I thought I'd balance it today with this piece on why they have got the coverage of David Davis so very wrong.

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After the FFW I always end up spending silly money on something genre related. This year I forked over £42 from my bottomless visa card to amazon for this. It arrived this morning, and it's GORGEOUS. Amazingly, it also contains only 2 films that I already own, even though my Hammer shelf is not tiny by any means.

21 films in a pretty box? I think that's value for money. Please validate this opinion and assuage my nagging sense of guilt...

But it's not here, it's on LC. My OWN little posty wosty. And I shall love it and hug it and sing to it, and I shall call it George!

[plug]If you would like to subscribe to LC in general, you can add liberalconsp_fd to your f-list, and if you want to subscribe to just me you can add jennier_lc_feed[/plug]

I am indebted to burkesworks for pointing out to me that the other famous MP for Haltemprice was someone we ALL should be familiar with...

Kelvin McKenzie is saying he might stand agin Davis as a Sun-cum-Murdoch endorsed candidate.

* hollow laughter *

One pro-death penalty anti-gay wanker against another. We're all doomed, aren't we?

So suddenly, now that Nick Clegg and the rest of my party have agreed to not field a candidate against him, David Davies is broadening his platform from the single issue of 42 days and presuming to speak on all issues of civil liberty and making himself sound like he (and by extension, his party) are the sole defenders of liberty in this country...

We're far too nice in our party, aren't we? How did nobody see this coming?

We should have told the tory tosser to stuff it, stood against him, and said you don't honestly think you'd have any more freedom under the Tories, do you? But no, we thought we'd be cuddly and fluffy, and have now been knifed in the back for it.

Fucking marvellous.

Of course, thinking about some of the members of my party, especially the local party, it's not like we'd be any better than the main two, either... Just look at our transport policy, for starters. We look at Darling, the worst transport secretary in... in forever, and we look at his policies, and somehow, instead of saying Christ, that's horrendous! we ADOPT them.

I am so depressed with the whole boiling. I'd take Moodie's attitude (that one should laugh at politicians rather than be depressed by them) apart from one minor problem. THIS AFFECTS ALL OF OUR LIVES. Their petty willy-waving and macho posturing is fucking up life for the rest of us and it pisses me off.

So Gordon Brown won his vote, but he had to rely on the support of the Gay-Hating Bible-Basher Fundamentalist party to do it. I think this is possibly going to do him more damage than losing the vote would have. There might well be support for this in the Tory press-reading public, but the Tory press-reading public have been misled into thinking that after the time limit, a suspect has to be let go. As we know, this is emphatically not the case. This Labour government has, under the threat of terrorism, continually and systematically done exactly what the terrorists want. Why should the terrorists even bother to try to destroy our way of life and ancient freedoms when the government is so intent on doing it for them. Authoritarian bastards, one and all... Well, not quite.

There are a few remaining principled people in the parliamentary Labour party. A couple of them come from round here. But one of them... She deserves a special mention and a big whooping cheer. I might not always agree with Diane Abbott, but her speech to the house yesterday was so bloody good that even David Davies said so. Diane, I salute you. I wish there were more like you and less like Blears in the house, I really do.

Anyway, hope is not gone that this proposal will be defeated because it's sure as shit that the Lords will slap it down, and Brown can't force it through with the parliament act because it's not a manifesto commitment. Expect me to return to this subject then...