OneGuyFromBarlick

The actor Jon Finch, who was in Polanski's Macbeth and Hitchcock's Frenzy. He was offered the Bond role after S Connery stepped down, but to the surprise of many turned it down; he also turned down the role of Bodie in The Professionals (which went to Lewis Collins). He was happy doing a film or so ...

Thought there'd be snow in Barlick today having seen the weather this morning. Chucking it down with rain on the Wirral and not that cold. Unlike yesterday's hard frost and glorious sunny morning with flocks at 000s and 000s of birds on the Dee, and which attracted a hundred or so birders just after...

Is that how regulatory oversight works in this country? I thought most, if not all, regulatory regimes were self-regulatory in that the duty holder complies with statutory duties as they, obviously, are best placed to do so, and do so in the absence of close and stringent oversight by the regulator....

I had a mutton and cauliflower curry last night. Blimey it was good, if I say so myself. I'd made it Tuesday, as a lot of curry improves for keeping a day or two I reckon. Not often I say this, but I could have kept eating it 'till I popped. I can make my own pastes, but I more often use those Patak...

For some reason when I read 'cob on' above, I thought about the word 'mard'. As in, so-and-so is a real 'mard lump'. My mother used this to refer to a whining child. It's not a Barlick phrase this: the Arctic Monkeys from Sheffield have a song called 'Mardy Bum'. And Nancy Banks-Smith who used to do...

I'm afraid that the current crop of Ministers seem increasingly unable or even inclined, to do the right thing let along the best thing. Mind you, I'm not sure the best thing can ever be done as it suggests you'll please all of the people all of the time and that's never going to happen. We humans a...

I suppose I'm different from the likes of Dr Lee. I'm quite happy to have programmes designed to stop people smoking, drinking to excess, eating healthily and all the other preventive measures we can take to avoid certain medical conditions. But sad to say, no matter how much we may do this there wi...

Couldn't agree more with what sunray above says, though I'd extend it to the British Isles. Still haven't managed to get north of the Central Belt in Scotland and the only place I've been in the Irish Republic is Dublin. I visited the North of Ireland earlier this year for the first time and I can q...

Just to note that the overriding reason why no accounts have got through the auditors is due to Member States (and that includes us) being unable to satisfactorily account for spending EU funds. It''s really nothing much at all to do with the European Commission being lax, rather National Administra...

Oh well. Cast my vote in the PCC elections for Merseyside. I felt I should. Not least to stop the English Democrat candidate getting in via apathy. Anyone who has their views on policing 'guided by God' is a bit iffy. I suppose it's his God that suggested he take Merseyside police to court for flyin...

Lovely crisp morning here with a nice frost. Saturday was especially lovely though - very clear from the beach over to Wales and the snow on the Snowdon range beyond the coastal hills. Lovely that - yellow sand, blue sea and white mountain tops.

Richard Broughton

I'm sure that the Tax Payers Alliance will have a good evidence base for their argument that the state should not be paying the costs of full-time union officials (indeed 'any time', as they seem to have a problem with the TUs full stop). After all, one could make a counter-argument that trade union...

It's also interesting where, having been encouraged to 'reach for the stars', Mr Laws imagines you ending up: journalism, investment banking, and the law. I pass no comment on the merits of those employment sectors. Rather I note the absence of, to name simply a few, engineering (and not just gradua...

Schools Minister Mr Laws has suggested many teachers are failing in their responsibilities by not encouraging their pupils to 'aim for the stars', with the result that many pupils see places at the 'better' Universities and careers in 'law, journalism and investment banking' as beyond them. One wond...

I'm a bit puzzled by the Attorney General's decision not to publish the heir to the throne's letter to various Government Departments. Specifically, the comment that to do so would 'damage' his ability to perform his duties when he becomes king. What on earth is in them that would do this 'damage'? ...

Council Tax is only about a quarter of the funding for local services is it not? The rest is the block grant, which Government can set as it chooses. Government can also pronounce and instruct a feeze in Council Tax. All in, Local Government funding a shambles; talk of localism is a nonsense. I'm no...

The answer to the question I posed is Todmorden. The winners were, for physics (1951) Sir John Cockcroft for his work with Ernest Walton in spitting the atomic nucleus. And then for chemistry, Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson (1973) for his work on organometallic chemistry and cataysis. They both attended Tod...

Nope. I'll give folk 'till tomorrow morning....

Richard Broughton

Physics Nobel goes to the Frenchman Serge Haroche at the Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris and the American David Wineland at the National Standards and Technology Institute at the U of Colorado at Boulder, for their work on quantum optics which opens the door to quantum computing applications. They j...

I see the Justice Secretary has played to the crowd with his statements and policy intention with regards the permitting (it seems) of disproportionate force when confronting an intruder. Under the last administration the then DPP clarified matters in a statement offering these examples (taken from ...

The Nobel prize for Medicine and Physiology has been announced, and Sir John Gurdon at Cambridge shares the prize with Japan's Shina Yamanaka for their work, 40 years apart, on stem cells/cloning. Been felt for a while that they would get recognition. Sir Alec Jeffreys at Leicester will have to wait...

We've just got back from visiting my in-laws in Cheltenham and took in some events at the literature festival. Went to see Kofi Annan on Friday night, the man with as the interviewer noted, the most reassuring voice in world diplomacy. So far as a man steeped in diplomacy can be, he was despairing o...

Just to emphasise, I don't see this trait in his character as weird or warranting disapproval. Indeed, I find it a rather attractive attribute.

Richard Broughton

Unfortunately for Mr Milliband E he is an unashamed thinker with a keen interest in aspects of public policy and the machinations of Government. His idea of a good time likely involves digesting the latest policy treatise or academic opus (Mr G Brown too was famous when single, for taking his holida...

Parts of Liverpool have been destroyed by the last Government's Housing Market Renewal policy (which operated north of Birmingham). Here, swathes of terraced stock which had collapsed in value was to be flattened and replaced by new and less stock in attempt, as the name suggests, to 'renew' the mar...