Monthly Archives: July 2008

LibDemBlogs Redesigned

LibDemBlogs

I’ve spent the last month working on a new version of LibDemBlogs, most likely you are now reading this on it.

The most obvious change is the new theme, which is modified version of the Rainbow theme from Theme Lab. The old theme has been around for two years now, and didn’t actually work in IE6, so it needed replacing.

The newest feature is the Mute function, this allows you to hide/silence blogs that you don’t want to read. More info about this feature can be found in the about pages.

Some of you may have already seen the new version of the mobile site which went silently live a few weeks ago. It’s moved url to m.libdemblogs.co.uk partly because mobile phone companies shouldn’t try to adjust the layout, and also because the url is easier to type. (No need to update bookmarks as you should be redirected automatically).

On top of these front end changes the whole back end has had a refit. When I first started LibDemBlogs the project was set up to allow others to use my code, since then so many changes have been made that it got in quite a mess. For example all the blogs were stored in a text file. With only 20 blogs to edit it was quick and simple, now with a list 285 bloggers it was clearly time to move to mySQL with lovely indexes.

Now whilst I’ve had the site running in beta for a few weeks, I’m certain that something will go wrong, so please do let me know.
I hope you like the new design, but if you don’t sorry, I’m not changing it again for another few years.

Somerfield, Co-op and the High Street

Lincoln

In the last month Somerfield opened a new store on the High Street in Lincoln. Today we hear that the company has been sold to the Co-operative Group.
The question I have is, “what will happen to the store on the High Street?”.
Lincolnshire is awash with Lincolnshire Co-op’s (different to the Co-operative Group, who are owned by the old Manchester Co-op), so I don’t think they will want to compete.
The BBC talk of stores being sold off, however the names being mentioned are:
– Waitrose (already one uphill)
– Morrisons (already one on Triton Road)
– Iceland (litterally opposite),
so I don’t think any of them will buy the site.
Hopefully the real media might get some answers in the next few days.

Council Tax Limitation – Lincolnshire police authority budget

Lincoln, Politics, ,

Last night when I got home, I discovered that Parliament were debating “Council Tax Limitation – Lincolnshire police authority budget”. The bill was to place a cap on the 78.9% increase that Lincolnshire police authority had made on the council tax bills. I blogged about this in March (Council Tax up by 11.1%).

So how did those Lincolnshire MPs vote?
Quentin Davies – Grantham & Stamford (Lab) – aye
John Hayes – South Holland & The Deepings (Con) – absent
Douglas Hogg – Sleaford and North Hykeham (Con) – absent
Edward Leigh – Gainsborough (Con) – absent
Gillian Merron – Lincoln (Lab) – absent
Mark Simmonds – Boston & Skegness (Con) – absent
Peter Tapsell – Louth & Horncastle (Con) – absent

Out of the 7 Lincolnshire MPs with consituents affected, only one went down the lobby.

However, at least unlike 44 LibDems, the Tories didn’t actually vote against it.

My twitter last night summed this up:
artesea disapointed to see the LibDems voting no on the Lincolnshire Police Council Tax cap on BBC Parliament.

Amazingly due to the magic of technology I got this response:
joswinson is voting against the unfair Council Tax system.

However I still can’t see how a “Local Income Tax” would have stopped the Lincolnshire Police from asking for more money than anyone would expect. Instead we now have it on record that the LibDems are “pro” 78.9% increase.

Maybe someone from the Parlimentary party would have like to have asked those who have been affected by the issue, and campaigned in elections last May what our views were first, or is that just a bit too hard?

* Voting records taken from PublicWhip.org.uk