The lady's not for jumping...

At the risk of over Thatcherising the posts on here - here's one last Thatcher mention. A video from a foreign TV Station where they interview world politicians - and ask them to do one particular thing. Apparently everyone acquiesced - until they asked the British PM...

Quite an insight into Mrs Thatcher





h't to @kunaldutta

All the front pages of the papers in one image

h/t @nicksutton . Click to enlarge

4 Prime Ministers; 1 US president ; 5 Statements on the Death of Lady Thatcher.

We have four living PMs/Ex PMs; here is what each has said today on the death of Lady Thatcher. Plus I now have added Obama's statement as well; Click each to enlarge.

Dennis Stevenson; what he said before it all went pear-shaped

In 2000,  the company I worked for published a book called ‘ Creativity Works’ and I helped organise the launch (which included a reception at No.11 – oh la la). The book covered interviews with a series of business leaders on why they thought creativity mattered in business, and how it could make a difference. With a foreword by Gordon Brown, interviewees included Martha Lane Fox, Terry Leahy, Charles Dunstone…and Lord (Dennis) Stevenson.

Not surprisingly, the Dennis Stevenson interview included reference to the Halifax (well before the merger with BOS) and his appointment of Andy Hornby. With the benefit of hindsight and in the light of the report from the Banking Standards Commission, it makes fascinating reading, especially his views on mergers. Here’s an extract....

“ Let’s switch to the Halifax, which is a mature business in a mature industry, but which I would say I believe is also behaving in a brave and creative way. Our strategy is to treat consolidation – mergers and acquisitions – as guilty until proved innocent. We think it has destroyed value on both sides of the Atlantic and the opportunity cost is huge at a time when we ought to be changing our business strategy. This is so obvious it hardly bears saying. Yet because pressures towards aggregation are so strong, it is the only real game most other banks are playing. So we are definitely swimming against the conventional tide.

Secondly we are saying that this is an industry which has been badly, or at best averagely, managed all over the world. So another part of our strategy is to transform the quality of the management in this business and thereby transform the performance. The first sight of that was to hire Andy Hornby, at the tender age of 33, to run all of what most people know as the Halifax. Was that creative? It was certainly brave because putting someone in charge of 20000 people whose average age is several years older than he is, is not the most obvious thing to do.

And the third part of our strategy is to become a venture capitalist in our own industry, which means seeing the new technology as an opportunity, not a threat. It is about being brave enough to take advantage of the opportunity that has been given to us to put our money and our expertise into a new area, and so to increase our market share. So we have invested £2billion, not in new divisions but in totally new ventures.

The Halifax strategy is radical, it’s bold, and it breaks the mould, and if creativity means doing something differently, I suppose it is creative. Creativity is also partly about having the courage to do what other people might not see as obvious.”

Remember this letter?

Eric Idle and John Major were born on the same day - and both turned 70 yesterday.

As they approached their 50th birthday, Idle wrote the following letter to Major

h/t to @shaunusher

The Olympic Stadium in Rio has been closed. I really wouldn't panic just yet.

The Guardian is reporting that the Olympic Stadium in Rio , where the athletics will take place in 2016, has been closed indefinitely for safety reasons. To quote the piece..

' The João Havelange stadium, which is currently used by the Botafogo football club, is scheduled to host athletics events at the Games, but engineers have discovered structural problems with the roof that could pose dangers to spectators in certain wind and temperature conditions.

"There is a risk, so I have decided to close the stadium immediately," said the Rio mayor, Eduardo Paes, who emphasised that it would not re-open until a solution was found. "If it takes a month, then it will stay closed for a month; if it takes a year, it will stay closed for a year." '

Now, I know there is a part of all of us that wants the Olympics back and so we jump on this sort of news as an indication that maybe, just maybe, it will somehow return in 2016. And similar stories about delays to rebuilding the Maracana Stadium, that will host the opening and closing ceremonies.

But honestly. Here's a picture of of Stadium in Rio today

And here is a picture of our Olympic Stadium in Feb 2009, roughly the same time away from the opening ceremony in 2012 as Rio is now

Sad to say - I think they are going to be fine....

Secret Courts. Still not in my name.

As you will know, the Justice and Security Bill went unamended after the debate in the Lords on Tuesday, and so will now become law - and secret courts will become a reality in the Civil Court.  I find it extremely upsetting that this could happen with Lib Dems in government.

There is an excellent round up of the events of Tuesday over at LDV from Caron, where you can find a list of the Lib Dem peers who defied the three line whip to Vote against the government. Also over at LDV today there is a great piece from Paul Strasburger on the shenanigans that went on Tuesday both to keep Tory peers in the House (they all watched a film rather than the debate), and the delay on the debate which meant many peers sloped off home before it even took place.

All in all quite disgraceful

This debacle has cost us some wonderful members, notably Jo Shaw but I also learned last night that David Allen Green has now let his membership lapse as a direct result of the secret courts issue. A very sad loss to the party. I hope we get him back some day soon, and those of us staying need to fight to overturn this law  - and uphold party policy, that so many of our parliamentarians have ignored.

Jo is also founding 'The Project for Open Justice' and I hope many will contact her to see how they can help. As someone else has said, it's astonishing we find ourselves on the other side of a civil liberties issue from Reprieve, Index on Censorship and Liberty

Finally, here's an interesting little factoid.

Next up, as Liberator has pointed out today, is the Snooping bill, which it is rumoured may get introduced in the May Queens Speech. Again, if that's correct, our Westminster representatives can expect a fight.

I'm a Liberal Democrat and I'm against this sort of thing.