Irish Political News

Or ... emotional intelligence.

Cartoon: Gaping Void

I picked up a consultation document about a "New GP-Lead Healthcare Centre" for Notinghamshire yesterday. The consultation period finishes today.

I'm not going to beat them up about not seeing the document earlier, as my GP and my address are just (half a mile) in Derbyshire. The NHS in each county are getting much more territorial though - I've been forced to stop using an optician in Nottinghamshire for my diabetic eye checks (where I went several years ago) because Derbyshire compel me to use their self-delivered service at the cost of an extra half-day off work every year.

However, I am going to have a go at the logic and quality of the programme and the consultation.

Is over at Suzanne Lamido's place - the "here come the girls" edition.

That headline will get the traffic, and the review deserves it. These girls aren't faking.

The roundup is a compendium of last week's outstanding posts in the British Blogosphere.

I forgot to post the audio of Britblog Roundup No. 175 last week (23-Jun-2008), it is hosted at Redemption Blues , so here's a bonus to have with your morning coffee.

Click through on the title for the audio.

How many UK political bloggers have heard of Joi Ito?

If not? Why not? In 2008 it matters.

Cartoon: Gaping Void

I'm delighted to be able to announce that Robert Gabriel Mugabe may will have is bound to has won the Zimbabwe Election.

Here's a button so that anyone can announce the result on their blog:

What? The count isn't finished yet?

What on earth has the count to do with the result?

Silly people.

These are some links you can use to keep up to date:

• Sokwanele - Enough is Enough - Civic Action Support Group
• This is Zimbabwe - Sokwanele blog.
• The Bearded Man Blog / Podcast - Ex Zimbwbwe policeman based in UK
• Zimbabwe Democracy Now - Democracy campaign site

Back in February I wrote about the saga of the SPCK bookshop chain in a post about the need to maintain dialogue between critcial different religions and philosophies:

About a year ago the venerable SPCK chain of Christian Bookshops (one arm of the literature work of SPCK - the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, who also do things such as funding libraries in theological colleges) were transferred to a charity called St Stephen the Great Charitable Trust.

and noted the pressures on staff:

Since the transfer took place, a large number of staff (for example 70% of the bookshop managers) have left, and there have been some major management changes - including an attempt to make major changes (which were perceived as detrimental) to the staff contract.

Doug Caplin, who writes at MetaCatholic reports that this has turned to tragedy in Worcester with the apparent suicide of Steve Jeynes, the ex-SPCK branch manager, two weeks after he was made redundant.