My little (27-year-old) brother Paul this weekend passed the halfway mark of his tour of duty in Iraq with the RAF.
I celebrated with a couple of pints in Elland whilst Paul celebrated with for once not being on the receiving end of insurgent rocket attacks.
Stay safe

Congratulations to Cllr. Jennifer Pearson and Brendan Stubbs (Agent) for their trouncing of the Tories in Warley Ward of Calderdale MBC.
A storming 901 majority.
The election was postponed from May because of the sudden death of the Conservative candidate Richard Maycock.

 
Results
Jennifer Pearson (Lib Dem) 1,319
John Foran (Con) 418
Jenny Carr (Ind) 360
Julie Ann Baxter (BNP) 335
Ilyas Najib [...]

Neo-authoritarian John Reid today announced his intention to seek a parliamentary consensus to extend the 28 day detention without trial to 60 days.
Yet again the Nu Lab posse seem to have forgotten that consensus requires a decision to be made after discussion not before.
Hopefully this will be last gasp of Hauptsturmführer Reid before Gordo’s Whitehall [...]

A few weeks ago it was announced that Comrade Gordo’s child tax credit system overpaid claimants by £6 billion since its birth in 2003.
Today I received my first child tax credit renewal form.
This evening, Jo and I sat down to fill them in:

We read the form (2 pages to fill in)
Read the accompanying notes (35 [...]