Dean Sas's Weblog

Chesterfield Pubs

// April 10th, 2005 // 1 Comment » // General

I’ve been looking around today for others bloggers near me, and I found The Definitive Chesterfield Pub Guide. Quite an exhaustive collection of pubs past and present in the borough, with photos of some of them. The author doesn’t seem to like the ‘modernisation’ of the pubs and clubs around town, with some good reason. One thing that this did make me remember is that the Slug ‘n’ Fiddle used to be called The Crooked Spire, at least I think I can remember it being called that. It had that name for 700 years – as long as the pub was standing until someone thought that Slug ‘n’ Fiddle sounded better. Seems quite a shame to me.

More Election Links

// April 8th, 2005 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

I’ve found a couple of links today that are quite interesting. The first is Guidos blog about parlimentary rumours, gossip and inside information, he’s beat the papers to several stories and as you’d expect at election time is full of information.

The other find is the Grauniads political database, this has information on any candidate who’s stood for election since 1992 – including things like MPs voting records and biographies and also information on each constituency, such as the winning candidate in each election since 1945. Have a look at your incumbent MP, and see what they’ve been up to.

General Election

// April 5th, 2005 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

Tony Blair has announced that the next general election is to be held on the 5th day of the 5th month of the 2005th year (aka thursday the 5th of may). So we’ve got a month of political posturing, petty name calling and kissing babies to look forward too.

The BBC have a policy comparison tool which allows you to see at a glance what each of the parties thoughts are on whichever issues you find most important. They’re also running a blog (RSS) on the election, which looks to me to be a useful application of blog technology by a media giant, for a change, mainly because of how they’re using it – small, frequent updates on one issue to update the main stories and headlines.

I am currently mulling over voting either for the Green party, the Liberal Democrats or spoiling my ballot. It’s likely to be a non-issue because the greens don’t usually run in my constituency, but as an hypothetical choice I favour the Greens. Spoiling the ballot is counted as a result, unlike simply staying away, it’s technically possible for a spoilt ballot to win a majority.

I favour the greens as they wish to; stop PFI (the taking over of government services and properties by private companies), welcome immigrants and asylum seekers coming from oppressive regimes, reinstate British Rail and focusing the justice system on rehabilitating people rather than locking them up and throwing away the key.

The main negative thing I can find is that they oppose GM crops – which may help to solve the world hunger problem in a way acceptable to both western governments and the third world. Just like drugs for AIDS etc though, probably not.

This all makes me sound a bit of an anti-business communist or something but I want to make money in this world as much as anyone. I just believe that some things should be owned and ran for the people and feel that the PFI project has been an experiment gone wrong – it’s failed to be more efficient than the public sector in many cases.

Nicks 21st

// April 3rd, 2005 // 3 Comments » // General

It was Nicks 21st birthday last saturday. He’d chosen to have a fancy dress theme, so after much messing about over the ‘theme’, which ended in being non-existant, I got my soldier costume and Sara and I made the ninety-ish mile train journey to Redditch. The journey ended up being ten minutes shorter than expected, which is a rare triumph for the rail system.

Anyway we all had a lot of fun, some great costumes, a fair bit to drink and a good night, apart from some people falling out at the end.

Here’s some of the pictures I have took. If anyone wants full size ones, or a cd with all the photos I have of the night (I took 146 pictures and have another 100 from others), then you’re more than welcome to them, just get in touch!

{ gallery [Nick_Wilkes_21st] }

Meet

// April 2nd, 2005 // No Comments » // General

I went to the cinema today with Vardy, Tom and Jamie. Jay had gone to Sheffield and didn’t have his phone on him and Joe couldn’t get the day off of work . It was good to see the other three though, and I think it’s the first time I’ve saw Jamie in nearly a year – with the exception of a bit of facial hair he’s not changed a bit though. Vardy was sporting a new long-ish kinda beard too, which quite suited him. I was the only one who shaved

At Vardys suggestion we watched Be Cool, neither Tom nor I realised it was a sequel until we were sat down and the cinema ads were playing. There wasn’t really any need to know it was a sequel though. The film was quite good, funny in places – particularly Andre 3000s (who can act better than I thought) character.

Looks like that’ll be it for a group meet-up until summer now. Reminded me of the fun college days.