There's only so much dog poo readers can take

Readers may recall that last week I was angsting about doing it wrong in this blog. But lo, the Blogosphere has spoken! And it was good.

In response to my plea for feedback, I received four (yes FOUR) replies:

1. A Buddhist chant from casa da poesia (I took this to be encouraging);

2. "Do not be a Politics Robot. Please!!!" - this kind comment came from rekindled, along with an equally kind offer to have a look at my crappy coding for me (mate, you're going to be sorry you offered! - and thanks!);

3. A very encouraging comment from fellow Green Cllr Sue Luxton, who has been blogging a lot longer than I have, and therefore knows of which she speaks: "I have this dilemma too, but think you're striking a good balance so far. There's only so much info about rubbish collections, CPZs and dog poo that readers can take (ooh, how glamorous the life of a cllr can be!)";

4. An email from a regular reader who shall remain nameless, but the gist was (in the timeless words of Billy Joel) "don't go changing".

So there we have it - a 100% positive steer for me to keep blogging about incidental day-to-day happenings as well as the Big Stuff (or 75% if that Buddhist chant is a special one for hopeless cases - still not bad I think).

Thanks to everyone for their encouragement and kind words! And sorry to the Politics Geeks, but there'll be more to come on baking, pussycats, and street art, as well as elections and policies. All work and no play makes for a very dull girl, don't you think?

PS As always, the ever-hilarious Encyclopedia Dramatica's entry on the different types of "blogging" had me in stitches:

• Politics
  • Author Profile: Intense, angry, probably a virgin
  • Typical Talking Point: The government sucks!!!
  • Representative Public Reply: OMG!!! Noes u suck!

Blog Assessment; Bee Amazement; Bong Amusement

Blog Assessment

I'm now almost five weeks into starting this blog (yes, I know it feels like longer ;)), and this evening I started to worry slightly that I've been doing it wrong.

Yes, I've been making some punchy political points about both local and national government policy issues, and yes, I've tried to give my, erm, dozens of readers a flavour of the work I carry out on a day-to-day basis on behalf of the residents of Preston Park ward. I've also blogged at length about the recent European elections, and the current local by-election in Goldsmid.

But equally I've also been wittering on about things I like (art, architecture, food, horticulture etc) and things that amuse me (smoking fish, Morrissey heads), which aren't necessarily directly connected to my work as an elected Green, or to my efforts as an activist (although to me, the personal is always political).

It feels like a dilemma: should I scale back on the fripperies and observational stuff to concentrate only on being a Politics Robot? Or should I leave out the campaigns and the elections, and just content myself with musings about urban meadows and street art (etc)?

Ideally, I'd like to keep on doing both, but I don't want to appear inconsistent and/or (*ahem*) 'random'.

This ISN'T an official Green Party of England & Wales blog, but I am a Green councillor, and I'm very mindful of the potential for tension in including both my personal musings and my political mutterings in the same blog (*eyes P&P imprint to right*).

Answers on a postcard please (or via the 'post a comment' button), but in the meantime, here's a bit of both:

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

Bee Amazement

(Charlie Brandts, a White House carpenter as well as beekeeper, collects the first batch of honey from the beehives on the South Lawn of the White House, June 10, 2009. Official White House Photographer: Lawrence Jackson)

So we all love Obama (yes, we do!). But this week I started to love him even more when I learnt that he's keeping bees at the White House. I am so thrilled by this! - it's amazing, visionary, and totally leading by example.

I have, erm, a bee in my bonnet about bees: some readers may be aware that the escalating demise of the honey bee is a serious cause for concern, and potentially a catastrophe for agriculture and ergo humankind.

Bees are also a symbol of industry, and the symbol of my hometown (see right for a snap of the beautiful mosaic floor in Manchester Town Hall): I love the little fellas, and I'm hoping to do some work on (or even with) them soon (now fuelled by Obama-spiration).

Here are a couple of pix of some apian chums closer to home (well, Bowdon, last weekend) to be going on with:

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

Bong Amusement

Last Sunday my family and I went for a walk at Lymm Dam - an area of rural fringe land abutting the M56 which has been beautifully restored in recent years by a regional agency and community partnership project.

Pastoral beauty and tranquillity notwithstanding (and somewhat regrettably, given the fact that we're now both in our thirties), it doesn't take much to reduce me and my brother into Beavis & Butthead-like fits of the giggles:
Lol etc ;) (Etymologists might like to know that "bongs" is derived from the mediaeval (old French) word "bancs", meaning "wooded banks".)

After a lovely walk (during which we saw chaffinches and goldfinches), we ate some delicious cakes provided by the Lymm Brownies. At 30p for a big fat slice, it seemed churlish not to. Ah, Mysterious Cheshire!

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

So there you go - tit and tat. Like I say, answers on a postcard or via 'comments' please... I enjoy blogging about the incidentals as much as I enjoy blogging about hardcore politics/industry stuff. Maybe I need two seperate blogs (*brain melts at prospect of moar difficult coding*). All advice and constructive criticism much appreciated.

Votivation

Under the Local Government Public Involvement in Health Act (2007), local authorities and their elected councillors now have a duty to involve and engage with residents on matters of local importance.

The statutory “Duty to Involve” is one of several government initiatives designed to empower and involve local people. These initiatives aim to:

- involve local people in decision and policy making; and

- make councils and other public services more transparent and accountable to the electorate and tax payers.

In a bid to employ technology in the pursuit of better engagement with the community, I've signed up to the Votivation website. I must admit I'm still getting my head around how to use it properly, but participants can set up online polls and petitions, and submit (*ahem*) 'opinions'.

And Votivation called this afternoon to say they're upgrading my account as I'm an "early adopter" - woo-hoo!* You can view my Votivation page here.

*what this actually means, I couldn't say. I hope they call me back soon to talk me through it.

Blog Panic (or, Why I Never Became A Coder)

As with any recently acquired interest, this blog is often in my thoughts at the moment. I had a spare five minutes between meetings while I was in our office at King's House earlier today, and so I thought I'd log in to Blogger just to check on things (like you do).

Having spent a good few hours last weekend tweaking the layout and fiddling around with it until I was actually really quite pleased with how things were looking, you can imagine my dismay when I was confronted with a screen resembling the monstrosity below (only much worse):


Quelle horreur! What had happened to my beautiful blog in the time since I'd left the house and arrived at the council offices?

Then I realised: all the council PCs use Internet Explorer as the default web browser. Now, I've been using Firefox for all my interweb activities for years, and because I am not remotely l33t (aka Good At The Internet) it had never occurred to me to test my new blog layout in IE.

But clearly, this was a problem. Much as I find it hard to believe that anyone uses Internet Explorer any more when there are so many better browsers to be downloaded, I suspect that IE is still the browser of choice for the vast majority of web users.

So I started panicking that, erm, literally dozens of readers were not only being denied the opportunity to enjoy my blog in all its technicolour floral glory, they were also unable to even read the actual posts. Which entirely defeats the blog's fundamental purpose. And then I had to go into a Planning Committee meeting.

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

I resumed panicking on the bus on the way home. All my poor readers having to squint at an inky screen with undecipherable posts! And even worse - how on earth was I going to rectify the layout situation? The current one had taken me ages to get to its present state (via some haphazard cutting and pasting, and a whole load of trial and error and F5-ing and guesswork) and I had absolutely no idea where to look in the lines and lines of coding in order to identify the problem. Or what to do even if I did locate the glitch.

Stuck in the rush hour rain and traffic on North Street, I did a bit of desperate Googling on my crackberry for '[layout name] blogger "internet explorer" fix', and bingo - the search returned the following phrase: Internet Explorer 6 and below cannot display PNG transparencies correctly.

"Aha!" I thought. "God only knows what 'PNG' means, but that rings a bell from all those wretched lines of XML (or whatever it is) burnt into my eyeballs after the weekend's tweaking."

So feeling a bit perkier, and before I finally resigned myself to having to go back to 'Thisaway (Green)' or some other unexciting standard template, I decided to give it one last go in IE when I got indoors.

Et voilà! It all works just fine in Internet Explorer 7 (the council PCs are evidently limping on with an older version than the one I've got at home). But I've posted a caveat over there > > > > > > at the top of the page, just in case anyone operating an inferior browser chances on my blog and is put off by its apparent illegibility.

And I still think you should all be using Firefox.

PS The IE6 situation clearly isn't down to my crappy coding (*phew!*), but there are still x-amount of bad things about the code for my blog layout (eg why no blog title on the 'Older Posts' page or on individual post pages?), so if there are any kind-hearted techies out there who'd like to assist me in my quest for layout functionality, please get in touch!