My boy all grown up

Video Blog today!

When he was about 8 months old Roman suddenly started crawling, he just flopped forward on the living room floor while Elizabeth was out and dragged himself along, then did it twice more, that was it he was a crawler!

I took him up to pick his Mum up from her kickboxing class and using the good old car keys as a carrot trick I demonstrated his newest trick, I caught this one on camera. So here it is Roman's 4th ever crawl and the first time his Mum saw him do it



The Second video is from Easter Sunday just gone and a family trip to Farmer Palmers, Roman getting very excited and joining a herd of sheep. He sounds like he is shouting "BASTARDS, BASTARDS" but I assure you it is "Baa Sheep, baa Sheep"

Yes to AV

I was going to try and write a well reasoned and passionate argument about why I am going to vote Yes to AV, but you know, boring and that, so instead I am going to try and present my argument in pictorial form courtesy of the wonderful people at b3ta.com ( I can't claim that any ideas presented here are my own original thought)

 

The fact is, I currently have an MP I didn't vote for and in all likelihood so do you. Under the current system almost all MPs are currently elected with a minority share of the vote. 

Even more infuriating is the NO campaign constantly drawing comparisons to sports or horse racing - I would just like to point out THIS ISN'T A RACE, this is a way of selecting people who will represent your opinions in parliament. The positions shouldn't go to the person with the least weak claim, it should go to the candidate that the MAJORITY of voter's support.

This is a real problem, if you support the Green party but live in a labour stronghold what do you do? Throw your vote away on Green? or vote Conservative because you dislike them less than Labour and it is the only chance you have to get Labour out? What about your support for the Greens? don't you have a right to express that? Its probably not going to get them in but at least it might send a message about voter opinions to whomever does win

 

The NO campaign is in a tough position, to defend FPTP is to defend the current political system, a system that over the last few years has been discredited and exposed and dishonest and corrupt, the general public hates politics and politicians even more. So what do they do? The only option is to attack AV, spread lies and half truths, to muddy the water and resort to scaremongering.  

One piece of misinformation is the fact that the NO campaign likes to point out that only three countries currently use AV, that much is true, but the implied message is that the entire rest of the world uses first past the post - that is absolutely incorrect. There are dozens of different  voting systems used all over the world: Instant run-off voting, Borda count, Condorcet method, Plurality voting, Approval voting, cumulative voting, weighted voting, supermajority, unanimous consent, Sainte-Laguë method, d'Hondt method  highest averages methods, largest remainder methods, Mixed Member Proportional , Single Transferable Vote. You get the idea, to suggest that low incidence of AV indicates the superiority of FPTP is absurd.

 The worst lie is that AV is complicated. It's not. It's how the voting on X-factor works - I can't even expand on this point, the picture above says it all.

 The AV campaign isn't about party politics, or at least it shouldn't be, but this picture made me smile

 

This final picture kind of undermines my whole argument but I had to include it because it is brilliant. 

Dandelions

When I got home this evening Roman our two year old was climbing up the walls with cabin fever having been stuck in the flat all day while lizi was cleaning it top to bottom.

It was still light and warm so I took him on a little walk to stretch his legs, we live right next to the Rodwell trail which is an ideal place for a wander or cycle.

The Rodwell trail follows the path of the old Weymouth to Portland railway that used to transport quarry workers adn the stone they mined on and off the island. It has been closed as a railway since the 1950s but has been given a new lease of life as a footpath with lovely smooth tarmac. The platforms for several stations still line the route and give an eerie glimpse of the past. There are some great photos here

As soon as we got onto the trail Roman started shouting at me about 'flowers, flowers Daddy!' and was soon grubbing about in the undergrowth, seemingly impervious to the great clumps of stinging nettles.

After he emerged with a handful of what I call Elderflowers, (i'm sure I have the plant name wrong but if you do ever want a positive ID on a plant or bug you have found the best place to go is Ispot where you can upload your pictures and have a geek check them for you), and starting puffing away I soon realised he was actually looking for a dandelion. I steered him towards something more suitable

Thus armed he has another go

only instead of blowing he sucked....yuck

The story does have a happy ending, I re-armed him and we spent some fun time blowing dandelion faries everywhere - hurrah!

Hello World..

The bandwagon has been rumbling around these parts recently and I have decided to jump on with both feet.... Everyone around me suddenly has a blog and that, combined with my ego telling me that the world has a right to my opinion and the fact that I have no friend on twitter has spurred me to start my own.

Find me on Twitter

My Friend Kathryn Ashcroft blogged recently that "blogging is terribly masturbatory" and I couldn't agree more, but I have never been able to resist a bit of self indulgence so I can't think of a more fitting pastime.

I'm Alex, I'm 29, I live by the seaside and work in sales. I am married to Elizabeth with two boys;  Roman 2 years and Jasper 10 weeks. Aside from my family I am most interested in my allotment, growing vegetables and (currently) 107 varieties of chilli. I am addicted to radio 4 and am currently working writing a script for an afternoon play.

I like cooking and eating (a bit too much) and am interested in music production, currently trying to learn to play the piano. I take sporadic interest in exercise, fishing, boxing, kayaking and mountain biking.

I am planning for this blog to become an eclectic mix of high brow features, thoughtful reviews of the arts, insightful political musings and witty economic debate......unfortunately I know myself a little too well so what you are actually going to get is random updates about things Roman has done that made me laugh, links to things the internet has done that made be laugh, gratuitous pictures of my allotment including graphic close ups of various chillies, posts that are subtle dig at my wife, very unsubtle make up posts extolling the virtues of my wife. I might even occasionally get worked up enough to have a proper rant about something. Oh and not forgetting the time where I am going to be convinced that I am going to 'get fit once and for all' and for a that short period I will be able to talk about nothing else and might even sound vaguely convincing when I try to kid myself that I actually enjoy undressed salad and tinned tuna, don't worry though it only lasts a couple of weeks before I get sucked back in to the sofa.

You know how crap, never gonna make it, musicians spend a lot of time talking about their 'influences' hoping to achieve some type of admiration by association? Well I'm going to do it now but with blogs. These are my influences:

http://www.mommatwo.com/ - My lovely wife, she has only been blogging a few weeks but has taken to it like a fish to bicycle

http://www.tonysullivanphotography.co.uk/Site/Blog.html - My boss, he decides my pay reviews so I have to be nice, but in all honestly his blog so far has been very good

http://www.kathrynashcroft.com/ My friend, Kathryn has been doing this for ages, and somehow she manages to keep her blog nicely highbrow - it would be perfect if it just had a few more pictures of dogs on skateboards.