Creating Community Conversations - Gallomanor

Conviction Politics

We're in Party Conference season and the news is full of speeches from politicians playing to the gallery, the media and their opponents.  There has been recent coverage about how Gordon Brown is similar to Margaret Thatcher as they are both "conviction politicians".

Jerry Sanders, the Republican Mayor of San Diego, held a recent news conference to talk about how he had changed his mind and had decided not to veto a City Council resolution in favour of gay marriage.  This was in direct contradiction to his election promises and to his party's policy.  The YouTube clip below calls it a FlipFlop.  Watch it yourself and feel the courage Sanders displays in going against his party and previous promises to keep true to his personal conviction that gay and lesbian people should have equal rights to marriage.

(Hat-tip to the always brilliant Apophenia)

Celebrating good customer service

I'm normally far too quick to complain and not quick enough to praise, so when I get really good customer service I ought to shout about it.

So let me introduce Tony West, our friendly TNT driver.

At 7.20am this morning there was a knock on the door at home.  Tony was there with a couple packages that were due to be delivered to the office.  He knew that if he took them to the office there would be no-one there and a card would be left and we wouldn't them until the next day.

That's what I call customer service and it is good business for TNT because the picture is of Tony picking up a couple of boxes which contain some of the things he dropped off this morning.  Thank you TNT.

Dolores and David explain it all

In the course of some PC housework I came across this radio clip recorded last year on the last day of I'm a Councillor.

It features Cllr Dolores Kelly and Cllr David Jones from Craigavon Council in Northern Ireland and includes Ciara McKay, a teacher, and Michael Kerr, a student from St. Michael's a participating school.

The clip is nearly seven minutes long but is well worth a listen for any councillors or citizenship teachers looking at taking part in the event this year.

Thank you to U105 for not objecting to this clip being featured so far.