Archive for September, 2011

Elina and I recently headed over to Ilkley Moor to take in a bit more nature. Afterwards, we went to lunch at the Cow & Calf pub, which turned out to be the exact same chain as when we ate at the Roundhay Fox the day before.

Having a bit of time before before Elina headed back to Finland, we headed over to Tropical World and Roundhay Park where you can observe nature from the safe distance of behind 20mm of glass.

Following August Wendy House, it was time for the usual fry up club which I stepped up to cook this month.

All in all, I was reasonably pleased with how it went, it didn’t help that I’ve never cooked eggs before so I delegated that to George, but everything else seemed reasonably editable once served, and nobody died, so I think we can chalk that one down as a victory.

As part of Jonni’s never ending birthday celebration, we forwent our usual Wendy pre-party this month for drinks elsewhere, before heading up to the union. Not the best Wendy ever, but still good.

As announced last month, Sunrise Conference returned for a second year to provide community leadership training to those who want to start, run and manage local community groups.

This year’s speakers included James Murray, Nicola Jackson, Paul Thomas, Lucy Adams, Michael Burgess and Chris Worfolk.

If you missed the conference, don’t worry, we’ll be making all the talks available via Worfolk Lectures. You can follow Sunrise on Twitter to get the latest updates about when the videos will be available. You can also see the photos on Facebook.

A big thanks to all our speakers who gave up their time to share their knowledge and experience!

Prior to the Sunrise Conference 2011, we held a pre-filming event for those speakers who were unable to make it on the day. James Murray was on his way to Stockholm while Nicola Jackson was heading out to Uganda to do some volunteer work, so both had to pre-record.

In August, Simon Wellings delivered a talk to Leeds Skeptics in the Pub entitled “All you wanted to know about the credit crunch (but were too afraid to ask)” looking at the problems with the economy and how money reform could help.

Recently, I signed a petition to retain the ban on the death penalty.

Initially, I didn’t think it worth it. Why? Because Parliament would never approve the death penalty being brought back into British society, and even if they did, Europe would just override them anyway. We don’t have to worry about the death penalty coming back.

However, having initially rejected the idea out of concern it would give the debate some genuine legitimacy, I in the end decided to sign it because if enough of us do, we don’t even have to have the faux-debate. I’m proud to see more pople standing up to say of course we don’t want the death penalty back, than people signing up to say we do.

As I write this, the petition to retain the ban currently has the 5th most signatures of any petition, the most popular bring back the death penalty petition is only 8th.

Recently, we headed over to James’s house for a bit of a party. It was interesting to see the exact same bag and printer at his house, but in the end we decided that he hadn’t burgled me, then got home quicker than we could get to his house and pretended he owned everything all along. So, in the end, a good night all round.