Martin’s Twitter
Were you affected by flash floods in Winchester on August 27? The County Council (@hantsconnect) has a survey for affected homes and businesses here... forms.office.com/Pages/Respon…
Last week from Martin Tod's Twitter via Twitter Web App · reply · retweet · favourite
Just tried @SeedlipDrinks Grove 42. Tastes like flat, watered-down Sprite... 😕
About 2 weeks ago from Martin Tod's Twitter via Twitter for Android · reply · retweet · favourite
We met when the UK was in the EU and Austria wasn't. And now, 29 years later, it's the other way round. We managed one. We'll manage the other. #StrongerthanBrexit pic.twitter.com/xHygCohRpd
About a month ago from Martin Tod's Twitter via Twitter for Android · reply · retweet · favourite
Gives extra energy for our campaign for equal access to Hampshire's tips - winld.org.uk/hwrc - if @BCPCouncil can do it, why can't @hantsconnect? twitter.com/GreenSFG/statu…
About a month ago from Martin Tod's Twitter via Twitter for Android · reply · retweet · favourite
Definitely - @YvetteAmyRiley - one for you! twitter.com/GreenSFG/statu…
About a month ago from Martin Tod's Twitter via Twitter for Android · reply · retweet · favourite
Come rain or shine... the Stanmore street surgery on the first Saturday every month pic.twitter.com/kRqfgvNDpk
About 2 months ago from Martin Tod's Twitter via Twitter for Android · reply · retweet · favourite
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Mini-rant about Gibraltar
Conservatives vote down tougher action on air quality
Once again, Conservative Councillors at Winchester City Council have voted down a proposal from the Lib Dem group to have a tougher policy on air quality in the city.
I summed up on a proposal at today’s council meeting that it should be compulsory for all council proposals to report on the air quality impact of any action they recommend.
Under the Conservatives, again and again, the council has treated air quality as something that’s only done by the environment team. Other departments are left free to ignore it. It happened with Station Approach. It happened with the ‘pollution patio’ in St George’s Street. And the proposed new Parking Strategy doesn’t do enough. With 51 deaths a year in the Winchester district from air pollution, this can’t carry on.
It’s got to be impossible to ignore air quality in council plans – right across the council – as well as making sure that the Air Quality Action Plan due later this year does enough to tackle it. You can’t sort air quality in a silo. It’s got to be everyone’s business.
That’s what we proposed. And it’s deeply disappointing – although not surprising – that, once again, the Conservatives voted it down.”
Autumn 2016 St Paul Ward Focus
Topics include:
- Station Approach
- Station Area Parking
- New Tory ‘Tip Tax’
- Our crossing campaigns
- The local vote to ‘remain’
- Air Quality
- Grammar Schools
- Safer Routes to School
Making Shopify work with UK Gift Aid
At the Men’s Health Forum, we’ve been using Shopify for a while now and we really love it.
They have a great value non-profit rate (if you ask nicely). It’s great for handling trading. It’s great for handling digital downloads. All we needed was for it to handle donations and we were done!
The good news is that there’s a pretty straightforward way of doing it by using Shopify’s approach to collecting customisation information – as outlined here.
To make a Shopify product page work for donations we wanted to do three things:
- Ask about Gift Aid
- Remove the quantity selector
- Put the description above the area where people select the donation
You can do all of this by working your way through the customisation page – with a few tweaks along the way.
- Create a new template for donations
Take the same approach as Shopify outline for customisable products – although I called my page donation instead of customizable. - Add customisable form fields that ask about Gift Aid.
The code I used for this was:<div>
<h3>Gift Aid</h3>
<strong>Boost your donation by 25p of Gift Aid for every £1 you donate. </strong>Please treat as Gift Aid donations all qualifying gifts of money made:
<input type="checkbox" id="giftaid-today" name="properties[Include Gift Aid made on donations today]" value="Yes"/> <label class="inline" for="giftaid-today">Today</label>
<input type="checkbox" id="giftaid-p4y" name="properties[Include Gift Aid made on donations in the past 4 years]" value="Yes"/> <label class="inline" for="giftaid-today">In the past 4 years</label>
<input type="checkbox" id="giftaid-future" name="properties[Include Gift Aid made on donations in the future]" value="Yes"/> <label class="inline" for="giftaid-today">In the future</label>
<p id="taxstatement"><small>I confirm I have paid or will pay an amount of Income Tax and/or Capital Gains Tax for each tax year (6 April to 5 April) that is at least equal to the amount of tax that all the charities or Community Amateur Sports Clubs (CASCs) that I donate to will reclaim on my gifts for that tax year. I understand that other taxes such as VAT and Council Tax do not qualify. I understand the charity will reclaim 28p of tax on every £1 that I gave up to 5 April 2008 and will reclaim 25p of tax on every £1 that I give on or after 6 April 2008.</small></p>
</div>The relatively long name descriptors are needed to make the shopping cart and payment pages look sensible when your visitors check out.
- Remove the quantity selector
Just replace the selector code with a hidden input field. Specifically, replace:<div class="product-single__quantity{% unless settings.product_quantity_enable %} is-hidden{% endunless %}">
<label for="Quantity">{{ 'products.product.quantity' | t }}</label>
<input type="number" id="Quantity" name="quantity" value="1" min="1" class="quantity-selector"/></div>with
<input type="hidden" id="Quantity"" name="quantity" value="1" min="1" class="quantity-selector"/> - Add a bit of JavaScript to hide the Gift Aid text until needed.
I added the following inside the final script tag:var countChecked = function() {
var n = $( "input:checked" ).length;
if( n == 0 ) {
jQuery("#taxstatement").hide();
} else {
jQuery("#taxstatement").show();
}
};
countChecked();
jQuery( "input[type=checkbox]" ).on( "click", countChecked ); - Reorder the page until you have it how you want it.
I moved:<div class="product-description rte" itemprop="description">
{{ product.description }}</div>just below the form tag:
- Create a new product in Shopify as you would do normally, but select product.donation as the template suffix (in the bottom right of the page). The end result should look something like this.
Er. That’s it. Comments and suggested improvements welcome.
Letter to the Hampshire Chronicle about Station Approach
This followed a letter from the Hampshire Chambers of Commerce which totally missed the point of what was discussed by the council…
Sir,
Nobody opposed the scheme for station approach because they opposed having new offices in the city. Councillors opposed it because it was a poor design that was slammed by the independent jury, crammed far too much onto the site, was set to create disastrous congestion and air pollution, and would ruin the appearance of the town for people arriving in Winchester.
The argument put forward by Stephen Gates on behalf of the Hampshire Chambers of Commerce last week is the same one that made the Brooks happen. Something needs to be done. This is something. Therefore it should happen.
The problem with that argument is that it sets absolutely no standards at all for the quality of design and impact on the area.
Let’s not forget how mediocre the scores given to this design by the independent and expert design jury appointed by the council actually were. Nothing about the scheme was scored as excellent. Nothing about the scheme was even scored as good. And several aspects of the scheme were marked as less than satisfactory.
And that’s on top of the scheme’s failure to take even the slightest notice of concerns raised by local residents about congestion, traffic and pollution.
As others have noted, the Conservative party’s disastrous policy allowing offices to be converted into housing at will is hitting the city hard. We do need more modern office space. But that doesn’t mean that councillors should approve the first scheme to come along – no matter how bad it is.