Last updated Friday 27th May 2022 17:00 BST
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Once posed as pound-shop Churchill; now reveals himself as a cheap liar
Partygate. We are all fed up with it. Yet the events and the aftermath shredded have any bit of credibility that Boris Johnson had left. Faced with continual calls for his resignation, Boris Johnson has today watered down the ministerial code to ensure that ministers can avoid resigning if they break the ministerial code. Ludlow MP Philip Dunne has not been a challenging critic of the Conservative government or Boris Johnson. But in an email sent to several constituents, he makes it clear that he believes that Boris Johnson is no longer fit to prime minister. "I am sorry to ...
In my Lib Dem Voice article of 4th March 2022, I argued that Putin should be stopped in Ukraine for good. Now that Putin has narrowed his war aims to take over the rest of Donbas, Luhansk, including the industrial and food producing heartland of Ukraine, having had created a land corridor to Crimea and brought Ukraine's economy to its knees, he may well accede to calls for a ceasefire to consolidate his gains, erect strong defences in his recently-captured territories and rebuild his army into a new more effective force to recommence war whenever it suits him. A ceasefire ...
In just two days we hear of two further huge problems for the council. One is historic and relates to the leadership of the past Mayor Anderson and its managerial team one is current and has arisen under the leadership ... Continue reading →
Writing in The House yesterday, Tim Farron said: British farming communities are a crucial cog in the cost of living fighting machine. But farming families themselves are facing an even more acute cost of living emergency. He said input costs are spiralling making crops and livestock more expensive to produce. In 12 months, the price of animal feed has shot up by 60 per cent. In some cases, fertiliser prices have quadrupled because production uses gas. Twelve months ago, a tonne of ammonium nitrate fertiliser cost £280 - it now costs £1,000. The government needs to do everything it can ...
Thu, 12:56: RT @criticalthreats: The first 90 days of the war in #Ukraine mapped by @criticalthreats and @TheStudyofWar. https://t.co/YlThNROHru Thu, 16:05: Michigan election bureau says 2 leading Republican candidates for governor filed fraudulent signatures, disqualifying them | PBS NewsHour https://t.co/GRO9cmlK9m Brazen! Thu, 17:01: A Norman Legacy, by Sally Harpur O'Dowd https://t.co/B4MOIAkPCf Thu, 17:11: RT @phu4ng: This isn't normally what I post but I had to get this out. If you didn't know already, I'm a 9th grade English teacher in Texas... Thu, 17:43: A Norman Legacy, by Sally Harpur O'Dowd https://t.co/oxtR8vUx5e https://t.co/JpmPEz2Ar1 Thu, 20:48: RT @DW_Infostamp: Russell T. Davies avoided ...
I have been asked how we consistently manage to elect a diverse group of Lib Dem councillors in Kingston, reflecting the local community in terms of gender and ethnicity. I want to focus specifically on gender in this post, and that got me thinking about quotas and targets. Quotas Amongst the many strategies to get a better gender balance in education, employment and political representation, quotas have had their day. There is one simple problem with quotas - they are perceived as unfair all round. Quotas in general carry the implication that those in the under-represented group are not able ...
The Chancellor of the Exchequer may have finally relented and decided to hand out the proceeds of a windfall tax to poorer households but, as the Independent reports, earlier decisions by the Tory Government could have saved us all a lot of money, and done so on an annual basis. The paper says that a new analysis has found that households could have saved more than £500 a year on energy bills during the cost-of-living crisis if the government had not scrapped a green policy for homes: UK parliamentary research - seen by The Independent - increased previous estimates to ...
This week's principal authority council by-elections started off with a Wednesday contest: Laleham and Shepperton Green (Spelthorne) council by-election result: GRN: 51.7% (+29.4) CON: 44.4% (+4.2) TUSC: 3.9% (+3.9) No LDem (-18.4), UKIP (-16.5) and Lab (-2.7) as prev. Votes cast: 1,747 Green GAIN from Conservative. — Britain Elects (@BritainElects) May 26, 2022
Yesterday evening, we had the pleasure, along with our Liberal Democrat Group colleague Councillor Daniel Coleman, to meet with David Phillips, the new Director and General Manager and Marc Winsland, Commercial Manager, at Xplore Dundee to discuss bus services in the city. We had a really productive and useful discussion and it is clear that the positive relationship we have had with Xplore Dundee over a long period will continue and grow in the years ahead.
Nick Clegg these days reminds me of the episode of The Simpsons where Homer gets a new job and doesn't realise he is working for a Bond villain bent on world domination. But he does feature in this blog's Trivial Fact of the Day. Previewing a local by-election today in Lincolnshire, Andrew Teale writes: Quarrington and Mareham is Sleaford's southern ward, taking in the Quarrington and New Quarrington areas on the southern fringe of the town. Also here is Greylees, a large and very new housing development on the site of a former asylum next to Rauceby railway station. This ...
Claudia Webbe, the MP for Leicester East, today lost her appeal against a conviction for harassing a love rival. But her sentence was reduced to a community order for 80 hours' unpaid work with no custodial element, so there will be no recall petition. She was elected for Labour in 2019. Though she was born in Leicester, many regarded the Islington councillor Webbe as a candidate imposed on the local party by the Corbyn leadership. Resigning from the Labour after her selection, the Leicester East constituency chair called it "a fix and a disgrace". Webbe was expelled from Labour after ...
The recent local election results continue to demonstrate that rural support for the Conservatives is dwindling. Their loss was, by all appearances, the Liberal Democrats' gain. Where the Conservatives faltered, the Lib Dems thrived: in newly created council Westmorland and Furness, they took 36 seats compared to just 11 for the Tories, and in the Conservative stronghold of Somerset, they won 65 seats compared to a meagre 36. Our recent opinion poll could well have predicted this Conservative downfall in the countryside. Published just weeks before locals took to the ballots, it indicated a 7.5% drop in support for the ...
Ed Davey was unimpressed with the package announced by Rishi Sunak aimed at helping people with the soaring cost of living. He described it as the "Sunak Scam." The Chancellor is hammering families with a £800 tax hike this year, more than wiping out what he announced today. It is the Sunak scam, promising you help but picking your pockets while you're not looking. Soaring inflation and devastating tax rises have left proud families who never dreamed they would find themselves in trouble struggling to pay the bills. The British people need help right now, but instead have been left ...
The people of Moray deserve better from our elected Member of Parliament. Douglas Ross should resign now as an MP. Let someone do the job who actually wants to make a positive difference in the lives of those who live and work in Moray. Our MP has not only backed down on calling for a Prime Minister that has committed a criminal offence to resign, but he has also got a track record for missing key votes that would benefit his Moray constituents due to his commitments as MSP and as a Scottish party leader. Only last week, our MP ...
Powys County Council is to be led by the Welsh Liberal Democrats for the first time since its creation, in a partnership with Welsh Labour. Previous administrations have been led by independents. James Gibson-Watt, the Welsh Liberal Democrat Group Leader on Powys Council, was elected as Leader of the Council at the Council's AGM this morning, becoming the first Welsh Liberal Democrat Council leader since 2012. The agreement between the Welsh Liberal Democrats and Welsh Labour will focus on delivering a fresh and distinctive path to meet the serious challenges the county faces. A Green Party councillor is expected to ...
Despite a damning report from Sue Gray and photos of Boris Johnson at a party during lockdown, the Prime Minister continues to hang onto his job, and senior Tories can still be found to defend him in the media. However, not all Tories are so supportive. The Mirror reports that three more Tory MPs have broken ranks in the wake of Sue Gray's report. One of them, Conservative MP John Baron, said he did not believe Johnson's claims that he was unaware of the scale of lockdown boozing in Downing Street laid bare in the dossier, and that his repeated ...
If you live in the West Midlands and are going to fall ill, you better get on with it. Certainly, don't leave it until 17 August because if you want an ambulance, you may not get one. That's the apocalyptic prediction from a director of the West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS). Ambulance provision in the West Midlands, as in many other areas of the country, has been struggling for a couple of years. There are endless stories of delays in ambulances reaching patients. Handover delays from ambulance paramedics at the county's two hospitals, both maintained by the Shrewsbury and Telford ...
If you going to fall ill and likely to require an ambulance, you better get on with it. Certainly, don't leave it until 17 August. Ambulance provision by West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS) has been struggling for a couple of years. There are endless stories of delays in ambulances reaching patients. Handover delays from ambulance paramedics at the Royal Shrewsbury and Princes Royal Hospitals, both maintained by the Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Hospital Trust (SaTH), are among the longest in England. There are far too many reports of patients dying during these delays when they might have survived. Too many ...
On behalf of Liverpool's Liberal Democrat Group, I have submitted a requisition for an Extraordinary Meeting of Liverpool City Council to confer on the manager of Liverpool Football Club, Jurgen Klopp, the title of Citizen of Honour of the City ... Continue reading →
