It's fair to say that Tim Farron's reputation amongst Liberal Democrats, and liberals more widely, took a bit of a battering during the 2017 general election. There were some moments, though...
Second paragraph of third chapter: But expectations were like fine pottery. The harder you held them, the more likely they were to crack. Apart from the sampler submitted as part of this year's Hugo packet, I think the only works by Sanderson that I had previously read were his Hugo-winning novella The Emperor's Soul, which I voted for back in the day, and his Hugo-finalist novella Perfect State, which I didn't vote for. His various overlapping series caused me a lot of head-scratching last year as Hugo administrator; judging by ownership on LibraryThing and Goodreads, which may of course reflect ...
With next Monday ( 27th August ) being a bank holiday, bin collections are put back a day So if your usual collection day is Tuesday, next week it'll be Wednesday etc Next week is a "Green Bin Week" ( ie not recyclable waste) , and there are no "Brown Bin" ( ie garden waste ) collections
From September 2018 Yate Secondary Academy and Woodlands Primary School will be operating as two individual schools, and each school will have its own local governing body - and they are looking for people to become school governors. Here is their description of the role: "Yate and Woodlands are happy, energetic, welcoming and inclusive schools; Woodlands has a nursery and Yate has a thriving sixth form, and there is a Hearing Impaired Resource Base for students from 3 to 19. Having joined the Greenshaw Learning Trust in September 2017 as an all-through school, rapid improvements in behaviour and the quality ...
The most popular post on my Liberal Democrat Newswire Facebook page this week, judged by its reach, was this welcome news about the Home Office u-turning in the face of campaigning over an absurd ruling,
Every year, the Liberal Democrats turn to the Young Liberals to launch and run one of the party's biggest recruitment events - the Freshers campaign. In this campaign, Young Liberals (formerly Liberal Youth) across the country will descend upon their Students Unions to attend Freshers Fairs and recruit new young and student members. Our largest branches enjoyed hundreds signing up for mailing last year. Local parties are often well-placed to help Young Liberals in this campaign, and certainly well placed to benefit. Parties with strong student societies will tell you that the Young Liberals can be invaluable come election time ...
So, the PPC selection for Bristol South was yesterday and... I beat RON. The hard work starts now! This was the script of my speech. I'm afraid nerves and some technical difficulties with the iPad's teleprompter app means it reads better than it was in delivery. Firstly, thanks to all for coming: I'm sure there's lots of other things you could be doing, even on a dreich Saturday afternoon like this one. Well, the script says dreich, but it looks like it may have improved out there. An especial welcome if you're here from Bristol South. Thanks for your support ...
There's a good article by James Ball and James Greenway in the Spectator this week. They write: Any time we see a politician fail, or an idiotic policy collapse as it passes through parliament - which these days seems like a regular occurrence - we are left with a familiar feeling. That this screw-up is the result of a chancer at work. Someone who has, at the very best, a shallow understanding of the country they're trying to govern. Someone who knew how to come up with a headline-grabbing idea, and how to make it sound convincing and radical - ...
Sun 19th
12:15
Labour councillor Faisal Rana cautioned by police after voting twice in local elections
Faisal Rana, a Labour councillor in Rochdale, has been cautioned by the police after admitting voting twice in May's elections for the location council. Cllr Rana has properties in two different wards and joined the electoral register at both addresses. The wards are in different Parliamentary constituencies but both within Rochdale council. Faisal Rana cast votes in both wards at the Rochdale council elections earlier this year. It is legal to be registered in more than one place, such as students who can register both at home and at university if they have gone away for university. But it is ...
Merseybeat Nostalgia remembers: The Bluegenes as they where known in the early years, formed in 1957 and, like most Liverpool groups, started out playing skiffle. They progressed from playing dance halls and church halls to the Cavern Club combining skiffle with trad-jazz. In 1961, Cavern DJ BobWooler, compiled a Top 10 list of the best Liverpool groups, he placed The Beatles at No.1 but beneath his list he added 'excluding the Bluegenes, they are beyond comparison, in a class of their own'.Today the Swingng Blue Jeans are mostly remembered for their two big British hits: Hippy Hippy Shake from 1963 ...
Sat, 12:56: This is very entertaining, but I think it is too good to be true! https://t.co/V7WNcsr126 Sat, 16:05: RT @StuartHumphryes: Beautiful, evocative and moving: This is the earliest known original colour film of London, taken in 1924 - only 5 yea... Sat, 16:06: Nobody's Children, by Kate Orman, Jonathan Blum and Philip Purser-Hallard https://t.co/VNzoDapWKI Sat, 19:01: Very puzzled by proposed #WSFS constitutional amendment D7 at #WSFS_BM. https://t.co/vvlw30GDtt Sat, 19:25: Hooray! @GregHullender - this was our amendment to relax the word limits for Best Novel/Best Novella from 35k-45k t... https://t.co/O6b9fKhRkz Sat, 22:21: RT @JolyonMaugham: This is what Boris Johnson did. ...
I was in Swalwell yesterday with two of my goats (Coal and Perky) to promote the community fair where I also was selling our preserves and eggs. The goats are always popular with the (human) kids! A good, steady flow of customers and lots of chats with residents about a whole range of local issues.
Ben Whitlock, International Officer, Young Liberals, writes a guest post about exciting news for the Young Liberals.
Caught up with former leader and North East Fife MP @scotlibdems @LibDemLords Menzies Campbell at today's @peoplesvote_uk rally #ExitFromBrexit pic.twitter.com/upoehb02HB — Wendy Chamberlain (@wendyc4861) August 18, 2018 * Paul Walter is a Liberal Democrat activist. He is one of the Liberal Democrat Voice team. He blogs at Liberal Burblings.
There may well be elements amongst the Labour leadership who understand the damage the anti-Semitism row is doing to their party and are trying to find a way to back out of the mess that they are in. However, if that is the case then their colleagues are doing them no favours. The Independent reports that anti-Semitism training at this year's Labour conference is at risk of being scrapped after Jewish members accused party leaders of trying to "censor" the sessions. They say that the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) has led courses at the last two conferences, but has withdrawn ...
Sun 19th
09:22
The demise of public toilets – Maghull just one of many towns to have a shopping center with n...
Maghull's closed public toilets at the Square Shopping Centre. The Mirror has an interesting a sad story to tell about the demise of public toilets across the nation – see link below:- I remember only too well trying to save the public toilets at Maghull Square Shopping Centre, toilets that in the 1980's had been award winners in the Loo of the Year Awards. Of course by the time they closed they were a shadow of that former glory having been vandalised and unmaintained. Indeed, by the time they closed few people would use them anyway due to their ...
Sunset as seen from the end of Southport Pier The Liverpool Echo has come up with a bucket list for Southport and it's on the newspaper's web site – see link below:- Come to Sunny Southport and do the Echo bucket list!
South Beach Library will be closed for the day on Monday 20th August I have not had the reason confirmed , but with the already reduced opening hours it is a bit disappointing Renewals etc can still be done online ....
The council customer service point in Ludlow Library is open four days a week. But plans are afoot to reduce its opening to two days a week, Tuesday and Friday. This will mean that vulnerable people will find it harder to access support and get referrals to the food bank. Age Concern told the Shropshire Star that the countywide cuts will be a serious blow for the elderly. Shrewsbury will though get a gold-plated service, far better than Ludlow and other rural towns. Other cuts to community support are on the way. Shropshire Council is no longer interested in supporting ...
Disney bought the rights to A A Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh for a reported $350 million dollars (richly endowing some of the late author's beneficiaries, including the Royal Literary Fund, Westminster School and the Garrick Club, in the process). That means Disney can basically do what they like with the characters of the children's books until the [...]
"And it was certainly a dramatic landslide - with diners in the National Liberal Club dancing on the tables as victory after victory was reported." Mark Pack on the 1906 Liberal landslide. ConservativeHome is a hotbed of Conservative Islamophobia, says Simon Childs. Adam Segal looks at the prospect of China becoming a cyber super-power: "If this happens, the Internet will be less global and less open. A major part of it will run Chinese applications over Chinese-made hardware. And Beijing will reap the economic, diplomatic, national security, and intelligence benefits that once flowed to Washington." What went wrong with the ...
I don't know if it is more true of this part of the world than anywhere else, but in Leicestershire and Northamptonshire the centre of villages are often bypassed by the main roads. I am not thinking of modern bypasses, just the A roads that were established a couple of centuries ago. Take North Kilworth. I have always known it as a pub and a few houses on the way to the M1, But having used at Google Street View the other evening, I realised there was much more to see. So I caught the 58 bus - one of ...
Joe Anderson says 'Too many people in Liverpool don't care about their city' Leader says city is one of the worst for people dumping, littering and lacking any pride in where they live Liverpool Echo Tuesday 14th August In the ... Continue reading →
The Bridgwater constituency, in its different forms over the years, has been one part of Somerset which has not elected a Liberal Democrat MP even in the party's heydays in the county.
The British Medical Association has been warning about how a 'no deal' Brexit could damage health in the UK: The doctors union warned in a new briefing paper shared with The Independent on Thursday that crashing out of the EU without a deal will leave the UK more vulnerable to outbreaks of deadly infectious diseases. It says that the UK's ability to coordinate responses to emerging threats, such as the current outbreak of measles or seasonal flu, will be seriously undermined, making it harder to stop infections spreading across borders... All parties will be weakened if the UK's quits key ...
It's funny how you collect stuff over time. And it's not as if I'm some out of control collector of "stuff". I shop occasionally, if a little haphazardly, an occupational hazard of putting on weight gradually but significantly over a period of time, I guess. So, I've started what promises to be a vaguely painful, but valuable exercise of going through my wardrobes to see what I've got and to reestablish some sense of order. And I started with something easy, just to gently lower myself into the water, so to speak - my tie collection. I don't wear ties ...
Second paragraph of third section of "All Mimsy Were the Borogoves", by Kate Orman: I pulled myself off her torso, which made her flinch, and took the form of a madder-lily once more - a harmless ornament on the phone room's table. Second paragraph of third section of "The Loyal Left Hand", by Jonathan Blum: And that was just the capper to the whole journey - at that time when you've had all the sleep you're going to get, and the breakfast service is still an eternity away, and there's just no cosmic point to freshening up for landing yet, ...
Fri, 12:56: Read the replies. https://t.co/WKNSqZFIqv Fri, 13:30: RT @jonlis1: 1. No-deal would be our choice, not EU's 2. If we fall out of international agreements (no-deal) EU can't pretend we're still... Fri, 13:30: RT @jonlis1: Brexiters always used to complain that the EU was too powerful and too interfering. Now they complain that the EU won't interv... Fri, 16:05: Uzbekistan's Secret Underground https://t.co/73eXsUfb1m The Tashkent metro. Amazing. Fri, 16:38: Time Lord, by Ian Marsh and Peter Darville-Evans https://t.co/dERxDtFq25 Fri, 16:41: RT @PRNews: It seems like an unlikely duo, one wants coverage the other anonymity, but the chief communications officer ...
It is not often nowadays that a newspaper article shocks me, but this one in yesterday's Guardian did exactly that. The paper reports that data they have obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveals that the Home Office has left some people waiting more than 20 years for decisions on their asylum claims. The paper says that the data refers to the time the Home Office takes to make an initial decision on an asylum claim. It does not include any extra time taken for an appeal or fresh claim. Seventeen people received decisions from the Home Office last ...
Via the amazing political scientist Richard Rose's website comes this photograph of people working on the election night projections at the 1959 general election.
I came across the origin of the 'disposition effect' this week, via Matthew Syed's Times column about financial trader-turned new Chelsea coach, Maurizio Sarri. The term was coined by a behavioural finance academic, Terrance Odean, who observed 'the tendency of investors to hold losing investments too long and sell winning investments too soon'. Here's Syed's explanation for the phenomenon: Why does it exist? The reason is largely due to ego. When we have taken a public position, it is difficult to accept that we might have been wrong. This is why traders hold on to their bad investments, desperately hoping ...
Next year is a big year for the UK. With our exit from the EU set to happen at the end of March, Britain is all but guaranteed to see its influence in the world declined. The fact of the reality is that outside of the EU, the United Kingdom matters far less in world politics than we did as a member of it. Unfortunately, this is also true for the Liberal Democrats. Leaving the EU not only deprives us of the opportunity to elect MEPs, but also places us in an awkward position within ALDE. No longer a member ...
My first thought is to say it's no one's business what I wear and I have no right to push what I believe are the 'correct' things to wear on anyone else. But of course I worry that some, maybe many, women who wear the Burka in its various forms are doing so because of male oppression rather than personal choice. But what worries me even more is the casual identification of Muslims as though it's OK to make out that they are all potential criminals and terrorists. That line is utterly appalling and its one that Johnson was clearly ...
DUNDEE CITY COUNCIL - WEEKLY ROAD REPORT REPORT FOR WEST END WARD - SATURDAY 18 AND SUNDAY 19 AUGUST 2018 All Under One Banner Parade - rolling road closure on Saturday 18 August affecting the following streets: Arbroath Road, Princes Street, King Street, Cowgate, Panmure Street, Meadowside, Reform Street, High Street, Nethergate, Perth Road, Roseangle, Riverside Approach, North Marketgait and East Marketgait. West Marketgait (Nethergate to Westport) - northbound nearside lane closure on Sunday 19 August for Scottish Water manhole repairs. REPORT FOR WEST END WARD - WEEK COMMENCING MONDAY 20 AUGUST 2018 Riverside Drive (at Riverside Approach) - temporary ...
Lib Dem Councillors John Dodd, Daniel Lewis, Nigel Ashton and Yaso Sathiy, Focus Editor are holding their next advice centre in Churchtown. We will be at BoxTree Kitchen for Queenscourt café, Manor Road/Cambridge Road, roundabout, from 10:30 to 11.30am on Thursday 23rd August. We also hold a monthly advice centre in Crossens, at St John's School, Rufford Road, Crossens every month (except August) on the second Saturday of the month from 11:00 am to 12:00. We will be there to meet you and discuss any Council problems you may have. No appointment necessary. Just pop in.