These posts seem to be getting later and later... at least it is still Wednesday, though!! This week's choice is the brother of one of the artists featured 11 weeks ago - then it was Neneh Cherry, this week it's Eagle Eye Cherry with Save Tonight. Enjoy: Eagle-Eye Cherry - Save Tonight on MUZU.TV. Andrew
Thanks to the invaluable Open Culture for reminding us that the first game of the chess's 'match of the century' was played on 11 July 1972. The Russian Spassky won that game but went on to lose the match and his world title to the American Bobby Fischer. Though Spassky was far from a model Soviet citizen, the match symbolised the Cold War as nothing else could and captured the imagination of the world. The video above is an excerpt from the 2006 GSN documentary Anything to Win: The Mad Genius of Bobby Fischer. I can also recommend last year's ...
Time for another extract from Alice Hawkins and the Suffragette Movement in Edwardian Leicester by Richard Whitmore. The first dealt with the Market Harborough branch of the Women's Social & Political Union (WSPU). This one deals with events in (I think) 1909 when Christabel Pankhurst made a special effort to win the support of women and position: One such woman, Miss Isobel Logan, had been a committed Liberal in her own right but had become increasingly dissatisfied with the lack of action by organisations like the Women's Liberal Association [WLA], as her resignation letter makes clear: "To my mind the ...
Sorry for not the following the mainstream mindless hysteria over the Hackney and Stratford Olympics, for me the joy was short lived, up to winning the Olympic bid, the Olympics was accepted on the premise, that they would be delivered for a mere 2 billion, much emphasis was place on these being affordable games, not long after the costing catapulted to a eye watering 8 billion. Yes many of us will be swept up in the endless promotion, the BBC daily prostitutes itself with torch madness, in which seemingly rational BBC journalists daily talk utter bollix about the torch progress, ...
When a Tory MP, at a public meeting, answers the question 'are we being railroaded into choosing a free school?' by saying 'well, it is government policy to fund free schools' ...then you know the whole 'parental choice' pack of cards has come crumbling down. But that's what happened at a Public Meeting I attended last night. Organised and hosted by Zac Goldsmith (and attended by one Tory and two Lib Dem councillors as well as the new Education, Children's and Cultural Services Director), the meeting in North Kingston was organised to discuss the urgent need for 240 new school ...
At Stockport's Disability User Group today we had a useful update from the people behind disabledgo – a website that gives impressively detailed information for anyone with a disability. For example, not only will the guide tell you whether a venue has disabled access, it will say whether the doors are single or double, manual or automatic, heavy or light to open. It won't just tell you whether there are disabled toilets, but exactly what the measurements are, where the fixtures are, whether there's good colour contrast between the walls and floors and more besides. The disabledgo website doesn't just ...
Here's a language I hadn't come across before:Jilnuul bojjan in ri Majol, rej kio mour im jokwe ilo United States, im kab jikin ko jet an, ekkar nan aer keidri ilo bonbon ko jimor, an US im kab <redacted>. Bonbon eo an <redacted> nan 2011, ej ripoote 53,158 armij, rej kio jokwe ilo Aelon Kein. Bonbon eo an US nan 2010 ej ba bwe ear wor 22,434 ri Majol rej jokwe ilo United States im kab jikin ko an. Bonbon kein ruo, elane kobaiki ippen dron, rej kwalok 75,592 ri Majol, ak 30 bojjan in jonan ro im rej jokwe ...
This is an extract from The Other Olympics: Playing with Identity by Matt Roebuck. It describes the day he met Tommie Smith, the man at the centre of this controversial image. I was at the International Children's Games in Lanarkshire and had spent the last three days at a conference discussing how to use utilise sport and the conclusion was that if sport is a platform to be built upon, then for sport to be a force for good, the message surrounding sport must lead people towards a choice of ethical and healthy behaviour. A movement with the size and ...
Cllr Nigel Bell Conservative and Labour Councillors on the Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Fire Authority have voted to agree deep cuts to emergency fire services while rejecting repeated calls from Liberal Democrat members to protect the front-line. While the scale of the cuts is dependent on the grant settlement from central government, it is expected to be up to £6 million over 4 years and could result in the closure of 4 fire stations, the loss of 10 Fire Appliances and over 40 firefighter compulsory redundancies. The losses include the removal of the second fire appliances at both Soham and Ely ...
Dr Martin Milton is giving a free public lecture on the links between courage, creativity and mental well-being in Leicester this Saturday (14 July). His lecture forms part of the Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society's Division of Counselling Psychology. It will see Dr Milton drawing upon the Harry Potter stories, boxing and mixed martial arts, as well as lesbian and gay psychology. Dr Milton's talk will launch his book Diagnosis and Beyond: Counselling Psychology Contributions to Understanding Human Distress. Tea and cake will be available afterwards. The lecture takes place at the Mercure Leicester City Hotel in Granby ...
Photo credit: keeshu from morguefile.com I find myself oddly unconcerned by the call for the armed forces to be more involved in education made by Stephen Twigg and Jim Murphy in the Daily Telegraph yesterday. There are many children who will hate the idea (I would have been one) but there are others who would jump at the idea of "specialist Service Schools," so why shouldn't they be able to attend them? Liberal and radicals should be keen to leaven the state system with more variety, choice and outright eccentricity. I also like the argument of Sean Davey on Liberal ...
Communities Minister, Baroness Hanham, has seen how Cambridgeshire is leading the way on a national pathfinder project to join up public sector assets to save millions of pounds and improve access to public services. The partnership - Making Assets Count - is finding ways for different public sector bodies to come together to take a shared view about land and buildings. This will deliver real savings and better, more joined-up services which will benefit both the tax payer and the local community. Collectively the local public sector in Cambridgeshire controls assets with a book value of over £1billion. The event ...
I was asleep when the first of the Twin Towers got hit in 2001. I was working nights that summer and I was asleep, to be woken up by my boyfriend at the time, shaking me awake and telling me that I "better watch this". We all, as I suppose everyone did, for hours watching the events unfold, which I'm sure I don't need to detail again. We didn't know what to think or say, so said very little. It was the next couple of years, when my fledgling liberal nature started to agitate itself to the edge of the ...
Day 3 of our journey through the much forgotten (by Labour supporters) Labour manifesto of 2010. Today it's Children - 3 texts, which was in the Labour manifesto. A. Too many children leave schools without the skills to be successful. And your family background still has a huge effect: a typical child froma poor family will fall behind a richer
Local politics in the south-east of England, especially in North Kent and London, has been dominated by the proposed HUB airport, it was a key issue in the Mayoral debate, especially for residents of the Medway towns. London's Mayor, Boris Johnson is pushing for a new airport either on the Isle of Grain where there is an RSPB sanctuary on marshland that was portrayed in Dickens' Great Expectations or in the middle of the estuary itself. It is a story that is hardly out of the local press or local Politicians blogs which is why I was reading a Labour ...
First the positive bit. A vote of 462 – 124 in favour of a Bill that has a second chamber predominately elected by a proportional voting system is a major step forward. This confirms the fact that there is a substantial majority of MPs who favour radical House of Lords reform. But...the Bill may now ...
At the Gatley Village Partnership on Tuesday we had an interesting presentation from Paul Hartley on the Gatley Conservation Area – what it is and what it means. The presentation is below. Within a conservation area, permission has to be sought from the Council to demolish a building and there are additional controls over how buildings can be modified. That doesn't mean nothing changes in a conservation area, but the aim is to retain the look and character of the area. Click here to see the presentation
An apocryphal story (attributed to C. Northcote Parkinson) tells of a board of directors who had only two items on the agenda of their monthly meeting. The first was a proposed £100 million investment in a new plant that would be a make or break investment for the company; the second what colour to paint the ...
This was written for my personal blog and is reproduced here as it is both promoting democracy and celebrating a new life. As I've very recently become a new dad, in the next few months or so I might reflect on parenthood more than a little! I would like to thank everyone on twitter, some who I know well and some less well, for all your kind congratulatory messages yesterday after I announced the arrival of baby Xanthe. Somebody noted that "Xanthe is such an ACE name" and inevitably conversation turned to how we picked it. When I explained how ...
Durham County's Cabinet made their decision on Libraries today. It won't surprise you that it is unchanged from the "pre-consultation" decision. We have to accept that cuts were inevitable. The council has less money because government has had to cut all councils' grants as it tries to balance the books, and some of the report was reasoned and sensible, showing clear criteria for the decisions made. One area bucked that completely. That was the decision that all libraries (except Clayport in Durham City) can be banded as "Town Centre Libraries" to get 36 hours per week opening, the rest "community ...
Angie Bray, Conservative MP for Ealing Central, was yesterday sacked as Francis Maude's Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) after rebelling on Lords reform (a PPS is an MP who, for no extra salary, acts as a minister's "eyes and ears" among backbench MPs, keeping the minister in touch with backbench opinion). Today's Standard has Ms Bray saying: "The whips tell me there's no way back, but historically there are cases of MPs who rebel on an issue being able to go on to great things later on." Don't hold back, Ms Bray. This is no time for false modesty. If you ...
During the brief spike of intellectual interest in the Blue Labour movement a few years back, I was somewhat baffled by the inability of most commentators to understand where it came from and what it was really about. I have been reminded of this today by a comment from Jonathan Freedland on identity, which I ...
Tell me, can you beat SCOPING REPORT FOR THE LOCAL DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK FOR THE SUSTAINABILITY APPRAISAL INCORPORATING SEA OF THE Wokingham Borough Managing Development Delivery Development Plan Document as the worst title for a document you have ever seen? It only adds insult to injury that underneath the title it says NON TECHNICAL SUMMARY! It is just one of a ton of documents on the CD I have been sent in order that I might take part in Wokingham Borough Council's consultation on the Managing Development Delivery document (see previous posts). Don't get me wrong. I am grateful for the ...
Over at Paul Walter's Liberal Burblings blog, he has set out a plan: Nick Clegg should immediately freeze co-operation on the boundary review which the Conservatives know will increase their parliamentary strength. He should set up a team, including old hands such as Charles Kennedy and Sir Menzies Campbell (with memories of the Maastricht parliamentary struggle) to reach out to reform-minded MPs in the Labour and Conservative parties and manage the parliamentary guerilla tactics needed to get this legislation through. There also needs to be much better "selling" of the measures to the public. By giving in to the rebels, ...
First of all it is no exaggeration to say that the British public are hugely proud and supportive of our armed services, and so we should be of the men and women who dedicate their lives to national service. But in modern times the military is facing a number of challenges which are rapidly changing the function they serve. With a Conservative Defence Secretary enacting the biggest round of cuts since the end of the cold war, it is clear that our armed services must adapt to survive. Thus Labour's proposal for schools staffed by armed service staff come at ...
No sooner do I post yesterday that the three opposition parties should work together better to hold the government to account than the three leaders table a motion of no confidence in the health minister. The Western Mail reports that the Welsh Conservatives, Plaid Cymru and the Welsh Liberal Democrats have agreed to use the Welsh Liberal Democrat opposition time next Wednesday afternoon to debate the motion of no confidence following the controversy surrounding the independence of the Case for Change report. This is a good start, but it is not just on showpiece motions that we need better coordination. ...
I just got into yet another altercation with a motorist who objected to my presence on the road. (I was on my bike, of course.) His main objection to the existence of cyclists is that they don't pay road tax, and thus have no right to share tarmac with him. So I thought I'd clear a few things up. First: nobody pays road tax. Road tax doesn't even exist. The payment commonly known as road tax is actually called Vehicle Excise Duty, or VED, and it's a tax on the vehicle. It is paid as a license to drive or ...
Here is the timetable for this Saturday's Village Fete; 12:00 Fete Opens 12:30 Official Opening by BBC Radio Cambridgeshire's Jeremy Sallis 12:35 Tesco Fun Run Starts 13:00 Fancy Dress Competition (organised by Bar Hill Primary School) 13:30 Zumba Fun with Escential Fitness 14:00 Dog Show (Entries @ Help Station) 15:00 Billy Banana Children's Entertainment 16:30 Raffle and Tombola Prize Draws The evenings live bands are; 18:00 Quinto Cohors 18:45 The Centimes 19:30 Fluffy Wangers 20:30 Midlife Crisis 21:30 The Earnshaws 23:00 Cerberus Nights Disco See you there!
Well, there has been a victory of some sorts yesterday. Although the vote was passed there has also been a Government retreat on a time limit. It reminds me of the Battle of Edge Hill in 1642 where despite heavy fighting and Parliament withdrawing the Royal Army was bloodied enough that it was unable to proceed into London. Although the Bill's not dead without a time limit we could be facing it being kicked into the long grass and it dropping into obscurity. Like the Civil War I fear that this will become a long and drawn out affair wrought ...
It may seem strange that a victory of 462 votes to 124 on the Bill for an elected Lords is coming across as a defeat - but let's make no mistake. A defeat it is. Because of Labour's lack of support for a programme motion, which would have set a timetable, the Tory rebellion would have been big enough to defeat the motion - and hence the Conservatives can now simply talk the Bill out. Labour wanted it both ways - they supported the Bill to reform the Lords and then colluded with the Tory rebels to ensure that it ...
Yesterday, the first set of evidence into the Home Office's controversial interception plans was heard in front of the special committee established to look at the draft bill and you can watch the Video on Parliament's web site. (More is scheduled for this afternoon). We learnt a few things about what's being planned as a result of the evidence given, which was predominantly given by Charles Farr, ex-MI6 man and Director of the Office for Security & Counter-Terrorism. Firstly, the existing Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and Data Retention Directive are allowing police and security services to get access to ...
I want you to make a pledge. Don't worry; it's got nothing to do with fees or abstinence from alcohol. I want you to make a pledge to do something you know you ought to be doing any way. Will you pledge to recruit 10 people to join the Lib Dems this summer? They could be 10 completely new members, 10 lapsed members or a mixture. But I need you to make me that pledge today and to fulfil it before we get to our Brighton conference in September. The most important thing to me is that our Party grows ...
Good news! I am delighted to learn that Cambridgeshire County Council is going to build a link between the Hills Road Bridge and the Guided Busway cycle route. They have agreed to build a series of steps from the southern Busway Cycle route to the Hills Road Bridge. This will mean that people can avoid crossing Hills Road when travelling to Addenbrooke's, Homerton College and Hills Road VI Form College. There will be steps for pedestrians and channels for bikes. At present there is not enough space for a bike ramp, as the land alongside is owned by the property ...
Why, in a supposedly modern civilised liberal society, are some of our journalists having to put up with alarming levels of personal abuse? It is not often that I agree or sympathise with the comments of Mehdi Hasan, a vehemently ... Continue reading →
Most of you will have a friend or family member who needs some kind of care and support to help them get through the day. In fact, more than 80% of us will need some form of care once we turn 65 - which is why getting social care right is so important. It's important because it touches upon some of the most essential things in life, like being healthy, happy and independent. Today we published a Care and Support White Paper, a draft Care and Support Bill and a progress report on social care funding reform. These three documents ...
A North West MEP is fighting a carmaker "scam" that costs drivers hundreds of pounds in unnecessary fuel costs every year. The European Commission today proposed a target for 2020 that could save an average driver £400 a year based ... Continue reading →
My colleague, and now leader of the Lib Dem group on the City Council, Cllr Richard Kemp, is calling on the Mayor of Liverpool to "come clean" about what was or wasn't promised around the whole issue of whether or not Liverpool should have an elected mayor. Richard will be raising this at a City Council meeting next week. I am pasting below some info about what we think on the topic and what we are saying. "Councillor Richard Kemp, Leader of the Lib Dem Group on Liverpool City Council is demanding that the Elected Mayor, Joe Anderson, publish the ...
I am writing what I hope will be a series of short articles on various topics around politics and local democracy. I've managed to get one of them published on one of the Post and Echo blogs. You can find a link to it
My regular column for the Prestwich Advertiser. By the time you're reading this all that will be left of the Stone Roses will be a mixture of memories, and a park and its environs that will take some time to recover. I know a lot of fans had a great concert - including many Stone Roses fans who live in Prestwich. I know it was great to have such a major event on our doorstep. I know many Prestwich businesses will have done well out of the concerts. I also know that for some people the event was a nightmare. ...
Liberal Democrat Secretary of State for Scotland Michael Moore MP writes a weekly column for local newspapers in his Borders constituency. Here's this week's edition. Diamond Jubilee service of Thanksgiving A number of church services and events last week marked the Scottish celebrations of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and it was a privilege to take part in my role as Secretary of State. I was especially pleased to be able to attend the Thistle Installation Service in Edinburgh which was followed by a procession down the Royal Mile led by Lothian and Borders police pipe band and featuring the Scout ...
The push-me-pull-you antics of the Labour Party yesterday on Lords' reform showed British politics at its worst. It is not surprising that 91 Tories voted against the motion for reform. After all, the preservation of privilege and clinging to things past are core Conservative traits. Nor do I feel that Mr Cameron's failure to haul them into line is a sign of his weakness and a betrayal of the coalition cause. In general I believe spirited independence among MPs rather than slavish obedience to the Whips is to be welcomed and hope we shall see more of it on other ...
After a day with their feet up (if you ignore the long training/recovery rides they'll have done as well) the race is back on today. The big news from the race yesterday was the French police arresting Remy di Gregorio for doping offences. He's been sacked by his team (Cofidis) and withdrawn from the Tour, though unlike when something similar happened in 2007, Cofidis won't be withdrawing from the race entirely as it seems the allegations centre around Di Gregorio's time at Astana. My favourite comment on the whole situation was this tweet: Kudos to the French police who found ...
Wed 11th
11:07
'What day is today? It's Neil's birthday. What a day for a birthday, let's all have some cake'
Well that headline is a lie because yesterday was my birthday but I have a tradition where I don't talk about my birthday online on the actual day itself. I also wanted to use the birthday song from Futurama so I had to use the headline even though it was a lie. I also didn't have any cake yesterday *sad face* Well yes folks another circumnavigation of the sun completed and survival has been met which is the first thing I look at when reviewing that trip. I always like looking back and having a birthday in the middle of ...
Compelling evidence from Europe that local areas with more decentralised public finances are more competitive. In the UK central govt spend 72% of all govt spending whereas in Germany they spend 19% and 35% in France. In our own Southwark area 99% of the budget is allocated centrally with significantly less than 1% allocated and spent locally at local community council or ward levels. Equally in Southwark the decision making is going ever upwards. Planning applications since late May are no longer taken locally. The hurdles have been hugely raised and effectively planning committees centrally only make decision instead of ...
Oh, (No) Canada! What if Newfoundland had become/remained independent? (tags: canada maps ) Refused access: fighting for the right to travel on the buses London vs wheelchair user. (tags: disability ) Ranked: Disney Princesses From Least To Most Feminist I think I have seen two of these films. (tags: films sexandgenderandsexuality ) How to Kill a Troll Try love. (tags: internet ) The woe that is in teaching English "It is an important step to move beyond nonsense about the decline of English and chin-wagging about the Young People, and to talk about the difficulty of mastering standard written English, ...
Imagine you're a slightly excitable aide to Ed Miliband and plotting how he can be Prime Minister by Christmas, with you getting a new nice job in 10 Downing Street as a result. What would your plan be? Knowing that we now have fixed-term Parliaments, what you would want to plot is a falling out between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, which might – just might – result in the Lib Dems saying 'sod you lot; Ed – do you fancy a go?'. How might you go about trying to pull off this unlikely occurrence? Well, first you want ...
As the academic year draws to a close, most young people are thinking about the summer ahead – not us though. At Liberal Youth we're already planning for the next academic year and we want this year's Freshers (the inaugural party / join-a-society week at the start of the academic term) to be the one that puts us back on the map. The Freshers period is incredibly important to our organisation, more so now than ever. We're not naive, we know the Liberal Democrats' reputation on campus isn't the same as it was a few years ago, but we're working ...
As fired off on request from the Evening Standard for today's edition (subject to spiking): Nick Clegg should immediately freeze co-operation on the boundary review which the Conservatives know will increase their parliamentary strength. He should set up a team, including old hands such as Charles Kennedy and Sir Menzies Campbell (with memories of the Maastricht parliamentary struggle) to reach out to reform-minded MPs in the Labour and Conservative parties and manage the parliamentary guerilla tactics needed to get this legislation through. There also needs to be much better "selling" of the measures to the public. By giving in to ...
We need a price for carbon. Preventing climate change requires that we find a way of minimising our emissions of carbon dioxide and its equivalents, and by far the best way is by assigning a price to those emissions, providing an incentive to people to innovate their way round the difficult process of decarbonising our ...
This is the latest in my series of Random Thoughts posts with links, things found on the web and other stuf that has occured to me between 4th July and 8th July (published a little late): What to make of the new Electoral Reform Society rules? Mark Pack says what I would have said about the changes to the rules that the Electoral Reform Society is run by, if I had bothered to go into the details and then chosen to blog about it. However, I am pleased that one of the things that the new broom in the ERS ...
As I've watched the shameful shenanigans in the House of Commons this week over Lords reform, one event from our recent past kept popping into my head. Those of us of a certain age can remember the eventful passage of the Maastricht Bill through Parliament in 1992/93. Even though they agreed with the principles of the Maastricht Treaty, Labour teamed up with Tory Eurosceptics to try to undermine the Government. The Liberal Democrats, enthusiastic about closer European partnership, played no such games. I would be lying if I said I had taken this entirely calmly at the time. After 14 ...
I suppose it was inevitable that the opportunity to give the Liberal Democrats a good kicking was just too good to miss. never mind that the UK still has an upper house of Parliament that is partly hereditary and partly a mass of political cronies. Never mind that all parties are committed in theory to at least a partially elected upper house. In the end it was dirty politics and not high principle that won the day. As in so many decades past, the entrenched interests of political expediency stopped any real change. Yet it is yet another example of ...
We watched the next in the Beeb's current Shakespeare season in two goes over Sunday and Monday nights, and I felt that although enjoyable and dramatic - the tavern and battle scenes particularly well staged - it didn't quite grab me in the same way that Richard II did. steepholm has crystallised the problem for me. The production allowed Simon Russell Beale as Falstaff to dominate proceedings, which fundamentally unbalanced the play; it became a star vehicle rather than a historical drama. He is a powerful actor, and is good here; I was blown away by his Leontes in The ...
As I've watched the shameful shenanigans in the House of Commons this week over Lords reform, one event from our not so recent past kept popping into my head. Those of us of a certain age can remember the eventful passage of the Maastricht Bill through Parliament in 1992/93. Even though they agreed with the principles of the Maastricht Treaty, Labour teamed up with Tory Eurosceptics to try to undermine the Government. The Liberal Democrats, enthusiastic about closer European partnership, played no such games. I would be lying if I said I had taken this entirely calmly at the time. ...
Wed 11th
08:55
Britain's future in the European Union: In or out? 3 must-read articles to help you decide...
I took part in a fascinating discussion on Voice of Russia UK radio yesterday. The subject: Britain's future in the European Union: In or out? You can listen to the 28-minute programme on YouTube below, and here me alongside former UK-ambassador-turned-blogger Charles Crawford; Robert Oulds, Director of the eurosceptic Bruges Group; and Petros Fassoulas of the pro-EU European Movement. (Available on YouTube here.) I found it interesting to do some quick research prior to the discussion, and thankfully stumbled across three terrific, briefish-but-in-depth articles which offered just the right balance of pragmatic, non-starry-eyed pro-Europeanism I was looking for... First, most ...
In the aftermath of last night's vote (and non vote) in the Commons, Nick Clegg sent a remarkably temperate e-mail to party members. Calm though the language may have been, his message to David Cameron, that he needs to sort his MPs out, is clear. Here's the e-mail in full: This evening we overwhelmingly won an historic vote on the Second Reading of the House of Lords Reform Bill – a Bill that will finish something our party started a century ago. This is a huge triumph for our party, and a clear mandate to deliver much needed reforms to ...
Yesterday may have been a rest day for the majority of the Tour but it means something more to certain riders. Tony Martin of Omega Pharma Quickstep the World Time Trail Champion made it as far as the Time Trail with a fractured wrist. He has however decided that three weeks rest ahead of the Olympics are what he needs if he is to challenge Bradley Wiggins and Fabian Cancellera in London. So he has abandoned this year's Tour. Meanwhile elsewhere Remy di Gregorio from Cofidis, but formerly of Astana. He was arrested and taken from the team hotel in ...
Below is a guest blog from Southcote Lib Dem and carers' campaigner Dave Warren on social care, posted as we find out more today about the Government response to the Dilnot commission. I can personally attest to the issues Dave describes about the urgent need to improve the quality of services provided by care agencies. If recent reports in the press are to be belived the current government is shaping up to do just what its predecessors have done with social care reform and put it off at least until after the next General Election. As a Liberal Democrat and ...
The Great Depression and the rise of Fascism aside, the 1930′s was a golden era in many respects. For example, the literary output was first rate: Orwell's talent was in full bloom, Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath" flew off the bookstore shelves. Indeed, according to the New York Times, "The Grapes of Wrath" was the best ...
Some weeks ago, on behalf of residents who had complained to me that the white lines at the junction of Blackness Road and Elm Street were badly worn (see right), I received an assurance from the City Council's Roads Maintenance Partnership that the markings would be refreshed in the near future. I was pleased to be advised recently that this work has now been carried out - see below:
Letter from Nick Clegg to Lib Dem members 10.26pm, 10th July 2012 "Dear ........ This evening we overwhelmingly won an historic vote on the Second Reading of the House of Lords Reform Bill – a Bill that will finish something our party started a century ago. This is a huge triumph for our party, and a clear mandate to deliver much needed reforms to the House of Lords. As David Cameron and I have both repeatedly made clear – in the Queen's speech, in May 2011 in the White Paper and in May 2010 in the Coalition Agreement - the ...
