The Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni, who died in 2007, was born on 29 September 1912. To mark his centenary, here is a scene from Blow-Up. With digital photography, it just wouldn't be the same.
The Green Deal is a major Government initiative designed to tackle climate change by making it much easier for people to deal with the cost of making their homes much more energy efficient. It does this by meeting the up front cost of the work and allowing people to repay the investment using the resulting savings in their energy bills. The scheme is designed to ensure that the repayments cannot exceed the savings. In other words you can get your home made greener and warmer without needing any capital and without any extra monthly costs. The Green Deal starts soon ...
After being reported by the Lib Dem team, several streetlights in the centre of Gatley and one under the railway bridge have been repaired by the Council. We've reported a number of other lights for repair, including on Old Hall Road and the passageway between Belmont Road and South Park Road, Gatley. Please do report any faulty lights you spot to us or directly to the Council. We're also chasing up some clanking manhole covers. They're slightly more complicated: the Council doesn't own them so can't repair them. There's an order the Council serves on the utility company responsible; but ...
This image: Looks at the NPV of the tuition payments for graduates in each percentile of income. The assumption is that the government pays the universities a fee of £7,500 for each year of study. Labour's proposal is for the government to pay no more than £6,000 per year to universities through this scheme. This will, however, not affect the lower income percentiles and only probably the
Following concerns from Greenvale Drive residents about parking, we've asked residents and found that over 50% would like residents' parking to be looked at. We'll be handing in the petition at the next Cheadle Area Committee (next week) . The next stage will be for council officers to see if residents parking is really needed. We have strict rules: we only use it when residents have a real problem parking near to their own houses, and the problem is down to people who don't live there taking the spaces. That's simply because if we stop people parking in one road ...
Where should Richard III - if it is Richard III - be buried? The answer, of course, is Leicester, but there are those who have questioned this, suggesting York or Westminster Abbey instead. I suspect that one reason for this is that Leicester's rich heritage is not as widely appreciated as it should be. You can start with the Jewry Wall, the second largest piece of surviving civil Roman building in Britain, and its neighbouring Saxon church of St Nicholas. Today I visited the second oldest church in the city, St Mary de Castro. Here Geoffrey Chaucer was married and ...
At a Q&A session, Labour leader Ed Miliband said: I think what would be not sensible is for us to come along and say, 'well, Andrew Lansley, now Jeremy Hunt, they're changing all the arrangements, have these new clinical commissioning groups and so on, and we're just going to reverse it all back and spend another £3bn on another top-down bureaucratic organisation. Miliband confirms he won't repeal Health Act – talks vaguely about changing principles underpinning NHS. Interesting. — oliver wright (@oliver_wright) September 29, 2012 So Labour wouldn't just reverse all the Health and Social Care Act changes? That would ...
Thanks to @NickThornsby on Twitter.
I did not blog about it at the time, but I was deeply disappointed that the Coalition government made squatting a criminal offence. And Deborah Orr puts it very well in today's Guardian: Alex Haigh, 21, is the first person to have been jailed under new laws criminalising squatting. He has been sentenced to 12 weeks. What a joke. If a small, basic, publicly subsidised room had been made available to him in the first place, he would not now have a criminal record, along with all the lasting psychological misery that comes with the experience of incarceration. This is ...
Parmjit Singh Gill and his team in Leicester have been recognised for the years of hard work in promoting diversity and inclusion. They beat off stiff competition to show that developing a diversity-oriented party takes time, energy, leadership and commitment. ... Continue reading →
Nick Clegg has told The Times that Police should investigate allegations of sexual abuse "without fear or favour." His comments come in the wake of this week's report showing deficiencies in the way police and social services handled allegations of sexual abuse in Rochdale. Nick said: It is completely unacceptable if perceived cultural sensitivities or political correctness ever stops crimes being investigated fully or allows abuse to continue. No one would pretend that sexual exploitation is exclusive to any community or race, but major cases like this raise tough questions about the profile and attitude of the abusers towards their ...
landofmaps: British Isles circa 820 [1076x1127]
Today it was the turn of Hornsey's doorsteps to get some calls from me. It's always lovely to get to talk to people face-to-face – and you never quite know what issues they'll bring up! We (a surge of Liberal Democrats) were doing our Community Survey and knocking on the doors in Hornsey. As ever – there were a host of issues bothering local residents from lighting (too little) to bins (too many) – not to mention controlled parking zones! One of the questions was about how people contact Haringey Council and what their experience is when they do! It ...
A combination of quick thinking, fast typing and a long standing ovation for Nick Clegg meant that newsletter #25 covering party conference started hitting people's email inboxes this week just before the applause finished at the end of conference. My fingers have now just about recovered, and if you missed out on the newsletter you can read it online here. If you would like to receive the next edition of the newsletter direct to your own inbox, just sign up here. It's free! You can unsubscribe whenever you want using the link on the bottom of all the emails, and ...
Sat 29th
15:48
Lib Dem members' support for Coalition still high... but approval of Government hits new low
Lib Dem Voice polled our members-only forum before conference to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. More than 550 party members have responded, and we're publishing the full results. 74% of members continue to support Coalition with Conservatives LDV asked: Do you support or oppose the Lib Dems being in the Coalition Government with the Conservatives? (Comparison with August 2012′s figures) 74% (-3%) - Support 21% (+3%) - Oppose 5% (n/c) - Don't know / No opinion Support for the Coalition remains high, at 74%, in spite ...
I presume it was an unfortunate typo which meant that Pete Ruhemann's list of complaints about the Liberal Democrats was somehow replaced with a list of things the previous Labour government did (Letters, 28 September). After all, it would be somewhat eccentric to declaim that the Liberal Democrats are so right-wing that Labour should have nothing to do with them and then list a series of policies that Labour enthusiastically implemented, such as increasing the level of private provision in the NHS. At least under the current government's plans private providers will only be paid for work they actually do, ...
I have several blogs in my mind to write but they keep getting bumped by other things. This is an example of that. Dreams. We all have them. Whether they be daydreams, dreams of how our future will be or actual dreams that we have in our sleep. This is a blog about the latter. Wikipedia dreams dreams as the following: Dreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. The content and purpose of dreams are not definitively understood, though they have been a topic of scientific speculation, ...
There is a mechanism in the Northern Ireland Assembly that is designed to protect minority interests. It is called a petition of concern. Any 30 MLAs can call for one on any issue up for debate. What it means that instead of simple majority the motion for debate requires 60% of the chamber and 40% of both the Unionist and Nationalist designations. You may ask why I have highlighted this at the top of this post. The answer is to do with a debate before the Assembly on Monday 1 October, a debate on Equal Marriage, a motion largely similar ...
As part of my preparations for my Monday stint as editor of Liberal Democrat Voice, I am having to consider an image to illustrate an article on Page Three. The mind boggles. Obviously, I don't want to be salacious. I did look for a fully clothed picture of Linda Lusardi (yes, some of us are old enough to remember her modelling career). Unfortunately, there are none I could find which are available through the Creative Commons Licence. So I think I will resort to an old favourite of mine. A photo on Flickr of a bloke reading The Sun. Funnily ...
I met Prateek Buch at the Liberal Democrat conference. He highlighted the work of the Social Liberal Forum to me. When I got back, I took a look at their website and realised SLF is the "home within a home" which I have been missing. So I have signed up as a member. [IMG: Post to Twitter] Tweet This Post
Much of the talk at the Autumn Conference in Brighton has rightly centred on the economy and we, in my opinion, are rightly sticking to Plan A and not being deviated towards Plan B or Plan V. However, we as Liberal Democrats in government and on the ground have another area of policy in which we can make a significant and lasting change in this parliament. Social Care is not a sexy subject, it is not often at the forefront of people's minds nor does it command a full chamber in parliament but it is vital to a liberal, fair ...
Although this post is a few days after the fact, I nevertheless thought that this insightful and intriguing article by the Guardian's senior political correspondent, Andrew Sparrow was worth referring to. Mr. Sparrow sets out ten lessons from the recent Liberal Democrats Federal Conference that underlines the risky but necessary course that Nick Clegg has embarked on. In particular he identifies that the Liberal Democrats leader is seeking to recast us into a mainstream party that can win by first-past-the-post: As Matthew d'Ancona put it in a column recently, he wants "nothing less than to create a third party of ...
Matt Gallagher with Javed Khan, Chief Executive of Victim Support I have been busy this past week speaking with different people and organisations who have involvement in the criminal justice system. I met with Jeremy Brown, the minister for Crime Prevention, which will be a key part of my platform in the Police and Crime Commissioner Election, and I also met with Sir Hugh Orde, President of the Association of Chief Police Officers, and my fellow Glasgow Celtic fan, Paul McKeever, Chair of the Police Federation of England and Wales. I also met with Javed Khan, Chief Executive of Victims ...
Take a read here for a fascinating, moving and informative account about how one person became a victim of a troll, tracked down the troll – and then meet them face-to-face.
..........................The loud and prolonged cheering which followed the decisive rejection of a resolution urging the abandonment of the policy (employee ownership) was the climax of the Assembly and made it clear that the great majority of those present regarded the proposals as the cornerstone of Liberal Policy and the Party's main issue at the forthcoming General Election. Profit-sharing and co-partnership have, of course, been advocated by the Liberal Party for more titan fifty years; but to-day it wants to go a good deal further than merely welcoming the development of such schemes. It wants to extend them over a large ...
Having lived for much of my life outside our over-developed country, and working in contexts of extreme poverty and social exclusion in Africa and Asia, I am disheartened by some significant assumptions in the immigration debate: Firstly, what gives us the right to preserve a global status quo comprising an economically, politically, and culturally dominant and exclusive club? Many phrases used amongst Liberal Democrats, seem paternalistic, even oppressive, towards people whose plight we perpetuate by our insularity: "'Soft' on immigration": We're not 'soft' enough, if it means being repentant enough to share the world's resources and opportunities. "An 'earned amnesty' ...
Four years ago we shed tears of joy along with our African-American cousins when Barack Obama took the White House. As Obama seeks re-election hope didn't change the world after all but Black Americans are still ...
Cornwall Council's Tory/Indie Cabinet's position on their proposed privatisation project is looking very shaky at the minute. The administration's problems on this issue are well-documented, and their attitude towards the strongly expressed view of the Council's democratically elected membership have led to a public petition (which nears the 5,000 signatures required to trigger a Full ...
Police: We've apologised to Liverpool fans but we won't apologise to MacKenzie | PressGazette (tags: ) Nick Robinson confesses to performing at Glee Club (tags: ) The BlackBerry typo that landed a man in jail | PC Pro blog I'd like to hear more of the evidence in this. The man was convicted in a jury trial, not by a judge. (tags: ) Good year for East Coast mainline re-ignites nationalising railways debate - News Archive - News - JournalLive (tags: ) Britain's Culture Minister Isn't Allowed to Have Video Games in His Office | Side Mission | GameTrailers I'm ...
Below is a video of the speech that the Deputy Prime Minister, The Rt. Hon. Nick Clegg, gave at the fund raising dinner at the Trent Bridge Cricket Ground, Nottingham. I would personally like to thank everyone who took the ... Continue reading →
In a generally very unhelpful piece in The Guardian on Monday Jackie Ashley wrote... 'The final part of this fantasy conference is the commonly held idea that Clegg isn't really the Lib Dem leader, or at any rate won't be for long.Tim Farron is coming! Vince is on his way!But the plotting is real enough. A group of defeated MPs and others are planning a motion for the Lib Dem gathering next spring to change the party rules in order to allow leaders to be ousted by the party conference. They'd be unlikely to get the necessary two-thirds majority, but ...
24 minutes and 1 second of the financial advisor and consumer champion Martin Lewis talking about the tuition fees system, how it works and what people get wrong about it: * Mark Pack has written 101 Ways To Win An Election and produces a monthly newsletter about the Liberal Democrats.
Ah, the Great Leader's speech. The main & last event of the Liberal Democrat party conference on Wednesday, was I don't know how to describe it other than a muddled mess. It had great bits, don't get me wrong. Parts of the speech made me when I watched it live, think Clegg is the man ...
This morning I have been walking up what later on will be the Ulster Covenant Centenary Parade route. I'm heading to the capital, Dublin, for the day for a meeting in Molesworth Street. However, one thought particularly struck me as I walked up the Upper Newtownards Road in Belfast. The parade organisers have no signs ...
I wasn't at conference this year, for the first time since joining the Liberal Democrats. Holding a conference in Brighton isn't good for Scottish members, which is presumably why the party have decided to host the 2013 Spring Conference there too. Watching conference on television is actually quite a surreal experience. It lacks the authenticity and the drama, even when the membership gives the leadership its customary defeat on a key issue. I felt quite disconnected from events. When it comes to the leader's speech, this detachment can be useful. Rather than being taken along with the mood in the ...
Following complaints from residents about a significant amount of water leaking over Perth Road near the junction with Springfield, I have contacted Scottish Water about this. See photo (right) of the leak, just east of the Springfield/Perth Road junction. Scottish Water has advised me : "We have arranged for our Network Engineer to investigate the issue."
This week's selection are mostly related to Politics, the Liberal Democrat Conference, and Conference Politics. First up, Jennie casts her eye over the Lib Dem leadership runners and riders - and succinctly demonstrates why there is no vacancy. My fellow Bristol Lib Dem Alex Marsh lists what he feels to be the good, the bad and the indifferent things of the conference. His article contains a link to this interesting story by Patrick Wintour in the Guardian. It suggests that even though we pride ourselves on our party democracy, that doesn't mean there is still some element of stage-management going ...
