The financial crisis at Hearts - who failed to pay their players again last month - has surely reached its penultimate stage before they go bust. They face a tax bill of £1.75m and have asked their supporters to cough up through buying £100 or more of their worthless shares. Despite claims of cost cutting director Sergejus Fedotovas - one of the Russian/Lithuanians running the club under the ownership of Vladimir Romanov - admitted they were still spending much more than their income. He told the BBC "The cost of the squad that won silverware last season is £8m and ...
As part of the planning permissions for Morrisons new store in Houghton Regis a new roundabout was installed at a main junction today. I'm glad the lights have gone. I'm happy the roundabout is back. But I still need to work on the powers that be to get them to accept "Shared Space". INTRODUCTION TO SHARED SPACE - PART ONE INTRODUCTION TO SHARED SPACE - PART TWO
Remember the campaign buttons that Cowley Street used to provide for Lib Dem bloggers? HQ stopped updating them ages ago and they became so out of date that I removed them from Liberal England. The good news is that Mark Pack has set up some new buttons, which I have now added here. Daniel Furr on Liberal Democrat Voice says that secret courts are the final path towards the police state. "Not only was it a matter of social justice, Ford wrote, but paying high wages was also smart business. When wages are low, uncertainty dogs the marketplace and growth ...
Derwentside Enterprise Agency's activities for Global Enterpreneurship Week 12 – 16 November 2012 Monday - Idea generation session – WantoPreneur If you have ever thought about running your own business but haven't got a clue where to start come to this drop in session to get free advice and guidance on what you could do and how to do it. 10.00-12.00, Monday 12 November, Steel House, Consett Tuesday – Drop in café Free drop in café where you can 'speed date' professionals from Finance and Legal who will give you a one to one slot to troubleshoot any business issues. ...
This is St Paul's Church of England Primary School in York, according to its website an "exciting and forward thinking school" with "around 166.6 pupils". I shall leave that mystery for the present, as my reason for writing about the school it housed the first polling station at which I took numbers of a Liberal candidate. He was the late Julian Cummins, and that contest took place as part of the local elections of 1980. We lost narrowly to Labour. The school is still used as a polling station for Holgate Ward, serving the terraced streets behind York station, though ...
Mon 29th
20:20
Giving power to local communities - much too important to be left to Nick Clegg or Parliament
[IMG: Nick Clegg in Liverpool. Photo credit: Alex Folkes] Like my LDV colleague, Paul Walter, it was good to hear Nick Clegg's announcement that he intends to give more economic powers to up to 20 cities and major towns. After all, if there's one thing that unites Lib Dems it's the belief in devolving power to the most local level possible. And yet there is a grumble about the scheme that nags me: why is it that local government is having to bid to central government for "the right to decide how skills and transport funding is spent locally" or ...
MP Julian Huppert has welcomed the chance for Cambridge to bid for more government funding and radical new powers to boost economic growth. Julian has been working hard to make sure the government acknowledges the importance of Cambridge's economic strengths and its pivotal position in helping to drive forward the UK economy generally. And he vowed to continue to do everything in his power to make sure the bid from Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire is successful. He said: "This is an excellent opportunity for Cambridge demonstrate what it is capable of - freeing us to do what we want with ...
My thanks and congratulations to Mark Pack for resurrecting the automatically updated campaign buttons which can now adorn Lib Dem websites — you can see what they look like for yourselves by casting your eyes rightwards on this page. As Mark explains of the original intention behind the buttons, they were: a great way for the party to be able to push out quickly and widely adverts for new campaigns, policy launches and the like, whilst for those running sites it made for some automatically updated and useful content which they did not have to look after. And of its ...
This blog is unashamedly about politics and I pretty much keep it on topic. And today is no different - tho the title has to be a bit vague, because (SPOILER) if I say it's about select committees and inquiries you'll have a bit of the clue of the plot of Skyfall - and as it's rather good I wouldn't want to do that. Back in July I wrote this about Parliamentary Sub-Commitees . It seems I'm not alone a certain revulsion for their current incarnations, and both Skyfall and The Thick of It recently have referenced inquiries and select ...
On Sunday 28th October, Jeff Dudgeon MBE gave the address at the service to mark 30 years since the decriminalisation of same-sex relationships in Northern Ireland. We are grateful to him for allowing us to publish the text of his address here. Thank you for the invitation to talk about the 30th anniversary of decriminalisation this ...
The English Premier League has long been the number one football league in the world according to TV figures but the move from NBC to buy the rights in the American market has stunned pretty much everyone who keeps a keen eye on these things. When FOX and ESPN signed the last contract for the rights it was for $23million per year but the new NBC deal is for more than triple that and includes the shocking news that every single game will be broadcast. Yes every single game will be broadcast via one of NBC's platforms (180 games solely ...
So, following the decision of Labour MP Austin Mitchell to tweet Louise Mensch the message that "a good wife doesn't disagree with her master in public", something of a row has erupted. And my personal view is that anyone who says something like that, even if they later claim it was an "ironic joke" (adding an inability to understand the meaning of irony to Mitchell's list of flaws), is being disgustingly misogynist and has no place in parliament let alone in a Labour party which claims to be committed to equality. Anyway, this prompted the usual groundswell of party tribalists ...
Last week I watched the TV programme 999: What's Your Emergency. When I saw PC Claire van Deurs Goss putting on lip gloss I thought it was a bit strange as she was driving at the time and some drivers go to court if they are not giving enough attention to their driving. The officer said that "lipstick is more effective than a Taser" when dealing with some dangerous situations. That may be the case but driving may be fairly dangerous when you don't give it your full attention. She was disciplined. So how would you manage this situation? Would ...
Nick Clegg is giving more economic powers to a new batch of cities and major towns. – Devolving powers out of Whitehall in order to stimulate growth. It is very difficult not to see this as A Very Good Thing. The Independent takes up the story: Up to 20 major towns and cities will today be offered extra powers over jobs and transport to help them to recover from the downturn. Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, will promise them freedom "to carve out their own economic destinies". The second phase of "city deals" comes after England's eight largest centres ...
It's not, shall we say, anything like usual for the Herald to say anything nice about Liberal Democrats. Sometimes I wonder if they have a special container of bile that they dip their keyboards in before they write about us. So I got a bit of a pleasant surprise yesterday when their leader was: a) called "Why we need the Lib Dems and b) full of praise for Willie Rennie. Look at this: Since the election, the party, largely through Rennie's ceaseless efforts, has shown it can punch above its weight at Holyrood. Rennie has been ahead of the curve ...
[IMG: Trident missile launch] Nick Clegg has made it clear that the Coalition Agreement on the Trident nuclear programme will not be changed, despite Philip Hammond's announcement today on a multimillion-pound contract for a new generation of nuclear missile submarines. Speaking at a press conference this morning, Nick Clegg said: Some people are jumping the gun on this Trident decision. The Coalition Agreement is crystal clear. It stands. It will not be changed. It will not be undermined. It will not be contradicted. The final decision on the replacement of Trident will not be taken until 2016 – however much ...
Two bits of news about the business of Government that have caught my attention over the last few days. The quad has become the sextet – As we've come to see over the past couple of years, a lot of the real decisions about the direction of the Government are being taken by the 'quad': David Cameron, George Osbourne, Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander. That's now expanded include David Laws and Oliver Letwin. Philip Hammond is pushing on with Trident replacement contracts – The 'main gate' decision isn't meant to be taken until 2016, but work is still being undertaken ...
How wonderful – the coffee shop in Middle Lane (Crouch End) has won the top slot as best coffee shop in London at the third annual London Lifestyle Awards. Well done to owners Greg Vukasovic and Massimo Bergamin. And I love that they put down their success to community involvement – which they certainly major on. And their coffee is great too. You can read a fuller write up here.
Since 2010 the word 'fairness' has been deployed on an industrial scale across the political spectrum. To want 'fairness' is to want a distribution of the spoils which reflects the value of the contribution of each to the economic and social resources of society. A fair tax system should seek to tax according to capacity to pay. It must also act to discourage those, such as polluters, whose economic choices negatively impact on society. It must encourage those, such as in renewable energy development, whose economic activity has the potential to positively contribute to society. The next category when looking ...
Middlesbrough Liberal Democrats have selected a local jobs expert as their candidate for the upcoming Parliamentary by-election in the constituency. George Selmer, who grew up and went to school in Middlesbrough, has outlined his plan for the town – focusing on jobs, housing and safeguarding local facilities under threat from Labour cuts. Commenting on his selection, George said: We need an MP who will tackle the shocking local housing problems and who will fight against the cuts imposed by the Labour council. Most importantly, we need an MP who will work to bring more jobs and investment to the area. ...
I support an independent British nuclear deterrent. Those 7 words are enough to land me in hot water with a lot of people from across Britain. Trident is widely reviled as a symbol of the past, as a colossal waste of money and as an evil thing, a blot on Britain's reputation in the world. Yet I believe that Britain needs nuclear weapons - nay, the world needs them - because they bring a blanket of security, ironically, without which the world today would be a darker place. This is not to say that I believe that a like-for-like renewal ...
A new set of automatically updated campaign buttons is now available for Liberal Democrat websites. As I wrote in September, during my time working at party HQ doing online campaigning one of our most successful projects (cooked up with the help of Rob Fenwick and Martin Tod) was the 'campaign buttons' - a simple piece of code which let bloggers and those with other websites easily display campaign adverts and news stories from the party. It was a great way for the party to be able to push out quickly and widely adverts for new campaigns, policy launches and the ...
Welcome to the latest of my monthly collections for the Engine Group of five links that you shouldn't miss. Infographics: What the Department of Health has learnt about doing them http://bit.ly/U14znz Includes a handy set of eight lessons learnt so far. Privacy: Microsoft uses new IE feature to block information being passed to advertisers http://bit.ly/U15kNy Targeted ads face an uncertain future as Microsoft defaults to tight privacy setting on latest version of Internet Explorer. Searching: Did you know there's an A-Z directory of Twitter users? And also one of Facebook users? http://cnet.co/U15BQz Just like the old phone book, including silly ...
Barack Obama is rapidly becoming the Muhammad Ali of politics. Floating like a butterfly, drawing the opponent in and taking a few blows before stinging like a bee. And so it proved to be at the ...
Coast and Country Housing have issued the following update on the Closes redevelopment: October 2012 Dear Resident We would like to update you on our progress to redevelop The Closes estate. We have been working hard to ensure that the empty properties are stripped internally, utilities are disconnected and gardens are cleared. Your safety, the cleanliness of the estate and the welfare of the residents waiting to be relocated is our priority In Spring we strengthened the site based regeneration team and we are already seeing a positive impact from the additional caretakers on the estate. Also we have listened ...
There are moments when Ros does suspect that I might be a sufferer from this rather under-regarded complaint, but she assures me that that wasn't why she asked... Baroness Scott of Needham Market (Liberal Democrat) To ask Her Majesty's Government what action they are taking with regard to the diagnosis and treatment of obstructive sleep apnoea. Earl Howe (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Quality), Health; Conservative) The National Clinical Directors for Respiratory Disease have identified obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) as one of the priority areas for the respiratory programme in the department for this year. As a result, a clinical ...
In November 1926, Mussolini established the Tribunale Speciale, which was a secret court designed to convict those of dissident and anti-state activities. The Organizzazione per la Vigilanza e la Repressione dell'Antifascismo was the secret police force, wtih the authority to arrest opponents of the regime. 4,000 citizens were detained in secret, tried in secret and exiled in secret. 10 individuals were even executed in secret. Secret courts were not isolated to Fascist Italy; Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and countless authoritarian states used or use secret trials to silence dissidents and guard state secrets. The auspice of national security is ...
Many thanks to the residents who got in touch to raise the problems in the supply of milk to primary schools in Bury in September and October. My colleague Cllr Donal O'Hanlon has been following this up, most recently with a formal written question to the Labour Council Leader at the most recent full meeting of Bury Council. It turns out that there were problems with the supply of milk at the beginning of the current term when no milk was delivered to Bury schools on both the 6th and 7th September. Further delivery failures occurred on 13th and 28th ...
Council chiefs say a possible new City Deal with Government could bring massive benefits to the local economy and help keep more of the money generated from future growth within the local area. Cambridgeshire County Council, Cambridge City Council and South Cambridgeshire District Council and the Local Enterprise Partnership have been invited by Government to enter into negotiations around a City Deal for the Greater Cambridge area. This means negotiations will start shortly with Government on how this could benefit Cambridge and the surrounding area. A City Deal could see more funding and powers coming straight to the Cambridge city-region, ...
MP Julian Huppert has joined eminent doctors and researchers to raise concerns that patients are being put at risk by the secrecy surrounding drug trials In a letter to The Times, Julian and 27 leading medical professionals claim that despite being legally bound to report both positive and negative results from clinical trials, information is being withheld from doctors and the public. Those who have signed the hard-hitting letter include Dr Fiona Godlee from the British Medical Journal, Dr Richard Horton from The Lancet and Dr Clare Gerada from the Royal College of General Practitioners. The letter comes in response ...
If so, then this survey is for you: Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats want to take a pragmatic not a dogmatic approach to business. We want to listen, engage and work with the business community to continue the rebalancing and growth of our economy. If you're involved in a small or medium sized business in any way, please take five minutes to fill in this very short survey. You can fill in the short survey here.
Sign up to the Despatch Box, the new weekly political e-magzine from digitalpolitico.net Today Ed Miliband is going to make a major speech on mental health care, attacking high profile people that mock those who suffer from depression and other ... Continue reading →
Those of us familiar with the EU are used to its complicated processes, obscure acronyms and often unfathomable procedures. We sometimes forget that it is still a hybrid project that no-one has ever tried before: a multinational, multilingual experiment in international cooperation where countries decide by common accord to pool decision-making in certain areas and under certain conditions for their own mutual benefit. No wonder that ordinary members of the public - not to mention politicians, civil servants and journalists - are often left baffled and bemused by EU decision-making. Even MEPs and EU civil servants find it hard to ...
The Football Association has replied to my complaint about Dave Jones's slanderous remarks accusing Leeds fans in general of being "vile animals." It appears that Jones has been spoken to and let off with some words of advice and a caution: Dear Mr Abbott, Thank you for contacting The Football Association. Sheffield Wednesday Manager, Dave Jones, has been reminded of his responsibilities and advised to exercise caution and warned that any further comments could result in disciplinary action. We do appreciate all of the feedback we receive from supporters. This feedback is collated and used to build a picture of ...
On 15 November 2012 voters across Greater Manchester will take part in the first ever elections for a Police and Crime Commissioner. These elections are taking place across all of England and Wales (except London), and is the first time that voters will have a direct say in choosing who will run the local police service. Voting takes place on Thursday 15 November 2012 at your normal polling stations which will be open 7am -10pm. If you have a postal vote then these are scheduled to arrive from 5 November onwards and need to be returned before 15 November. Matt ...
Today's leaflet in my series on old election leaflets is a centrally produced Labour party 4-pager from 1929. As with the Conservative leaflet from 1931 which I previously featured, the design may be very different from good modern leaflets, but the content has some very familiar overtones. The May 1929 contest was the first general election in which women under 30 could vote and also one of only three elections in the modern era where the party with the most votes did not also win the most seats. Despite being slightly out-polled by the Conservatives, Labour won more seats in ...
Last week a headline proudly proclaimed yet another "Olympic victory": the games had cost "only (sic) £8.921bn against an original budget of £9.28bn." This represents a saving £377m, and is thus greatly to the credit of the Locog and, by extension, our government and British guts, grit, determination and organisational flair. With accounting like this any project can be a financial success. The "original" original budget, in the bid put in by the then government in 2007, was £2.4bn. We normally attribute the rewriting of history to the Soviet Union under Stalin. That this should be happening, without, as afar ...
It seems that Eric Pickles wants to recruit an army of snoopers armed with tape measures and notepads in his latest central initiative to make local government more open and accountable. According to Conservative Home: Councils will have to publish soon as it is produced the number of off-street parking places and the revenue raised from them; the number of on-street parking places and the revenue they raise; as well as the revenue from parking fines and the number of free parking spaces available in line with the Portas Review of the High Street recommendations. The trouble is that in ...
From today's Guardian: Philip Hammond, the defence secretary, will reignite the argument over Britain's independent nuclear deterrent on Monday when he announces a further multimillion-pound contract for a new generation of nuclear missile submarines, making it clear he plans to press ahead with a Trident replacement. The Ministry of Defence said the £350m contract would sustain 1,200 UK jobs, adding that the investment made "clear the government's firm commitment to maintaining continuous at-sea deterrence for future decades". Hammond, who will visit the Trident submarine base at Faslane on the Clyde on Monday, said: "Our continuous submarine-based nuclear deterrent is the ...
Never let it be said that this blog doesn't cover the big issues. And hopefully this will be of use to those worrying about the proposed changes... HMRC will start to write to around one million customers this week to explain how they will be affected by next year's changes to Child Benefit. The changes, which have already been the subject of media scrutiny, will see the introduction of a High Income Child Benefit Charge. This will come into effect on 7 January 2013. The new charge will apply when a taxpayer's or their partner's income is more than £50,000 ...
Very nice to see this appear on one of the party's campaign sites (appears after you sign up on it):
In the UK we need to have a thriving economy based on innovation and small businesses. We cannot compete with the likes of China and India when it comes to large scale manufacturing and high volume industries. But we can, and must compete through high quality, fresh ideas and innovations which see us as market ...
I recently wrote an article about the need for science policy in the EU, I also spoke about the need for investment in science at the Lib Dem federal conference in Brighton this year. A common theme in both is the need to invest in science to get the economy moving, not just for today, but ...
I've done a quick Storify of tweets from Scottish Liberal Democrat Conference - it has lots of pictures and lots of points of view of the day. There's tweets from the keynote speeches, the fringe and the general atmosphere. Oh, and did I mention that the Vine Venue in Dunfermline does the best sliced sausage ever? I'm not going to embed it here as I normally do because it's a bit of a monster length, but there's something for everyone in there I think. You can find it here. Enjoy.
Miriam - 3 activists hassled by police, 2 of them disabled [Public] (tags: ) Things Rich People Never Understand | Laura McInerney This should be required reading for everyone (tags: ) Stephen's Liberal Journal: Why the clocks needed to go back I recommend joining the campaign for real time... (tags: ) Police raid activist's home for 'criminal' posts on Facebook. China? No - Wales « Pride's Purge (tags: ) The Grantham Grocer Fallacy (tags: ) Police Opt Out Of Accountability (tags: ) 'Keith Lemon: The Film' or 'The Imposter': Which one would you pay to watch? | Kieran Turner-Dave | ...
I'm Libby, I'm local - to Demsbury and Libbyshire at least - and I wasn't going to be a Lib Dem. I guess I have to blame that on Melissa, a dyed in the wool Conservative who I occasionally drink a half-bucket of Pinot Grigio with. I've always stuck my head above the parapet rather than lay low. In the last couple of years, friends have suggested I become politically active. I have been listening to local voices, voices that are mostly ignored - voices that I could help get heard. Of late, I find more and more people fed ...
One of the things that I really hate about reading blogs is that bit when, just as you'd like to make a witty, erudite comment, you find yourself having to type something you can barely read into a box. It's called CAPTCHA, and I personally find it really annoying. It was therefore a rather unpleasant surprise when the always entertaining Jennie Rigg noted, in passing, that the CAPTCHA on my blog was rather hard to read. This came as a surprise, as I hadn't even known that it was there. So, in a rather determined manner, I decided to remove ...
I have called for Leisure and Culture Dundee and the City Council to make alternative library arrangements and for local groups who use Blackness Library when the library is disrupted early in the New Year as improvement work is undertaken at the library that will create disabled access to the upstairs meeting rooms for the first time. The work to improve the disabled access and some other improvements follows a council decision earlier this year, arising out of a public consultation exercise. I was recently updated by the City Council's Chief Architect that work will commence immediately after the festive ...
Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (DJCAD) is holding Open Days tomorrow (Tuesday 30th October) and on Wednesday 31st October. Aimed at undergraduates, the Open Days are a good way for would-be applicants to see DJCAD before applying. Everyone is welcome to attend including school students, college students, parents, teachers and careers advisers. You can register interest in the Open Days by going to http://www.dundee.ac.uk/undergraduate/visits/prebook.php.
