So Nigel Farage thinks last Thursday's local elections are a "game changer"? As any Liberal Democrat with a rueful memory of 'liberal revivals' could remind him, one swallow doesn't make a summer. To capture around 25% of the vote from a standing start is very good going. But to put that in perspective, the turnout, as usual in local elections, was only about 25 to 30%. 25% of that is only about 7% of the whole electorate. The fact that 7% hate foreigners, gays, wind farms and everything else that's happened since 1963 is neither remarkable nor a threat - ...
Yesterday was certainly a very good day for Nigel Farage's party (or, as a prefers to call it, an outfit). The rather surprising success of UKIP sends out some clear messages and constitutes a challenge that other political parties now must respond to. It isn't just the three major parties either - the likes of the Green Party and various other "smaller" parties who have tended to be overlooked must also recognise the apparent rise of UKIP as a problem and make the case for an "alternative alternative" in this new political world. Farage's party seem to have convinced the ...
An hour with two of this blog's heroes - you may want to skip the introductions and go straight to 6:30.
The main NHS acute hospital for people in and around Yate is moving from Frenchay to Southmead next year. So how would YOU get from Yate or Chipping Sodbury to Southmead, without a car? Steve Webb asked the question, and the best they could come up with was to catch a bus to Bristol Parkway and then change and get another bus to Southmead. Imagine - it's cold, it's wet, and you're already not feeling very well. According to the North Bristol NHS Trust "whilst a direct service from Southmead to Yate was considered early on in discussions it would ...
I've got some limited connectivity again, but unfortunately I've been made so ill from the stress of the last few weeks that I'm not able to write. I'm hoping to be well enough tomorrow to travel to London to see Van Dyke Parks (I'd better be — I already bought the ticket for the show ...
Lyddington is a village stretched along a single road. Its buildings, which include two good pubs, are of an almost gaudy orange limestone. If it were in the Cotswolds it would be full of coaches. Because it is in Rutland I had it almost to myself yesterday. I was there to look at Lyddington Bede House. I had visited the village before, and knew that it was a pleasingly ramshackle medieval building standing next to the church, but I still had no real idea of what a bede house is. It turned out that it used to be the village ...
Who won the local elections? No one, says Mark Smulian on Liberator's blog. Max Dunbar on the rise of UKIP: "Smart progressives who want to make a difference don't go into politics, they go into public policy or advocacy or journalism or law or the police or the Royal Marines. Because smart people are leaving politics, the field is left clear for maniacs, illiterates, thieves, neo-Nazis and toytown power merchants." "'Differences of reward must be large enough to induce people to do their best but the present differences are far too great. If we do not find some way of ...
So, after a rather exciting morning at Trinity Park, and four recounts, Stephen Searle, the UKIP candidate, was elected as the new county councillor for Stowmarket South by just one vote, defeating the Vice Chair (and Chair designate) of Suffolk County Council in doing so. I admit that, whilst I didn't have too many regrets about Anne Whybrow's loss (she is a Conservative, and their efforts to contract out key services haven't gone down too well), I do regret that it wasn't our candidate, Keith Scarff, who had the honour of being elected. Having narrowly failed twice before, he got ...
Chic's 1st single released in 1977 by Atlantic Records and absolutely superb :
[IMG: image] This is very funny. The British National Party has urged its members to procreate after it lost every seat it contested in the English local elections on Thursday. The BNP fielded 99 candidates but did not win a seat. It lost the one county council seat it held in Lancashire, leaving Nick Griffin's party with just two councillors. In a post on the party's website, members are urged to have bigger families to counter large families had by non-Britons. Northernscot claims that 51% of the US population is non-white and says that to prevent the same thing happening ...
The strong showing by the United Kingdom Independence Party in this week's county council elections and recent parliamentary by-elections has been causing shudders in Britain's other political parties and strengthens the hand of right-wing Conservative MPs who have been urging David Cameron to drift towards the UKIP agenda in an effort to stop the haemorrhage ...
Sat 4th
17:20
LDVideo: Nick Clegg and Simon Hughes comment on the Lib Dem performance in the local elections
The Lib Dem leader and deputy leader on the outcomes from Thursday's elections... Nick Clegg on the Lib Dems' local election performance Local elections: Simon Hughes defends Lib Dem result [IMG: Get Adobe Flash player]
Sat 4th
16:21
Why any analysis of the local election results cannot be extrapolated to a general election
I am utterly sick of people attempting to read in the entrails of the local election results what might happen in the general election in 2015. Here is a (non-exhaustive) list of why such efforts are fruitless bullshit:People vote differently in local and general elections. Recognising that the local council has very little power any more, people take council elections far less seriously. This means that turnout is derisory and the result is thus distorted by the people who DO turnout being either seriously committed to one party or another, or wanting to "send a message" by spoiling their ballot ...
[IMG: Adam Boulton] Adam Boulton@adamboultonSKY Updated @Sky News projection Labour majority of 12. Lab 331 Con 245 L/D 48 Oth 26. Reply Retweet Favorite More 4RETWEETS 1FAVORITE [IMG: Dave Bodimeade] [IMG: Bobby Bainz] [IMG: Jerry] [IMG: Habsboyspolitics] [IMG: A Better Tomorrow] 11:27 AM - 3 May 13
In the news this week it was released that Sussex Police are rolling out a plan, that was trialled in Chichester, to equip dementia sufferers with a GPS tracking device, so that they can be traced quickly, and more cheaply, ... Continue reading →
Sat 4th
15:45A Labour Party member writes... The 2015 General Election will NOT be a disaster for the Liberal Dem...
Timothy Sykes is a Labour Party member at the University in Hull. Here he offers his take on what the local elections mean for the Lib Dems... In the 2013 local elections, the Liberal Democrats did much better than many people were expecting. The loss of 124 council seats is less of a mid-term slump than the significant loses inflicted upon the Conservatives, or the disastrous election results that Labour suffered in 2009. The only clear winner was UKIP, which really had an astonishing night, gaining around 140 seats. The reason the Lib Dems did not suffer quite as embarrassing ...
My obsessions come around on such a regular basis and have such a cyclic nature that I can almost mark them down on a calender. Among the topics that crop up are dinosaurs, Mormonism, Scientology, Star Wars, Doctor Who and comics. Pretty much all over them occur at a low level most of the time but one will flare up here and there and consume most of my time for a while (right now I'm coming down from a very intense obsession with Mormon history, to the point of reading decades old BYU dissertations and editing Wikipedia entries). Yes I'm ...
So, having had the County elections, the count, and a good night's sleep, it is Saturday, and time to think about the future. Ah, but which future to think about? 2014 and the European Parliament elections? 2015, with a General Election and some difficult District Council elections? Or 2017, when County seats are up again? The obvious answer is all three, I suppose. For us, integrated campaigning is the key. We'll need to select a Prospective Parliamentary Candidate, devise a strategy for the next four years, and ensure the means to deliver it. Naturally, as the Local Party's Treasurer, I ...
I was first elected to the old Avon council twenty years ago this week. My ward of Cabot covered the city centre, Kingsdown and much of Cotham and Clifton. For the next six years I spent most of my time trying to minimise the impact of the car on my local residents. They suffered more ...
Over the next few days, politicians of mainstream political parties, will be delving deep and working hard on those phrases we know so well such as "this is a wake up call" "lessons to be learnt" enough to make you yawn! Still strangely, Ed Miliband is reported as being "pleased" with Labour's local election results, pity he wasn't at Margate's Winter Gardens, to witness those smiles drain from Thanet's complacent Labour group, whom I'm sure had until the ballot papers spilled on to the tables for counting, no real understanding of the contempt most people have for the mainstream politicians. ...
I spent yesterday doing journalistic coverage of the county council election results and it was hard to say that anyone 'won'. It is true that UKIP got its surge to about 25% of the vote, but for any liberal to think this must herald some long-term change in politics may be premature. We've all seen 'liberal revivals' as protests at someone else's mid-term that hauled in many more seats than UKIP now has, and which duly vanished a few years later. In terms of local council seats, UKIP is now more or less level-pegging with the Green Party, but its ...
Are UKIP's sights on Medway? Over the last few days we've witnessed something that a few years ago would have been considered thewaking dreams of Nigel Farage and his inner circle. Eastleigh was the first warning flare but this round of local elections have shown the possibility of them making serious gains in the future. One possible site is Medway. The current Conservative council has done some good work over the last decade or so and has some good councillors. However they also stand accused of some awful cockups. Massive overspends on capital projects like the bus station, the Medway ...
Originally published by Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats Campaigning by EMLD and equalities experts has led to the government listening and dropping a plan to axe a key element of equalities law. Lib Dem equalities minister Jo Swinson made the concession ... Continue reading →
[IMG: FarRen2] Election victor laughs with mouth wide open on front pages on Saturday after the first Thursday of May 1993 and May 2013. The difference: David Rendel had his mouth open on four front pages. Farage only made two and his mouth wasn't open as much. It's the twentieth anniversary of the Newbury by-election victory on Monday. I'm celebrating early. It gave us twelve years of a damned good Liberal Democrat MP. [IMG: 93 13 front pages] [IMG: Post to Twitter] Tweet This Post
I'm just back from a morning which included some litter picking on Garston Park and nearby. I suspect some people driving past will have seen litter pickers in high vis jackets and thought nothing more of it. But this is an annual initiative which local church members and volunteers take part in to help make our community cleaner. And it occurs to me that we ought to be better at recognising them and thanking them for this. The event was, as usual, fuelled by a breakfast provided at Long Lane Church. We then all picked up our litter pickers, bags ...
The application to turn the building on the corner of Aigburth Road and Mersey Road into a restaurant has been agreed by the Council. The details are at this link. (you may need to scroll down for the decision letter and committee report).
There's a new website for the campaign to save the Meadowlands (the bit of land the Council is trying to flog off). You can find the website at this link. There'll be another "picnic" event as part of the campaign on May 27th and there's also an e petition to sign if you think the Council is wrong to get rid of this open space.
UKIP did very well in the county council elections yesterday, but with no MPs, including Farage himself, there is no reason for the UKIP leader to take part in the televised prime minister's debate. There has been a bit of an online debate about whether or not the prime minister's debates should go ahead next ...
Here's the story of this year's local elections in three graphics... First, let's start with the bald statistics: the Lib Dems made a net loss of 124 councillors on Thursday. As I pointed out here, that's slightly better than forecast. But still, as the party's chief executive Tim Gordon noted in his post-election briefing, each is "a real loss to both their local communities and the Liberal Democrat family". [IMG: lib dems local elections 2013 - 1] But here's the reason Lib Dems are feeling not-quite-so-bad this morning: [IMG: lib dems local elections 2013] Here's how the party has summarised ...
This is the first Activate where Liberal Youth will be accepting motions, emergency motions and constitutional amendments. Policy Committee will be offering drafting advice for this conference, which is why Stuart Brown has asked me to draw up the timetable for submitting motions, amendments, emergency motions and constitutional amendments. Submitting... Deadline Drafting advice on constitutional ...
We probably have to go back a few years to understand where we are (in short). Pre-coalition the number of new homes was dictated by a civil servant in Whitehall. As we all know Labour Governments love control from the centre, they don't trust those pesky local decision makers to do what they wanted. We all hated top down planning, especially when it suggested that Basingstoke should
The dust is starting to settle on a dramatic set of elections to Cornwall Council. The authority has lost some good people from all political groups and gained some interesting new faces in their place. The electorate have given those of us who remain a good deal to think about. In terms of my own ...
The American website examiner.com has some detail on the plans for the reinterment of Richard III at Leicester Cathedral: "There's a very strong likelihood that the re-interment will be May 2014, depending upon the members of the royal family who wish to attend, plus the bishop and mayor," said Keith Cousins of the diocese of Leicester. "There will be a two- or three-day time line, possibly with a small ceremony at Bosworth Battlefield, a process in, and then a receiving in the cathedral, which is very dramatic and visual. "We will have visitation for people to come see the coffin, ...
This story on the BBC news website is as follows: A woman was reportedly jailed secretly by the Court of Protection recently for disobeying its orders. The court decides on issues affecting mentally incapable people. The claims, reported in the Daily Mail, suggest the woman disobeyed orders relating to care for her 80-year-old father, who was suffering from dementia. It is a bit odd that the
I have been contemplating the strange thought that a quarter of the population voted for UKIP and Nigel Farage's slightly dodgy populists - the same proportion of the vote that the Labour Party won in 1983 (also, as you may remember, the Liberal-SDP Alliance, those were the days...) This doesn't mean that Farage is going to be prime minister or that they will win any seats at the next general election - I suspect UKIP are about as far from being able to 'target' seats as it is possible to be. But it is worrying, and - if Kenneth Clarke ...
[IMG: House of Lords. House of Lords. Parliamentary copyright images are reproduced with the permission of Parliament] Here's my piece for the latest edition of House Magazine about the forthcoming Queen's Speech: There is a bizarre political virility test for Government ministers. Only the most optimistic would think it has been killed off, but there are at least hopeful signs that the Queen's Speech will see it continue to slumber. The test has been about confusing new legislation (or even worse, a new logo) with getting results. Serious about tackling crime? Better put a new piece of legislation through Parliament. ...
Today's Western Mail reports that Museum curators and other specialists at National Museum Wales are being balloted for strike action over plans to cut their pay and reduce their status. The papers says that the body's senior managers claim the cuts are necessary because of reductions in its budget. But the Prospect trade union says cuts are being imposed unfairly and that top managers are unaffected by the proposed pay reductions. Gareth Howells from Prospect is quoted as saying: "Morale is at an all-time low amongst Museum staff, as the Director General [David Anderson] first announced his intention to initiate ...
[IMG: rsz_lpc_gym_equipment_04_13_2] [IMG: rsz_lpc_gym_equipment_04_13] This was the scene as work to install the outdoor gym equipment was all but finished at Lydiate Parish Council's Village Centre site on Lambshear Lane. It is looking good and is NHS funded but I remember when a far seeing Lydiate Parish Council suggested installing such items a few years ago. It was attacked in the press for even thinking about it! How times move on.
The Daily Post carries an interesting article today about a particularly embarrassing gaffe on the part of contractors at the headquarters of Flintshire County Council. It transpires that in marking out spaces for Councillors in the car park they spelt the word with only one 'l'. The Councils has now had them back to correct the mistake but, keeping to the theme of pedantry I have to ask, did they also add in the missing apostrophe?
Me in the New Statesman yesterday; Huzzah.I was all set for a bit of spleen venting this morning when I woke up to be greeted with the South Shields by-election result. And let's not pretend that any result in which your vote share drops by 13 percentage points, you're beaten into seventh by (among others) the BNP, your coalition partner loses masses of support to the new girl in town and still loses less of its share of the vote than you do, and you finish just 155 votes ahead of the Monster Raving Loony Party, is nothing less than ...
[IMG: NickRonCountyHall] Newly re-elected Liberal Democrat County Councillors, Nick Hollinghurst, representing Tring & the Villages, and Ron Tindall, representing Hemel Hempstead St Pauls are seen here in County Hall under the watchful gaze of Pope Hadrian IV, Hertfordshire's only pope (so far). Both were comfortably re-elected with good majorities, easily seeing off the pretensions of UKIP, who trailed 4th behind Labour in Hemel Hempstead St Pauls and who managed a poor 3rd place in Tring only because of Labour's weakness in the area. Ron and Nick are looking forward to resuming their roles as members of the official Liberal Democrat ...
Hertfordshire Liberal Democrats were delighted early on Friday morning by the return of their hard-working colleague County Councillor Ron Tindall to represent Adeyfield and Highfield in Hemel Hempstead. The result for the Hemel Hempstead St Pauls Hertfordshire County Council Division was: Conservatives 579 (24%) Green 54 ( 2%) Labour 510 (21%) Liberal Democrats 816 (33%) Ron Tindall elected UKIP 499 (20%)
Last night, Janet and I had the pleasure of attending the Civic Reception at the City Chambers to mark both MS Awareness Week 2013 and the 60th Anniversary of the MS Society. See photo - right. There was a great attendance despite a very rainy evening and excellent speeches from the Lord Provost, MS Society Scotland Director Christine Carlin and local branch Chair Gordon McDonald. Janet is a member of the MS Society Dundee Branch Committee and we were really delighted to see Christine award Lillian Malcolm, the long-serving and hard-working Secretary of the Branch with the society's Shining Star ...
Recycle Week is a celebration of everything about recycling, and offers you a chance to get involved and highlight the significant benefits and opportunities associated with recycling. With this year's theme 'Recycling at home and away ...' Recycle Week is a fantastic opportunity for you to: • raise awareness of your recycling activities• launch new initiatives and• boost your recycling capture rate Recycle Week is now in its third year in Scotland, and is organised by Zero Waste Scotland using Recycle for Scotland. It is supported and delivered by a range of partners across the country. As part of the ...
[IMG: dawn] Taken from our garden at 05:48 hrs this morning. Shot with a very low ISO. Also helped with a little bit of magic from Photomatix. [IMG: Post to Twitter] Tweet This Post
[IMG: 8334962452_1b3295acef_b] My photo is of Widemouth Bay, which is within Poundstock division. The photo is viewable on Google Earth (via Panoramio) where it has had 255 views in just a few months. Well done Nicky Chopak! Poundstock – LD win Andrew Ades, Con 449 Nicky Chopak, LD 487 Rupert Powell, 171 Paul Sousek, MK 206 Turnout 36.3% Rupert Powell was standing for UKIP, according to their website. From This is Cornwall: @thisiscornwall on Twitter | thisiscornwall on Facebook [IMG: Post to Twitter] Tweet This Post
It's not been a great day to be a Lib Dem in Bristol. We've lost 9 seats, and lost our position as the largest party on the council. The party's maxim - where we work, we win - has never been so wrong in the case of some of our hardest working councillors. Two losses were particularly galling: Jon Rogers who came third behind the Greens and Labour in Ashley ward and Steve Comer who lost by one vote in Eastville. It wasn't just existing councillors who worked hard but didn't win; for example, Alex Smethurst pounded the pavements of ...
