With today's sad news of the death of Mel Smith at the age of just 60 British comedy has lost one of its finest talents. Not the Nine O Clock News on which he made his name was a ground breaking sketch show that reintroduced an eager audience (including me) to satire and underpinned the British comedy revolution that was know as 'alternative comedy'. Here is Smith on top form in a sketch that completely undermined the objections to the Monty Python masterpiece 'Life of Brian' - and probably did for what was left of Malcolm Muggeridge's credibility after the ...
This is the second of these round-ups - no.1 is here. I have invited some bloggers to nominate a couple of books they have enjoyed recently and write a few sentences about each. You are welcome to send me your own choices. I suggest you nominate one political and one non-political book, but I don't insist on that. Iain Dale Dominion by C.J. Sansom If you are a fan of counterfactual history and you wonder what might have happened in May 1940 had Lord Halifax become prime minister rather than Winston Churchill, you will love this book. The author, C ...
Birkdale Focus looks at the historical battle against market fundamentalism in the Liberal Party and introduces us, via a letter from William Wallace, to Edward Rushworth, candidate in Harborough at several general elections: "He made little distinction between being a Liberal and being a teetotal nonconformist; his instincts were anti authoritarian and socially egalitarian." We need a few more, but not too many, Steve Webbs, says Mark Pack. "At the start of the 19th century some 2,000 miles of turbulent Central Asian territory - deserts, mountains and unstable Muslim khanates - separated Britain's Indian territories from the edge of the ...
Sat 20th
18:25
LDVideo: Graham Norton meets Lib Dem councillor Paula Belford and her husband's "little chappie"
Here's Islington Lib Dem councillor Paula Belford starring on Graham Norton's chat-show, with Steve Carrel among others looking on... Perhaps not surprisingly, Paula's appearance reached the ears of the local paper, the Islington Tribune.
. Towards the end of the SLF's Manchester conference, held again on the Saturday closest to Bastille Day, Michael Steed stood up to speak. He was introduced by the Chair, Gareth Epps, as a past President of the Liberal Party. Michael reminded the conference that he and I had been in Manchester 40 years ago when he was the candidate in the Manchester Exchange by election - he came within 2000 votes of winning. Now that is a thought to conjure with; what impact would he had if he'd have won ? (I know with an absolute certainty that the ...
Another mainstay of my childhood has gone to the great green room in the sky. RIP Mel Smith. [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
[IMG: Alan Turing and me] Last Friday I made my first ever visit to Manchester, where I did the traditional thing of posing to have my photograph taken with the statue of Alan Turing. Yesterday, Liberal Democrat peer John Sharkey introduced his Bill to grant Turing a posthumous pardon. The World War 2 codebreaker was subject to appallingly cruel treatment – chemical castration and disgrace after being convicted for being gay. He killed himself two years after that. The Government allowed men convicted of similar offences to have those convictions disregarded but that didn't help those who, like Turing, had ...
DC Heroes in Lego form - awesome I have been a big fan of the Lego franchise of games since the first Lego Star Wars came out and I've managed to play most of them. There have been many improvements through time to these games such as the advent of Split screen which means you no longer accidentally drag the other player over cliffs! There is also the ability to change characters mid free play game that allows you to swap to a character that hasn't been been selected by the game. This means that the amount of Toggled characters ...
Here's today's hand-picked selection that caught my interest... www.nytimes.com Interesting.... > Nate Silver of @FiveThirtyEight Blog Is to Join ESPN Staff http://nyti.ms/13rXIvU CentreForum Liberal Hero of the Week #42: Jeremy Browne | CentreForum Blog My @CentreForum Liberal Hero of the Week is LibDem home office minister Jeremy Browne. Find out why here: http://bit.ly/15TgH14 Facebook "Your Highness, you do realise homeopathy is all in your mind, don't you?" http://on.fb.me/1dKxEhc (What I should have said, but didn't.)
Many people reading this will be aware that Brentwood Cllr Karen Chilvers offered a home earlier this year to Bailey, a dog destined to be put down. She nursed him back to health and he's now part of her family. Those of us who are friends with Karen on Facebook were treated to Bailey's daily thoughts on life, the universe and everything during his recovery. The Daily Bailey was often humorous and engaging.Recently, Karen's set up a Twitter account in Bailey's name so that people on there can follow the cute one's progress. @DailyBailey_Dog's profile reads: Nothing but a pound ...
The claim by a Conservative peer, whilst speaking in the House of Lords that that he uses friends in the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency to track down drivers he spots littering the road and admonish them has caused a bit of a sensation. That is not because of the extraordinary sense of citizenship demonstrated by Lord Selsdon in tracking down British families driving 4x4 cars to go skiing in the Alps who, he says are amongst the most prolific vehicle-based litterers, but for the data protection implications of his alleged actions. The Independent reports that a spokesperson for the ...
[IMG: bailey july 2013] I was elected to Brentwood Council in 2007 with people knowing I was an animal lover and I always wanted to be the most approachable of councillors, so my animals have always featured on my website and in my work because I want them to know I am "one of them" and not a remote career politician. I've always picked up casework when walking Louis and his predecessors around the ward. My dog Louis lives with my mum in my Brentwood West ward and has, since 2012 when I got my seat back after a year's ...
Sat 20th
12:09
Welcome to Twitter @AshleyFoxMEP! South West Conservative MEP becomes latest to join social media si...
It was surely only a matter of time but Conservative Ashley Fox has become the latest South West MEP to join the social media site Twitter. Tweeting at @AshleyFoxMEP, the first accounts he followed predictably included the official feed for the UK Prime Minister, the Chief Minister of Gibraltar Fabian Picardo and his fellow Conservative MEP colleagues, but also included fellow SW MEP Julie
Longford Park Cafe is due to open this Sunday 21st July at 10am initially serving coffee, cake, sandwiches and ice creams. Soon, this new family park cafe will open 7 days a week also offering bread in partnership with Uprising Bakery, warm scones from the oven at 3pm, a full brunch menu at weekends, slow cooks & stews for lunch, homemade kid's lunch & occasional summer barbecues. Find out more about Caffeine & Co by visiting their Facebook Alice an Extraordinary Adventure - Open Air Theatre Saturday 31st August 5pmTickets Now available:-Tickets are now available online atwww.heartbreakproductions.co.uk, or call0161 ...
Keeping 3 Public Libraries in Bootle but only 1 in Southport is outrageous However the Bootle Labour cabinet try to spin their decision leaving only one Public Library in the Southport constituency whilst keeping three open in Bootle is wrong. It displays Labour's priorities and their contempt for our town. (The two constituencies have the same population) Far more books are borrowed from the branch Libraries in Southport that Labour want to close than the ones in Bootle they are keeping open. Many residents will be more than two miles from a library especially (but not only) those in Crossens ...
[IMG: Steve Webb] At last weekend's Social Liberal Forum conference, two common viewpoints amongst attendees were apparent. First, widespread unease at many of the changes being made to the welfare system. Second, the popularity of Steve Webb and the work he is doing to the very same welfare system. That contrast between those two viewpoints, concurrently held by the same people, is made even sharper by Steve Webb's record in the media – he is rarely quoted knocking what Conservatives in government are doing. How does he manage to combine mostly public silence over unpopular welfare policies with being a ...
My brother, who is definitely not fifty today because that's a frankly terrifying prospect, is doing a marathon to raise money for SSAFA. SSAFA are a charity you may not have heard of, but they are a cause that's very close to my brother's heart. They helped him out a LOT at a time when he really needed it, and now he's in a position to help them, so he is doing. If you've got a bit of spare brass, and fancy chucking it his way, his just giving page is here. Think of it as a birthday present to ...
I've been getting some emails from local residents who are concerned about a threat to local lollipop people – I think as a result of this Living Streets campaign (an organisation I would normally support – indeed, I'd be quite keen to get a local branch going here!). This has come as a bit of surprise, since a combination of campaigning by local people, hard work by local school governors, teachers and council officers and pressure from local councillors has just helped us get two more locally – one in Cheriton Road and one in Stockbridge Road. I was chatting ...
Sat 20th
10:45Lib Dems select Maajid Nawaz as candidate in ultra-close three-way marginal of Hampstead and Kilburn
[IMG: maajid-navaz] In the 2010 general election, Hampstead and Kilburn was a three-way marginal: Glenda Jackson squeaked back in for Labour by just 42 votes, polling fewer than 900 votes ahead of the third-placed Lib Dems. This week, the local Lib Dems selected the candidate they hope will succeed Ms Jackson when she retires at the next election: he's Maajid Nawaz, a former radical Islamist, author of Radical: My Journey from Islamist Extremism to a Democratic Awakening, and co-founder of the Quilliam Foundation. As the Ethnic Minority Lib Dems note: He is the first visible minority so far to become ...
With the EDL doing the best they can to cause further division in society comes the news that the people arrested for the Mosque Bombings, who were working in Yardley Constituency, are Ukrainian (see today's Birmingham Mail - I was aware of this beforehand from the police, but had not got their permission to reveal this). This raises some serious questions as to the motivation behind this spate
Microsoft is a huge corporation. It has products spanning video games consoles and enterprise level software. Usually you would expect these divisions to be quite separate, but lately they have been united by gaffes on an epic scale. Lets take the launch of the new Xbox One console. As a replacement for Xbox 360 much was expected, but Xbox fans got more than they bargained for. Two key features of the Xbox One quickly emerged as the most controversial aspects of perhaps any console launch ever. Xbox One had to be connected to the Internet to be able to play ...
Steve Webb came along to the Social Liberal Conference to give the William Beveridge lecture. As Minister for Pensions and a Professor of Social Policy he is eminently well qualified to do so. He has the advantage of having read Beveridge rather than just assuming he knows what the great man thought. I should begin by saying that there is a Southport connection with Beveridge as he made clear in a letter to Robert Martin the Liberal candidate in the 1945 election 'I am more than sorry not to able to visit Southport during the Election because I will miss ...
posted The Blood is The Life 19-07-2013 http://t.co/ijkZuInHTZ on #dreamwidth (tags: (from twitter) dreamwidth ) New NSFW content restrictions enrage Tumblr users http://t.co/vV2c7RoAem (tags: (from twitter) ) [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
Catherine Tate? On a politics site? Really? Well, this is a lovely Summer Saturday morning, Parliament has just broken up for its holidays, so I just thought I'd do something a little bit different. You can tell me to take a running jump if you like, and this is something I would only ever do sparingly, but I thought I'd give it a try. Please don't worry. My fixations with Doctor Who, Strictly and F1 will be confined to my own blog. A few weeks ago, I missed both the Social Liberal Forum Scottish conference and the British Grand Prix ...
Sat 20th
09:30
Catherine Tate's top tips: Be nice to everyone and don't be late. With added Doctor Who geekery
Catherine Tate? On a politics site? Really? Well, this is a lovely Summer Saturday morning, Parliament has just broken up for its holidays, so I just thought I'd do something a little bit different. You can tell me to take a running jump if you like, and this is something I would only ever do sparingly, but I thought I'd give it a try. Please don't worry. My fixations with Doctor Who, Strictly and F1 will be confined to my own blog. A few weeks ago, I missed both the Social Liberal Forum Scottish conference and the British Grand Prix ...
Scientists suspected a link between asbestos and lung cancer as early as 1918. The news that exposure to asbestos fibres might cause cancer were confirmed in a series of medical studies in the 1920s. But it was a test case in the US Supreme Court in 1969 - half a century later - that impacted on the money men and the politicians. The result was the cause of the near collapse of the Lloyds of London reinsurance market in the early 1990s, and the scandal which I wrote about in my book Broke: Who Killed the Middle Classes? The case ...
I attended a meeting a couple of days ago where members of the church community from Maghull, led by Maghull Baptist Church, gave interested local councillors a briefing on the survey they had conducted within the past year about community views on various matters. The survey, which 380 people had responded to in detail, covered a wide range of matters - social, economic, crime, environmental, community facilities etc. and I think it fair to say that there were no really big surprises in the results presented to us. However, it was fascinating to hear a perspective from the religious community ...
[IMG: 3059005398_f9fd73e8e5_o] An interesting comments thread over at Liberal Democrat Voice on the David Ward issue includes a comment from ATF, with which I entirely agree subject to the rider that it is the disproportionate and imprecise expression of his opinions which are the issue: He is entirely free to and has the right to express his opinion as part of society, that does not mean he can say so and still be a LibDem MP. No one has stopped him saying it, they have only stopped him saying it as a party MP. The letter from Alistair Carmichael is ...
Comments to liven up the silly season. But hold on a minute. The regular presenters of Daybreak, on which programme Ms Hopkins expressed these views have strong Scots and Welsh accents. Lorraine Kelly has a wonderfully broad Scots accent. And yet she is one of the most popular and enduring television presenters in the UK. I'm a great fan of Stephanie McGovern, whose Geordie vowels started all this. It's funny that Katie Hopkins thinks that regional accents don't work on TV. I don't think her regional accent works on TV. She's from a region. Most people are. The Home Counties? ...
[IMG: boat st michaels mount] [IMG: Post to Twitter] Tweet This Post
I have had complaints from residents that the embankment at Pentland Avenue looks very poor, with burned/dead weeds across it. I have taken up the matter with the Environment Department and have now been advised: "The burned dead weeds are where we have applied herbicide in an effort to keep the vegetation at bay. At this time of year we really have no option if we are to keep on top of the vegetation in this area. If finances allow we will plant up more shrubs in this area as ground cover over the winter period. The front of the ...
I welcome the Court of Justice of the European Union's decision to reject a legal appeal by Fifa and Uefa, ruling that World Cup and European Championship football matches must remain free-to-air TV events. Fifa and Uefa wanted matches not featuring England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland to be sold off to pay-per-view channels. Yesterday's ruling upheld a 2011 decision by the European General Court that the UK could keep World Cup and European Championship football matches on a list of free-to-air sporting events. I am delighted that Welsh football fans will be able to watch World Cup and European ...
