I went down to London today to see my fellow Liberator collective member Catherine Furlong. She lives in Walthamstow and we visited the William Morris Gallery there. On the way I was taken with this piece of post-war municipal architecture, the Hoe Street Central Parade. Hugh Pearman writes about it well: It's a brick postwar group, L-shaped on a prominent junction, mixed-use, shops below, flats and some civic offices above, with a modestly heroic stone-clad clocktower marking the corner. What caught my eye was the style: pure Festival of Britain. It has the lot: wavy thin-shell concrete canopy, shallow copper ...
Labour cannot be trusted to build a stronger economy. They crashed the economy and have no answers on how to create jobs and get the economy growing. "There's no money left" - Labour nearly bankrupted Britain. We are cleaning up their messLabour let the banks run wild. They cosied up to gamblers in the City of London and left us all with a huge bill when the banks collapsedLabour's numbers don't add up. Their extra spending and unfunded tax cuts would break their own debt rules and add £201bn to the UK's debt for our children and grandchildren to pay ...
So in order to challenge the popular (but wrong) view that nothing of any importance ever happens in the European Union here's a selection of things that happened over the previous few days; New rules were adopted on pilots hours, this overturned a previous vote in committee which rejected the proposalsA 1985 law on environmental impact assessments for major infrastructure projects was revised (this will include old exploration and fracking)The Tobacco Products Directive made it though it's first reading and was amended by allow e-cigarettes to be widely available (rather than restricted to being medicines). This managed to displease both ...
One of the best records ever made. From 1972. It was written by Mike Pinder with backing vocals by the Moody Blues (Mike Pinder and Justin Hayward). [IMG: Post to Twitter] Tweet This Post
There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the media earlier this week about an OECD survey with showed England's youth as being near the bottom of the league in literacy and numeracy.*. There was much less furore about another damaging deficiency revealed in a Thompson Reuters' list of the Top 100 Global Innovators, which contained not a single British name. As might be expected the go-getting Americans took 45 of the places. More surprisingly the top Europeans, with no fewer than 12 entries, were the mollycoddled, highly taxed, dirigiste French. Japan, Canada, Sweden, Germany, South Korea, the Netherlands,Switzerland ...
Like an amoeba the extreme Right tend to divide and sub-divide. That's the thing about Fascists, their hatred of people different from themselves rarely holds firm long enough to prevent hatred of themselves flaming up and [...]
The Observer last Sunday had a wonderful piece by the wildlife photographer Thomas Peschak on his career searching for sharks. [M]y western culture portrays the shark as a malevolent, man-eating monster. The fear of sharks has led to violent retribution against these animals, which have been pursued with everything from explosives to rifles to gill [...]
The October 2013 newsletter from Cheadle police.
LibDemVoice has two parallel sites. The first is our public blog, the thing you're reading now. The second is our private members' forum, which only current Lib Dem members can access. If you're a member and want to chat with fellow party members about any issue that's on your mind, then why not sign up? In addition, you'll be included in our regular surveys' of party members' views. Here's some of the most active discussions this past week: European Union – some thoughts; Help to Buy Housing; Cable breaks rank to defend Guardian over Edward Snowden; HS2; MPs Standing Down?; ...
In L. P. Hartley's book "The Go-Between" the first line is "The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there". Well may we paraphrase this sentence to read "The City is a foreign country, they do things differently there" to sum up the mystification of the British public and political class with what goes on in the Square Mile and its American-controlled enclave, Canaray Wharf. Having worked in the City, on Wall Street and in the Australian and Argentine stockmarkets, I have found myself often over the years at dinners and parties in conversations with people outside the ...
Royal Mail shares soared on their first day's floatation yesterday, prompting inevitable accusations that the company had been priced too low. Here's Lib Dem business secretary Vince Cable explaining his aim to assure long-term investment irrespective of the froth of the "spivs and speculators": The Independent has a fair-minded editorial today, pointing out the hypocrisy of Labour's shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna warning of undervalued shares and a "massive bonanza" in advance of the floatation then holding up his hands in horror that such talk helped hype demand for the massively over-subscribed sale: The most crucial thing in any flotation ...
I've respected Andrew Marr's writing for years, since his days as a columnist on the Independent on Sunday. To be honest, it is that print journalism that I remember. Broadcasting is so ephemeral that it is really hard to remember more than a few snatches. I wonder if that is one of the reasons why he revealed that he wished he had been an artist. This is not how the technocrats see things, of course. They prefer to label people definitively so that they can count them, but most of us break out of categories and I believe most of ...
Here's today's hand-picked selection that caught my interest... The secret state is just itching to gag the press | Jonathan Freedland | Comment is free | The Guardian You can almost hear the penny drop as Guardian realises state-backed regulation of the press will also apply to them http://bit.ly/GVs4Pk Why is the left obsessed by the Daily Mail? | Paul Dacre | Comment is free | The Guardian "Comments will be enabled on this article at 9am" http://bit.ly/19wesVo < It's almost like the Gdn's expecting some re Dacre's fight-back www.bbc.co.uk Even more importantly... Lukaku sends Belgium to World Cup http://bbc.in/15ujgcy ...
[IMG: Featured on Liberal Democrat Voice] It was with enormous sadness that I learned earlier this week that Joan Coleman had died. She had been in a nursing home for some while. Joan, a Scot, was a stalwart of Southport Liberals and later Lib Dems. In her own right she was a formidable politician but her contribution extended far beyond party politics; she was a charity worker, a senior magistrate, real ale advocate and a family women. In 1965 she was in the small market town (was it at Hawick ?) in the Scottish borders when the declaration of the ...
Opposing somebodies position because they hold it hypocritically is generally a weak point: the reality of climate change is wholly unaffected by whether or not Al Gore flies or not. However, with Paul Dacre ignoring his rampant inconsistency is impossible because it's close to his defining characteristic. I've already blogged about his sweary tirades at [...]
New recycling calendars – telling us which bins to put out on which days – will be delivered to everyone from 16th October. Keep a look out – there will be some changes to collection days for some people so it's important to check. There's more information here.
I attended the public consultation for a new Ismaili community centre in the old Worcester Park tavern (pictured) last night. The development has been branded a 'mosque' by the Worcester Park blog and in the [...]
Sat 12th
11:55
Reshuffle redux: how Lib Dem members rated the ministerial performances of the sacked and the promot...
I posted earlier the most recent ratings by Lib Dem members of the party's government ministers. Here's how those affected by the reshuffle have done over the three-plus years we've been running our members' surveys... Sacked Michael Moore (Secretary of State for Scotland, May 2010 to Oct 2013) [IMG: michael moore performance] Jeremy Browne (Minister – Foreign Office, May 2010 to Sept 2012; Minister – Home Office, Sept 2012 to Oct 2013) [IMG: jeremy browne performance] David Heath (Deputy Leader – Commons, May 2010 to Sept 2012; Minister – Rural Affairs, Sept 2012 to Oct 2013) [IMG: david heath performance] ...
Warwickshire County Council launched a new 4-week consultation on the future of its Integrated Disability Service: This is a direct result of concerted action by opposition WCC councillors, who were not satisfied with the decision taken by Conservative Cabinet members on 12 Sep, and who therefore "called in" the decision to a special meeting of the Children & Young People Overview & Scrutiny Committee on 26 Sep. At that meeting, the Cabinet member agreed to run a new consultation on the revised "Matrix of Need", the key tool to be used by officers in assessing individual need and eligibility ...
Lib Dem Voice polled our members-only forum in September to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Almost 700 party members responded – thank you – and we're publishing the full results. Apologies: I failed to publish this list owing to the general hecticness of conference season. The reshuffle reminded me it needed doing as this is the last time this exact list will be published... Please bear in mind, though, the figures below are now a month old. LDV asked: How would you rate the performances of ...
Worrying developments at the home office. Again. (tags: ) posted The Blood is The Life 11-10-2013 http://t.co/cIom1PDiLS on #dreamwidth (tags: (from twitter) dreamwidth ) Option to be unsearchable on Facebook is being axed. Feel like profs etc should take note. http://t.co/rzT2D0kHBR (tags: (from twitter) ) http://ind.pn/184lv7j State schools 'an open door for evangelical groups to push creationism,' warns study http://t.co/ieZ8tNgQSY (tags: (from twitter) ) The 1 Most Likely Articles To Redeem Buzzfeed For All The Linkbait Crap They Post http://t.co/SenLWms4v4 Genius, honestly (tags: (from twitter) ) [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
Today's Western Mail reports that Plaid Cymru has been forced to "sincerely apologise" and launched an investigation after it inadvertently revealed an extensive list of email addresses of party members to a list of journalists. They say that in an email sent out from the party's press email address with the title "Press release contacts", the party revealed the email addresses of journalists, third sector leaders and others who receives its press notices. But the message also revealed an extensive list of email contacts of "members who tweet", including some belonging to non-political organisations, and erroneously listed email addresses of ...
More comedy genius from Australia's Clarke and Dawe: You can also
Plaid Cymru unveiled their big idea yesterday to solve the woes of the Welsh health service and it immediately came under fire. There is no surprise in that. This is how politics works, with politicians constantly seeking to shoot down their opponent's ideas no matter the merits of a policy. And on the face of it a 20p per litre levy on fizzy drinks does have its good points. It makes it more expensive for people to rot their teeth and enter prematurely the fraught world of diabetes. Plaid Cymru's problem is that they did not stop there. The party ...
As astonishing as it is to believe Ancient Egyptian is not a dead language. While it is nobody still uses it as their main language, millions still hear it weekly as the language of the liturgy of the Coptic Church. The Coptic language is written in Ancient Greek script but takes its grammar and vocabulary [...]
We have reported the complete failure of the street lights in York Road to the county council. If you have any other lighting problems please let us know or report them on Fix My Street: http://www.fixmystreet.com
My latest from the New Statesman. In the original I note many of the links didn't work. Naturally - I suspect a conspiracy... Nick Clegg has been on something of a drive to rehabilitate his civil libertarian credentials in recent months after the Secret Courts debacle (my word, definitely not his), nuking the Communications Data Bill, reversing the party's position on Secret Courts, and securing numerous compromises over the Lobbying Bill.But the latest step - putting Norman 'conspiracy theory' Baker into the Home Office seemed, for many non-Liberal Democrats, a step too far. "Did the Freemasons stage the moon landings? ...
Earlier on this year I was fortunate to be in Bristol for a conference at the same time that the Gromit Unleashed trail was on. From the number of Facebook postings I saw about the trail from my friends in the south west and the £2.3m raised by the auction for the Bristol Children's Hospital, it looks like it was a fantastic success. It was also good to see that the organisers went to the trouble of assessing the economic impact of the event on Bristol's economy – judged to be £123m. Let's hope that one of the outcomes is ...
The coverage of the latest Immigration Bill has already generated significant controversy. It is an emotive issue and one of those areas of government where the different instincts of the coalition parties are at their widest. This briefing note sets out the facts of the Bill and also the Liberal Democrat arguments both on specific [...]
[IMG: Heathrow Immigration Queues] Conflating international students' use of the health service with so-called 'health tourism' sends out the wrong message to prospective students. The government's new Immigration Bill, according to immigration minister Mark Harper will: Stop migrants using public services to which they are not entitled, reduce the pull factors which encourage people to come to the UK and make it easier to remove people who should not be here. The measures focus on enforcement and clamping down. They include a requirement for temporary migrants, such as overseas students, to make a contribution to the National Health Service to ...
I've never met Tommy Robinson, but I have a feeling we wouldn't get on. He's spent the last few years leading a bunch of thuggish, football hooligan-esqe malcontents from protest to protest and not saying much when they chant racist slogans. And I'm a unionist snob who dislikes outrageous displays of "Englishness" (you know, where they deface their own flags and treat them like rags... so patriotic!). So, no, Tommy Robinson may have decided to stop supporting a bunch of yobs but I'd guess we'd still not have that much in common. And speaking of changes of heart... I've not ...
The radicalisation of Muslim youth has been a prime concern of Western governments and security agencies ever since 9/11. But it is sobering to realise that the path to militancy — with its intolerance and, in extreme cases, its contempt for human life — is not necessarily only one way. Readers of Ed Husain's 2007 [...]
Growing up in Northern Ireland in the 80s I was used to disappointment. Every week I would scan through the tour lists in the back of Smash Hits and see if any of my favourites were about to tour. By in large when I scanned the list of dates there was often one omission: BelfastIt wasn't because of a lack of suitable venue, we had that it was bands being scared to come here. Thankfully in recent years things here have gotten better. Bands do come here and we have an even better and more accessible stadium venue that they ...
I was on Wave 102 News yesterday about the Harris Academy school transport review. You can hear the interview by clicking 'play' below:
[IMG: Auntie Beeb] A remarkably interesting article from Paul Dacre in the Guardian. It's all the BBC's fault. The Guardian is helping terrorists, abetted by John Humphrys and lots of people with mobile phones. Oh, and Ed Miliband cheated ("diddled") his brother. Cheating – aka the machinations of the Labour party constitution and lots of awful "chatterati" who sign up to trade union membership. If I might pick up on one element, Dacre says that "the fury and recrimination the (Ralph Miliband/hate Britain) story is provoking reveals again why those who rule us - and who should be held to ...
Drugs can have a devastating impact on individuals and families and can fuel organised crime. Evidence shows that our current drug policy is costly, ineffective and it is the poor and marginalised who suffer most. Liberal Democrats support an evidenced based drugs policy, and at Autumn Conference in 2011 called for an independent panel to review current drug laws. We want to ensure the Coalition Government has a clear focus on prevention and reducing harm by investing in education, treatment and rehabilitation, and moving away from criminalising individuals and vulnerable drug users. Liberal Democrats Manifesto 2010 Ensure that financial resources, ...
