Too many Manchester neighborhoods are covered by forests of unsightly 'To Let' boards say local Lib Dems. They are calling on the City Council to follow Leeds Council who have banned the boards in favour of smaller more discrete signs pinned flush to houses. They are calling for the Council to introduce a new code of practice trialing a similar scheme in Levenshulme, Withington and Fallowfield before it's rolled out across the City. If successful the code of practice would mean that only one 'To Let' Board would be allowed per building, the boards would be no larger than 13ins ...
Back in July 2008 I described Lady Allen of Hurtwood as one of my heroines. So thanks to Rethinking Childhood for pointing me to this short documentary about her work from around 1970. The blog warns us that the film's terminology about children is not that we would use today and rightly warns us that "Lady Allen's accent could cut glass at 20 paces". But it goes on: But do not let any of this put you off, or you will miss out on as clear a manifesto for adventurous play as you are ever likely to see. The documentary ...
Tue 3rd
21:51
Euro candidate Issan Ghazni says family war experience strengthens resolve to support Europe
Visiting party activists in Southwell, the East Midlands Euro candidate Issan Ghazni told of his family history fighting for Britain in World War II and how this had strengthened his belief in the European Union to ensure the continent never ... Continue reading →
East Midlands Euro candidate Issan Ghazni spoke to Broxtowe Lib Dems about how to tackle the thread of UKIP in next May's European elections. Speaking to activists in Bramcote, Nottingham, he stressed that Lib Dems should concentrate on getting out ... Continue reading →
Invicta Plastics of Leicester has gone into administration. The name may mean nothing to you, but readers of a certain age will certainly remember the Master Mind game, which the company made. It was everywhere in the early 1970s. And, let us be honest, it was a little dull. You may remember the illustration on the cover - the magus and the Chinese girl. An article on the University of Leicester website tells the story behind it. (The Leicester Mercury report says that Bill Woodward died earlier this year.) Later the company made Comic Relief red noses and used to ...
After the 2004 Tsunami the UK public donated £390 million in charity to help victims. Over £100 million went to Sri Lanka without any discrimination about ethnicity. The Sri Lankan government just a few years after that engaged in horrific war crimes and slaughtered tens of thousands of civilians. Maybe even charity should be tied to human rights in the future - a Government should cut its military spending before it can be given aid, and armed groups lay down their arms. There was a great feeling of optimism that the disaster of the South Asian Boxing Day Tsunami might ...
Tue 3rd
20:00
bad things the Lib Dems have stopped the Tories doing in government (I am desperate for a catchier t...
We all know what being in coalition has done for the Liberal Democrats. For the many that are not engaged in politics the lines between Lib Dems and the Tories can appear blurred. I know we are told to keep mentioning the increase to income tax threshold, Pupil premium, triple lock guarantee for pensioners, apprenticeships, banking reform as just a few of manifesto commitments that are now
As the prime minister visited Beijing, the Liberal Democrat leader said that although he understood the "huge opportunity" presented by the forging of trade links between the two countries, "China must both address its own human rights record and uphold the values of the United Nations".But that prime minister was Gordon Brown and this quote comes from a 2008 PoliticsHome report.
This blog has long taken an interest in the sometimes colourful affairs of Ludlow Town Council. It is back in the Shropshire Star today: Veronica Calderbank quit her role at Ludlow Town Council in June last year, claiming she was left with no choice after being asked to work long hours without a break, despite councillors knowing she had a crippling back problem. At the end of a month-long employment tribunal hearing in Birmingham, it was ruled she had been unfairly constructively dismissed. A hearing to assess the amount of money she will be awarded has been set for February ...
[IMG: Lorber Kataria] Brent Council's Liberal Democrat contingent was strengthened today when West Harp councillor Dhiraj Kataria left Labour to join them. He gave his reasons as: I have become increasingly disillusioned by the way the Brent Labour Group has operated - and particularly by the top-down way in which that it has been led. I feel decisions taken by the Labour Group and Labour Executive members, such as closing half our libraries and cutting street cleaning, have been against the interests of my constituents. I have been impressed by the Liberal Democrat Group's commitment to transparency and open debate ...
The UFTDU are similar to Liberty.
A planning application's come in for a 24 hour petrol filling station as well as a Starbucks and some other retail on Speke Boulevard. You can see the information, and make a comment, at this link. Comments close shortly before Christmas.
Whether it's payday lenders or rising energy bills we've never been more interested in corporate behaviour. But despite the fact that through our pensions we own billions of pounds of holdings in British businesses, pension savers are shut out of the investment system and denied the opportunity to have their voices heard. Legal & General's decision to set up a pension fund AGM (PAGM) represents an important first step in spreading 'shareholder democracy' to the millions whose savings are managed through a pension fund. Shareholder democracy means giving shareholders the rights and means to hold companies to account - making ...
Guardian Editor Alan Rusbridger answers questions on Edward Snowden and the NSA files.
Welcome to Day 3 of our series of Christmas present ideas. Today it's the turn of Mary Reid. [IMG: Sweet-Tooth] Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan Ian McEwan has written another masterful novel, set in the murky world of MI5 in the 1970s. The outcome is actually given away in the first paragraph, but the final chapter is still surprising and revelatory. In between, we follow a young and seemingly ill-prepared recruit to the service as she is given the task of subverting a novelist. She had herself been introduced to MI5 by an older lover who then disappeared mysteriously, and ...
Tue 3rd
14:35
Italian Mother: Statement by John Hemming (includes comments from mother and italian judgment)
Report of Conversation with mother: John Hemming said "I have spoken to the mother concerned who has been very badly treated by the authorities in England. She has said to me that she would like to thank all the British people who have sent messages of support." Parliamentary proceedings "Now that we know that the case is still live and to be heard by Munby P it is clear that the case is
Recently, there's been quite a bit of banter in the comments of a post I wrote a couple of years ago about my first employer, PAFEC Ltd. It's got me thinking. It would be great to try to re-create a working copy of their most famous software package, DOGS (Design Office Graphics System) on (say) a modern Linux platform such as the Raspberry Pi, for conservation reasons. As one of the first general purpose CAD packages on the market (it was first released around 1979 if my memory serves me correctly) that didn't require specialist CAD hardware to operate it, ...
In the last hour, Nick Clegg has come to Glasgow to pay his respects at the Clutha pub site. Few people will forget the horror of Friday night's events when a police helicopter crashed into the bar, killing nine people. He and Secretary of State for Scotland Alistair Carmichael laid flowers there and read some of the other floral tributes that people have been leaving over the weekend. I watched in shock and horror as the events unfolded on Twitter on Friday night. I was on my way home from a night out in Edinburgh, laughing and joking with friends ...
I have an article on the Wales Eye website on homelessness and the Welsh Governmnt's proposal to scrap the priority need category for ex-prisoners.
Here's today's hand-picked selection that caught my interest... The Conservative Party is in danger of dying on its knees - Telegraph Blogs Ben Brogan: it's "difficult to find Conservatives willing to say privately they will still be in power after 2015" http://bit.ly/1cQF9E9 Osborne must shift voters' focus back to the deficit – FT.com Janan Ganesh spot-on here that Mario Draghi's pledge to do "whatever it takes" to save the euro" crucial moment http://on.ft.com/1g1P66J £750,000 second job shows I am a success, says Stephen Phillips MP – Telegraph Poor Sleaford and North Hykeham. First Douglas Hogg and his moat. Now Stephen ...
It was hard to avoid the news articles relating to Amazon and their testing of drones to deliver goods. The first thing many did was quickly check their calendars to make sure it was no April fool joke. It wasn't. It was one of the cleverest bits of marketting ever performed. Clearly a drone could not deliver your parcel. If we imagine for a moment that it could actually be programmed to
Thanks to a number of national police forces, led by the Canadians, working together 341 child abusers have been arrested and almost 400 children being held as sex slaves have been freed in recent months. That is fantastic news. However, not one of those was in Britain. 2,345 British suspects had been identified by the authorities in Toronto, some of whom are feared to have regular contact with children, and these were passed to CEOP, the specialist police centre, but astonishingly, no action was taken on our side for 18 months. It appears that whilst the Prime Minister has a ...
Tue 3rd
11:59
Martin Horwood MP writes...Putting people with disabilities into the international development pictu...
One year after her appointment as the first ever Liberal Democrat minister at the Department for International Development (DfID), Lynne Featherstone has already earned a reputation for picking up difficult subjects and setting ambitious goals. In her first year, she put the issue of female genital mutilation on the national and international agenda and famously declared that she wanted to see it gone within a generation and then started to take the practical steps to make that happen. Now Lynne has taken up another challenge for some of the world's most vulnerable people: to champion the inclusion of people with ...
Tue 3rd
11:55
Is prison too harsh or too soft? Vicky Pryce's book gives plenty of fuel to both arguments
[IMG: Prisonomics by Vicky Pryce] Vicky Pryce's Prisonomics: Behind bars in Britain's failing prisons is really two books interwoven. One is a rather dry academic text which uses a barrage of statistics to make a powerful case for female prison reform - especially because of the impact on their children of incarcerating mothers, and the frequent failures of the prison system to address the sorts of issues such as mental illness and abuse that cause so many prisoners to break the law in the first place (and then cause so many to reoffend afterwards). It make a good case for ...
This is not a good day for education in Wales. Following the dismal PISA results in 2010 and the subsequent strategies and action plans laid out by the Welsh Labour government to address the poor performance, the people of Wales were rightly expecting to see an improvement in Wales' international standing. Disappointingly, this is clearly not the case. This is the culmination of over a decade of Labour being in control of our failing education system. There is a risk that for politicians, particularly those responsible, a panic switch is flicked on when their programmes and strategies seem to have ...
On 28th, 29th, and 30th Nov, the Annual Congress of European liberal parties in the European Parliament and beyond, (ALDE) met in London. The 'pan-European' liberal manifesto was agreed for the upcoming Euro elections, (no mean feat !), and several other resolutions were passed. The UK Lib Dems had one motion on the agenda. This was an emergency motion on armed drone attacks, put forward following new on-the-ground data from the UN and others on civilians being killed, and following a European defence meeting which failed to address the illegality of the attacks, instead focusing on the capacity of 'Europe' ...
I get my gas from British Gas. It isn't a perfect solution, and I will be getting £53 of their vast price increase back, I gather. Whoopee. I can't quite get my head around why this tweak works, but it has made me think about the way our services are currently structured. Either way, I am not exactly celebrating. Let me say, before anyone categorises me, that I have no problem with private companies delivering services, as long as they do so on a human-scale, and do so without so narrowing what they deliver that they spread extra costs around ...
Our friends at Lib Dem HQ have released the latest in a series of campaign packs to prepare teams for the next national Day of Action, which will take place on Saturday 1st February. The pack contains guidance on how to organise and structure your day, bulk buy details for key materials, leaflet templates and [...]
Tue 3rd
09:35Jo Swinson talks to Cosmopolitan about the gender pay gap and equality in the workplace
We've heard a lot from Nick Clegg and Jo Swinson over the past week on one great inequality in the workplace – the rules around leave after a baby is born. Thanks to the Liberal Democrats in government, parents will soon be able to share all but the first two weeks of a year of parental leave. For me, that policy sums up what we are about. It's liberal, it's about allowing people to make choices that are right for them and it does sing to both stronger economy and fairer society mantras. However, that's not the only issue of ...
After seeing some of my YouTube subscriptions respond to the Tom Daley news, some good and one extremely inappropriate I decided to see how else people responded to the news. Here are xxx of the best: This is someone I hadn't come across but makes some really good points. Here is another person who gets the fact that currently the lack of label is down to the diversity of human attraction. Chris Thompson is someone that I do follow, and apart from his putting a label on Tom that he didn't put on himself this is a good comment about ...
Hundreds of Thousands of people on the streets of K'yiv. Viktor Yanukovych at bay facing allegations of corruption and criminality. Why it could almost be the Orange revolution of 2004 all over again. Except it is 2013, and the stakes are even higher this time. The root of the crisis does not lie in K'yiv, but in Moscow. The Kremlin is seeking to restore its influence in a remade USSR: the Eurasian Union. Ukraine is a country as similar to Russia as Denmark is to Sweden, so the idea that it would reject the Kremlin's overtures is shocking to many ...
posted The Blood is The Life 02-12-2013 http://t.co/n2VgVqoGJy on #dreamwidth (tags: dreamwidth (from twitter) ) New Blog Post - Diageo Re-launches Mortlach Distillery with 4 new permanent expressions: http://t.co/Vvo8lTFZiZ (tags: (from twitter) ) http://open.spotify.com/track/5K8gqK84cFZV1dFJAMC0jU Rock cheese playlist is proper coming up trumps today ♡ http://t.co/LrRqzzfB76 (tags: (from twitter) ) http://open.spotify.com/track/4X1LS2LEYxKdlvHq5oZesi Ahhhhhhh rock cheese ♡ http://t.co/ALQnMyXNWH (tags: (from twitter) ) Tom Daley's coming out shouldn't matter - but it does, and it's beautiful - Telegraph Blogs "It's not viable, though, pretending to be something you're not - not in practice. It might just about work for a while, in ...
The journalist Tony Parsons (echoing much conservative opinion) wrote in an opinion piece for GQ that the abolition of Grammar Schools: ....really was the British equivalent of the Cultural Revolution in the People's Republic of China – an act of institutionalised vandalism, all done in the name of equality. Crosland, the archetype Bollinger Bolshevik, wanted [...]
On Saturday afternoon, despite some technical difficulties with the election equipment, Returning Officers Daniel Obst (FDP, Germany) and Mark Valladares (Liberal Democrats, UK) were able to announce the winners of the two contests as follows: President Sir Graham Watson MEP (Liberal Democrats, UK) – 377 votes (91%) Vice-Presidents Lousewies van der Laan (D66, Netherlands) – 389 votes (98%) Marc Guerrero i Tarragó (Convergencia, Catalonia) – 378 votes (95%) Olle Schmidt MEP (Folkpartiet, Sweden) – 348 votes (87%) Karin Riis-Jørgensen (Venstre, Denmark) – 339 votes (85%) Alexander Graf Lambsdorff MEP (FDP, Germany) – 291 votes (73%) Niccolo Rinaldi (Italia dei Valore, ...
Having been appointed as Congress Returning Officer in a reprise of my double act with Daniel Obst from the FDP in Dublin last time, our instructions were quite simple. "We're using keypads to vote, so all you need to do is look reassuring, confirm that the vote tallies look alright and, once we have an official record of the result, ensure that the individual voting data is destroyed to ensure privacy." Doesn't everyone have a ballot box at home? That sounded easy enough, and the system had been tested so, when the election session started, Daniel and I stood at ...
Liverpool's planning committee will be discussing and voting on plans for houses on the former New Heys school site in South Liverpool later this month. The plan is to build more than 100 houses - mainly four bedroom - on the land. The committee meeting is on 10th December. There have been some objections to the scheme but the Council looks set to say yes. The info is all at this link. The item is a few items down.
Liverpool's planning committee will decide next week (10 Dec) on whether it's OK for the phone mast on Brodie Avenue (opposite number 192) to be replaced with a bigger one, and new cabinets. Last time work was done here it caused real problems and residents are unhappy with the way the phone company has behaved. Some have also objected, along with my colleague Cllr Richard Oglethorpe, to parts of this application. The Council looks set to say yes though. The papers for the meeting, including a report on the phone mast issue , are at this link (it's the very ...
From Sheena Wellington: As has become traditional, Friends of Wighton's last Lunchtime Recital of the year will feature the Wighton Singers in a programme of songs with a seasonal touch. It's been a busy time for the group who meet every Tuesday afternoon. As well as having performed at the McManus on Christmas Light Night and at the Wighton Heritage Centre's 10th Birthday celebrations, they also presented a selection for St Andrews Day in the Central Library foyer last Saturday. The Lunchtime Recital takes place in the Wighton Heritage Centre, Central Library, Dundee on Wednesday 4th December at 1.15pm and ...
Social media has many uses, but one I had not considered before is to help track down evaders. According to this website, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs Inspectors are increasingly turning to Google Street View as a monitoring tool to catch suspected tax evaders. UHY Hacker Young, which is one of the top 20 accounting firms have said, that based on recent cases, HMRC are using Google to try to prove people have undeclared income:UHY Hacker Young: Street View provides a kerbside view of homes and businesses, giving inspectors a quick way to assess a person's lifestyle and see whether ...
Speaking before the publication of the highly anticipated PISA results expected later today, the Welsh Liberal Democrats have outlined the progress they believe is needed if Wales is to be in the top 20 countries by 2015. The Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) tests the knowledge and core skills of 15-year-olds as they near the end of their compulsory education. After Wales' disappointing PISA scores in 2009, the Welsh Labour Government has repeatedly stated its target for Wales to be amongst the top 20 countries by 2015. Michael Davidson, head of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) ...
The council has agreed to removing the bus signs in Bloomfield Road. The council had been trying to get the bus company to run a service along Bloomfield Road, it would have served the Odd Down cycle track, but with no success. We have seen a number of people waiting for a bus at the stops. We hope that eventually the bus company will see sense and have buses run along Bloomfield Road as we know
We have asked for the sign directing traffic to Odd Down football club removed from the Wellsway now that Combe Hay Lane is blocked outside St Gregory's
