I was doing some late night checking of Twitter in relation to the fact that the LGBT+ Lib Dems Website was blocked under Talk Talk's porn filter and came across this converstation. Fortunately for Talk Talk we are outside an election period at the moment or else there could be implications from the fact that they are blocking both the Lib Dems and UKIP's LGBT websites but not that of Labour or the Conservatives. It means that they are able to differentiate sites and someone should have spotted this for the other political parties assuming that the Conservative and Labour ...
Well you would think so if his online Christmas card is to be believed...
In Nottingham looking for the Five Leaves Bookshop last Saturday, I came across this piece of Victorian fantasy. It turned out to be the offices of the local architect Watson Fothergill, who was responsible for many buildings in the city and beyond. Among them are the former home of the Nottingham Express, with its busts of Gladstone, Cobden and Bright and plaque to the memory of Graham Greene, who used to work there as a journalist.
[IMG: Ibrahim Taguri selected for Brent Central] Brent Central Liberal Democrats have selected Ibrahim Taguri as their successor to Sarah Teather to stand at thee 2015 General Election. Ibrahim born in Brent, grew up in Willesden Green and has spent many years working in the charitable sector. Ibrahim said, I'm delighted to have won the backing of local party members. I am determined to carry in Sarah Teather's excellent legacy as Brent's local MP, fighting for better schools and more jobs locally. I've already been talking to local people about the issues that matter to them most and how let ...
There were rumours circulating on Twitter last night that Lord Janner, the former Labour MP for Leicester West, had been arrested. I was not going to repeat them without an authoritative source (remember silly Sally Bercow?), but now the story has made the newspapers. In fact Lord Janner has not been arrested, but his London home has been searched by Leicestershire police. As the Ham & High tells it: Leicestershire Police officers searched a luxury flat belonging to Lord Greville Janner, 85, in West Heath Road on Monday and Tuesday. A spokesman for the force said officers had travelled to ...
Blyth Town Council is now closed for the holiday period The office will re-open on Monday 6th January If any resident has an urgent need to contact the council then please contact your local councillor or Northumberland County Council who will try to assist
Fri 20th
17:43
This week's by-elections: a come from behind upset in Lincolnshire brightens an otherwise grim scene...
Lincolnshire wasn't kind to Liberal Democrats in the 2013 County elections, with our vote share dropping by three-quarters and two of our five seats lost, so a December by-election in Scotter Rural wouldn't have seemed to be promising much other than more pain, especially with UKIP in second place in May, but in a fine rebound, the seat was gained from the Conservatives on a 22% swing. Scotter Rural by-election: Lesley Rollings (Lib Dem) 746; Richard Butroid (Con) 348; Nick Smith (UKIP) 264; Chris Darcel (Lincs Ind) 137 — Lincs County Council (@LincolnshireCC) December 20, 2013 Many congratulations to Lesley ...
Almost exactly a year ago, former Lib Dem East Dunbartonshire council leader John Morrison died after being assaulted o on the way home from a night out in Glasgow. Today, the BBC reports:: A man has been convicted of killing a former East Dunbartonshire council leader days before Christmas last year. Darren Murphy, 25, punched 50-year-old John Morrison on the head in Dunlop Street, Glasgow, on 22 December, causing him to fall over. Mr Morrison died after striking his head on the ground. Murphy left him in the street to go to a nightclub. There is quite a lot more ...
It's Christmas, so bring on the lists! Here are the people who were essential to follow in 2013, and who you should make sure you're following in 2014. Some I'm sure you will know, but I do hope you find at least a couple of new and interesting people to follow. I'm sure I've missed [...]
The contrast between Amy and Penny has always bothered me but I couldn't work out if that was me over-analysing things. Jaclyn Munson would probably argue that there is something in my unease. She's branded Sheldon's love interest Amy Farrah Fowlet as one of the 10 most sexist characters on TV: The conceptualization of Amy's [...]
Labour wants to get back into Government in eighteen months, yet the sum total of their plan seems to be a single promise to temporarily freeze energy bills. As always, if it sounds too good to be true, it is: the energy companies would simply hike up prices before and after the freeze and Labour could do nothing to stop them. But even worse is what this promise says about Labour. They honestly believe that they can walk back into Downing Street with a giveaway here, a gimmick there, but no credible economic strategy. Do you know why Ed Miliband ...
Yesterday, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announced it would reduce or 'taper' its level of QE acquisitions from $85 billion a month to $75 billion. In the physical world it was not a touch on the break so much as a slight easing of pressure on the accelerator. Back in September the FOMC had announced it thought the time for 'tapering' was at hand. Long term interest rates (a window on future expectation for growth and inflation) veered up and down as markets tried to gauge the warring claims of the liquidity, income and expectation effects. No clarity: US ...
One of the very first lessons that stuck when I started out on my psychology degree in 2007 was never to suggest in an essay that the results of a psychological experiment either proved or disproved something. This is because psychological researchers always express their results with reference to the probability that their findings might have been arrived at by chance. It's common for researchers to reject this notion if the calculated probability of that having happened is less than 1 in 20. More precisely, researchers often state that their results are statistically significant if the probability of the null ...
You guys all know that I self-identify as feminist. I am very pro-equality. And yet, and yet... The subject of positive discrimination has been raising it's ugly head again, and it has been a while since I fully elucidated how I feel about it. The first time I posted substantively about this was in July 2008 and my views have shifted slightly but not much since then, so this is going to be basically an update of that post from 08, edited for more current examples and to remove some of my own bad wording* Why I am Against Positive ...
LD Lesley Rollings 726 (49.2; +26.3) Con 348 (23.6; -18.4) UKIP 264 (17.9; -7.1) Lincolnshire Independent 137 (9.3; +9.3) [Lab (0.0; -10.1)] Majority 378 Turnout 22.75% LD gain from Con Percentage change is since May 2013.
Ind 529 (51.2; +21.8) Con 219 (21.2; -33.8) LD Barry Charles Coward 148 (14.3; -1.4) UKIP 138 (13.3; +13.3) Majority 310 Turnout 24.93% Ind gain from Con Percentage change is since May 2011.
ALDE has become the first of the European political parties to release its manifesto for next year's European elections. As ALDE Party President, Sir Graham Watson notes; This manifesto is a departure from the norm - it has been forged in the heat of the crisis Europe has been weathering for a number of years now. I am pleased that it demands a stronger union to serve our interests while calling for a cutback in top-heavy, unnecessary and costly bureaucracy. A stronger, simpler union is what we all want and need and that is what our manifesto delivers. It is ...
Con 649 (35.5%; +1.7) UKIP 576 (31.5%; +5.1) Lab 346 (18.9%; -2.7) LD Anna Barbara Hall 201 (11.0%; -7.2) Grn 55 (3.0%; +3.0) Con Hold Majority 73 Turnout 23.1% Percentage change is since May 2013
Con 414 (45.6%; -15.1) UKIP 269 (29.6%; +29.6) Lab 103 (11.3%; -2.3) LD Anne-Marie Lucraft 91 (10.0%; -15.6%) Grn 31 (3.4%; +3.4) Con Hold Majority 145 Turnout 24.8% Percentage change is since May 2011
Con 266 (50.3%; -19.9) UKIP 263 (49.7%; +49.7) [Lab 0 (-29.8%)] Con Hold Majority 3 Turnout 16.9% Percentage change is since May 2011
Lab 227 (45.8%; -13.5) UKIP 122 (24.6%; +24.6) Ind 79 (15.9%; 8.3) Con 55 (11.1%; -5.5) PC 13 (2.6%; +2.6) Lab Hold Majority 105 Turnout not known Percentage change is since May 2012
Lab 744 (51.9%; -15.2) Con 325 (22.7%; +1.1) UKIP 252 (17.6%; +17.6) Grn 60 (4.2%; +4.2) LD Wendy Connor 53 (3.7%; -7.7) Lab Hold Majority 419 Turnout 14.1% Percentage change is since May 2011
As many readers will remember, during the debate on motion F17 at Autumn Conference many speeches were made by technically inclined LibDem members describing how the proposed porn blocks would not work, and in particular would misclassify and block legitimate websites as containing pornographic content. Just in case we needed confirmation that we were right, TalkTalk have provided it... by classifying the LGBT+LD portion of the party website as porn. In addition, the website of LGBT charity "London Friend" has been blocked. These are not isolated incidents. Wired has a more in-depth write-up of sites which have been blocked by ...
Fri 20th
13:37
Bad Business, Bad Democracy, Bad Management: Secret £100,000 Loan for Folkestone Arch Slammed
[IMG: Plans kept secret] Sandgate Councillor Tim Prater has slammed the way that £100,000 of Shepway funds were promised to Step Short to pay additional costs on the Folkestone Memorial Arch project without public, cabinet or Council agreement. A paper "for noting" the payment was tabled at Wednesday evening's Cabinet meeting, but the decision had already been made by Shepway Council Leader David Monk and promised to Step Short. A number of Shepway Cabinet members expressed reservations about and even voted against the funding. The funding comes on top of £200,000 already agreed through Council and an additional £40,000 for ...
An investigation by Herts County Councillor Stephen Giles-Medhurst, Leader of the Liberal Democrat Group, has revealed that the Conservative-run County Council has spent over £7m on securing and heating some 29 empty properties it owns around the County. This includes no less than five schools it has closed down. [IMG: Staggering large amounts have been spent on some sites such as the former Little Furze School in South Oxhey which the county closed back in 2004 has seen a spend of £734,366 on security, rates and electric bills – the latter was over £100,000. Meanwhile the Bill Everett site ...
Here's today's hand-picked selection that caught my interest... Season's Greetings from the University of Oxford – YouTube Not bad. Not bad at all. "Season's Greetings from the @UniofOxford" http://bit.ly/1cW9Yt9 UK politicians tweeted a record 922,000 times in 2013 94,675: the number of tweets sent by Lib Dem MPs in 2013 http://bit.ly/18CIsRV The 21 Most Bizarre Political Moments Of 2013 A bit too much Keith Vaz but hey-ho > The 21 Most Bizarre Political Moments Of 2013 http://bzfd.it/18CFih0 This was not the morning for the Today programme to give Anjem Choudary a platform Good stuff from @sundersays > This was not ...
Some good pre-Christmas news to report... Councillor Benjamin Dennehy has been refused permission to proceed with his judicial review challenge of the Standards Committee decision, by the High Court, which found he had breached Ealing Council's Code of Conduct for Councillors and had not treated others with respect. Myself happy with the High Court's decision My complaint stemmed from a blog post that Councillor Benjamin Dennehy wrote where he wrote comments about Indians and those living in Southall. Councillor Dennehy referred to Southall being the "home to the worst concentration of illegal immigrants in the UK". Councillor Dennehy then referred ...
[IMG: Christmas Tree] If you have a real Christmas tree Shepway District Council will collect it for recycling (composting) after Christmas, free of charge, from the boundary of your property between Monday 13th January and Friday 7th February 2014. To receive a collection: If you are a garden waste subscriber all you have to do is place your tree out at the boundary of your property, on your usual garden waste collection day, and it will be collected. Alternatively; If you do not subscribe to our garden waste service, please place your tree out at the boundary of your property, ...
It is a tradition for LDV to bring its readers copies of our new MPs' and Peers' first words in Parliament, so that we can read what is being said and respond. You can find all of the speeches in this category with this link. Last Thursday, Lord Verjee made his maiden speech in the House of Lords during a debate on the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. His words are reproduced below. Lord Verjee (LD): My Lords, it is with a very full set of emotions that I stand before noble Lords this afternoon to make ...
I always read Anthony Hilton's finance column in the Evening Standard, and I always learn something from it. He doesn't regard the duty of a financial columnist, as some do, to cheerlead for the financial sector. So I was especially pleased to see his column earlier this week, writing about the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) and their report suggesting that people born in the 1960s and 1970s would be less well off than those born in the 1940s and 1950s. I was born on the glorious cusp: 1958, which makes me sitting marginally pretty - though not as pretty ...
On Monday the Airports Commission, chaired by Lord Howard Davies, produced its interim report. The Commission was set up to make recommendations on the expansion of airports in and around London, which has become a politically vexed question. To most people, this complex question is viewed through a single dimension, such as whether or not Heathrow will be expanded. As a result, most of the commentary has been very shallow. To me its conclusion is obvious: it will recommend building another runway at Gatwick airport, and all the other airport expansion ideas will be put on ice for 20 years ...
The bad news is that I seemed to have overlooked the fact that Alix Mortimer has started blogging again — why did nobody tell me? The good news is that I now have loads of extremely well written, and funny, posts to read to catch up — and mostly about history too. [IMG: :-)]
Courtesy of John Rentoul, news reaches us of a list of the ten most active MPs on Twitter in 2013. [IMG: top tweeters] Yes, it's our Tim and our Julian at the top of the list, with an honourable mention for Greg Mulholland. Tim has managed an incredible fifty tweets a day this year, and probably should avoid piers for a while. And for anyone out there who wonders, it is him, and not a staffer, as those of us who have discovered that, by mentioning Tim in a tweet, you do tend to get his attention. I tested the ...
Fifteen years on, it's probably about time I got round to blogging about the overall winner of the 1998 New Statesman International Cartoon Competition. It was Borislav Stankovic, who drew the brilliant cartoon below and more of whose cartoons can be viewed here. [IMG: Borislav Stankovic cartoon]
In the Daily Mirror, MP for Wells, Tessa Munt (and potential candidate to be Deputy Leader?), has been taking our case to its readers; We've delivered more policies we've been working on for some time - like free school meals for primary school children, a supermarket Ombudsman and shared parental leave. Most importantly of all, we've done even more to make our tax system fairer – taking the low paid out of paying income tax altogether and nailing an agreement to give workers a bonus of over £700 in April next year by raising the point when you start paying ...
So, I wrote a piece for the NewStatesman yesterday, opining that I hoped one of the 2 women eligible to be the new Deputy leader of the Lib Dems (Tessa Munt and Lorely Burt) emerged from the pack victorious. I was, in truth, quite pleased with it. We have a huge under representation of women in the party in the House of commons (7 out of 57 MPs and none in the cabinet) and this seemed the perfect opportunity to get a woman into a high profile position in the party - which I thought (and still think) would be ...
Fri 20th
09:35What Lib Dem members think about the way the Coalition is cutting spending to reduce the deficit
Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Some 750 party members responded – thank you – and we're publishing the full results. The economy may be recovering but cuts to public spending are going to be with us for some time no matter who's in government. I wanted to test attitudes among Lib Dems to how the cuts are being handled. The questions below mirror those which have been asked by YouGov since summer 2010 (you can access the ...
Scenes From A Multiverse » The Good Pope (tags: ) Facebook vs Tumblr - this is why I have the one and not the other ;) (tags: ) I Rewatched Love Actually and Am Here to Ruin It for All of You Another salvo fired in the "is Love Actually shit or not?" war that's bubbling beneath the surface in the Lib Dems at the moment (tags: ) If you've not seen yet: Porn filters fail to block porn but do block sex education websites Hands up everybody who is surprised. Anyone? ... Anyone....? *tumbleweed* *bell tolling in distance* (tags: ...
Alcohol is icky – so much so that not drinking at all seems like the best idea. Professor David Nutt – the man sacked as chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs for relying on statistics not sensationalism – argues that the safest approach to alcohol is to avoid it altogether: The [...]
[IMG: Sivuqaq the walrus] There appears to be no escape from day editor duty for this walrus, but it's the last Friday before Christmas, Parliament has adjourned until 7 January, and most of you are beginning to think about presents, turkey and things that rhyme with holly. However, my colleagues in LDV Towers are still beavering away, and there's still quite a lot happening, so let's see what we've got today. We've got some good news from Lincolnshire, with a marvellous by-election gain, and the pan-European Liberal manifesto for next year's elections has been published. Whilst some of our readers ...
[IMG: Lorely Burt] Politics isn't an individual pursuit. It's a team effort. That's why choosing the best person to fill a vacancy isn't just about the individual, it's about the rest of the team and who will best compliment others to produce the overall strongest team. Obvious perhaps, but there's the comment so often heard in the Liberal Democrats that filling posts 'should be just about who the best person for the job is'. True – but usually said in a way that misses the wider point, in that you can only decide who the best person for the job ...
Audra J Wolfe: Outer space is getting more and more crowded. Should the US and Europe be worried? Audra J Wolfe
Last night, after my last ward surgery at Blackness Primary School before the Christmas break, I had the pleasure of attending this year's Harris Academy Christmas Carol Service at Dundee West Church. As always, there was a great turnout of parents, families and other local residents. The Carol Service was a thoroughly enjoyable event - as it is every Christmas - and it highlights the superb musical talents of Harris Academy pupils.
David Cameron has said he keeps a little black book of things the Liberal Democrats have stopped him doing in Government. Here are a few things we think are probably in it: Inheritance tax cuts for millionairesBringing back O' levels and a two-tier education systemProfit-making in schoolsNew childcare ratiosFiring workers at will, without any reasons givenRegional pay penalising public sector workers in the northScrapping housing benefit for young peopleDitching the Human Rights ActWeakening the protections in the Equalities ActClosing down the debate on TridentThe 'go home' poster vansBoundary changesScrapping Natural EnglandHolding back green energyStopping teachers teaching children about how we ...
An e-mail arrives from Welsh Water inviting me to send out a standard press release for their latest campaign, trying to prevent blocked sewers over Christmas: Don't let blocked sewers ruin your Christmas[INSERT AMs NAME] backs Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water's Let's Stop the Block campaign As Christmas approaches, [INSERT AMs NAME] is backing Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water's Let's Stop the Block campaign in a special effort to avoid festive misery for people in [INSERT CONSTITUENCY NAME]. Blocked sewers are a major problem across Wales which costs Welsh Water over £7 million pounds a year to clear. They cause huge human ...
The most recent figures show unemployment in Wales is continuing to fall, The Economy is picking up and people are starting to feel it, employment figures are continuing to move in the right direction, but there is still a long way to go. The Welsh Liberal Democrats know that what matters to people is not abstract numbers and for everyone currently looking for a job it can be a real struggle and often hugely demoralising. The Welsh Government urgently need to do more however, to help get young people into stable and meaningful employment. Less than half the participants who ...
Lesley Rollings gained a seat on Lincolnshire County Council from the Conservatives last night. The voting figures in the Scotter Rural ward were: Liberal Democrat - 746 (49.2% +26.3) Conservative - 348 (23.6% -18.4) UKIP - 264 (17.9% -7.1) Independent - 137 (9.3% +9.3) Congratulations to Lesley and her team for a tremendous campaign. Perhaps more significant than the defeat of the Conservatives was the failure of UKIP. As their own website said: We came second in this division in May without putting out a leaflet, so we do stand a chance of winning these seats.There was also a by-election ...
