With York still in many readers' minds, this is a good time to post this photograph. St Helen's Square is famous for Betty's, but when I was a student there was an even classier establishment across the road. Terry's shop sold chocolate downstairs and had wonderful tearooms upstairs. Thinking about it, the business may have closed while I was living in the city. Today the building is occupied by the jewellers Swarovski - I seem to recall the National Railway Museum had a shop there for a while. Though the passers-by are doing their best to disguise the fact, you ...
Warrington Worldwide is reporting that the prospective Lib Dem candidate will be Judith Wheeler
Conservative Seat. Resignation
Labour seat. Resignation
Conservative seat. Resignation
Con Seat. Death
Lab Seat, Resignation Lib Dem candidate is Anne Mead (clive.mead@btinternet.com) For more information please see:
Lab Seat. Death
Lab Seat. Death
Con Seat. Death
Celebrating this blog's 10th birthday the other day - and thank you for all the kind comments - I said I would look through its archive and see if any posts would bear republishing. This is an example of House Points, the weekly column I wrote for the late, lamented Liberal Democrat News for many years. It appeared in the paper, and on this blog, in April 2004. The writing's on the wall Charles Kennedy was missing on Monday. Not from the Commons - he was there to hear Tony Blair describe how well things are going in Iraq - ...
We have an increasingly desperate issue about the Dulwich Medical Centre failing its patients: But we also have the same problem at the Melbourne Grove GP: Have you been affected? We really need residents to formally complain. Many have they told me but nothing changes.
Next week (18th – 21st March 2014) is postgraduate focus week at the University of Leicester. If you're interested in finding out more about postgraduate study, you will be able to chat to staff and students online here, or if you're able to make it in person to Leicester on Wednesday, there's an open day in the Percy Gee Students' Union Building running between 3pm and 8pm. For anyone interested in becoming a taught masters distance learner like me, there's an online chat session all about distance learning between 6pm and 7pm on Tuesday, with another online chat session available ...
Apparently the Royal Mail have stated that they will not paint a mail box gold for Northern Ireland's own golden girl Kelly Gallagher. They say the the 59 gold post boxes for the Olympians and 50 for the Paralympians were for a unique occurrence. With 109 of them that is new definition of unique. But initially there were only 106 of them all of which were on the GB part of Team Great Britain and Norther Ireland. The other three were awarded for five gold medals one for Bethany Firth in Seaforde, County Down, and for their two gold medals ...
Sooner or later Labour governments run into a paradox. The more ambitious their spending plans get, the more they have to tax the very people those plans are intended to help. So I was happy to support the Liberal Democrat policy of significantly raising the tax threshold to take a lot of poorer people out of the system altogether. And pleased to see the Coalition put the policy into effect so that people do not pay tax on the first £10,000. Now the Lib Dems and the Conservatives are engaged into a contest to raise the personal allowance even further. ...
Lewisham Council will be resurfacing Dartmouth Road, SE23 between Thursday 20th March and Wednesday 26th March (but no Saturday and Sunday). The works will be carried out between 9pm and 5.30am, so there will be noise and traffic disruption for residents and businesses at night during that period. The Council have asked that any parked [...]
Thu 13th
20:11
New poll: Voters credit low-earner tax-cuts to Lib Dems, Clegg's ratings spike following Farage deba...
Here's a poll finding that will relieve Lib Dems and worry Tories – according to Ipsos-Mori more voters (45%) credit the Lib Dems with the Coalition's tax-cuts than credit the Tories (33%): [IMG: tax cuts lib dme credit ipsos mori] [IMG: evening standard tax cuts] The findings are in line with some of the Lib Dems' own private polling I've seen. While it might seem self-evident to Lib Dems that the party should get the credit – it was the top demand in the party's 2010 manifesto – the Tories have been trying hard to associate themselves with raising the ...
) I'm very proud to see the council launching a series of short films to demonstrate what it is that we do on behalf of residents and businesses and how we spend your council tax and the other money we take in. The films are called 'Working for Cornwall' because that's what we do every day of the year. The main film is five minutes long and there are three shorter films - all less than a minute - focussing on people, businesses and the environment. All the films present the views of local residents as well as showing the ...
Cornwall Council, in partnership with the Dogs Trust, is running another series of free dog chipping events across Cornwall. To find your nearest event, see the poster. The success of the dog chipping campaign is also celebrated in one of the new short videos produced by the council to show how we spend your council tax. ) Tweet
Ah Germany, the home of beer and wurst and people in leather shorts with braces. And so, naturlich, I am in a bar. With beer. And weisswurst mit sweet mustard. Fortunately, there appears to be nobody in leather shorts, although an accordion player would be tolerable. Nobody has smuggled in a flugelhorn, nor are beer drinking songs being sung... yet (the night is still young though). I freely admit that it didn't take very much to tempt be from my hotel, very nice though it is. When you have an entirely new city to explore, U-bahn to ride and things ...
More from CeBIT – David Cameron talks to CEO Karl-Heinz Streibich and Chancellor Angela Merkel about the benefits of digital technologies such as those provided by Software AG. This is very important for the future of Europe, because we need to be more competitive, we need to be more productive, we need to keep our costs down and digital technology can be a very big part of that. We shouldn't just talk about it, we need to make sure that Angela and I at the European Union, that we make sure we complete the digital single market - that must ...
Thu 13th
17:03
IC2218 from Cologne to Hamburg - which one of my fellow passengers isthe most likely murderer?
Whilst my arrival into Cologne was delayed by about twenty minutes, the DB Lounge was very comfortable, and had wi-fi, thus the postings earlier. However, time waits for no bureaucrat (except if tea is involved, naturally), and I had a connection to make... which was running fifteen minutes late from Stuttgart - so much for this German efficiency I hear so much about. The train pulled in, only to reveal an unexpected treat - six seat compartments. Better still, I had a window seat for my four hour journey to Hamburg. My fellow passengers looked relatively normal, a smartly dressed ...
I spent Tuesday night attending a meeting at Southport Town Hall.It was the last meeting of the Performance and Corporate Services Overview and Scrutiny Committee. All such committees are chaired by Labour chairs and all receive an extra financial allowance for their duties, to the tune of £4,260. The purpose of the scrutiny committees is to scrutinise the decisions made by the all Labour Cabinet, which begs the obvious question of how can a Labour chair scrutinise his own Labour masters? My reason for this posting however, is to take a look at the the financial gains made by the ...
[IMG: Senior citizens dancing pensioners Some rights reserved by StevenM_61] Last summer, Nick Clegg asked me to chair a working group looking at the issues of an ageing society and how Government should respond. The UK population is living longer and today there are more people over the age of 65 in the UK than there are children under 15. This change is a direct consequence of public policy, of bearing down on preventable deaths. But an unsophisticated debate about the impact of ageing has portrayed this as a disaster. Our everyday language tends to stigmatise, portraying ageing as a ...
Annabelle Fuller, who denies having an affair with UKIP leader Nigel Farage, seems to have hit out with a transphobic remark against the former UKIP MEP who made the allegations
The crisis in the Ukraine is showing that a cherished principle of international politics does as much harm as good In a few days the Crimea will go to the polls in a referendum on whether to join the Russian federation. Leaving aside the difficulty of conducting a free and fair election in a region [...]
[IMG: image] We Lib Dems do not need persuading of the merits of the Co-operative Movement. Founded in Rochdale in the 1840s, it continues to this day to provide an alternative model for business. However, it cannot be said that there are many takers for this business approach. Apart from a good number of small co-operatives, there are two dominant players. The John Lewis Partnership, which is owned by its employees, and the Co-operative Group, owned by its members. John Lewis is a success. It is often cited as an example for others. Not so the Co-operative Group which seems ...
After having fought the Crimean War, Russia felt that its possessions in North America were vulnerable from attack by Britain from British North America (Canada) in the event of the outbreak of future hostilities. Tsar Alexander II resolved that it was better to get something in exchange for what is now Alaska than to lose it and be left empty handed. And so what is called in the United States the Alaska Purchase took place in 1867, turning sovereignty over Russian North America to the United States, in exchange for $7.2 million ($116 million in today's money). Could a similar ...
Thu 13th
14:09
Seven Reasons to Kill Someone (Involving Palaeontology) 4: Gastric Flora in a Tyrannosaurid
But I don't want to cut for spoilers. What do you mean, you still haven't seen the episode? Fine. Everyone else, I'll see you below the cut. Okay. so in Dead Clade Walking, the murder is committed alongside the destruction of a fossil that, on its own, disproved a theory so important, so world changing to the murderer in question that it would ruin his career if it was found out. That fossil was a non-avian dinosaur younger than sixty-five million years old. That... really isn't enough to get anyone to kill anyone, I'm afraid. There is no important, career ...
[IMG: taguri] Later this month Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats will be holding the first of several action days in Brent Central to help the excellent Ibrahim Taguri get elected. We will also be doing everything we can to encourage party members to get out and secure a victory for Ibrahim in 2015. On paper this may look like an uphill task - defending a wafer-thin majority against Labour in a highly multicultural seat. But it really isn't, and here's why... Let's tear up any assumptions that Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities are wedded to Labour. Historically the tendency to ...
Question Asked by Baroness Scott of Needham Market To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their estimate of the number of female directors on FTSE 100 boards.[HL5589] The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Viscount Younger of Leckie) (Con): There are around 229 female Executive and Non-Executive Directors on FTSE 100 boards. Women now account for 20.4% of board members in FTSE 100 companies (figures from January 2014), up from 12.5% in February 2011. Government supports a voluntary business-led approach for increasing the number of women on FTSE boards and, following Lord Davies's recommendations, set a ...
Thu 13th
12:54Jeremy Browne questions wisdom of ratchet effect on tax cuts while the deficit remains so high
[IMG: Jeremy Browne] The Huffington Post reports some interesting comments by Jeremy Browne, Lib Dem MP for Taunton Deane and former foreign and home office minister. Browne expresses reservations over campaigns to raise the threshold further as a method of seeking to attract credit for the policy, suggesting that the Lib Dems should do so by reminding voters of the substantial increase that has already taken place. Here's an excerpt from the piece: A former Lib Dem minister has criticised Nick Clegg's flagship policy of pushing to increase the amount of money people can earn before the pay income tax. ...
My train was, somewhat unexpectedly, five minutes late. It did look good though... First class on ICE trains comes with waiter service, very efficient waiter service, in fact, but on the Brussels to Cologne route what doesn't seem to exist is wi-fi, which wasn't expected either. It is all a bit stark though, with the designer having clearly exchanged notes with his opposite number at Eurostar, using a palette consisting almost entirely of shades of grey, made even more cold by the leather seats - unlike Eurostar who at least have cloth upholstery. That said, we were making excellent time ...
From the Manchester Ship canal, built thanks largely to Irish 'navvies' in the 19th century, to the thousands of Irish fans who throng to Manchester at the weekends to watch [...]
Having been to Spring Conference, I was interested to see that a new spring seems to be in Nick Clegg's step, ever since he successfully challenged Nigel Farage to sign up to a debate on Europe. I also feel quite positively about this myself, proving that once again, if I agree with my leader his move is wise, politically adept and bound to improve our chances in the election. Of course if I don't, he's misguided, unaligned with the membership and destined to take us into political oblivion. The truth is likely somewhere between. But back on point, I was ...
Now that I have reason to come to Brussels from time to time, I have a hotel that I prefer, in a neighbourhood that I like, the Holiday Inn Brussels-Schuman. And so, with an overnight stop, it made sense to book a night there. The hotel is just off the Schuman rondpoint, and is very convenient for the 'EU Zone' to the east of the centre of Brussels, but it is also close to Place Jourdan, home to Maison Antoine, allegedly the best frites stand in the city, and a number of nice bars and restaurants. I also like the ...
Laura Kuenssberg's return has been well received by most Newsnight viewers. Some of her fellow journalists seem to be determined to subject her to chauvinistic slurs to demean her. Laura
[IMG: row of potted trees] The council tax is unlovely and unloved. It was rushed into being as a replacement for the hated poll tax. Its structure has always been an uncomfortable compromise, somewhere between a charge for services and a genuinely progressive property tax. The property values upon which it is based haven't been uprated for twenty years in England and Scotland and ten years in Wales. This means that, because local housing markets have traced out different trajectories, the relativities built in to the council tax bandings bear very little relationship to the current distribution of property values. ...
I found myself delving deeper into Croydon's peculiar library service yesterday, and I have to say I'm even more confused than I was before. The service is flexible and human and able to order me books from anywhere and send them anywhere. Their people in libraries are brilliant and helpful. But there remains a mystery. I was reminded of it when I was searching for a copy of Gulliver's Travels in Croydon's central Library. There wasn't one in any of the branch libraries (except one) and I had to order a battered old copy of Swift's collected works from the ...
[IMG: Campaigning on the doorstep - Lynne Featherstone] Later this month Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats will be holding the first of several action days in Brent Central to help the excellent Ibrahim Taguri get elected. We will also be doing everything we can to encourage party members to get out and secure a victory for Ibrahim in 2015. On paper this may look like an uphill task - defending a wafer-thin majority against Labour in a highly multicultural seat. But it really isn't, and here's why... Let's tear up any assumptions that Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities are wedded ...
Here are some photos from York taken by the LDV team: The Yorkshire Contingent on stage at the Glee Club. And is that Jennie Rigg in a DRESS? [IMG: Yorkshire Glee Club] And there's Dr Huppert warming up for the debate on surveillance with a new version of Every Breath you Take [IMG: Every Breath you Take] Liberal Democrat Women on their stall with their swanky new banner [IMG: LDW stall] A henna Libby on Kavya Kaushik's hand [IMG: Kav and Libby] Norman Lamb is interviewed on end of life care [IMG: Norman Lamb being interviewed]
[IMG: New york police Some rights reserved by Amiga-Commodore] Development Minister Lynne Featherstone spent two days in New York earlier this week at the United Nation's annual Commission on the Status of Women. She posted a series of blogs from the Big Apple. Here are some highlights. Day One: I'll be attending a whole load of events as well as talking to my counterparts from around the world to ensure the CSW negotiations lead to a commitment to finish the job of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and to support the inclusion of a stand-alone goal on women and girls ...
Thu 13th
09:00
My column for ConHome: The immigration choice for the Conservatives - pro-business, or pro-UKIP?
[IMG: con home cartoon] Here's my latest The Other Side column for ConservativeHome, published here on Tuesday. Who'd have thought a column talking about immigration, Europe and Ukip would get their readership so exercised? My thanks as ever to the site's editors, Paul Goodman and Mark Wallace, for giving a Lib Dem space to provoke – constructively, I hope. Maybe, just maybe, James Brokenshire has done the Conservatives a favour. His speech last week – blaming "the wealthy metropolitan elite who wanted cheap tradesmen and services" for busting the Tories' nonsensical net migration target - was so comically inept that ...
At the request of residents, I raised concerns about the lack of safe crossing points at the Ninewells Avenue/Perth Road roundabout. I raised this with the City Council's Network Management Team and have been advised as follows: "... there (are) no plans to provide a controlled pedestrian crossing at this location but there (are) plans to provide a new footway link across Ninewells Avenue linking Tom MacDonald Avenue to Perth Road complete with drop kerbs. Due to the level difference between the footway and carriageway on the north side of Ninewells Avenue some further design will be required to provide ...
Dundee Libraries are working with Cargo Publishing to launch an exciting new book competition. Could you write a book for children aged 9-12 about Dundee during the Great War? If so, more information about the competition can be found here. The winning entry, judged by school children in Dundee, will win £2,500 as well as having their book published by Cargo Publishing. The deadline for entries is 31st August 2014. For further information or to receive a pack through the post, please contact bookprize@leisureandculturedundee.com.
Thu 13th
08:00
Lib Dems Win Concessions On Cuts To Children's Centres And Winter Gritting From Tories
The Conservative run County Council have approved a budget based on a 1.99% council tax increase and severe cuts to services. The Liberal Democrat group opposed the Tory budget, saying the proposals made unacceptable cuts to services for the most vulnerable. Some Lib Dem proposals, such as reduced cuts to children's centres and winter gritting were accepted, but the over-all picture remains very bleak. "This Conservative budget, supported by local Conservative Councillors, remains a shocking reflection of the way the Tories have run the council for the past 20 years. We are pleased they have listened a little and found ...
At their Spring Conference in York Liberal Democrats passed the policy motion, Making Migration Work for Britain (see the policy paper here - via Google Drive). This motion replaces previous policy on migration and is based on the following key principles: Security and firm control - To take back control of Britain's borders, Liberal Democrats would as an urgent priority, ensure entry and exit checks are fully implemented.Growth and prosperity - Ensure a strong economy by encouraging students, business visitors and tourists who help growth, to come to the UK.Compassion and fairness - Ensure a fairer, more united Britain by ...
In August, scientists and policymakers will meet in Auckland to debate the politics and practice of scientific advice In the five years since he was appointed as New Zealand's first science adviser, Sir Peter Gluckman has earned a reputation as one of the world's most thoughtful practitioners at the interface between science, society and public policy. In 2009, after a distinguished career in medical research, focused on how a baby's environment between conception and birth determines its life-long health, Gluckman was invited by John Key, New Zealand's newly-elected Prime Minister, to create and lead the Office of the PM's Science ...
2015 will mark 800 years since the Magna Carta was signed forcing King John to guarantee certain rights and freedoms. This historic document and what it represents is admired around the world as a symbol of liberty - the first occasion the people of England were granted rights against an absolute king. Unlock Democracy are conducting a survey of what changes think should be done now to protect and improve our democracy: TAKE PART IN OUR SURVEY This is a national conversation to gather people's views on what a 21st century Magna Carta should look like - and what kind ...
Today's Western Mail reports on the continuing saga of Wales' poor English Language GCSE results. The paper presents a dossier of evidence compiled by headteachers at more than 100 schools evidencing the impact of the new marking system on pupils and teachers.. They say that headteachers' union ASCL Cymru have reported that schools across Wales are "at a loss" as to what to do after a sudden and unexplained dip in January's GCSE English language grades, which had left experienced staff questioning their ability to teach. The union says that results published last week put at risk confidence in Wales' ...
Welsh Liberal Democrats believe that the Welsh Labour Government should make the most of EU Membership to build Wales's economic future. Figures obtained by the Welsh Liberal Democrats show that Wales is net beneficiary from being a member of the EU. Not only is Wales a net beneficiary from being a member of the EU, but in fact Wales gets double its investment back in grants alone. The £650 million Wales receives each year supports our agricultural sector directly and helps us develop the capacity to grow our economy in Wales' poorest communities. Any development strategy to grow the Welsh ...
Senator Dick Burr: Dr. Martin, how many Canadians die on waiting lists each year, do you know? Dr. Martin: I don't sir, but I do know that 45,000 die in America because they don't have insurance at all. BOOM! She knocks it out of the park. Watch this clip to see a superb Canadian doctor effortlessly bat away Republican senator Dick Burr's questions and red herrings about a single-payer health system.
Despite their obvious differences, there is one thing that unites significant sections, if not all, of the Conservative and Labour parties: contempt for the Liberal Democrats. An Economist Intelligence Unit report from just a few weeks ago highlighted how the Tories' contempt for the Lib Dems could well have the result of putting David Cameron out of office after the next general election, due to be held in May 2015. (I would quibble with the author's assertion that many Conservatives "now are" contemptuous of the Lib Dems: 'twas ever thus). As the EIU hints, neither Labour nor the Tories have ...
