After lunch comes tea, and I had already seen signs saying that they were doing teas in St Paul's, Woodhouse Eaves, that afternoon. The church was built in 1836/7 and one of the benefactors was Sir William Henry Salt, the eldest son of Titus Salt of Saltaire fame. William Henry was married to Emma Harris, the daughter of John Dove Harris, who was twice Mayor of Leicester and one of the city's MPs between 1865 and 1874. He was a Liberal. Inside you will find a tablet to the memory of the Revd A.J.W. Hiley, who was a grandson of ...
Let me get this straight. A vote for UKIP on Thursday which results in a UKIP MEP being elected means that the United Kingdom is sending representatives to sit in the European Parliament who will work their socks off to JEOPARDISE the UK's interests in Brussels. That's about it- right? The election on Thursday is NOT an 'in-out referendum' as to whether the UK remains or leaves the European Union. Yet, people are treating it as if it is. Let me present you with what I think is an illogical argument. Growth and the economy has been the daily mantra. ...
Lord Bonkers writes exclusively for Liberal England: T.E. Lawrence - "Lawrence of Arabia" - died on this day in 1935. I had long been an admirer of his novels and was shocked to hear the news. It later transpired that he died in a motorcycle accident after, uncharacteristically, swerving to avoid two schoolboys.Lord Bonkers went on to assure me that there is no truth in Alan Bennett's suggestion in Forty Years On that Lawrence "was known at school as 'Tee Hee Lawrence' because of his high-pitched girlish giggle".
The Guardian reports: A police chief has said more than half of his force's armed officers could stop carrying weapons because of plans by the police watchdog to ban them from conferring with each other as they write up statements following a shooting.The police chief quoted is Commander Neil Basu of Scotland Yard. But would it be such a tragedy if there were fewer armed police?
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-27473166 The BBC and Liverpool Echo have the story but let's think this through because the fact is that an open prison, like Kennet, will have such problems from time to time. The assessment of an offender for day release may be wrong at times and there is no 100% guarantee that an assessment will get it right. Of course 'lessons will have to be learned' as the old political phrase/excuse goes but we should not think that there will not be problems in the future because there will. If we are to try to rehabilitate offenders as I ...
There has been some degree of amusement in the Lib Dem camp here in Gateshead about a leaflet the Labour party has put out in Whickham North ward. This Lib Dem held marginal ward (our majority is only 4%) has attracted a Labour candidate who spectacularly lost neighbouring Dunston Hill and Whickham East ward in the last local elections. In 2012 he was defending a Labour majority of 600 from the
Yeah I have actually opened and read UKIP Northern Ireland's local government manifesto (even though my DEA does not have a UKIP candidate). What most interested me was their section on social equality (page 8). It starts with a bold statement that most right minded people would not argue with: As a party, which draws support from all ethnicities and from people of all faiths and none, we believe everyone is born equal. We oppose discrimination upon the basis of disability, race, denomination and sexual orientation. Their second point emphasises this point saying that UKIP oppose any special treatment of ...
"Ken Clarke is now a Liberal Democrat in all but name," complains Steerpike on his Spectator blog. This is nonsense. Clarke is a liberal Conservative - a breed that used to be common, but is not almost extinct. And the Conservative Party is much weaker because of it. In his early days as leader, it looked as though David Cameron had grasped that, in order to win a majority, his party had to reach out to voters who are not instinctive Conservative voters. And in order to do that, he would have to reverse its rightward drift. Some even saw ...
Good Luck It 's the final literature push and peak. Start on pre-knocking. Focus on key groups eg Squeeze or switch - last weeks email for details. THINGS TO DO on Thursday Deliver good mornings Get the Vote Out!! Don't stop "knocking up" till 10 Attend the Count DATES FOR YOUR DIARY Deadline for for [...]
More comedy genius from Australia's Clarke and Dawe: You can also watch this on YouTube.
Winning local elections is usually about differential turnouts In many places we don't have a "natural" majority of the electorate. If everybody who voted in the General Election voted in the local elections we would lose the local election. However many general election voters don't vote in local elections and some will vote differently locally [...]
South Manchester Liberal Democrat MP John Leech has become a champion for Sustrans' Campaign for Safer Streets, supporting the right of every child to have a safe walk, bike or scoot to school. John Leech MP said today: "In Manchester, Lib Dems proposed the 20's Plenty speed limit in residential areas, and I am supporting this Sustrans' campaign because every child has the right to a safe walk, bike or scoot to school," John, who last year submitted a road safety bill in the House of Commons, added, "Walking, cycling or scooting to school is a great way to include ...
Following a nomination from local MP John Leech, the Village Tandoori in Chorlton has made the regional finals of the prestigious Tiffin Cup. The Tiffin Cup is awarded every year by the Tiffin Club of MP's. Formed in 2006 and chaired by Keith Vaz MP, the aim is not only to celebrate and applaud the quality of South Asian food in the Britain, but also to raise much needed money for charity. This year's charity is "World Vision" http://www.worldvision.org.uk/ John Leech MP said today, "The curry industry is incredibly important to Manchester and the UK. It is worth £3.6bn and ...
The 2014 count The combination of the Euro Count and the local election counts in many parts of England complicate. Each local authority is doing its own thing on the timing of the various stages of the counts. You will need to look at your local paperwork and talk to your local elections office to [...]
Britain, along with the rest of the EU, faces a very interesting set of elections this week, for the European Parliament. Our polling day is Thursday 22 May, when there are also local elections in many parts of the country, including London, where I live. I am not an impartial observer of these elections, but I do try to express my views dispassionately, and set aside the pure propaganda. Here is what I think of the various contenders. Let's clear the decks a bit. I am thinking mainly about England; my knowledge of the politics of other parts of the ...
[IMG: Town Hall Money] So far this year, the Tory controlled City Council have been complaining that they have no money and that as a result they have had to make some cuts to services. Obviously, they completely fail to make mention of the variety of errors they themselves have made and wasted millions of pounds of local taxpayers money. Rather than cutting spending which supports the most vulnerable members of our society (such as axing Children's Centres) Liberal Democrats want the council to: Sell the Town Hall and move all council staff into new offices which are being built ...
I have received a comment about last week's blog 'Top reasons for voting UKIP?' which asked about point 9, 'Making it legal for a man to rape or assault his wife'. Here is a brief answer to that comment. In 2006 UKIP members voted against a resolution titled "combating violence against women", one which "urges member states" ... "to make rape within marriage a criminal offence". Now UKIP almost always either abstains or votes against absolutely anything and everything which comes up in the European parliament (which is why their claim to "give the UK a voice in Europe" is ...
Jessica Bland was at the BBC in London for the unveiling of the shortlist for the Longitude Prize 2014 a £10m fund to solve one of the greatest problems of our time The six challenges have been announced: Flight, Food, Antibiotics, Paralysis, Water and Dementia. More detail here 1.19pm BST Jessica writes: The success of the Longitude 2014 Prize will depend on its design. As I said earlier, challenge prizes only work well when they open up the problem to a wider pool of people to solve, when those people will make the time to get involved and when it's ...
[IMG: Forth Railway Bridge at North Queensferry Fife Scotland] Nick Clegg is coming to Scotland today to lend his support to George Lyon MEP ahead of Thursday's European elections. He's also going to be speaking to the Scottish Chambers of Commerce in Edinburgh. There has been hardly any mention of actual European issues in this election as politics up here is dominated by the independence referendum. Nick's remarks will concentrate on the question of more powers for the Scottish Parliament. He'll say that a no vote is a positive choice and will repeat his comments on Andrew Marr yesterday that ...
[IMG: Words.] Two popular arguments deployed against immigration are that immigrant's take jobs from British workers or that immigrants are a burden on the welfare state. Both arguments have been shown to be largely invalid: the Lump of Labour fallacy has long been dismissed as economic bunkum; and existing evidence suggests that the net contribution of recent migrants to Britain's public finances is positive. However, according to this evidence from Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM) at University College London not all groups of migrants make a positive fiscal contribution to the UK. Whereas EEA immigrants have made ...
In summer recess I always try to take up a special and extra mission- one that it is not possible to do timewise when Parliament is sitting. One summer I visited on foot as many shops on our local high streets as I could. The single issue that shopkeepers raised with me - over and over and over again – were the problems that their customers had parking - particularly if it was literally to pop and shop for just a few items. Not surprisingly with Labour run Haringey ramping up parking charges to £3.00 an hour in some high ...
[IMG: LD logo] Within a great deal of the Westminster bubble, the demise of the Liberal Democrats post-2015 is taken as a given. A Labour peer once told me, very matter-of-factly, that Nick Clegg was certain to lose his seat. When I told her that given there has never been a constituency poll that has ever revealed this to be true, and the not incidental fact given who the bearer of this information was, that the only beneficiaries would be the Tories, she remain resolute in her conviction that the DPM would be seatless come May 8, 2015. Right, so ...
Years ago I tried to persuade colleagues in the Liberal Democrats about the virtues of having a web address in the party's description and/or logo so that postal voters could easily look up more information before completing their ballot paper. That idea never got very far, though now another party is trying something similar: A party standing in the South East in this year's European Elections has become the first in the country to include a working QR code on the ballot paper. QR stands for Quick Response and YOURvoice has incorporated the device into its official emblem. The Electoral ...
It's been a while since I've updated my blog. I've been so busy talking to thousands of residents across Kilburn ward over the past few months it's been hard to find time to write a post. But with the local elections coming up this Thursday (22 May), I thought it might be helpful to summarise why [...]
[IMG: SONY DSC] £32,000 a year is well above the average wage. Many people earn significantly less. Yet Bristol's Assistant Mayor Gus Hoyt has been moaning on Twitter about his low pay. It all started when someone suggested on Twitter that he might like to go to New York. His reply was that he couldn't afford it. When his correspondent suggested that was a shame, he replied: Yeah, Big time. Am in big job but low pay...local government When Liberal Democrat Councillor Alex Smethurst and his colleague Chris Martin questioned his view of low pay, and a local resident mentioned ...
The Green Party's hostility to free trade would if implemented lock the world's poorest out of the global economy. Thus electing Green MEPs to shape the policies of the world's largest trade block is a dangerous move. The European Union long ago became something more than a simple free trade area. Economic integration has now [...]
Nice positive piece about reasons to vote LibDem in the Euros @emcmillanscott (tags: ) [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
The BBC News Shropshire pages win Headline of the Day.
[IMG: Screen Shot 2014-03-09 at 08.06.08 Liberal Democrats Libby] One of the drawbacks of the way we vote for our MEPs is that so few people know who they are. You don't vote for a person, you vote for a party and the party decides who goes to sit in the European Parliament. I'm not complaining about the PR nature of it, just that one of the drawbacks of the closed list system means that people don't necessarily have that connection with an individual. Our MEPs and candidates are all individuals with different things to offer. George Lyon, in Scotland, ...
After four years in government – four years during which the Liberal Democrats have delivered more progressive policy than ever before – we are facing devastatingly low polling results and the prospect of massive losses in the upcoming local and European elections, not to mention the bleak outlook for next year's general election. What went [...]
Following complaints from residents about a significant amount of fly-tipping in Douglas Street, I contacted the City Council about this. My thanks go to the Environment Department who reacted promptly and made a good job of cleaning the area up (see below). I have also asked the department if it can remove the graffiti at the site. Before After
[IMG: Pile of gold coins] And a reminder of how Labour left things in May 2010: A reminder of how things were when Labour left office... #NoMoneyLeft pic.twitter.com/f9FaQz79Q6 — Mark Pack (@markpack) May 15, 2014 Followed by: [IMG: Ed Balls denies his denial over the structural deficit]
The photo below was taken recently from Poverty Lane (looking over towards School Lane) in Maghull and it shows the massive piece of high grade agricultural land that Labour-run Sefton Council plans to put under tarmac and concrete. [IMG: rsz_from_poverty_ln_tp_school_ln_-_05_2014] As an environmental campaigner I find this act of environmental vandalism hard to take especially because in 1998 I and my Lib Dem councillor colleagues helped lead the Maghull community to rise up and successfully oppose development of this very same site! Now Labour runs both Maghull Town Council (which incredibly has not opposed the building) and Sefton Council which ...
If Nigel Farage is really wondering why it is that the media are only interested in the idiots in UKIP, then the answer lies here. There are just so many idiots that it is difficult to focus anywhere else. In this particular instance, a UKIP council candidate has circulated a letter around his ward advocating that politicians from Britain's three main political parties should be hanged and their voters tried for treason. The Telegraph say that Gordon Ferguson delivered a letter to prospective voters in which he claimed that Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat politicians have committed Britain to "slavery ...
The Labour party is being inconsistent on the issue of ending social care visits that last only 15 minutes. Whilst the Labour party in London claim that they will end '15 minute care' following a report published by the party's Lady Kingsmill, here in Wales, where Labour is in Government, the party has consistently voted against Welsh Liberal Democrat calls to end 15 minutes care. Figures show that 83% of local authorities in Wales commission 15 minute care visits. As with zero hour contacts, we are seeing Labour say one thing in England, but doing the exact opposite in Wales ...
