Gone are the days when I wore a suit to the office. Indeed, gone have the days when I went to an office! Suit wearing for me is now a rare event. Most of the time I'm dressed in baggy trousers and a t-shirt to hangout down on the allotment and muck out the goats. Today however I was back in the suit to visit an allotment. Not my allotment of course. This morning I went instead to the official
There will be quite a carnival atmosphere around Chipping Sodbury and Yate for the next few days as two of our major festivals take place. Chipping Sodbury Festival is already under way, with everything from opera to rock, and from walks to talks. Here are few highlights from the many events: Sunday 15th June - Gloucester Cathedral Choir, St Johns ChurchTuesday 17th June - Music In The Street, an evening of free entertainmentSaturday 21st June - All Day Street Fayre and Carnival Procession (3pm) with Battle of Britain Spitfire and Hurricane flypast at 1.50pmSaturday 21st June - Last Night of ...
Cambridge Liberal Democrats have tonight rejected a resolution calling for a leadership ballot by 45 votes for 32. The Liberal Democrat Constitution makes provision for a leadership contest if 75 local parties vote for one at quorate general meetings. The Cambridge News has the story: Cambridge Liberal Democrats have decided to back Nick Clegg's leadership. Party members voted against calling for a ballot on the leadership at a special general meeting tonight. An election could be called if 75 local associations request it, but that now looks unlikely to happen. The Cambridge meeting was called in the wake of the ...
A bold, somewhat controversial, question, I know, but hear me out... I'm not a Trekkie. I have a nostalgic fondness for the original series, which I watched as a child as a kind of Doctor Who methadone, but I haven't seen an episode of it in something like twenty years. I watched most of Next [...]
Craven Arms is an odd little 19th-century town in Shropshire. It came into being because of a railway junction, was named after a hotel and grew into a major centre for livestock auctions. The livestock has gone and the railway station is not what it was. Today you will find a straggle of light industry and haulage depots, some modern building in the railway yard and opposite the Craven Arms hotel, and a little Victorian town centre just off the main road. Most of the shops are in that town centre, along one side of Corvedale Road - the other ...
Fri 13th
21:40
So, for The Netherlands revenge is a dish best served in a hot sweaty Brazil. June 13, 2014 at 09:39...
June 13, 2014 at 09:39PM via Facebook
via Facebook
Fri 13th
21:22
Nick Clegg will be making a mistake if he appoints Danny Alexander as our economic spokesman for 201...
Andrew Grice makes a worrying claim in the Independent: Nick Clegg is expected to appoint Danny Alexander rather than Vince Cable as the Liberal Democrats' main economic spokesman at next year's general election.His evidence for this is that Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander have jointly written (or rather, I suspect, put their name to) an article for the Indy setting out the Lib Dems' stance on tax and spending in the 2015-20 parliament. I do hope that Nick will not appoint Danny as our economic spokesman at the next election. I have not seen a single media or parliamentary performance ...
South Cambridgeshire Liberal Democrats have selected Sebastian Kindersley as their next Parliamentary candidate. Sebastian, 47, who polled more than 20,000 votes for the Lib Dems in the 2010 election taking the party's share of the vote to 34 per cent, was elected at a meeting of party members on Sunday evening. His election comes ahead of a possible by-election for the seat if South Cambridgeshire MP, Andrew Lansley is appointed the new EU Commissioner. Sebastian is a former Lib Dem leader of South Cambridgeshire District Council. He represents Gamlingay on the district council and Cambridgeshire County Council. "It is a ...
I've been able to do more research since I last wrote about this topic. In his Westminster column in the South Shropshire Journal on 6 June, Ludlow MP Philip Dunne pledged to argue for controversial planning applications to be decided by ministers when they conflict with Shropshire's SAMDev housing plan. I was doubtful about the [...]
The East Anglian Daily Press wins Headline of the Day.
The following notice has been published in relation to the A14 (Girton) improvement works. Basically on Tuesday 17th June the westbound carriage will be closed from 9pm to 6am. Here's the notice in full; Costain is pleased to be working with the Highways Agency on the delivery of planned road improvements on the A14 in Cambridge between J31 at Girton and J32 at Histon. The improvements are part of the targeted improvement and pinch point programme and are by their very nature intended to improve traffic movements through this very busy section of road. The improvements include adding an additional ...
Fraser Nelson writes in the Telegraph of the extraordinary and unexpected success of the coalition in taxing the rich. He says that tax cuts have been viewed with deep suspicion by those around Mr Cameron and it took some time for him to realise that they are often the surest route to recovery and stability. But, then, the top rate of income tax was lowered from 50p to 45p in the pound, and the Liberal Democrats forced the Government to lift three million of the lowest earners out of income tax. As a result millionaires are now paying more tax ...
A great peice here by the Palestinian Ambassador to the UK, Professor Manuel Hassassian, and a UK-based Israeli academic, Professor Raphael Cohen-Almagor, in which they write, re:- a two-state deal: "Israel shall recognise the State of Palestine. Palestine shall recognise the Jewish State of Israel."It is immensely significant for a Palestinian diplomat to write words that imply Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state that will co-exist with a future Palestinian state. Immensely significant, and very welcome, as is his willingness to co-write it with an Israeli author for publication by the pro-Israeli British group BICOM. Also refreshing ...
Some things I've been in to this week: A painting: Last weekend I had a brief look around parts of Tate Modern, having never been and finding myself in the area, but then leaving after not long as it was just so busy. However, this was the painting that stuck in my mind – Seated Woman [...]
Fri 13th
18:25
A nexus approach to global challenges | Michael Bradshaw, Declan Conway and Hayley Leck
Resource challenges are highly interconnected. Can the idea of a food-energy-water 'nexus' become more than another buzzword, and help us to identify solutions? The dramatic spike in resource use over the last two decades, particularly in the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China, has exacerbated the threat of resource scarcity. And the worlds failure to curb emissions of greenhouse gases means that the impacts of climate change will be felt strongly across food, water and energy the three dimensions of the "nexus". It is unsurprising there are increasing calls for innovative ways of approaching these problems. In recent ...
Fri 13th
17:40
Hillsborough and the Sun newspaper – It would be hard to make this up – What on earth di...
DID THEY THINK AT ALL? www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27829958 Here is the sad, sad story as carried by the BBC. Words fail me, they really do THEY SHOULD ALL HANG THEIR HEADS IN SHAME
[IMG: MOD consultation map on Shorncliffe Garrison site development] Sandgate Parish Council will be considering the planning application submitted to SDC by Taylor Wimpey for the Shorncliffe Garrison site at its Planning Committee meeting on Tuesday 17th June at 7pm. Members of the public are welcome to attend any Sandgate Parish Council Planning Committee meeting. Sandgate Parish Council's views are advisory to the Planning Process: the views of Sandgate along other consultees will be taken into account and presented to Shepway District Council Development Control Committee who will make the final decision on any application. Since last year, all applications ...
Fri 13th
14:45
Opinion: Ontario Liberals show real Grit, win a fourth term and make history with the first elected ...
[IMG: Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne] Congratulations to our cousins in the Ontario Liberal Party in Canada who, overnight, have won a remarkable fourth term of provincial government and, at the same time, have made history with leader Kathleen Wynne becoming the first elected LGBT Head of Government in the Commonwealth! Going into the election, the Liberals had been in a period of minority government and Wynne had taken over-a year ago from the by-then unpopular Premier Dalton McGuinty. The party has been in Government in Ontario since 2003 and some pundits had predicted that the opposition Progressive Conservatives (I know, ...
Fri 13th
14:10Clegg's "Parental Guarantee": calls for all schools to employ qualified teachers and teach 'core cur...
[IMG: 05062014 ED Goes Back to School 4] "We are and always will be the party of education and I'll be saying more about that in the near future," promised Nick Clegg in his Bloomburg speech on Monday. Today we saw the start, with the Lib Dem leader setting out the party's Parental Guarantee that "every parent can be confident that their child will be taught a core curriculum by a properly qualified teacher". This isn't actually a new policy. The 'parental guarantee' was first announced last October. And the policy it's based on was passed at the Lib Dems' ...
Meols Ward Lib Dem Councillors John Dodd, Nigel Ashton and Jo Barton are holding their next advice centre on Saturday 14th June, from 11 am to 12 noon at St John's Primary School, Rufford Road, Crossens. We will be there to meet you and discuss any Council problems you may have. No appointment necessary. Just pop in. We hold our advice centre at St John's School, Rufford Road, Crossens every month (except August) on the second Saturday of the month. We also hold a monthly advice centre in Churchtown, at Cafe Moo Moo on Cambridge Road (by the junction with ...
Despite a huge effort to save the well used and much loved Churchtown Library, including a 4,000 signature petition, Sefton Council were determined to close our library. Churchtown Library being demolished. Photo credit Tom Sandham. Churchtown Library shut its doors for the last time in November. Now the building has suffered the final indignity, as residents have watched it being slowly demolished over the last few weeks. The only thing left is for the Council to sell the site off, although whether Sefton will recoup the £70,000 cost of demolishing the library remains to be seen. Councillor Nigel Ashton outside ...
[IMG: Benefits of staying in the UK] Alistair Carmichael, Liberal Democrat Secretary of State for Scotland, has launched a booklet, which will be delivered to every home in Scotland, outlining the case for Scotland to remain in the UK. The key facts from the weighty Scotland Analysis series of papers have been distilled into an easy to read booklet with lots of pretty pictures. I'm glad to see that it really is the key issues – the economy, currency, pensions and international influence that have made it in to the final version. I do sometimes worry that we end up ...
Fri 13th
12:25
Nick Clegg & Ed Miliband photographed with a copy of The Sun - cue over the top reactions across...
Holy crap. Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband have been photographed with a copy of the countries most popular newspaper. Burn them both at the stake now. I mean seriously. Anyone who does that is surely not capable of representing the country. Sometimes politicos live in this ridiculous political bubble where we think we are right and that those who disagree with us are just plain wrong. That is part of politics that I truly despise. Ed Miliband was snapped with a copy of the paper and got an attack from the leader of the Labour group on Liverpool Council. No ...
Were it not for four words in its trailer, I'd likely have barely noticed this little indie film that's only available On Demand rather than in cinemas or as a DVD. Those words were "written by Joss Whedon." To be honest that was probably not a great reason. Not that I don't adore Whedon's work [...]
[IMG: European Flag] All political parties have their blind spots. When policies are not particularly close to their hearts, parties can afford to be critical – examining, debating and 'stress-testing' those policies before approving them. But some policies are too close to the heart; they are 'Articles of Faith', not to be questioned or examined too closely. Articles of Faith sometimes do not get exposed to critical examination, and when contrary evidence is unearthed, it can be pushed aside. It is not surprising that when 'Articles of Faith' are put under the spotlight, they are found wanting. Europe is an ...
Independent 395 LD Joanna Stephanie Matthew 314 Labour 182
[IMG: Relief Road] Following the approval of the planning application for the A6 to Manchester Airport Relief Road by Stockport, Cheshire East and Manchester, we've been waiting for the Secretary of State, Eric Pickles, to decide whether to call the scheme in for a Public Enquiry. We've now been told that the application will not be called in. There will be a Public Enquiry into the Compulsory Purchase and Side Road orders after the summer, but DCLG say a wider public enquiry into the scheme is not necessary. That should allow us to move forward with the scheme, due to ...
You can now buy Crater* (distopian pulp science fiction novella) on Amazon in Kindle Edition format here ~ Crater* You can now buy two of my science fiction short stories in Kindle Edition format on Amazon here ~ Simultaneity ( a sort of stereo dreaming ) and The Double Take And also a selection of my poems here ~ Inside the Quiet Spaces Again
Mark Pack has posted an interesting piece on Liberal Democrat Voice about the "newspaper readership habits of Liberal Democrat voters," using figures that have been calculated from the data provided in The British General Election of 2010. It is interesting that the two papers which treat the Lib Dems with such contempt and bully us daily with nasty smears and exaggerations, the dreadful Daily Mail and The Sun, have the largest Lib Dem readership. Clearly if Lib Dems stopped buying these papers they would be in real trouble.
Dear Nick, I know that lots of people have been giving you advice about what should happen after the European and local elections so I am going to do so as well!! I have been described many times recently as ... Continue reading →
[IMG: The Enemy at the Gate - book cover] Andrew Wheatcroft's history of the Great Siege of Vienna in 1683, The Enemy at the Gate: Habsburgs, Ottomans and the Battle for Europe, is a great account of one of the key moments of conflict between Christianity and Islam in Europe. As with Roger Crowley's Empires of the Sea, which concentrates on an earlier period than this book, it shows how much of Europe's history was shaped by this conflict without lapsing into simplistic stereotypes about one side being the good guys or any inevitable clash of civilisations. Indeed, Wheatcroft is ...
In last month's local elections we lost a group of extremely hardworking Councillors and I want to pay tribute to their work for and with our community. Bill [...]
(all of this puts at too great length what FlipChartRick's greatest Venn Diagram of the Coalition period says in a single picture. One of the weakest and yet most common arguments you will hear about austerity – outside of government, but even, shamefully, within Whitehall – is: we have managed Austerity of X%/year so far. [...]
Not all of my regular readers follow Liberal Democrat Voice, so here's an opportunity to read my piece published there earlier this morning... It seems like mere weeks since the last Council meeting of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in Europe (ALDE), when optimism was in the air - admittedly helped by the presence of our Austrian hosts on that occasion, who were running an unashamedly pro-European campaign. Sadly, just six weeks later, delegates from across Europe gather in Brussels under rather less cheery circumstances. The decimation of the British, German and Italian member parties in the European Parliament, ...
One of my life missions is to inspire people to grow more of the food they consume. For me, it's not just about talking about it. It's about doing it as well. That's one of the reasons I opted to take redundancy 5 years ago, so that I could concentrate on the good life here in Sunniside, growing my own food and keeping hens, ducks, quail, goats,bees and so on. We soon discovered that you cannot
[IMG: Ellison Sau, Project Manager for the Men Against Violence Against Women (MAVAW) program at Live and Learn, holding a 'Stop! Violence against women!' sign] In a blog post on the Department for International Development website, as the London summit on ending sexual violence takes place, Lynne Featherstone has been writing about what the UK Government is doing to end violence against women and girls. She talks about the scale of the problem and the importance of identifying why it happens: Globally nearly 1 in 10 women has experienced sexual violence by someone other than a partner. This is nothing ...
[IMG: SebastianKindersley] South Cambridgeshire Liberal Democrats have selected Sebastian Kindersley as their next Parliamentary candidate. Sebastian, 47, who polled more than 20,000 votes for the Lib Dems in the 2010 election taking the party's share of the vote to 34 per cent, was elected at a meeting of party members on Sunday evening. His election comes ahead of a possible by-election for the seat if South Cambridgeshire MP, Andrew Lansley is appointed the new EU Commissioner. Sebastian is a former Lib Dem leader of South Cambridgeshire District Council. He represents Gamlingay on the district council and Cambridgeshire County Council. "It ...
Boris Johnson versus the water cannon - a Proper Science examination of what would happen (tags: ) DWP in court: challenged to reveal list it fears could make workfare "collapse" (tags: ) 11 Film Posters Made Better By Boris Johnson - for a given definition of Better (tags: ) Martha Fernback ecstasy death: Mother calls for drugs legalisation (tags: ) Where The Sun don't shine - I totally DO NOT endorse this course of action (tags: ) The water cannon Boris Johnson cut-out-and-keep home game kit - Us Vs Th3m 3 (tags: ) Once Scotland votes, there'll be further clamour ...
Here's some of the articles that have caught my attention in the past couple of days... Roberto signs new five year deal | Nil Satis Nisi Optimum Yesterday's biggest football news: "Roberto Martinez signs new five year deal" http://bit.ly/1nAjuGW Twitter, Conferences Or Magazines? | News & Events | The Education Endowment Foundation "Twitter, Conferences Or Magazines?" Trials involving 8,000 schools to test best ways to help schools use evidence http://bit.ly/1qal8SE Nick and The Sun – a missed opportunity My co-editor @caronmlindsay isn't happy with Nick Clegg for posing with The Sun http://bit.ly/1qahSXD (Can't imagine Vince or Tim doing it) Reality ...
[IMG: image alde] It seems like mere weeks since the last Council meeting of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in Europe (ALDE), when optimism was in the air – admittedly helped by the presence of our Austrian hosts on that occasion, who were running an unashamedly pro-European campaign. Sadly, just six weeks later, delegates from across Europe gather in Brussels under rather less cheery circumstances. The decimation of the British, German and Italian member parties in the European Parliament, plus the defection of the Romanians to the European People's Party following merger with a former rival, was somewhat offset ...
During May, the yellow-coloured bus bays (three of them) in Glamis Road between Dickson Avenue and Blackness Road were repainted by Tayside Contracts, on behalf of the City Council's Roads Maintenance Partnership. On 1st June, the road was resurfaced with tar and stone chips, covering the newly painted bus bays. Residents have quite rightly complained to me about the wastage of painting the bus bays and them covering them over. As one resident pointed out, "It would appear there must have been a lack of communication or, contrary to belief, the council has money to waste." I complained to the ...
[IMG: An 'Australian' chap inspects the new steps] An 'Australian' looking chap inspects the new steps After a long campaign may I congratulate the Canal & River Trust for the work they have done to restore the historic Pilling Lane stone bridge and the steps that lead up from the canal tow path to Pilling Lane, in Lydiate. This is right next to the headquarters of Mersey Motor Boat Club. I have commented on this project quite a number of times over the past couple of years so it is great to see it all come to fruition. Below is ...
The latest figures show Welsh unemployment matching the UK average of 6.6%. This is good news. For too long Wales lagged behind the UK in economic activity and employment rates. The Welsh Labour Government must now work with the Coalition Government and continue to keep up the pressure on this vital issue. This good news must become the norm rather than the exception. We have now seen Wales match the UK average for two consecutive months. There is no reason why Wales should slip behind the UK again in terms of unemployment." Figures for the UK as a whole are ...
The greatest antidote to extremism in any community is moderation. We must not tar all Muslims with the taint of extremism. We must never forget that the vast majority of Muslims oppose extremism. As Liberal Democrats we support, in principle, the idea of Ofsted carrying out no-notice inspections where they have legitimate concerns. However we believe there should be tougher curriculum rules on academies and free schools. Some of these schools, while under a duty to deliver a balanced curriculum, are not under any duty to teach the national curriculum. We need to make sure that a core body of ...
[IMG: Land of]
