After I posted a clip from A Taste of Honey as a tribute to Dora Bryan, a reader kindly tweeted me the link to this short film. Shelagh Delaney's Salford was made by Ken Russell and broadcast on 25 September 1960, when I was precisely six months old. She comes over as a striking and attractive figure. The story of A Taste of Honey is worth retelling. Michael Billngton did so after Delaney died in 2011: Shelagh Delaney ... was almost as important for what she symbolised as for what she wrote. She was, as Jeanette Winterson wrote in the ...
Fri 25th
22:51
"We want five green laws for a green Britain," an interview with Energy and Climate Change Secretary...
The Liberal Democrats clearly have a mountain to climb when it comes to next year's General Election but one area where we do have a broadly positive tale to tell is that of the green agenda, but how well does that play with voters and what can we do-as activists and elected representatives-to help trumpet [...]
From the Guardian website - and tomorrow's newspaper: The Liberal Democrats have apologised to Lord Rennard for mishandling part of his disciplinary process and dropped their investigation into whether he brought the party into disrepute by refusing to say sorry to female activists who accused him of inappropriate sexual behaviour. The peer and former chief executive is now under investigation only over the issue of whether his "criticisms of party processes" on social media and in the press have harmed the reputation of the Lib Dems, which means he continues to be suspended from the party in the House of ...
I've had a number of number of complaints today over temporary traffic lights on Corve Street. They are holding up traffic and the roadworks don't even have a permit. Water company Severn Trent is responsible. Shropshire Council gave Severn Trent a permit for work to be undertaken on the footway opposite the bus stop at [...]
My latest village Focus has now been written, printed and delivered. Focus on Sunniside, Streetgate, Marley Hill and Byermoor was written after Gateshead's planning committee agreed plans for opencast mining at Marley Hill. We held this edition back to be able to report the news to residents. I was planning to deliver my patches on Wednesday but I was in a planning appeal that day for much
Just a few links today, it's too hot to write properly. Top Shelf Comics have a digital sale on. You can get the complete Alec by Eddie Campbell, DRM-free, for just $5. A map of the DC multiverse, by Grant Morrison and Rian Hughes Leonard Pierce on the death penalty Jack Graham gives a Marxist [...]
Liberal Democrats have cleared up Labour's economic mess with GDP now above pre-crash levels, new figures show. The UK economy is now larger than before the financial crisis in 2008 according to ONS quarterly data released today. It comes as the IMF predicted Britain will be the fastest-growing advanced economy in 2014. Lib Dem Treasury Minister Danny Alexander has said it vindicated the party's decision to form the coalition in 2010. Commenting, Danny Alexander said: "Today we are passing a major milestone on the long road back to full recovery. There is still a long way to go but Britain ...
Lord Plumb, a former EU Commissioner and President of the National Farmers' Union, had sought a debate on the role of agriculture and the food industry in the economy of the United Kingdom and, in her capacity as Chair of the relevant European Union scrutiny committee, Ros felt that she should make a contribution to it... Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD): My Lords, I join the thanks to my noble friend Lord Plumb for securing this afternoon's debate. As chair of EU Sub-Committee D, which has agriculture within its remit, I appreciate enormously his long experience of both agriculture ...
While I've been trying to find the PAFEC 10th anniversary photograph (no joy so far), I did come across an edition of the PAFEC Post – our customer magazine – from June 1990. I was interviewed! That's me, having a bad hair day, second from the right, in the Stapleford offices with some of the other members of the Product Services Department. [IMG: Interview in the PAFEC Post from June 1990.]
The news that Liberal Democrat policy has turned against the bedroom tax is very welcome indeed. My only regret about it is that it does not go far enough, but it probably went as far as could be reasonably achieved. Largely this is a move in a political game, using a formal report that tells us what we already knew (and only some of it) as cover for a change of policy that is carefully designed to distance us from the Tories enough to be able to make a separate space for ourselves, but not so far as to endanger ...
[IMG: Ed Davey - Some rights reserved by Liberal Democrats] I write this while on a visit to India. A few weeks ago I was in the US, and I've just left China. Why? These three countries are the world's biggest emitters and the series of meetings I'm having all focus on paving the way for a global climate change deal next year. In the UK, and with our partners across the EU we are gaining momentum for an ambitious deal, which I hope will result in a domestic EU target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030. ...
More shots with thanks to Jen Robertson:- [IMG: rsz_1img_5559] [IMG: rsz_img_5556]
There were eight principal by-elections this week in Blackpool, Doncaster, Maidstone, Northumberland, Reading, Rhondda, Walsall and Windsor. The Liberal Democrats made two gains, Labour held four seats, UKIP gained one seat and an Independent held one seat. The Berwick Liberal Democrats stormed to victory in the rural ward of Longhoughton (Northumberland CC). Kate Cairns won [...]
There were eight principal by-elections this week in Blackpool, Doncaster, Maidstone, Northumberland, Reading, Rhondda, Walsall and Windsor. The Liberal Democrats made two gains, Labour held four seats, UKIP gained one seat and an Independent held one seat. [IMG: longhoughton] The Berwick Liberal Democrats stormed to victory in the rural ward of Longhoughton (Northumberland CC). Kate Cairns won just shy of 50% of the vote to gain the seat for the Liberal Democrats after the death of a long standing and popular Independent councillor. The division which had not seen such a competitive election in a long time saw the Conservatives ...
The Green Deal Home Improvement Fund has been cancelled with effect from today because an increase in demand has quickly exhausted the fund. Anyone who has got a green deal assessment done in the last few weeks, thinking they could get cash back from the fund, is out of luck. I'm one of those people. [...]
Yesterday was the first Southfield ward forum since the local elections where the Liberal Democrats were re-elected. The meeting took place in the Acton Green church hall, on Cunnington Street. New councillor, Gary Busuttil, was present and re-elected Councillor Andrew Steed chaired the meeting. A range of interesting topics were discussed... Councillor Gary Busuttil St. Albans Church Since the campaign to stop the site being converted into ten flats, local Liberal Democrats have been working with residents and church authorities to make use of the chuch. We were lucky to have Reverend Richard Moy and Rev Mike Tufnell present at ...
Planning was meant to be a progressive project which ensured that land was harnessed for the best use of the community but instead it's excluding all but the the richest from successful cities. For better or worse, much of what the Clement Attlee's great reforming Labour government did has not endured. The NHS does of [...]
These are before and after pictures of the communal garden at Heydean Road flats. The garden has been tended by residents and has won prizes in the past. However tree removal by landlord Liverpool Mutual Homes has left a tree root not properly removed making part of the garden not useable and a it of an eyesore. One of the residents has tried to get LMH to remedy this to no avail. It's a shame that a garden that was a source of occupation, and pleasure, to some elderly residents has been left this way. (Admittedly these pictures don't show ...
Earlier in the month was the regular meeting of Bury's Full Council – the opportunity five times a year when all Councillors meet together. The meeting interestingly too place the night before the announcement in the press and on TV about the three-weekly bin collections. However no mention was made of this new policy at Full Council (TV interviews had clearly already been recorded). Papers for the Cabinet meeting which contained the proposal seemed to be handed out as people left the meeting. This was my first Full Council meeting as the only Liberal Democrat councillor. Although it has its ...
[IMG: 20130527_112202] (This is the sixth in a series of posts looking in depth at issues from Conrad Russell's An Intelligent Person's Guide To Liberalism. Previous posts in the series are here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and my original post on the book is here.) Out of all the posts I've done on this book, this one is going to have the least of Russell and the most of me in it because while Russell does embrace the idea of green liberalism, he was writing at a time when awareness of environmental issues was a lot lower than ...
[IMG: old school] The 2011 Education Act made a radical change in provision for careers advice for young people. Responsibility had traditionally been with an external advice agency – originally the LA careers service and from 2002 with Connexions. The Act passed this responsibility on to schools with provisos that it should be 'independent and impartial' and involve people other than just school staff. During the passage of the Act, Lib Dems in the Lords had fought hard to make it mandatory that each young person should have a one-to-one interview with a properly qualified external careers' adviser. We did ...
Well – it's been quite a stunning week. Last Saturday we (Department of International Development) held a Youth for Change event on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and Child Early and Forced marriage (CEFM). Young people came and took over DFID for the day. And then on Tuesday – we had the Girl Summit 2014 – which brought leaders, activists and campaigners from all over the world to unite in the fight against FGM and CEFM. At the Youth for Change event – which I hope you read about in the papers – there was an amazing program ranging from mentoring ...
Liberal Democrats have helped to restore the UK economy to pre-crash levels, figures released today show. The UK economy has grown by 0.8% over the last quarter, ensuring that the UK economy has now returned to the same level it had before the banking crisis in 2008. Commenting, MP for Redcar, Ian Swales said: "Today is a big day for Britain. The rescue is working and Britain's economy is the same size as it was before the crash. This is fantastic news for local people. Things continue to improve and good news keeps on coming. "Delivering this recovery is why ...
Latest pictures of the giants in Liverpool today, from Jen Robertson:- [IMG: Little girl and her dog near the old Mersey Tunnel entrance] Little girl and her dog near the old Mersey Tunnel entrance [IMG: Grandmother leaving St. Georges Hall this morning.] Grandmother leaving St. Georges Hall this morning. The photos above are amongst my Flickr shots at:- www.flickr.com/photos/86659476@N07/
I research and produce regular e mails with news and information about South Liverpool (mainly L19 and L18). If you want to start getting these, you can sign up at this They used to be once a month but they are now twice a month. It's a good way of getting early information about what's planned or suggested in our area.
The Liberal Democrat hierarchy does itself and the party no favours by slapping down anyone who says what they really think about the Israel/Palestine situation. Ten years ago Jenny Tonge, after a visit to the Gaza Strip and being horrified by the conditions under which the people there were force to live, said that, whilst not condoning their actions, she understood motivations of the Palestinian suicide bombers. She was forced to apologise for her honesty by our then leader Charles Kennedy. Two years later Ming Campbell took similar action, and Nick Clegg sacked her from her post as a party ...
Joanne Harris's novel Chocolat was a huge success in many countries and languages, as well as being the basis for an Oscar-nominated film of the same name, starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. So the south-western French village of Lansquenet and its cast of characters, from the crusty priest, Francis Reynaud, to the vivacious founder [...]
Fri 25th
12:31
Satellite full of sexually experimental geckos adrift in space, Russia lose control of mission
The Independent wins Headline of the Day. The late Lou Reed adds:
Here's the new film from the Liberal Democrats: You can also watch this on YouTube.
[IMG: 042] Your Liberal Democrat FOCUS Team wants to know what you think about local issues. We want your views so that we can campaign to get the City Council and other public authorities to do what you think needs doing here in your area. To view the latest STATS please CLICK HERE!
[IMG: the-beast-of-yucca-flats-pic-4] "I don't know.....I like Francis as an actor but really he should have stayed in front of the camera. As a director, he really didn't know what he was doing." - Ed Wood Jnr. When the man noted as being the worst film director of all time says you're rather lousy at this filmmaking malarkey, perhaps another career choice should have been considered. Yet Francis ploughed on in obscurity, at least during his own lifetime. He owes the knowledge people like me have of his works pretty much solely to Mystery Science Theatre 3000, the show which understandably ...
Fri 25th
10:20
Highest ever rate of applications to university from poorer students new UCAS figures show
The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) has just published the latest figures of students applying to university this year according to free school meal status. What they show is that a higher proportion of pupils from low-income backgrounds are applying to university than ever before: [IMG: ucas fsm uni figures 2014] Around one in eight English pupils receive free school meals (FSM) and their application rate at age 18 to higher education is around half that of other pupils. For the 2014 cohort, application rates for the FSM group reached 18 per cent (a 1.3 percentage point increase, 8 ...
Today's figures from the Office for National Statistics show growth of 0.8% in the second quarter of 2014, bringing UK GDP above the level it was before the 2008 crash. With GDP 3.1% higher than a year earlier, the UK has the fastest growing economy in the G7. Cheif Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander comments Today we are passing a major milestone on the long road back to full recovery. There is still a long way to go but Britain has recovered the economic ground lost under Labour and is forging ahead. The main reason that we stepped forward ...
In a double-whammy of good news Britain has been hailed by the International Monetary Fund as having the fastest growing advanced economy in the world, and had the latest new GDP figures show substantial economic growth. GDP figures released this morning (Friday, 25 July) by the Treasury show solid quarterly growth of 0.8% putting Britain's economy back to the position it was in before the crisis hit in 2008. Speaking this morning Julian said, "It is fantastic that the economy is doing well, and that we are outperforming the rest of the major economies in the world. Unemployment in Cambridge ...
Screwing your way to the top? Good for Lana Del Rey for helping kill that myth - Comment - Voices - The Independent (tags: ) University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 404 page is a work of genius (tags: ) The legal definition of terrorism threatens to criminalise us all OfC we won't know this is going to happen till it actually happens. And then people who argued FOR it will say "but we couldn't have foreseen that the police/security services would interpret it as broadly as possible to justify mistreatment of people they don't like!" - and it's profoundly depressing ...
[IMG: NickCleggSpeaking Blog] The Liberal Democrats will ensure that benefit claimants in social housing will no longer be penalised if their landlord cannot provide accommodation suitable to their needs. In other words, the £14 reduction in housing benefit ("bedroom tax") for an unneeded room will not apply unless the landlord can offer reasonable accommodation and the tenant refuses the offer unreasonably. The principle of limiting Housing Benefit to match the accommodation needs of claimants was established as long ago as 1989. The then Conservative government brought in the Rent Officers (Additional Functions) Order 1989 as a needs-based restriction of benefits ...
Here's some of the articles that have caught my attention in the past couple of days... Now that Ed Miliband has accepted reality, Labour might be ready for the 2020 election – Telegraph Blogs Interesting from Dan Hodges on the Lab triumvirate – Cruddas, Balls, Adonis – driving its policy agenda http://bit.ly/1l0hDI8 Measuring school success | Civil Service Quarterly Very clear & helpful explanation from @timleunig of DfE's 6 criteria for measuring school success http://bit.ly/1x1rtix OECD educationtoday: Poverty and the perception of poverty – how both matter for schooling outcomes OECD: In France & US, principals believe far more of ...
Lord Bonkers writes exclusively for Liberal England: "Hammond must be our least memorable Foreign Secretary since... What was that fellow's name?"
There are many times throughout history where man has stood by and allowed inhumanity to win the day. One of few positives that can be taken from these days is that human behaviour can be observed, patterns emerge and those that are left can begin to understand, to learn. But there are times when lessons are forgotten. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is humanity's greatest forgotten lesson. It is time to face up to hard truths and if we fail to do so we legitimise the deaths of thousands more men, women, children, Israeli and Palestinian. Liberal Democrats were strong advocates for ...
From the Open Society Foundations website: The European Court of Human Rights has finally officially confirmed the facts of a story that the U.S. and European governments have sought to deny for more than a decade: The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency operated a secret torture center on Polish soil in the aftermath of the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. In a historic ruling, the court concluded beyond reasonable doubt that Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri—represented by the Open Society Justice Initiative—and Abu Zubaydah were held in secret and tortured by the CIA at a military base called Stare ...
Last night's Full Council meeting at Southport Town Hall was relatively forgettable except for the bizarre behaviour of the Labour Mayor. The leader of the Liberal Democrats was making a speech when he was rudely interrupted by the labour leader of the council. The Mayor decided that he needed to intervene to bring order to the debate. Rather than tell his own Labour leader to stop shouting and allow the speech to be concluded, he chose instead to tell the leader of the Liberal Democrats to sit down and be quiet! I now ask myself if this has set a ...
A new planning application has been received within Holyrood Ward as below: Application Number: 57773 Registration Date: 14/07/2014 Location: 7 Holyrood Grove, Prestwich, Manchester, M25 1PG Proposal: Garage conversion with extension to front elevation More details are avialable on the Council's planning site here. Please do not hesitate to get in touch if you require any further information. Tim
Despite attempts by Nigel Farage to try and change the image of UKIP there is no escaping the loose cannons in his party. The latest is a UKIP County Councillor in Cambridgeshire, who really seems to know how to win friends and influence people. Gordon Gillick told a council meeting that the reason poor, badly educated people are fat is because they like being fat: "The people we describe as obese, thick, badly educated, whichever way you like to phrase it... they enjoy being 25 stone, they're not discontent, they're just a burden on the state," the Cambridge News reports ...
This Sunday's band concert on Magdalen Green features Dundee Instrumental Band. It starts at 2pm on Sunday 27th July at the bandstand. Further details available here.
I blogged earlier about the planning application for a shop unit, plus a couple of houses, and some parking at the junction of Booker Avenue and Greenhill Road. (We now know that the intention is for the shop to be one of the Co op local stores) The deadline for comments passed yesterday. When I have a date for planning committee, or any other info, I'll blog again. Meanwhile, here are the comments I sent in. Comments on planning application 14F/1140Booker Avenue. I am a former City Councillor for this area and so know the issues at this location well. ...
Local councils could be required to recycle 70% of household waste and 80% of packaging by 2030, under new EU proposals announced yesterday by the European Commission. The proposal would also see a total ban by 2025 on sending waste to landfill that could have been recycled. According to the Commission the new targets could create over half a million jobs across the EU. While there has been a significant increase in recycling in the UK in recent years, there would still be a long way to go to meet the new targets. According to government figures, 43.2% of waste ...
The Campaign to Protect Rural England [CPRE] has launched an initiative to identify thousands of derelict sites suitable for new homes in a bid to help solve Britain's housing crisis without building on the countryside. The campaign, called Waste of Space, is hoping to tap the local knowledge of people across the country about disused buildings and former industrial sites. The CPRE is asking people to nominate sites by tweeting or emailing photographs, which it will compile and publish in a national database. The information will be used to put pressure on the government to increase the incentives for developers ...
A discussion with a Maghull resident the other day was illuminating because without prompting they told me that Maghull's Neighbourhood Plan would be able to stop building on the Green Belt. Er no, it will not, indeed it can't do what I was told. And I wonder which political party may have been putting that misinformation about? No prizes, the answer is all too obvious. A Neighbourhood Plan can only agree with the amount of building that is in the Borough Council's Local Plan or it can propose more building. Anyone who suggests otherwise is either completely ignorant of the ...
In 1965 it seemed like everyone was recording a version of It Ain't Me Babe. Johnny Cash had got in first, having a country hit with a mariachi-tinged version of the Dylan song at the back end of 1964, but after Mr. Tambourine Man was such a hit, everyone latched on to this song. It [...]
