Fri 22nd
22:46

Six of the Best 459

David Higgerson rightly criticises the Local Government Association for its press campaign rubbishing freedom of information legislation. Moscow dreamt of transforming southeastern Ukraine into a client state, but the Kremlin's plans are fraying as Kiev pushes back, says Anna Nemtsova on Foreign Policy. "I really fear that higher education is moving down a slippery slope where the fetish for the best ratings and indicators ensures that we merely hold student's hands, rather than ignite interest in their own studies," says Alister Scott on The Conversation. Dave Cooper writes on Echoes of the Past about falling in love with Kate Bush ...

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

Congratulations to Sam Barnett, Mike Matuszczyk and George Murray, who lead the LibDemVoice Fantasy Football League after its first full week, each scoring 70 points or more. There are 122 players in total and you can still join the league by clicking here. I merely mention in passing that two of the LDV team — Ryan Cullen and me — are in the top 10. That I mention it at all is because, at least in my case, I suspect it may be the only time I can make the boast... [IMG: ldv league wk 1] * Stephen Tall is ...

Posted by Stephen Tall on Liberal Democrat Voice

I have just had a call about another long delay in an ambulance getting to an ill patient in Lydiate recently which led to the family taking an elderly lady, who was very poorly indeed, into hospital themselves in a car. I have asked for more detail of this case to be sent to me. This is now 3 cases over the past few days that have been brought to my attention. Worrying indeed.

Posted by Cllr. Tony Robertson on Sefton Focus

A lot of people on my twitter timeline were sharing this article approvingly this morning, and given that it prompted one of the very rare disagreements I have with my beloved PPC for Calder Valley, I thought I would detail my issues with it. And the first issue comes right at the beginning:a small engined car with four people in it has lower emissions, lower pollution, than four people traveling by train. So it simply isn't true that everyone benefits from more train travelThe second sentence there does not follow on from the first. While the first sentence is, indeed, ...

Friday: We've got just ONE day to go before DOCTOR WOO returns with brand new Doctor, Sir Peter of Capaldi. So we've been celebrating by watching all of the Grand Moff's stories so far. It would be UNFAIR to suggest that this hospitalised Daddy Alex, but we have to confess that our little remake of Carry On Doctor may have slightly DERAILED our Matt Marathon... our scaling the Matt-a-horn. Sufficient to say that Season Six has proved... difficult. But looking back at the GRAND PLAN we suddenly realised we'd been looking at it all wrong! What was it we'd missed? ...

[IMG: ALDC Master Logo (for screen)] This was a quiet week for by-elections. There was just one Council by-election in Wroxham (Broadland DC). The Liberal Democrats were piped to the post by just fourteen votes in the 'Capital of the Norfolk Broads'. The Conservative candidate emerged victorious with 400 votes (45%) to take the seat from the Liberal Democrats. Malcolm Springall, the Liberal Democrat candidate, received 386 votes (43.4%) and Labour came third with 11.6%. This result is especially disappointing for the Liberal Democrats as they managed to win a by-election in the ward in March with a 141 majority. ...

Posted by ALDC on Liberal Democrat Voice

More than four years ago, I took a look back at the Party's concept of electing its nominees to the House of Lords, a concept that, to be honest, I had some scepticism about at the time, and to some extent still do. I started with a look at the 1999 list, from which nine, including the woman who had subsequently become my wife, had been selected. Since then, Monroe Palmer - number 17 on that list - and Dee Doocey - number 38 - were elevated in the first Coalition list in November 2010 (the May 2010 list was ...

Posted by Mark Valladares on The view from Creeting St Peter

This was a quiet week for by-elections. There was just one Council by-election in Wroxham (Broadland DC). The Liberal Democrats were piped to the post by just fourteen votes in the 'Capital of the Norfolk Broads'. The Conservative candidate emerged victorious with 400 votes (45%) to take the seat from the Liberal Democrats. Malcolm Springall, [...]

Posted by Victor Chamberlain on Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors

[IMG: Scientist in a lab. Public Domain CC0] Nature has some useful research into how academics and researchers use social networks, including several designed just for them: In 2011, Emmanuel Nnaemeka Nnadi needed help to sequence some drug-resistant fungal pathogens. A PhD student studying microbiology in Nigeria, he did not have the expertise and equipment he needed. So he turned to ResearchGate, a free social-networking site for academics... More than 4.5 million researchers have signed up for ResearchGate, and another 10,000 arrive every day, says [its founder, Ijad] Madisch ... And Madisch has grand goals for the site: he hopes ...

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack

A cap has been introduced to limit the amount local authorities and housing associations can charge leaseholders for repairs to council homes. The new directions limit the amount authorities can charge for future major repair, maintenance, or improvement works when they are wholly or partly funded by the government. Outside London the maximum amount residents [...]

YouGov

By William Barter, Sian Reid and David Grace In 2005 we offered "the real alternative". In 2010 we offered "change that works for you". And in 2015 it looks increasingly likely that we will offer to "build a stronger economy and a fairer society, enabling everyone to get on in life" (SEFS). Cambridge Liberal Democrats recently had a meeting to discuss the direction of the party – you may have read about it in the media. We disagreed about the best solution, but we all agreed that we face very real problems, especially in how the party presents itself in ...

Posted by Multiple Authors on Liberal Democrat Voice

Over the past few days I have received a number of requests to table a motion to the next meeting of the City Council about how money would be available to councils if we clamped down on tax dodging by ... Continue reading →

Posted by richardkemp on But what does Richard Kemp think?

The Expendables 3 (12A) Director : Patrick Hughes Website : The Expendables III The third in this action series solidly thumps it's way through the action but still fails to deliver in both pace of plot and in the fight scenes which are diminished by shaky-cam. While the huge cast clearly have a blast the whole plot slows down, muscle-bound by the amount of new characters and cameos. This movie franchise should be an all-out action fest but somehow manages to be too knowing with several of the jokes falling flat to a silent cinema audience... that said, there is ...

Posted by Trisha xx on ripplestone review
Fri 22nd
13:11

A few new pages

I've made a few slight layout and editing changes to the blog, just to make it easier to access some of my old posts, particularly those I wrote as part of a series of posts. So, if you're looking for my writing on any of these, you can now find links for them all on their own page to help guide you through the archive: My 2006 walk from John O'Groats to Land's End The 2010 General Election The 2012 Tour de France Conrad Russell's An Intelligent Person's Guide To Liberalism Related PostsRussell and Liberalism 3: Diversity Russell and liberalism ...

Posted by Nick on What You Can Get Away With

[IMG: Hospital] That's the question an American doctor, Jen Gunter, recently asked after having to use the NHS: Victor, one of my 11-year-olds, had something in his eye courtesy of a big gust of wind outside of Westminster Abbey... Despite an extensive search and rinse mission no object or relief was to be found. I fretted about going to the hospital. It wasn't the prospect of navigating a slightly foreign ER, but simply the prospect of the wait. While I am a staunch supporter of the British NHS in the back of my mind I envisioned a paralysingly full emergency ...

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack

Sometimes you think it is just about getting the best candidate for the gig, however sometimes it really isn't if you actually want to win. The more you get exposed to the inner workings of politics you come to understand that to win you have to prioritise, you have to work out where your money is, how to spend it, where to spend it, how the activist is, where the activist base is, how best to use the activist base and so on. When the 2015 General Election comes round it is highly unlikely I'll be voting here as it ...

Posted by neilmonnery on The Rambles of Neil Monnery

The Liverpool Echo has the story – see link above

Posted by Cllr. Tony Robertson on Sefton Focus

Channel 4 have announced that there will be a 90 minute drama about Nick Clegg and the formation of the coalition, broadcast in the run up to next year's General Election. From the Guardian Writer James Graham [another James Graham], who also penned political plays This House and Tory Boyz, said: "In May 2010, British politics was faced with a dilemma it hadn't had to face in peacetime for over 75 years. The public were asked 'who should govern', and they came back with the answer - 'we don't know'. "Those historic, dramatic few days put personalities at the heart ...

Posted by Joe Otten on Liberal Democrat Voice

The Liverpool Echo has the story – see link above I have posted before about this historic building so it's nice to see what looks like a positive outcome to the recent difficulties surrounding its future. My original posting was in 2010 and coincidentally I went to see my old chum (now 93) a couple of days ago, who is mentioned in it, and he reminded me of the incendiary bombs falling on Liverpool that fateful night when St. Lukes was struck. That original posting is at:-

Posted by Cllr. Tony Robertson on Sefton Focus
Fri 22nd
11:43

Diary Dates

[IMG: st barts flowers] Flower Festival "All God's Gifts" St. Bartholomews Church, Wigginton, Tring, Herts HP23 6DZ Saturday 23 August 10am-5pm Sunday 24 August 12noon-5pm Monday 25 August 10pm-5pm Refreshments available ~ Books and other stalls Wendover Arm Trust – Canal Restoration www.wendoverarmtrust.co.uk/ Next Restoration Work Party... Friday September 5th - Thursday September 11th Come and see what we do – new volunteers will be most welcome and are neededto continue the job – if you would like to help please call Ray Orth on 01494 786868 for details or email restoration2@wendoverarmtrust.co.uk You can also call the Trust on 07457 ...

Posted by nickhollinghurst on Nick Hollinghurst
eUKhost

[IMG: Brighton beach] The Argus reports: The latest candidate to throw their hat into the ring for the Brighton Pavilion parliamentary seat has vowed to out-green the sitting Green MP Caroline Lucas. Liberal Democrat candidate Chris Bowers has announced he will join the battle for the highly contested seat and said his strong environmental background would allow him to "fight fire with fire" against the UK's only Green MP. In 2011, Chris Bowers published a biography of Nick Clegg called (wait for it...) Nick Clegg: The Biography. As I wrote of Nick Clegg: The Biography: The pre-publication newspaper serialisation of ...

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack

The following update has been circulated by South Cambridgeshire District Council in relation to changes to household collections over the coming months. "Over the next five years the council must save around £4m due to reducing government grants - a quarter of its annual budget. Some savings have been found but we still need to find £1.1m savings by April 2015. The waste and recycling service will be contributing around £400,000 a year to these savings from a number of changes: New collection rounds from 1st September Using the very latest software, we've completely redesigned all our waste and recycling ...

Posted by Andy Pellew on Focus on Bar Hill

Our Headline of the Day Award goes to York's The Press.

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

GCSE results at Cape Cornwall School, like the rest of the County are out. I want to add my congratulations to the local students for their achievements. More than 60% achieved C - A* grades in English and Maths, a great foundation for adult life. Whats more, from going into the school I know they are an interesting group with very individual characters and when we take that into account, alongside their academic achievements, I have a suspicions some names will be up in lights here and further afield! As I said with 'A' level results, the exam result does ...

Fri 22nd
10:46

Michael Bay's Up

What would Up have been like had it been directed by Michael Bay? Someone has gone beyond the obvious answer of 'rubbish' and actually visualised it: I'd also recommend checking out this video from Every Frame a Painting on Bay's distinctively over the top visual style. Filed under: Uncategorized

Posted by Mark Mills on Matter Of Facts

Pauline Pearce's dramatic withdrawal from the contest came as a bit of a surprise to your absentee bureaucrat, although, to be fair, her emergence as a contender in the first place was itself a bit unexpected. I don't want to touch upon the grounds she has given - I haven't been involved in her campaign, nor that of any other candidate, as I mean to be an interested, neutral observer in this contest - but perhaps I might examine the four questions that I put to her some time ago, and never got an answer for;What do you think the ...

Posted by Mark Valladares on The view from Creeting St Peter

[IMG: Clegg 2] It was announced yesterday that Channel 4 are to produce a one-off, feature length programme to be entitled Coalition, centred on the events surrounding and shortly after the 2010 general election, with Nick Clegg as the main character. There has been plenty of debate around who would portray the Deputy Prime Minister, ranging from the improbable (Colin Firth, Ricky Gervais), to the acceptable (David Morrissey, Benedict Cumberbatch), to the car crash some have suggested may take place (Hugh Dennis or Chris Addison - god help us all). There has been little speculation thus far on who ...

Posted by Nick on nicktyrone.com

Why is Labour demonising the poor and widening social inequalities? Short answer: because they think it will win votes (tags: ) Time to Legalise Cannabis by @Jamesdbaker1 (tags: ) Poll: Most Americans Want to Criminalize Pre-Teens Playing Unsupervised (tags: ) Empowered by 22,000 volunteers: The citizens' manifesto | Citizens Advice blog (tags: ) [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments

It seems that without telling anyone, the Lib Dem hierarchy has cancelled its autumn conference in Glasgow. Or so it would seem from the endless string of announcements that 'XXX policy will be in the manifesto' – today one about the longstanding but relatively peripheral policy of safe standing at football matches (honoured in the breach in every away fans' section I have been in). Of course, somebody (and I can identify who) clearly thinks it is acceptable to regularly mislead the public and insult members' intelligence by pretending that Party members have no say in the process, when in ...

Posted by Gareth on Gareth Epps

Here's some of the articles that have caught my attention in the past couple of days... #Tip: the big list of headline formulas for the web | Editors Blog | Journalism.co.uk How to craft the perfect headline. Includes #QTWTAIN: http://bit.ly/1trkRu0 A small Summer for politics | Hopi Sen Damn. I was going to write about the smallness of current British politics. But Hopi Sen got there first and better. http://bit.ly/1pkwUJA Statement from Lord Rennard Strangely Rennard's statement doesn't mention his apology nor the QC finding his accusers' evidence broadly credible http://bit.ly/XCfuxD Daniel Finkelstein: For most of my life, antisemitism was ...

Posted by Stephen Tall on Stephen Tall

The Islamic State is a symptom of a much wider and more dangerous split in the Islamic world between Sunni, Shia and Kurdish communities across the Middle East. Whatever action Western governments undertake to stop the Islamo-fascists ISIS, more must be done to mend an age-old split between Sunni and Shia Muslims. We often forget the seeds of this current conflict, instinctively looking to regional instability in Syria as the catalyst for the events currently unfolding in Iraq. In 2007 a suicide bomb attack, the most damaging for four years, was directed not at US armed forces but at the ...

Posted by Shaughan Dolan on Liberal Democrat Voice

The Telegraph carries a very entertaining article about what MPs get up to during recess, which for the most part also applies to Assembly Members. As a regional member I have always held surgeries and like many MPs take advantage of recesses not just to continue that tradition but also to engage with constituents in different ways as well. The paper says that according to one study a third of MPs spend up to half their time solving problems on behalf of their constituents, but for another third it's more like three quarters. Many receive 200 new cases receive each ...

Posted by Peter Black on Peter Black

South Glos council is currently consulting on proposals which will affect the work of Private Sector Housing services as it looks to save £168,000 a year (approx. 24%) from its budget by 2015/16 as part of the council's savings programme. Services that could be affected include: Disabled adaptationsEnforcement of housing standardsEmpty homesHome energy conservationHome renovationsLicensing of houses of multiple occupationLandlord accreditation You can find out more at www.southglos.gov.uk/psh and you have until 10th October to comment.

Posted by Paul Hulbert on Focus on Sodbury, Yate and Dodington

[IMG: Spaghetti] I don't normally like simply saying 'here's a problem' or 'something must be done' without also giving an answer. So apologies for departure from normal service, as I'm much surer that something needs to change with the English Party in the Liberal Democrats than about exactly what the solution is. A slightly unkind, but still mostly true, explanation of why the English Party exists at all is that it was created at the time of the party's formation in order to keep the Scots and Welsh happy. They insisted on meaningful power being given to the Scottish Liberal ...

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack

Last night, I participated in the latest West End Local Community Planning Partnership (LCPP) meeting at Blackness Library. The LCPP meeting is an opportunity for representatives from different council departments, councillors and representatives from other organisations like police, fire and rescue and the NHS to discuss local issues, matters of concern and strategic issues. Yesterday we had presentations on the review of property assets across the West End (and the city as a whole), the impending changes to waste collections and recycling arrangements and also from Sibelius Erskine-Smith of the Scottish Youth Parliament and Dundee Youth Council, who is joining ...

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of visiting Rose Lodge, in Seafield Road, which provides high-quality housing and support for adults with learning difficulties. Rose Lodge was recently inspected by the Care Inspectorate and I visited yesterday to pass on my congratulations to Alison Hogg and her team for an absolutely excellent report. To quote the Care Inspectorate : Quality of Care and Support : 6 - ExcellentQuality of Staffing : 6 - ExcellentQuality of Management and Leadership : 6 - Excellent As Alison says, the success of Rose Lodge is greatly assisted by the local community and supportive neighbours. Here's ...

I will be honest. I was really nervous when Tasty plc announced it had taken over Ludlow's signature café, De Grey's to convert it to a Wildwood Kitchen. There was good news when Tasty said it would keep the De Grey's name and the traditional tearoom and bakery. Tasty also it would keep the De [...]

Posted by andybodders on Andy Boddington

I was glad to see yesterday that the long awaited repairs to the pot holes have now been done. I had been contacted by an elderly lady who had fallen due to one of the pot holes and had contacted the Maghull Group, who own the Shopping Centre and car parks, trying to get them to do the necessary repair work. [IMG: rsz_leighton_ave_car_park_08_14] Above is a photo of the Leighton Avenue car park where a large tarmac patch can be seen. Previously it had been badly rutted.

Posted by Cllr. Tony Robertson on Sefton Focus
Fri 22nd
03:33

Lost Causes

Last night, I found myself in tears, and thinking to myself "despite everything, I still believe in Liberalism, and I still believe that the Lib Dems are the best vehicle for it. I'm going to have to fight harder for the party". Which is probably not the response Steve Earle was intending to provoke. I've [...]

Posted by Andrew Hickey on Sci-Ence! Justice Leak!

#3273321 / gettyimages.com Looking at this photo, it is remarkable that this forgotten London terminus survived for another 14 years after it was taken in 1972. I can remember, on a summer Saturday in 1983 or 1984, being the only passenger on a train when it arrived here.

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England