Sunday of the Doctor (one year on): In celebration of my Daddies' four week anniversary, (and some little TV show being 51 today), by gracious permission of Uncle Barry, we bring you "Alex and Richard in an Exciting Adventure with Doctor Who" by Daddy Alex, with some assistance from Terrance Versatile Dicks, Robert Holmes, David Whittaker, Andrew Cartmel, Ben Aaranovich, Simon Guerrier, Andy Lane, Paul Cornell and many many more. and additional dialogue by William Shakespeare. starring Mr Simon and Mr Nick. And the Daddies' Wedding Chorus. Thank you all, so very, very much.
[IMG: Policy Unpacked 5] Yesterday I took part in a panel discussion on the housing market as part of the Festival of Economics 2014. The panel was chaired by Julia Unwin of JRF; it comprised Kate Barker, Michael Ball, Diane Coyle and me. It was an enjoyable event, with plenty of questions and comments from an informed and concerned audience. I had arrived with rather more to say than could sensibly fit into my allotted time. So I ended up speaking rather fast, as a number of audience members pointed out to me after the session. I'm usually not too ...
This week's Newsnight report on the £3bn repair bill facing Westminster.
Choosing another track in August, I wrote: The genius of Blow-Up is that, though the mystery remains unsolved, you feel that if you watch the film just once more you will crack it. The Draughtsman's Contract has the same quality.And Ode to Billie Joe has the same quality. Listen to it once more and you are sure you will understand what is going on. Wikipedia claims it know the reason for the mystery: The original recording, with no other musicians backing Gentry's guitar, had eleven verses lasting seven minutes, telling more of Billie Joe's story. The executives realized that this ...
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 399th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere ... Featuring the seven most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (16-22 November, 2014), together with a hand-picked quintet, you might otherwise have missed. Don't forget: you can sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox — just click here — ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging. As ever, let's start with the most popular post, and work our way down: 1. The truth about why I resigned and ...
Sun 23rd
18:43
Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen's Christmas attraction closes: Children leave in tears as Father Christmas i...
Thanks to the Independent, we have our Headline of the Day.
DUP MLA Paul Givan's announcement this morning that he is going to introduce a private members bill to bring in a conscience clause brings forth an important question; where is the boundary of that conscience? We have equality legislation for a reason, that is to set the bounds of what counts as discrimination corporately. If...
What is it with Labour and their lack of appreciation of green/environmental issues and how important they are?
"Using a language that is jargon-filled, complex and often baffling, those in charge of our economies have made some catastrophic decisions that only a few individuals really understood." The School of Life draws on John Lanchester's new book to help us 'speak money'. Jim Armitage reveals how foreign governments make hundreds of millions of pounds a year running British public services. Does Interstellar owe a debt to the brilliant 1961 British sci-fi movie The Day The Earth Caught Fire? Mark Kermode thinks it does. The Bradshaw's Guide Michael Portillo brandishes on his travels is not the one that was famous ...
This year's best film is about the conflicted, young leader of a revolution but it's NOT Mockingjay part 1 For a generation frequently derided as shallow we Millenials have remarkably dark tastes. Witness, for example, our infatuation with dystopias. We seem to devour Divergent, the Lovely Bones, Maze Runner and, the series which ignited this trend, the [...]
[IMG: Livefyre comment thread example] Earlier this month Reuters axed the comments threads on its website. This was no idiosyncratic whim but rather part of a wider trend, as Charles Arthur has pointed out: Re/Code is turning off comments. This comes after Reuters turned off comments, and many other sites have dialled back on allowing comments - Popular Science, the Chicago Sun-Times, and so on. Huffington Post stopped "anonymous" (actually pseudonymous) comments in August 2013. The quality, or rather lack of quality, of many comment threads is a big part of this change. Why do so many sites run into ...
Here are the latest national voting intention figures from each of the main pollsters. To put the numbers into longer context, take a look at my database of polling figures going back to 1945, which is updated quarterly. Con Lab LibDem UKIP Green Con lead Fieldwork Method ComRes 30% 34% 8% 19% 3% -4% 12-14/11 Online ComRes 30% 30% 9% 19% 4% 0% 24-26/10 Phone ICM 31% 32% 11% 14% 6% -1% 7-9/11 Phone Ashcroft 29% 30% 9% 16% 7% -1% 14-16/11 Phone MORI 32% 29% 9% 14% 7% 3% 8-10/11 Phone Opinium 30% 33% 7% 19% 4% -3% 18-20/11 ...
Over on the Liberal Democrats main website there is a bit of a celebration going on as the party rejoices in the news that we have succeeded in killing off the Snoopers' Charter for the rest of this Parliament at least. They report that although Theresa May has announced that action to match IP addresses to individuals will be included in the upcoming package of counter terror measures, the much wider and disproportionate proposals in the Snoopers' Charter will not feature. If the Charter had been proceeded with then it would have allowed the security services to access records kept ...
Sun 23rd
14:25
Alex Folkes: Cornwall Council and its chief executive have serious questions to answer
Many Lib Dems will know Alex Folkes. He's a Lib Dem councillor on Cornwall Council, and was a member of its cabinet until earlier this month, when he stood down to "deal with a personal issue". I noticed it at the time, hoped it was nothing too bad, thought no more of it. Then on Thursday night I read Alex's 1,500-word blog-post, 'The truth about why I resigned and the claims being made against me'. It is an extraordinary account which, if shown to be true, must surely lead to the resignation of Cornwall Council's chief executive, Andrew Kerr. It ...
[IMG: charlotte henry] In a spasm of madness a few weeks ago, from their conclavial confinement, the Liberal Democrat Voice team saw fit to emit a puff of white smoke in favour of myself, concerning the vexed matter of who would be Wednesday Editor of this august and elegantly barnacle-clad ship of the cyber-seas. In the course of my duties last Wednesday, my not-very sophisticated news gathering antennae became aware of the news that Charlotte Henry had left the party. Newsmoggie kindly published a post concerning that. An interesting comments debate ensued under said post and it was one of ...
It's been a weird week. Here's a rebellious Golden Retriever to make everything better.
Writing for the Jewish News newspaper on David Ward, Lord Rennard, and my resignation from the Liberal Democrats. Joining a political party rightly means compromise. However, it also means knowing what your key principles are. As a member of, and a candidate for, the Lib Dems, as well as a journalist commentating on the party, [...]
Image from Islington: only 3 streets away from @EmilyThornberry's office! Please RT! pic.twitter.com/mEtBtOCV8F — Dave Raval (@DaveRaval) November 23, 2014
[IMG: 7 ver 4 full] Many thanks to the 17,000 visitors who dropped by Lib Dem Voice this week. Here's our 7 most-read posts... Rochester & Strood by-election: Ukip win, Lib Dems lose 11th deposit (124 comments) by Stephen Tall Charlotte Henry resigns from the Liberal Democrats (42) by Newsmoggie Baroness Olly Grender writes...Tales from the Rochester campaign trail (46) by Olly Grender Lib Dem "senior strategists", what are you thinking? (69) by Caron Lindsay Is this the most bizarre election leaflet of all time? (20) by Caron Lindsay Jeremy Browne hits out at "arbitrary" mansion tax (72) by Newsmoggie ...
#143655914 / gettyimages.com My first reaction on seeing the Liberal Democrat federal committee election results was one of puzzlement. Surely I couldn't be reading the results correctly, because those numbers looked much too small to be people's first preference totals? But no, they were indeed. What had happened was that the number of votes cast in the elections fell off a cliff. Take the number of valid votes for Federal Policy Committee: 2004: 1,158 2006: 935 2008: 1,208 2010: 1,669 2012: 1,204 2014: 656 Two things stand out from these numbers. First, how exceptional the 2010 number of votes was ...
It's shocking that the level of empty homes in this county has soared while they have fallen elsewhere. In the last four years, the number of long-term empty properties in Shropshire has gone up by more than 5%. Nationally, the number has dropped by 28%. This woeful performance puts us in the bottom ten percent [...]
Paul Givan MLA has said he is planning to bring forward a private members bill to introduce a conscience clause into Northern Ireland legislation, saying that it will enhance "equality legislation". He goes on to say: "Equality is about ensuring that everybody in society is allowed to live out their lives."We now are heading towards a community where it's not just about live and let live - people are now saying, 'you need to affirm my particular lifestyle and if that goes against your conscience, you have to do that'."That's not equality; that's intolerance."Now the word affirm means:To declare positively ...
[IMG: Nigel Farage with Thatcher mug] "If you are a Conservative MP sitting on a small majority against the Labour party, and the further north of London you go the bigger problem this becomes, you know you've lost next year. The Conservative party is literally dying in the urban north, the way it has in Scotland. It is for you to do the guessing game. Matthew Goodwin has already published a list of the Tory MPs who have no chance of winning on a blue rosette but might have a chance on a purple rosette. So let's see what happens." ...
Today's Wales on Sunday reveals those Welsh MPs who are taking home additional cash on top of their basic £67,060 salary: The latest register of MPs financial interests show that the biggest earner outside of Parliament was the Conservative MP for Cardiff North Jonathan Evans. The former lawyer is paid £110,004 a year on top of his MP's salary from his work as non-executive chairman of four linked pension fund companies that are part of the Phoenix Group. Close behind, former Welsh Secretary Peter Hain, Labour's Neath MP, made an additional £70,650 outside Parliament. That was made up of £31,500 ...
Don Foster, MP for Bath, is pleased that Liberal Democrats are seeking to put an end to revenge evictions thanks to a new Bill that is making its way through parliament. Last year over 200,000 people suffered from revenge evictions and Lib Dems want to put an end to this. The Tenancies (Reform) Bill, which was put forward by Lib Dem MP, Sarah Teather, will have its Second Reading on 28
Bath & North East Somerset Council is on track for a record performance in recycling thanks to local residents. This financial year (2014/15) it is forecast that 80% of the waste collected from homes will be recycled and/ or treated. Last year this figure was just under 75% and of this, 48% was sent for recycling, reuse and composting. Rubbish not recycled goes to a mechanical biological
Edition #54 of Liberal Democrat Newswire came out last week, a quick mid-month update on several issues. You can also read it below, but if you'd like the convenience of getting it direct by email in future, just sign up here. It's free! And if you are already a reader and like it, why not Like my Facebook page to help publicise the newsletter to others? Welcome to the 54th edition of Liberal Democrat Newswire, a quick mid-month update on some of the issues covered last time. As ever I hope you enjoy reading Liberal Democrat Newswire, which has more ...
[IMG: Danny Alexander by Paul Walter] Danny Alexander, Lib Dem chief secretary to the Treasury, has an article in today's Observer rejecting the paper's front page lead last week headlined 'Revealed: how coalition has helped rich by hitting poor'. I absolutely reject this assertion. Nick Clegg and I led the Liberal Democrats into coalition not just to rescue the British economy from the aftermath of the 2008 crash, but to do so fairly. He details, with examples, various of the Coalition's policies which aren't picked up in the analysis reported by the Observer and sets out ways the Government (thanks ...
What a delight this orchestra is. It was our first visit to hear them last night and they were well worth the visit. The evening was themed 'In time of war' Their web site is at:- www.cathedralconcerts.org.uk/22-nov-in-time-of-war.html It was also nice to meet an old colleague from Maghull Town Council – Mark Julius – who plays Second Violin. Here are a couple of shots I took on the night:- [IMG: Second Violinist Mark Julius] Second Violinist Mark Julius [IMG: The lantern roof of the quite wonderful Metropolitan Cathedral] The lantern roof of the quite wonderful Metropolitan Cathedral The second photo ...
[IMG: image] The new LDV members' survey is now live. So if you are one of the 1,500+ registered members of the Liberal Democrat Voice forum — and any paid-up party member is welcome to join — then you now have the opportunity to make your views known. Questions we're asking this month include: do you support the broadcasters' proposal for the televised leaders' debates; would you support local pacts between the Lib Dems and Greens; how do you think Ukip will do at the next election; if/how increased devolution to Scotland should be reflected in England; whether the decision ...
West End Free Public Lecture - on the Life and Work of Mary SlessorTuesday 25th November at 7pm Speaker is Carly Cooper, Social History Curator at McManus Galleries. Taking place at Dundee West Church, 132 Perth Road, as part of West End Christmas Fortnight this event is kindly sponsored by Friends of the University of Dundee Botanic Garden and Friends of Riverside Nature Park. All welcome!
The Shropshire Council Lib Dem group met with officers last Tuesday to discuss the new arrangements for delivering youth services from next April. Youth services are a central priority for the four unitary councillors for Ludlow and Clee. We have long been on the ball, so we didn't learn much new. We were though shocked [...]
Sorry for doing two linkblogs in relatively quick succession, but I haven't had time to write anything today as Plok is visiting Manchester. Proper post tomorrow. The Privilege Denier's Diversity Monitoring Form Todd Klein has done a seven-part history of the transition from hand lettering to digital lettering in comics. It starts here. Freedom of [...]
