[IMG: TOP10] I'm not 100% sure I can decide what sort of year 2014 has been for this blog – good, bad or indifferent. The overall level of traffic has been the same as 2013, give or take a few hundred hits. I'm grateful to everyone who takes the time to read what I post. The pattern of traffic has been bit different this year to that of previous years. Nothing I posted this year sank without trace, but, on the other hand, nothing really took off. Most posts did okay (by the standards of this blog!). The statistics for ...
We're having our annual look down the New Years Honours list and we didn't get very far before we saw a name we recognised: [IMG: Screen Shot 2014-12-30 at 22.51.46] For political and public service. He joins fellow former Liberal Democrat Sir Menzies Campbell who became a Companion of Honour last year. The Royals' website has details of the Order, which was founded 97 years ago: The Order of the Companions of Honour was instituted in 1917 by George V at the same time as the Order of the British Empire was founded, and it is sometimes regarded as a ...
What a CBE looks like I know that many of you regularly ask yourselves the same question that I ask myself. "Why on earth did Erica marry Richard?" The replies I get from Erica when I have the temerity to ... Continue reading →
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog. Here's an excerpt: A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,100 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 18 trips to carry that many people. Click here to see the [...]
Read part 1. April I photographed the Empire Hotel and hydropathic institution in Newfoundpool, Leicester, before it was too late. I enjoyed the next-door ruins of St Augustine's too. Jeremy Browne's use of the concept of a 'global race' did not inspire me. (For the record, I did buy and read the book afterwards.) I recalled the three times I have been mentioned in Hansard. (For the record, Charlotte Henry did give up.) My next Leicester discovery was the giant redwoods of Humberstone. I was not impressed by Nick Clegg's handling of the Cyril Smith revelations. And then it was ...
Tobogganing on Hampstead Heath, December 1938. pic.twitter.com/vRj3XmhoL5 — Rob Baker (@robnitm) December 30, 2014 @robnitm ..and this was Hampstead Heath this afternoon. pic.twitter.com/5Yf7sOTegD — Mr. M.J.Moth (@mothmun) December 30, 2014
Consistency in the use of colours by political parties is a relatively recent innovation, despite the obvious benefits that arise from it, as these examples from the Liberal Party at the 1970 general election show. Orange was the dominant party colour but it was by no means universal: [IMG: Liberal Party leaflets 1970] [IMG: Liberal Party leaflets 1970 (2)] It wasn't just the Liberals who mixed and matched colours as this Conservative Party poster demonstrates: [IMG: Conservative Party poster 1970] For more gems from past election leaflets, see my collection How leaflets used to look. Thank you to the staff ...
May saw the start of a campaign that was to eventually change the law on what has become known as Revenge Porn. The friend I quoted in the article wasn't going public at that time, but it was Hannah Thompson who so eloquently and with real grace and dignity told her story and persuaded the likes of Maria Miller, Julian Huppert and Sal Brinton to fight for change. Remember that interview where LBC's James O'Brien took apart Nigel Farage on such issues as UKIP's dodgy immigration claims and its MEPs' expenses? We shouldn't forget that infamous moment when he said ...
Throughout the 12 days of Christmas, we're bringing you the 12 most-read posts on this site of 2014. Here's today's offering... Opinion: Why I was persuaded to back LibDems4Change – George Potter | Sat 24th May 2014 ... I'm now backing LibDems4Change and have signed their open letter calling for a leadership contest. I'm not naïve. I don't think electing a new leader would mean a clean break. I don't think it will magically win us back loads of lost votes. But a new leader won't start with the same trust deficit that Nick Clegg has. A new leader will ...
[IMG: Daniel Coleman] Daniel Coleman will be one of the youngest candidates in the country when he fights Dundee West for the Liberal Democrats in May. Last year, while still at school, he was recognised by Dundee City Council as being truly community spirited when he was awarded the McManus Citizenship Award. Daniel is a qualified football referee and has chaired Dundee Youth Council. He also represented the city in the Scottish Youth Parliament. He's also been the sole Scottish representative on the British Youth Select Committee at Westminster . From the Dundee Liberal Democrats' website: Following the announcement of ...
As we move into the new year most of the complaints received by my team have been about problems with rubbish collection. The new system is far less efficient than the previous system and as a result frailer people who need help moving around the large wheelie bins are finding that their rubbish does not get collected. People who have the temerity to put their weeds unwashed (with too much
Mervyn King's stint on the Today programme yesterday was curious. It was much anticipated in some quarters. The reality then proved to be less revelatory than some might have hoped. I'm not sure what people were expecting - after years of buttoned-up discretion it was unlikely he was suddenly going to let all hang out. But some of the interpretation of King's comments has been intriguingly partisan. We are now only too familiar with the Coalition's inclination to pin the blame for the financial crisis of 2007-08 on the last Labour government. But asked directly yesterday whether he thought Labour ...
[IMG: Sarah Teather] I was furious last night when I saw some social media posts from people who should know better complaining that the nurse now being treated in London for Ebola was let back into the country. Some of them calmed down a bit when you explained that it would have been impossible for anyone to catch Ebola when she was showing no symptoms on the flight. In fact, it would have been pretty darned hard, involving more intimacy than is usual with complete strangers on a flight, even if she had started to develop a fever during the ...
"The reason Occupy and the Tea Party were such uncanny replicas of one another is because they both drew on the lazy, reflexive libertarianism that suffuses our idea of protest these days, all the way from Disney Channel teens longing to be themselves to punk rock teens vandalizing a Starbucks. From Chris Hedges to Paul Ryan, every dissenter imagines that they are rising up against 'the state.' It's in the cultural DNA of our times, it seems; our rock 'n' roll rebels, our Hollywood heroes, even our FBI agents. They all hate the state ... But here's the rub: only ...
Robert Hardy's screen career dates back to 1951. Because he was a child star, James Fox's dates back to 1950. Here they are together in a short from 2006.
The members of the LDV team are in a relaxed state at the moment, replete with the joys, food and drink of the season. Some of us have been showing off our best Christmas fashion and I thought you'd like to have a look over your morning coffee. We'll start with the tasteful. Mary Reid's wonderful green coat. I bumped into her at LDHQ the other week and I can promise that it feels amazingly soft. I don't really care that much about clothes, but I like this coat. [IMG: Mary Reid's coat] I guess Joe Otten's new funky Christmas ...
[IMG: Telferscot 3] Telferscot School, the primary school where I am Chair of Governors has been passed as Outstanding by Ofsted. In my previous two articles I have looked at how the school has achieved this, and the role of school governors. In this article I want to look at what lessons I have learned about how public services should be run. It shows that the grandstanding by commentators of both left and right is missing the point. Lesson1: the public service ethic can work. Many on the right assume that no nationalised public service can work – that its ...
January: Q&A on the allegations against Lord Rennard. (My conclusion: it's a mess.) - Jan 17, 2014 February: 18 posters in which the Conservatives promise to build more houses. The last one appeared in 1979 - Feb 19, 2014 March: Tom Watson handily reminds me why I left Labour - Mar 20, 2014 April: So how's my scenario 3 - a Tory lead of 6% by May 2015 - working out then? - Apr 2, 2014 May: Why I am one of the 39% of Lib Dem members who thinks Nick Clegg should stand down as leader - May 28, ...
If you have a real Christmas tree, South Glos Council say there are a number of ways you can recycle it when the festivities are over: If you have subscribed to the garden waste service you can put your real Christmas tree in your green bin for kerbside collection on your collection day. Please cut the tree into manageable pieces and make sure the tree is not wedged into the bin.You can buy a single use garden waste sack for £2 from your nearest South Gloucestershire library. Please attach the sack to the tree and leave out for collection on ...
By April the European election campaign was in full swing. The second Nick v Nigel debate took place on the BBC. Nick's performance wasn't as strong as it had been in the LBC debate the week before. His big error, which he later acknowledged, was to say that the EU would be roughly the same in 10 years tome. That made us look far too wedded tot he status quo rather than the reformers we are. Nick was never going to come out of these debates ahead, but that isn't help. At least he had the nerve to take Farage ...
Yes, I know, it's on Facebook. But it's VERY good - on the oppression of male nerds. (tags: ) in which @auntysarah is quoted in the New York Times (tags: ) How often do we talk about immigration? Quite a lot, it turns out (tags: ) Three cheers for the Indy for running this story. (tags: ) This made me giggle (tags: ) Why I am leaving the Liberal Democrats - I thought this would be self-serving rubbish, but it ain't. Such things often are, of course. But the top brass in the party need to pay attention to this ...
When I first heard on the radio that Nando's had done a TV advert which got axed after triggering protests from Robert Mugabe for satirising him, I thought it was a joke. But no, here's the advert that caused the fuss in 2011:
It's the season for goodwill and joy but no one told Charlie Brooker and Steven Moffat. Black Mirror and Dr Who were all the better for it. Black Mirror: White Christmas The late Christopher Hitchens told a story about visiting Prague while it was still part of Communist Czechoslovakia. He resolved that he would [...]
[IMG: Mike_Thornton] So Eastleigh MP Mike Thornton used an agency to send out some Christmas cards on his behalf and some of them were sent out without stamps. He apologises for the error and rightly offers to reimburse what they recipients have had to shell out. It's not exactly high drama, is it? It's hardly worth the space on the Daily Mail website with a headline screaming "Lib Dem Scrooge: Families have to pay £1.53 for letter that arrives with no stamp, only to find it's their MP's Christmas card." But then a headline saying: "Agency working for MP makes ...
I have expressed concern about the unacceptable speed of responses to council housing lighting failure repairs in the run up to Christmas, particularly as the cases involved older tenants the West End. I have asked the City Council's Housing Department for an explanation as to why it took from 16th December until 27th December to repair a strip light in an elderly tenant's kitchen in sheltered housing in the Logie Estate. The repair finally happened on Saturday after I contacted the Director of Housing herself. I am very grateful for the Director's intervention but the fact that, for days, this ...
In many ways a rather dispiriting year especially for library volunteers and environmental campaigners but there were some positives elsewhere. [IMG: Sadly this placard could also read 'NO' to volunteers taking over Aintree Library!] Sadly this placard could also read 'NO' to volunteers taking over Aintree Library! The year kicked off with the appalling treatment of volunteers by Sefton Council. All they wanted was an opportunity to try to take over and run two libraries (Aintree & College Road) that Sefton Council, under its Labour rulers, had decided to close. I don't think I have ever seen volunteers treated so ...
Nick Clegg has published his New Year message for 2015. Here it is in full: The text appears below. 2015 should be a year for optimism. I know it might not always feel that way, the last year has been another tough one for many people. And when times are tough, some politicians, instead of telling it like it is and offering a positive way forward, respond with easy simplistic answers or by telling us who to blame. And when that happens, instead offering hope and a way forward, politics becomes about picking a side – us vs them, fear ...
So here I am once more. I have just collated all the profiles and photos for the flirty thirty as the seventh season of Take Me Out gets under way on Saturday night. Like last year, I've got together the photos Fremantle Media have sent out along with the details and some random facts about the girls as sent out as part of the press pack. It is intended to be a light-hearted and whimsy look at the people that will be lighting up our screens for the next few weeks. This year Laura Jackson will be joining Mark Wright ...
This is going to be both more personal than I normally get, and more emotionally draining, so before I get started properly, here's a song that felt apropos: Over the last couple of days, a comment on Scott Aaronson's blog has been doing the rounds a lot. The comment was originally posted a couple of [...]
