Today's trivia question: which British politician said this "Every major statesman needs the wilderness years. Nelson Mandela had them and I suppose that's my lot, too, so I'm ruling nothing out at this stage." You can find the answer here or in the tags to this post.
Please watch and share this video. Find out how to save a choking baby with #TheChokeables - the new advert from St John Ambulance:
Over on my Patreon, a post about the fifth Batman '66 story, Zelda The Great/A Death Worse Than Fate, for those who support my writing financially. Meanwhile, for those who don't like my spendthrift habit of paying my mortgage and buying a new pair of glasses, here's the free version of a post from a [...]
Several econ bloggers have had things to say over recent days about the distinctions between mainstream and heterodox economics. It's a discussion topic that carries a cast iron guarantee of raising the blood pressure of everyone involved. It's one I've blogged about several times previously, but not for a while. The proximate cause for this debate springing back to life, in the UK at least, was the broadcast of a Radio 4 programme about economics education which some mainstream economists (notably Tony Yates) felt was hopelessly one-sided in its support for heterodoxy, without giving those working from a mainstream perspective ...
Cllr Sue James shares her hopes for 2015 rather than the traditional New Years resolutions or targets. Locally [IMG: Andrew George Outside St Just library] Andrew George, MP discusses impact of reduced opening hours with Friends of St Just Library co-chair, Kate Beckly I want to see the Library Service come under more local control and the doors open more at the end of the year than they are now. I want to see Nancherrow Youth club finding a way to provide sustainable services to our young people and the excellent music provision retained in the town. I would like ...
Sun 11th
20:30
Featherstone and Hughes defend Coalition record on civil liberties in letter to Independent on Sunda...
The coalition's record on civil liberties took a bit of a pasting in last week's Independent on Sunday. Today, Justice Minister Simon Hughes and Home Office Minister Lynne Featherstone defended the Liberal Democrat record in a letter to the paper. Their missive rather felt the sharp edge of the editor's pen, but the full version (via the party website) is below. They have a good go at both the Tories and Labour. Dear Sir, We are writing in response to your editorial Common-sense rights (Sunday 4thJanuary). We are intensely proud of the coalition's record on civil liberties. The presence of ...
Sun 11th
20:10
Why does the Cornish Guardian think there should be one rule for elected councillors and another for...
The Cornish Guardian carried a story this week saying that Cornwall Council does not know if any of its elected members might pose a risk to children because very few have had a background check. Actually this claim is untrue. In 2009, after the first set of Cornwall Council elections, all the elected members were the subject of CRB checks. Any councillor first elected in 2009 - more than half the current number - will have had either a CRB or DBS check from the council. The policy was changed in time for the 2013 elections in line with national ...
Martin Horwood, the Liberal Democrat MP for Cheltenham, writes a regular column for the Gloucestershire Echo. This week, however, he has sent the newspaper a cartoon instead. You can find it on the Gloucestershire Echo website.
Perhaps choosing one of the windiest and wettest days of the winter wasn't the best idea for a visit to Yorkshire Sculpture Park near Wakefield. But having collected a bookshelf from Heckmondwike that I'd bought online, I wanted to go somewhere on the way back. Having not been to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park for some [...]
[IMG: sundaypaps] A bit later today, but here's my pick of the best of the Sunday papers. First up, in the Sunday Times (£), we have a story on Osborne's plan to cut taxes for rich dead people (shelved from 2010 when Nick Clegg ensured that taxes were cut for low and middle income earners instead) while also cutting public spending for those people who rely on public services. Their priorities are clear, I guess. In the same paper, an article looks at the likelihood of terrorist attacks in this country and moves afoot to prevent them. It highlights differences ...
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 406th 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 (4 – 01 January, 2015), 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. It's so easy for Indians ...
Earlier today, I was pleased to join the Friends of Riverside Nature Park and City Council Environment Department officers in a litter pick of the park. Despite it being rather rainy, it was less cold than I had expected! Here's a photo of some of the volunteer team today :
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. Polling company Con Lab LibDem UKIP Green Con lead Fieldwork Method ComRes 33% 34% 8% 18% 2% -1% 10-12/12 Online ComRes 29% 32% 12% 16% 5% -3% 12-14/12 Phone ICM 28% 33% 14% 14% 5% -5% 12-16/12 Phone Ashcroft 30% 31% 8% 19% 5% -1% 5-7/12 Phone MORI 32% 29% 9% 13% 9% 3% 13-15/12 Phone Opinium 32% 33% 8% 17% 4% ...
As a society we appear to be talking to babies less. Cliche of the parent pushing a pushchair with one hand and using a smartphone with the other. The baby loses valuable talk time or "language nutrition". But the first 1,000 days of life are crucial for brain development. A poor, in terms of intellectual stimuli, environment can make a lasting negative impact. In the US a new public health scheme started this month – Talk With Baby. Nurses, teachers, etc have been taught how to speak with babies. Babies respond better to sing song talk. The idea is they ...
Probably the best article I've read this week is Columbia University Linguist John H. McWhorter discussing how the languages of the World will look in a century. His broad hypothesis is that we will have fewer languages that will be simpler. Along the way, however, he touches on a particularly interesting question: will English continue [...]
Ludlow has one of the finest heritage resource centres in the country. The Ludlow Museum Resource Centre is now under threat as Shropshire Council makes staff redundant and fails to put a plan in place for long term maintenance and access to the collections. The Museum Resource Centre has excellent historical and archaeological collections, and [...]
British cuisine is generally considered to be terrible. While recent memories of Christmas mean I must acknowledge that my homeland can produce some dishes worth savouring like roast dinner and Christmas cake, even as a proud Brit I have to broadly agree that the only thing we excel at foodwise is blandness. Yet the food [...]
Cornwall Council has received an application to build three new homes on land at Newport in Launceston. The houses will be built behind Quarry Lane as indicated on the plans. My greatest concern with this proposal is about access. The lane into and out of the development will be very narrow and there will be little in the way of sight lines for cars trying to exit onto the main A388 St Thomas Road. Opposite this lane is Priory Lane. This is a very difficult junction to exit as drivers have to put their nose out into the road to ...
It was a "you'll remember where you were when you heard the news" moment. I remember where I was when I heard the news about: Bobby Kennedy being assassinated Princess Marina dying (admittedly a bit of a niche one, that) Lord Mountbatten being killed John Lennon being shot Princess Diana dying The planes flying into the twin towers And now I add to that list: Five cartoonists, the editor, three other staff, two policeman and a visitor are killed at a French satirical newspaper "It's like Private Eye being attacked" – was my first thought on hearing the news. Cartoonists. ...
I have been thinking about how good we are to each other since reading 'Free Country' by George Mahood. It tells the true story of two guys that tried to get from Land's End to John O'Groats without spending anything. They started out in just a pair of boxers each and no transport, food or clothes to get them to their destination. Reading the book, you see acts of kindness and acts of complete contempt for our fellow man and that really got me thinking about I would have done if two complete strangers had come to up me and ...
[IMG: 7 ver 4 full] Many thanks to the 19,100 visitors who dropped by Lib Dem Voice this week. Here's our 7 most-read posts... Êtes-vous Charlie? (100 comments) by The Voice Ming Campbell's response to the Charlie Hebdo shootings worries me (95 comments) by Caron Lindsay Could there be a National Government by the end of the year (42 comments) by Sally Pearson 48 good things Nick Clegg has done (48 comments) by Caron Lindsay The 12 most read LDV posts of 2014: Day 12 by The Voice Opinion: Deliberately offending people might be necessary (94 comments) by Mark Wright ...
Why the Tech Elite Is Getting Behind Universal Basic Income – Because they understand a world of more automation and fewer jobs needs it. The hypocrites have jumped aboard the Magna Carta bandwagon – Peter Oborne on good form: "Mr Cameron's Government has launched something close to an out-and-out attack on the rule of law. The idea that either he or his ministers give a damn for the principles that underlie Magna Carta is preposterous." Why I am not Charlie – "This crime in Paris does not suspend my political or ethical judgment, or persuade me that scatologically smearing a ...
It was a "you'll remember where you were when you heard the news" moment. I remember where I was when I heard the news about: Bobby Kennedy being assassinated Princess Marina dying (admittedly a bit of a niche one, that) Lord Mountbatten being killed John Lennon being shot Princess Diana dying The planes flying into the twin towers And now I add to that list: Five cartoonists, the editor, three other staff, two policemen and a visitor are killed at or around a French satirical newspaper "It's like Private Eye being attacked" – was my first thought on hearing the ...
Ed Miliband gets a mini-Paxman/Howard grilling from Andrew Marr during which he neither denies nor disowns talking about "weaponising" the NHS:
This blog is down with the kids, So here is the groovy platter that is currently top of the the hit parade. To be honest, I cannot remember the last time I knew what the number one single was, let alone like it. Perhaps if the current talk of bringing back Top of the Pops comes to something, it may happen more often. Anyway, I think this is a really good record. Alexis Petridis interviewed Mark Ronson the other day: As I'm leaving, he starts talking again about the guitar part on Uptown Funk that made him faint. He played ...
I had read a lot of things about the new Paddington Bear film before sitting down on Saturday in the local cinema to watch it: that it had a pro-immigration subtext, that it was anti-UKIP propaganda, that it was an attempt by the liberal cognoscenti to brainwash little ones throughout the western world to believe in multiculturalism. I figured everyone was probably exaggerating. Actually, the film is pretty much a straight up allegory about xenophobia and its negative effect, using a CGI bear as a proxy. I take this time now to alert you to the fact that this review ...
What do the security services need at a time like this? (tags: ) ICYMI: my response to the idea that all Muslims should apologise for X thing done by a Muslim Now with interesting comments :) (tags: ) Delia Derbyshire Audiological Chronology (tags: ) If Mr. Men Were From Yorkshire Little Miss Reuses Her Teabags has the best boots. Her hat would be quite cool if it was in better colours. (tags: ) The Conservative story of support for election reform (tags: ) Half of working dads want more childcare support (tags: ) If I lived in the same house ...
£600,000 of funding has been provided by Transport for London for the improvement of the 'public realm environment' on Dartmouth Road between Forest Hill station and the pools. The money is being provided under TfL's Local Implementation Plan (LIP) process. This funding – £300,000 for each of 2015-16 and 2016-17 - will be used to [...]
The Daily Telegraph reports: Ministers must commit to publishing the Chilcot Inquiry report before the election if it is completed in time, the Liberal Democrats have demanded. Tim Farron, the party's foreign office spokesman, wrote to Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office Secretary, urging the Conservatives to formally agree releasing the report within a week of its completion... "It has been over five years since the Iraq Inquiry began taking oral evidence from those with first-hand experience of the development and implementation of British government policy in Iraq," Mr Farron said. "The publication of the report has been long awaited and ...
You can always tell when there's an election coming up when stories start appearing in the press in the category of: "Someone with an (incredibly tenuous) link to a Lib Dem has done a Bad Thing." The Guardian's been guilty of two of those recently. First they published a story saying that an "aide to Vince Cable" had tweeted that convicted rapist Ched Evans was "probably not guilty." The person in question was a civil servant in Vince's department. I would imagine that the spokesman for Vince Cable quoted was also a BIS press spokesperson, not a Liberal Democrat. Even ...
The claim by Rupert Murdoch, reported in today's Independent, that Muslims must "recognise and destroy their growing jihadist cancer" or be "held responsible" after the Paris shootings at Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket is so outrageously wrong-headed and irresponsible that I hesitate to respond to or report on it. However, Mr. Murdoch is a man of influence and power and nonsense like this cannot be ignored. He may well have said that all Christians should be held responsible for the actions of Anders Breivik, the crusaders in the eleventh century or the Spanish Inquisition for all the sense he ...
So Tesco have announced plans to close some stores throughout the UK?But what does this means for Peterborough, a place with several Tesco outlets and a distribution centre, at Parnwell? According to the report: The news comes after two years of troubles at Tesco, which has suffered falling sales and profit warnings. Last year, [...]
Up until recently, as my blog title suggests, I have sat on the sidelines and observed, commented and followed the Lib Dems. I have been a Party Member for the last few years and although I have been an activist, ... Continue reading →
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-29816152 The link above is to the BBC web site. The article is all about closed major railway stations that have all but disappeared. Both the former Liverpool Central and Liverpool Exchange Stations are included and there are some historic photos. I published 3 photo's of the old Exchange Station on my Flickr site only a few days ago, being unaware that John Dodd would point me to this BBC article soon after. This is the link to one of the 3 photo's I published:- www.flickr.com/photos/86659476@N07/15609112074/ You can see the other two photos (all 3 are from the National Railway ...
I have long speculated, usually to friends over alcoholic beverages, as to what the content of Tony Blair and George W's conversations in the lead up to the Iraq War might have been. As many of them are potentially libellous, I shan't divulge any of my pet theories on the subject here; sufficed to say I am as eager any anyone to find out what the Chilcot investigation tells us on the matter. Which leads us all to ask in unison: when exactly will Chilcot's findings be revealed? Sir Peter Tapsell, Conservative MP for Louth and Horncastle, is quoted as ...
I thought it might be useful to add a note about making comments on planning applications for housing and other developments. Formally, there are 21 days to object or support from notification of an application. In practice, Shropshire Council, like most other councils, will accept comments up until shortly before the application is decided. Often [...]
When ice or snow is predicted, Shropshire Council pre-salts priority roads. This is around 28% of the total road network in Shropshire. It includes all A and B roads, and localised high-risk sites and important access routes. Click image to enlarge Map of roads gritted in Shropshire. Gritting in Telford & Wrekin.Filed under: Explainer, Ludlow, [...]
This brief guide is for people who are in immediate need of housing or think they might soon find themselves in need. The first move for anyone in need to housing is to register with Homepoint: 0300 303 8595 - shropshirehomepoint.co.uk. This is Shropshire's clearing centre for renting social homes. It is possible to get [...]
I've often been moved to offer a rebuttal to comments made in the public sphere. Indeed, I'm known for taking a sharp intake of breath and squeezing my eyes shut in an anxious state when Michael Gove went to make a comment on education, before taking my big letter writing pen to an article asking what planet he inhabits. Sexism, Civil Liberties, LGBT+Phobia, Racism, Environment - all topics I've replied to against opponents of my view. This is the first time I've been moved enough to write to rebut a member of my own party, one I get on well ...
This really bizarre letter was posted up online by someone who says, "The letter came through the door of a friend of mine, and then copies of the letter were sent to other people on the street": [IMG: Ukip Dartford letter page 1 - http://imgur.com/RKQ6Ek1] [IMG: Ukip Dartford letter page 2 - http://imgur.com/nVl6FQm] So far, various pieces of detail in the letter seem to stack up but we'll see what the passage of more time brings...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVNgplfx0PE The link above is to a You Tube video of a Parish Council meeting in Beyton. If you watch and listen to it you can hear allegations being made but seemingly little coming back from the Council by way of answers. Yes, this is a parish pump type matter for that particular community and not necessarily a big issue outside of that community but it does go to the heart of openness in local government. No doubt the councillors here were frustrated and wanted to move on to other business but why were the allegations not fully answered? It ...
Yesterday's Courier highlighted my call for the City Council to again consider lower 20mph speed limits in highly residential areas. Part of the article is reproduced below :As residents will recall, last June, I proposed to the council's City Development Committee that the City Council consult communities on where local people feel a 20mph limit would be appropriate. This failed to get support at committee by a single vote, due to the failure of SNP councillors to support a consultation exercise. As I indicated in the Courier yesterday, the sort of locations I feel these may be appropriate are narrow ...
