I was delighted to be invited to the first General Election hustings hosted by Dundee & Angus College's Arbroath Campus. The hustings, organised by students took place on Wednesday at the Keptie Street Campus. Sanjay took the opportunity to meet with students at the college on the Introduction to Construction course. It was an excellent first hustings for the election campaign, with great chairing by Student President, Marc Winsland. It was also a real pleasure to meet students taking the Introduction to Construction course. [IMG: Sanjay visiting D&A College] Questions focussed on the job opportunities for young people, the impact ...
The title probably gives away my attitude to this subject, but the electorate (or at least, part of it via a website called "Where do they stand") have been asking my opinions on these subjects, so in the interests of a well-informed Parliamentary Democracy... The question this website is asking is: What are your views on abortion? (Do you support the current law? Would you support a reduction in the upper gestational limit for abortion?) Ultimately these boil down to the concept of bodily autonomy, individual responsibility and personal freedom. As a Liberal, these questions are at the core of ...
I was very saddened to read in The Courier on 9th March that 1/4 of Angus Council Staff and Angus Teachers who are off sick are suffering with stress. Many of them will not be met with the understanding and sympathy they deserve as Mental Health is poorly understood and there is such a stigma attached to it. Having been off work with stress myself last year, my heart goes out to all of them and hope that they are able to receive the support and treatment they desperately need. Personally, I was fortunate that I was getting support from ...
This interview was recorded in 1927. He also speaks about his interest in spritualism.
It has been a bad fortnight for English teams (and British – poor Celtic...) in European competition and after Everton's shambolic defending against Dynamo Kiev tonight, the hopes of a British team lifting silverware in Europe is over for another season. Both Chelsea and Arsenal dropped out of the Champions League following a defeat on the away goals rule. The rule has been about for ages and most competitions use it to some degree. I'm a fan of having no away goals in use at all, like the football league playoffs, but can also see the way that CONCACAF Champions ...
Tonight I received the very sad news that former county councillor Mike Nicholls has passed away. Mike served the people of Launceston for many years and, latterly, was elected as a member of the Royal Cornwall Hospital Trust Council of Governors representing East Cornwall. Tweet
Today the Medway UKIP were proud to announce that they are now the third biggest party in the Council having leapfrogged us (LibDems) having gained two new councillors via defection. Yep, Councillors Vaughn Hewett and Tom Mason, both former mayors, have joined UKIP. No one seems too surprised at Mason but Hewett has raised a few eyebrows. The big question is; Is this a prologue for May's elections? Hard to say at this point, all that can be said is that two people have swapped party, they were not selected by the people and their constituents in their wards will ...
Back in December Jose Mourinho complained of a "campaign against Chelsea" and everyone scoffed. But an article posted on the club's official website yesterday does at least point to some surprising facts: It is in our 28 Premier League games this season where we have been awarded just two penalties. Both were for infringements on the league's most-fouled player, Eden Hazard, and both were in home London derbies, against Arsenal and QPR respectively. The most recent was four-and-a-half months ago. Historically, this figure seems abnormally low. In the Double-winning 2009/10 campaign, when we were the country's outstanding attacking team, we ...
From Sun Nation: Ukip has suspended one of its senior figures after a Sun investigation into alleged fraudulent expense claims. Ukip has removed the whip from MEP Janice Atkinson and axed her as a general election candidate "following allegations of a serious financial nature", the party said. Ms Atkinson represents the South East in the European Parliament and was due to fight the Folkestone and Hythe Commons seat on May 7. The Sun secretly filmed a member of her staff apparently plotting to make a substantial bogus expenses claim. A party spokesman said it was "incredibly disappointed with Ms Atkinson, ...
Today the day after George Osborne delivered the final budget of this coalition Government Danny Alexander the Liberal Democrat Chief Secretary of the Treasury laid out our plans for tax and spending. Lib Dem plans include borrowing £70bn less than Labour and cutting £50bn less than the Conservatives, keeping Britain on the path to prosperity, showing that we still believe in a stronger economy AND and fairer society; the Conservatives recently dropped the latter in a campaign poster and in their budget plans. Danny announced using the same figures that were available to Osborne that there is still roughly roughly ...
From BBC News: Further inquiries are to be carried out into whether detectives were told to limit a child abuse investigation centred on the former MP Lord Janner.A home belonging to the 86-year-old peer, who was a Labour MP in Leicester for 27 years, was searched in 2013.Last year it was reported that in 1989 a detective sergeant was told not to arrest Mr Janner or search his home.The Independent Police Complaints Commission has said more investigation is needed into the claims.Leicestershire Police said internal inquiries had been made before the matter was referred to the commission.Greville Janner was Labour ...
Thu 19th
18:53
A dancing troupe and the Lib Dem party leader are expected to be filmed today, as long as the smog d...
A gem of detail from the News Shopper: The mystery filming work in Gravesend is a Liberal Democrat promotional video, with Nick Clegg rumoured to be making an appearance today (March 19)... The Lib Dems have been filming in Paddock Street car park for the last two nights, which confused residents who spotted a white, double decker bus and film crews... A dancing troupe and the Lib Dem party leader are expected to be filmed today, as long as the smog does not interfere. One can but hope that the final film will look like this:
Thu 19th
18:51
Peg Hill Skate Park - Help Yate Town Council check out the repairs, and lighting coming soon
Do you use Peg Hill Skate Park? If so come along to the park at 4 pm on Monday 23rd March to have your say about the recent repair works. What's more, the ground work for the extra lighting will start next week. The lights will be fully installed by the summer, so they will be in place ready for use in the autumn when the evenings get darker again. The work has taken longer than planned because getting extra power to the site has been challenging, but work will start on Monday. The plan is to keep the disruption ...
It's hard to believe that anyone could do such a stupid and dangerous thing. If caught the book needs to be thrown at the staggeringly stupid culprit. [IMG: Taken from the Station platform looking towards Southport.] Taken from the Station platform looking towards Southport.
[IMG: herts-county-council] Hertfordshire Lib Dems learned today that the projected underspend at County Hall this financial year has topped £21m. Just £4.2m of this is needed to carry into next financial year, to finish off delayed projects. Conservative-led County Hall still intend putting £7.7m into topping up reserves, and have now suggested paying off further debt with the extra £9.1m windfall, despite having the 2nd lowest debt of any comparable UK local authority. This is all despite the Conservative Administration recently deciding to raise Council Tax, piling misery onto hard-pushed families, to raise just £4m extra. Paul Zukowskyj, Lib Dem ...
Who can you send your address Election Freepost to? The Election Communication/Address/Freepost distributed by the Royal mail can be done as an addressed mailing or an unaddressed one. You do not have to mail every household or every voter but you cannot mix addressed and unaddressed mailings in a single constituency. Depending on your choice [...]
I'm a very proud, if amused father at the moment. Here's why – a message (and photograph) from my daughters. So anyone who knows us will know we're not exactly seasoned runners. Jess actively hates it; her favourite activity is sitting down and she prefers to take the train. Emily hasn't run anywhere for many ... Continue reading »
ALDC members have access to our Ask ALDC online advice service. The Election Law section of Ask ALDC contains the following resources relating to nominations: Getting Your Candidate Nominated Filling in the Nomination Paper Candidate's Consent to Nomination Nomination and the Deposit DNO Paperwork and Agent's Appointment Form Deadlines and Delivery of Nomination Paperwork Nomination: The [...]
This Government (DCMS) Fund is designed to provide grants to help disabled people get elected. The LGA has commissioned ALDC to deliver the programme for the Liberal Democrats. The programme comprises identifying potential candidates with disabilities in target seats for next May's council elections. We're probably looking for about five or six. Each of these [...]
The BBC reports: UKIP has denied a general election candidate in Wales has been suspended following internal party wrangling. The party said Norma Woodward was wrongly removed as its Carmarthen East and Dinefwr candidate by a committee that overstepped its authority... It was announced earlier this week that Ms Woodward had been suspended from all party activities and that it was looking for another candidate in the constituency. In a statement to local newspapers, UKIP Wales cited allegations about the management of a party branch bank account.
With the 'short campaign' just about to get underway, now is the time to plan the last weeks of your campaigns if you haven't done so already - after all, you are going to be much too busy campaigning to do this any later! ALDC's example timetable combines a rigorous canvassing schedule, with stuffing parties, [...]
George Osborne's budget continues to give help to those who don't need it (but might vote Tory) and take it away from those who do need it. Those of us with savings are to be allowed to earn £1 000 of interest per year free of tax. Well, 2% is a pretty average rate of interest, so to receive (I won't say "earn") that £1 000 you'd need to have £50 000 stashed away. Indeed, if you were daft enough to put your savings in a Lloyds Bank's "Easy Saver" account you'd need half a million, as Lloyds pays only ...
[IMG: election-590x288] Yes, I know you've all been listening to podcasts a lot longer than me, but something's not really a trend until I jump onto it several years later than everyone else. Anyway, after Chris Brooke's numerous plugs for it, I've started listening to the Cambridge Politics department's Election podcast and from the evidence of the two that I've listened to so far, it's the show about politics I've been wanting for years. In depth interviews with interesting people where they get to talk at length about issues, coupled with interesting discussion about current political events that's not just ...
In a constitutional innovation, from the House of Commons dispatch box, Danny Alexander has today set out the Liberal Democrats' alternative fiscal plans, as the Guardian reports: Danny Alexander, the Liberal Democrat chief secretary to the Treasury, has taken the unprecedented step of standing at the Commons dispatch box to set out an alternative fiscal plan to George Osborne's budget. The Lib Dem proposals would allow the next government to reach balance on the current account by 2017-18, and impose higher tax rises and slower cuts in spending than those set out by the Conservatives. The plan also allows for ...
1 in 4 of us will develop a mental health problem at some point in our lives – and 75% of these conditions develop by the age of 18. If people don't get the support they need in childhood and adolescence it can have an impact on the rest of their lives. And in yesterday's budget, Liberal Democrats acted decisively to make sure the best possible support is available, with £1.25bn of new investment in young people's mental health services, and a clear blue print for delivering the transformation needed. If we want to build a fairer society, where everyone ...
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That tub-thumping Labour opposition at work again: [IMG: Ed Balls] Which of course reminds me of: [IMG: Rachel Reeves on benefits] And also: [IMG: Labour promise more welfare cuts]
T4GM and First Manchester have now confirmed the start date for the changes to buses on the Manchester to Bury corridor, which particularly affects buses on the Bury New Road corridor, together with buses that go down to Carr Clough and Rainsough, and also up to Pillsworth. There is also a minor routing change to the 135 in Manchester city centre. [IMG: Screenshot 2015-03-19 11.47.13] [IMG: Screenshot 2015-03-19 11.47.21] There one addition to this schedule, introduced too late for this document, which is that there will be an additional shuttle on the route of the 95 from Rainsough to the ...
Yesterday I attended the London Resi Conference where housing developers, investors, land managers, the GLA and other industry professionals gathered to discuss how to deliver housing to address the shortfall of provision in London. I gained some useful insights into the issues faced and forecasted growth areas. However the 'Bright Young Things' ideas session left [...]
Message in a sentence The Liberal Democrats want to introduce a High Value Property Levy, or 'Mansion Tax', on properties valued at over £2 million to help balance the country's books and reduce the country's deficit. Message in a paragraph The Liberal Democrats want to introduce a High Value Property Levy, or 'Mansion Tax', on [...]
Hip hop was invented sometime around 1975 by a DJ in the South Bronx who called himself Kool Herc. His idea, like all brilliant ones, was essentially simple. He played mostly funk tunes at his gigs, and he noted that the bit of every song people seemed to like the most was the drum breaks. So he figured: why not just play drum breaks all the time, looped together? A form of music that has gone onto to sell billions of records was born. I decided I would catalogue the five greatest hip hop acts of the 20th century, in ...
On Sunday's Andrew Marr show, Ed Balls caught the chancellor off guard when he all but forced him (in one of recent television history's most awkward moments) to shake on an agreement to hold a television debate. That agreement did not include provision for a Lib Dem presence – something which Danny Alexander tried to rectify when he appeared on Sky News yesterday with Mr Balls: Ed Balls and Danny Alexander in heated exchange on deficit cuts http://t.co/OPJWUbkcDv — Sky News (@SkyNews) March 18, 2015
Hertfordshire Lib Dems learned today that the projected underspend at County Hall this financial year has topped £21m. Just £4.2m of this is needed to carry into next financial year, to finish off delayed projects. Conservative-led County Hall still intend putting £7.7m into topping up reserves, and have now suggested paying off further debt with the extra [...]
With my book deadline pushed ack to the end of the month and still a lot of work to do but I have taken ten minutes (odd) to question this latest Labour Tweet, the second of which I've seen in the last two weeks: Rail season tickets in Chatham have gone up by 100% since 95. Tory complacency on economy as real pplfeel sting >> http://t.co/fkBTzUDAd2 — TrisOsborne (@cllrtrisosborne) March 18, 2015 Firstly I should state when it comes to rail fare I am completely neutral as I have been commuting for the last seven years and have watched my ...
Yesterday was one of the great annual set-pieces of British politics: the Budget. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, set out his plans for government finances: taxes and spending. This year, behind the theatricality, it was a bit of a non-event. There were few changes to previously announced plans. Mr Osborne rowed back somewhat in his longer term plans to cut government spending. There were some cheap gimmicks. Political inactivity is not necessarily a bad thing. But what is most remarkable is that neither he, nor the Labour opposition, were prepared to talk about the British economy as it ...
Labour seat Cause- death LD Candidate- David Dear Please contact David Mawdsley (d.h.mawdsley@btinternet.com or 01745 710464) to help.
[IMG: Internet campaigning in the 2015 general election]
I was dwelling on some of the more dramatic elements of the Budget, and found myself drawn to the introduction of a Personal Savings Allowance, to be introduced from April next year. Under the proposals, anyone receiving interest on their savings will be exempted from income tax on the first £1,000 of any interest received. Now, given that interest rates on savings accounts are, at best, around the 1% mark, you would need to have £100,000 in savings to get the maximum benefit from it. However, how many people have that level of savings? Indeed, how many households have savings ...
In the world of politics, energy is all too often around building shiny new power stations - whether gas or nuclear. Rather more positively it is about renewables – erecting wind or solar farms, and wind arrays off-shore. Just recently, with Lib Dems in Government and in charge of DECC, we've got rather more sophisticated. Nowadays we also think about the demand side of the equation. Why not spread demand more evenly and avoid having to build all that expensive excess capacity? Or even better, increase energy efficiency to such a degree that we don't need to generate so much ...
The sad tale of financial regulators is the same sad tale of regulators everywhere. There is an inevitable, even biblical, tendency for them to strain most enthusiastically at gnats and miss camels. To seek energetically the mote and to miss the beam altogether. That's what I mean by biblical; it's just like a parable. They have an unerring instinct for the trivial while missing the bigger picture entirely - especially when it is a trivial matter that they don't fully understand. Or when it is an important innovation that has emerged from outside the narrow financial world where they came ...
This post is the first of its kind for me. The post is jointly authored by myself and my friend and colleague Ken Gibb. It is being published simultaneously on both our blogs. You can find Ken's post here. A recent NIESR paper by Armstrong and Davis (November 2014 (£)) compares the last two booms and busts in major OECD country housing markets. The authors present a thoughtful macroeconomic analysis of national housing markets and from there conduct panel data analysis of the determinants of house prices focusing on financial, debt and related variables. The authors argue that comparison of ...
Budget set to include Yorkshire devolution deal - eurgh. Leeds City Region AGAIN. FUCK OFF. (tags: ) Labour are doing the Tories' work for them on welfare (tags: ) A Universal Basic Income Is The Bipartisan Solution To Poverty We've Been Waiting For (tags: ) Movie Romance vs real life (tags: ) Do Unemployed People need a kick up the arse? #qtwtain (tags: ) Bradford West election race heats up with claims of anonymous threatening calls (tags: ) Fully automated luxury communism is taking us back to a promise of scifi utopia (tags: ) This is the crumb of comfort ...
How much is a tree worth? Or a historic hedge, or local wildlife? Not much, some developers seem to think. Take the Rodford School site, for example, which is being redeveloped into housing. We've already reported how valuable trees and habitat were considered less important than profits - at the planning stage local councillors were outvoted by others who don't live anywhere near here, and the developers were allowed to squeeze extra units onto the site despite the concerns about significant trees and hedges. Now a second threat has revealed itself. Local environmentalists spotted that the builders were not complying ...
From Sheena Wellington : Wighton Heritage Centre, Central Library - this Saturday at 11am : Helen Forbes (tin whistle), with Lou Lewis (guitar) - Cappuccino Concert. Tickets £5 (includes coffee, available from 10.30am). Scotland's finest whistle player presents reels, jigs, slow airs and a surprise or two, sensitively accompanied by Lou Lewis on guitar.
Last month I reported on how deselection was looming for controversial Conservative MP Ian Liddell-Grainger: The Conservative Party is finally catching up with just how unsuited Ian Liddell-Grainger is to being an MP (such as his cavalier disregard of personal information supplied by his constituents, his claim to personally fund his website despite the official records showing him claiming expenses for it and his airbrushing of photos to remove someone he doesn't like, an attitude more suited to a sulky teenager). Now a dossier has been presented to Conservative HQ, as the local paper reports: A Conservative council leader has ...
[IMG: Badgers-Tories] Whilst on holiday in Shropshire last week I came across this general election poster. I can't say this issue has been at the top of media's election coverage to date, indeed I can't say I recall them mentioning it at all so far. But Shropshire is predominately rural so bovine tuberculosis is going to be a big issue in the farming community there. My instinct is to back the badgers against the Tories, but then I have never backed Tories!
George Osborne, in the budget, announced the 'Help To Buy' ISA which comes on top of other 'Help' policies for people wanting to buy homes. This is my conundrum- why does George keep pushing up the demand side for housing when it is well known that a huge uplift in demand side housing leads to a housing bubble that will eventually burst? There is a huge gap in the supply side of housing, especially affordable housing, but the concentration is on private ownership. Is this a way of keeping Thatcher's neoliberal agenda alive whereby private ownership of property is seen ...
Election Day Minus Forty-Nine: So, for the last time in the first fixed term Parliament, Master Gideon did a thing. Liberal Democrat policies once more featured strongly (and anonymously) in the form of future rises in the personal allowance towards the minimum wage and a promise of an end in sight of austerity. But most of what he did was mess things about. A little. He cut some taxes a little; cut some spending a little less; made the tax system a little more generous to favoured industries/more complicated with more loopholes. And made several bad jokes. Mostly about the ...
Amongst the good news in yesterday's budget there was an important announcement for Wales. The UK Government plan to cut the tolls on the Severn Bridge shortly after they take control of the crossing from the private company currently running it. As welcome as this news is the Liberal Democrats want to go further. We want to abolish the tolls altogether and in doing secure a massive economic boost for local businesses.
