The Victorians get an unfairly bad press. They did not cover table legs because they thought them indecent. That was a joke 19th-century Britons made about the more prudish Americans. And I am convinced that the British obsession with respectability and emotional repression dates not from the Victorians but from the early decades of the 20th century. It may even date from after the First World War. You know those little shrines that appear today where someone has died in a car crash? The ones that people tend to find a bit unBritish? Backwatersman (aka the blogger across the road) ...
On Channel 4 On Demand, I watched Coalition earlier today. I was not impressed by the first few minutes covering the election campaign. However, once the election polls closed, the drama changed gear and was superb from that minute onwards. The acting was first-rate. Mark Gatiss as Peter Mandelson was priceless. Donald Sumpter was utterly brilliant as Paddy. Chris Larkin was great as Danny Alexander. OK, the latter two didn't look like Danny/Paddy but they "got" them. Acting is not impersonation. Acting involves getting into a character, and I think Sumpter and the rest of the cast did that. There ...
I'd be lying if I said there haven't been times when I've asked myself why I'm a Liberal Democrat. Even with a well considered philosophical liberalism, frustrations with party messages, elements of coalition policy and strategic mistakes can be very testing. I know many good Liberals who have left the party in recent years, and I understand perfectly why they have made their respective decisions. I know how difficult it has been for some of them to leave a party they have served for decades, and naturally I have reflected more than once on my own future within the Liberal ...
The People's Flag is purple nowIt's to Farage that they kowtow Now Labour's values are unknownExcept the mugs with 'Send them home' The People's Flag has changed its spotsFor fear of UKIP's ballot boxThose mugs keep lowering the tone Their banner reading 'Send them home' I like to think that I'd instinctively be a Liberal and not a racist opportunist even if I wasn't the son of an immigrant. After all, Ed Miliband's the son of an immigrant too, so there doesn't seem to be any correlation. Thanks to Nick Barlow for eternal vigilance and #whynotjointhelabourparty, and to Richard Flowers ...
The controversy over Labour's "Controls on immigration" mug, which I wrote about last night, continues. 108 units have been sold since I first looked this morning, netting the party over £500.The goodwill it will have lost Labour is priceless, though. Seriously, how would you feel if you had gone through hell trying to get into this country, had finally got your visa and been reunited with your spouse whom you hadn't seen for ages only to be assaulted with headlines demonising immigrants on a daily basis. How would you feel if you saw someone drinking out of a mug like ...
My review of the week. Here's some of the things I've been in to (and this time it seems to be a bumper edition): A TV series: Storyville on BBC4 is a series of one-off documentaries from around the world. The latest series has been running for some time but I caught up with it [...]
Peter Preston's Observer column today is about the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of David Steel's byelection victory in Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles. Preston covered the contest as a young reporter: We're used to seeing politician as spads, special advisers without a life away from greasy polls. We're used to alienation, distrust, the greater snarling Paxo. Were things kinder and gentler half a century ago? Not exactly: Brown and Hailsham, for two, could dish it out. Jeremy Thorpe was already a sly, smiling rogue. But on the doorsteps and in the village halls there was a connection beyond curled lips. ...
Ministers have been accused by a cross-party group of peers of trying to "bury" the results of the biggest ever Whitehall examination of European Union powers, after it found no evidence that the EU was interfering excessively in any aspect of British life. In a hugely damaging move for the government, the European Union Committee of the House of Lords, chaired by former Tory minister Lord Boswell, comes close to saying that ministers tried to cover up the findings, which do not support David Cameron's claims that the EU is "becoming a state" and has already accrued excessive powers. By ...
Escalating property prices, and inaction by the Tory council, have created a housing crisis in London, and we must act now. Regardless of who wins the General Election, there is action that can be taken locally. Wandsworth Borough Council has a target of 33% properties to be affordable in new developments. However, developments consistently miss [...]
Recorded exclusively for Liberal Democrat Newswire's 'I'm Voting Liberal Democrat' Facebook event, Tim Farron's video is available to watch here. [IMG: Tim Farron video] If you agree with Tim, remember to sign up to the Facebook event here – and you'll be the first to see the other exclusive videos that will be coming out during the campaign.
Thanks to Daisy Benson for putting this on You Tube. If this was the West Wing, it would be Nick's stump speech and every time he speaks in the next few weeks, it'll be the "modified stump" that he delivers.
Full Council in Gateshead on Thursday 26th March included taking a final decision on the Gateshead local plan. This document sets the planning policies for the years ahead. Liberal Democrat Councillors have been in battle with the Council over the greenbelt. We argue that no land needs to be taken out of the greenbelt for house building. Labour on the other hand are arguing the opposite - they
[IMG: After eight years, I still haven't memorised this list from the Council Chamber] After eight years, I still haven't memorised this list from the Council Chamber Those of you in Colchester likely already know this, but let's make it official: I won't be standing for re-election to Colchester Borough Council this year, so my eight years on the Council will be coming to an end in May. It's been an interesting and enjoyable time, but everything has to come to an end sometime, and it seems that this is the time for me and the Council Chamber to part ...
[IMG: Calabrese Pizza Express pizza] I'm the guest speaker on Tuesday evening at a pizza and politics for Liberal Democrat members and supporters in North London: With the General Election just over a month away, the coming weeks promise to be both exciting and intense. We are therefore delighted to have Mark Pack, co-author of 101 Ways to Win an Election, and campaign manager for Lynne Featherstone's 2005 and 2010 election wins, to come and speak to us on Tuesday 31 March. The details are: Date: Tuesday 31 March Time: 8pm Venue: 18 Duke's Avenue, N10 2PT Cost: £10 Please ...
In February seasonally adjusted unemployment fell again in Birmingham. The unadjusted figures rose, as this is a month when the figures tend to increase, as the Christmas effect unwinds further. Acocks Green saw a rise of 16 in the unadjusted count to 695. This is 302 lower than a year ago. The number of long term unemployed rose by 10 to 265 and the number of youth claimants fell by 10 to 135. The seasonally adjusted figures in Birmingham are now back to the typical levels seen before the financial crash of 2008, standing at 6.3%. While much improved, this ...
Acocks Green's Ward Committee met last Wednesday evening at Lakey Lane Primary School. It was a relatively light agenda with only a few members of the public in attendance. The main issues discussed were: Planning. An objection was submitted by the Committee against application 2015/00455/PA by Painters Funeral Directors on the grounds of inadequate parking arrangements for hearses and visitors which is having a significant impact on local residents. Environmental Health. Mark Croxford gave an update. Acocks Green Ward had 48 complaints about rubbish on the highway and 64 complaints about rubbish elsewhere last month. There were 4 fixed penalty ...
Twitter abuse is an occupational hazard for anyone who has an opinion, especially if they happen to be female. If you are a woman, it's not only what you say but how you look that is fair game for the trolls. Alliance MP Naomi Long had a bit of Friday fun this week as she read out some of the abuse she'd received over the years and get her own back with some witty retorts. I think my personal favourite was her response to the one about the size of her backside – a subject on which Alistair Carmichael waded ...
My first job to do today was to take photos at another Planting Up Whickham event, this time on Coniston Avenue, on the Lakes Estate. There is a rose bed on the entrance to the Estate and the group has decided to take on the planting and maintenance of it. This morning a group of residents did the work. Cllr Peter Maughan was raised on the Estate and he planted a rose in memory of his
Last night we ran another community pub at Marley Hill Community Centre. The aim is to get young families in the early evening, hence the reason for assembling the children's play equipment. David and I ran the kitchen. I also sold my hen and duck eggs to raise funds for the community centre. Whilst the event was popular with young families, we still need to work out a way to attract
Sun 29th
15:30
Day 5198: Ed-xaggeration - Mr Milipede Should Not Be Allowed to Claim Credit for Stopping Syria
Thursday: Not-debate Night The election campaign sort of kicked off with an interview-and-question-time session each for the Prime Monster and his opposite Wonk. I fell asleep towards the end of Mr Balloon and woke up a few minutes into Mr Milipede. And it took me a while to realise that they'd changed over! Which says a lot about the sort of choice facing the voter! I am, though, nursing a particular annoyance at Mr Milipede once again rewriting history to cast himself as "standing up to Obama, Cameron and Clegg" over military intervention in Syria. That's simply not what happened. ...
The BBC reports that Mike Hancock has announced that he is to stand as an independent candidate in Portsmouth South. Hancock had the whip withdrawn last year after apologising for inappropriate conduct towards a constituent. He told BBC News: "I'm going to stand for sure, I've made this decision because my health is so much better and I think I owe it to a lot of people who have supported me. "Once you've been an MP for as long as I have it's hard to just walk away. "I think if enough people realise that I'm like everyone, I'm a ...
[IMG: 7 ver 4 full] Many thanks to the 17,700 visitors who dropped by Lib Dem Voice this week. Here's our 7 most-read posts... We're heading for a minority Labour government supported by the SNP (101 comments) by Paul Walter The attacks on Tim Farron need to stop – Vince Cable should know better (50 comments) by Caron Lindsay Is David Steel right about the Lib Dem attitude to a future coalition (70 comments) by Caron Lindsay Why have Liberal Democrats encouraged the Tories' Bercow bashing? (54 comments) by Caron Lindsay +++Lib Dem PPC arrested on historic child sex abuse ...
Lib Dems Believe Wordle 10
We're a party that believes in genuine freedom. Genuine freedom only exists if you have the means to exercise it. So it means the freedom to decide what kind of life you want to lead, freedom of choice about your personal circumstances, about where you want to live, about what sort of life you want to live, who you want to live it with - but also about having freedom to have a home, to work, to have access to decent healthcare. It's a distinctly Social Liberal concept of freedom. And also a fundamental acknowledgement that the biggest single bar ...
We had a mini action day in my ward yesterday to deliver 2000 letters and an equal number of Focuses. All done though the second patch I had to deliver was done this morning. The Focus is entirely about volunteering possibilities in the Whickham area. It's already been delivered in Whickham North and Whickham East and has resulted in a number of people coming forward to help local organisations
We held our street surgery in Whickham, outside the Library, yesterday morning. We got noticed - hardly surprising given the huge diamond corex posters we had with us. And we had a good number of people speak to us as well. It seems that people have been watching the videos we made of recent council meetings. One of them was in the eFocus on Friday so that got noticed. Someone mentioned they
Sun 29th
14:02
Lib Dems publish more internal polling, leaked figures show Labour's lack of canvassing and more in ...
Find out more about all these stories and more in the next edition of my monthly email newsletter, Liberal Democrat Newswire, going out tomorrow (Monday). Sign up for it here and make sure you don't miss out. In the meantime, you can browse the previous editions online.
It's yellow, it might just ever so subtly mention the Liberal Democrat Stronger Economy, Fairer Society, Opportunity for Everyone slogan, and those designs from the graphic designers representing our five key manifesto priorities are actually very pretty. And inside there are yellow seats (on reflection probably more orange than yellow), and, I'm told, yellow ambient lighting. Here is Chipping Barnet candidate Marisha Ray and friends about to board (reproduced from Facebook with her permission). [IMG: Lib Dem battle bus maiden voyage] Strong speech from @nick_clegg to fire up the campaign in @OxWAb pic.twitter.com/wwMoDFOslH — Alex Meredith (@alex4wantage) March 29, 2015 ...
A couple of days ago I received an email from the DWP about the State Pension Top Up that it going to be made available, for a limited time, to women born before 6th April '53 and men born before 6th April '51. I forget why we've been offered this crumb, but I think it [...]
This week, Lib Dem Equalities Minister Jo Swinson announced the eight organisations who will receive £2 million of government money to tackle homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying. To accompany that announcement, she wrote an article for Pink News explaining why this money is needed: Earlier this year singer-songwriter Sam Smith publicly came out and talked openly about being bullied at school. Denying he was gay made the bullying worse and the thing he most hated was how his friends and family heard the names he was called. Fortunately he's gone on to have a multi-million album selling, Grammy winning career ...
Labour have just started delivering a dishonest newspaper in the Yardley Constituency. There are a number of false and misleading items in that newspaper, but one is so spectacularly false that it warrants an immediate response. The claim is that "while people here are forced to foodbanks". I made an expenses claim for subsistance or food. They then say "Why were you paying for his dinner."
Sun 29th
12:31
Why Couldn't the Tories have given Hague a cake on a platter instead of Bercow's head?
The Tory's attempt to oust the House's Speaker,John Bercow, was an absolute farce in itself but was made worse by the fact that Tory MPs were told by the whips to vote in favour of toppling him as a gift to William Hague for his birthday. Couldn't they have done a whip around instead? There was no need for Hague to call a surprise vote that would have lead to a secret ballot being held in May on whether to bring in a new speaker in an underhanded way. As a young person I am sick of the way that ...
A great video of Jethro Tull in their bluesy prime. Fillimore East was a music venue in New York's East Village. In a The Local East Village article, John Mayall recalls: If you played there, you did feel like you were a part of something whereas the bigger places, of course, everybody gets lost in the shuffle. Stadiums are stadiums, it loses the intimacy. So because of the size of the place it was just about right. It held a lot of people but not too many people that you couldn't feel that connection with the artist.Its owner Bill Graham, ...
Interesting story in today's Telegraph about a fundraising letter from Tim Farron to combat Tony Blair's £1000 donations to Labour's target seats. Interesting, but old. We told you about this way back on 5th March. [IMG: LDV Blair post] Should the photo of Tony Blair set your blood boiling, as it did mine, you might like to make a donation to the Liberal Democrats – especially as there's a match funding effort for March going on. Can you help the party reach its £300,000 target? * Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
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% 35% 7% 16% 4% -2% 11-13/3 Online ComRes 35% 35% 8% 10% 7% 0% 20-22/3 Phone ICM 36% 35% 8% 9% 4% 1% 13-15/3 Phone Ashcroft 33% 33% 8% 12% 5% 0% 20-22/3 Phone MORI 33% 34% 8% 13% 6% -1% 8-11/3 Phone Opinium 34% 33% 8% 13% 7% ...
Sun 29th
10:34
Ed Davey: It would be incredibly difficult to work with the Tories due to their views on the EU and ...
The Observer reports The Liberal Democrat energy secretary, Ed Davey, has hinted strongly that he would oppose a second coalition with the Tories because their policy on Europe amounts to "economic and environmental irresponsibility of the highest order". Davey, seen as a likely contender in any contest to succeed Nick Clegg, told the Observer that, by contrast, the Lib Dems and Labour shared many views on the environment, although he feared that Ed Miliband's policy of regulating energy prices would drive away investment. In a significant intervention in an increasingly tense debate within the Lib Dems, Davey said he found ...
We all knew that Labour are unprincipled, opportunistic and popularist but even the cynics on the interweb last night were not expecting a gaffe so dreadful that it confimed all their prejudices in spades. However, as the New Statesman says, it wasnt really a gaffe. It was a calculated and cynical manouevre designed to counter UKIP, whilst undermining the Tory USP. And that makes it even worse: Labour has come under fire from its own activists after releasing a branded mug that promises "Controls on immigration". The troublesome cup is being condemned as unspeakably naff at best and outright racist ...
Bakery spreads the joy of quality food far and wide - nice article on @LoveBread_ in t'Echo (tags: ) [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
Here's the new film from the Electoral Commission:
We have received some good local news, about a community minibus for St. Philips Church More than 300 local charities and community groups across England will receive new minibuses from the Department for Transport's £25 million community transport minibus fund The winners from across the country will each receive a 9 to 16-seater minibus specifically tailored to their requirements - such
Seen at the Atkinson in Southport:- [IMG: Crossens Canoe - Atkinson 12] I have never seen the councillors representing Crossens arriving at meetings via this form of transport! To read more about this historic artifact see the BBC link below:- The photo is amongst my Flickr shots at:- www.flickr.com/photos/86659476@N07/
Disraeli may have thought that "England does not love coalitions", but I certainly enjoyed the Channel 4 dramatisation of those crazy days of May 2010, broadcast last night. If you've not yet seen it, I strongly recommend catching up (before ... Continue reading →
I recall when I first heard about this programme being commissioned. In fact, I wrote an article on this very site about it. Having now watched it, my view on that hasn't really been significantly altered - it was a bad idea. This was reflected in the quality of the final piece, which wasn't very good, really. I mean, as a piece of a drama. And before you jump to conclusions that I'm saying this out of political bias, I actually thought it was remarkably pro-Lib Dem. Perhaps not very pro-Clegg on occasions, but definitely pro-Lib Dem. The nation seemed ...
[IMG: mphbasic] A few weeks ago, I mentioned that a poll had shown 36% of people in the UK supported the idea of a basic income and promised to look in some more detail at the results when ComRes released them. Unfortunately, that slipped my mind for a while thanks to other things going on, but I've now found the details of the poll and a PDF file of the more detailed results, broken down by demographics. The question asked was one of a series of Green party policies that respondents were asked if they supported or opposed (there was ...
If you've had a busy weekend, you might want to reward yourself with a wee cocktail. There's a new one on the market. Trouble is, you'd have to go to Inverness to drink it, but that's no hardship. It is one of the loveliest places on earth, after all and I'm not just saying that because I was born there. The "Beaker" cocktail, created in Danny Alexander's honour, is on sale in an Inverness bar for either £4 or £6 depending on the day of the week. The Press and Journal has the story: The cocktail, which sells for £4 ...
As Lib Dem Planning Spokesperson on Sefton Council I led the opposition to Sefton Council's Local Plan on the Planning Committee. As a consequence I have been sent many copies of objections to the Plan which is now going on to be reviewed by an independent planning inspector. This is one such objection. For the attention of the inspector. I wish to object to the local plan as proposed by Sefton Council. I am basing this objection on several grounds which concern sites I am familiar with. The loss of Green Belt land on the following sites will lead to ...
Harris Academy Parent Teacher and Pupils' Association is holding a Prize Bingo Evening this Tuesday, 31st March at the school in Lawton Road. Eyes down at 7pm. Tickets are priced at £1.00. All welcome!
Two planning applications have been submitted for very different solar installations near Ludlow. One, on the roofs of existing chicken sheds, is unlikely to be controversial. The other is a submission for a solar farm at Whitton in Caynham parish. A larger scheme on this site caused much controversy and was thrown out by the [...]
Sun 29th
08:00Call Clegg goes on the road as Nick Clegg launches the Liberal Democrat election campaign
A big day today as Nick Clegg heads to Oxford West and Abingdon to officially launch the Liberal Democrat campaign. As ever there will be a bus to ferry the leader and his team around the country but it will have two particularly interesting features. First of all, it'll have the tech to enable Nick to do Call Clegg style shows and radio interviews while he travels. Nick has always been the most accessible party leader, doing regular town hall meetings, but this will take it to a new level. The other feature of the bus is that its livery ...
[Once again doing Chuck Wendig's flash fiction challenge. This time he's said to write, in 2000 words or fewer, a story that's in some way about filth, inspired by the controversy over Clean Reader, an app that removes swear words from books. This story was written in 48 minutes with no revision and is UNPLEASANT, [...]
