My hands have not fared well with letter boxes in recent weeks. I have had numerous knuckles repeatedly bloodied as letter boxes chew up my fingers whilst putting leaflets through. I look forward to the day when we either have everyone's email addresses or a robot can deliver leaflets for us! Not all injuries in the photo were campaign caused. The scar on my thumb was the result of chopping
We don't normally have chocolate in our house. After all, it's not something we can grow! But a couple of weeks ago, we let ourselves go and bought a pile of chocolate biscuits. This is fuel for the campaign. Sadly, it's all gone now. No more until our next sweet ration coupons come through!
A particularly fine crop this time. I have visited Stamford East myself, though not accompanied by Strauss. There are many more of these slideshows to enjoy on this blog: Devon, Bedfordshire, North Lincolnshire, East Sussex, Leicestershire, Herefordshire, Hampshire, Cumbria,Cambridgeshire and Kent.
This shop in Nelson Street, Market Harborough, has been an Indian takeaway for as long as most residents can remember. Today it appears to be undergoing a refitting to become some form of fried chicken shop. But for two or three years in the late 1970s it was a secondhand bookshop. When I was in the sixth form I had a Saturday job there, serving what customers there were and cataloguing books. It all sounds rather unlikely now and too long ago for the internet to help me prove the bookshop really existed. But a search in Google Books brought ...
Thanks to Spotlight for the illustration. After the allegations against Greville Janner had received their first public airing during the trial of Frank Beck in 1991, he received extraordinary support from a group of colleagues in the Commons, In recent days two of them who are still active in politics have backed away from supporting him again. In 1991 Keith Vaz told the House: The people of his constituency do not believe the lies. They are with him now, and they will be with him in the future, because they know of his unstinting service to anyone who approaches him, ...
Some more election activity from me, as I helped out a friend by delivering a couple of hundred leaflets for her – it was a sunny day, and I needed the exercise. So, it's another day when I've not been keeping up with the minutiae of the campaign itself, but I'm not sure I'm missing much. In 2010, David Cameron complained that the debates were sucking the life out of the campaign, but this year it feels like the campaign itself is doing that, and reducing itself to nothing before our eyes. There's a real campaign going on, with leaflets ...
[IMG: Oxford Lib Dems making phone calls for the 2015 general election] Nor do you have to give money, valuable though both are. You can also make calls from the warmth, comfort and convenience of your own home. Just sign up here.
It's possible that the new Sergeant's Farm Bridge, which links Shire Way to Wapley Common, may open as soon as tomorrow (Sat 25 April). If all goes to plan tomorrow, we understand that Murphys have Network Rail's permission to remove the temporary bridge overnight Saturday/Sunday. Fingers crossed... They have been installing the new boundary fence for the Network Rail compound. At least in the short term the path from the bridge will emerge at the zebra crossing, then people will be able to walk along the short length of tarmac on the edge of Shire Way and then follow the ...
www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32445696 The BBC has the story – see link above. I particularly like the note that Danny Alexander has written for whomever becomes the next Chief Secretary to the Treasury:- [IMG: images] "Sorry for the late reply – I've been fixing the economy. The deficit halved, jobs up, growth up. "That's the Liberal Democrat record. We won't let you – or the Tories – screw it up." Of course this is response the infamous note left by the last Labour Chief Secretary to the Treasury – Liam Byrne after Labour had been kicked out of office in 2010 for their ...
This year's Yate St George Celebrations at the Heritage Centre and St Mary's Green will be the biggest St George event in the area, with a full day of entertainment and activities for the whole community. There will be mumming, morris dancing, brass band, Punch and Judy, archery, history activities and even St George himself will be in attendance. For more details and the timetable please check out the Yate and District Heritage Centre website
Every year Diplomat magazine hosts an awards ceremony championing the work of members of the huge diplomatic corps in London, recently at the Langham Hotel in Portland Place, just opposite the BBC. What makes these awards special is that nominations for the awards — most of which are allocated on a geographical region basis — [...]
For some time now ALDC has intended to revise the Election Offences poster. It was last done in 2008 in an A3 format. Unfortunately many people continued to print it as A4 making it largely illegible. This new, revised version comes as four sheets of A4. This should make it easier for everybody to download [...]
With just three performances left, this is how twitter has reacted to Stasis at the White Bear Theatre. Well done all involved – and I admit to crying just a little bit during the performance! [View the story "Stasis" on Storify]
Residents of Greenbank Road in Gatley (off Northenden Road, opposite Gatley Rec) have long complained about parking problems. Between residents and customers for the vets on the corner the road often gets jammed up. A while back the Lib Dems had double yellow lines painted to stop people parking on the inside of the bend in the road, which has helped. Now an eagle-eyed resident has spotted that the landlord of the flats at 10 Greenbank Road looks to be breaking a planning condition applied when the age restriction for the flats was removed in 2008. [IMG: The car park ...
[IMG: NPG D32583,Anthony Trollope,after Sir Leslie Ward] It's 200 years to the day since Anthony Trollope was born. I was first introduced to Trollope — like any other, ordinary 13 year-old — in 1990, when BBC2 repeated The Barchester Chronicles, Alan Plater's adaptation of the first two books (The Warden and Barchester Towers) in the six-volume series. Unusually for costume dramas from that era, it holds up today. That it does is thank to the scintillating script and a cast to dream of: Donald Pleasance, Nigel Hawthorne, Clive Swift, Barbara Flynn, Geraldine McEwan, Susan Hampshire and of course Alan Rickman, ...
[IMG: Time is precious: use it well.] Time is precious: use it well. Here's a piece I've done for the Liberal Democrats' official AdLib blog: Probably only older activists now remember Pat Wainwright, the doyenne of the front of house at Parliamentary by-elections for years. She was brilliant at meeting you like a long lost friend (even if you'd only met once before, half-hidden behind a pile of leaflets) and shepherding you out of the door with something useful to do as quickly as possible. Charm, fast turnaround and yet also making sure people knew what to do: it was ...
Sorry for the lack of posts the last couple of days; my insomnia has been particularly bad, and I had to do two hustings this week, on Wednesday and yesterday, as part of the election campaign. I don't like public speaking, it's not my political strength, and it used all my brain power for the [...]
There is a fundamental conflict of interest between MP's representing us, the people, and voting on a transfer of power form the people to government/parliament. When the United Kingdom spearheaded the creation of the European Court of Human Rights it established the principle that there are inviolable rights that all human beings should have that reside outside the jurisdiction of national governments. We looked back at the horrors of two world wars which had just passed, at the way in which those who came through them, from all side,s had been mistreated and damaged at the hands of the nations ...
Five years apart, two letters tell a very different story. David Laws found this on his desk at the Treasury: [IMG: Liam Byrne's note] Danny Alexander got round to replying today: [IMG: Danny Alexander's reply] As George Crozier pointed out last week, this recovery is very much a Liberal Democrat recovery: It suits many, on both left and right, to airbrush the Liberal Democrats out of the economic recovery story. But they are wrong. This economic recovery has a Liberal Democrat stripe running through the middle of it. It belongs as much to the orange half of the coalition as ...
From the tapping of the metal bowl to the collective meditation of 'mindfulness': to sharing the experience of the meditation to giving the practitioners the answers, they want to hear: I have concluded that mindfulness is nothing short of a pseudo-religious cult. As a militant atheist it does concern and repel me. If you have a problem with any of the sessions or the exercises, it is the patient who is being judgemental: not that the course of treatment is not suited or ineffectual to them - it is your fault. There is now some important research into the negative ...
Yesterday the IFS confirmed that the Liberal Democrats are the most transparent party in our manifesto. Tories give a "misleading impression" of cuts. Labour give "disappointingly little" information on borrowing and do not provide enough funding for the NHS. The IFS found:● Lib Dems most transparent of all the parties● Lib Dems only party that will end austerity in 2017/18● Lib Dems will deliver £8bn for NHS and invest in public services · Conservatives will embark on £30bn of cuts to public services that are "not mentioned" in their manifesto· Conservatives manifesto gives "a misleading impression" of the scale of ...
Fri 24th
12:23
Danny Alexander says HSBC worries about UK leaving EU show dangers of Conservatives and UKIP
HSBC has said today that it might consider pulling out of the UK and cited uncertainty over Britain's position in the EU as part of its reasoning. From the Guardian: HSBC, Britain's biggest bank, has issued a stark warning about the economic risks of the UK pulling out of the European Union as it revealed it was considering moving its headquarters out of London. The surprise announcement of a full-blown review into where the bank should base its operations will stun politicians on the general election campaign trail. HSBC listed the economic uncertainty created by the risk of the UK ...
Fri 24th
11:44
The Conservatives big black hole – Will they fill it on the backs of the poor? You bet they wi...
What with Labour planning to borrow too much (again) and the Tories planning to cut too much (again) there's only one progressive place for your vote – the Lib Dems. And if the SNP get their hands on power (and around Ed Miliband's neck) just think how Labour's borrowing will spiral even more out of control! With thanks to my old chum Roy Connell for bringing the Guardian article to my attention.
Fri 24th
11:09
Labour Leader questioned about Sefton Council's financial arrangements with Labour Mayor Anderson
Some people wonder why Radicals, progressives and those whose politics are generally considered as being on the Left want nothing to do with the Labour Party. The events surrounding Labour Mayor Joe Anderson receiving what the judge at an Industrial Tribunal described as 'a reverse form of zero hours contract, whereby the Respondent was bound to make to make payment of salary but the Claimant (Labour Mayor Joe Anderson) was not bound to provide any services. The disgraceful saga that saw Liverpool Labour Mayor -who worked in a Sefton MBC school - take his employers to an Industrial Tribunal came ...
Fri 24th
10:53Sefton Labour Leader blocksLib Dem bid for Inquiry into Sefton's conduct over Mayor Anderson
Question submitted by Councillor Shaw to the Leader of the Council (Councillor P Dowd) As the Leader is no doubt aware, judgement was handed down last week by the Employment Appeals Tribunal in the case of Mayor Joe Anderson v Chesterfield High School. Chesterfield High School was, until recently, a school maintained by Sefton Council. In view of the serious public disquiet over this issue, and having regard to Judge Serota's judgement at the EAT that the Claimant (Mayor Joe Anderson) was "party to a misuse of public funds" and that "this arrangement may strike members of the public as ...
You may recall that when I started regular blogging last year, the spur for that was writing about Conrad Russell's An Intelligent Person's Guide To Liberalism. The key to Russell's liberalism is that it is a creed that always challenges and seeks to break down unaccountable forms of power. The other side to that coin – and a key difference of liberalism and libertarianism – is the recognition that power isn't solely the preserve of the state, and can be exerted on us by a number of unaccountable forces. One of the main sources of unaccountable power in Britain is ...
[IMG: Jenny Woods and Meri O'Connell] Last September, the Greater Reading party was gearing up to select its Prospective Parliamentary Candidates for the two seats in our area: Reading East and Reading West. It was the fevered period just before the Scottish referendum, yet discussion about the looming General Election was increasing, including discussion of the number of women in Parliament and ongoing debate about women in the Liberal Democrats in the light of past events. I was therefore delighted when Jenny Woods and Meri O'Connell were selected, enthusiastically and overwhelmingly, to stand for Reading East and Reading West. Jenny ...
Interesting analysis by Adam Parker, showing how a relatively small number of SNP Twitter accounts manage to have a disproportionate impact on online discussion, especially by looking out for supportive messages from small Twitter accounts which are then heavily retweeted: One of the first major examples of social media analysis that received widespread coverage was in relation to the seven way #leadersdebate... We can see that one in four tweets were generated by only 803 journalists, media, celebrities or other commentators [by either them tweeting directly or others retweeting them]... The SNP's performance is particularly impressive with only 801 [SNP ...
Lib Dems Believe Wordle 36 Freedom - equality of opportunity
The Liberal Democrats uniquely want to provide equality of opportunity to everyone, no matter what their social background, ethnic background, sexual orientation or any other irrelevant difference. Uniquely we want to provide everyone with as much freedom as possible, with the least interference as possible from government or the law, with decisions made by local people who know what is best for them and their community. That is why I am totally disillusioned, after more than a decade of Labour's financial mismanagement, restricting civil liberties and creating hundreds of new criminal offences, totally disillusioned with the Tories wanting to restrict ...
Yo! Gyles Brandreth's gangster rap is ... Well, it's Gyles Brandreth. Rapping. I don't think my brain will ever recover. (tags: ) Harrie Farrow Author: The Fallacy of Bisexual Heteroprivilege "the idea of bisexual hetero-privilege implies that it is a privilege to be seen as someone who you are not, that it is a privilege to have your identity erased" - spot on (tags: ) Introducing the Waterstones Watch *dies laughing* (tags: ) [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
Fri 24th
09:45
The 8 seats where I'd consider voting tactically - Conservative or Labour - to keep out Ukip
[IMG: Polling_station_6_may_2010] Tim Montgomerie has (apparently) risked expulsion from the Conservative party for declaring "If I lived in Sheffield Hallam I'd definitely vote for Nick Clegg" – quite a turnaround for a commentator who said last year "The Lib Dems must ditch Nick Clegg". (Like I can talk...) It's one of the (many) oddities of party politics. All parties urge tactical voting to one degree or another — when it will benefit them. Danny Alexander recently did so, urging pro-UK voters to block the SNP... by voting Lib Dem in his marginal seat. David Cameron urged Labour and Lib Dem ...
Here's some of the articles that have caught my attention this week... The polls could decide the fate of the Lib Dems – Spectator Blogs Can't follow logic here: Lib Dem MP in Tory-facing seats thinks s/he's more at risk if Tories polling poorly?? http://bit.ly/1GlztBE The Doghouse Diaries: is it news when political parties bar journalists from election events? National papers this election appear determined to trash any lingering credibility they had http://bit.ly/1GlcjeQ Nigel Farage wins BBC viewers' vote in leader interviews | Media | The Guardian Interesting Cameron's (1.8m) least watched of Evan Davis leader intvws. Farage (2.5m), Clegg ...
Fri 24th
08:58
Did Labour just forget about this glaring problem for them when they wrote their manifesto?
I take you back to 2012, when the plans to reform the House of Lords were shelved. Nick Clegg announced that as a result of this, the Lib Dems would vote against the boundary changes as proposed by the Tories. However, this only amounted to a temporary delay: the new boundaries, equalising the constituency sizes and reducing the number of MPs to 600, a move that takes a lot of the current bias towards Labour out of the system, will automatically come into effect in 2018 unless some new piece of legislation gets passed to come up with either an ...
Fri 24th
08:55Paddick: Tories are playing a dangerous, divisive game over English votes for English laws
I still feel aggrieved that in the immediate aftermath of a bruising referendum campaign, our Prime Minister, rather than say something comforting and unifying, came out and picked a fight with Labour over English votes for English laws. Today, the Tories are highlighting their plans to resolve the constitutional conundrum. From the BBC: Under the Conservatives' proposals, the line-by-line scrutiny of new bills would be reserved for MPs from the nations affected by the legislation. A new grand committee of all English MPs – or English and Welsh MPs where appropriate – would also have to approve any legislation relating ...
Good to see the Lochee Park car park being resurfaced given its deteriorated state recently :
As then Labour MP Phil Woolas discovered*, it's against the law to lie about candidates (Representation of the People Act 1983, Section 106). Which is why a Labour MP has been able to call on the Director of Public Prosecutions to investigate the Grant Shapps Wikipedia editing scandal: Karl Turner, the party's candidate for Hull East, said the edits made by a Wikipedia user called Contribsx created a "false impression as to my character and conduct". Contribsx was blocked by the online encyclopedia earlier this week because of suspicions it was being operated by Shapps or "someone close to him". ...
[IMG: keep britain tidy] You've told us litter in our parks is a serious problem, so Lib Dem Stockport is putting in 50 new bins, replacing damaged dog waste bins and the old-style open top bins that allow litter to blow out. The new bins should increase capacity and will hopefully be better used and more effective, reducing the amount of litter in our parks. Remember: Bagged dog mess can be put in any litter bin, or in your black bin at home. Please clean up after your dog and, when you've bagged the dog mess, please don't leave it ...
Considering the baptism of fire he has experienced since he was elected leader, Ed Miliband has had quite a good campaign so far. However, as the polls indicate he has not managed to inspire voters enough to pull clear of the Tories, whilst many people still use him as a reason why they are not voting Labour. Amongst that number, it seems that we must now add former Labour Trade Minister, Lord Jones of Birmingham who, the Telegraph reports, has told Mr. Miliband that he needs to stop "sneering" at wealth creators. The paper says that in a highly critical ...
