I decided to let the fuss die down before I paid my respects again to Richard III. Last time I saw him, on my birthday, his coffin was display in Leicester Cathedral. Today I saw his tomb, which seems to me to get the balance between modernity and heritage just right, and to avoid canonising a controversial figure. The Cathedral has been remodelled inside to give Richard prominence and it looks better as a result. It used to be rather compentalised but now feels spacious. The building is a largely 19th century reconstruction of a medieval church, yet it looked ...
After nine years of blogging I have changed my comments policy. I used to say that I allow any comments as long as they are not potentially defamatory. For most of the time that will continue to be the case, but I reserve the right to reject comments if I just don't feel like publishing them. The knee-jerk reaction is to call rejection of comments "illiberal" and indeed I used to be of that view (although I never used to buy the moronic line that comment rejection is "censorship"). However, it is part of a liberal society that there are ...
In the general election ending on May 7th: 37% of the votes cast were for the Tories and they received 51% of the seats in the House of Commons. 24% of the votes cast were for the Lib Dems, the Greens and UKIP, and they received 1.5% of the seats. The SNP received 3% of the votes but 9% of the seats. All totally logical. Not. Rory Bremner, impersonating David Cameron was asked "Isn't that unfair?" and Cameron (Bremner) replied: Life is unfair and it is only fair that we reflect real life in the House of Commons
"Labour activists were receiving emails beseeching them to go and help in the marginal seat of South Ribble (which Labour failed to take) but choose instead to work their socks off in Southport where the only outcome which they could hope to achieve would be to reduce the Lib Dem vote and let the Tory in." Iain Brodie Browne takes Labour tribalism to task. The floggings will continue until morale improves - or something like that. Caron Lindsay is rightly outraged by an email sent to the party's candidates straight after the debacle of 7 May. Britain has resigned as ...
It remains that some people (sometimes known as Freeman of the Land - aka FMOTL) continue arguing a case based upon a strange interpretation of the UK constitution. This ends up with a strange distinction between common law and statute law and an attempt to argue really quite unorthodox things. I am not in itself opposed to things which are unorthodox, but if people do not follow the procedures
Sat 23rd
19:06
Um. I really think, with hindsight, we would change our General Election campaign. Wouldn't we?
While I think Ryan Coetzee's analysis of the Lib Dems #GE2015 campaign is often right, one paragraph stands out for me "Should we have run the campaign differently, given what we knew? I don't think so. We correctly identified the threats facing us on each front, and did our best to counter them. We made a coherent, liberal case to the voters, offering both a strong economy and a fair society. There are of course improvements that could have been made to the design and execution of the campaign, as there always are, but in retrospect it is difficult to ...
York's The Press wins our Headline of the Day Award. Which route was it? I hear you ask. The Press reports: The bag containing the evidence of his infidelity was left on a number 17 bus, a circular route from Scarborough town centre to nearby villages Eastfield and Osgodby.
All the stories in this year's Hugo nominations for the Best Short Story award are there because they were on one or both of two overlapping slates. Not only do I believe that slates are wrong in themselves in an award like this, as they distort the voting process, but the two slates themselves were [...]
[IMG: Sandgate War Memorial / Enbrook Park wall - power cupboards] Three decommissioned power cupboard doors in the wall of Enbrook Park on Sandgate High Street near the War Memorial have been refurbished by Saga who own the wall. The doors had previously been falling off and unkempt: after they were reported to Saga by Sandgate Parish Council the doors had emergency repairs to keep them in place, and in the last few days have now been refurbished and painted. Parish Councillor Tim Prater was pleased to see the works. He said: "The doors were originally mentioned to be by ...
The Inside Story Of "The Crystal Maze", The Most Epic Game Show Ever Made – Another of BuzzFeed's looks behind the scenes at a classic TV show. Pro-growth, anti-business – Being good for the economy and being good for business are not the same thing, argues Chris Dillow. If David Miliband had won... – An interesting bit of counterfactual history to ponder on. Marketing the Liberal Democrats should mean setting us free – Ewan Hoyle has some good points on how to approach the future of the party without messages being set down from on high. If Michael Gove Listens ...
Sat 23rd
12:55
Watch and laugh: Clarke and Dawe - The State of Politics. (Perhaps you might like to sit down)
More comedy genius from Australia's Clarke and Dawe:
Sat 23rd
11:55
LibLink: Ryan Coetzee: The Liberal Democrats must reunite, rebuild or remain in opposition
Ryan Coetzee has written a long article for the Guardian in which he analyses our election defeat and looks to the future. He looked at the three fronts of the electoral battlefield, Scotland, Labour-facing and Tory facing seats. He looked at the Tories' fear tactics throughout the campaign: In Tory-facing seats we got routed by what I call the Fear. We presumed from the beginning that the Conservatives would try to scare voters with the prospect of a Miliband government that would risk the economy. But in the event the polls and the SNP conspired to ratchet up the Fear ...
[IMG: A photo I took of Tim after having a cup of tea with him in Portcullis House, Westminster on March 24th this year] A photo I took of Tim after having a cup of tea with him in Portcullis House, Westminster on March 24th this year We are very fortunate to have someone of Tim Farron's skills available to us as a leader of the Liberal Democrats at this time. We need to rediscover and refocus our liberal values. Tim is a lode star of liberalism. He is a walking, talking embodiment of liberalism. I can trust 100% that ...
In April the main Planning committee agreed to the demolition of the 2758 homes that form the Aylesbury estate. The vast majority being social rented council homes, all 2,249 of them + 509 leasehold homes. The replacement will be 2,745 new residential units in tower blocks up to 20 storeys high with only 37.5% social rent and 12.5% shared ownership with the remaining 50% private homes. So a huge decrease in social housing. I sat on that planning committee and we heard much contradictory evidence. Assertions such as the estate had high levels of crime, ill health and low employment ...
Just last year Linda Jack, a reasonably prominent Lib Dem, failed to secure enough nominations to stand for the position of Party President. The fact that a well-known party figure could not muster the required number of names to take part in one of the most important internal elections suggests we are going wrong in the nominations process. Of course, if we allowed write-in candidates for internal party elections, Linda's campaign would have been able to continue. The hours she and others had invested in developing a vision for the future of the party would not have gone to waste. ...
[IMG: No horsing about here r] Click on this to enlarge it. Seen outside the award winning Callaghan's Butchers in Maghull Square back in 2013. The photo is amongst my Flickr shots at:- www.flickr.com/photos/86659476@N07/
Theresa May's plan to censor TV shows condemned by Tory cabinet colleague (tags: ) The UK's Obsession with immigration is founded more on myth than reality (tags: ) Marketing the Liberal Democrats should mean setting us free. (tags: ) Workfare, Forced Labour and the new 'Business and Community Wardens' (tags: ) In which Nick Barlow asks the Question about Liz Kendall (tags: ) Police admit falsely arresting teen rape victim: "this is what happens when you lie." (tags: ) A comic explaining privilege (tags: ) Watch This Neuroscientist Perfectly Tear Down the Biggest Myths About the War on Drugs (tags: ...
[IMG: Cllr Stephen Giles-Medhurst LibDem County Cllr for Central Watford and Oxhey] Cllr Stephen Giles-Medhurst LibDem County Cllr for Central Watford and Oxhey From: Cllr Stephen Giles-Medhurst – LD County Cllr for Central Watford and Oxhey Conservative run Herts County Council has decided to cut a further £1.47m from its bus budget. This will mean a dozen bus routes will cease to exist, others will only run up to 7.30pm, and just a few that serve hospitals will run on a Sunday (but again only up to 7.30pm). The Conservatives voted by 42 votes to 30 to push through the ...
For the past three years, Sefton Council has been controlled by a seven-person Cabinet consisting entirely of Labour Councillors from Bootle. Opposition and backbench councillors can question and make representations to these people on local residents behalf - but they have no power to over rule them. 21 of the 66 Sefton Councillors are elected from Southport. Of these Southport councillors, 16 are presently Liberal Democrats and 5 are Conservatives. There are three councillors in each council ward. Because of the financial situation of the Council, the Lib Dems proposed to reduce this to two but this is opposed by ...
Yes, it was probably a significant contributory factor. You see at the heart of the Labour Party is that 'our way or no way' instinct but in 2015 it probably led to tribalism topping common sense. Take a look at the seats where Labour tried to do some damage to the Lib Dem vote because of their hatred of Nick Clegg. In quite a few cases it will show that their actions either led to a Tory MP being elected or in Southport's case it very nearly did. This is Cllr. Iain Brodie Browne's take on it:- We do not ...
This single was Alanis Morissette's first foray back into the charts after Jagged Little Pill. That album remains a very well-regarded piece of work, and justly so; it's twenty years old, and now sounds of its time, but the themes it dealt with and the bravery of its lyrics remain significant. I would guess that [...]
[IMG: Grove lights] Councillors Dereks Hicks, Alex Watson and I met together with John Hinds of the Grove Residents Association and a lighting expert, Steve Fullerton, to consider alternative solutions now that the council has removed the lampposts on the A692 between Consett and the Grove. We're bitterly disappointed that the council has rejected our reasoned arguments, arguments simply reinforced by the number of pedestrians and cyclists who passed us as we talked about the situation. We're going to have to be realistic – the council is not going to put back what it has just taken out – but ...
In Meols Ward, Lib Dem councillor Nigel Ashton increased his share of the vote from when he was first elected in 2011. Nigel Ashton and the Meols Ward team thank you for your continued support.
Sat 23rd
08:55Grab a coffee, kick off the shoes and take a longer read over the Bank Holiday: three suggestions
[IMG: Drinking coffee] Got a bit of time ahead of you over the Bank Holiday? Then here's three longer reads I've blogged that you might want to take a look at: The forgotten liberal hero – Earl Grey: want a Prime Minister who ran a successful coalition and introduced major political reform? Grey's your man. The Liberal Democrat approach to campaigning: the history and debunking some myths: a history of bar charts, the rise of Chris Rennard and how the Lib Dems reworked Britain's electoral system Orange Bookers. Social Liberalism. What's it all about? David Howarth takes a look at ...
The release last week of Prince Charles' letters to Ministers - the so-called "black spider letters" - offers a once in a lifetime window (and one unlikely to be repeated, thanks to the 2011 amendments to the Freedom if Information Act exempting royal correspondence from FoI disclosure - inexplicably supported by our party in coalition) into the workings of the British 'system', and the influence of the royals in the process of our 'democratic government'. I hope that, as liberals, all Liberal Democrats would agree that political power derives from the exercise of the people's democratic rights at the ballot ...
A slender Tory majority was one of my most feared election outcomes, mostly because of one issue: Europe. I worried that if the Tories got a majority but only a very tiny one, the right of his party would hold Cameron to ransom on the subject. They would reject his calls for a renegotiation at all, saying they planned to oust him, split the party, whatever, lest they get an In/Out referendum with no strings attached pretty much immediately. Instead, Tory unity, so far I'd like to stress, has been admirable. Cameron's approach to the Riga summit seems to be ...
Our May Blether will be on Tuesday 26th May at 7pm in Madigan's Food Emporium and Bookshop, Castle Street. The Theme this month is Dundee. All welcome!
Royal Bank of Scotland have announced that their Heaton Park Branch (corner of St Margaret's Road and Bury Old Road) is to close this summer. Many residents have reacted with concern, as this is the only bank in the Bury Old Road area and a well loved local service. [IMG: Screen Shot 2015-05-23 at 08.08.19] We are concerned that RBS seem to have made this announcement without any consultation with the local community. Banking has changed, with more people using online services, but some people do prefer bank counter services and this closure leaves us with no provision anywhere in ...
