OK, it's a spuriously provocative title. But if you can't be spuriously provocative on your blog, when can you be? I joined the SLF shortly after they were formed, and have been a member ever since. At the time, they were a welcome voice standing up for the membership against a leadership that all too frequently ignored party policy in favour of 'tough decisions' that they never bothered to justify. When the party was dominated by the right (and by the Cleggbunker), they were a welcome counterbalance. I was pretty turned off in the first days after the election. Their ...

Posted by Lorgy on Explorer Laura
Tue 26th
22:30

Hurst spit and castle

[IMG: image] Yachts moored behind Hurst beach and spit We had a great day out yesterday at Hurst spit and castle, which is in Hampshire on the watersedge of the Solent. We parked at Keyhaven and walked out to Hurst castle on the spit, having lunch halfway along. It was very windy and the shingle spit certainly absorbs ones' energy, but it was a great walk. We thoroughly explored the many nooks and cranies of the enormous castle and battlements. What an extraordinary place! And what great views of the Isle of Wight, the Needles and sailing boats jostling inbetween! ...

Posted by Paul on Liberal Burblings

We had to reach Shropshire eventually. Along the way we have visited Devon, Bedfordshire, North Lincolnshire, East Sussex, Leicestershire, Herefordshire, Hampshire, Cumbria, Cambridgeshire, Kent, Lincolnshire, Cornwall, Rutland and Northumberland.

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England
Tue 26th
22:09

Six of the Best 513

"Britain's main liberal party is probably about to elect an evangelical Christian as its leader. If you're someone who follows US politics, you may want to read that sentence back a couple of times to check you got it right." Christian Today on Tim Farron's faith and politics. Martin Petts is supporting Tim, but he wants to see a second leadership election soon - one where the candidates do not have to be MPs. "There was general agreement across broad divides of opinion that Snowden - love him or hate him - had changed the landscape; and that change towards ...

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

I'm still slogging my way through the "best" novellas of John C Wright, World's Greatest Living Author (according to the Rabid Puppies), and I'm losing the will to live. There are only so many heavy-handed Christ analogues beating one over the head with American culture-war crap one can take, and I'm a LONG way past [...]

Posted by Andrew Hickey on Sci-Ence! Justice Leak!

Today is the 60th anniversary of the 1955 general election, won by the Conservatives under Anthony Eden. The BBC Politics channel has announced that it will be showing the results programme this evening (though it is currently showing a live feed from Stormont). Discussion on Twitter day seems to have concluded that seven MPs elected in 1955 are still with us: Lord Balniel (Conservative)Sir Richard Body (Conservative)Robin Chichester-Clark (Ulster Unionist)John Eden (Conservative)Denis Healy (Labour)Tom Mitchell (Sinn Fein)James Ramsden (Conservative)John Eden (the nephew of Anthony Eden) and James Ramsden were already MPs, having both been elected at byelections the previous year. ...

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

A couple of weeks ago people on the Gatley Facebook page mentioned the need for more bin capacity around the skateboard park on Gatley Recreation ground. We're pleased to report that the Council have agreed to our request and a double bin is being installed to replace the open bin current there, greatly increasing capacity. Although it's not perfect, the users of the skateboard park are pretty good at using the bin – until it fills up. We hope this will result in less litter on the ground and blowing around the park.

Posted by Iain Roberts on Keith, Graham and Iain

So, we had returned to Suffolk after the disappointment of having our trip cancelled and, out of curiosity, I had a look at the Hurtigruten website to see if they had availability for the voyage on the Saturday out of Bergen. They did, a surprising amount of availability. I called my new friend at Hurtigruten, Andy, the Senior VIP Consultant (we're not VIP's, but I think they realised that they had screwed up). I said to him, "I see that you have availability for Saturday. Is there any chance that we could cut a deal so that we get one. ...

Posted by Mark Valladares on The view from Creeting St Peter

From today's Leicester Mercury: Leicestershire Police has made its first move in its legal bid to overturn a decision to not put Greville Janner on trial for alleged sexual abuse of children. The force today wrote to the director of public prosecutions, (DPP), - who last month ruled out taking action against the 86-year-old peer because of his ill-health - to explain why it believes the allegations should be tested in court. The DPP, Alison Saunders, has 14 days to respond to the force's submission and to say whether she intends to reverse or stick by her decision. In a ...

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

From the Facebook page of my friend Anne, reproduced with her permission: My mother was riddled with cancer, according to the Coroner, when she planned her successful suicide in 1972 at the age of 54. She waited for her first ... Continue reading →

Posted by caronlindsay on Caron's Musings
YouGov

From the Facebook page of my friend Anne, reproduced with her permission: My mother was riddled with cancer, according to the Coroner, when she planned her successful suicide in 1972 at the age of 54. She waited for her first grandchild to be safely born, chose a day my brother and doctor wife were visiting so that my father wouldn't find her, left notes around the house re unfinished business (including knitting for her grandson), went to a spare bedroom and took sleeping tablets writing a note as she fell asleep. It was the only way she could make sure ...

Posted by Caron Lindsay on Liberal Democrat Voice

[IMG: GCHQ] It's fairly clear what Theresa May wants to do (and, please, don't tell her what a threat walking is), but what to the spooks themselves actually want? There are some intriguing – and from a civil liberties perspective, reassuring – hints in the report of a recent event at which "a former "C" (Chief of the UK's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6)) presided as forty-plus participants from around the world sat down in private for three days to talk intensively through changed approaches to intelligence, security and privacy." It's been written up by the investigate journalist Duncan Campbell, who ...

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack
Tue 26th
16:34

Kohee, a good student

 

Posted by Eric Avebury on Eric Avebury

 

Posted by Eric Avebury on Eric Avebury

What good luck to experience an event which illustrates the complete futility of a course of behaviour. Could our party be more lucky? Yet many still ascribe the defeat to the SNP , the media, whatever; despite the decline happening across the period of this parliament. Our defeat is due to the lack of a strategic narrative The regular voter prefers a party with a clear programme which they stick to. They have been offered a party which explains its position only in relation to other parties and with unconnected policies diluted by the compromises of coalition. "A stronger economy, ...

Posted by Tony Harms on Liberal Democrat Voice

 

Posted by jaynemccoy on Diary of a Sutton Councillor

This is my first article for Lib Dem Voice - I've often been on the site, and finally decided I'd try and write for it! It was a night of tragedies for the Liberal Democrats. Sitting in my student accommodation, I was watching my first election being old enough to vote, with horror. Vince Cable, Charles Kennedy, Danny Alexander - bastions of British liberalism fell, one by one. As I'm sure we're all aware, the party lost over 85% of its representation in parliament, having just eight seats midday on the 8th May. Nick Clegg's resignation speech later that day ...

Posted by Samuel Skubala on Liberal Democrat Voice

Police Scotland have been caught uploading custody shots of people who may not ever even be convicted or have even been charged to the national police database and then searching it using facial recognition technology. Over 600,000 photos of almost ... Continue reading →

Posted by caronlindsay on Caron's Musings

I am told the Events Committee will ONLY be addressing the new Christmas lighting etc at the Market Square. It was planned tat the meeting would be at Arms Evertyne House before or after the walk around the market , but this has now been changed. The meeting therefore will be at the Market Square, by the Keel Row entrance, at 6:30. Due to my being less that mobile, I have had to put my apologies in . Goodness knows how many of the non-councillor members / guests at this meeting will turn up. I have to thank officers and ...

Posted by Alisdair Gibbs-Barton on Alisdair Gibbs-Barton

We reported a few months ago of funding to improve cycle access in Gatley through the Government's Cycle City Ambition Grant for Greater Manchester. The project aims to boost cycling to and from Gatley Station and also through to Cheadle, Parrs Wood and Stockport. The Lib Dem team were keen to make sure the benefits extended beyond just cycling though, so we got sorting out the road surface at drainage at the junction of Oakwood and Gatley Road (by the railway bridge) included, plus 20mph zones for much of the village centre. There are also improvements to the path from ...

Posted by Iain Roberts on Keith, Graham and Iain
eUKhost

Police Scotland have been caught uploading custody shots of people who may not ever even be convicted or have even been charged to the national police database and then searching it using facial recognition technology. Over 600,000 photos of almost 335,000 people are involved. The facial recognition technology can be used to cross-reference images of suspects from crime scenes with images of individuals kept on the database. However, experts have also raised concerns the system could be abused. There is currently no framework to stipulate the circumstances in which the technology should be used - meaning it could be used ...

Posted by Caron Lindsay on Liberal Democrat Voice

"Demonisation is the ideological backbone of an unequal society." wrote left-wing commentator Owen Jones in his 2011 book "Chavs: the demonisation of the working class". He was right but, at the same time, summed up much that's wrong with progressive politics in the UK. Demonisation works both ways. It is easy – and entirely incorrect – to demonise the poor as chavs, crooks, benefit cheats and scroungers. As people who could be high-paid bankers and successful business-people if only they knuckled down and worked a bit harder. But it's also simple – and wrong – to demonise the wealthy and ...

Posted by Iain Roberts on Liberal Democrat Voice

So, on Sunday I said... "If MPs resign every time they are proved to have told untruths we'll have none left. Which is a pretty depressing state of affairs but a fact. So Alistair shouldn't need to resign. Unless everyone who's ever told a journalist a great big porkie is going to do the same (more of that anon)" And then today I see Sir Malcolm Bruce has said: "Asked on BBC Radio 4 whether he was alleging that lying was widespread in public life, Bruce, who stood down at the election, replied: "No, well, yes. Lots of people have ...

Posted by Richard Morris on A VIEW FROM HAM COMMON

People react in many ways to defeat. A desire to blame individuals is a frequent, if often inglorious, human trait in such circumstances. The wise approach is to be sure you really know who did what before deciding on who you think is blame for what - and even then, there should be no place for adopting an attitude that makes the Tory 'fire at will' policy seem generous. That's why it is important for the Liberal Democrat general election review to take a cool, considered look at staffing when trying to divine what can be learnt from the general ...

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack

The Liberal Democrats have always felt like a family, and none more so than with the rallying round after the crushing election results this month. As the results unfolded, the texts and tweets began to arrive. I had to read them in small batches over the next few days: it's often the words of kindness that bring the raw emotions to the surface the most. On one level, the pain I felt was deeply personal - Duncan and I both lost our seats after 12 years of campaigning and service to our communities. Compounding this was the shared anguish of ...

Posted by Jo Swinson on Liberal Democrat Voice

Sign the Lib Dem petition. The two candidates for the Liberal Democrat leadership today launch a campaign to save the Human Rights Act from the Conservative axe. Norman Lamb and Tim Farron will also warn of the dangers of Tory plans to pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights. David Cameron is expected to include plans to scrap the HRA - an Act that incorporates the ECHR into British law - in Wednesday's Queen's Speech. Liberal Democrats blocked Tory plans to weaken our human rights obligations in Government and we will continue to fight to stop them in ...

Posted by Iain Roberts on Keith, Graham and Iain

[IMG: Sex Lies and the Ballot Box - book cover] When reviewing Sex, Lies and the Ballot Box my comments were very positive – and if you've not yet read the book, go buy it now. There is however one small factual error in it I've spotted. It's for the gender balance of Liberal Democrat party membership which is reported in the book as being 29% female. This rather surprised me as the data I've seen and quoted in the past puts it in the 40-50% range, i.e. close to equity with the wider population's gender balance. If the true ...

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack

I cannot be alone amongst Liberal Democrats, after the general election result we have just been through, in questioning the collected wisdom of the UK electorate. Fortunately, as an Irishman, my faith in the collective wisdom of the people has been dramatically restored by the result of the equal marriage referendum in Ireland, as my people lustily endorsed equality, and cast off the comfort of bigotry to which it is easy to resort in times of economic strife. But, just as Ireland becoming the first country on earth to enshrine this type of equality into the law by popular vote ...

Posted by David Thorpe on Liberal Democrat Voice

[IMG: Lib-Dem-logo] Tim Farron's given an interview to the Independent outlining more of his vision for the Liberal Democrats if he's elected leader, the gist of which is in this quote: "You need to motivate people. People vote for a political party because of what is in their wallet or issues that they weigh up in their head. But you join a political party because something gets you in your gut and it's time we went out there and got people in their gut." It tied in with a thought I had reading this post by Alex Marsh earlier. The ...

Posted by Nick on What You Can Get Away With

A very on point review of The Day the World Turned Upside Down by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (tags: ) Let's eat together: how immigration made British food great (tags: ) 31 Glorious Shop Puns You'd Only Find In Britain - Brim Full Of Rasher LMAO Doesn't feature my favourite ever though; the now sadly defunct West Riding Camping used to our up in their window every October "now is the winter of our Discount Tents" (tags: ) UK's biggest male rape charity has state funding slashed to zero despite 120% rise in men reporting (tags: ) [IMG: comment count unavailable] ...

The great Gatley Festival – a week of events culminating in the Fun Day on the first Sunday in July – is nearly here. This year's festival has been generously sponsored by Piccolo restaurant and the Stockport Mail newspaper group. [IMG: gatley festival]

Posted by Iain Roberts on Keith, Graham and Iain

I'll start this article by saying that this website has not become a cheerleader for the Conservative Party, nor have I suddenly become a Tory. But I believe in trying to speak the truth, particularly when talking about politics, an area overcrowded with polemics as is. So when I speak of things like "20 years of Tory hegemony ahead", I do not do so because it makes me feel good. I'm just calling it like I see it. There was an article in the Guardian yesterday that blew my mind. It was about a piece of work undertaken by British ...

Posted by Nick on nicktyrone.com

The proliferation of betting shops in our high streets and the associated issue of the amounts gambled on high stakes gaming machines have been the subject of intense political debate recently. The welfare of animals in the betting industry, I am thinking in particular of racehorses, receives a lot less interest. I have always been a very strong supporter of the rights of animals, but having developed a keen interest in horseracing a few years ago, I started to examine much more closely the treatment of the non-human participants in what is a multi-billion pound industry. Horseracing is an international ...

Posted by David Warren on Liberal Democrat Voice

In my survey of the changed political landscape after Britain's General Election it is time to look at the unexpected winners of that election, the Conservatives. Just as a pall of doom hangs over the defeated Labour Party, and an even darker one over the Liberal Democrats, a bright glow surrounds the Conservatives, who now have an aura of invincibility, to judge by the commentary. We form our opinions in such ephemeral ways. How well is this aura deserved? The Conservative majority is a narrow one. There is a huge gulf between them and the second-largest party, Labour, but if ...

Posted by Matthew on thinking liberal
Tue 26th
08:44

Food hygiene advice

Note from the district council Join the Chicken Challenge and halve campylobacter food poisoning St Albans City and District Council is calling on people to follow simple hygiene rules when handling and cooking chicken to help halve campylobacter food poisoning. It is backing a campaign by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) to get people to [...]

Posted by chriswhite on Chris White » Chris White
Tue 26th
08:30

The University at War

From the Curator of Museum Services at the University of Dundee : The University at War Tower Foyer Gallery - Tower Building, University of Dundee The new exhibition in the Tower Foyer Gallery explores the effect of the First World War on the University and its affiliated institutions. It tells the stories of staff and students who fought on the front line, or undertook important wartime research. It also describes the effects of the war on those who stayed in Dundee to continue their studies. As well as University College Dundee, the exhibition also looks at staff and students from ...

The news in today's Telegraph that Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, and Francois Hollande, the French President, have reached an agreement to create a closer union within the bounds of existing EU treaties could leave Britain struggling to keep up. The paper reports that the pact, which is due to be presented at an EU summit next month, could limit David Cameron's room for manoeuvre as he tries to claw back powers from Brussels ahead of a referendum on Britain's membership. The danger is that as Cameron seeks to limit Britain's involvement in Europe, he will also reduce our influence ...

Posted by Peter Black on Peter Black

Last week a tweet by the estimable Stephen Tall crossed my timeline. The tweet pointed to his blogpost The Economist is right. Liberalism is winning. Which could be bad news for the Lib Dems in 2020. That immediately piqued my interest. After all, it is axiomatic, as all right thinking people surely know, that the Economist is pretty much never right about anything. Except, of course, on the odd occasion when, through enlightenment or inadvertence, it takes a position on an issue that I happen to hold already. But I think on this occasion the Economist, and Stephen's blogpost, raise ...

Posted by admin on Alex's Archives

Shortly after the election results, my brother-in-law arrived from Cardiff with his business partner, and both announced that they were planning to join the Lib Dems. It was encouraging of course, though I doubt very much that they have done so. I was also surprised: he's never mentioned anything of the kind before. But even if he hasn't gone through with the idea, it suggests that the 14,000 or so people who joined the party may just be the tip of a much bigger iceberg. That's how many planned to join and acted on it - goodness know how many ...

Posted by David Boyle on The Real Blog

The I Will If You Will (IWIYW) Community Fund is now open for applications. This is a chance for local groups to bid for funding to run their own activities or events. Groups can be awarded up to £1,000 from the IWIYW Community Fund towards their proposal for things such as facility hire, equipment costs, coaching or publicity. [IMG: image011] The 'I will if you will' team say: "We want you, our communities, to get your thinking caps on and come up with some great ideas for how you might support IWIYW. We're looking for ideas that will inspire our ...

Posted by prestwichfocus on Tim Pickstone

A new group in Bury for people with dementia, carers and anyone who likes to dance... The Bury Christian Fellowship and the `I Will if You Will' team have partnered up to deliver a new group in Bury for people with dementia, carers and anyone who just likes to dance, have fun and meet new friends. The first session is on Wednesday 10 June 2-4pm at the Manna House, Irwell Street, Bury. [IMG: Screenshot 2015-05-20 05.45.42] [IMG: Screenshot 2015-05-20 05.45.53]

Posted by prestwichfocus on Tim Pickstone

A topic I have commented on often in the past but am drawn to again because I have been reading a report to the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority dated 16th April. Agenda item 10, item 3.7 points out that low priority for electrification lines, such as Ormskirk Preston, are 'lightly used rural lines'. [IMG: End of the line from Liverpool - Ormskirk Station. Beyond the buffers is the line from Ormskirk to Preston which is virtually designed to be a lightly used rural line!] End of the line from Liverpool – Ormskirk Station. Beyond the buffers is the line ...

Posted by Cllr. Tony Robertson on Sefton Focus » Sefton Focus

With thanks to Cllr. John Dodd ans OTS News for bringing this event to my attention. [IMG: ots-hesketh-park-obs]

Posted by Cllr. Tony Robertson on Sefton Focus » Sefton Focus