Tim Farron and Norman Lamb had to face what was probably the most difficult hustings of their LibDem leadership contest so far tonight at an event put on by Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats (EMLD) at the Draper Hall in Southwark. The meeting was chaired by Simon Wooley of Operation Black Vote, who had some pretty [...]
I wanted to spend a few moments telling you why I am supporting Norman Lamb as the next leader of the Liberal Democrats. I take you back, not to the most recent election day, nor to 2010 election when historic movements were afoot worth the promise of a new kind of politics. I take you [...]
These two earth banks with a ditch between, to be found beside the Aylestone Road, are all that remains of a water course that brought supplied the Roman city of Leicester. The Eccentric Leicester Tour on the University of Leicester's website says: The current earthworks are a fragment of very much larger works. The surviving stretch of the Raw Dykes is about 100 metres of linear earthworks comprising two parallel earthen banks (double vallum) with a channel (Fosse) measuring about 6 metres between them. The height of the bank varies between 4 and 7 metres. The earliest known documentary reference ...
OK, so it looks like my Patreon just reached its goal of $100 per month, and so, as long as it stays at that level or higher, I'll be doing a podcast of all my non-linkblogging blog posts. Sometimes they'll be a day or two behind, but I'll do my best to catch up every [...]
Join us to celebrate the life of Colin Hall We want to bring together all who knew Colin, to share happy memories of a wonderful husband, father, friend, councillor and colleague Saturday 4 July 2015 United Reform Church Hall Holmwood Gardens Wallington Surrey SM6 0EU 6-8pm Please bring a bottle to drink a toast in [...]
You *will* get the Batpost tomorrow, but this heatwave has completely messed my ability to think up, and I'm having to get up early and write in the morning before work, before everything heats up, rather than at 10PM when I normally write. I can barely breathe, in fact. So for now, links. Sorry. You'll [...]
The operators of the SPAR convenience store on Castle Street, AF Blakemore & Son, have objected to plans for a supermarket at Rocks Green on the outskirts of Ludlow (14/05573/OUT). Writing on behalf of AF Blakemore, Julian Sutton from Signet Planning says Shropshire Council should employ an independent consultant to scrutinise the proposal: For a [...]
We have our Headline of the Day, thanks to BBC News.
The pursuit of hope becomes dangerous when it comes at the price of clarity. A little over six months ago, the Guardian columnist George Monbiot wrote that: Perhaps there was a time when this counsel of despair made sense. No longer. The lamps are coming on all over Europe. As in South America, political shifts [...]
The Liverpool Echo has the story – see link above. The investment in the A5036 from Switch Island to Seaforth Docks is not detailed in the Echo story but then again it would seem that they (the Highways Agency) are not even close to a firm proposals position as yet i.e. they are still pondering upgrading the A5036 or putting a new road down the Rimrose Valley Country Park or indeed both! My previous post of a few days ago refers:- By the way have you driven along the M57 (northbound carriageway) between the junction with the M62 ...
Merseyrail through to Wigan? [IMG: The old Skelmersdale Station - now long gone in the name of progress!] The old Skelmersdale Station – now long gone in the name of progress! I have been pondering the recent news which seems to indicate that if Government can come up with a big enough cheque and other significant sources of money can be tapped into then a railway into Skelmersdale could well be a runner. My previous postings on this subject are available via the links below:- As you may have picked up by now the plan is to ...
So, Phil left a comment here which he's since expanded into a full post. I suppose I should respond before the expansion rate of his responses really picks up and it turns into a book, but be warned that this may ramble. Phil is quite scathing of my suggestion that Labour and the Liberal Democrats could work together in the future, saying it "would evince heroic levels of chutzpah (and not in a good way)" on the part of the Lib Dems. In that, he's probably right, but I'm an optimist about this sort of thing right now, and to ...
Tomorrow I'm going in to King's College Hospital for an operation on my leg to deal with an occlusion extending most of the way from groin to knee. First an angioplasty will be tried (http://bit.ly/1R1OSj5) and if this can't be done the artery will have to be replaced by a graft from the vein in the same leg. Angioplasty is relatively simple, involving one night in hospital, but if it needs a graft that would be a week or more. While I'm in hospital, Lindsay or JW will post bulletins on this blog to save having to write to everyone ...
Last week on Lib DemVoice I remarked that when great social reforms had been enacted liberals had the support of many Christians. I was thinking of Roy Jenkin's Homosexual Law reform,when Michael Ramsay was in the front line of supporters and David Steel's Abortion Act passed at a time when he was regularly introducing Songs of Praise. This was not just a phenomenon of the 1960's you could go back to Josephine Butler's work on the Contagious Diseases Act. My point was that such Christians who are today working to celebrate same sex marriages in churches and for women to ...
7 film and TV series set in the exciting world of municipal government::Gritty political thriller about a corruption scandal in which car companies buy up Los Angeles' streetcar network, purely so they can rip it up, thus forcing the public to buy more cars. Also features a cartoon rabbit.By that strange bloke [IMG: [twitter.com profile] ] jonnelledge. [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
Tue 30th
15:25
Another of those inconvenient facts: income inequality continued its gradual decline last year
New figures out from the ONS: [IMG: ONS graph of Gini coefficient]
Today 30th June, John Pugh MP for Southport will stand up in the House of Commons and talk about the Human Rights Act. Following on from Southport Liberal Democrat's Action Day on the Human Rights Act on Saturday, 27th June, John will talk about why the Act is important to him and why the Liberal Democrats are right to value protecting it so highly. I'm sure that we will be asked why we think the Human Rights Act is so important, in fact we were on Saturday. My answer is that the core values of the Human Rights Act overlap ...
[IMG: ALDC Master Logo (for screen)] Two principal council by-elections were held last Thursday. The Lib Dems in Cambridgeshire (CC) narrowly missed out on holding their seat in Romsey ward, falling 47 votes short of Labour. LD candidate Nichola Martin polled 35.2%, a decrease of 12.7% from the ward's last election two years ago. The contest in South Kesteven (DC), which saw three seats up in a deferred contest, resulted in three holds as two Independents and one Conservative won election, mirroring the 2011 result. Adam Brookes received 7.7% of votes cast in finishing fifth out of eight candidates, with ...
St Albans City and District Council has been refused leave to appeal the dismissal of its court challenge against the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. The Council had challenged the Secretary of State's decision to grant planning permission for a strategic rail freight interchange at Park Street near St Albans. The High [...]
You may not think the future of Greece in the European Union is a big deal for the UK individuals, many of whom have never visited the country. It is. A lot rides on whether ANY country leaves the EU. In the case of Greece, it's all about the money. They owe a fortune in [...]
[IMG: Street drain / double yellow lines / potholes] Sandgate Parish Councillor Tim Prater has reported potholes and subsidence around a drain gulley cover on Wilberforce Road, Sandgate to Kent Highways for repair. Tim said: "The width of Wilberforce Road at that point means that many vehicles drive over the drain cover, and the road surface is breaking up around it. A proper repair needs making before there is damage to a vehicle: it's already potentially a damaging hazard to bikes." You can track the progress at http://www.kent.gov.uk/highwayfaults The details are as follows: Logged Date: 29/06/2015 12:33:34 Enquiry Number: 161479 ...
It has been obvious since long before the election that we have a trust problem. We did the right thing on tuition fees, bringing more young people than ever from disadvantaged backgrounds to university, a contribution system that fairer in terms of graduate incomes than general taxation would be, and therefore more "left wing" in the distributional sense, if not in the clientilist sense. This, graduate tax in all but name, on a moderately generous interpretation (! yes I know) honoured the second half of the pledge "work towards a fairer system of student finance" in spades, and made the ...
Tue 30th
12:27
National Audit Office verdict on Pupil Premium: "potential to bring about a significant improvement ...
[IMG: school 11] Six months ago I wrote: I think [the Pupil Premium is] one of this Coalition's most progressive policies. But expecting its impact to be sudden and dramatic is to over-hype it. What I suspect it has done is focus schools' attention on the attainment gap and to address it in ways that go beyond, and do not depend on, the value of the Pupil Premium itself. Today sees the publication of an important report from the National Audit Office, Funding for disadvantaged pupils, which highlights both these points. First, that any impact of the Pupil Premium will, ...
[IMG: Extract from The General Election of 1950] Source: The British General Election of 1950
Updated Details Conservative seat. Cause: Resignation. Candidate- Cadan ap Tomos. Contact Details: Robin Rea (robintrea@gmail.com)
The Government's plan to impose Mayors where they were previously rejected is progressing apace in Parliament. Fairly unusually for a controversial Bill, it has started out in the Lords. Our Lib Dem team, led by John Shipley, is seeking to make three campaigning points about the Bill. First, that if areas are to have powerful Mayors imposed upon them, these should be scrutinised by directly elected assemblies, as in London. Secondly, that all of local government should be elected by STV, ending modern rotten Boroughs. Thirdly, that the franchise for these (and all other) elections should be expanded to include ...
I wrote last week about the emerging new kinds of public service organisation, and got quite a response. I didn't write about it before, but I'm constantly struck by the gap between the way public services have been run since the Blair-Brown years - like assembly lines - and the lessons from the most innovative enterprises emerging in the USA, which genuinely understand their staff have something to offer beyond mere obedience. But fascinating new research from Birmingham University seems to demonstrate something of what I've been saying about scale. They have spent the past two years studying micro-enterprises in ...
BBC Radio 4's Westminster Hour took a look at the Lib Dem leadership contest this week. You can listen to the 9 minute discussion between Olly Grender (Team Norman Lamb) and me (Team Tim Farron) here:
Here's a guest post from Paul Rainger on where next for the Liberal Democrats. [IMG: Paul Rainger] Like me, you may be pondering where progressive politics in the UK goes from here. I'm optimistic that there is an exciting agenda radical out there waiting for a champion, if we are brave enough to step beyond politics as usual. Recently I listened to Ed Davey on the radio talking about climate change. It was inspiring stuff. It reminded me why I joined the Liberal Democrats. It was Ed freed from the shackles of coalition, which of course was exactly the cause ...
The Independent reports on official statistics that show that the poorest families in the UK are losing more of their income in tax than any other income group. They say that while the richest fifth of society paid 34.8 per cent of their overall income in tax last year, those at the bottom of the income scale lost 37.8 per cent of their income to the taxman. This is a wider gap than last year, when the difference was 2.3 per cent. The paper adds that this means that the richest fifth of the population paid £29,200 in all taxes ...
Tue 30th
08:39
Almost 14 years on from September 11th, 2001, and our language around terrorism is still wrong
In the aftermath of the Sousse massacre, David Cameron has spoken a fair amount about the tragedy, both in the House and in public. On Radio 4 the other day, he was talking about Daesh (I'm refusing to call them ISIS or ISIL ever again, except in the context of a quote – they aren't a bloody state, and calling them one simply feeds into their warped narrative). He said that they "have declared war on Britain and they are attacking our people at home and overseas." Here's the thing: I know the prime minister has to issue some harsh ...
Further information available here. Campus map to find venue available here.
I sent a postcard from Athens to LDV six months or so ago as we waited for the Greek people to elect a new government - bringing to power the curious mix of Syriza (a collection of hard left factions that would make the People's Front of Judea blush) and the Independent Greeks (representing the Greek chauvinistic right). This odd mix of nationalism and hard -left rhetoric has been colourfully described by one academic as "ethno-bolshevism". Since then, it has certainly been eventful and I have been very much aware that political choices have consequences. In the Greek election campaign, ...
Well, my vote is cast. It was a difficult choice to make because both candidates are a solid, Liberal choice. Both have their "High Profile" supporters, and both have had a polite but firm campaign. Whoever wins will have a hard task to raise the party's profile and to raise the number of votes we receive and seats we win. Good luck to them both. Oh , my vote went to ........ one of the candidates, I'm not going to disclose who I voted for. But I did vote.
Conservatives break promises on rail electrification | Cllr James Baker This is frankly bloody disgusting. Which Jane Austen Heroine Are You? - this is hilarious. Via @CharlieEdmunds Museum of Endangered Sounds My name is only real enough to work at Facebook, not to use on the site Sensory Overload: How People With Autism Experience the World Holy crap! This completely negates the point of having a WiFi password UKIP's disgusting behaviour at London LGBT Pride [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
The Tories are proposing to replace the Human Right Act and block British citizens from being protected by the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Winston Churchill led the UK's and Commonwealth in winning help;ing win World War 2. He then tirelessly pushed for the ECHR. He considered it critical to winning the peace. So the irony of a Tory government, whilst we have the disaster of Russia in all but name invading Ukraine i.e. European peace crumbling, destroying Winston Churchill's arguably equally important legacy to European peace as winning the war is quite simply monstrous. If you can;t bare ...
Written with an intermittent and terrible attempt at a Welsh accent. Oh yes. You've seen people like Mark Pack with bloody lovely pictures at the top of their blog posts. And you want some of that yourself, don't you? Well, here's a very very simple guide on how to do it. STEP 1. ONCE YOU HAVE WRITTEN YOUR GORGEOUS POST, MAKE SURE YOU ARE IN TEXT MODE BY HITTING THE "TEXT" TAB AT THE TOP RIGHT HAND SIDE OF THE WRITING SPACE. THEN PUT YOUR LOVELY CURSOR RIGHT AT THE TOP LEFT OF THE TEXT. YES, RIGHT HERE WHERE THE ...
Last you heard from me, it was September 2013 and I was a week away from moving to New Jersey. For what it's worth, I accomplished the move and now, thank God, I am leaving. Next month, I'm moving BACK to DC (well, Northern Virginia). It's just four years short of when I left for Seattle and I've learned a lot in the time I've been gone. I fell in love with the Pacific Northwest and learned to love trips into New York City (only good reason I can think of to live in Jersey, frankly). I've had two jobs ...
