Leicester used to have two mainline railway station. The Midland station, formerly known as Leicester London Road, is still in use. The second , Leicester Central on the old Great Central line, closed in 1969. On Wednesday the Leicester Mercury carried this news: Leicester's run-down Great Central railway station could be converted into a 100-bedroom boutique hotel as part of multi-million pound proposals to regenerate a neglected corner of the city. Developer Charles Street Buildings (CSB) owns the station complex near Highcross which was abandoned by rail bosses in 1969. It is currently used as industrial units but CSB is ...
View image | gettyimages.comRacecourses that once attracted tens of thousands of people now lie beneath airport runways, university campuses and housing estates.It is now 50 years since Birmingham's Bromford Bridge course shut and it is one of many that vanished thanks to a housing boom and the lure of developers' money.An article on the BBC News site earlier this week reminded us how demand for housing land can drive out other uses in cities. Something for us to bear in mind today. The photograph above shows the grandstand at the Hurst Park course near Hampton Court after it had been ...
[IMG: foodies.jpg] Amazing event at Alexandra Palace today - the Foodies Festival! Caribbean lager, coconut water from south America, English Granny Smith Cider, Thai beer, Italian wine (and more) all in one place :-) And too much food to list on top... Great for people who got (absolutely bargain) tickets - but also great for the Palace too. The more people the know about it and the great events and beautiful grounds, the better.
Liberal Democrats across the East Midlands and South Yorkshire have launched a petition to reverse the new Conservative Government's decision to delay the electrification of the Midland Main Line. You can sign it online. Lib Dem councillors and campaigners from the towns and cities served by the Midland Main Line have come together to lobby the Government to rethink their plans and commit to electrifying the line which serves Sheffield, Chesterfield, Derby, Nottingham and Leicester - as well as towns in Northamptonshire and Bedfordshire. The electrification work was due to be completed by 2020 but Patrick McLoughlin announced on 25 ...
A family member (not one with whom I was especially close, so I'm OK) died on Thursday, and I spent today with my family as a result. As I was already drained from the heat and general tiredness, I've taken yesterday and today off from blogging, but will be back tomorrow.
Best wishes to all our American friends as they celebrate their special day. We were talking amongst ourselves on the LDV team, wondering what the best way to to mark the occasion would be. We decided that it just had to be with some clips of the best programmes ever made. And the first one, suggested by Nick Thornsby, even has tennis. After the way Mr Murray has just dragged our emotions through a mangle, that's only appropriate. And one of my favourite scenes from Two Cathedrals And I have resisted the temptation to show Sam being humiliated by Ainsley ...
[IMG: Tim Farron and Norman Lamb at Social Liberal Forum hustings] Sporting the same shirt and trousers outfit and similar close cropped hair styles, 57 year old Norman Lamb and the more youthful 45 year old Tim Farron – who being men, will of course not be described that way by the press – faced off in a hustings that saw more variety in their stock speeches and answers than usual. Lamb went first and was on good form, with much more emphasis on his personal stories, using them to weave a convincing picture of his campaigning track record on ...
Managerialism vs Innovation – "Does management's pursuit of efficiency crowd out innovation?" asks Chris Dillow, wondering if creating small productivity gains through managerialist efficiency is driving out bigger gains that can be made through innovation. On politics and the 'common' – Alex Marsh on the changing style of political rhetoric and what it shows about our political culture. A world without work – How might we adapt to an automated future? I used to lead tours at a plantation. You won't believe the questions I got about slavery. – People really don't understand the past, part 94. London 2025 – ...
This lady tried to film a yoga video but forgot to ask permission
Here's the third set of tweets from the SLF Conference. Gordon Lishman chaired a session on political pluralism. David Howarth, former MP for Cambridge, looked at election data, Sue Goss from Compass looked at how progressive parties might work together and Tom Spencer, former Tory MEP who argued that a liberal party should alternate between left and right. David Howarth's rigorous electoral analysis, remarkable facts inferable from the data #slfconf pic.twitter.com/0YgipNLJA5 — Callum Delhoy (@CallumDelhoy) July 4, 2015 * Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
Here's our second look at tweets from SLF Conference covering late morning and early afternoon. It's a great day. Remember you can watch live below: First up a session on how the Lib Dems rebuild featuring Sal Brinton and Mark Pack: .@salbrinton says PR a red line for any coalition & no "nonsense about a referendum, it has to happen straight away." #slfconf — Caron Lindsay (@caronmlindsay) July 4, 2015 * Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
[IMG: Lib Dem website screenshot] Want to read the latest news stories and blog posts from the Liberal Democrat federal website but want the stories to come to you rather than have to remember to go and check the website regularly for new content? Then my free email service is just what you need. Just sign up for this daily email of Liberal Democrat news here (tick the second box under "What would you like to receive?"). There will be no more than one email a day - and no email if there hasn't been a new story added in ...
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 ...
Sat 4th
13:36
Opinion: In defence of the Scottish Government's plan for named persons for every child
I am writing this article after becoming increasingly frustrated at the tone and level of debate with which many people in our party are subjecting the Scottish Children and Young People's bill and in particular the provision for a "named person" for every child. Many of you will be asking what a "named person" is. If you choose to listen to the Daily Mail, the Christian institute and an assortment of other hysterical social conservatives this represents the introduction of state sponsored guardians whose mission in life is to spy on families and enforce political correctness. However I choose not ...
Yesterday I had the honour of attending Tony's funeral at St John's Church in Yeovil, with fellow councillors from Yeovil East Ward (Tony Lock, David Recardo, Manny Roper and Phil Chandler), the Mayor and Mayoress, ex Mayors, Liberal Democrat members, council ... Continue reading →
[IMG: Eyes in the Sky - Radiolab podcast] Ross McNutt has a superpower — he can zoom in on everyday life, then rewind and fast-forward to solve crimes in a shutter-flash. But should he? The tensions between arguments for privacy and for security often keep campaigners for civil liberties busy. The latest edition of the Radiolab podcast from the US has a great piece of coverage of what may well be the next flashpoint in such debates: permanent aerial surveillance of cities. The technology in question is both scary and impressive, even involving a little bit of 'time travel'. By ...
The post What Is The Difference Between Innovation and Creativity appeared first on James Taylor.
The Social Liberal Forum is having its annual conference today with the theme of Rebooting Liberalism. It's being held at the Amnesty HQ in London, so at this point, after the awful news this week about surveillance, we should probably say that we hope our friends at GCHQ enjoy the proceedings. The event sold out some weeks ago. Our own Mary Reid has been very involved in the organisation. SLF Conference is always lively, interesting and really makes you think. The agenda looks brilliant. Claire Tyler will give the William Beveridge Memorial Lecture. Julian Huppert and Bridget Fox will revisit ...
At the next Council meeting, later in July Erica and I will be working with Cllrs Radford and Morrison to try and force through a discussion on the development of the Liverpool City Region. Cllrs Richard Kemp and Steve Radford ... Continue reading →
The internet is designed to be open and accessible but what if it were the very opposite. Today's Independent reports on how Justin Foley decided to create a website that is the antithesis of that ideal. He has set up the World's most exclusive website and so far hundreds of thousands of people have spent around 20,000 hours in the line to access MostExclusiveWebsite.com after taking a ticket and waiting to be let in. Once you're in, you get 60 seconds to enjoy the site before the person with the next ticket is admitted. Personally, I don't really have the ...
[IMG: HALT poster] The proposal for a wind farm here has been doing the rounds for some time now and my previous postings refer at:- My understanding is that the land owner is trying to resurrect the previous proposals and find additional partners to try to deliver a huge wind farm to the west of Lydiate. The land in question is actually in West Lancashire. My concerns about the proposals remain the same despite the fact that I am very keen to see renewable energy sources developed in the UK. In simple terms taking any high grade agricultural ...
The Lib Dem Lawyers' Association asked our leadership candidates Tim Farron and Norman Lamb a number of questions to probe their positions on key legal issue debates. First off we asked about the rule of law as a liberal principle and as you might expect received positive responses. On all our questions both candidates gave good responses, though sometimes with a different emphasis - you can read the responses in full here. There were a number of themes:- On Access to Justice both took anti-LASPO (the legislation which cut back the scope of civil legal aid) positions - although both ...
Season 1 of Borgen, a Danish political drama focusing on the female leader of a centre party, is best summed up as West Wing with subtitles and less optimism. Although West Wing managed the occasional moment of tragedy, it was fundamentally an optimistic series in which nearly everything turns out for the best and nearly every problem is fixable by a combination of soaring oratory and efficient politicking. Borgen, as perhaps befits a program located in a rather smaller country, is much more about politicians buffeted by events – both political and personal – outside of their full control and ...
TACTRAN, the regional transport partnership for Tayside & Stirling, has introduced www.GoToo.com, a new website aimed at providing travel information that is lifestyle focussed. GoToo provides residents and visitors with tailored information to explore and get around the Tayside and Central Scotland area, as well as providing a range of travel tools and options to ease the daily commute. GoToo has people as its focus, recognising that visitors are looking for places to visit before they travel and want to know how to get there; residents are keen to find their travel options for getting around the area and commuters ...
Yesterday, the Women's Equality Party declared itself open for membership. It collected over 1,000 members in 24 hours, a great achievement for any political conglomeration starting from zero. As a non-partisan political party, welcoming members from other parties non-exclusively, it is also a fascinating study in 21st century politics, watching where it goes from here. If you're someone who believes in the equality of genders, you would have thought finding something to bitch about amongst WEP's victory was a tricky task. Not so. "Why don't they just call themselves the Equality Party?" was asked on social media many a time. ...
Slimming down the government is one of those phrases, along with 'reducing middle management' thrown around a great deal often with little concrete behind it. Indeed the story of recent governments has been that of near unending expansion. As the creation of a portfolio has become a standard way of making a statement of intent, [...]
