Over a long period of time, I have highlighted the very poor state of the shared roadway/footway of Shaftesbury Place (see right). It has never been adopted by the City Council and is one of relatively few unadopted roadways in the city. Following meetings with residents in the past, I attempted at the council's 2012/13 budget meeting to create an unadopted roads fund to assist this sort of situation, but unfortunately this was outvoted. Residents again recently highlighted the concern about the deteriorating state of the road and tonight, along with 15 residents of the street, three council officers and ...
Despite a big publicity drive by the police and lots of anger in the community, no one has come forward with information about those responsible for setting the Coronation Park bench on fire. If you have any information or saw anyone walking towards the park shortly before the fire then please contact the police by calling 101 or emailing 101@devonandcornwall.pnn.police.uk quoting crime reference CR/43481/15. Tweet
Just over an hour ago on his Facebook page, Alistair Carmichael wrote: Sometimes being a bit of a geek can bring results. Having made an application under Standing Order 24 of the House of Commons standing orders for an emergency debate on the government's determination to bulldoze English Votes for English Laws through the House of Commons, I succeeded in getting a three hour debate tomorrow. A little piece of parliamentary history maybe. The BBC reports: Commons Speaker John Bercow has granted an urgent three hour debate on Tuesday on the government's plans to introduce "English votes for English laws". ...
The date of the election for the leadership of the Liberal Democrats is now only 10 days away. Earlier in the campaign, we sent a list of 5 questions to both candidates, chosen from among many of the key concerns raised by our membership. We have now received responses from both Tim and Norman and, although many members have voted already, we hope they are of interest for those who are as yet undecided. [IMG: Screen Shot 2015-07-06 at 20.11.48] Response from Tim Farron 1. Research spending The UK currently invests 1.7% of GDP (combining both government and business spending) ...
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Opinion: Who will be paying if the government drops free over-75s TV licences: the BBC or the over-7...
Tuning in briefly on Sunday to the Andrew Marr Show, appropriately belatedly via the iPlayer, I was amused and appalled in equal measure by what lay ahead (I didn't actually watch it all, partly out of fear of what I would see, but mainly out of fear of boredom). I was greatly amused by the format of the program. I've got used to listening to the Today program's political correspondent "cut through the crap" immediately after a political interview, which I like to hear. However, it is a little odd when that correspondent does this before the interview is complete, ...
[IMG: Martello Tower 6 [Sandgate Escarpment] (Copyright Steve Popple and licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons Licence.)] Shepway Council's Development Control Committee will be discussing the planning application to build five houses on Sandgate Escarpment (by Military Road) as an "enabling" development towards repairs to Sandgate Martello Towers 5 & 6 on Tuesday 14th July. The agenda and reports for the meeting are available online, and in the Officers report on the application is recommending approval of the application. Sandgate Parish Councillor Tim Prater commented: "It's sad that Shepway's Planning Officer has not listened to the opinions of Sandgate ...
Meols Ward Lib Dem Councillors John Dodd, Nigel Ashton and Jo Barton are holding their next advice centre on Saturday 11th July, from 11 am to 12 noon at St John's Primary School, Rufford Road, Crossens. We will be there to meet you and discuss any Council problems you may have. No appointment necessary. Just pop in. We also hold a monthly advice centre in Churchtown, at Cafe Moo Moo on Cambridge Road (by the junction with Preston New Road, next to Boots) on the fourth Thursday of every month (except December) from 10:30 - 11:30 am.
We have objected to the idea of pedestrians, cyclists and cars sharing the space in Kirkdale. This is one of the proposals put forward in the recent consultation about improvements to Kirkdale and Dartmouth Road. We welcome parking bays, planting more street trees and improving the look of the 'High Street' area of Kirkdale. However [...]
The Lib Dem team would like to thank the Gatley Festival organisers for all their hard work that made the whole festival, and the Sunday Fun Day, another great success. We had our regular stand and had a very enjoyable afternoon chatting to lots of friendly people. We'd also like to thank all the stall-holders, food vans and fair operators, both commercial and voluntary, along with everyone who took part in the parade. Without everyone the festival wouldn't be as great a success as it is. Finally, thank you to everyone who came along to enjoy the day – your ...
Over the years, the Liberal Democrats have quite rightly been proud of our record of 'Community Politics'. However, the nature of 'community' has, I believe, changed a great deal, and we need to consider the implications and opportunities of that massive social change. We all know that there is an army of party activists (elected, unelected, and hopefully at some point to be elected) working really hard all year round in their local areas, helping people with all kinds of problems from personal difficulties with council policies and procedures to the inevitable potholes. They do such valuable work in getting ...
[IMG: Baroness-Claire-Tyler-1] Baroness Claire Tyler is our spokesperson for mental health in the Lords, and on Saturday she gave the William Beveridge Memorial Lecture at the Social Liberal Forum conference. The full text has now been published, but we can give you a taster here. The title of the lecture was 'Wellbeing – a modern take on Beveridge' and she began by saying: I think it is entirely appropriate to be revisiting Beveridge at a conference entitled 'Rebooting Liberalism'. It's neither regressive nor intellectually lazy to be looking to the past as we seek to move forward. Far from it ...
It is with great sadness that I would like to inform you of the deaths of two local people: Jonathan Greenwall and Brian Goodchild. Jonathan was a parish councillor for several years and held the post of Chairman from May 2006 to 2007. His funeral will be held on Friday 17th July at 11am at St Paul's Church in Sandgate. Brian's funeral will be held on Wednesday 8th July at 11am at St Mary & St Ethelburga Church, Lyminge, followed by cremation at Barham Crematorium at 12.40pm. Published and promoted by Tim Prater, 98a Sandgate High Street, Folkestone, CT20 3BYPrinted ...
[IMG: 'Alackaday, and fuck my luck.'] 'Alackaday, and fuck my luck.' I've just watched Chris Froome take the yellow jersey in stage 3 of this year's Tour de France and it's got me thinking about how much blind chance plays in sporting success. Froome's luck, for instance, seems very variable – this year, he's managed to avoid a big crash today, and be in the right place yesterday when the peloton split to gain time on a lot of his rivals, but last year he spent the first few stages watching everything go wrong for him, and ended up pulling ...
We all know the gloomy picture: I don't need to re-hash the scale of our losses, or present you with the same statistics you know so well. Let's leave it like this: we don't just have to win back seats and votes. We have to find a way to win back lost trust, in the face of anger, disappointment and - perhaps worst of all - plain disinterest. That means finding a way to signal a clear break with the past, but without disowning the party's achievements in government. It means offering a distinctive alternative to the Tories and Labour, ...
The Scottish Elections (Reduction of Voting Age) Bill has now gone through the Scottish legislative process and will shortly receive Royal Assent, bringing into force a reduction to 16 in the voting age for both Scottish Parliament and Scottish local government elections. It will also, unintentionally but usefully, provide a little bit of a real world split test as to what impact the reduction in voting age to 16 has given that this means for next May's local and devolved elections it will be 18 in England and Wales alongside the 16 in Scotland. Interested in more stories about how ...
South Wales West Liberal Democrat AM Peter Black is concerned that the Welsh Government has given only part time status to a domestic abuse programme advisor. He said: "This Bill was controversial from the outset as many people felt it did not go far enough to tackle domestic abuse and sexual violence. "In particular, all three opposition parties were concerned that sufficient and appropriate mechanisms were being put in place to mainstream education on relationships in schools. "I am shocked therefore that the recent advert for the National Adviser says: 'The hours expected to fulfil this role will be part-time'. ...
Conservatives claim that extending the so-called 'Right to Buy' policy to housing association tenants will give the possibility of home ownership to 1.3 million families. But at what cost? And is this the right policy priority, given our housing crisis? What isn't explicit in the name of this policy ('right to buy') is that it involves selling off homes at a very large discount to their market value – over £100,000 per home. This amounts to a huge give-away of public assets to the new owner-occupier of the homes in question - who are likely to be amongst the better-off ...
With a month left until the end of 'Early Bird' discounts for September, we're already seeing some local teams book their places at one of this year's two main Kickstart weekends. Kickstart is widely regarded as the best opportunity all year round for local campaigns training, planning and strategy. So, before everyone jets off on [...]
Our colleagues at the LGA Liberal Democrat Group have pulled together a template council motion and accompanying spreadsheet of housing waiting lists in England from 1997-2014. The motion is included below, and ALDC members can download the motion as an editable MS Word document and the MS Excel waiting lists spreadsheet from our File Library. [...]
Terminator: Genisys is essentially the Terminator mythology retold as an episode of Doctor Who. It mostly works. Spoiler warning: I've avoided giving away anything that hasn't been in the trailers but frankly that wasn't difficult. If you've been lucky enough not to have seen them, don't read this before seeing the film. Let's start with the obvious: [...]
More comedy genius from Australia's Clarke and Dawe:
Thursday's news reported Michael Fallon's statement to the House of Commons raising the possibility of another Commons vote on bombing Syria. Friday's zoomed in on the one minute of silence to honour the victims of the shooting in Tunisia. Quite how bombing ISIS positions in Syria would prevent a gunman doing crazy things near the other end of the Mediterranean is not quite so clear. Announcing this just before a public marking of the deaths sounds like a plea for revenge. Later on Thursday Radio 4 interviewed two Conservative MPs about the possibility of bombing Syria, one who voted for ...
[IMG: Apple Core (Photo courtesy http://www.free-photo-gallery.org/photos/red-apple-core/)] Former Cambridge MP David Howarth and Liberal Democrat commentator Mark Pack have been taking a look at the evidence on what the Liberal Democrats need to do to recover from the May 2015 disaster. They've written a pamphlet setting out their solution, called "The 20% Strategy: Building a core vote for the Liberal Democrats", and, for what it's worth, I pretty much entirely agree with their analysis. The Party was massacred in May 2015, and although that was a particularly harsh reaction by the voters on much good work done by the Party in ...
Can't say that my home community of Lydiate is known as a holiday destination but sailing along the Leeds Liverpool Canal not so long ago came a holiday barge. Indeed there were two of them lashed together. [IMG: They came on holiday to Lydiate] Click on the photo to enlarge it Delighted to see how busy our canal is these days; its a real leisure facility on our doorstep and it is clearly bringing holiday makers too. The photo is amongst my Flickr shots at:- www.flickr.com/photos/86659476@N07/
Readers of this blog site will know how passionate I am to preserve Sefton's Green Belt land from development mainly because it is almost all of the highest grade of agricultural land in England. To my mind building on it is utter madness as it is the very land that grows the food we eat and which we can't grow enough of to feed ourselves now. [IMG: Green Belt campaigners outside Maghull Town Hall.] Green Belt campaigners outside Maghull Town Hall. Click on the photo to enlarge it. This is not though a rehearsal of my previous postings about how ...
The Local Government Association has called on the government to change the law on littering from cars. At the moment it is hugely difficult to prosecute when someone throws litter from a car. Not only do you have to see it happen, but you have to identify who in the car is responsible and prosecute them as an individual. Councils now want to change the law to match what happens in London where it is the owner of the vehicle who is responsible. Cornwall relies on visitors for a huge section of its economy. And if our roads and verges ...
Neither candidate has decided to do a photo op about 'rebuilding the party' which involved them in hard hat with a trowel in hand. Keep up with news on the Lib Dem leadership race Sign up for Liberal Democrat Newswire here, and Sign up for the Facebook event for the contest (where Norman Lamb and Tim Farron are regularly answering questions from members).
Revolution is not a dirty word: it is the honorific given to moments of dramatic change by their benefactors, which became suspicious in its connection to the prophecies of Marx's illiberal inheritors who wished to usher in an era of benevolent totalitarianism. Constitutional change is a common revolutionary cause. The American Revolution founded the world's first Democratic Republic out of the writings of Publicus and Thomas Payne; the Revolution in France turned an agrarian feudal monarchy into an Empire in the mould of Rousseau's Social Contract; and the Glorious Revolution established the supremacy of our Parliament in the vein of ...
"The purpose of Free-Money is to break the unfair privilege enjoyed by money. This unfair privilege is solely due to the fact that the traditional form of money has one immense advantage over all other goods, namely that it is indestructible." So said Silvio Gesell, the Argentinian trader who came up with the idea of rusting money. It is always going to be easier to make money out of money, rather than using it to do something productive, wrote Gesell in 1913. Because money grows if you invest it - but real commodities tend to rust or go mouldy. The ...
The leaders of Greece's Syriza government are clever people. They include university academics, well versed in modern economics, including game theory and the theory of negotiations. After yesterday's decisive No vote in the referendum on settlement terms, these negotiators now feel they have a strong hand. I don't share their optimism. Unless you believe the conspiracy theories that Syriza's real aim is to create a Venezuela in the Mediterranean, they appear to think that their EU counterparts and the IMF will be forced to negotiate because the consequences of not doing so are dire. What they seek are two things. ...
We have received a number of requests for information on Lib Dem spokespersons in the House of Lords. We've now compiled the following list of people and briefs, which can also be downloaded as a .pdf here. Liberal Democrat Spokespersons House of Lords, June 2015 Leader of the Liberal Democrats, House of Lords Lord Wallace of [...]
Two parties are holding leadership contests at present. It was supposed to be three but, after resigning, Nigel Farage was told not to be silly, so he un-resigned himself. By contrast, both Labour and the Lib Dems are replacing their leaders following disastrous results at the General Election. I watched the Labour candidates in the [...]
Yesterday, Greece voted overwhelmingly to reject the terms put to it via the latest in a string of proposed bailout deals (it was actually more complicated than even that, but for the purposes of this article, go with it). Tsipras told the Greek public that a "No" vote would strengthen his hand in discussions with the country's various creditors. The question now is whether he is proven right or wrong. For the future of both the Eurozone and the EU, I think Tsipras should have his bluff called. I'm going to say something obvious here: Greece shouldn't have joined the ...
Mr K. had arrived on the wing at Brixton Prison on the Friday. By Monday morning he was dead. He had managed to hang himself using a sheet tied around the window bars. No-one knew what time he had died. It would be interesting to know whether the inquest showed up the notoriously lax attitude of Brixton night duty staff to night time cell checks. No-one really remembered speaking to him and all anyone amongst the prisoners could really say was that he had arrived on Friday, was short and slight, had an Irish accent and kept himself to himself. ...
[IMG: Nick Clegg resigns as Liberal Democrat leader] That's the tile for the next Liberal Democrat History Group meeting, coming up in London on 13 July from 6:30pm: The 2015 election is the most catastrophic in the history of the Liberal Democrats and its predecessor parties; in no other previous election has the party lost such a high proportion of its votes and seats. Entry into coalition with the Conservative Party in 2010 meant that the party always knew it would lose a good number of those who had voted for it in 2010, but Liberal Democrats hoped that they ...
New Zealand's government has passed the Harmful Digital Communications Bill, which declares that cyberbullying is a criminal offence. Anyone using digital communications like Facebook, Twitter or even WhatsApp in a... Read the full story here: Kiwi cyberbullies face jail as New Zealand criminalizes trolling
For a Welsh government that prides itself on its anti-domestic violence agenda, the decision to make the first ever statutory national advisor on the subject a part-time post was an extraordinary gaffe. The question is whether a part-time advisor will have the time to carry out the tasks created for him/her. The Violence against Women, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence (Wales) Act 2015 was controversial from the outset as many people felt that it did not go far enough to tackle domestic abuse and sexual violence. In particular, all three opposition parties were concerned that sufficient and appropriate mechanisms were ...
Now that the school summer holidays are underway, my usual weekly ward surgeries do not take place, but I can still be contacted on any local issues or concerns through my e-surgery - just e-mail esurgery@frasermacpherson.org.uk. I can also be contacted at home at any time on 459378 and also during office hours at my Dundee City Council office on 434985. Surgeries commence again in August with the start of the new school year.
Fiji hammer Micronesia 38-0 in 'record international win' at Pacific Games | Football | The Guardian Bruce Dickinson 'bounces back' from cancer Osborne's £13bn 'northern powerhouse' fund includes routine council spending on potholes #NorthernPowerCut Driving a car is getting cheaper and cheaper while trains and buses just keep getting more expensive Interesting (if brief) interview with one of the international line judges at Wimbledon selling a couple of things on ebay for James: Hartnell era Doctor Who: The Complete History ... .... and Capaldi era from the same range Privilege makes them do it — what a study of Internet ...
