The result in Long Ditton Ward was a strong win for the party. The result was as follows. UKIP 61 Green 79 Conservative 611 Lib Dem 770 In the previous election the Lib Dem majority was under 50 so this is a large swing for the party. The party was helped by the fact that [...]
Current Watership Down, by Richard Adams (a chapter a week) Gulp, by Mary Roach Last books finished The Sorrows of an American, by Siri Hustvedt Doctor Who and the Vortex Crystal by William H. Keith, Jr. City at the End of Time, by Greg Bear not finished, read 100 pages and it failed to grab me. Doctor Who and the Rebel's Gamble by William H. Keith, Jr. A Scanner Darkly, by Philip K. Dick Sally Heathcote, Suffragette, by Mary M. Talbot, Kate Charlesworth and Bryan Talbot Prisoner, by Dave Rogers Kushiel's Mercy, by Jacqueline Carey Next books The King's Speech, ...
The Borough has 3 MP's, they are John Pugh (Lib Dem – Southport), Bill Esterson (Labour – Sefton Central) & Peter Dowd (Labour – Bootle). John Pugh voted with his Lib Dem colleagues to oppose the Tories appalling attack on the poor. Bill Esterson voted the Labour Party line by abstaining. Peter Dowd voted against his Party's whip i.e. the same way as John Pugh.
Lord Bonkers once described Cornwall as being littered with the gaunt remains of the tin mining heritage industry. (If I recall rightly, he was in those parts because he feared Paul Tyler was turning into the Beast of Bodmin every full moon.) Now it seems North West Leicestershire will soon look much the same. The legal challenge to the closure of the Snibston Discovery Museum near Coalville failed today and it will be gone before the end of the month. This is a horribly difficult time for local government, but it is hard to resist the feeling that the Conservative-controlled ...
After the 2015 general election, David Cameron announced that during his time in government he will try and scrap the Human Rights Act of 1998 and replace it with a British Bill of Rights. After this statement only one thought sprung to mind. Has David Cameron officially lost it? However with David Camerons small majority. [...]
Members of the Yorkshire Ridings Society (YRS) will meet at Micklegate Bar at 11.15 am to lead the 39th annual walk around the 'Bar Walls' of York carrying the Yorkshire flag. The Yorkshire Declaration of Integrity will be read at the 4 Bars (Gates) starting at Micklegate Bar (West Riding) 11.40 followed by Bootham Bar (North Riding) Monk Bar (City) and Walmgate Bar (East Riding). The time 11.40 am for the first reading coincides with the number of years since the first written reference to the Ridings of York in the Anglo Saxon Chronicles. Yorkshire Declaration of Integrity will be ...
News in from Rugby: Former Rugby Green Party general election candidate Terry White, 22, has defected to the Liberal Democrats following differences with himself and the national Green Party. He has rejoined a party he left at the start of the previous government as a result of the direction he felt the party was heading in but said he is "confident in the fight back of the party following the election of Tim Farron as party leader and the spirit of the modern party". Terry has stepped down in his role as co-ordinator of the local party and chair of ...
The question that will be answered by today's local authority by-elections is whether the exceptionally strong results of last week will be repeated. Attention will be paid to Long Ditton Ward in Elmbridge where the party is defending the seat. This is in South-West London which has been an area where some of our strongest [...]
Yorkshire Day (1st August) this year falls on a Saturday and organisers are hoping for a bumper turnout on the day for the celebrations, which take place at the Redcar town clock on the High Street from 10 am. Leading the proceedings as usual will be actor Chris Foote-Wood who will read the Yorkshire Declaration of Integrity (a statement of allegiance to Yorkshire) at 11.40 am. This equates to 1140 years since the first written reference to Yorkshire appeared in the Anglo Saxon Chronicles of 876. Chris, who turns up as a different character each year, is pictured as this ...
A recent robot-related death in Germany highlights broader dilemmas in the design of safe autonomous systems. Last month, a robot grabbed a worker at a Volkswagen plant in Germany, crushing and killing him. This tragic though fairly common incident has drawn attention to the growing dangers of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI). As computers become smaller, smarter, faster and more interconnected, we will delegate more tasks to them. Generally, this will make our lives easier, because we will spend less time researching information, getting directions, or driving cars. Well-designed programs can often do these sorts of tasks better than we ...
[IMG: Man relaxing on a couch with a laptop] I've no idea who the person in this photograph is, but if you want to capture in one image who the new Liberal Democrat members post-general election are, he pretty much epitomises them. Young-ish, white male in a middle class professional job. There are many exceptions to this, of course, but that broad generalisation captures both an opportunity and a necessity that arrises from the make-up of the new members, 51% of whom are under 35. The opportunity: the wave of new membership is bubbling over with the sorts of skills ...
I'm not sure why, but the older I get, the more the Powell and Pressburger film A Canterbury Tale means to me. Certainly it is unusual in being a work of English mysticism. We stolid English usually prefer to leave that sort of thing to the Celts. I knew that a book had been written about the making of the film a few years ago. When I asked about it in The Chaucer Bookshop, they did not let me down.
I am down in Canterbury for a few days' holiday. Today, as is obligatory, I did the cathedral. Its sheer size is impressive, though it is not a great open palace of light like York Minster, and I like the way you climb as you progress further towards the east end, where Beckett's shrine stood before the Dissolution. I like cathedrals in places that seem to small for them, like Southwell and Ely. But from its monuments you can see that Canterbury is very much the church of its own city as well as the home of the Church of ...
Thanks to Labour's abstention on the welfare bill, a party that was just two months ago caricatured as 'Tory enablers' can now credibly claim to be the only national voice of left-wing opposition to the current regime. While I'm sure we'd all much rather be seen as the latter than the former, the fact that this repositioning is possible at all speaks to the central flaw at the heart of our political platform. When I consider voting for the Tories or for Labour, I know that in doing so I'd be declaring my belief in a certain economic narrative. If ...
Thu 23rd
15:25
Details of YouGov's Labour leadership polling even more remarkable than the headline voting intentio...
A remarkable finding from YouGov's polling of Labour members: three quarters don't think it's important to have a leader who understands how to win. [IMG: YouGov poll]
Some of the most vociferous critics of Tim Farron have come from the gay people within the church. It is not surprising given the way that the LGBTI communities have been treated by some folk in the church at home and abroad. Their legitimate concern is that those who believe them to be 'sinful and unwholesome' will not give them full support on human rights issues. A couple of case studies will illustrate the point. Close to home we have the CofE which is at present in front of an Industrial tribunal in Nottingham in a discrimination case brought by ...
This post originally appeared on Lib Dem Voice. "We stand up for the outsider instead of the establishment.", Tim Farron said during the leadership rally last week. For party members who were rather discouraged by our missteps in coalition, that line gives us hope. Our failings in the Coalition can be traced to one key fault: after speaking out against the establishment, we were seen to be now a part of it. There are so many bills that we extracted key concessions on, but we were not able to communicate that. How could we, after all? We were bound by ...
[IMG: House of Commons. Crown Copyright applies to this photo - http://www.flickr.com/photos/uk_parliament/4642915654/] "We stand up for the outsider instead of the establishment.", Tim Farron said during the leadership rally last week. For party members who were rather discouraged by our missteps in coalition, that line gives us hope. Our failings in the Coalition can be traced to one key fault: after speaking out against the establishment, we were seen to be now a part of it. There are so many bills that we extracted key concessions on, but we were not able to communicate that. How could we, after all? ...
[IMG: laura kuenssberg] The BBC has announced that Laura Kuenssberg is to be its new Political Editor, succeeding Nick Robinson who is moving to the Radio 4 Today programme. Delighted, shocked and in awe of following the peerless @bbcnickrobinson ! Thank you so VERY much for all the kind messages and tweets — Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) July 22, 2015 Last year she wrote for Politics Home It's time politicians re-examined their early instincts, asking: Are politicians making decisions based on their own experiences of a family doctor, when in fact swaths of patients now have never seen the same GP ...
Cambridge City Council's cherished aim for a Greater Cambridge Unitary Council has been side-lined according to city Liberal Democrats. According to a document hurriedly published just after the Lib Dems called for more openness on the subject, local council leaders have launched a review of Cambridgeshire's local government structure. This excludes the option of a single tier council for the city and surrounding rural area, which many residents and the business community have set their sights on. As the councils are at the same time bidding for more devolved powers from Whitehall, Cambridge Liberal Democrat Leader, Tim Bick fears the ...
[IMG: 'Before your party switch can be done, you must answer my question one.'] 'Before your party switch can be done, you must answer my question one.' Certain over-excited speculation (totally unlike the reasoned deliberation you find on this blog) about the possible fallout of a Corbyn win in the Labour leadership election has suggested some MPs might leave Labour for pastures new. As ever, with rumours of MPs defecting, it's worth taking them with a bucketful of salt as while speculation of possible defections is often rife, actual defections are usually very thin on the ground. However, Labour swinging ...
Yesterday a most peculiar thing didn't happen in Liverpool. Labour speaker after Labour speaker did not stand up to attack the Liberal Democrats for what we were doing in Parliament. Well they couldn't really could they? There was an attack ... Continue reading →
The Guardian has taken an interest in the deluge of emails being sent out by the Labour Party recently. Our head of Members and Supporters Austin Rathe is quoted in the piece explaining the difference between Labour's approach and ours. Most of what is being done by both party's has been poached from the Obama campaigns. But while Labour have been more indiscriminate in their approach, the Liberal Democrats have sought to build relationships with people. All those emails with pictures of cute babies that the Labour Party use to harvest your email address are not well used. Over to ...
The search for extraterrestrial life is seen as one of pure curiosity. But, as in other areas of science, we should worry about the consequences of success. Fifty years ago the era of robotic exploration of our solar system was just beginning. In July 1965 the Mariner IV probe sent back data showing that Mars did not have vegetation, much less canals crisscrossing the planet as envisioned by earlier generations of astronomers. The New York Times opined that Mars was "The Dead Planet" with the chances for life of any kind to be "infinitesimal." Carl Sagan, astronomer and early rock ...
Thu 23rd
11:25The British General Election of 1950: full of interesting information for followers of contemporary ...
The British General Election of 1950 was at the time only the second in what has since become the essential Nuffield series of general election books, a series which is now a permanent part of following elections in the UK. [IMG: The British General Election of 1950] Its age shows in some ways – not only of course in the subject matter but also in the very light touch of statistics (though they were advanced for the time). The electoral system back in 1950 was nominally the same as now, but its working were very different. Turnout was higher in ...
There was such an interesting article in Saturday's Guardian - alright, I admit it, it was written by me - listing five key aspects of English culture which are not English in origin. But what really struck me were the responses. Within a few hours, there were more than 700 furious comments at the bottom of it from readers, variously accusing me and each other of various aspects of xenophobia or treason. Of course, below the line in the Guardian is a frightening place, where monsters lurk. If you took all the comments about your articles written there too seriously ...
I do support the party and have done since before it was the Lib-Dems. As "Chairman" of the Plymouth Polytechnic Liberal Society in the early 80s I worked with other "grown-up" Liberals to get David Owen re-elected in his Devonport seat in those heady days of the Liberal-SDP Alliance. I campaigned with David Penhaligon, I played host to Paddy Ashdown, I had lunch with David Steele. I can remember times back then when 8 MPs seemed a far-off fantasy. But I've drifted from time to time too. I voted for Tony Blair's New Labour and was broadly behind his policies ...
UPDATED DETAILS Labour seat. Cause:Resignation. No LD candidate.
UPDATED DETAILS Labour seat. Cause:Resignation. LD Candidate- Alan Dean Contact Details- David Foster (01254 703858, davidfosterld@btinternet.com)
Labour seat. Cause:Death. Updated LD candidate- Roy Horobin. Contact: Steve Beasant (07941 858395)
UPDATED DETAILS Liberal Democrat seat. Cause:Resignation. LD Candidate- Neil Houston. Contact: Shweta Kapadia, 020 8399 7737, 07885 082573, shweta.kapadia@btinternet.com
UPDATED DETAILS Labour seat. Cause:Resignation. No LD candidate.
A week ago Tim Farron became the new leader of the Liberal [IMG: Tim_farron_2014] Democrats, my political party here in Britain. When such important events occur I am torn between two impulses: to comment straight away, and so be topical, or to pause for reflection; I take the "thinking" bit of my blog's title seriously after all. The decision this time was quite easy. I was quite depressed by the news of Tim's victory, as I had been backing the rival candidate, Norman Lamb. I needed a few days to recover from that low patch so that could be more ...
He may not have got Blair, but Jeremy Corbyn has secured the backing of a former Lib Dem (Wales) leader: https://t.co/ieCDMQ8G65 — Sam Macrory (@sammacrory) July 22, 2015
Thu 23rd
08:55
LibLink: Paddy Ashdown: Diplomacy, not bombs will defeat ISIS. The west is being sucked into a secta...
So, David Cameron, like Tony Blair before him, pledges to help the US in the Middle East. We know that that sort of intervention is unlikely to end well. It would also be unlikely that the UN would ever agree to sanction any military action. Russia and China would just block it. So the option would be to have another Iraq, without properly defined objectives and potentially make a horrendous situation even worse. I don't always agree with Paddy, but he's always my first port of call on foreign affairs. He's been writing for the Independent about what should happen ...
Thu 23rd
08:46
The Corbyn conundrum points out a huge problem for political parties - their membership numbers are ...
"My name is Bob, I've been a councillor in Nottinghamshire for twenty years, and I'm to the right of Genghis Khan." This was uttered into a microphone at a Q&A - to great applause from those around him - following a fringe event at Tory conference in Birmingham several years ago. In the interests of fairness and disclosure, the topic was Europe, with the most pro-European person on the panel being Tim Montgomerie, but nevertheless it sticks in my brain as a beautiful imprint of a monumental difficulty facing every modern political party: their membership numbers are too small. Back ...
Last week, I advised of the rollout of Phase 2 of the recycling extension and changes to bin arrangements that will start in November. As I pointed out, in Phase 2 are the areas around Tullideph, Pentland, City Road, Brook Street, eastern part of Blackness Road, Peddie Street, South Tay Street and Windsor Street. However, there is a significant change to the Phase 2 that was originally agreed at council committee in that the Perth Road Lanes and surrounding area is now excluded, something I mentioned last week that I had queried with the Environment Department. I have now been ...
The latest Sunday Bandstand Concert on the Magdalen Green Bandstand takes place this coming Sunday at 2pm. The Dundee Instrumental Band will be playing - more details here.
I have commented before about Lydiate being surrounded on 3 sides by Lancashire and the importance of anything being considered for this community taking into account its unique geographical location i.e. it being very much an outpost of Merseyside which is all but still in Lancashire. I raise the matter again because Lydiate Parish Council says that it wants to do a Neighbourhood Plan – my previous posting refers:- The reason for this posting is to very clearly show the extent of Lydiate's rural nature – it is in fact at least three quarters rural with just one quarter ...
Neo Bankside: how Richard Rogers's new 'non-dom accom' cut out the poor 25 Ways To Dress Like A Tech Employee - I really loved this. Read right to the bottom. Cricket: has Cameron failed the Tebbit test? DWP accused of still stalling over release of controversial disability benefit death stats Labour's leadership election takes us into the silly season - some good analysis here How Democracy Works vs How Harriet Harman thinks democracy works Genderflipped book covers show the sexism authors and readers are subject to I like the Nellie Gaiman one myself Couples describe each other to a police ...
Women Having A Terrible Time At Parties In Art Ow! (tags: art funny sexandgenderandsexuality ) How to Rage Quit Your Media Job Look at the rhetoric. (tags: uspolitics media ) Would the SNP win votes in the North East? Wishful thinking, I suspect. (tags: scotland ukpolitics ) Amazonians linked by DNA to Indigenous Australians Ancient migration revealed? (tags: genealogy )
The BBC reports some very good news, reporting comments by the chief veterinary officer for Wales that the various measures being deployed against the spread of TB in cattle here are starting to show results. Although Professor Christianne Glossop says that it is too early to determine the impact of the badger vaccination programmes in Pembrokeshire, she told an audience at the Royal Welsh Show in Llanelwedd, Powys that incidents of TB have fallen by 28%. She added a 45% cut in animals being culled had left 94% of herds TB free. The five-year vaccination programme has one year remaining, ...
The Welsh Liberal Democrats' Young Person's Concessionary Bus Fare scheme will be launched in September 2015, it has been announced today. From September, 16, 17 and 18 year olds will receive a one-third discount on all of their journeys by bus, including the TrawsCymru network of longer-distance services. £5million has been allocated for the introduction of the scheme in 2015-16, and a further £9.75million in 2016-17. From today, 16-18 years old will be able to register their interest for the new WYPDT Scheme Card via Gov.wales/mytravelpass (English) or Llyw.cymru/fyngherdynteithio (Welsh). It will enable them to receive discounted fares on all ...
