Flashbak explains: In the clip above, from around 29 minutes into Antonioni's 1975 film The Passenger, Jack Nicholson is seen strolling along a concourse before jauntily tripping down a wide staircase of a new concrete building. The short scene was filmed at the recently completed Brunswick Centre in Bloomsbury in London. The staircase has now gone, demolished by Camden Council not long after the film was completed. The word 'Centre' in the name has also gone and the building, for a reason only known to some over-paid image consultants trying to make their jobs relevant, is now known as just ...
[IMG: Nick Knowles Meridian Tonight 4th Jan 1993] We used to love it when Nick Knowles did the travel news on Meridian Tonight. He used to do it in the news room of the studio in Hambridge Road, Newbury. Here he is on YouTube giving his report on the first Meridian Tonight on 4th January 1993. He's a tad nervous to begin with. But he soon got into his stride with his "cheeky chappy" schtick.
Peter Black has picked up a Telegraph story: They were invented by Percy Shaw of Boothtown, Halifax, West Yorkshire and have been a fixture on British roads since the 1930s but now cats eyes are set for the scrap heap, with the UK Government proposing to phase them out and replace them with LED lights.When I read this I half-remembered reading something about Market Harborough being the first town to use cat's eyes on its roads. And a little googling turns up the 365 Days of Motoring post for 1934: The first reflecting road studs - Follsain Gloworm studs, patented ...
After much debating and convincing from a very good friend. I have finally found the confidence to stand in this years Liberal Youth election to become a member of the policy committee. Through this article and my manifesto. I would like to present to you what I would do if elected member of the policy [...]
[IMG: Vince Cable and Nick Clegg. CC BY 3.0] Ahead of the publication of Vince Cable's new book, After the Storm, he has done an extensive and fascinating interview with The Guardian. Here are a few of the highlights: After toeing the line for five years, he can go public with his criticisms of chancellor George Osborne's handling of the economy. He warns that the emphasis on consumption rather than investment, the continuing reliance on house price inflation as the driver of growth, the decline in productivity and innovation mean fundamental problems are not being addressed. He is also the ...
It's time to Durham County to Act. That's why all County Durham's Liberal Democrat councillors have written an open letter to the council leader, Simon Henig, calling on him to agree to offer homes to 150 displaced families. The full text of the letter follows: Dear Cllr Henig and fellow councillors No doubt you are as distressed as we are at the scenes unfolding on our TV screens in recent weeks. The Government has accepted that the UK should accept more refugees from Syria. The question then is what is County Durham willing to do to help in this process? ...
Sorry to those people who have logged in in vain to see what's going on on my site. It's true that I've been away a lot in August, but that's no excuse as I've not posted since the General Election Now we're back up and running.
Friday 28th August. News came through of an horrific discovery in Austria. 71 refugees, including three children and one baby, were found dead in a lorry there. Adding to a very grim day, reports emerged that a boat packed with refugees had sunk off the coast of Libya, with 200 people feared dead. One would have thought that such a double humanitarian disaster would have softened the heart of the most hardened Fleet Street editor. Indeed, the Guardian's front page the following day was sympathetic to the plight of the refugees. An article by Kate Connolly in Passau, Germany, was ...
[IMG: George-orwell-BBC] Over on the (unaffiliated) Journeyman blog there is a review of George Orwell's collection of essays called Why I write, which was originally published in 1946. The review quotes a couple of passages where Orwell makes observations about England. (I apologise that these opinions are very specifically given about England only, rather than the country as a whole). The first passage is about the artistic and intellectual characteristics of the English: Here are a couple of generalizations about England that would be accepted by almost all observers. One is that the English are not gifted artistically...the English are ...
When you first go to conference there is a risk of overloading with "stuff". Bear in mind that conference is a very unusual situation for a human being. You are there being pumped full of the highest octane level of high octane political content for up to 18 hours a day. I once counted up over 50 subjects on which I had listened to speeches or explanations during a conference week. It is very easy to take it all very seriously and end up with your head exploding. Here's some very simple tips: Make a plan of the things you ...
Originally posted on Liberal Democrat Voice. 38 degrees does have its uses. Their "Refugees Welcome" campaign allows you to go their website, enter your postcode and see if their is a current "Refugees welcome in -name of town or city-" petition for your locality. If there is, you can sign it if you want to. If there isn't one for your area, you can just hit the red button to "start a campaign" and you can set up a petition for your home town, village or city, and then publicise it via Twitter, Facebook, email etc. The Guardian has a ...
Sat 5th
16:49
Farron: the Tories are turning up at the school gate and stealing children's lunch money
[IMG: School meals by COventry City Council Flickr CCL] The Mail reports today: Ministers are poised to scrap Nick Clegg's controversial free school meals programme, it emerged last night. The flagship Lib Dem policy was supposed to ensure all primary school children were given free lunches in their first three years of education. Tim Farron has responded: If this goes ahead, the Tories will show they are willing to take an axe to the education budget at the expense of children's learning. By scrapping this policy they would take food off the plates of hundreds of thousands of school kids ...
Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp! Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door! Emma Lazarus – words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, New York City (with thanks to Rev. Giles Fraser). Tim Farron has today responded o David Cameron's approach to the refugee crisis as follows: David Cameron is realising he is on the wrong side of public opinion. His latest proposals will do nothing for people making these desperate journeys. ...
Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp! Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door! Emma Lazarus – words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, New York City (with thanks to Rev. Giles Fraser). Tim Farron has today responded o David Cameron's approach to the refugee crisis as follows: David Cameron is realising he is on the wrong side of public opinion. His latest proposals will do nothing for people making these desperate journeys. ...
The West Midlands Liberal Democrats will be participating in an appeal to assist refugees in Europe. The scheme is still being planned and so this post is purely to test whether the Donate button works. Test post to see whether my donate button works
Way back in 1998, Nick Clegg walked into a dingy room in Leicester to be interviewed as a potential European candidate for the East Midlands. I have to say I was not particularly optimistic about this. His CV was the most boring thing I had ever read that wasn't a phone book. That's not to decry his illustrious career to date, working at a high level in the European Commission and a brief stint as a journalist in New York. It just didn't inspire. However, he came in that night and blew us all away with his sheer passion for ...
Hugo Award Categories: Magazines and Editors @KevinStandlee proposes a sensible reform, which I support. (tags: sf ) The Guardian view on the refugee crisis: it is people and stories that move us, not statistics Name check for @tnielsenhayden. (tags: migration humanrights ) Azerbaijani reporter sentenced to more than 7 years after a farcical trial Tightening control. (tags: azerbaijan humanrights )
Five Liberal Democrats have been elected to the Electoral Reform Society's Council. They are Crispin Allard, Paul Pettinger, Keith Sharp, Jon Walsh, who were re-elected, and new arrival Wera Hobhouse. There are also 4 Labour, 1 Green and 5 non politically aligned members. The society has its AGM today at which the new Council takes office. What surprises me, from the official announcement, is that there were only just over 3500 valid voters of whom less than 30% actually cast their ballot. I would have expected ERS to have more members and for those members to be more engaged in ...
I suspect David Cameron's advisers and speech writers are desperately looking for verbal formulations which make his progression, from referring to refugees as a "swarm" to recognising that they are after all "people like us" and should be treated as such, as logical and consistent. What has changed Cameron's public attitude is the public response to pictures of the little Syrian boy's body being washed up on a beach. (Strangely we seemed to be unmoved by news of thousands drowning, and the horrifying reports of 71 being suffocated in a closed van.) Even the Sun has now been converted and ...
Last night, at Hamilton House in Camden, London Liberal Democrats held a hustings for shortlisted candidates who had put themselves forward to be selected for the "top-up" list of 11 members of the London Assembly (the other 14 being elected in geographical constituencies). As there were 16 hopefuls and all had to make short presentations [...]
[IMG: Williamson's Tunnels in Liverpool. Credit: Chris Iles/Friends of Williamson's Tunnels/www.williamsontunnels.com] Fascinating from the BBC on the Williamson's Tunnels in Liverpool: A vast network of 200-year-old tunnels lies beneath Liverpool's streets - and no one knows why they're there... Of all the engineering projects that ever took place in the industrial centre of Liverpool - like the world's first exclusively steam-powered passenger railway - the building of the Williamson Tunnels in the early 19th Century must be the most mysterious. The patron of the tunnels, tobacco merchant Joseph Williamson, was extraordinarily secretive about their purpose. Even today, no one is ...
Sat 5th
10:45LibLink: Catherine Bearder MEP: Cameron must wake up and join the EU's response to the refugee crisi...
Liberal Democrat MEP Catherine Bearder has written for Left Foot Forward to criticise David Cameron's decision to take Syrian refugees, as long as they aren't already in Europe. Plans are being drawn up to take a limited number of refugees directly from camps on Syria's borders, but much to the dismay of our EU partners, Cameron continues to rule out taking part in an EU response to the thousands of desperate refugees arriving on Europe's shores. This may be politically expedient, but it is strategically short-sighted. Only by working together at the EU level can we address the biggest refugee ...
It's nearly here. After an election campaign that seems to have spanned ice ages, this time next week we will know if Corbyn is the winner. What if he doesn't win though? To put it politely some colourful characters have attached themselves to his campaign and it won't be long before equally colourful theories will emerge. So what / who are the runners and riders and their odds? 1) 1/5 Clear favourite is Labour HQ. Conductor of the Labour purge which does seem to have caught up genuine Labour members / activists along with Greens, Tories and trots. 2) Israel ...
The Western Mail reports that the exhibition, which depicts Israeli Jews and Arabs playing football together, was removed from public view after complaints from anti-Israeli groups were forwarded by the authority's deputy Labour leader Councillor Sue Lent. However, the council maintains the decision to shut the exhibition was taken by officers on "operational" grounds: The council's deputy leader Coun Sue Lent said: "I forwarded complaints about the exhibition to the Cabinet member responsible, Peter Bradbury. "I have campaigned against Israel's treatment of Palestinians for more than 20 years. They operate a system of apartheid that is worse than applied in ...
They were invented by Percy Shaw of Boothtown, Halifax, West Yorkshire and have been a fixture on British roads since the 1930s but now cats eyes are set for the scrap heap, with the UK Government proposing to phase them out and replace them with LED lights. The Telegraph reports that Ministers are preparing to amend traffic legislation to allow a new generation of solar-powered LED road studs to be used on British roads which can be seen up to 1,000 yards ahead, 10 times further than cats eyes. They say that the lights are capable of working for up ...
In the run-up to Autumn Conference in Bournemouth, we'll be looking ahead to examine the highlights in the debating hall, the fringe and training rooms. You can find the papers here. You can find all the posts in the series here. The final debate before the Leader's Speech is on the subject of youth services. The motion's promoters have been very busy this week, ensuring coverage on the Children and Young People now website. Mathew Hulbert told the site: Hulbert said the Lib Dem Friends of Youth Services has been formed to campaign internally in the party to influence the ...
[IMG: Jasper Gerard] A guest post today, this time from Jasper Gerard on the tragedy dominating our news: A tiny boy is washed up dead on a beach and it transforms global politics. With that click of a shutter lense, no tub-thumping politician or nationalist newspaper can any longer dismiss desperate refugees as mere flotsam, floating on a tide far from home. We all shed a tear, and this time we don't move on. Nameless entities long ignored have suddenly been granted back their humanity. The boy has a name, he is called Alan. Now the West has been forced ...
Still not convinced Jeremy Corbyn has the Labour leadership in the bag? Yesterday we witnessed the fag-end of modern political campaigning. If you want to know what the sound of the barrel being scraped in Westminster is like, you just had to tune into what emitted from the Burnham camp yesterday. They claimed to the media that if Jeremy Corbyn becomes Labour leader, the party will lose 500 seats at the 2016 local elections. What is this number based on? A crude projection using Labour's current crappy poll rating (28% or thereabouts), looking at the vote share in 2012 (the ...
Here's another fascinating West End photograph from Photopolis - the old Harris Academy in Park Place, that opened in 1885 but was replaced by the Perth Road building (currently being re-built) in the 1930s :
