Many tens of thousands of people, of all ages and ethnicities, marched from Marble Arch to 10 Downing Street in London this afternoon in solidarity with refugees, especially those from Syria. The main chant and slogan on banners was "Refugees Welcome Here!", echoing the actions of citizens in Germany and calling Prime Minister David Cameron [...]
The Magazine - an old gateway to Leicester Castle - still stands, but Magazine Square is long gone. These houses were built for the county militia in 1863 and occupied three sides of the square. The fourth was closed off by a drill hall. In 1967-8 the square was swept away to make room for the Newarke underpass. That was filled in 40 years later.
Norman Baker has an article in the Daily Mail today. I take it to be an extract from his forthcoming book Against the Grain. He tells some stories of life in Whitehall that could have come straight from Yes Minister and spills the beans on what it was like to work with Theresa May: Still, there was finally some light relief when we were all - the ministerial team, the permanent secretary and the spads - invited by Theresa to Christmas lunch. In early January. We duly assembled one lunchtime in the basement of Osteria Dell'Angolo, the restaurant immediately opposite ...
Congratulations to Shani Smith for gaining a seat for the Liberal Democrats on Barwell parish council in Leicestershire. I would not usually blog about a gain at parish level, but this extraordinary leaflet from the defeated Labour candidate deserves a wider readership. One of the gentlemen pictured on it, Huw Williams, is a Conservative parish councillor. Whether this respect for Ukip and the Tories will survive Corbynite revolution remains to be seen. Thanks to the mighty Bosworth Lib Dems for sending me the leaflet.
Let us know at teamludlow.uk. The nights are drawing in, as they say. It's dark in the evening and, if you an early riser like me, in the morning. Overnight it's close to pitch black as the majority of streetlights are turned off between midnight and five-thirty in the morning. There are 18,500 street lights [...]
It's time to welcome the Labour Party back to what it should be, a socialist party. For far too many years it has looked and felt like a Tory Party MK11 otherwise known as the Red Tories. I am not a socialist and am certainly not in any way a supporter of the Labour Party yet I am strangely pleased that it has seemingly gone back to its roots. In recent years I have seen Labour at a local level opposing every measure of austerity yet at a national level doing the exact opposite as the likes of Rachel Reeves ...
Rallying to welcome refugees with @sheehanshas and @lizlynne1. (@ Parliament Square) https://t.co/xObD3ZTeh6 pic.twitter.com/0lhvQ2D68b — JonBall (@JonBall) September 12, 2015
A friend of mine asked my opinion on Jeremy Corbyn's landslide victory of the Labour leadership election. Here goes but first a little history. After John Smith died in May 1994, Tony Blair became leader of the Labour Party. With his rebranding of it as New Labour and the dropping of Clause IV* from the party's constitution, it was clear that the party of Left had abandoned socialism. I did ask socialist friends at the time whether they would continue to support Labour. May of them did not. It was clear that Labour under Blair was attempting to win power ...
The Sleep of Reason, by Martin Day Second paragraph of third chapter: Dark clouds are gathering - both literal and, if I might be permitted so fanciful a notion, symbolic - and I do not happily watch them as they form. One of the last of the Eighth Doctor Adventures, seems to have got rave reviews from a lot of people though I am with hammard who warned me last year that it is alright but not stellar. The Doctor is involved with two different timelines in the same mental hospital, in one of which he is ostensibly a mysterious ...
The election of Jeremy Corbyn as Leader and Sadiq Khan as the Mayor candidate will enthuse many BaME voters who had previously been members or supporters of Labour to return, but not alone, but with their friends and families. Visible BaME communities are not impressed, in fact they are turned off, by the 'tit for tat' inter-political squabbling, so I very much hope that our Party does not participate in such trivia against Jeremy Corbyn and his new team. They are if anything a new ally against Toryism. The Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats (EMLD) is here to continue to assist ...
So, congratulations to Jeremy Corbyn on being elected as leader of the Labour Party. Let's be honest, nobody saw this coming four months ago, and I won't be claiming some kind of prescience now. I did ask a question two months ago which seems even more credible now, but I wasn't in a position to offer a credible opinion as to which of the candidates might win. The rush amongst certain elements of the Parliamentary Labour Party to distance themselves from the new leadership is informative, but not indicative yet. The decisions that Messrs Corbyn and Watson make over the ...
Herts County Council's main Highways contractor, Ringway has been fined £671,546 over the last two full financial years for failing to do the work it was paid for. In figures exposed by Liberal Democrat Leader and Highways Spokesperson, Cllr Stephen Giles-Medhurst, shows that Ringway was fined £421,321 in 2013/14 and another £250,225 in 2014/15. These fines under [...]
A new direction for Labour under Corbyn? In case you have missed the news Jeremy Corbyn has been elected as leader of the Labour Party and this is something to be celebrated. Celebrated? Really Chris? Why would a LibDem be celebrating this? A fine set of questions to which the answers are; Yes, really and it is a long complicated rant so buckle up.... Firstly, I am a big fan of democracy and political theory - it is one of my vices and I'm a HUGE fan of Hobbes "Leviathan". I studied the evolution of Political theory at university for ...
The story of a lawyer who was sexually harassed on LinkedIn is in the news. There's not much more to be usefully said about that than "Don't be a dick online, and don't be surprised by the blowback if you are." But it has helped crystallise my own thoughts about LinkedIn generally. (For those of you don't know it, it's a social network which is a grownup version of Facebook.) I find it both useful and frustrating, with the useful outweighing the frustrating, but the frustrations still there. First, I like the fact that it's a good way of not ...
I can't work out which is more apt for the Labour Party? To borrow from Wellington..A Corbyn led Labour party will go at the Tories in the same old way...and they'll beat them off in the same old way. Or "Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns!" he said. Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. One thing is certain it will be Tennyson on the 8th May 2020 Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon behind them Volleyed and thundered; Stormed at with shot and shell, While horse and hero fell. They ...
The Yate Safer Stronger Community Group meeting at 7pm on Monday 14th September will feature a Question and Answer Session with Southmead Hospital, Yate Minor Injuries Unit and the Clinical Commissioning Group. This should make for an interesting meeting, as they won't all be able to blame someone else for any issues raised. The meeting will be preceded at 6pm by a drop-in exhibition on Healthy Lifestyles. The venue is Cranleigh Court Chapel, Cranleigh Court Road, Yate BS37 5DH.
I voted against the Marris Bill and found the result and the debate strangely heartening even though it's an issue its hard to feel certain about. I will not rehearse the arguments presented but endeavour to offer a different explanation than offered by Norman Lamb for why the Marris Bill failed. Firstly there was an implicit dishonesty in the proposal. No-one is against assisting the dying but if you arguing for assisted suicide you should call it that. Words ,as George Orwell said, matter. Conflating state-facilitated suicide with care of the dying even if the former is appropriate conflates a ...
Elected by 59.5% of the voters. Wow. His acceptance speech demonstrated that he is no polished performer, but his percentage demonstrates he is a game changer. Yet within minutes of the announcement one of his senior colleagues had resigned. Yesterday Corbyn was quoted: "[The Labour Party has] a big job to do in exposing the government's austerity programme and what it's doing to the poorest and most vulnerable in our society, their bill on welfare reform and their bill on trade union issues, and the way they are actually systematically slicing up public services in Britain through massive cuts and ...
So, that was emphatic. Corbyn wins Labour leadership election with 60% of the vote and a massive lead in all three categories of the vote. The first Liberal Democrat reaction has come from Party President Sal Brinton: The Corbyn style of politics may generate a lot of noise but only one thing keeps Government in check - credible opposition. As Labour abdicates its responsibilities, the Liberal Democrats will offer the serious, responsible and economically-literate alternative this country badly needs. We will find common cause with the millions of people who do not support this Government and need a party to ...
Back in August I blogged about Liberal Democrat Voice's decision to ban Tony Greaves from its pages. The new issue of Liberator casts more light on this episode: Liberator understands that the original cause of the row was that Greaves wanted to criticise Ryan Coetzee, the party's strategy director in the two years up to the general election. This was rejected not because of the argument made ... but because Coetzee was a staff member and the site had decided that party employees should not be criticised no wonder how powerful. Whether Coetzee himself ever claimed this privilege is unknown. ...
The new Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition! So the result is finally in. A man largely rejected by his fellow MPs and ending up on the ballot paper because people felt sorry for him has become leader of the Labour ... Continue reading →
Congratulations, Jez.
So the results are in and Carbyn has won. Last week I gave the odds on what would happen if, in a shock upset, (who'd a thought that 3 months ago) Corbyn lost today. So when he loses the next election...and if not removed he will lead Labour to another defeat the left will need a scapegoat because its never the policies that are rejected its always the fault of someone else. So who / what will be blamed?1) 1/10. Murdoch / The Tory press. I'd be prepared to stake my life savings on this. 2) 1/4. False consciousness. The ...
Yesterday the House of Commons voted to reject the Assisted Dying Bill at its first stage by a majority of 330 votes to 118. How, then, did Liberal Democrat MPs vote? It should be noted that although the party has policy in favour of assisted dying in England and Wales, our MPs' right to vote according to their conscience is enshrined in both motions. We have been criticised in the past for publishing who votes what way in these sorts of votes, but the information is a matter of public record and there is no reason that we shouldn't draw ...
[IMG: HMS Vanguard - CC BY-SA 2.0 courtesy of Defence Images] Facing his first party conference in Bournemouth as Liberal Democrat leader, Tim Farron faces two main challenges. The first is the obvious - his leader's speech and his chance to set out a direction for the party in a world where Jeremy Corbyn in Labour leader and international humanitarianism has sped up the political agenda. Does he have a convincing strategy for how the party gets public attention, and for how to detoxify the party's reputation - especially bearing in mind how rare it is for a political party ...
Second paragraph of third chapter: As always, the player sat invisible in one corner of the studio, its face hidden by an androgynous porcelain mask that fitted so close it could really only be skin. A wide-brimmed, black hat cast a crescent shadow across most of its bone-white features except for the mouth, a painted-on slash that either curled up or down at the edges depending on what Natty was painting. Its body was wrapped in a shawl of a thousand patchwork colors that looked part Romany, part Tibetan, all Faerie. The instrument, a battered old friend from the foothills ...
The Sutton Guardian reports: A Wallington man has pleaded guilty to burning a Liberal Democrat councillor's home. Dunstan Thomas, of Sandy Lane South, admitted arson with reckless intent to endanger life at a case management hearing at Croydon Crown Court... The 41-year-old engaged in a stand off with police and refused to leave the burning building belonging to Carshalton Central councillor Hamish Pollock, a former deputy-mayor of Sutton and secondary school governor, with two teenage children.
One of the posts that I most enjoyed reading last month was written by Lois, called 5 Things You Actually Need to Survive University. Her advice seems sound to me, so if you're looking for things that might be useful to you as a fresher you really should go there, rather than carry on reading this. However, Lois's post made ...
[IMG: Southport Train rounds the curve towards Sandhills Station] Click on the photo to enlarge it Southport train to Liverpool Rounding the curve towards Sandhills Station (in the distance) by coming off the Southport line of Merseyrail. The two 507/508 EMU's are joining the Merseyrail lines that (behind the camera) lead to Ormskirk and Kirkby. Prior to around @1968 the Ormskirk line went all the way to Preston and beyond as Scottish bound trains used the route from Liverpool's Exchange Station to Glasgow. The same could be said of the present Kirkby line as trains ran through to Wigan and ...
Well, it looks like I'm going to have rivulets of egg yolk running down my face in a couple of hours. I have pretty consistently said through the Labour leadership contest that there's no way Jeremy Corbyn is going to win. Labour members would flirt a bit with him but when it came to it, would plump for a safer option. They might get their ballot paper out with every intention of voting for him, but when it comes to actually putting that number 1 on the paper, some invisible force would make them bottle out of it at the ...
[IMG: Robotic bricklayer SAM] Robots Lay Three Times as Many Bricks as Construction Workers Construction workers on some sites are getting new, non-union help. SAM - short for semi-automated mason - is a robotic bricklayer being used to increase productivity as it works with human masons. In this human-robot team, the robot is responsible for the more rote tasks: picking up bricks, applying mortar, and placing them in their designated location. A human handles the more nuanced activities, like setting up the worksite, laying bricks in tricky areas, such as corners, and handling aesthetic details, like cleaning up excess mortar. ...
[IMG: 1st World War Memorial in Potters Lane, Higher Walton, Lancashire] 1st World War Memorial in Potters Lane, Higher Walton, Lancashire I am still looking out for war memorials and more will follow. Here is one spotted by my old friend Roy Connell whilst he was out bike riding in deepest rural Lancashire recently. It's a simple but powerful memorial to this small community's WW1 lost generation.
From Dundee City Council : Dundee City Council is pleased to announce that businesses in Dundee and Angus will now be able to apply for grants of up to £3,000 each to boost their broadband, as announced in the recent budget. This comes as part of the UK Government's broadband connection voucher scheme, which is to be extended for a further year. Each voucher covers up to £3,000 of installation costs but businesses can also apply as a group to connect bigger or more complicated premises. Once installed, businesses pay the line rental and VAT. More than 25,000 vouchers have ...
Most Labour people I know in Westminster have been sure for weeks now that Sadiq was almost certainly going to get the nod to be the party's mayoral candidate for 2016 - but few saw the margin of victory coming. A whopping 18-point margin over Tessa Jowell - who at one point, let us recall, was considered almost a shoo-in - surprised even most insiders. Part of the assumption that Khan would win was based on him being preferred over Jowell by what everyone figured was the Corbyn inspired influx of new people registering to vote in these sorts of ...
The Russian Regime in 2015: All Tactics, No Strategy Grim reading. (tags: russia )
How do I offer a room to a refugee? Like a storybook character come to life: why the Queen is a style icon Work shouldn't start till 10am and school even later, says sleep expert - and that's for normal people A four hour window into the storm of abuse "Feminazi Lawyer" Charlotte Proudman faces on Twitter How did we get here? A brief history of immigration to the UK 33 Things You'll Only Understand If You Were In Secondary School In The '90s - via @stackee. Campaigners set to press Corbyn on 'no shaving' zones I think you'll find: ...
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has published a study which shows that less than one-sixth of the losses faced by households from the summer Budget benefit cuts will be recouped by the introduction of the 'national living wage'. Public Finance reports that Chancellor George Osborne's proposals to cut welfare spending, which include reducing the household benefit cap from £26,000 to £20,000 (£23,000 in London) and a four-year working-age benefit freeze, will reduce incomes significantly. They say (rather obviously) that this is particularly true for households where no one works, which will lose on average £2,069 and cannot gain from the ...
Concern over the future of rural banking has increased recently in Ceredigion after closure decisions affecting a number of bank branches, including those in Aberaeron and Tregaron, and last year in New Quay and Llandysul. I have submitted an early day motion raising my concern about the number of bank closures in rural areas, and the inadequate alternatives, such as mobile banking facilities, the Post Office and telephone and internet banking. I am calling on the Government to recognise the importance of bank access and to encourage the banking sector to maintain a network of bank branches in rural communities. ...
