So I was wrong. Again.* The massed ranks of Jezzabelles and Jezzabeaux have propelled their Bennite throwback to the top of their party. My wrongness, and the wrongness of others like me who failed to predict JC's second coming, has prompted some to argue the Westminster commentariat needs to reflect on their detachment. I/they just don't get it, apparently. Which seems to me a category error. It is the Labour selectorate which don't get it. Jeremy Corbyn will be an electoral disaster. Not because the Evil Tories will 'try to define him' negatively. Nor because the Right-Wing Press will 'smear' ...
Welcome to Broxtowe Enews, brought to you by the Liberal Democrats and edited by David Watts, on behalf of the Lib-Dems in Broxtowe. May I give a special welcome to the new readers that we have this week. Thank you also for the feedback on last weeks' newsletter. There are a couple of people that I still need to reply to but I will try and deal with those tomorrow. May I also offer my congratulations to Jeremy Corbyn on being elected as the new leader of the Labour party. There are many things that I don't agree with him ...
[IMG: 7 ver 4 full] Many thanks to the 13,700 visitors who dropped by Lib Dem Voice this week. Here's our 7 most-read posts... The article you must read on the General Election..or is it? (98 comments) by Caron Lindsay Alistair Carmichael election petition hearing to be broadcast live tomorrow (55 comments) by Caron Lindsay Sal Brinton and Willie Rennie respond to Jeremy Corbyn's election (123 comments) by The Voice Carmichael legal fees fund launched (29 comments) by Caron Lindsay A Corbyn victory means that there's not much chance of a realignment of the left (75 comments) by Stephen Howse ...
We have a new, social liberal leader; we have seven clear campaigning themes; and we have significant national and international issues where Liberals can bring much to the debate. So, you would think that Tim Farron would be getting some favourable media coverage on the back of all of this. Sadly, it would appear not. I have been frankly astounded by our almost total absence from the debate amongst the major broadcast media on the refugee crisis. Plenty of commentary from Sturgeon, UKIP, even Plaid Cymru, but next to nothing from Tim (or from anyone, for that matter). That we ...
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 431st weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere ... Featuring the seven most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (6-12 September, 2015), together with a hand-picked quintet, you might otherwise have missed. Don't forget: you can sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox — just click here — ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging. As ever, let's start with the most popular post, and work our way down: 1. By-election report, 10th September 2015 by Michael ...
I'm always open to trying something new on social media, and sometimes it works (eg my posts on the best known book set in each European country) and sometimes it doesn't. This is the brief story of something that didn't. During a conversation at work on 1 September, the Bob Shaw story "Light of Other Days" came up. I found an online version and shared it with my colleague; and then thought, why not share it more widely? So I pinged it onto Buffer to post to Twitter and Facebook at an hour of the day that I thought might ...
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. Willie Rennie has finally written a frank and fascinating assessment of the flaws in the Better Together campaign. He draws a number of important conclusions which need to be learned if the EU referendum is not going to fall foul of the pitfalls that beset not only Better Together but in starker and disastrous form the incompetent Yes To ...
I had a link retweeted into my timeline just now and it made me shake my head in despair over what might've been. Paul Flynn MP has written a blog post entitled, One Leader, One Party, One Enemy. The blog is about how Labour's coronation of Jeremy Corbyn as leader should further focus the minds of the party on who the real enemy is for them and that is the Tories. If only that was their mantra for the past five years then who knows how things would've panned out but of course is most certainly wasn't. For as we ...
There can be little argument that politics just got a whole lot more interesting. While we've been discussing – indeed anticipating – a Jeremy Corbyn win in the Labour leadership election for several weeks now, it was all tinged with an air of unreality. Now he's been elected. The situation is still tinged with an air of unreality, but that will pass. Reality will intrude soon enough. Lots of people appear to have been inspired by JC's victory. There are reports of 15,000 new members for Labour in the half day following the declaration of the results. From my Twitter ...
Willie Rennie has gone to town on the Better Together pro-UK campaign in an interview for the Sunday Herald. He described it as "dark" and "secretive." Labour had a dark campaigning style. It was very secretive. Everything would be last minute. You would never be told much about what was going on until it happened. We all suffered. The Tories and ourselves suffered more, but some in Labour were out of the loop as well." You mean an inner circle ran everything? "Yes. It was Blair [McDougall, campaign director] and Rob [Shorthouse, communications director]. People like that were making decisions ...
Second paragraph of third chapter: Modern scholars recognise a dialectal distinction which fundamentally parallels the ancient tripartite division. Prior to Michael Ventris' decipherment of the Linear B tablets of the Mycenaean Greeks (see §2.1) in 1952 (see Ventris and Caswick 1973:3-27), the ancient Greek dialects (i.e., of the first millennium BC) were broadly separated into (i) Attic-Ionic; (ii) Arcado-Cypriot; (iiii) Aeolic; (iv) Doric; and (v) Northwest Greek. Each of these, in turn, shows some lesser or greater degree of internal differentiation. I bought this on impulse a few years ago; it turns out to be the European chapters extracted from ...
Enjoy these time-lapse satellites images from NASA's Landsat program and Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS): Hat-tip: World Economic Forum
Going to Conference? then please Take a Cheque for Tim. We need to wake up to the fact that if we don't start funding the Party now, right this minute, then Tim and our colleagues are going to be working on the fightback as if with one hand tied behind their backs. Take a cheque (your own or a Local Party cheque, a cheque from a wealthy donor if you know one...., any cheque will do) to conference and we can make a big statement of our intent to make sure Tim has the funds he needs. I plan to ...
Originally osted yesterday on Liberal Democrat Voice 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 ... Continue reading →
A couple of people have asked me to talk about Jeremy Corbyn here, to explain his election as Labour leader for people who aren't in the UK. I've so far resisted doing so, because I have a lot of friends who think he's the Messiah, and a lot who think he's Satan, and almost all [...]
Yesterday, Tim Farron went to the Refugees Welcome rally: #refugeeswelcome @timfarron pic.twitter.com/kiW5Lfp6TQ — Lib Dem Press Office (@LibDemPress) September 12, 2015 @timfarron at the start of the Solidarity welcome march at Marble Arch and in Parliament Square speaking for refugees pic.twitter.com/8pGgpj30ks — Avril Coelho (@AvrilCoelho) September 12, 2015 And this is his speech. He had the crowd cheering by the end. A few weeks ago, I went to Calais. I talked there with about 20 refugees. I heard their stories of harrowing risks, dangers fled, and desperation for their children. I have to tell you, not a single one of ...
Dear Sir, One of the hoped for benefits of the new Brooms Cross Road was that not only would it assist with the traffic jams and pollution in Green Lane/Lydiate Lane, Thornton but it would also lead to less through traffic travelling via Maghull and Lydiate along Liverpool Rd Sth, Liverpool Rd Nth and Southport Road. The initial evidence of my eyes, as a Southport Road, Lydiate resident, is that this is happening and a Liverpool Rd Sth area resident said something similar to me a few days ago. Time will tell when things settle down and drivers get used ...
We agree that Bath needs a Park & Ride to the east of Bath but the three locations on offer from the Council are all inferior to the missing fourth option - Bathampton Junction. This site would be hidden and so is the only one that would not ruin the Bathampton valley. It also leaves open the option of turning it into the far superior Park & Rail and makes the much needed Bath Relief Road a real
Yesterday, along with tens of thousands of others, including a sizable Liberal Democrat contingent with leader Tim Farron, I took part in the London march in support of refugees. But in the evening I facilitated a discussion with the Lewisham local party on what can and should be done about the current refugee and migrant [...]
Just what the world needs. A reworking of the Boney M hit by a Finnish metal band. "Oh, those Russians!"
"Bye bye, new Labour", "Death of New Labour," "Red and buried," (actually, that's quite a good one, not often you find me saying anything complimentary about the Fail on Sunday). So scream today's headlines. A casual assumption that the party is well and truly over for Labour, leaving the Tories in power forever. I am not scared of socialist ideas suddenly being put into the public space. We need to have a grown up debate about them and as a liberal, I'll utterly oppose anything that reeks of centralised state command and control, but it's a perfectly legitimate discussion to ...
The leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats is interviewed in the Sunday Herald: Listening to Willie Rennie recall the Better Together campaign is like eavesdropping on a therapy session as he wrestles with a half-buried trauma. The misery simply pours out of him. The No side was "shambolic in its development", groans the Scottish LibDem leader, its output "dark", its operations "secretive", people's confidence was "crushed" by the lack of information. Yes, they won in the end, but how they won "didn't make us feel very good about it". And as for the aftermath, David Cameron was "despicable," he spits. ...
Sun 13th
09:58
Which former Lib Dem Cabinet Minister disagreed more often with Danny Alexander than George Osborne?
The Journal of Liberal History is a serious academic publication. When it arrives on my doorstep, I know I have an enjoyable couple of hours with a cup of tea learning about interesting events and people in the history of the Liberal Party, SDP or Liberal Democrats. The issue of the publication which will be on sale at Conference is no less worthy and serious, but my reaction to it was unusual. Within a few minutes, I was hyperventilating and my eyes were out on stalks at what I was reading. Seriously, they should have sold serialisation rights to the ...
My one regret about the Labour leadership contest is that I did not put £100 on Corbyn to win when he was 200-1. The winnings would have paid for my election campaign next year. However, like others I did not at that stage expect the sensational victory that the Islington North MP pulled off yesterday. Hindsight is not a very practical attribute. If it had been then many Labour MPs would not have given Corbyn their sympathy-nomination at the beginning of this leadership campaign. Certainly, judging by this headline in today's Sunday Times, Labour has now been plunged into a ...
More comedy genius from Australia's Clarke and Dawe:
How many of Jeremy Corbyn's policies would you actually swipe right for? [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
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. Yesterday, the Labour Party made the historic mistake of electing Jeremy Corbyn as its new party leader. Through this decision, it has thrown away years of work (and time in government) convincing the general public that it is electable. To a lesser degree, let us not do the same. Naturally I respect the views of the "Scrapping Trident" lobby ...
From the Curator of Museum Services at the University of Dundee : To accompany our hugely popular exhibition in the Lamb Gallery, Jim Petrie: Minnie the Minx and More, we will be hosting this special free event: Comics and the CityWednesday 16th September at 5.30pmBaxter Room 1.36, Tower Building, University of Dundee The statues of Desperate Dan and Minnie the Minx in the city centre are a tangible reminder of the importance of comics to Dundee's heritage and identity. In this event, four guest speakers will discuss this unique legacy in a series of short talks. Dr Chris Murray (English, ...
"The country's being run by a bunch of tired, cynical, 55 year olds who just want a quiet life" – Jim Hacker – Yes Minister is terrifyingly no less relevant now than it was then it would seem. Does anything ever change? "There comes a time in any government when its best service is to be gone" "You're a Liberal because you know that all is not what it ought to be, because you'd march on to some nearer approach to equality." – love that, guess the idea of Liberalism hasn't changed much in the last 200 years either. Quotes ...
Right, so now that Jeremy has won by the flipping great margin we all thought he would, what does the first year of his reign look like? I'm going to try and stick to things I'm pretty sure will happen as opposed to engaging in wild speculation (as tempting as that may be). Like I've said before, Corbyn will have a honeymoon period. His straight talker routine will get extra mileage after he becomes leader of the opposition and people outside of Westminster pay attention to what he's saying for the first time. His more populist stuff, like re-nationalising the ...
On "Passive Aggressive" and Other Wrong-Headed Advice of Strunk & White's Style Manual Asya Pereltsvaig @LangsOfTheWorld has a good rant. (tags: linguistics english ) Russian cosmonaut back after record 879 days in space New record. (tags: space )
Tourism is a major part of our economy, and one of the few industries which truly covers the whole of the UK. There isn't a single Parliamentary seat which doesn't benefit from tourism and it's a sector with great potential for growth. As Liberal Democrats I believe we should use the levers at our disposal to stimulate the economy and create opportunities for people to get on in life, no matter where they live. That is why, as a group of local parties from across the UK, we have brought this motion to conference. By reducing VAT to 5% for ...
