Last year, it was announced that the boundary of the area in which an Annual Gold Card Railcard was valid was to be extended into East Anglia as of 2 January this year. Good news, I thought, as someone who'd got some use out of their's in the days when I was still a Londoner. That was, until I tried to get myself one, seeking to convert my existing season ticket into a Gold Card version. A very polite lady at Stowmarket station explained that I wasn't eligible for reasons that made some sense, even if I didn't like them ...
This Sunday, 25th October, there will be an event at St Peter's Church, Wapley to celebrate an important local link to the Battle of Agincourt, which took place 600 years ago. The Battle of Agincourt, part of the Hundred Years War, took place on St Crispin's Day, 25th October in 1415 near the village of Agincourt. The #wapley600 event celebrates the area's links with Sir John Codrington, who was the standard bearer of King Henry V at the battle, when the English forces defeated a larger French army. This free event runs from 10am to 4pm, finishing with an evening ...
From the Loughborough Echo: A newly restored railway line in Mountsorrel will be opened this weekend, the latest addition to the Great Central Railway. The project to restore the Mountsorrel Railway, which once served the granite quarries of the village, has been undertaken entirely by volunteers from the local community and beyond ... Not content with restoring the railway, the group then set out to create a brand new railway station at Mountsorrel. Steve added: "When the Mountsorrel Railway was built originally, it was always intended that Mountsorrel would have a station but that dream was never realised. "That was ...
The Times backs NHS England's call for a sugar tax http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/health/news/article4593962.ece It would provide a badly needed saving of £500,000 on England's health bill. The Government has committed to increasing NHS funding in England by £10 billion in real terms by 2020-21, above 2014-15 levels, but all the same a £2 billion gap has opened up in their budget for 2015-16 alone. The right way to deal with this is through fiscal attacks on self-harm, including not only the sugar tax, but higher duties on alcohol and tobacco. The Government estimated the cost of alcohol harm at £21 billion a ...
TTIP is not being decided in secret, it is just being formulated by EU and US bureaucrats and then it will go to the council of ministers and the EU parliament for scrutiny and revision, where most of the contentious stuff will go. How anyone can say they oppose TTIP when no one knows what its main provisions will be yet, is a mystery. The opposition to TTIP seems to me to be at its core anti American. They first started scaremongering by saying it would undermine the NHS, when health care has been excluded from the TTIP provisions. Liberals ...
You may have read in the Peterborough Telegraph about a recent call to remove the photos of former Mayors of Peterborough who have been found guilty of electoral fraud was roundly condemned by members on the city council. Bizarrely Cllr Swift, an ex-Labour member and activist, and city Councillor for over 60 years stated: "There [...]
More comedy genius from Australia's Clarke and Dawe:
Cambridgeshire Liberal Democrats claim a five per cent increase in Council Tax is the only way to protect services across the county as it faces a brutal cut in funding from the Tory government. They have warned that without the increase in council tax, the county is facing a level of cuts which will be extremely difficult to achieve without having an appalling effect on services for residents. The cut in government grant comes on top of many years of spending cuts in the county coupled with the pressures of an ageing and increasing population. Cambridgeshire Lib Dem Leader, Lucy ...
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You may have missed it, but the Tory's just broke democracy for England, and stuck two fingers up to the idea that the devolved nations can play a real part in deciding the future of the UK union they belong to. The West Lothian problem, the situation where legislation that affects only England can be voted on in parliament by Scottish, Welsh and N.Irish MP's (whose constituencies are
Sat 24th
14:42
Tim Farron and Sally Hamwee speak out against £20 a week cuts to asylum seekers' support
Without Nick Clegg to restrain them, the Tories have been setting about cutting benefits to asylum seekers as this story in the Independent shows. Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat leader, has accused Conservative ministers of quietly cutting the living allowance for asylum applicants this summer after Nick Clegg blocked the move inside the Coalition before the May general election. Since August, a single parent with one child has received £73 a week instead of £96 and a couple with two children £147 a week instead of £178. Mr Farron is calling on the Government to grant asylum-seekers the right to ...
The gay porn film written by John Gielgud. I assume that the line about it starring "Nigel Havers, Julian Clary, Barry Cryer" is a joke... A fascinating, if rambling, piece about giftedness, female socialising, responsibility, and monetising writing. An index of women in experimental music Mark Evanier has an obituary for Murphy Anderson, the great [...]
[IMG: IMG_6340-0.jpg] Here is Willie Rennie's speech to Scottish Lib Dem Conference in full, delivered 15 minutes late after the conference was evacuated when the fire alarm went off. I have been a member of the Liberal Democrats for twenty eight years. I have stood up, spoken up and campaigned for this party all over the country. It has gifted me some of my proudest moments and dealt some crushing blows too. In May, we lost some of the best Members of Parliament in Scotland. In fact the best in the UK. I'm not naïve, I knew the election would ...
Sat 24th
13:16
Oscar-winning film "Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life", written and directed by Peter Capaldi
Starring Richard E. Grant as Franz Kafka
III. No-one dared to remove the apple lodged in Gregor's flesh, so it remained there as a visible reminder of his injury. He had suffered it there for more than a month, and his condition seemed serious enough to remind even his father that Gregor, despite his current sad and revolting form, was a family member who could not be treated as an enemy. On the contrary, as a family there was a duty to swallow any revulsion for him and to be patient, just to be patient. Because of his injuries, Gregor had lost much of his mobility - ...
A couple of years ago the political pundits Anthony King and Ivor Crewe published a book, "The Blunders of our Governments" depicting major errors of British governments in recent years. These ranged from Mrs Thatcher's Poll Tax, Pension Mis-Selling, entry to the ERM at the wrong price so subsequent humiliating exit from it, the Millennium Dome, Working Tax Credits, and the attempt to finance an extension of the London underground through a Public Private Partnership. If and when an updated edition is produced thee can be little doubt that the Hinkley Point C Nuclear power station will be added to ...
II. It was not until it was getting dark that evening that Gregor awoke from his deep and coma-like sleep. He would have woken soon afterwards anyway even if he hadn't been disturbed, as he had had enough sleep and felt fully rested. But he had the impression that some hurried steps and the sound of the door leading into the front room being carefully shut had woken him. The light from the electric street lamps shone palely here and there onto the ceiling and tops of the furniture, but down below, where Gregor was, it was dark. He pushed ...
I. One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. He lay on his armour-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could see his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections. The bedding was hardly able to cover it and seemed ready to slide off any moment. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, waved about helplessly as he looked. "What's happened to me?" he thought. It wasn't a dream. His room, a proper ...
It seems a long time since Vince Cable was leading the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills. During his tenure, one of his greatest achievements was the Industrial Strategy. In automotive, aerospace, nuclear and renewables, long term partnerships and structures had been set up to ensure that UK manufacturing stayed at the cutting edge of R&D and that we grew the skills and capacity to manufacture the next generation of products. The visit of the Chinese President Xi Jinping to the UK has clarified the new government thinking. Taking three industrial issues in turn: Steel: everyone knows that steel prices ...
The film "Suffragette" is now on general release. It is very much worth watching. I saw it last night. I approached it without knowing what parts of the Suffragette struggle it would depict. It was good to enjoy the film without any expectations. I won't give away the gist of it. But I will say that the film is extremely powerful. It manages to artfully straddle the powerful micro-drama of a working community with great events on the broader stage. Carey Mulligan is superb as suffragette Maud, around whom the movie is built. It's hard not to be moved by ...
Several recent opinion polls relating to Britain's forthcoming IN/OUT EU referendum have shown a swing to the "leave" side, though still predicting that "remain" will win. One explanation mooted for the shift in opinion has been the current refugee and migrant crisis, to which the response from EU member states has been mixed, to put [...]
Cameron's EU gamble: Five reforms he can win, and ten pitfalls he must avoid Latest analysis from @CER_Grant. (tags: eu ukpolitics ) Giant Squid Babies Caught in Japan, First in World Cthulhu fthagn! (tags: biology ) Unfinished story ... how the ellipsis arrived in English literature Punctuation lore. (tags: english language ) Kafka's Metamorphosis and its mutations in translation "zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt" (tags: languages ) I wanted to believe in Jeremy Corbyn. But I can't believe in Seumas Milne Righteous disillusion and anger. (tags: ukpolitics ) Tolkien's annotated map of Middle-earth discovered inside copy of Lord of the ...
A 'progressive alliance' would suffocate the Liberal Democrats, says Tim Oliver. Rafael Behr explains what is going on in the Labour Party: "To Corbyn and McDonnell, a commitment demanded by Hilary Benn that Labour campaign to stay in the EU, for example, is an easy concession to make. The bigger prize was the shadow foreign secretary's seat on the national executive committee, snatched from under him and awarded to Rebecca Long Bailey, a Corbyn loyalist." Whatever the House of Lords does on tax credits the Conservatives are unlikely to put reform of it back on the agenda, argues Richard Reid. ...
The film "Suffragette" is now on general release. It is very much worth watching. I saw it last night. I approached it without knowing what parts of the Suffragette struggle it would depict. It was good to enjoy the film without any expectations. I won't give away the gist of it. But I will say that the film is extremely powerful. It manages to artfully straddle the powerful micro-drama of a working community with great events on the broader stage. Carey Mulligan is superb as suffragette Maud, around whom the movie is built. It's hard not to be moved by ...
The Liverpool Echo has the story about one of those brave coppers who try to keep our streets safe. So nice and appropriate to see him getting a bravery award.
[IMG: times rb osborne] Here's my post, published on The Times's Red Box blog yesterday, on the Tories' plans to cut tax credits – and how the Lib Dems are opposing them. "We don't support them. We don't support them in the future." So protested an angry George Osborne in April when his deputy at the Treasury, Lib Dem Danny Alexander, claimed the Conservatives had secret plans for welfare cuts, including slashing child tax credits. This Mr Osborne was, presumably, entirely unrelated to the Chancellor who this week told the Treasury select committee that voters knew full well what the ...
When the new lot all arrive we'll have 112 Liberal Democrat peers and we need to use them. For some of us that means local as well as national stuff since some of us are still actively campaigning in our local areas! So when changes to the police funding formula were announced that mean one of the best forces in the country risks being "annihilated", in the word of the commissioner, it was time to put down a topical question in the Lords. The Lancashire police force is "outstanding". That's the conclusion of the review of police force efficiency by ...
[IMG: Buy Pay me forty quid and I'll tell you - book cover] The views of the voter are curiously absent from most account of British elections and politics more generally. Instead, accounts are usually based on what figures at the centre get up to, even though almost all of the events recounted are barely noticed by most real voters. That is why I am such a fan of Deborah Mattinson's Talking to a Brick Wall as it tells the story of New Labour's rise and fall not through the gossipy details of Westminster but through the voices of actual ...
Yesterday, along with two senior representatives from the City Council's Neighbourhood Services Department (Housing) and the Community Payback Manager, I participated in a useful site visit to look at progress the Community Payback Team has made in repainting the garden railings on the non-sheltered side of the Logie estate. Back in April at a residents' meeting I chaired, we discussed with residents the idea of asking Community Payback to (with owners' consent) paint the railings of owned properties on the south side of the estate. As many of the railings were badly needing painted, this was welcomed by residents and ...
An event from the Time2Give West End timebank :Time2Give advises : "We'll bring tea/coffee, biscuits, pens/pencils and beautiful pictures to colour in! You bring your secret desire to spend an hour just colouring in and creating something lovely on a cold dark afternoon! Feel free to bring your own pictures and/or pens/pencils if you want to and relax for an hour or two."
Sat 24th
08:01
Is the age of two-party politics back? Will we see another coalition government again?
Prior to the May 2015 general election, a lot of obituaries on the two-party system in Britain were written. I recall reading somewhere that the moon striking the Earth in the next few weeks was more likely than one party forming a majority government. The age of coalitions was, apparently, here to stay. But then the moon came down on us. We woke up on May 8th to a Tory majority government. More than that, the Lib Dems were left with eight seats, the Greens failed to pick any seats up at all, and UKIP actually lost one to go ...
Lovely, lovely interview with Victoria Price about Vincent Price's sexuality via @davepage_mcr Legal highs ban is 'unworkable' and will put lives at risk [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
Congratulations to Paul Revell, whose 'Sock Monsters' (536 points) have re-gained the lead in the LibDemVoice Fantasy Football League after Week 9, just ahead of Christopher Buck's 'Moves Like Agger' (530) and Edward Douglas's 'Use Your Ed' (520). But let's also hear it for a couple of players outside the top 10: Bobby Dean's 'Nacer the Astronaut' had the best week's performance, with 92 points. Dave Radcliffe's 'Cotteridge clunkers' weren't too far behind, with 89 points. [IMG: ldv ffl 10] There are 220 players in total and you can still join the league by clicking here. * Stephen was Editor (and ...
The Times reports that one of Labour's most high-profile peers has quit the party's benches in the House of Lords because of Jeremy Corbyn. They say that Lord Grabiner, a barrister and master of Clare College, Cambridge, left at the end of September because "I can't square [staying] with my conscience". He is the third member of the Labour benches in the House of Lords to desert since Corbyn was elected as leader. Lord Adonis, the former cabinet minister, left the Labour benches last month and Lord Warner, the former health minister, quit this week: Lord Grabiner told The Times: ...
