This is the opening session from the Battle of Idea last Saturday. I did not arrive until after it had taken place. The blurb on Youtube runs: Classical liberalism has very few friends on either side of the Atlantic. The ideal of free speech is frequently trumped by the claim that it must be regulated in order to protect the powerless. Even the liberal principle of tolerance has been criticised for being too judgmental. In this compelling panel discussion filmed at the Battle of Ideas 2015 at the Barbican, Professor Frank Furedi, Dr Katrina Forrester and Steven Erlanger discuss with ...
Welcome to Broxtowe Enews, brought to you by the Liberal Democrats and edited by David Watts, on behalf of the Lib-Dems in Broxtowe. This is a fairly long email just because a lot is happening. 1. Bramcote Hills Park Café This is one of the most exciting news items I've ever reported on. I'm delighted to announce the launch of the Bramcote Hills Park Community Café, a community group set up to build and run a café and toilets on Bramcote Park. A group of local residents have come together to set this up. We are creating a community interest company ...
I'm on my way back to darkest Suffolk after a weekend away, visiting part of Ros's small, but perfectly formed, family in the New Forest area. And, whilst I am naturally biased in favour of my local scenery, it has to be said that the New Forest has a lot to be said for it. Yesterday, we took a day trip to Yarmouth, on the Isle of Wight, using the Wight Link ferry, which was quite nice, even if Yarmouth is surprisingly small (nice castle though). Today, however, we were off to see some naval history. Buckler's Hard is now ...
As a young girl involved in politics i have always taken great comfort and drawn strength in the existence of feminism and what it can offer girls like me. Yesterday i attended the 'Feminism in London' conference and I can honestly say that i came away feeling rejuvenated. In the morning I attended a workshop about the history of feminism which was specifically catered for 12-18 year olds. It isn't just politics that is personal, politics is woven into feminism which makes politics and feminism a potent combination. It got me thinking about the opportunities for young girls in politics. ...
From PoliticsHome: Senior leaders from business and government have gone head-to-head over whether mandatory quotas are needed to get more women to the top of organisations. At an event organised by the Institute for Government and EY, former Business Minister Jo Swinson joined forces with Department of Culture, Media and Sport Permanent Secretary Sue Owen, and Frances Dickens - the chief executive of media firm Astus UK - to argue against compulsory quotas. Swinson - who was also one of the Liberal Democrats' most prominent female MPs until the election - said that while progress on achieving gender equality was ...
[IMG: inewspaper24th oct2015] From the letters page of the i newspaper yesterday: After the election, one commentator remarked that history would treat the Liberal Democrats better than the electorate did. After less than six months of this spiteful government it is already clear what a restraining influence the Lib Dems were. STUART ACKLAND MILTON KEYNES And from Twitter today: STOP PRESS: Labour MP 4 Scunthorpe on Sunday Politics Yorks says he wished @nickclegg was still in govt 2 stop Tax Credits & Steel closures — libdemfightback (@libdemfightbac) October 25, 2015 * Paul Walter is a Liberal Democrat activist in Newbury ...
Sun 25th
16:25
Minister hints at automatic re-registration rather than requiring everyone to register each year
Minister for Constitutional Reform John Penrose has suggested the annual canvass to update the electoral rolls is outdated and unnecessary... During a Commons debate on individual electoral registration (IER), Penrose said: "We should ask ourselves why we ask all those people to re-register every single year, once they have made their individual decision to register to vote. "We do not ask them to re-register for their tax credits, their TV licence or their benefit claims every single year."... He added: "We could effectively do nine tenths of the annual canvass automatically in a trice just by running some cross-matching between ...
A triumph of bureaucracy over common sense is the only way to view the failure to provide school crossings patrols for Consett's new Academy during its first half term. I first became aware of the nonsense when I was asked on September 23rd for comment on the discontinuance of the school crossing patrol on Durham Road to the former Blackfyne Academy site. I was surprised by this because the site closed months ago, but was told that procedure is that the site has to be re-surveyed before a crossing patrol can be discontinued. Obviously I raised no objection but questioned ...
I tweeted this link on October 10 to a powerful article about the imminent execution of former Bangladesh Nationalist Party Leader Salauddin Quader Chowdhury after refusing to hear 26 defence witnesses http://linkis.com/blogspot.com/vHzkk. Now several prominent Pakistanis have asked to testify before the International War Crimes Tribunal that Mr Chowdhury was living in Karachi when the offences of which they convicted him were committed: http://bit.ly/2061RSQ. The sentence surely ought to be suspended and these witnesses should be heard.
One phrase I often hear in the midst of discussions is 'let's take the politics out of this' and it – or its many similar variants – is almost always guaranteed to make me wince. When someone says it, what they invariably mean is 'let's all agree with me'. The assumption is that the speaker's understanding of the best way to do anything is somehow objectively correct and the only reason everyone else won't publicly support them is because some malign force called 'politics' is preventing them from doing so. The speaker, of course, is not tainted by this nefarious ...
Thanks to Meredith and Steve Davidson, and the SF Encyclopedia, I've compiled a list of novels eligible for the 1941 Retro Hugo Awards which will be presented at next year's Worldcon (MidAmeriCon II in Kansas City, Missouri). My aim is basically to help myself (and others) make an informed nomination, recognising that books which are relatively obscure now are unlikely to make it through the process to the award ceremony. What, then, are the least obscure SF novels of 1940, and the most likely to receive the favour of Hugo voters? As is my wont, I've ranked them by popularity ...
[IMG: this boy] This Boy, Alan Johnson I'm late to the party on this, but what a fascinating memoir. Frank Skinner made the point in his own (brilliant) autobiography that you usually spend the first few chapters as a reader thinking to yourself "Hurry up and get famous". Yet what's gripping here is Alan Johnson's unsparing and unsentimental recollection of growing up in grinding poverty in 1950-60s' London. "You may be poor, but don't show poor." That was the philosophy taught to Young Alan by a West London Mod. Observe the pin-smart Johnson today – crisp collars and double-cuffs – ...
Here is Tim Farron's speech to Scottish Liberal Democrat Conference in full. The official version obviously doesn't include his "stuff the convention" departure on tax credits or the bit where he got Aird and Loch Ness by-election winner Jean Davis's name wrong. He called her June and quickly corrected himself, reminding us that he knows how it feels after the Sun got his name wrong this week. Enjoy: Thank you, it's a massive pleasure to be here - not least because it only took me half the time to get here as it did to get to federal conference in ...
The American writer and egotist Gore Vidal was a force of nature who shocked and amused people on both sides of the Atlantic for much of the post-War period. I never met him, though I would have liked to. Christopher Isherwood, whose biography I was writing at the time, gave me an introduction but at [...]
[IMG: YouGov polling results re. Prime Minister's Questions] Hmm... Either: (a) PMQs is amazingly popular, or (b) People think watching PMQs is the sort of thing good people do, and so fib about watching it when they didn't.
Hurricane Patricia was made worse by climate change Crumbs. (tags: climatechange mexico ) The End of Expertise Are we all doomed? ("we" = "people in my line of work") (tags: work ) Trey Gowdy Just Elected Hillary Clinton President Best piece I've read on this bizarre event. "These morons in Gowdy's committee were so bent on proving that Hillary is an unfeeling, ambition-crazed schemer bent on riding gleefully to the White House on the corpses of Benghazi victims that they ended up making her look like the one thing she really isn't, at least not very often: a regular person." ...
I have to be honest. I was none too chuffed at the prospect of dragging myself out of bed at 6:15 yesterday morning and heading to Dunfermline for Scottish Liberal Democrat Conference. Dunfermline is half an hour from where I live, but I'm currently on holiday in the blissful Black Isle. This view from our holiday cottage will perhaps help you to understand my reluctance to leave: [IMG: Roebuck at sunset] That was sunset on our first night last Saturday. Ultimately, though, I ended up very glad that I'd gone. Here are the things I wouldn't have wanted to miss: ...
I have changed the rules for how my Patreon works. It wouldn't be fair to you to keep charging you monthly while I'm unwell (for those who don't know I've recently been diagnosed with arthritis, and can't start treatment until January) and producing less than I should be, so I've changed to a per-post setting [...]
This is my new favourite clip on Youtube. The two quotes below what is going on. From BBC News: On 7 May 1964, a gaggle of excited passengers alighted on to a rainy disused railway station platform in south Manchester and took their seats for what one of the city's leading music academics says was a "massively culturally significant" gig. The show at Whalley Range's Wilbraham Road station, recorded for Granada TV as the Blues and Gospel Train, saw greats including Muddy Waters and Sister Rosetta Tharpe perform. The University of Salford's Dr Chris Lee says the show "influenced nearly ...
Former Lib Dem Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey has condemned the way that the Conservatives governing alone are trashing all he did to create a boom in clean, planet-saving renewable energy: My experience as energy and climate change secretary - in the months I spent battling George Osborne over the budget for investment in low carbon, and in the daily attrition with Eric Pickles over onshore wind - was that many Conservatives simply regard their commitment to climate change action as something they had to say to get into power. With some honourable exceptions, most Conservatives I worked ...
Jack Stilgoe: Matt Ridley's argument for cuts to science is dangerous because it is half-right British policymakers are deep in the throes of another spending review, which means that science must rehearse its arguments for public support. Civil servants in the department of Business Innovation and Skills will join learned societies and national academies in trying to persuade the Treasury - again - that their work is important enough to avoid the deepest cuts. Meanwhile, scientists themselves are mobilising around the message that 'Science is as vital as ever'. They should all be praying that George Osborne isn't listening to ...
[IMG: Pound coins. CC0 Public Domain] Amongst the many contenders for 'most foolish thing I've said' undoubtedly the most directly costly was a few years back in a London Lib Dems training session. Armed with my experience of visiting and helping dozens of local parties during the previous round of elections, I talked about the lessons - good tips from some local parties, common patterns and a few frequently made mistakes. One in that list was an unwillingness to ask people for money. Almost none of my campaign visits had resulted in a subsequent request for a donation to help ...
It was Margaret Thatcher who first introduced us to stalking horses. Now Jeremy Corbyn has got one, whether he likes it or nor. The Independent reports that Rochdale MP, Simon Danczuk is preparing to put his name forward in a leadership challenge if Labour performs poorly at May's Scottish, Welsh and London elections. This latest act of defiance comes on top of the resignation of Lord Warner, who was a Health minister under Tony Blair, arguing that Labour "is no longer a credible government in waiting". Whilst, Lord Grabiner, Master of Clare College, Cambridge, has also quit the Labour benches, ...
Sun 25th
08:47
"Stuff the convention", says Farron, "Lib Dems will block "cruel, heartless, mean-spirited and misju...
Tim Farron told Scottish Liberal Democrat conference yesterday that Liberal Democrats would try to kill of the Tory tax credit cuts with a "fatal motion." It's the only one of the many resolutions opposing the measure that would actually stop it. What's interesting is that it's clear that you can give the man a script, but you can't make him stick to it. He actually said much more than was in the official version below. He added in a bit that said, directly, "Stuff the convention", referring to the Salisbury Convention under which the Lords don't defeat Government plans that ...
With the start of the new school term tomorrow, my weekly Monday surgeries for the West End recommence at : Mitchell Street Centre, (The Base) at 4.20pmWest Park Centre (Old Mansion House) at 4.50pm You can read full surgery details here.
As someone who grew up in suburbia and didn't really enjoy it all that much, I have a particular soft spot for anything that describes artfully the depressing facts of life which comprise the coming of age in such an environment. What I've tried to do here is assemble the ten best such works, which can be anything from songs to movies to books. The flip side of all this is something like "Manhattan", the Woody Allen film I had such a love of when I was a teenager, mostly because it revealed a world that seemed incredibly inviting, one ...
www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34572807 Whenever there is a party-political feeding frenzy with the press chipping in its biased assessments too I want to know some facts not the prejudices of others. I hope I have found some clear facts in the this BBC web site article which is quoting from what seem to be reliable and reasonably independent sources. As an aside Labour's dithering over this in the House of Lords is remarkable but of course they were bashing those needing welfare help in the run-up to the 2015 General Election, maybe that is still their favoured way forward?
Sun 25th
07:30
Sandpits Road maisonettes to be demolished to make way for homes for the elderly - a scheme Ludlow w...
South Shropshire Housing association has announced plans to demolish the maisonettes on Sandpits Road. The block will be replaced with four two-bed bungalows and 22 apartments (10 two-bed and 12 one-bed). The new homes will be provided as affordable rented properties solely for the use of frail and elderly people on the Council Housing Register. [...]
A stroll along Southport's famous for shopping Lord Street is always worthwhile especially if you look up as some of the buildings are really out of the ordinary, indeed a number are Listed Buildings like this one:- [IMG: Looking up in Southport r] Click on the photo to enlarge it. This building dates from 1877 on Southport's Lord Street (No.479-481). It is presently a Jaeger a shop. Designed by MacGibbon and Ross in red brick with dressings of glazed blue brick and sandstone and with a slate roof. It has three storeys with a shop front and a glass veranda ...
The frustrating thing is the people who do this think they are on the side of disabled people. Scary Beard of Halloween Shortlist revealed 14 Horrifyingly Yorkshire Ways To Die [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
Lib Dem North East Regional Conference was held in Gateshead today, at the Jurys Inn on the Gateshead Quays. It was the best attended for years and there were lots of new members there in addition to the familiar faces. I'll post about the key debate on devolution on another day. However, the annual awards were announced and I'm pleased to say for the second year running, Gateshead got the
