This video shows trains passing through Earby between Skipton and Colne, then the last train on this line and the track being lifted in 1970. The good news is that the Skipton and East Lancs Rail Action Partnership is campaigning to have the line reopened.

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

UPDATED DETAILS. Labour seat. Cause: Death. No LD candidate.

Posted by Michael Powell on Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors

UPDATED DETAILS. Plaid Cymru seat. Cause: Resignation. LD candidate- Andrew Joyce.

Posted by Michael Powell on Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors

UPDATED DETAILS. LD seat. Cause: Resignation. LD candidate- Alison Bradnock.

Posted by Michael Powell on Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors

UPDATED DETAILS. UKIP seat. Cause: Resignation. No LD candidate.

Posted by Michael Powell on Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors

Labour seat. Cause: Resignation. LD candidate- Adrian Gee-Turner.

Posted by Michael Powell on Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors

UPDATED DETAILS. Llais Gwynedd seat. Cause: Resignation. No LD candidate.

Posted by Michael Powell on Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors

LD seat. Cause: Resignation LD Candidate- David Caldicott To help please contact David Whipp (01282 853634) Straight fight with the Greens.

Proper post tomorrow, but I've been absolutely exhausted over the last few days. So here are some linky things instead. The first ever adaptation of 1984 — a radio version starring David Niven The original, Borges-approved, translation of The Garden Of Forking Paths (his best collection of short stories) which went out of print after [...]

Posted by Andrew Hickey on Sci-Ence! Justice Leak!

There may not be any obvious traction that the Lib Dems are bringing to themselves at the moment, no obvious attention from the media or speaking for the nation. But there are shoots emerging. One of these was the speech on economics that Tim Farron made today at IPPR in London. The most important element of this story is the mere fact that Farron chose economics for his first keynote speech. But it was also important the way he framed it - the idea of Liberals as the party of challenge, of enterprise and entrepreneurs, as the "party of Small ...

Posted by David Boyle on The Real Blog
YouGov

Photo by Amanda Reynolds, Ministry of Defence Groupthink, says Wikipedia, is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people, in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative viewpoints, by actively suppressing dissenting viewpoints, and by isolating themselves from outside influences.After the Liberal Democrats were turned to chutney at the May 2015 general election, a number of people who had left the party in the days after the Coaliton was formed asked ...

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

It is time again to visit Rutland's most celebrated fictional peer. We are not downhearted All the leaves are brown and the sky is grey; if the weather carries on like this, the Well-Behaved Orphans will soon be needing shoes. I sit by the Library fire as Meadowcroft dibbles and hoes outside - or whatever it is he does at this time of year. Flocks of hamwees are massing before leaving to winter in Africa, unless they have just arrived to winter here. Or are they wheways? I never can tell the difference. Let us be honest: 2015 was not ...

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

Three years or so ago, Austin Rathe, sadly soon to be leaving Lib Dem HQ and his position as head of Membership, and I were having a curry in Edinburgh and talking about how local parties had no incentive to grow. What Austin developed out of that conversation was a scheme which actually did a classic liberal thing and put our resources back at local level, giving those parties that grew their membership a fair old whack of their members' subscriptions. If a local party grew by between one and ten members in one quarter, it would get 20% of ...

Posted by Caron Lindsay on Liberal Democrat Voice

The team at Cheadle Mosque battled the wind and rain to set up a "Samosa stall" after Friday prayers to raise money for Children in Need. After prayers, worshippers munched through 400 samosas and countless pizzas to raise money for Children in Need - there was hardly any room left for cake! [IMG: The "Children in Need" team serve tasty samosas to "Mukhtar Ahmed and Munsif Choudry" Behind the stall - Left to Right : Afzal Chaudri, Farah Anwar, Rubbiah Choudry, Shahnaz Azhar] The "Children in Need" team serve tasty samosas to "Mukhtar Ahmed and Munsif Choudry" Behind the stall ...

Posted by Iain Roberts on Keith, Graham and Iain

Today, it was announced that junior doctors had voted in favour of strike action by an overwhelming majority. 98% were in favour of action which will begin on 1st December. Norman Lamb has condemned the Government's handling of the situation and told Jeremy Hunt to do everything he could to avert the strike: It's a serious concern that we have reached a point where junior doctors are prepared to take strike action. The Government has woefully mismanaged this contract negotiation and Jeremy Hunt must act urgently to resolve the dispute. Everything possible must be done to avert the strike which ...

Posted by The Voice on Liberal Democrat Voice

I came across a couple of photos of a fairly recent piece of Maghull's history the other day – the building of Meadows Leisure Centre, which opened in early 2010. [IMG: BEFORE - Work just starting with former Maghull & Sefton councillor Andrew Blackburn taking a look. The state of the roof of Maghull Town Hall (tin sheets covering broken tiles) can clearly be seen. Of course it was subsequently replaced.] BEFORE – Work just starting with former Maghull & Sefton councillor Andrew Blackburn taking a look. The state of the roof of Maghull Town Hall (tin sheets covering broken ...

Posted by Cllr. Tony Robertson on Sefton Focus » Sefton Focus
Thu 19th
18:11

Thursday reading

Current Dodger, by Terry Pratchett Short Fiction Eligible for the 1941 Retro-Hugos Vol 1, ed. von Dimpleheimer The Battle for Gaul, by Julius Caesar Last books finished Sleepyhead, by Mark Billingham The Ill-Made Knight, by T.H. White Somewhere! / هُناك , by Ibraheem Abbas Oblivion, by Dave Stone A Million Years to Conquer, by Henry Kuttner Monkey Planet, by Pierre Boulle Twice in Time, by Manly Wade Wellman [Doctor Who: The Glamour Chronicles] Deep Time, by Trevor Baxendale North Wind, by Gwyneth Jones Next books The Invention of Happiness, by Brian W. Aldiss Bits of Me are Falling Apart, by ...

This dog pretty much sums it up: [IMG: A dog tries to have fun. Image courtesy of http://imgur.com/gallery/hz3lsoJ - jinky74]

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack

I wrote before about the English Party's plans to axe nearly all of the budget for the local party membership incentive scheme: If you don't count 'get massacred in an election' as a membership initiative, then the most successful initiative in the history of the party to get Liberal Democrat membership growing has been the recent financial incentive scheme. The combination of clear thresholds and simple funding rules (get your membership up and you get a chunk of money, don't and you don't) meant that even though it was launched at a tough time for growing party membership, it helped ...

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack

Last year, the Open University announced that it intended to start offering masters qualifications in psychology again from 2016, after mysteriously withdrawing them a few years ago. More details of the qualifications being offered are now available on their website. The MSc choices appear to be Psychology (F74) – wisely, they seem to have dropped the idea of calling it ...

Posted by tim on ten pence piece
eUKhost

When it reached my ears that a ward for elderly patients with mental health issues may be relocated from Lanchester Road Durham to Bishop Auckland, my first thought was "What about the patients and the relatives?" A quick visit to the bus route planner confirmed my worst fears. For someone in Blackhill who wanted to visit their loved one that would mean a minimum of four hours to get there and back (often longer), and the need to be leaving Bishop soon after 6 o'clock if they weren't to spend the night at Durham bus station. So I rang Tees ...

Posted by Owen Temple on Owen Temple & Margaret Nealis

Tim's talking about the economy. And it's great. With George Osborne building an economy to benefit big business and Mr Corbyn swerving Labour towards "big state" nationalisations, there's a clear big gap for the Liberal Democrats to be the Party of Britain's creative talents, home-grown entrepreneurs and innovators, the self-employed and small business owners. But we need to go further. It's increasingly urgent that Lib Dems present a distinctive economic agenda to underpin our social and liberal plans. So the Party needs a new (possibly unofficial) Liberal Democrat group to raise awareness and to promote what the Liberal Economy means. ...

Posted by Richard Flowers on Liberal Democrat Voice
Thu 19th
15:03

Thirty Nine Barrels

I was Christmas shopping with the wife when the mobile phone rang. It was not a welcome call. "Martin, I have booked you on a flight to Angola for the 20th." It was my manager John. "Oh. What?! Steve covers Angola. Where the hell is he?" "Steve has just checked himself into hospital. Back problems." "That son of a bitch just doesn't want to go!" Everybody knew that Steve was faking it. Even I had heard that, during a base meeting in September, he had stated that if a job came up over the Millennium celebrations he wouldn't be available. ...

Posted by Martin Veart on Martin's View

In days of yore, 6 months ago, if the Liberal Democrat leader made a keynote speech on the economy, the journos would be there in force. While there was a bit of coverage on the Guardian and BBC, it was nowhere like it used to be. So, I guess that means it's up to us, and by us I mean all Liberal Democrats, to get the word out. The first section of this piece has some commentary on the speech and the full text is at the bottom. The trails sent out last night in my opinion missed out the ...

Posted by Caron Lindsay on Liberal Democrat Voice

With the weather forecasts all predicting lots of rain and then the cold of winter to come in the next few days, yesterday seemed like the last chance to have a decent long walk this year, so I took the opportunity to head out on the Essex Way. The Way skirts around the outskirts of Colchester so I decided to walk out to West Bergholt and pick it up there, then head along it through the Stour Valley and Dedham Vale. [IMG: pringles] The walk out to Bergholt is one I've done a few times. It's relatively easy to do ...

Posted by Nick on What You Can Get Away With

The worst terrorist attack in western Europe for a decade has left us all feeling numb. Our thoughts go out to the bereaved and injured. But inevitably our minds look to the consequences. What we must avoid is any knee-jerk responses. Two such responses we must avoid are: first, a rush by governments to remove yet more of our hard-won freedoms; and second, a rush to close our borders to refugees coming from the Middle East. Our freedoms of speech, expression and religion, and our rights to privacy and to live our lives as we want were hard won over ...

Posted by Mark Wright on Liberal Democrat Voice

What could be more fitting than a play addressing complex issues of leadership and conflict in November 2015?

Posted by Tom King on Never Cruel Nor Cowardly

Ormskirk, Preston & Southport Travellers' Association - two cars better than one! It's ironic that OPSTA should be celebrating the allocation of much-criticised 2-car Pacer units to the Ormskirk-Preston Line, but they say this does restore much-needed seating capacity – the group has long argued that the single-car Class 153 units are inadequate and effectively suppress demand. With new housing nearby, the numbers using Burscough Junction are growing and OPSTA is continuing to carry out passenger counts. Results from the Burscough Demand Study, commissioned by Merseytravel, are eagerly awaited, but in the meantime OPSTA has been invited to a meeting ...

Posted by Cllr. Tony Robertson on Sefton Focus » Sefton Focus
Thu 19th
12:36

The cat as author

This may well be the greatest tweet ever. Honestly...wut. Does he think I'm photographing him for his book jacket pic.twitter.com/iT9l5kP3cC— Allison Kilkenny (@allisonkilkenny) November 8, 2015

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

We like to cover our Lords' maiden speeches. Nick Clegg's former chief of staff, Jonny Oates made his last week. He talked about international trade and particularly about encouraging trade with Africa, and told us something about his life that may well become one of those Lib Dem trivia questions for fundraising quizzes. I think we need to know the full story. My Lords, it is an honour to make my maiden speech, albeit necessarily briefly, in this debate. I want first to thank everybody who made my introduction to your Lordships' House so easy—in particular, Black Rod and his ...

Posted by The Voice on Liberal Democrat Voice

Alright, I lied, there was always going to be a pun... Council has met in both halves of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in my relatively short time back in ALDE, and it will be nice to be on the banks of the Danube after so many years (alright, it isn't blue, but it is fairly deep). But there is business to attend to and, as I may be the only Liberal Democrat who campaigned for election to our Council delegation on the basis that I would... attend Council and discuss the administration of ALDE (bloody radical, eh?), the only way you'll ...

Posted by Mark Valladares on Liberal Bureaucracy

The Labour MPs who didn't support Jeremy Corbyn as their leader seem determined to fulfil their prophecy that the party is unelectable under his leadership. Corbyn makes the perfectly sensible statement that he he would be unhappy for the police to operate a "shoot to kill" policy. So would I and so would most of us. A paragraph in yesterday's Guardian reads: The number of people killed by law enforcement officers in the US this year has reached 1 000 after police in Oakland shot dead a man who allegedly pointed a replica gun at them. Well, we're a long ...

Posted by Peter Wrigley on Keynesian Liberal

I have to confess upfront to being something of a fan of Ken Livingstone. As a Londoner I can say he was a pretty good leader of the GLC back in the 1980's, standing up to Margaret Thatcher in a way that very few others did at the time, and paying the ultimate price for... More Livingstone's Comments Endemic of Wider Problem

Posted by dawudislam on LibDemHAME

Even in a world in which we see tragedy every day on the news, one where twenty four hour coverage of the many battles currently raging in different corners of the globe makes it easy to become numb to humanitarian disaster, the Paris attacks last week were shocking. Amongst the heartening displays of solidarity and defiance, people are angry, and rightly so. Those who committed the attacks displayed such a level of callous cruelty that it is completely understandable that many across Europe want revenge against patrons of the twisted ideology that leads people to carry out such horrific acts. ...

Posted by David Gray on Liberal Democrat Voice

SURREY CC – Epsom and Ewell West LD seat. Cause: Resignation. Candidates Julie Morris Contact Nigel Pavey nigelpavey@hotmail.com.

Liberal Democrat MSP Jim Hume has slammed the SNP for failing to accept that they had missed their election target of delivering 30,000 new homes for social rent before the 2016 Holyrood election. Speaking before yesterday's debate at the Scottish parliament, Hume said that the nationalists had claimed to have hit the target when in... More Hume Slams SNP Over Socially Rented Housing

Posted by dawudislam on LibDemHAME

Let us put aside for now Livingstone's horrible remarks regarding Kevan Jones and his refusal to apologise until everyone in Westminster had a go at him over it, and even then issuing one that was half-assed at best before apologising in earnest – plenty of others have commented aptly on this already. What I want to ask is this: why was Livingstone appointed to chair (or is it co-chair? I'm still not clear on this) a defence review for the Labour Party in the first place? Where to begin? So Labour have a shadow defence secretary in Maria Eagle already. ...

Posted by Nick on nicktyrone.com

The local people who brought us Wallington's first Festive Switch-on promised it would be back for a second year, so aided and abetted by the Wallington North and South ward councillors the big night is set for 3rd December. Chief organiser Ric Adams was keen to ensure that it is bigger and better than last year [...]

Posted by jaynemccoy on Diary of a Sutton Councillor

In just over an hour's time, Tim Farron makes his first major speech on the economy at the IPPR in London. We'll have coverage of the whole thing later, but here are the key principles he's setting out. He also sets out a challenge to Labour to support the Liberal Democrats in stopping the cuts to tax credits, not just putting in transitional relief which would do nothing to help new claimants on low pay. I suspect that the stuff on venture capitalism shows the influence of Susan Kramer and her professional knowledge in the field. Here are some of ...

Posted by Caron Lindsay on Liberal Democrat Voice

Following the reduction of the speed limit on Riverside Drive and Riverside Avenue some time ago, the possibility of having pedestrian crossings on these busy roads became possible and the City Council has provided three new crossings on Riverside Drive. I have long argued that one on Riverside Avenue to cover access to Riverside Nature Park would be a boon so it is great to see work on delivering this now taking place - see below :

Lamar Smith has targeted government climate change researchers with a subpoena that demands all their notes and correspondence relating to a recent study If you don't like a particular scientific study, attack the scientists who produced it. It's a tried and true method of manufacturing controversy around inconvenient scientific analysis. And now, Lamar Smith, Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, is using the sledgehammer of a congressional subpoena to bully National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists for their research on climate change. At issue is a paper published in Science earlier this year ...

Posted by Michael Halpern on Political science | The Guardian

Why are terrorists drawn to Belgium? Sober assessment from @KristofClerix. (tags: waronterror belgium ) Second Volume of Free Stories Eligible for 1941 Retro Hugos Hurray! (tags: sf ) Are Referenda Blocking the EU's Progress? Good question. (tags: eu nothinglikedemocracy ) Falling for our own propaganda (PDF) Sir Nick Harvey looks back on the party's internal polling. (tags: libdems ) This Tool Lets You See Exactly Who's Tracking What You're Reading Online Interesting. Horrifying. (tags: internet ) The Earliest Known Abecedary Cool. (tags: linguistics alphabets archaeology ) The Suicide Clusters at Palo Alto High Schools Horrifying, with a hint of redemption. ...

The UK government is trying to remove feminism from the A Level Politics syllabus Why Did Instagram Ban Photos of These Breast Cancer Survivors' Post-Mastectomy Tattoos? A thing that I want Oh God I love Pointless Letters - make sure you read the comment Muslim man in Northampton asked what he's doing about ISIS After Endless Demonization Of Encryption, Police Find Paris Attackers Coordinated Via Unencrypted SMS [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments

It tells us all we need to know that the Welsh Conservatives are able to overlook a conviction for animal offences in choosing their lead candidate for the Mid and West Wales regional Assembly list. According to the BBC Powys opposition group leader Aled Davies was fined more than £2,500 in October after admitting six offences. Animal health officers found nine sheep carcasses on his farm said to have been dead for two weeks. He also admitted failing to register the death of a cow. The BBC quote a a Conservative spokeswoman who said: "Aled has the backing of the ...

Posted by Peter Black on Peter Black

The Welsh Liberal Democrats have week hosted a debate in the National Assembly calling for VAT to be reduced from 20 per cent to 5 per cent on hotels and holiday attractions to boost the tourism industry. This is part of a Liberal Democrat plan to make Wales and the UK more attractive as a holiday destination and to create a jobs revolution in the sector. It means the UK would follow the lead of 25 out of 28 EU member states who have cut VAT on tourist accommodation and attractions. The World Economic Forum places Britain in 140th place ...

Posted by Eluned Parrott on Freedom Central

[IMG: LIb Dem incumbent Tim Farron in Kendal, Lake District. Picture by Jack Hill/The Times. 15 April 2015] As my poster on what the Liberal Democrats believe indicates, economic policy has long been a difficult area for the party in terms of coming up with a distinctive liberal approach which isn't just not quite red, not quite blue. So it is good to see Tim Farron's first speech dedicated to the economy since becoming leader trying to do just that, especially in his section on backing entrepreneurs. The key elements of his speech to the IPPR today, including that section, ...

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack