As soon as "Doctor" Eugene Landy was taken on for a second time, in 1983, to "treat" Brian Wilson's increasingly severe mental illness, he started taking control of both Wilson's personal life and his professional life. Landy fancied himself a songwriter — or at least, wanted to get a writing credit and the concomitant royalties [...]
Conservative seat. Cause: Death. LD candidate- Richard Dunne. To help, please contact Ian Beardsmore (01932 782031, Ian.beardsmore@btinternet.com)
Imagine you are in need of some human sympathy and your care is handed over to a computer, or at least to human beings under the rigid orders of a computer. How would you feel? Because that seem to me to be the main side effect of handing over failing children's services regimes to other local authorities. If the main story today has been the second British astronaut in space, the main story yesterday is still echoing round what passes for my mind. It is the removal of children from their mothers at birth and the failure of some children's ...
"In the current flare of details coming out about the Tatler Tory bullying affair, one group more than others has been scrambling for cover, and that is the Young Britons' Foundation." Random Scribbling Notepad tells us all about it. "Pugh's suggestion that Labour has a tendency to choose the wrong leader and to hang on to him too long is an interesting reflection in the light of the result of Labour's recent leadership election." Keith Laybourn looks at some books on the history of the Labour Party. Ian Marsh argues that policy convergence, cynical marketing strategies and the demise of ...
Only bins that are normally collected on a Friday will be affected by changes over Christmas and New Year. Collections which would have been due on Friday 25 December will instead take place on Monday 28 December. Collections due on Friday 1 January will be carried out on Monday 4 January. People can arrange to have their real Christmas tree collected free of charge by contacting the council on 03000 261 000 before Friday 8 January.
Artworks created by some of the most acclaimed artists of the 20th century, from Henry Moore to Barbara Hepworth, have already been destroyed. Created and sited in the open for all of us to enjoy; these pieces were made for our public spaces, our schools, hospitals, housing estates, civic areas and communities. They were commissioned and designed with a social spirit to add colour to our local places and our daily lives. Such sculptures, murals and architectural reliefs are disappearing for many reasons, and for some pieces, it is already too late. Stolen and melted down for their scrap value; ...
Keith is asking residents of Milton Crescent for their views on putting yellow lines along sections of the road that are getting heavily parked up. Milton is fairly close to Cheadle village centre and gets people who work nearby parking all day. Residents have told us they don't mind some parking, but want to be able to get in and out of their drives and get along the road safely. [IMG: Selection_239] Let Keith have your views on where the council should put yellow lines and/or white H-bars.
Following requests from residents, Keith and the Lib Dem team are consulting to see if there should be yellow lines on the bend on South Park Road (either one side or both) to stop cars parking on the narrow section. [IMG: Selection_238] Let us know your view.
Here are the decisions and discussions from this evening's Cheadle Area Committee – the last of 2015. Iain asked council officers to see if litter could be cleared up on South Park Road near the junction with the motorway slip road. 2nd Cheadle Scout Group was awarded £1000 towards training two younger leaders to drive the minibus. Planning application 60010 (new homes at 2 Turnfield Road, Cheadle) was deferred to the next meeting after a disagreement over which windows from the neighbour's house overlooked the site. Members were briefed on Cheshire East's plans for a Poynton Relief Road, to be ...
16-17 year olds will not have the right to vote in the EU Referendum, following a hugely disappointing vote yesterday in the House of Lords.
Tim Peake's voyage into space has reminded me of the children's science fiction books by Hugh Walters. As a website devoted to his work says: If you regularly borrowed science fiction books from your local library anywhen from the 1950s to the early 1980s, the chances are that your read a Hugh Walters novel or two. You remember - English astronaut Chris Godfrey and his team flying to each of the planets in the solar system? With titles like 'Expedition Venus', 'Destination Mars' and 'Journey to Jupiter', with a Hugh Walters novel you were guaranteed nailbiting tension coupled with a ...
Nick Clegg's recent bravura performance in a European debate against Nigel Farage won widespread plaudits ("Nick Clegg Defeated Nigel Farage With Rousing EU Referendum Speech At Oxford Union"). Now you can watch his opening speech in full:
I thought this was really excellent - a short novel written and set just before the second world war, published shortly after the author's death by her own hand; on the surface, it's a story of manners about a village pageant for Empire Day, but in fact there are deep currents of violence, both sexual and colonial, running through it and colouring everything that happens for the attentive reader. A really disturbing book in some ways. I'm becoming a bit of a fan.
As soon as it was known that 16 and 17 year old would have a say in the referendum on Scottish independence, I tabled a Bill in the Lords for a comprehensive change in the franchise. I have long believed that there is a strong case for lowering the voting age, in light of the maturity and political awareness of this group, and the many, much rehearsed adult responsibilities they take on. There is a pragmatic argument too, which is simply that creating a seamless link for as many young people as possible between citizenship education in schools, electoral registration ...
[IMG: Calculator and paperwork: would a citizen's income make things easier and less stressful?] I'm a member of the Liberal Democrat policy working group looking at our welfare policies (consultation paper due for discussion at the York conference). I have been keen that we discuss the idea of a citizen's income, aka basic income or universal basic income, as it used to party policy back last century and also is clearly a bit of a coming thing once again. That said, the more I have looked at the policy, the more I have gone off it, at least for a ...
[IMG: partymembers] Here's an interesting new academic research project: the ESRC Party Members Project. Their description of the project is: By collecting original quantitative and qualitative data, the project explores party membership's supply side (the members themselves and what they do and think) and its demand side (how and what parties think of their membership and their recruitment and retention strategies). It's a three year project, so it'll be a while before the really interesting data comes out of it, but there's useful stuff there already. They're also looking at questions of why people who are strong supporters of parties ...
I happened to mention on Facebook this morning that I'd ordered our Christmas wine from Laithwaites. I could have done it online, but their call centre is one of the best to deal with. I know that flogging wine to ... Continue reading →
Federalism as an aim and a concept has a long history in the Liberal, and now the Liberal Democrat, Party. The benefits and feasibility of federalism have been much debated over the years and what has evolved from those debates not only forms the basis of our own party's structure and governance but has also become part of our party's constitution: We believe that sovereignty rests with the people and that authority in a democracy derives from the people. We therefore acknowledge their right to determine the form of government best suited to their needs and commit ourselves to the ...
We had planned to get a group of residents to do some gardening on the planters at Marley Hill and Byermoor on Sunday. If all went well, we would have done some weeding around the trees in the Kingsway community orchard in Sunniside. Alas, snow put an end to these plans. We will have to reschedule the work. As you can see in the photo above with my ward colleague Cllr John McClurey, the work
Scottish Liberal Democrats MSP Jim Hume, in his role as the party's Health Spokesperson, has today told Scottish ministers to 'get an urgent grip' on primary care services. It comes in the wake of new figures revealing that more than a third of GP's are set to retire in the next ten years at the... More Hume Tells SNP To 'Get A Grip' On Primary Care
This is one of a number of stories about the high numbers of babies taken at birth in England. Any reader of this blog will now that this is not news. There is a well written research document that looks at this. It particularly looks at repeat removals. The original paper is here The question that needs to be answered. However, is why other countries with exactly the same set of facts
The Guardian wins Headline of the Day.
[IMG: Tim farron photo by liberal democrats dave radcliffe] Tim Farron has condemned the government decision to allow fracking in national parks and other sensitive areas, protected at Liberal Democrat insistence under the coalition. The change is being made by statutory instrument so that the House of Commons will not be allowed to debate it. Tim said The Government's decision to sneak through a huge change to allow fracking in our National Parks without a proper debate is outrageous. They have shown their true colours and complete lack of regard for protecting some of the most beautifully scenery in the ...
[IMG: veggies] Globally, the way we produce food is unsustainable. In the UK alone millions of tonnes of food are being thrown away, soil quality is deteriorating and dairy farmers are shutting up shop on a daily basis because of crazy supermarket price wars. At the moment 800,000,000 people are 'food insecure' meaning they go hungry periodically. Not many are predicting the situation to improve, there is forecast to be a 69% gap between the crop calories produced now and those needed by 2050. I see the problem as divided into 3 main sections: not enough food for a growing ...
Pity the French Socialists. Last weekend they managed to stall the Front National at regional elections – but only by supporting the centre-right Republicans. The collapse of the left and centre-left in France offers lessons to the British left – in the Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green parties. But they are not listening. Now remember that only three years ago the French Socialists were triumphant. François Hollande won the presidency, and parliamentary elections confirmed the party's ascendancy, along with left wing allies, including the French Greens. France was in an anti-capitalist mood; this was no victory of the centre ground. ...
There is an interesting article here on the role of big money in American politics and how the failure of Mitt Romney to seal the deal last time has led to several big political donors going their own way in terms of how they support political activity this time around. The article says that in the 2012 contest between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, celebrated political strategist Karl Rove assured a host of Republican mega-donors that, with enough funding, his super-pac could put Romney in the White House: "I had every expectation we would be the victors," says Home Depot ...
Tue 15th
09:15
What Stop the War and Momentum need to realise is the rest of us are only trying to deal with realit...
I was having another look at Isaac Deutscher's outstanding biography of Trotsky over the weekend (having not peeked at it since my late teens) and was reminded again of the chaos surrounding the USSR in the period post-civil war and pre-Stalin. Essentially, Lenin and his inner circle realised something pretty awful: socialism doesn't really work. Like, at all. But when you've just gone through a pretty bloody revolution and a civil war after that on the basis of heartfelt belief in the tenets of socialism, it's pretty hard to lay all that aside. So they tried to fudge things via ...
The European Union is an ever-evolving organism and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future as it adapts to a changing world. Some challenges, such as increasing competition from emerging economies, can be planned for; others, such as the current refugee and migrant crisis, are less predictable and require some pretty nifty footwork [...]
We have planning permission for around 8000 units granted and unstarted in Sheffield, and numerous brownfield sites which are considered unviable for development. The authority is in danger of not meeting its housing land supply, and a green belt review is looming. This is a northern perspective, and I daresay the issues are different in the south. Now a common feature of the planning system as it operates in practice seems to be the negotiation between planners and developers to add conditions and extract gains from developments to serve public interest goals, such as: aesthetic standards provision of affordable housing ...
Scottish Liberal Democrats MSP and Justice Spokesperson Alison McInnes has criticised the Scottish Police Authority (SPA) over its decision to withhold board papers from publication until meetings are underway. She says that this will further undermine efforts to increase transparency and accountability of the force, which is already under a cloud following several high profile... More McInnes Slams Police Authority over Transparency
Today's statement of the bleeding obvious: Anti-Radicalisation Strategy 'Alienating Pupils' Autistic ppl more likely to commit suicide & women autistics more than men (opposite of general population) All of the political Christmas cards are rubbish (apart from @TimFarron's) TBH I quite like George Osborne's. Sorry. Awesome @ShappiKhorsandi to press for inclusive sex education as new @bhahumanists President Trump supporters forgive "little lies" as The Donald tells the "big truths" :/ Church of England accused of twisting cinema ad row to create 'media storm' Because I'm ultra middle class now, I posted top tips for Milk Frothers on my blog Next ...
The Welsh Liberal Democrats have welcomed more ambitious targets for closing the attainment gap between richer and poorer pupils, after previous targets were met three years early after a key Welsh Lib Dem policy was implemented. The Education Minister has announced more ambitious targets for closing the attainment gap by the end of Foundation Phase, aiming for 80% of learners aged 7 who are eligible for free school meals achieving the expected level by 2017. The news is a vindication of my party's decision to prioritise the Pupil Deprivation Grant (PDG) in budget negotiations with the Welsh Government, a policy ...
