It still wasn't very nice as I left Inverness (again). At least it wasn't raining as hard as it had been for the most epic part of my rail adventure, involving two trains, a ferry and two buses, one of which might not actually exist. The railway line to Kyle of Lochalsh is another of those well-known railways to nowhere, passing through a whole lot of nothing on the way to a ferry port which lost its raison d'etre when the bridge to Skye was built. Admittedly, the 'whole lot of nothing' is insanely scenic, but you do wonder how ...
Simpkin & James, a grocers rather than a department store, closed in 1971. There were a number of branches around the county, including Oadby and Stoneygate. They closed the same year. You can read more about Simpkin & James in an old number of the Leicestershire Historian.
[IMG: carrigancover] When you've been immersed in an activity for quite a while you tend to forget its illegibility to those coming to it for the first time. There are a whole bunch of things that are part of everyday practice for those with the expertise of experience. Or which are appreciated more consciously by those who have taken a step back and spend some time studying or reflecting upon the activity. Yet, the whole enterprise may seem impenetrable to the newcomer. So it is with the world of social media among academics. There are plenty of academics who are ...
The Leicester Mercury reports: A number of Labour councillors who have clashed with Leicester mayor Sir Peter Soulsby have lost key posts within the city council's ruling Labour group. The party has held its annual general meeting and elections for a series of positions this week including those heading committees that scrutinise the policies of Sir Peter and his team of assistant mayors. Former city council leader Ross Willmott is one of the casualties.This story has a familiar ring. Sure enough, when searching the archives of this blog I find that much the same thing happened in 2012. So let ...
No one's gonna take me alive The time has come to make things right You and I must fight for our rights You and I must fight to survive Share
I think this was all before "Swap Shop". I think there was an Ed Stewart programme at some stage. But around 1971, the BBC1 TV staple on Saturday mornings was a combination of the "Banana Splits" and "Here come the Double Deckers" – both of which programmes had very catchy theme tunes. Happy memories! Share
Walter Ayles was one of Bristol's first two Labour MPs. He represented Bristol North for two periods in the 1920s totalling just over three years. Later he was elected again in west London but in an unremarkable Parliamentary career never came close to office under either MacDonald or Attlee. His sole act of fame came [...]
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 455th 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 (10 -,16 April 2016), 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. Lib Dems deliver by-election double whammy ...
Scottish Liberal Democrat energy spokesman Liam McArthur has today questioned why voters would believe the SNP can deliver on their new target to cut greenhouse gas emissions given their track record in tackling climate change. Scotland has missed its climate change targets every year since they were introduced under the Climate Change Act. Earlier this [...]
Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie has today called out the leader of the Scottish Conservatives for being in George Osborne's pocket as she continues to stand by the Chancellor's tax cuts for the wealthy while keeping silent on benefits cuts for the vulnerable. In a newspaper interview published today Ruth Davidson was unwilling to [...]
Second paragraph of third chapter: On impulse, he walked along to the shop. 'Excuse me,' he began. 'New window?' Candy Jar's series of books about the earlier career of Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart have not been getting as much buzz as I feel they deserve. For a lot of us, the UNIT days are the defining period of Who, and the idea here is to look into their backstory, the four years that the Brigadier say in The Invasion since The Web of Fear. The previous couple of books I'd read in the series were pleasing enough, but here McIntee plays with ...
Mark Valladares reports: A schedule for the selection of our European Parliament regional candidates lists for 2019 has been agreed, and Returning Officers are being appointed. There will be those of you who might think that this is all a bit premature, especially given the small detail of the referendum on 23 June, and you may well be right. However, any advert isn't due to be published until after that, so in the event that there is a vote to leave the European Union, not so much effort is wasted. It is, I think, probably better to be prepared on ...
This morning I headed into Edinburgh at the crack of dawn to take part in a panel on Radio Scotland show Good Morning Scotland. I got a bit of a shock at the station as there was hardly anywhere to park, which I hadn't expected for that hour. The reason became clear when I got to the platform and saw lots of people in running gear, heading into town for the Great Edinburgh Run. I have to say it is much easier to be discussing your election campaign when your leader is on the form of your life and when ...
"If you're interpretation of the Bible contradicts demonstrable facts, then it is your interpretation that needs to change, not the facts." I'm not a biologist but I'm very confident that evolution by means of natural selection is a real thing. That's partly because people who are biologists are themselves very confident of this fact and have been for [...]
[IMG: 7 best] Many thanks to the 12,800 visitors who dropped by Lib Dem Voice this week. Here's our 7 most-read posts... Baroness Lynne Featherstone writes...The State killed my nephew (4 comments) by Lynne Featherstone. UKIP's ongoing collapse – ducking a by-election in Farage's "top target" (10 comments) by Antony Hook Why, after a year of being involved with the Lib Dems, I'll be renewing my membership (27 comments) by Benjamin Sims Offshore 101, or can we please stop asking David Cameron to resign? (47 comments) by Alice Thomas Breaking... A duo of by-election wins – one strong hold, one ...
The web address for the 'Yes to AV' campaign in the 2011 referendum – www.YesToFairerVotes.org – now takes you to a spam website. There is therefore a double problem with old stories online which link through to this web address. First, they are helping boost the performance of a spam website. Second, because Google and other search engines don't like likes to spam websites, they also count against your own site's performance in search results. It's a form of negative search engine optimisation (SEO). So if you have old links to the Yes campaign's website, it is a good idea ...
[IMG: Kirsty Williams 2] All the parties in Wales have been asked to write a blog for the Tenovus Cancer Care charity's website. This is what Kirsty Williams had to say: Cancer is something that will touch the life of everyone in Wales at some point. So when it does, the system needs to be ready to step up and give the treatment and care patients, and their families, need. Yesterday the Welsh Liberal Democrats launched our manifesto for the next Welsh Government which contained a number of commitments that would transform cancer care. Cancer causes more than one in ...
Being a European Parliamentary candidate for the Liberals and then Liberal Democrats has seldom been easy. Before the advent of list elections, it was not until the 1994 elections that a Liberal Democrat was elected (there were two of them - Graham Watson and Robin Teverson). And so, when list elections were introduced for the 1999 European Parliamentary elections, European selections began to really matter, and not just in places of traditional liberal strength. With as many as eleven candidates to be elected in some Regions, achieving 12% of the vote across a European Region would probably be enough to ...
Muslim woman kicked off plane as flight attendant said she 'did not feel comfortable' with the passenger | Americas | News | The Independent This sort of shit is happening FAR too often. Instagram Goddammit Baker! Instagram (There are two dogs and my feet in this photo) #dogs #dogsofinstagram #lurcher #sheltie... We will not stand by when UN soldiers abuse, rape and murder | Avaaz Community RT @claireOT: The facts that have emerged about French troops committing child sexual abuse in CAR are horrifying. Please help force the UN to hold these troops accountable for these war crimes Instagram In ...
[IMG: Refugee camp Northern Greece] On Monday I flew out to Greece with Tim ahead of his visit to the camps in the North on Tuesday. Hours earlier UNHCR informed us they would no longer be able to facilitate the visit of a 'high-profile' individual given the security concerns after the clashes the day before. I tried desperately to reassure them that it was not exactly a 'high profile' visit, there would be no security team, huddle of staff and no media crew following him around- something that I don't think they really believed. So we flew into Greece with ...
Dayflower, says an old article on Leicestershire Press, describe their music as "honey-drenched pop melodies over a collage of fuzzed-up synths, lo-fi beats, and jangly guitars".
There is an uplifting story in the Independent today about the celebrated Jeannette biscuit-making factory in Caen in lower Normandy which closed down two years ago. The factory had been open since 1850 and in that time had produced some of the finest madeleines in France. The paper gives a brief history of the factory: It is quite possible that the madeleine which conjured up memories of Proust's childhood was a "Jeanette" madeleine. In the famous passage, Proust's autobiographical hero is staying at the Grand Hotel in Cabourg, a few miles along the Norman coast from Caen. At the turn ...
Ludlow has suffered serious damage from flooding over the years. The floods of 2007 swept away Burway Bridge and an adjacent house. There has been a lot of work to improve Ludlow's flood resilience since then. This does not mean that Ludlow is free from flood risk. Rapidly rising rivers and flash flooding from fields... Continue reading Meeting to review ways of reducing flood risk in Ludlow - Tuesday 19 April →
The Liverpool Echo has the story – see link above
Embed from Getty Images The former Liberal Democrat MP and government minister discusses his new book about the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government, says what he would do differently in hindsight, and looks into his crystal ball to see what the future holds for the party... Your new book about the Coalition has certainly made a few waves following its Sunday newspaper serialisation - the right kind of waves? I think inevitably there is a temptation in the press to shed light on things which are currently topical, such as Tory divisions on the referendum. But the primary reason I wrote ...
I was recently contacted by a TV production company called Little Gem who are currently working on a brand new documentary series for Sky that will tell the story of six families over 5 years of their life. They are looking for families who'd like to be a part of this project and hope to capture their dreams, ambitions and the journeys that they go on but also the changes that will happen to the world and surroundings that we live in. They want to embrace the uplifting, challenging and universal experiences of family life that we can all relate ...
More educative entertainment from Tom Scott: Wage transparency is a strange concept for most of us: not so in some of the Nordic countries. And while Norway, Sweden and Finland differ in exactly the amount of access they give the public, fundamentally your tax return would be public knowledge there. What do you think of this idea?
A New Map for America @paragkhanna redraws the lower 48. (tags: usa maps ) Ozymandias, illustrated by Justin Oaksford This is brilliant. (tags: comics poetry ) Monica Lewinsky: 'The shame sticks to you like tar' Fascinating. (tags: sexandgenderandsexuality internet uspolitics )
