The Agnus Dei from Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, song by Ian Bostridge.

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

Gordon Murray, the man behind the BBC children's series Camberwick Green, Trumpton and Chigley, has died at the age of 95. His Guardian obituary suggests these three - the Trumptonshire trilogy - were set in Edwardian England. But to me as a small boy in the 1960s, they seemed thoroughly contemporary. Nor, as the scenes in the video above show, were they always quite as innocent as the writer suggests. This is surely the England of the Kinks' Village Green Preservation Society. Trumptonshire has been an inspiration to many. In 2014 Flipchart Rick showed us how the county was faring ...

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

UPDATED DETAILS. Labour seat. Cause: Resignation. LD candidate- Clive Mead.

Posted by Michael Powell on Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors

UPATED DETAILS. Conservative seat. Cause: Resignation. LD candidate- Simone Reynolds.

Posted by Michael Powell on Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors

Independent seat. Cause: Death. LD candidate- Robin Lynn.

Posted by Michael Powell on Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors

UPDATED DETAILS. Conservative seat. Cause: Resignation. LD candidate- Joe Crome. To help, please contact Paul Kennedy (07947 430762, paulkennedy@mvld.org.uk)

Posted by Michael Powell on Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors

Embed from Getty Images Woeful. A dreadful lack of leadership. No idea of how to face the future. No, I am not talking about the Tory Party, the Labour Party or Britain after Brexit: I am talking about the England football team. Traditionally, after the shortcomings of our team are laid bare in yet another tournament, the cry goes up for more attention to youth. Find the best prospects at a tender age and give them the best of facilities and the best of coaching. But this time there is a dissident voice. Jamie Carragher wrote in the Daily Mail: ...

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

You could not help but wonder yesterday what on earth was going on when Pat Glass MP resigned from Jeremy Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet only two or is that 3 days after she accepted an invitation to join it as Shadow Education Secretary! [IMG: CJzYw4EWwAAicCx.png large] She clearly does not know whether her glass is half full or half empty. I bet this will haunt her for a long time. My understanding, from what I would consider a reliable Labour source, is that Sefton Central MP, Bill Esterson is backing Jeremy Corbyn together with fellow Merseyside Labour MP's Peter Dowd (Bootle) ...

Posted by Cllr. Tony Robertson on Sefton Focus

News from the Electoral Commission: The London County Court has ... issued a judgment rejecting the Labour Party's appeal against the Electoral Commission's sanction for making late payments in relation to the 2014 European Parliamentary Election, agreeing that the Electoral Commission's approach was correct... On 15 December 2015, the Electoral Commission announced that it had fined the Labour Party £1848 for making late payments in relation to the 2014 European Parliamentary Election. Under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, registered parties are required to obtain all invoices for their campaign expenditure during elections within 30 days after the ...

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack

For the Liberal Democrats and its predecessors the party's strategy for success at general elections was based on the accumulation of random chance through hard work. That is, a particular Parliamentary seat would become winnable through the combination of the right mix of personalities coming together at the local level, opposition errors, issue opportunities and helpful demography or tactical situation. Causal factors one and all, but with the accumulative appearance of random chance. It made for a diverse set of winnable, and won, seats without nearly as much in common between them – and those who voted Lib Dem – ...

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack
YouGov

There's a lot of different versions of this, but this one is my own version of it. You will need: - one large (at least 3 litre) container for mixing your mixer - a 1 litre carton of Cawston Press Apple & Rhubarb juice - 2 500ml bottles of Fever Tree Elderflower Tonic - quarter of a cucumber, sliced very thinly - 2 limes, quartered - a good handful of fresh mint sprigs - gin of whatever kind you like - ice - glasses for serving Put everything except the gin and the ice in your container. I used a ...

I can remember a time when the Liberals were the party representing the progressive voice of Rural Britain. Our voting base was here and Liberal MPs seemed to spend most of their time in the wild places of our islands. As the Liberal Democrat's we've widened our appeal, but in doing this we seem to have lost our rural voice to some extent. There's now a huge opportunity developing as this Tory government loses credibility on issues such as rural housing, broadband and transport. The Rural Services Network organises the Rural Conference which this year is in Cheltenham 6/7th September. ...

Posted by Peter Thornton on Liberal Democrat Voice
Thu 30th
17:30

June books

Non-fiction: 3 (YTD 20) Between Light and Shadow: An Exploration of the Fiction of Gene Wolfe, 1951 to 1986, by Marc Aramini (not finished) SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police, by Vox Day (not finished) The 4-Hour Workweek, by Timothy Ferriss Fiction (non-sf): 5 (YTD 14) Selected Stories, by Alice Munro The Unicorn Hunt, by Dorothy Dunnett The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas Dark Horse, by Fletcher Knebel The Commissioner, by Stanley Johnson Doctor Who, etc: 3 (YTD 22) Short Trips: 2040, ed. John Binns Loving the Alien, by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry The Mary-Sue ...

A message for every voter. No-no go areas. Local parties that are ready for every eventuality. These are the ideas that need to inform a '650 Seat Strategy' for the Liberal Democrats. This is what we at Liberal Democrat Expand will be fighting for. Liberal Democrat Expand was launched at the beginning of June with the aim of bringing about a '650 Seat Strategy' for the Liberal Democrats, inspired by Governor Howard Dean's '50 State Strategy'. When we launched we were riding high on the Liberal Democrat successes of the local elections. In areas like Watford, Southport and Portsmouth we ...

Posted by Liberal Democrat Expand on Liberal Democrat Voice

Jonathan Safran's Tree of Codes is a book created by cutting out chunks of text from another novel.

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack

No, my friend, my lodger. I don't 'feel better' this evening than I did this morning, nor will I 'get over' this in a couple of days. Here's why. I want to express, calmly but passionately, why I am so distraught about the result of the referendum. I voted remain, primarily because I was, and am, intellectually convinced it was by far the better option, but also because I am, in my very being, a European. I am not arguing in any way against the outcome of the referendum. I am confident that it was fairly conducted. However, I am ...

Posted by Alison Le Cornu on Liberal Democrat Voice

While the national emergency grows Labour and the Tory Party are pre-occupied with who is going to bag what job. The look of wide-eyed, guilty panic in the eyes of Boris Johnston and Michael Gove on Friday morning hinted at what was later confirmed: the Brexiteers who had schemed for this moment all their political lives had absolutely no plan for life after Thursday. But those of us who argued passionately that Britain should remain in Europe should also concede that there is little consensus among progressives now Britain has voted "out" - either how we will improve the lives ...

Posted by Cllr. Tony Robertson on Sefton Focus

Good news – A group has recently been established to try to help Lydiate deal with dropped litter and volunteers are now meeting on the last Saturday of each month to litter pick roads in Lydiate. They meet at Lydiate Village Centre on Lambshear Lane. [IMG: rsz_sefton_drive_litter_01_13] This builds on the longer established volunteer group (part of Maghull in Bloom) that has been litter picking the tow path of the Leeds Liverpool Canal for a number of years now. I understand that this new group of volunteers want to expand into Maghull as well but clearly that depends on volunteers ...

Posted by Cllr. Tony Robertson on Sefton Focus

UK Politics is just too distracting these days. Today we arrived at a point where both main parties are in the middle of differently shambolic leadership contests. These last few crazy days have brought to mind quite a few ancient parallels (read this excellent post by Caitlin Harris, one of our MA students, on voters' remorse). And then this happened: Michael Gove, formerly Brexit-campaign right-hand-man of Boris Johnson decided to run for the leadership himself, and may well have teamed up, in some way, with Theresa May (the other front-runner) to prevent Boris Johnson from gaining his long-held dream of ...

Posted by Maria Pretzler on Working Memories

So...Farage has won? Yesterday I watched Nigel Farage facing off against Jean-Claude Juncker in the European parliament. Today the news commented on how they both seemed happy, and indeed embraced. Indeed why would they not. Nigel Farage explained in his speech why he was having a good day, because he had fought for years to get Britain out of the EU, and finally he had succeeded. So why was Juncker happy? Perhaps because at least there was a silver lining, he would no longer have to contend with British obstructions to his goal of an ever closer union. Maybe there ...

Posted by David Pearce on Liberal Democrat Voice
eUKhost

Last night the Lib Dem Federal Policy Committee (FPC) starting putting in place the system for writing our next general election manifesto, so as to be ready in the event of a snap general election this year. But worth noting also is this from Tory leadership candidate Theresa May: There should be no general election until 2020. There should be a normal Autumn Statement, held in the normal way at the normal time, and no emergency Budget. And there should be no decision to invoke Article Fifty until the British negotiating strategy is agreed and clear - which means Article ...

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack

Spanish VIth form student who are spending time at KGV and Christ the King visited me in the Southport Town Hall this week. It was a pleasure to host this visit and good to see some many young people enjoying themselves in Southport. The students came from Vigo in Spain and like Southport it is a seaside town, but unlike Southport it has a premier league football team. At the end of the visit the students presented me with a hand written book they had prepared which gave a biographical sketch of each of the students. Not for the first ...

Posted by iain on theMayoralBlog

For our party and its supporters in the country the last few years have brought one defeat after another: local councils, devolved government, national government, AV referendum, now the EU referendum. There is a limit to the number of times a boxer can climb back up off the floor. What fortifies me is the adage that winners are losers who never give up. And perhaps we should think bigger: not as a small party with an 8% core vote but the centre of gravity of a broad movement of 48% of voters who chose Remain. The first step in responding ...

Posted by Vince Cable on Liberal Democrat Voice

A survey released this morning by Passenger Focus, the independent transport user watchdog, shows the performance of Arriva Wales has declined markedly in the past year. Arriva Wales is the only train service through Ludlow and many of us rely on it. The watchdog's data record changes in satisfaction of users of the train service... Continue reading Performance of Ludlow's train service company, Arriva Wales, takes a nosedive →

Posted by andybodders on Andy Boddington

It's not often I agree with sir Roger Gale MP however he has just sent out a statement* praising Mrs May's speech given at the launch of a campaign to become leader of Tory Party, as one of the most powerful and impressive speech he has ever heard. After a week of extreme turbulence Teresa Mays launch of a bid to become Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party offers I think a ray of sunshine, this I think will be a view shared by anyone who sees or has seen Theresa Mays campaign speech today. She makes Boris ...

Posted by tony flaig on BIGNEWS MARGATE

It's obvious from the maps published after the referendum that several former Liberal Democrat seats voted remain - Cambridge, Bath, Cheltenham, Lewes and others. It's equally obvious that plenty didn't - all of them in Cornwall and Devon, for example. But because the results were counted and declared by local authority area, we haven't been able to tell how individual constituencies voted - until now. Chris Hanretty, Reader in Politics at the University of East Anglia, has tried to estimate how all the 574 Parliamentary seats in England and Wales voted (it's a reasonable assumption that all or almost all ...

Posted by Duncan Brack on Liberal Democrat Voice

Gove's Wife Raises Johnson Leadership Concerns RT @jimwaterson: Sarah Vine accidentally emailed a member of the public with an email setting out Michael Gove's leadership plotting: Job losses at Lloyds sites in Halifax and Copley - Halifax Courier RT @HXCourier: Job losses at Lloyds sites in #Halifax and Copley Hell Is Round The Corner, a song by Tricky on Spotify @RacecarEngineer @po8crg @OldmoatLibDem appropriate song is appropriate: The BrExit Threat to British Science | Disturbing the Universe RT @davecl42: The BrExit Threat to British Science We Spoke To Victims Of Racist Abuse After The Brexit Vote - BuzzFeed News RT ...

The fate of the economy and that of the construction sector are intractably linked. That is why when recession hit in 2008 onwards, everybody was calling for big capital schemes to be put in place to keep things moving and to drag us out of the mire. It is very disturbing therefore to read in the Independent today that the massive uncertainty created by the Brexit vote could mean that the UK construction industry will slam into a "brick wall" early next year. The paper quotes an anonymous source who told them that since the shock referendum result was announced ...

Posted by Peter Black on Peter Black

David Boyle has been writing for the Guardian following the EU referendum result: I believe that we have to take the referendum result seriously. We can't just finesse it or constitutionalise it away. We also need to shape a narrative that interprets it in the most liberal way we can. In fact, history may belong to whoever can do that most convincingly. Now I have my own biases, as a Lib Dem. But, say what you like about my own party, it is one political force that may be united enough to do that. Yet - perhaps for understandable reasons ...

Posted by The Voice on Liberal Democrat Voice

A small number of people with views to the far right used the EU Leave campaign as an excuse to legitimise racism. Now the country has voted to Leave the EU we are starting to hear about incidents of racism where they had not been encountered before. The Police Borough Commander has written to us [...]

Posted by jaynemccoy on Diary of a Sutton Councillor

In the wake of the Brexit vote, a particular trope has emerged amongst some journalists and members of the public on social media: that the vote to leave the EU was a "bloody nose" to Westminster and London. I have no doubt that many voters meant it this way – the reality of what will happen now is very different, however. Let us start with Westminster. Yes, both political parties are in meltdown. Yes, political careers have been destroyed by the vote to leave. But on the flipside, many more careers in Westminster will flourish now. Particularly as – and ...

Posted by Nick on nicktyrone.com

Almost every MP and politician from Tim Farron to Nigel Farrage has been saying that we must respect the result of the EU referendum last Thursday but there is no agreement on what the result means. The act setting up the referendum deliberately made the result advisory, leaving parliament and the government to take the final decision (unlike the AV referendum, which was binding). But what is the final decision? To articulate a vision of the UK outside the EU, something not articulated by the leave campaign during the referendum? To prepare an initial negotiating position? To allow Scotland a ...

Posted by Richard Robinson on Liberal Democrat Voice

Here are details of the Perth Road (east of Sinderins) bus arrangements from 4th July for the period the road is one way only (westbound) during Scottish Water's infrastructure improvement works :You can read further details provided by Xplore Dundee here.

It isn't just about enabling rural communities to get about, because buses are also a means of getting to the countryside, as Ros noted yesterday evening... Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD) My Lords, I added my name to this amendment with great pleasure. I have no particular interest to declare with regard to national parks except as someone who visits them and loves them, and I want to make sure that everyone else has those same opportunities as far as possible. I was thinking on the way here about the Peak District National Park, which has, within an hour's ...

Posted by Mark Valladares on Liberal Bureaucracy

Now is the time for liberals in all parties to unite around a common cause: standing up for the values that have defined our country for generations.

Posted by Tom King on Never Cruel Nor Cowardly

Looking behind the Brexit anger It's political culture, rather than economics. #fb (tags: eu ukpolitics ) Why Brexit Might Not Happen at All Wishful thinking, I suspect; though widely shared. #fb (tags: ukpolitics eu ) UK voted for Brexit - but is there a way back? Difficult to see, but these are the scenarios. #fb (tags: ukpolitics eu ) Turkey airport attack: 41 killed #fb Awful. My favourite airport. (tags: terrorism turkey ) We're out of Europe! How British science is already being hit by Brexit. #fb (tags: ukpolitics eu science ) A national catastrophe, and a vacuum in leadership. ...