Photo of Taylor Swift by Jana Zills Neil Barnett sets out to discover who funded Brexit - features an appearance by Mike Hancock. Jeremy Corbyn does point to real economic problems facing Britain, but his solutions are based largely on wishful thinking argues John Van Reenen. "Walk between the glassy offices and tucked-away churches of the City of London, along the thundering roads down by the Thames, and you can occasionally find staircases embedded in the sides of buildings. It's not always clear that they're public, but if you follow one upwards they sometimes take you to wide, deserted corridors ...
Small businesses are the life blood of our economy. One of the real delights of recent months has been to meet local people who have taken the plunge and started up their own enterprises. At the Formby Festival I met Kirsty Fletcher who has started trading with a street food van serving Mexican style Cuisine. Kirsty, from Ainsdale, certainly had many satisfied customers at the Festival. Another local entrepreneur I have met is Neil Parker. Neil is a brewer from Southport and his Parker Cask Ales are proving a real success. It wasn't so long ago that 'real ale' was ...
[IMG: Tickencote chancel arch] Tickencote begins with a bus shelter on a slip road of the A1. So unpromising a location does it look that it took some persuasion for the driver to drop me there. I am glad I persisted, because the little Rutland village you find at the end of the lane from there has one of the most remarkable churches I have ever seen. St Peter and St Paul is a Norman church that had fallen into disrepair by the end of the 18th century. It was then rescued by the local Wingfield family. The chancel was ...
In some ways this is an amusing story because it was clear from listening to folks having a grumble in the store late this afternoon that one of their main reasons for going to it was to have a meal. We go there say 3 times a year and yes we always have a meal in the rather good restaurant which serves up decent food at low prices. And yes we were disappointed when we heard over the tannoy that it was closing early today due to some special event happening there involving crayfish I think. I suspect that IKEA ...
I'm a pretty reasonable sort of guy, I like to think. Not prone to excess of any kind, willing to consider a reasoned argument, even if I don't necessarily agree with it. Right all of the time? Hardly, indeed, I tend to make a virtue of uncertainty. After all, there are known knowns, unknown knowns and unknown unknowns, to erratically quote Donald Rumsfeld. Generalisation is unhelpful, even as a handy debating tool. And so, when someone popped up on Caron Lindsay's Twitter feed today, stating that they had zero respect for Sunni Islam, I felt moved to respond. Alright, I ...
Conservative seat. Cause: Death. No LD candidate.
UKIP seat (sat as an Independent). Cause: Death. No LD candidate.
Conservative seat. Cause: Resignation. No LD candidate.
Labour seat. Cause: Resignation. LD candidate- Andrew England.
Conservative seat. Cause: Resignation. LD candidate- Helen Wright To help, please contact Helen on 07870210011
Labour seat. Cause: Resignation. No LD candidate.
Conservative seat. Cause: Resignation. LD candidate- Thomas Sheriff. To help, please contact Thomas (07875336815, thomas.sheriff@hotmail.co.uk)
I heard about last night's bloody knife attack in Russell Square, Bloomsbury, as soon as I logged on to the computer early this morning. The location had a sickeningly tragic ring, as it was just off Russell Square that a bus was blown up on 7 July 2005 and Russell Square tube station was one [...]
Gateshead played host to a "Your Liberal Britain" meeting last night. Find out about it in my latest political vlog.
Embed from Getty Images It has just been announced that the Autumn Federal Conference in 2017 will be held in Bournemouth. The dates are, provisionally, Friday 16th to Wednesday 20th September 2017. This year the Conference Committee is trying out a four-day Autumn conference, which makes better use of the Saturday. They will be assessing its effectiveness and the reaction of members in their responses to the post-conference survey. If they decide to repeat the four-day pattern, then the conference will end on Tuesday 19th September instead. In case you are wondering what is going on in the photo, it ...
[IMG: agenda2106] The main agenda for the 2016 Autumn Conference in Brighton has now been published online. This year, for the first time, the conference will begin at 9am on the Saturday, 17th September. It will end, as usual, with the Leader's speech, which is expected to finish by 3.30pm on Tuesday, 20th September. The deadline for amendments, emergency motions, requests for topical discussions and for online questions to Federal Committees, Parliamentary Parties and the Leader's and Education Q&As is 1pm on Monday 5th September. That is also the deadline for submitting requests for separate votes on motions that are ...
On 27th August, LDV will be 10 years old. In that time, we've brought you over 24,000 posts and published over 337,000 comments. Over the Summer holidays, we'll take you on a nostalgic meander through a decade of Liberal Democrat history, seen through the eyes of our editors and contributors. We hope you enjoy our choices. As the party gears up for a potential snap election called by a Prime Minister on honeymoon, we can look back at the last time we thought, with a bit more certainty, that we were in this boat. I kid you not, one candidate ...
Thu 4th
14:04
Welcome news as health minister Philip Dunne says Ludlow Community Hospital "will remain a hospital"
Last night, our local MP Philip Dunne, who is the new Health Minister, gave a categorical assurance that Ludlow Hospital will not close. He told a crowded meeting of the hospital League of Friends that the hospital "is going to remain a hospital". Speaking after Philip, David Evans from the Clinical Commissioning Group confirmed that... Continue reading Welcome news as health minister Philip Dunne says Ludlow Community Hospital "will remain a hospital" →
First Bus has announced major cuts to bus services from Yate and Chipping Sodbury to Southmead Hospital, Parkway Station and the University of the West of England Frenchay Campus, starting 4th September. You can see the full details of the changes on the South Glos Council website here - you need to look at the sections about services 81, 82 and 16 in particular. The changes will cause major difficulties for local people. The frequency of the buses from Yate to Southmead Hospital and Parkway Station will be halved, and Chipping Sodbury, Wotton under Edge and the villages in between ...
It's been over three years since a cross-party group of city councillors sat down to consider location options for temporary sites where travellers would be able to camp legally for up to a month. Then in September 2014, City Councillors were presented with THIS FORMAL REPORT, detailing preferred locations and recommending a trial of Emergency Stopping [...]
[IMG: Lunt Meadows Intrepretation Board] Sheila and I went for a walk around this vast area of meadow and woodland that sits to the east of Lunt Village and north of Sefton Village. Here's three links to web pages which detail the site far better than I can explain it:- www.lancswt.org.uk/reserves/lunt-meadows [IMG: Showicks Bridge is on the eastern boundary of the site and it crosses the River Alt] Showicks Bridge is on the eastern boundary of the site and it crosses the River Alt If memory serves Showicks Bridge had to be replaced in the 1990's and I ...
The powers that be have acknowledged that the privatised energy suppliers (gas and electricity) are ripping us off, and have proposed a series of measures designed to make we consumers become more alert. Their solution is to persuade us to "switch" - either to another tariff or another company. Indeed, the energy suppliers have been ordered to tell OFGEM, the government regulator for the gas and electricity markets, of anyone who has not changed supplier for three years, and then all the others , of which there are six major ones, will be able to write to us offering what ...
At the start of August it seems an appropriate time to look back at the politics of the previous few weeks. At the start of July we were expecting a long Tory leadership campaign which was resolved in a rather brutal way, curtailing the 6 weeks of blood sport into just a few days. Theresa May has been installed as PM and somehow the Tory civil war that afflicted the Referendum campaign has been
William Wallace has been writing for the Yorkshire Post, to mark the celebration of Yorkshire Day earlier this week: In David Cameron's response to the referendum result, he announced that the Government would consult the Scots, the Welsh and Northern Ireland administrations throughout the negotiations, as well as 'other regional centres of power' - by which he mainly meant London. Theresa May has made a demonstration of that commitment by making early visits to Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. But who would she come to consult in northern England? Will she even feel any need to do so? Self-government in Scotland, ...
Giving back control? A contradiction at the heart of Universal Credit | British Politics and Policy at LSE RT @latentexistence: Universal Credit is seriously flawed and unfair, and it is not the concept of combining benefits that is the problem Daily Mail calls HIV pill a 'lifestyle drug' for gay men | Left Foot Forward It's not often I agree with every word of an article on @LeftFootFwd, but... FontShop | The Fonts of Star Trek RT @theorosendorf: The Fonts of Star Trek from @BaldCondensed Homeland Security Chief Concerned Hackers Could Infiltrate Voting System - BuzzFeed News RT @matthew_d_green: There ...
You have to hand it t UKIP, no sooner have they dug themselves into a hole then there is a clamour amongst the membership to dig it deeper. The stand-off between UKIP's Welsh leader and the group on the Welsh Assembly really got interesting yesterday as Nathan Gill dug his heels in and refused to quit either of his two roles despite the Sunday deadline whilst 12 constituency chairs threw their weight behind him. The BBC say that the 12 signatories believe that Mr Gill "remains extremely popular with a vast majority of the UKIP Wales membership": Agreeing with Mr ...
In my last post I said that the lack of a convincing economic vision was at the heart of the British Labour Party's difficulties, and a problem for the left generally. It is worth unpacking that a bit and sketching the direction that any new thinking should take. The central political problem for the left ... Continue reading Economics is at the heart of the left's weakness →
The BBC has announced that, from September 1st, the "iPlayer loophole" will be closed and access to the BBC's iPlayer will require payment of the licence fee. Of course, there was never a loophole; the licence fee is meant to apply only to live television broadcasts. Of course, the blame cannot be put at the BBC's feet. The BBC has been forced to make severe budget cuts leading to the scaling back of services that cost relatively little such as Radio 6 and BBC Three - services disproportionately used by people aged 18-34, while at the same time having to ...
Further to the community litter pick last month we undertook around the Blackness Industrial Area/Hawkhill (see photo of us - right), there will be a further community litter pick arranged at Riverside Nature Park for this Sunday - 7th August - at 10am. Very grateful thanks to Tesco Riverside who are bringing volunteers to help us. If you can help, please meet at the Riverside Nature Park car park.
Robert McLiam Wilson on Belfast and Paris As you would expect. (tags: writing waronterror northernireland france ) Thangam Debbonaire: 'If Jeremy had rung, it would have been a conversation I remembered' More detail. (tags: ukpolitics ) I'll take a united Ireland seriously when I hear Irish politicians tell us what they'll concede. Yup. (tags: ireland northernireland )
Before I start this, a brief acknowledgement that I am contributing to an Internet storm in a teacup, and that this is not, in general, a wise thing to do. I am writing here about a clickbaity piece that attacks ... Continue reading →
Gateshead Lib Dems hosted a "Your Liberal Britain" meeting this evening. Lord Shipley, former leader of Newcastle City Council, was the guest speaker. There was a good discussion and I was pleased to see lots of our new members there.
