Embed from Getty Images These days, of course, you can go south as well.
The Gazette reports that the Ring Road closures this weekend are being postponed. Full details here
Two Batposts are now up. An old one you can read for free, on Mindless Ones, about a Riddler story and the Miranda ruling, and a newer one for Patreons only (for the next few weeks, before it goes public ... Continue reading →
Malcolm, Head Boy, gets taken through his test results.
Back in April I wrote about Leicester City Council's decision to allow the demolition of 54-58 London Road in the city. That demolition has now taken place. I took the photograph above a couple of days ago when there when a brave fragment of the building was still standing.
[IMG: ALDC Master Logo (for screen)] Last night saw nine principal council by-elections take place across the country, with Lib Dem candidates standing across the board. In Redcar & Cleveland Carole Morgan and the team comfortably held Ormesby ward following the resignation and sad passing of Ann Wilson, a tireless local campaigner and ward councillor since 2009. Carole and the Lib Dem team ran a strong campaign on protecting local green spaces and opposing the Labour controlled council. Councillor Morgan was elected with an amazing 75.4% share of the vote - up 37.3% since 2015! UKIP struggled into second place ...
BBC Radio Newcastle interviewed my at my house and allotment on Monday about self-sufficiency and living the good life. It was broadcast on Wednesday and you can hear it on this link. The interview starts 12 minutes into the programme.
Second paragraph of third story ("Half a Grapefruit"): There were four large clean windows along the wall. There were new fluorescent lights. The class was Health and Guidance, a new idea. Boys and girls mixed until after Christmas, when they got on to Family Life. The teacher was young and optimistic. She wore a dashing red suit that flared out over the hips. She went up and down, up and down the rows, making everybody say what they had for breakfast, to see if they were keeping Canada's Food Rules. I've been raving here about the short fiction of Canada's ...
[IMG: Tooting bdy] Yesterday we had the best by election result in Wandsworth for the Lib Dems in many a year. A solid third place with 10.6% may not look like much, but it is a significant and positive step. It shows that the EU referendum has given the party a new opportunity. It also shows that contesting "hopeless" elections can be fun, and you can learn much in the process. Why I am so pleased? I have been part of the Wandsworth Alliance/Lib Dem scene since 1984 – pretty much the moment that fortunes turned against us. We have ...
Last night saw nine principal council by-elections take place across the country, with Lib Dem candidates standing across the board. In Redcar & Cleveland Carole Morgan and the team comfortably held Ormesby ward following the resignation and sad passing of Ann Wilson, a tireless local campaigner and ward councillor since 2009. Carole and the Lib [...]
Several days ago I received by full UK drivers license in the mail. Now that it is firmly esconced in my wallet and I see no way it can be…
Last week a couple of residents contacted me to complain about the way their weekly waste had been collected. One resident from Hallfields Lane, said, "It would be nice if the bin men picked up rubbish that they leave behind and to put bins back where they found them." If you have a similar experience [...]
[IMG: [personal profile] ] yoyoangel has asked me to tell you what I was up to in 2001. Age then: 23 Age now: 38 Relationship then: I was living with Ian, which didn't turn out well for the two of us, although it did produce Daughter, so I can't really complain. Relationship now: Depending on where we start counting, I've been going out with Mat for ten years, James for five, and Alisdair for three, and I have lots of lovely friends and extended family, and doggies. Where I lived then: Just around the corner from where I live now. ...
Members of the Nuclear Weapons Working Group are presenting their personal views as part of a wider consultation process into the party's future policy on nuclear weapons. The full consultation paper can be found at www.libdems.org.uk/autumn-conference-16-policypapers and the consultation window runs until 28 October. Party members are invited to attend the consultation session at party conference in Brighton, to be held on Saturday 17 September at 1pm in the Balmoral Room of the Hilton. Embed from Getty Images It's great to be able to speak with my own voice for a change. I'm more used to putting words in other ...
Campaigns Officer (Full Time, Manchester) Local Government Scale SO1-SO2 (Currently £25,440 – £29,558) Work with the leading campaigning organisation within the Liberal Democrats as one of our two national Campaigns Officers. We are looking for someone who can bring their own campaigning experience and ideas -not necessarily gained within the Liberal Democrats - to help us [...]
Embed from Getty Images It is generally assumed that the first step for the UK to leave the EU is to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. In his article on 10th August, Paul Walter described how "Invoking Article 50 could be a disaster for the UK". The referendum represented a democratic decision of UK voters that needs to be respected, but invoking Article 50 might not be the only way to do this. Article 52 of the Lisbon Treaty states "The territorial scope of the Treaties is specified in Article 355 of the Treaty on the Functioning of ...
Redcar Liberal Democrats are delighted to have held on to the Ormesby Ward with a landslide result in a by-election held yesterday. Nunthorpe resident Carole Morgan, a former teacher at Nunthorpe School, was comfortably elected as the new councillor in Ormesby, which includes part of Nunthorpe. The result was: Carole Morgan (Lib Dem) 980 UKIP 138 Labour 126 Con 41 North East Party 15 The by-election was caused by the resignation of popular Liberal Democrat Councillor Ann Wilson, who sadly died during the campaign. New Lib Dem Councillor Carole Morgan said: "Naturally I regret the circumstances that led to this ...
[IMG: wikipedia] One of the enduring appeals about Wikipedia for me has always been not just its laudable status as a free-at-the-point of access and advert free educational resource, but the still exciting fact that it's a community-written and maintained site. Yes, that can have drawbacks in the form of heated editing wars over punctuation or articles being targeted by online wags or trolls, much like the LDV comments section at times! Generally however its success is demonstrated by just how relied upon and ubiquitous it's become – I'm pretty confident most reading this will have read a Wikipedia article ...
When I was a teenager, I was a devoted fan for several years of the American death metal band known as Slayer. They were loud, they were aggressive sounding, they were sacrilegious – everything I was looking for in a musical act when I was fifteen. They sang about Satan; the lead guitarist had a band of long nails protruding from the leather strap around his arm which made him look like some sort of fantasy Viking warrior. The thing I remember most about this was the absolute worship other Slayer fans had for the band coupled with a distinct ...
King John was not a good man — He had his little ways. And sometimes no one spoke to him For days and days and days. And men who came across him, When walking in the town, Gave him a supercilious stare, Or passed with noses in the air — And bad King John stood dumbly there, Blushing beneath his crown.
This little gem of a property is run by National Museums Liverpool (NML) and is quite near to Sefton Park. Sheila and I had not visited it before so had determined that we would do so. [IMG: Sudley House - South Elevation] Sudley House – South Elevation The first thing to say is that it houses not 1 but 3 Turner paintings! [IMG: Hornby Tinplate O Gauge model railway items on display in the Childhood Room.] Hornby Tinplate O Gauge model railway items on display in the Childhood Room. NML says this of it on its web site:- www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/sudley/ We ...
I hear from Maghull & Lydiate Action Group sources that they are of the view that the tree felling on the site at the end of Maghull's Turnbridge Road was not licensed but that it should have been. This information comes, I am told, directly from the Forestry Commission. [IMG: This view of the site is from the Leeds Liverpool Canal towpath. Uprooted tree stumps can be seen on the far side of the site. Click on the photo to enlarge it.] This view of the site is from the Leeds Liverpool Canal towpath. Uprooted tree stumps can be seen ...
Nine by-elections for ten seats this week, and great to see that this time there was a full slate of Lib Dem candidates. (If you don't have a candidate, you force people to vote for someone else – which is completely self-defeating in the face of the party's struggle to get more voters to be regular, loyal supporters in the ballot box.) The first result in was from London. A doubling of the Lib Dem vote, still third but, as I've quoted Jonathan Calder on before, the Lib Dems need more decent thirds (i.e. the ability show signs of life ...
Cutting Air Passenger Duty (APD) will pump an extra 60,000 tons carbon emissions into Scotland's air every year and is the wrong priority for the environment, Scottish Liberal Democrat environment spokesperson Christine Jardine has claimed. Her criticism follows calls from Reform Scotland backing the SNP Government's pledge to cut and then scrap APD. Ms Jardine [...]
Not so long ago the idea of a "progressive majority" was popular amongst leftish intellectuals. They noted that if you added together the poll ratings, and even general election votes, of Labour, the Lib Dems, the Greens and (for some people) the Scots and Welsh Nationalists, there was a clear majority of the electorate, outnumbering ... Continue reading The Lib Dems mission must be to pick up disillusioned Tory voters →
Embed from Getty Images How deeply could Brexit divide the Conservative Party, as the contradictory choices involved in negotiating an alternative relationship with the EU become clearer? Media focus since the Referendum outcome has been on the widening divisions within the Labour Party. Press comment has praised the self-discipline of the Conservatives, by contrast, in resolving the issue of leadership so quickly - though in reality it was resolved by the implosion of 'Leave' candidates, one after the other, leaving Teresa May in command of the field. But the divide between practical Eurosceptics and ideological Europhobes is wide, and often ...
Interesting news in the Independent that the Dutch government has set a date for parliament to host a roundtable discussion that could see the sale of petrol- and diesel-fuelled cars banned by 2025. The paper says that if the measures are finally passed, then the Netherlands would join Norway and Denmark in making a concerted move to develop its electric car industry. Elsewhere in Europe, Germany managed to have all of its power supplied by renewable energies such as solar and wind power on one day in May as they continues to phase out reliance on nuclear energy and fossil ...
Residents have complained to me that growth from trees is obstructing the path that runs along Pentland Crescent from the bottom of Saggar Street and round to Pentland Avenue - see below :I contacted the City Council's Neighbourhood Services and have been given an assurance that this will be trimmed back.
Scottish Liberal Democrat rural affairs spokesperson Mike Rumbles MSP has called on the SNP to deliver on their broadband commitment after an official report by Audit Scotland on superfast broadband today described targets to reach rural areas as 'challenging'. The Scottish Government Minister responsible confirmed as much and admitted that more could be done 'at [...]
Scottish Liberal Democrat justice spokesman Liam McArthur MSP today said new figures revealing that Scotland has lost 1000 Fire Service staff since the SNP's centralisation of the service shows the scale of the impact the changes have had on the emergency services. Staffing figures released today by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) revealed [...]
We are Europeans. Brexit will make us face up to it. "For many Tory Brexit campaigners, the ideological impetus was never isolationist or chauvinist. The theory was that Britain should become a hub of global trade, woven seamlessly into Europe's single market while unbound by its meddlesome regulations. But that was a fantasy, unavailable in reality and hard to pitch to a mass audience. So to secure the result they wanted, Conservative Brexiteers made a Faustian pact with anti-immigrant populism. They mostly deny it, of course, because it was shameful." (tags: ukpolitics eu ) The Recipe for Creative Genius Some ...
