Today is a good day to celebrate being alive, and to thank one man in particular for that — Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov. On September 26, 1983 — thirty-three years ago today — Lt. Col. Petrov, depending on which version of ... Continue reading →
Mon 26th
23:03
Follow the Money: another cracking Danish thriller, this time with an environmental twist
Another cracking Danish thriller. Those four words summarise, but hardly do justice to, Follow the Money.
A few days before June's EU Referendum invited to Riga to give a lecture on Brexit at the University of Latvia. The mood among the audience (and other speakers) was one of total mystification: why would Britain want to leave the EU after more than 40 years, when other countries are knocking on the door [...]
[IMG: matthew-clark-conference] We have been telling you about the Conference Access Fund and how it has helped members to attend. Before we got to Brighton, Matthew Clark told us his experiences in a post titled 'Young, disabled and believed in'. By happy coincidence, I was delighted to be able to call him to speak in the debate on 'Mending the Safety Net' (the Social Security policy paper) which I happened to be chairing, and he was an impressive first time speaker. You can watch the debate and his contribution here, starting at about 1:05. Matthew speaks at 1:44. Another of ...
For once I find myself in agreement with Lucy MP, MP for Telford and Wrekin, when she told BBC Radio Shropshire this evening that the Future Fit programme has been an "extraordinary saga." The latest twist in this tortuous process is a leaked report on the first stage decision on the closure of one of... Continue reading Shropshire's single A&E planned to be at Shrewsbury, says Defend Our NHS →
The following resignations of Labour councillors following Jeremy Corbyn's reelection as leader have been spotted so far: "The leader of Portsmouth City Council's Labour group has resigned from the party following Jeremy Corbyn's re-election. John Ferrett had been a member of the party for 27 years and stood in general elections in 2010 and 2015." [BBC] "A solicitor and councillor for Barrow Borough has made the bold decision to resign as a member of the Labour party in protest against Jeremy Corbyn's re-election. Councillor Sean Harkin will continue to serve his constituents in Dalton North but will stand as an ...
This is the latter part of the bewitching key sequence of Blow-Up. David Hemmings' unnamed photographer thinks he has spotted something suspicious in a photograph he has just taken. He enlarges a detail again and again until he reveals a murder taking place, then goes to the park and duly finds a body. On his return to the studio he finds the enlargements have been stolen, except for the very last. Shorn of its context, it reveals little more than a patter of light and shadows. When he returns to the park for a second time the body has vanished. ...
A lot of gardening over the weekend and today's visit to Gravesend has pushed me over September's 300,000 step target. Thank you again to everyone who has sponsored me – you've raised a magnificent £305 for Cancer Research. I shall, of course, keep trying for 10,000 steps a day for the rest of the month. Target one has been achieved ... The post 10,000 steps a day – days 24, 25 & 26 – Pocahontas appeared first on ten pence piece.
Getting hold of an up-to-date Liberal Democrat printed membership form can be surprisingly hard, so here's a pdf of the September 2016 version of the form. Remember of course that people can join, renew and donate online and there's always the option to send some pennies the way of Liberal Democrat Newswire. Liberal Democrat membership form Download this document
In our latest party political broadcast, Tim Farron speaks about his background, his upbringing and what drives him. [IMG: Screen Shot 2016-09-26 at 16.54.41] You can watch Tim's speech at the end of Lib Dem Party Conference here: [IMG: Screen Shot 2016-09-26 at 16.54.51] Join us here.
Mon 26th
17:01
Maghull – Petition to improve road safety outside Northway Primary School where lollipop man k...
The Liverpool Echo has the story – see link above Following the accident last week where local lollipop man Ronnie Wilson was knocked over by a car a petition has been launched to press Sefton Council to take action. I have signed the petition and hope others will too. Please click on the Echo article link above and follow the link in the story to add your name to the petition.
The media has been full recently of reports of an increase in obesity, particularly childhood obesity, across the country. We have also seen the brilliant success of Team GM athletes in both the Olympic and Paralympic games in Rio. Following on from this, at the last full meeting of Bury Council the Lib Dem team of councillors used our two two formal questions to ask about obesity and sports participation, and how Bury is doing compared to the rest of the country: Given recent reports of continuing increases in obesity, including amongst children, could the Leader inform members on how ...
Ambition for Ageing in Bury is part of a Greater Manchester programme to create age friendly places with strong community connections and empowering people to live fulfilling lives as they age. The programme will enable people aged 50 plus to be at the heart of designing the places they live. Groundwork will be delivering the programme in Moorside, Radcliffe North and St. Mary's wards. How can you help make your community more age friendly? We can offer investments in your projects, existing and new of up to £2000. Local people aged 50 plus will design and direct small investments which ...
With many moved commas, extra references to Donald Trump, a bonus reference to Darth Vader, extra head-gear advice for when driving a tank and over 10% more text in total: the 2nd edition of 101 Ways To Win An Election is now available as an ebook too.
In recent speeches Jeremey Corbyn has showed his true colours – he wants Britain out of the single Market. Here's eleven reasons he's wrong: Britain may have voted to leave the European Union, but this doesn't mean we want to leave the 'single market' free trade area. The single market means it as easy to trade between London and Berlin as it is between Edinburgh and London. Within the Single Market, goods, people, services and capital can move freely, meaning there's no lengthy customs checks, borders to cross and goods can move freely and cheaply. Giving up our membership of ...
THE brother of the late comedian Victoria Wood, Chris Foote Wood, addressed councillors at the most recent full meeting of Bury Council. [IMG: imgID81694286.jpg.gallery] Chris Foote Wood has been leading a campaign to raise £20,000 for a lifelike statue of the Prestwich-born comedian who died in April aged 62 after losing her battle with cancer. The latest total for the 'crowdfunding' appeal for the statue in Bury's Library Gardens is £18,000, including £1,000 from Dame Judy Dench. He hoped the statues would be a lifelike representation in a typical pose of Victoria — like the very popular statue of Eric ...
[IMG: york-keith-aspden] Keith Aspden at Heslington Sportsfield which benefitted from Ward Committee funding I'm back in York after a very enjoyable conference in Brighton. From a local government perspective, I was pleased to participate in important discussions around education, housing, the impact of Brexit, the environment, devolution and more! I was pleased to speak (together with Cllr Keith House, Leader of Eastleigh Borough Council) at an ALDC training session about how Liberal Democrats can make best use of Area and Ward Committees. I've written up my notes from the meeting about York's Ward Committees below, which I hope might be ...
A new weekly poetry reading group at Prestwich Library starts on Friday 30 September (1pm to 1.45pm). Qualified teacher Paul Murphy will lead the group in looking at poems and exchanging ideas and opinions. These free sessions are for adults, and there's no need to book. For more information call Prestwich Library on 0161 253 7214.
"The opposition occupies the benches in front of you but the enemy sits behind you" Churchill was meant to have said to a new Tory MP. As ever the great man's wit was on the money and remains true today. It highlights the huge challenge of maintaining unity within a political party, unity that is [...]
Embed from Getty Images This is the slightly edited text of the speech to party conference on Sunday 18th September, moving the motion with the same title. The text of the motion can be seen here. We believe in social mobility, but social mobility is more than simply plucking a few from disadvantaged backgrounds, by unreliable assessment and unfair procedures, at the age of 11. In any case, all-embracing division at age 11 sends a damaging message about how we value each young person. Actually, we believe in more than social mobility; we want even people who choose to stay ...
Embed from Getty Images On Friday BBC News reported that court files recording details of Alan Turing's convictions for homosexual acts have been put on display at Chester Town Hall. As Helen Pickin-Jones, chair of Chester Pride, says in the BBC report: "Just a few simple lines of text reveal the appalling treatment of one of our national heroes."One of the documents displayed in Chester shows the mathematician admitted "acts of gross indecency" at a trial there in 1952. Turing was working at the University of Manchester when he was arrested for having a relationship with 19-year-old Arnold Murray at ...
I had to read an article in the Peterborough Telegraph that covered the increasing issue of local homeless families, twice! Why? Well, at the end it stated that the Tory controlled City Council "... is now preparing to sign a deal with estate agents Stef and Philips Ltd which has bought 74 properties from [...]
[IMG: alter-logo-300] Action for Land Taxation and Economic Reform (ALTER) seeks to build on support for Land Value Taxation amongst Liberal Democrats and to promote and campaign for this policy as part of a more sustainable and just resource based economic system. The ALTER fringe meeting at Brighton this year was chaired by our MEP, Catherine Bearder. Jock Coats, a former Oxford city councillor, presented a paper aimed at infusing the Liberal Democrat mission statement as set out in the "preamble to the constitution" with explicitly "geoist" principles. The paper argues that only publicly collecting the "economic rent" from land ...
The Liverpool Echo has the story on its web site – see link above Readers of this blog site will know how sceptical I am about the Northern Powerhouse, or Poorhouse as I call it. I have never felt it was much more than political froth and spin and have been amazed at how Labour politicians have been drawn into it. Was their following of it associated with the previous Northern Way of John Prescott? Now its leading light (other than George Osborne of course) has quit, what future does it have?
The Liverpool Echo has a story (written just before the announcement that Corbyn had won) which quotes my Lib Dem colleague Cllr. Richard Kemp – see link above. Trouble is that the Labour membership was not able to vote for a credible alternative candidate to Corbyn as there was no such candidate on the ballot paper; general opinion was that Smith was a poor lightweight in a heavyweight battle. Even odder, from my perspective, are the comments of Mayor Anderson who to many in Liverpool is a part the problem rather than a part of the solution to the ...
Twitter This is the best advice to new Lib Dems I have seen. What the Nevermind cover baby looks like now RT @ericdharvey: They're gonna be submerging this dude in water and taking photos every 5 years until he dies Australia Is Drifting So Fast GPS Can't Keep Up Continental drift is scary Top 20 biggest phobias in the UK - some are just weird | Metro News Buttons are top ten... London man 'training to cure autism' filmed abusing client People who claim to be able to cure autism do shit like this & neurotypicals wonder why we don't ...
Embed from Getty Images Her Majesty's Opposition is in turmoil. Our country is in crisis. Corbyn won't budge. I am saddened by Labour's demise. For all its flaws, for almost twenty years it has been a strong, progressive force in British politics. Corbyn has been re-elected with a sizeable 62% of the vote. Now Corbyn has a sizeable number of admiring activists - but they are talking to themselves. The public has already made up its mind about Corbyn - he is seen as incompetent, extreme and unelectable. It is all but impossible for Labour to gain seats in 2020 ...
Tonight at 21h00 their time (02h00 ours on the 27th) Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump face each other in 90 minutes of televised debate. This could easily be America's and the World's most dangerous moment since the Cuban Missile crisis. And it may not have such a non-climatic ending. I happened to be in the US during the Carter- Reagan campaign in autumn, 1980. To my mind there seemed to be no doubtt that Carter would win hands down, but, as we know, Ronald Reaagan prevailed and served two terms. Part of the reason for his victory was his performance ...
Pencils were long been used polling stations in the UK. But not just any old pencil, special indelible pencils. These combined the reliable convenience of a pencil with the security of being indelible. It was a winning combination, but note how I have put everything in the past tense. That is because they were what was used. But the main supplier (Shaw's) has stopped selling them, switching instead to normal pencils. Moreover, as was made clear by the comments form electoral administration staff earlier this year when pencils caught the headlines over in the Europe referendum, many places have switched ...
I realise I risk ridicule, or worse, by using a headline like this one to describe the ongoing unravelling of Southern Rail and the other GTR rail franchises. It isn't as if GTR are killing commuters, though they may have been putting them into dangerously overcrowded situations. But commuters' lives do matter. It matters that people can rely on the trains to get home or get to work. I know in small ways what can happen when this isn't possible - children not picked up from school or very late rendezvous with the family. Sometimes it makes business meetings completely ...
As many as 3,000 community pharmacies are at risk after the Department of Health announced it was cutting their funding by £170 million. The Government says the cuts are justified because there are "more pharmacies than necessary" in some areas, ... Continue reading →
Lilliput Park, between Heron Way and Chipping Sodbury, is very popular with people of all ages. The Lilliput Conservation Group run work mornings in the park on the first Tuesday of each month (e.g. Tuesday 4 October), but they have had requests for local people to organise a weekend session. The first weekend work morning will be on Saturday 15 October from 10 am until 12 noon, meeting at the Kingfisher Road gate. All ages are welcome, but children need to be accompanied by responsible adults. Suitable footwear should be worn, and gloves would be useful. Dodington Parish Councillor Paul ...
As if it were bad enough having to put up with Theresa May's Government's prevarication over their position after we leave the EU, the Welsh Labour Economy Minister chipped in over the weekend with his own version of Brexit that does not seem too far away from the vision of Nigel Farage and UKIP. According to the BBC, Ken Skates said that the Welsh Government wanted to maintain access to the single market but regain control over immigration, thus preventing the free movement of labour. He said: "In the absence of any other indication from the UK Government... we are ...
Embed from Getty Images Imagine our surprise on Saturday when news of Jeremy Corbyn's re-election of the Labour party came through hot off the wires. As it happened, my partner, who is about as a-political as you can get (and that's saying something, considering we have been together through multiple elections, not least of all the General Election last year, somewhat inconveniently we were moving flat the day after - a story in itself) had made a special study of this election and mentioned the news. In this age of anti-politics, the figure Corbyn cuts has great appeal for people ...
DUNDEE CITY COUNCIL - WEEKLY ROAD REPORT REPORT FOR WEST END WARD WEEK COMMENCING MONDAY 26 SEPTEMBER 2016 Scottish Water Clatto East (Mains Renewal) - Lochee Road (Tullideph Road to Park Street) - closed southbound for 2 weeks. Perth Road (Glamis Road to West Park Road) - closed for 5 weeks for gas main renewal. Kirsty Semple Way (access road to A&E to car park entrance to Mackenzie building) - closed on Sunday 2 October for one day for crane lifting operations.
