Welcome to Broxtowe Enews, brought to you by the Liberal Democrats and edited by David Watts, on behalf of the Lib-Dems in Broxtowe. It seems to have been a quiet week this week for Broxtowe news, so this weeks newsletter is shorter than some. 1. Oxjam 2016 Next Saturday, 15th October, is Oxjam 2016. 15 venues, 12 hours of music, dozens of bands and artists! Oxjam is the UK's largest music festival, taking place over the whole month of October. It's made up of hundreds of events happening all around the country, all organised by volunteers. Beeston has been hosting an ...
With Donald Trump in the news tonight, I am reminded of an article in Liberator 328 (that link will download a PDF: scroll down to pp. 28-9) from September 2008. Written by former collective member Gina Ford, it tells how her husband Martin had a motion of no confidence in him as the Liberal Democrat chair of Aberdeenshire Council's Infrastructure Services Committee after he used his casting vote to turn down a planning application from Donald Trump. That application was for 500 houses for sale, 950 holiday apartments, a 450 bed hotel and two championship golf courses and would cause ...
The Liverpool Echo has the story – see link above
Energy Reservoir 13 Ltd is hoping to build an electricity storage unit on green fields near Rocks Green. A storage system is a good idea. But why isn't it being built alongside the existing substation rather than in a green field? OST Energy has applied to Shropshire Council for permission for energy storage system (ESS)... Continue reading Energy Storage unit proposed in arable field at Rock Farm, Ludford →
It is common for politicians to think only they can fix problems. It is my belief that good politicians both empower residents by both not just solving a residents' issue when the Council has let them down - but to show how the problem was fixed. The latter can be done by keeping the resident involved in the communication throughout the whole process so the residents knows you are working to both help them but not afraid to give the details of the person who will actually solve the problem. Also it is important to lead and show the way. ...
A capybara yesterday - photo: Charles Sharp The other day it was a panther between Teigh and Market Overton. Today it is a capybara at Empingham. It's been a good week for exotic fauna in Rutland. And congratulations to the Leicester Mercury on winning our Headline of the Day Award.
Tucked away in a valley in the Allegheny Mountains in West Virginia, is this: the Green Bank Radio Telescope, the largest steerable radio telescope in the world. And there are some rather special rules for the area around it...
It is a common dictum that politicians should be judged by their actions not by their words. Well it would appear that on many fronts the government could be rightly accused of double-speak after this week's Conservative Party Conference. Theresa May was Home Secretary for six years. During that time she deported almost 50,000 students with dubious legality and yet still failed to meet her own unrealistic targets. She also oversaw a big reduction in the number of immigration officers at ports and airports. However rather than accepting targets will never be met and giving the Home Office the staff ...
Even by the low standards of the last couple of years, this has been a pretty grim week to be a liberal in Britain. Not content with embracing an economically destructive hard Brexit agenda, it seems that reducing immigration has become the overriding, obsessive objective of this government. Fresh restrictions on 'foreign' workers, students and [...]
On the face of it, it seems an innocuous enough phrase. A simple telling it like it is without being too specific or a way of summarising all those professional politicians and others in the orbit of government. It's handy when the column inches are tight. So why am I so vexed with this now? After all the phrase and the theory behind it isn't a new one as it has been around since the middle of the 20th century. Why now? Because in the last few years its usage has been subtly usurped and now it hides a whole ...
Current Songs of the Dying Earth: Stories in honour of Jack Vance, eds. George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois Winter Song, by Colin Harvey SPQR, by Mary Beard The Joy Device, by Justin Richards Last books finished Short Trips: The Solar System, ed. Gary Russell Companion Piece, by Robert Perry and Mike Tucker Last week's audios And You Will Obey Me, by Alan Barnes The Victorian Age, by AK Benedict Next books AfroSF: Science Fiction by African Writers, ed. Nnedi Okorafor Kings of the North, by Cecelia Holland Angels & Visitations: A Miscellany, by Neil Gaiman Books acquired in ...
How many British MPs are "foreign born"? RT @AndyBodle: A list of MPs born outside the UK. Apparently, they're all now out of a job. Most are Tories. One is Johnson. I know my fellow Brexiteers would feel betrayed if we kept freedom of movement - but there is no other way | The Independent RT @leftoutside: Today in *eyeroll emoji* First farm to grow veg in a desert using only sun and seawater | New Scientist This is pretty bloody awesome Keep Forever: Dungeon Keeper Is Free Right Now Given that this is my favourite game ever, yeah, I'm ...
At the Men's Health Forum, we've been using Shopify for a while now and we really love it. They have a great value non-profit rate (if you ask nicely). It's great for handling trading. It's great for handling digital downloads. All we needed was for it to handle donations and we were done! The good news is that there's a pretty straightforward way of doing it by using Shopify's approach to collecting customisation information – as outlined here. To make a Shopify product page work for donations we wanted to do three things: Ask about Gift Aid Remove the quantity ...
Embed from Getty Images It's been quite a week in British politics. The Tory conference and the UKIP self-combustion serve to crystallise a distinct change. A sea change, if you like. We heard Amber Rudd saying companies will have to register "foreign" employees (next step getting them to wear badges?) and Theresa May hard Brexiting. We see that the Tory party have pulled the rug from beneath the feet of UKIP. The Tories have stolen the immigration obsession spotlight from UKIP, who are consequently showing all the signs of looming self-immolation. The Tory party, whether it be through Cameron's hapless ...
It was not a great week just gone for UKIP. The resignation of their leader 18 days after having been elected, followed by one of the favourites to take over the reins being hospitalised – after a fight with another UKIP MEP. Shambolic barely covers it. Truth is, it has been terrible for UKIP pretty much non-stop since the country voted to leave the EU. I said at the time that UKIP could become bigger than ever if they had the vision to grab the moment; thankfully, they haven't so much failed to grab the moment as they have poured ...
[IMG: Clearing out the Summer planting 04 10 16 (2)] Last Tuesday Maghull's In Bloom Volunteers organised a session where they took out all the Summer planting from the barrier baskets along Westway in the Town. It amazing how much can be done in a short period of time with a dozen volunteers all pitching in. All rounded off with a coffee at Costa made for a lovely afternoon in the sunshine. [IMG: Clearing out the summer planting 04 10 16]
Although the government of India banned child marriage in 2006, ten years later the practice is still prevalent, though numbers have been steadily falling. There are therefore still millions of young girls in India and other countries in Asia and Africa who are married off well before the age of 18, thereby losing the chance [...]
Residents have raised with me a pothole in Osborne Place - see right : I highlighted this with the City Council's Roads Maintenance Partnership and have been advised that an Order has been placed to have this repaired.
We're forever told that it's unfair to be vocal about the strong xenophobic messages from some people in favour of Brexit. I do accept that not all 17.4M who voted Brexit did so out of xenophobia or paranoia. But you can't have it both ways. You can't claim that the strong xenophobic message is a [...]
Great toilets of Brussels Because you needed to know. (tags: Belgium tourism ) Government bars foreign academics from advising on Brexit Not a joke. (Probably illegal.) (tags: ukpolitics eu brexit )
It is of course the case that how much you spend in an election is not necessarily related to how well you do, but if you spend the money effectively in getting a convincing message across then you will have a much better chance of winning. What are we to make then of the news that Pontypridd MP, Owen Smith raised over £800,000 in donations for his unsuccessful Labour leadership challenge against Jeremy Corbyn. Buzzfeed say that Smith, who won just 38% of the vote against Corbyn, received a total of £808,905 in cash and donations in kind during the ...
