It is almost exactly six months since I had a conversation with a member of Southern Rail's staff on a station near where I live, and it set me off blogging about the mystery of what exactly was going on with the local trains. My surprise when more than usual numbers of people read the blog soon turned to horror and then fear when those numbers mounted, and suddenly nearly 100,000 people had read it. My original blog was based on the original conversation, which wasn't entirely accurate. It took me a month's work to find out what was actually ...
Moving Image Archive has a remarkable collection of films from the Second World War. Click on the still above to view a film of US sailors in Kirkwall, the largest town in Orkney, on that site.
Independent seat. Cause: resignation. LD candidate. Richard Moore. To help, please contact Richard Moore on 07703 234192 or email RichardMooreLibDem@gmail.com.
Embed from Getty Images The New European has an article arguing that Top Gear paved the way for Brexit. I've not read it - "To read it would be to condone it," as F.R. Leavis said when he was challenged over a book he had dismissed - but I suspect it is wrongheaded. First, because as I blogged during the referendum campaign. the best case for Remain was made by Jeremy Clarkson - if you don't believe me, see the quotes from him in that post. Second, because I fear that it as an example of the tribalism of liberal ...
Embed from Getty Images Good stuff from Sarah Olney, the Liberal Democrat candidate in this week's Richmond Park by-election: "Zac Goldsmith's idea that this was going to be a referendum about Heathrow has turned out to be nonsense because there is no pro-Heathrow candidate standing. "Actually, what people really want to talk about is Brexit." Mrs Olney called his decision to resign "ludicrous". "He doesn't need a further mandate to oppose Heathrow," she said. "He already had that twice over."These wise words come from the Press Association, via the Daily Mail.
Another sizeable gap in my blogging can at least be brought to a close for good reason. Earlier this month, my father Lance Cole would've been 80 years old. I had for a good year and more planned to respect his memory, by writing an article about one of his life-long passions - photography. I wrote about this passion in a blog post over 5 years ago back in 2011. A year later I blogged about my plan to preserve that legacy with modern media. It took me another year before his 900 or so slides were finally 'digitised' but ...
Following on from the Federal Board, the Federal Policy Committee and the Federal Conference Committee, I'll now turn to the final two bodies for which Liberal Democrat members are electing people.
Peter Watts has an article on Waterfront, the website of the Canal & River Trust, about Springer canal boats, which were built here in Market Harborough. They were very much at the bargain end of the market, but Peter writes: Belying their reputation, Springer boats also appear to be impressively hard-wearing with thousands still in use despite the fact the company closed down in the mid-1990s. And Springer boats aren't just confined to the English waterways - in 1990, the boatyard built the Typhoo Atlantic Challenger, a 37-foot craft shaped like a bottle that crossed the Atlantic from New York ...
This is the eleventh in the series of Les Mondes d'Aldébaran, the lush sf graphic novels by Brazilian-French writer/artist Leo (Luiz Eduardo de Oliveira), and the start of Antarès, the third of the four sequences within the cycle. Good news, Leo fans: three films are being made based on the five books of the first cycle, Aldébaran, directed by Emanuel Buriez, but no details of who will take the starring roles as yet. The films are due to come out in 2017, 2018 and 2019; I may try and make a rare cinema excursion to see them. This first album ...
This was the headline in the print version of the Observer yesterday, although it came out rather differently online. [IMG: richmond-park-by-election-22] It states: The Liberal Democrats are to target pro-EU Labour supporters and "soft Tories" who backed remain, in a final canvassing blitz ahead of Thursday's Richmond byelection, amid growing confidence in their camp that they are within striking distance of winning the seat. Party documents obtained by the Observer, laying out their strategy for the final days, suggest undecided Labour voters will be key, and failure to persuade enough of them to vote tactically may prevent the Lib Dems ...
The 107th edition of the Gunthorpe FOCUS Newsletter will be going to print shortly and will then be delivered by volunteers and ward councillors. To read it simply TAP the image below or visit the link at the bottom of the page! The local Lib Dem FOCUS Team make sure that ALL 3,830 properties in the [...]
Mon 28th
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Maghull – It took over 3 years but someone has finally cut back the overgrown shrubs blocking ...
[IMG: westway-hedging-cut-back-at-last-11-16] I could not quite believe what I was seeing recently when I realised that the overgrown shrubs that had significantly narrowed the pavement in Westway adjacent to The Dell & L'pool Rd Nth Traffic lights had actually been cut back! I commented on this back in September 2013, see link below:- I wonder who did it, an NHS or Sefton Council contractor? Note:- The reference to Maghull in Bloom offering to take over the management of The Dell came to nothing sadly. It was meant to be a project where Kennet Prison would be involved too but ...
The Guardian newspaper has the story on its web site – see link above 'More than 50,000 abusive and offensive tweets were sent celebrating Labour MP Jo Cox's murder and lauding her killer, Thomas Mair, as a "hero" or "patriot" in the month following her death, prompting calls for the government to do more to tackle hate speech online. According to researchers on the social media site, the tweets were sent from at least 25,000 individuals and have been interpreted by hate crime campaigners as a sign of an emboldened extreme right wing support base.' One thing that social ...
Embed from Getty Images We've been hearing a lot recently about the 'post-truth' era and what that means for the world. Generally, this is framed as meaning that the truth doesn't matter any more; that it is becoming easier, and perhaps fully acceptable, for politicians to lie and get away with it. But I have started to wonder: what if it's worse than that? What if the post-truth era means that people now deny the very existence of truth? The roots of this lie in resentment towards politics as a whole. People have always dismissed politicians as 'all a bunch ...
I don't often read George Monbiot. He is far too polemical for my taste. But for some reason I read an article of his last week in the Guardian, and I found myself mainly agreeing. The article was an attack on the idea that Donald Trump's victory will bring prosperity back to the rustbelt. Its ... Continue reading What TalkTalk can teach us about the modern economy →
Since May 2016, the Liberal Democrats have been the clear winners when it comes to taking seats in local by-elections. Many campaigners will have seen the following graph: [IMG: bar-chart] With 21 seats gained, and only 1 lost, the net result of +20, with our vote share averaging up 9% is a good recovery which the party should be proud of. We need to continue to work hard, but at the same time, steady progress. Conventional thinking would have us believe that when a party is in Government, they do badly in elections. Conversely, opposition parties should be doing well. ...
Sarkozy and Juppé have pulled a "2010" – they both used praise of the third, assumed to be out of the race candidate in an attempt to pull votes from that person's camp, only to find that they had created a genuine rival for the big prize. But unlike in 2010, when Nick Clegg's Lib Dems actually lost seats in spite of all this, Francois Fillon is now Les Républicains choice of presidential candidate for the election next Spring. I have written previously about how I believe Marine Le Pen will win the run-off contest for French president in May ...
Liberal Democrat Newswire #87 came with the latest version of my poster about Liberal Democrat beliefs and principles.
A little piece of history was made this week. I became the first Mayor to make an official visit to Southport Mosque. The event was jointly organised by the Iman Soyful Alam and Vicar of Holy Trinity Rod Garner. Members of both faith groups sat down together to share an excellent meal prepared by Mosque. The meal was the first joint event and built on visits that have been taking place between the two groups for some time. Everyone was made very welcome and over the meal we all had the opportunity to get to know more about the activities ...
I walk alone into the woods
Embed from Getty Images Since the Referendum and in the reaction since the Autumn statement I've seen a worrying rise in the amount of abuse being directed to older members of society based on the notion that they are somehow groaning under the weight of so much cash, greedily demanding benefits, whilst denying subsequent generations access to the EU with their vote to leave. I am worried. We, as a society, seem to be lurching from one scapegoat to the next in a desperate attempt to blame anyone except ourselves for the state this country finds itself in. Whilst it ...
NASA Didn't Find Life on Mars—But It Did Find Something Very Cool West Wing not prophetic yet in this case. (tags: mars astronomy )
