Members of Moss Lane Allotments Associations are facing increased rents in the new year. A group of Southport allotment holders are digging in after being askled to pay a higher rate to rent their plots. Members of Moss Lane Allotments Associations have been told by letter that lot rental will rise from £65 to £80 in the new year. The association which manages the allotments has said that rent increase is inevitable and still offers greater value than council run plots. One plot holder, Jim Marshall, has argued that a price hike is unfair as he believes the plots are ...
The Ecclesbourne Valley Railway runs for nine miles from Duffield to Wirksworth in Derbyshire. It closed to passengers as early as 1947, but British Rail ran occassional excursions along the line and I travelled on one of them back in 1987. There was heavy stone traffic from the quarries around Wirksworth, but that did not save the line and it closed to freight in 1989. The good news is that it has now been reopened as a heritage line. I was there today and caught an ageing diesel multiple unit up to Wirksworth and back. I shall return in summer ...
Black Sails Season Three (15) A return to more thoughtful form for this series, as the British install a new Governor in Nassau and the pirates wonder what to do with the treasure (of Treasure Island fame), all culminating in a sea battle, a death and a promise of a grand finale in 2017. One of the best series to hit the small screen in recent years, this carries on being both brilliant and bonkers. Cast as long as a yard arm includes Toby Stephens, Luke Arnold, Zach McGowan, Hannah New, Jessica Parker Kennedy, Toby Schmitz and Clara Paget. Five ...
"I'm incredibly proud of what we've achieved this year." - Tim Farron
I don't make a New Year's Resolution every year; the last was two years ago, in Surinam, when I vowed to write and publish my childhood memoir, Eccles Cakes, which I successfully achieved this summer. But the Resolution I am making this time as I see 2016 out in Brazil is far more ambitious and is [...]
The Southport Visiter has the story on its web site – see link above 'Volunteers at Queenscourt Hospice have been left devastated after vandals made off with Christmas tree lights from outside their BoxTree Kitchen.' What on earth possessed folk to steal from a hospice? Appalling, utterly appalling and in the season of good will as well. My good friend Roy Connell spotted this so sad story.
An old friend writes: "I remember a short story (but not the title or the author) I read many years ago, in which a man travelled into the future; was surprised, when he arrived, to see the streets mostly deserted and the roads and buildings uncared-for; is picked up by men in white coats who think there's something wrong with him for just wandering around; and learns that in this future world the only goal of humanity is to get themselves permanently wired up to a virtual reality device in which they can live out their favourite fantasies." Does that ...
Here is a list of my top 10 cultural experiences of 2016: Onegin – Royal Opera House Running Wild - Regents Park Open Air Theatre Christmas Carols – Royal Albert Hall Bernard Cribbins read out of .. well, a Christmas Carol.. Tosca - Royal Opera House Stravinsky at the Proms – [...]
So, that was 2016 - a year that many of us won't be too upset to see the back of. For the last few years I've generally made predictions on New Year's Eve for the coming year - some serious and some not quite so serious. However, I decided to sit it out last year - in part because I'm not spending the same time on the blog I once did, but also because I genuinely believed the UK would vote to leave the EU and also suspected Donald Trump's chances of winning the US Presidency were higher than many ...
Over the next few days, we will be publishing our twelve most read posts of 2016. Many thanks to the 533,000 people who have visited the site over the past tumultuous 12 months. The runner-up is Duncan Brack's analysis of how the seats in which there is most Lib Dem interest voted in the EU Referendum. It's obvious from the maps published after the referendum that several former Liberal Democrat seats voted remain - Cambridge, Bath, Cheltenham, Lewes and others. It's equally obvious that plenty didn't - all of them in Cornwall and Devon, for example. But because the results ...
I read only 212 books this year, which is my lowest total since 2006. Basically this is because I got sucked into feeding from the information firehose of social media around the times of both the Brexit referendum and the US Presidential election; I read precisely three books in November, which I think is the lowest since I started bookblogging at the end of 2003. It is addictive, but I get much more from reading books and have managed to restore the balance in the last few weeks. Non-fiction 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 37 47 48 ...
The new London home for the Design Museum, in the former Commonwealth Institute building on the edge of Holland Park, has been praised for the way it has restored the beautiful hyperbolic paraboloid concrete roof.
The sequence of events feels almost surreal. During the referendum campaign several former generals, including Lord Guthrie, came out in favour of Brexit, supposedly over fears that the EU is about to create an EU army. In the swirl of half-stories it was not clear what was actually being said: there has been shared policy on security and defence for a long time, which became the Common Security and Defence Policy in the Lisbon Treaty. Crucially, anyone with a grip on the different stories of EU member states would be aware that this is very complicated — particularly because of ...
Sat 31st
12:39
H L Mencken wrote that for every complex question there is an obvious answer that is clear, simple a...
H L Mencken wrote that for every complex question there is an obvious answer that is clear, simple and wrong. And you know, probably never has a more true word been spoken especially if you look at our troubled times in 2016. Remember the simple answers that the Brexiters poured all over the UK electorate to manipulate them into voting to leave the EU? Remember the simplistic answers Trump gave the US electors to get them to vote for him? Or how about 'Brexit means Brexit', just about the only thing of note our Prime Minister has had to say ...
Books read this week: Last Exit to Babylon - Volume 4: The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny The Listener, by Tove Jansson Christmas Days, by Jeanette Winterson The Case of the Missing Books, by Ian Sansom Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships, by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethà What Makes This Book So Great: Re-Reading the Classics of Fantasy and SF, by Jo Walton Brain Fetish, by Kinga Korska Books read this month Non-fiction: 4 (2016 total 37/212, 17%) Alexander the Great: The Hunt for a New Past, by Paul ...
Over the next few days, we will be publishing our twelve most read posts of 2016. Many thanks to the 533,000 people who have visited the site over the past tumultuous 12 months. In 3rd place is a piece from Ciaran McGonagle criticising one of Donald Trump's potential choices for US Secretary of State. Unfortunately, the guy who did get it, Exxon Mobii's Rex Tillerson, is arguably even worse. [IMG: john-bolton] News that John Bolton is being considered for the role of Secretary of State in President-elect Trump's administration should give liberals, multi-lateralists, indeed anyone who values human rights and ...
Many thanks to everyone who has been a reader in 2016, whether on this site, on email with Liberal Democrat Newswire and my email digests, on social media or in book format.
As we leave behind what can only be described as a pretty dreadful 2016, the bad news is that 2017 may not be much better. That is because the decisions that were made this year are going to come back to haunt us over the next 12 months. In particular, the election of Donald Trump and the rather concerning axis he is forming with Vladamir Putin against China, but also the disastrous vote to leave the EU that threatens to plunge this country into recession, put up the cost of living for millions of people and will see thousands of ...
Late last night we published the news that Shirley Williams has been made a Companion of Honour in the New Year Honours. But she is not the only Lib Dem to be honoured today. Embed from Getty Images Sir Steve Webb – as we will now know him – has been claimed by many to be the best Pensions Minister the country has known. Before his Parliamentary career he was Professor of Social Policy at the University of Bath, so had an unprecedented level of knowledge and understanding in his field of expertise. Ex staffer Tony Halmos is awarded the ...
There has been much debate, especially on Maghull's Facebook community pages about the state of and indeed future of the public toilet block in Maghull's Leighton Avenue which serves the Town's shopping centre. I have mentioned these toilets many times before on this blog site, toilets which were once award winning in the 1980's but that have sadly been in a steady decline ever since. They have in fact been closed recently due to vandalism and this was the scene on 29th December – They were very firmly locked up:- [IMG: wp_20161229_16_03_50_pro] When I was a member of Maghull Town ...
[IMG: 7th] On the seventh day of Christmas, ALDC gave to me... a great email to wish your local party members a happy new year! Share your highlights with fellow members and supporters and try to encourage them to get along to your next event. Just two weeks ago we won three Council by-elections to make 2016 [...]
How many times this year have you heard people say "I've never known a year as awful as 2016." I have some sympathy with what they are saying. I don't think I've ever known a year when so many friends have lost loved ones – parents and children. It's not just my age. Some of those friends have been much younger. For me, it seems that so many of the key influences on me as I was growing up have gone. I felt the sudden loss of Victoria Wood particularly strongly. I was one of the few never to have ...
Making any predictions for an upcoming year has become a perilous exercise recently. One only has to look at the Tory majority the experts (who people are now sick of as a result, apparently) said was less likely than an asteroid striking the Earth that did indeed take place, or the double punch of Brexit and Trump this year to see that telling people what is going to happen in the upcoming twelve month period will probably leave you with egg on your face at the end of it. But I can't resist. So here goes: this is what I ...
I have very mixed feelings about seeing Liberal Democrat colleagues in honours lists. As with the knighthood for former MP and pensions maestro Steve Webb and the Companion of Honour for Shirley Williams it is great to see those who have contributed so much to improving the lives of others rewarded. Tim Farron has rightly been critical of the many honours handed out to members of a very under-performing department, HMRC. Steve and Shirley do, by contrast, have positive contributions to our society and fellow citizens to justify being honoured. And yet... compared to those who put their lives physically ...
Honours lists are a minefield. Every country has them in some shape or form, and who gets honoured is a matter of great subjectivity. But leaving aside the rights and wrongs of who gets what, the British are relatively rare in that they give certain honours that change the courtesy title of the person who has been honoured: 'Sir', 'Dame', 'Lord', etc. And that's where good journalists need to distinguish between admiration and sycophancy. Too often, they don't.I have many misgivings about the British honours system, but there's no question Andy Murray deserves the knighthood he has been given. He ...
Over the next few days, we will be publishing our twelve most read posts of 2016. Many thanks to the 533,000 people who have visited the site over the past tumultuous 12 months. Our 4th most popular post highlights Justice Secretary Liz Truss. Lib Dem peer Martin Thomas found an old LDYS newsletter from Liz's days as a Lib Dem. A classic, I'm sure you will agree.. If it hadn't been for one of our peers moving house, we might never have had this wee gem fall into our hands. We know that new Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor Liz ...
Auld Lang Syne Should auld acquaintance be forgot,And never brought to mind?Should auld acquaintance be forgot,And auld lang syne? CHORUS:For auld lang syne, my dear,For auld lang syne,We'll tak a cup of kindness yet,For auld lang syne! And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp,And surely I'll be mine,And we'll tak a cup o kindness yet,For auld lang syne! We twa hae run about the braes,And pou'd the gowans fine,But we've wander'd monie a weary fit,Sin auld lang syne. We twa hae paidl'd in the burnFrae morning sun till dine,But seas between us braid hae roar'dSin auld lang syne. And there's a ...
People may be ready to pay an extra penny on income tax to fund the NHS and social care, Tim Farron has said. But it is a policy with a double risk, one political and one economic.
Rogue One Really, Really Wants You to Like It—And That's A Problem Emily Asher-Perton's spoiler-filled review. (tags: films sf )
I have seen a lot of people, over the last few weeks, putting the blame on various different factors for Hillary Clinton's loss. "It was the FBI!", "It was BernieBros!", "It was Putin!", "It was Jill Stein!", "it was fake ... Continue reading →
