So, another year has begun, and there are resolutions to make, goals to set, that sort of thing. Or, in my case, not. I'm not really that good at resolutions - willpower is not one of my historic strengths, and it really shouldn't need an arbitrary date to convince me to start on a new quest. But where does the beginning of 2017 find this particular liberal bureaucrat, apart from the Swiss Alps? I'm forty pounds lighter than I was this time last year, which equates to about four inches around the waist and an inch at the collar. I ...
Happy new year. I'm still in a pretty wretched state after the Christmas period — in the last twelve days my average speed has been forty miles per hour (not an exaggeration) and that kind of thing gets to you ... Continue reading →
Charles Masterman is my favourite Edwardian Liberal. Here he is in 1910 as Chuchill's deputy as the home office commenting on proposals for a by-law prohibiting roller skating on the pavements of the Metropolitan Borough of Stoke Newington: "It is always the amusement of the poor which is found intolerable by the middle classes. A very good case could be made out for prohibiting hide-and-seek and other children's games (elderly passengers are knocked down) dancing with street organs or whatever other children's amusements are possible in a town where not one in ten of them ever reaches a public park ...
Embed from Getty Images Tim Farron has replied to Theresa May's new year message, In it, she said: "I am there to get the right deal not just for those who voted to leave, but for every single person in this country."But Tim is having none of it. He says: "After months of platitudes and driving us headlong towards a hard Brexit out of the single market, threatening jobs and our economic security, a few empty words are utterly meaningless. "If the prime minister cannot even deliver on the words she gave when she campaigned for remain, why should we ...
Charlie Brooker's 2016 Screenwipe was as much a wake for liberalism as a comedy, and I have not watched Cunk on Christmas properly yet. But my vote for the funniest programme on television this Christmas goes to Peter Pan Goes Wrong. Stage productions do not often benefit from being transferred to the small screen, but this was a triumphant exception. David Ralf's review for The Stage gets it right: While there's a slightly feverish sense that Mischief Theatre have tried to cram every joke from the stage show into this one-hour slot, it does mean that the gag rate is ...
If you agree with Unsworth and Bury Liberal Democrats that building thousands of houses on green belt land in Unsworth is the wrong move for our area, then please get involved. The two most important things you must do right now (and certainly before the consultation closes at midnight on 16th January 2017) is register your objection on the GMSF portal and sign our petition). Full links and instructions are below. Writing your objection It's important to include your full name and address. Indicate which specific allocations you are objecting to. In Unsworth, the following allocations directly affect us: 14.6 ...
[IMG: [personal profile] ] sfred and I just kicked off 2017 by going to see Lazarus at the King's Cross Theatre, the 'David Bowie Musical, inspired by the novel The Man Who Fell To Earth, by Walter Tevis'. It's a very singular piece of theatre. It has a Brechtian sense of alienation, and I found it hard to engage with. Bowie has done Brecht before - Baal, directed by Alan Clarke and an equally singular piece of 1980s TV - so it's unclear whether this alienation effect is deliberate or, as it could be, the result of someone unfamiliar with ...
The Q 2 update to my database of voting intention opinion polls since 1943 (the most comprehensive such dataset) is now out.
TrainWorld, the new-ish train museum at the old Schaerbeek railway station in the north of Brussels, has been advertising a temporary Tintin exhibition, and F and I decided to go on the last afternoon of the year, yesterday. Well, our verdict is that if you are into trains, it's probably a lot of fun; but if you are into Tintin, it's probably a better investment of time and money to head down to Louvain-la-Neuve for the Hergé Museum. There is one quite nice room with original Hergé manuscripts and early editions of the stories which are most closely linked to ...
It's becoming a New Year's Day tradition that I do a post about my reading over the previous year. Once again, it's seen a lot of books being read – 95 in total – and the Goodreads website provides a nice graphic that sums it all up and picks out some of the key books, [...]
Last year Liberal Democrats started winning again. Our wins in the May elections, our victory in local council elections and our stunning win in Richmond were great progress. Those wins combined with our thousands of new members means the Liberal Democrats are back. We started winning again because people want champions for an open, tolerant, generous, internationalist, progressive kind of country. This year our ambitions are for the United Kingdom to remain in the European Union, Scotland to remain in the UK and Scotland to adopt a progressive programme to make us the best again. Liberal Democrats are the only ...
It's not been the busiest of blogging years for me, but there have still been a few posts here. Which were the most popular? Most popular overall was actually from 2014: Why do people join political parties (and why don't they do it now?) This is a post that's managed (thanks to a vaguely clickbaity title) to get itself high up in Google searches for various terms and it's rare for a day to go by without it getting some hits. Of posts actually written this year, the top five turned out to be: 5) Is Will Quince MP psychic? ...
2016 was a year when the unexpected happened. Britain voted for Brexit. Donald Trump is going to be President of America. Leicester City won the Premier League. So what you won't get from me are any predictions for 2017. We go into the New Year surrounded by uncertainty. The Government has no plan for Brexit. No plan for life outside the Single Market. Our NHS and social care system is in crisis. We have a refugee crisis on our doorstep. There is widespread insecurity in our economy, in our world and in the lives of too many of our fellow ...
So, it's finally gone, this year of a 'plague on all your houses'. It's the 53rd year that I've seen an end to and whilst the world is probably not sitting in its most dangerous place compared to other year ends during that period I would think that 2016 probably makes it into the top ... Continue reading 2016 – A Year To Remember.....And Forget
Our former MP Steve Webb has been awarded a knighthood in the New Year's Honours List. He was our MP from 1997 to 2015, and Minister of State for Pensions in the coalition government. Since last year Steve has been the Director of Policy at the large mutual insurer Royal London, a role that allows him to carry on raising issues about pensions and other areas of public policy. He pops up on Moneybox or the Today programme from time to time, but unfortunately because of this role he's not able to engage actively in party politics. We wish Sir ...
An anthem for 2017? These are the decadent days These are the decadent waysWe shall see, but Hazel O'Connor remains a goddess.
You would think I should take some comfort from the fact that the Prime Minister used her new year message to reassure those who voted for Britain to stay in the European Union that she will fight for their interests "around the negotiating table in Europe this year". The Guardian quotes her as saying: "We all want to see a Britain that is stronger than it is today. We all want a country that is fairer so that everyone has the chance to succeed. We all want a nation that is safe and secure for our children and grandchildren. These ...
I run an email list dedicated just to the stories I cover about election law, how our elections are administered and those election expenses stories. Just sign up below if you'd like the convenience of getting notifications about such stories straight into your inbox. There'll be no more than one email a day and it'll average out at a much lower frequency than that. (Note: if you're already signed up for a daily email alert with all my new blog posts, then there's no need to sign up for these alerts too as the stories will also be in the ...
I'm no socialist and no Labour supporter but I have often felt that the media has had it in for Corbyn. Yes, of course he is no great leader of men and women but he does have principles even if I don't subscribe to them personally. For what it is worth my view is that he has done the right thing in taking the Labour Party back to its socialist roots. However, with regard to the EU Referendum Labour, under his leadership, has adopted more opposing positions than you can shake a stick at! It was obvious from day one ...
[IMG: day-8-christmas] On the eighth day of Christmas, I gave to ALDC... £50 for their 50th anni-ver-sa-ry! Happy New Year!!! This year is ALDC's 50th Anniversary and we need your help to make it an extra special year of Liberal Democrat elections. In 2016, more and more people chose to support the Liberal Democrats, giving us a huge boost [...]
The job of the journalist is to find a good way to sell a story, ideally with a snappy headline. We are generally observers and describers, rather than actors, but in 2017 it will be vital for those who believe in a compassionate approach to the world to take a giant leaf out of journalism's book and find a vision, a narrative or even a slogan which can encapsulate and sell this better way.In 2016, the world seemed to be heading towards a new catastrophic era. We had the terrorist attacks in Brussels, Nice and Berlin; we had the clampdown ...
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 most read post of the year, and our 6th of all time was written by Sir Vince Cable, just one week after the Referendum. He set out a challenging reality check. For our party and its supporters in the country the last few years have brought one defeat after another: local councils, devolved government, national government, AV referendum, now the EU referendum. There is a limit ...
2016 has ended and 2017 has arrived. I spoke of how bad a year 2016 was and I spoke about a few positives I still found during that 12 month period. But, the thing is that 2016 is in the ...
The Origins of Princess Leia's Hairstyle Inspired by a Mexican revolutionary! (tags: mexico sf ) Trump, Putin and the Pipelines to Nowhere An alarming analysis. (tags: uspolitics russia climatechange ) How Watership Down was written Richard Adams' granddaughter reminisces. (tags: sf writing ) George Michael and Me Moving. (tags: Music Death )
It's here. We've bid the often crushing 2016 farewell and now have to face up to its consequences. In politics and world affairs, Brexit and the election of Donald Trump have signified a terrifying and undoubtedly disastrous change in direction. The irony of powerful rich men railing against political elites has not yet been realised by the general population. As liberals we really have our work cut out for us to challenge a chilling new orthodoxy of national selfishness, of scapegoating, insularity and the unravelling of decades of international European and transatlantic co-operation. The hideous and entirely preventable suffering we ...
