It's time to get the Flower of Gloster to London and her buyer - we left her at Market Drayton in Shropshire. On the journey to Wolverhampton 10-year-old Mike gets lost, but no one seems to concerned. More worrying is the wrong turn they take down a derelict canal, wasting valuable time. They arrive at Gas Street Basin, then part of a working canal rather than the tourist destination it is today. Mike wanders off again and is this time picked up by the authorities and taken to a hostel for the children of families who on the working boats. ...
Tim Farron has been campaigning for our by-election candidates, Rebecca Hanson in Copeland and Dr Zulfiqar Ali in Stoke-on Trent Central. His day started in Keswick where he and Rebecca met a Flood Action Group: #CopelandByElection #LibDemFightback As an experienced flooding Councillor I'd be proud to support Keswick Flood action group as MP pic.twitter.com/E6ZAIoS5VP — Rebecca Hanson (@hanson4copeland) February 14, 2017 From the Times and Star reports: The Westmorland and Lonsdale MP believes that Mrs Hanson is an "astonishingly good" candidate for Copeland. He said: "Her track record for campaigning on health service issues is known across the constituency and ...
Embed from Getty Images Today's news is all about Paul Nuttall's withdrawal of his claim to have lost a close friend in the Hillsborough tragedy. He says he can produce witnesses who will swear he was in the crowd that day. The time has come when he must do so. But the more significant story involving him may be this one by Owen Bennett on Huffington Post: Nigel Farage is refusing to do any more campaigning for Ukip in the Stoke Central by-election after falling out with the new leader's closest advisor ...Farage last week appeared at a rally in ...
"Populism often takes the form of rich people persuading the poor that the problems they face are caused not be economic injustice or exploitation but by foreigners and a corrupt 'establishment'." William Wallace dissects our current enemy. Simon Wessely explains why we shouldn't close the child refugee scheme. Paul Evans argues that modern demand for transparency has fatally weakened parliamentary democracy. Hear him. "Then there is perhaps the most monstrous application of racial terror in our historical register: Aug. 28, 1955, when 14-year-old Emmett Till was lynched." Jason Parham on a notorious case. Do bowlers get overlooked as England captain ...
The Corbynistas have gone quiet - unless he is facing a leadership challenge their idol does not give them much to enthuse them about. But it is not so long since anyone - a individual, the Guardian, the bulk of Labour MPs - who expressed less than wholehearted support for Corbyn was met with the question: "Why doesn't X just join the Tories?" Now one of Corbyn's critics has done just that. Leon Spence, who was elected as the Labour county councillor for Whitwick in 2013, resigned from the party to sit as an Independent last September when Corbyn was ...
Tue 14th
18:53
It is time to save lives by defining where you can park your car or market stall in Ludlow
It's been something of a nightmare. Since the clampdown on parking in the market area was launched last spring, people have been fined because it is simply not clear where you can and cannot park in our town centre. We also have a problem with vehicles blocking access to Quality Square, College Court and Church Street. More than 50 people live beyond the Quality Square arch, most of them elderly. We must guarantee fire and ambulance access to Quality Square throughout the day and night. Market stalls sometimes spread onto the access area as well, especially outside White Stuff. After ...
The council has had an application for 8 dwellings. If you have any questions, just ask us.
Some of the 300 respectable ladies and gents who were described as a screaming mob when they dared to protest about the Mayor's plans to build on part of Calderstones Park Today the council's planning committee met to consider the ... Continue reading →
As the temperatures warm up and daffodils begin to emerge, Spring seems to be just around the corner and my thoughts turn again to the garden but this time, not with a year full of plans or planting schemes but in packing away the gardening tools and moving house. After seventeen years it will be strange to start afresh but we will take a lot of family memories with us from the garden. It was never an elegant garden, not so much designed as emerging from an irregular, uncooperative patch of brambles, rubble and topsoil scraped over a patch of ...
An application has been submitted to South Glos Council to demolish the Railway Inn near Yate Station and the Barber's Shop next door, with a view to redeveloping on the land - but it doesn't say what the redevelopment might be. This local landmark is almost 200 years old and "locally listed", but that doesn't seem to be adequate protection against redeveloping the site. There's no sign of any effort being made to reuse this historic building, which is part of the character of this old part of Yate. Even if it's shown that it can no longer be used ...
Newry and Armagh includes most of the old County Armagh plus the town of Newry. 59.1% of the vote delivered four Nationalist MLAs in 2015, and 35.0% (counting in the votes for independent candidate and former DUP MLA Paul Berry) got Unionists two. 2016 result DUP 7,980 (16.7%, +3.6%) 1 seat UUP 6,745 (14.1%, -4.6%) 1 seat UKIP 315 (0.7%) Independents 2,603 (5.5%) CISTA 1,032 (2.2%) Alliance 493 (1.0%) Green (NI) 335 (0.7%) Sinn Féin 19,514 (40.9%, +0.1%) 3 seats SDLP 8,698 (18.2%, -5.3%) 1 seat 2017 candidates @William Irwin (DUP) @Danny Kennedy (UUP) Jackie Coade (Alliance) Rowan Tunnicliffe (Green) ...
Strangford is another heavily Unionist seat, taking in Newtownards, Comber, the Peninsula and Saintfield. 70.1% of the vote (and that doesn't include an independent from that part of the spectrum) delivered five Unionist MLAs last time, the combined Nationalist vote of 10.3% being less than Alliance's 10.7%, thus enabling Alliance to take the sixth seat. 2016 result DUP 14,037 (43.0%, -5.8%) 3 seats UUP 6,367 (19.5%, -0.9%) 2 seats TUV 1,407 (4.3%, +1.5%) UKIP 759 (2.3%, +0.3%) Conservatives 314 (1.0%) Alliance 3,499 (10.7%, -3.7%) 1 seat Independents 1,947 (6.0%) Green 924 (2.8%) SDLP 2,724 (8.3%, -0.2%) Sinn Féin 661 (2.0%, ...
[IMG: 2017] We've gathered together some of the essential campaign templates for you to easily adapt for your own elections. Do let us know if there is anything else that you need and any feedback. In partnership with Election Workshop, we've produced a year-long plan full of templates and print offers. You can use the guide to [...]
[IMG: DSC04019] Liberal Democrats in Parliament and local government have become increasingly distressed by the real terms cuts that England's primary and secondary schools will face in the next few years. A recent report by the National Audit Office found that schools must find savings of around £3 billion by 2020 to cope with mounting cost pressures. [...]
I'm pretty sure that British media have carried many interviews with EU citizens living and working in the UK about their thoughts about Brexit (and especially a "hard", complete Brexit), and about whether they want to stay or leave now that Brexit seems inevitable. I want to point to one case: the Dutch/Finnish modern musician Juha van't Zelfde, who from 2014 was artistic director of the multimedia cultural center "Lighthouse" in Brighton. Because the outlooks of him and his girlfriend point to two terrains where the Brexit votes (referendum & parliament), the reactions in British society, and the perspectives for ...
A key test for any society must surely be how it looks after those most in need. Surely no one decent can fail to be moved by that heart wrenching photo of Alan Kurdi, the young Syrian boy washed up, dead, on a Turkish beach. How then, can this government turn its back on thousands of child refugees, breaking its own promises as well as any moral decency? I've been concerned about refugee issues for decades - it's one of the reasons I went into politics in the first place. As the MP for Cambridge, I served as the Chair ...
This morning's Telegraph View column is entitled "Most Britons don't share Ken Loach's dystopian vision of his country". I agree. In fact, of all the failings of the British Left over the last decade, perhaps the largest is a consistent over-egging of how bad certain problems are, resulting in a "cry wolf" factor when a crisis really does come along. But the Telegraph piece shows a great lack of self-awareness in one key respect: the Right engages in dystopian porn, by that I mean a sort of fetishisation of how bad everything supposedly is, as much as the Left does. ...
Petition the government not to abandon the Dubs scheme for child refugees please. Interesting post on the potential realignment in British politics OfC while Andrew is right in everything he says here, I think it's worth bearing in mind it's ALWAYS women, LGBT folk, BAME folk and the disabled that get thrown under the bus. Its almost like the kyriarchy will use any excuse to reassert and reinforce itself. It's a good point he makes about us all being multi-faceted and multi-identity, but I suspect that's not going to make a difference, sadly. [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
So tonight was the biggest single hustings that will take place in Stoke-on-Trent Central. Hosted by Staffordshire University and The Stoke Sentinel this was 8 of the invited candidates – including the British National Party and the Monster Raving Looney. It was quite an affair. But at one point, having stumbled previously, the UKIP candidate was challenged to name again the 6 towns of the City and he managed it just. He didn't forget Fenton (damn you Arnold Bennett), but he still called it Stoke not Stoke-upon-Trent. I suspect he doesn't know the reasoning or the difference of the Stoke-on-Trent ...
Last week, when media attention was focussed on the Article 50 vote in Parliament, the Government quietly back-tracked on the previous commitment to help unaccompanied child refugees. Previously the 'Dubs amendment' had secured a commitment, with all-Party support, to take in 3,000 unaccompanied child refugees. The Government is now closing the door on child refugees with only 300 in the country. Bury, along with 22 other North West Local Authorities, responded to a request from the Home Office and agreed to oversee 4 of these vulnerable young people whom were being moved from France under a National Transfer Scheme for ...
The Independent features a House of Lords report which claims that the Government is "worryingly complacent" over how it will enforce environmental regulations after the UK leaves the European Union. Peers believe that European institutions, such as the Commission and the Court of Justice have played a key role in ensuring member states upheld EU environmental regulations, with threat of heavy fines having a significant "deterrent effect". As a result, campaign groups like ClientEarth have also been able to take the Government to court in the UK to force it to come up with an effective plan to cut air ...
I have today launched my February 2017 Update to West End Community Council. Subjects covered are : • Seabraes Lift• Riverside Drive improvements • West End Road Safety Improvements You can download a copy of the Community Council Update here. The Community Council meeting takes place at Logie St John's (Cross) Church Hall in Shaftesbury Terrace at 7pm tonight - all residents welcome!
[IMG: the-scotch-has-a-new-wig] It's not so long ago that the Scotch Piper pub suffered a really bad fire which destroyed its thatched roof. My posting on the day of the fire is available via the link below:- Now after weeks of being behind scaffolding and plastic sheeting the new almost finished new thatched roof is there for all to see and it's looking good. Click on the photo to enlarge it The photo is amongst my Flickr shots at:- www.flickr.com/photos/86659476@N07/
[IMG: 13511053_1614311592194015_4578317925991669418_n] I've signed, will you?
On 10 April 2016 the cost of a bulky waste collection increased from £15 for up to 3 items, with up to 2 additional items for £5 each, to £30 for up to 5 items – that is the minimum charge has doubled from £15 to £30. Given the number of residents that have been in touch about this, this price increase has come as a shock to some. One of the most frequent issues that you contact us about is fly tipping, sometimes this is large scale fly-tipping in semi-rural areas, but often it is waste left in 'back ...
Clinton's Ground Game Didn't Cost Her The Election Very interesting data-driven analysis. (tags: uspolitics )
I've had a couple of experiences on Twitter recently which I'm going to generalise into a statement about the whole of British politics at the moment, like a proper columnist would, or something. (I'm being flippant because this is one ... Continue reading →
