Not just semaphore signals, but a very fine splitting distant. That means I took this photo while there was still an Up Goods line from Little Bowden Junction to Desborough North. It was lifted as part of the Leicester to Bedford resignalling project, which dates this one to before 1983. The locomotive approaching from south is a Class 25 hauling what looks to be a departmental train or a very mixed freight. Note too the grass of the Dainite sports ground, which has long since had houses built on it.
Sun 19th
21:23
Abuse of Trust: Frank Beck and the Leicestershire Children's Homes Scandal by Mark D'Arcy and Paul G...
Abuse of Trust: Frank Beck and the Leicestershire Children's Homes Scandal Mark D'Arcy and Paul Gosling Canbury Press, 2016 In 1991 Frank Beck was sentenced to five life-terms for sexual and physical assaults against more than one hundred children in his care while he worked for Leicestershire County Council. He was sentenced to a further 24 years on 17 charges of abuse, including rape. Mark D'Arcy (now the BBC's political correspondent) and Paul Gosling published the first edition of this book in 1998. Now it has been reissued with a significant extra chapter. It begins: Throughout the Frank Beck trail ...
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 469th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere ... Featuring the five most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (12-18 February, 2017), together with a hand-picked seven you might otherwise have missed. Don't forget: you can sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox — just click here — ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging. As ever, let's start with the most popular post, and work our way down: 1. If Labour hold Stoke Central, it'll be ...
I was in Sweden last week, Stockholm to be precise, visiting museums and sampling Swedish food. There were some migrants there, working in the cafes, bars and restaurants. They were nearly all from the UK or Ireland - certainly the ones I spoke to were. There was also an ethnic minority community which appeared to be well-integrated. There were no signs of simmering discontent from anyone other
Current Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (a chapter a month) To Lie with Lions, by Dorothy Dunnett The Wild Robot, by Peter Brown Bernice Summerfield and the Doomsday Manuscript, by Justin Richards Last books finished THEN: Science Fiction Fandom in the U.K., 1930-1980, by Rob Hansen Short Trips: Time Signature, ed. Simon Guerrier Broken Homes, by Ben Aaronovitch The Raven and the Reindeer, by T. Kingfisher [Ursula Vernon] The Eye of the Tyger, by Paul McAuley The Wild Robot, by Peter Brown (did not finish) Last week's audios The King of Sontar, by John Dorney White Ghosts, by ...
This week the House of Lords starts its 5 days of deliberation on the Article 50 Bill. The Brexiteers in Government have basically told them not to muck about with it or else. David Davis has even told them that it's their patriotic duty to simply vote in favour of it. Actually, there's a very strong argument that it is their patriotic duty to put a brake on this Government's relentless pursuit of the most damaging Brexit possible – Tony Blair's "Brexit at all costs." Hard Brexit doesn't quite capture how relentlessly difficult the lives of many of the poorest ...
Shropshire Council will debate its council tax level for 2017/18 on Thursday. It is proposing to increase council tax by 3.99% - of which 2% will be specifically for adult social care. Here are the proposed council tax demands from April. These figures are inclusive of Shropshire Council's, Ludlow Town Council's and police and fire charges. The Police and Crime Commissioner's office is not increasing its precept for the next financial year. Shropshire & Wrekin Fire Authority is putting its charge up by 5.77%. Across the county, parish and town councils are raising their precepts by an average of 5.77%. ...
TV espionage thriller The Bureau is refreshingly different for it's not American, British nor even Scandinavian. Instead, it's a highly praised French drama.
When I was growing up in Lincolnshire one of the great 'urban myths' in the school ground was that Jimi Hendrix played Spalding. Only recently did it emerge that in fact this was no myth, but a hard solid evidential truth. On Spring Bank Holiday Monday May 29th 1967 he played at the Buld Auction Sheds. Now it is a matter of some legend as to whether people were there or not. In fact, given the truths emerging in Stoke-on-Trent I am wondering if Paul Nuttall saw Jimi Hendrix in Spalding back then – I better check his website... (joke) ...
North Belfast is the most divided part of the city, Unionists and Nationalists winning three seats each here in 2016 with 47.7% and 37.1% respectively. 2016 result DUP 12,783 (35.0%, -2.1%) 3 seats UUP 1,972 (5.4%, -2.8%) PUP 1,238 (3.4%) UKIP 751 (2.1%) TUV 644 (1.8%) Alliance 2,569 (7.0%, +0.9%) PBP 1,286 (3.5%) Green 796 (2.2%) WP 476 (1.3%, +0.3%) Inds 330 (0.9%) NILRC 127 (0.3%) NI First 32 (0.1%) SF 9,704 (26.5%, -5.4%) 2 seats SDLP 3,866 (10.6%, -1.4%) 1 seat 2017 candidates @Paula Bradley (DUP) @William Humphrey (DUP) @Nelson McCausland (DUP) Robert Foster (UUP) Julie-Anne Corr-Johnston (PUP) Nuala ...
[IMG: 7 best] Many thanks to the 14,700 visitors who dropped by Lib Dem Voice this week. Here's our 7 most-read posts... P-9: What Labour just don't get about Stoke-on-Trent (19 comments) by Ed Fordham Brexit – a view from the Continent (48 comments) by Robert Harrison The campaign against Brexit continues (36 comments) by Nick Hopkinson Breaking: Stoke on Trent Lib Dems challenge Labour to condemn "offensive and illegal texts" (20 comments) by The Voice Donald Trump, Twitter and Distraction (11 comments) by Caron Lindsay Labour leaflet: It's a lie to say Labour opposes Brexit (22 comments) by Caron ...
Upper Bann</b> stretches from the southern shore of Lough Neagh, through Lurgan, Craigavon and Portadown to Banbridge and my ancestral home of Loughbrickland. In 2016 Unionists won four seats with 59.3% of the vote, and Nationalists won two with 34.4%. 2016 result DUP 14,188 (31.1%, +4.0%) 2 seats UUP 9,884 (21.6%, -3.0%) 2 seats TUV 1,177 (2.6%, +0.2%) UKIP 1,072 (2.3%, +1.7%) PUP 704 (1.5%) Conservatives 79 (0.2%) Alliance 1,424 (3.1%, -3.4%) CISTA 672 (1.5%) Green 495 (1.1%) NI Labour 250 (0.5%) Independent 33 (0.1%) Sinn Féin 11,373 (24.9%, -2.3%) 2 seats (+1) SDLP 4,335 (9.5%, -1.9%) (-1) 2017 candidates ...
Recently, for reasons related to my academic research, I've been reading quite a bit about nationalism and aspects of the so-called "right to secede". As part of that, I've looked at how we make distinctions between, on the one hand, "liberal nationalism" and "ethnic nationalism". This is a politically fraught area, but one that can manifest itself in how we define who "the people" are. When it comes to deciding who has the right to vote, our laws on citizenship are typically the defining factor, but those citizenship laws themselves can say the lot about a nation, the State that ...
Sun 19th
15:47
Three times Jeremy Corbyn declined to raise human rights abuses backed by Russia with Russian ambass...
Three times Jeremy Corbyn was asked to raised concerns over Russia's human rights record in Syria with the Russian ambassador. Three times he passed up.
A candidate in the Stoke byelection has been arrested on suspicion of stirring up racial hatred... Barbara Fielding, 78, who is standing as an independent, was arrested after a complaint about her website, which calls for all immigrants to be repatriated and warns of a "seeping tide of Islamic warriors". Police seized her mobile phone and computer and later released her on bail until next month... Staffordshire police confirmed that a 78-year-old woman had been arrested under section 19 of the Public Order Act 1986, which makes it an offence to publish or distribute written material which may stir up ...
One of the things we can be most proud of is that we ensured that this country was committed in law to providing 0.7% of GDP in foreign aid to provide things like food, humanitarian aid, water, schooling and protection for women and girls at risk of abuse to the poorest places on the planet. Now it seems that the Brexiteers in government plan to divert some of that money to EU countries to advance our position in the Brexit negotiations. That doesn't strike us as being what it's for. Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesperson Tom Brake has called the ...
Hooray! More details here. Since I just crunched the numbers for the Clarke submission list, here are the Goodreads/Librarything stats for the BSFA Best Novel shortlist: Goodreads LibraryThing owners av rating owners av rating A Closed and Common Orbit — Becky Chambers 11905 4.42 116 4.34 Occupy Me — Tricia Sullivan 712 3.41 26 3.5 Europe in Winter — Dave Hutchinson 337 4.14 37 3.75 Daughter of Eden — Chris Beckett 443 4.19 10 4.25 Azanian Bridges — Nick Wood 198 3.7 19 3.13 Best Short Fiction (None appears to be online yet) Malcolm Devlin - The End of Hope Street Jaine Fenn - Liberty Bird Una McCormack - Taking ...
When politicans get sponsorship from private companies you need to ask do they serve that company or the public! Two things have made me ponder over the past few days about the nature of community politics. In some ways this ... Continue reading →
When Liberal Democrats have talked about offering a referendum on the Brexit deal, they have had tonnes of abuse shovelled at them from outraged Brexiteers. We're undemocratic, they say. We're not willing to accept the will of the people. How on earth giving the people a say on whether their government has interpreted their wishes correctly is undemocratic is beyond me, but to the Boris Johnsons, and Iain Duncan Smiths and Theresa Mays of this world, it makes sense. That would be the people with power who don't want it challenged. Tony Blair is the latest figure to come in ...
Welcome to the latest in my series of tips and advice for Liberal Democrat members, which appear first in the email bulletin run by London Region for party members. There's a special Liberal Democrat financial fund dedicated to helping weaker local parties build up their strength and start fighting elections successfully. That's crucial to building a sustainable and broad-based Liberal Democrat recovery. Run by the Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors and Campaigns (ALDC), its Fighting Fund helps campaigners fight key local government by-elections and to get campaigns going in development areas. Grants can be used for a by-election in a ...
Petula Clark has said of Serge Gainsbourg: "I loved his voice and that sort of ugly handsome look. ... He was very clever, very charming, I understand why he had all those lovely ladies."And none came lovelier than Brigitte Bardot. Bonnie And Clyde and its video come over as a musical version of the Jean-Luc Godard film A Bout de Souffle. It was actually inspired by "The Story of Bonnie and Clyde," a poem written by Bonnie Parker herself.
Liberal Democrats have been talking a lot about health and social care this week. In the Yorkshire Post, Norman Lamb argues for an urgent change of direction to give the NHS a sustainable future which meets our needs. First he seems out the crisis facing the NHS. But it seems this Conservative Government has become increasingly ambivalent to the state of our health service. In Yorkshire, vital A&E wards in Dewsbury, Huddersfield and Scarborough are all at risk of being closed or downgraded - it's the same over the border at Darlington. Communities are set to face even longer waits ...
As usual, I've run the books on the Arthur C. Clarke Award submission list through Goodreads and LibraryThing to see how many people have registered copies on each system (NB you have to dig down a level for this on Goodreads) and what the average rating of each book is. They are listed below by (geometric) average number of owners on the two systems. The top quartile, more or less, is bolded in each column (and for Goodreads ratings, anything over 4). A couple of additions to my reading list, I think. Goodreads LibraryThing owners av rating owners av rating ...
Politics is full of tribalism and the Labour Party wears its tribal loyalty like a badge of pride as an obvious example. I don't think I will ever forget MP Andy Burnham making it clear that his party came first in a Labour Leadership hustings interview, only to be shouted down by one of his own (MP Liz Kendal) saying 'Country first'. But here in the UK we have always had a sneaking admiration for those who at face value are a part of tribe but who are actually mavericks with a mind of their own. MP Ken Clarke is ...
Federal Policy Committee met on Wednesday 15th February. The meeting was slightly in advance of our normal cycle (it having been obviously felt that having a long FPC meeting on the evening before the Stoke-On-Trent and Copeland by-elections was a bad idea). Sadly the combined effect of a Parliamentary recess and half term in some areas of the country led to a lower turnout than at the previous meeting with neither Tim Farron MP nor the regular compiler of these reports Geoff Payne being able to attend. In Tim's absence the meeting was chaired by the committee vice-chair Duncan Brack. ...
Councillor Tracey Huffer and I have expressed our frustration at the length of time it is taking for roadworks at the junction of Station Drive with Upper Galdeford and Gravel Hill. Most of the time there are no workers on the site - except for the operative who sits in a van all day in case the temporary traffic lights fail. Town buses inbound to the town centre are being diverted via Weeping Cross and Old Street in an attempt to keep to timetable. Now Western Power has responded to our complaints. Here is the company's statement: "As we install ...
From the City Council : THE ROAD TRAFFIC REGULATION ACT 1984 : SECTION 14(1) THE DUNDEE CITY COUNCIL AS TRAFFIC AUTHORITY being satisfied that traffic on the road should be prohibited by reason of water service works being carried out HEREBY PROHIBIT the driving of any vehicle in Nethergate (from its junction with West Marketgait to its junction with South Tay Street), Dundee. This notice comes into effect on Sunday 19 February 2017 for one day. Pedestrian thoroughfare will be maintained. Access to premises will be maintained where possible. Alternative routes for vehicles are available via West Marketgait/ Hawkhill/Hunter Street/Old ...
Brexit: A row over money could derail Brexit talks before they have begun @economist warns. (tags: ukpolitics eu brexit ) The bloodless battle for the moral high ground The Cyprus Mail's @Coffeeshop1991 on the latest developments. (tags: cyprus )
As if the Hillsborough fiasco was not enough. the Independent reports yet more controversy regarding some of the claims on the UKIP leader's website. The paper says that Paul Nuttall is facing fresh allegations about his honesty after he wrongly claimed he was a board member of a training charity: In September 2009, an article published on Mr Nuttall's website stated he had accepted an invitation to join the board of the North West Training Council (NWTC). It quoted Mr Nuttall as saying: "If facilities like this existed for youngsters when I was at school, many of my classmates would ...
I've done a few of Chuck Wendig's flash fiction challenges before, but haven't in a while. I'm trying to write more fiction, so I decided to do the latest one. As always, I challenge myself to write it in one ... Continue reading →
