Our petition calling on Gateshead Council to keep open Whickham Library was completed today. I met up with colleagues Councillors Peter Craig and Marilynn Ord at the library to count up the total signatures (1612) and I then took it to Gateshead Civic Centre to hand it in ready for Cabinet tomorrow. Sadly, it's not looking good. The officer recommendation is to close.
...Is this one. It's said after Holy Communion in the Church of England. I have bolded the words that normally get me moist-eyed. It is a glorious prayer! Father of all, we give you thanks and praise, that when we ... Continue reading →
Here are a few images from a recent visit to the Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society building in Morrison Street, Glasgow. It is a truly awesome building which marks several centuries of trade activity on the site. Recently, it's crowning gold ... Continue reading →
On Saturday evening, I headed back to Sunderland for the Lib Dem thank you party for the Sandhill by-election. The ward had previously been safely Labour but Stephen O'Brien stormed from 4% to 45% for the Lib Dems on 12th January. The party was held in the flat of Cllr Niall Hodson. Before 12th January, he was the entire Lib Dem group on Sunderland Council. He won his seat from Labour in May last
Here's the new film from the Liberal Democrats, featuring the leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords, Dick Newby.
I said it on here a couple of days ago. Yesterday I couldn't write because of a headache. Today, I can't write because I only had four hours' sleep last night (couldn't sleep with the headache, and then the dog ... Continue reading →
We have been to Oswestry, Llanclys and Llanymynech. This last part offers an unsatisfactory walk to Welshpool. Whoever agreed that the station there should be moved so a new road could be built deserves a particularly imaginative punishment. Readers comment: Thank goodness we have seen the last of this line. Liberal England replies: Don't be so sure.
In the near future, Daisy takes part in an isolation experiment for five years only to find a very different world waiting for her when the doors open... (comedy/horror/sci-fi/distopian. All rights reserved) Part eleven of many. T-Ladi opens the door to the express lift and stares at the corpses within. Just what Fermat thinks she is going to do with them, she has no idea. There is far too much bio-material to go into the paper waste incinerator or the food composting unit. Health and safety regulations mean they could not be stored in the walk-in food refrigerator without sealable, ...
Embed from Getty Images I voted Remain in the EU Referendum. I still think we should remain a member of the EU, for a wide variety of reasons. I also think our policy on Brexit- to push government to negotiate the best possible deal, and then call for a referendum on the final result- is broadly correct. Certainly, people have a right to change their mind as we find out more details, or even decide that they were once wrong about something. However, one major amendment is needed. As things stand, the polls look like they're turning. If a new ...
Mon 20th
19:47
Willie Rennie says backing for Brexit could evaporate like support for the war in Iraq
Embed from Getty Images Willie Rennie, leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, is giving a speech to the David Hume Institute in Edinburgh this evening. The Scotsman had advance sight of what he will say: "We accept the referendum result. But political leaders have got a responsibility to lead. "Political leadership is sometimes about persuading people, not just repeating what the last focus group told you. That is followership. "In April 2003 people wholeheartedly supported Tony Blair's government. People and the media would howl at Charles Kennedy. But opinions changed."Willie is right: the public did change its mind on Iraq. ...
Margaret Thatcher nationalised the business rates because she felt local councils could not be trusted to work sensibly with local businesses. At around the same time she introduced the community charge in place of domestic rates, which morphed into the less regressive - but still considerably regressive – council tax. Liberal Democrats have agonised over the latter and our policy is still to introduce a Local Income Tax, instantly handing the tabloids an easy stick with which to beat us - the Lib Dems want a chancellor in every town hall and plan to increase our taxes. The policy is ...
Go round Stoke-on-Trent at the moment and there are a number of noisy clusters of posterboard and cortex signs – but slightly curiously when you compare them to the electoral register, residents there you will find none. Now what I am referring to is of course the age old power of the Trade Unions. Now don't get me wrong, I'm no union basher – when it comes to staff and workers right, on pensions, on health and safety and working conditions the history of the trade union movement has much to its credit. But it's modern and indeed recent historical ...
We finish this tour of the Northern Ireland constituencies with South Belfast, where I grew up. It elected two Unionists in 2016 with 36.1% of first preferences, two Nationalists with 34.2%, one Alliance with 16.4% and one Green with 9.6%. 2016 result DUP 8,081 (22.0%, -2.3%) 2 seats (+1) UUP 2,466 (6.7%, /6.9%) 0 seats (-1) UKIP 794 (2.2%, +1.5%) TUV 495 (1.3%) Ind 475 (1.3%) PUP 430 (1.2%) SBU 351 (1.0%) Conservative 161 (0.4%) Alliance 6,023 (16.4%, -3.4%) 1 seat Green 3,521 (9.6%, +6.8%) 1 seat (+1) CCLA 871 (2.4%) NILRC 246 (0.7%) WP 241 (0.7%, +0.3%) SDLP 7,361 ...
East Belfast elected four Unionists in 2016 with 56.7% of first preferences, and Alliance got the remaining two starting with 28.7%. The Nationalist vote was 2.9%. 2016 result DUP 13,643 (36.7%, -7.3%) 3 seats UUP 4,142 (11.1%, +1.4%) 1 seat PUP 1,772 (4.8%, +0.2%) TUV 887 (2.4%, +0.2%) UKIP 631 (1.7%) Cons 477 (1.3%) Alliance 10,659 (28.7%, +2.4%) 2 seats Green 2,183 (5.9%, +4.1%) Ind 1,099 (3.0%) CCLA 517 (1.4%) NILRC 78 (0.2%) SF 946 (2.5%, -0.7%) SDLP 141 (0.4%, -0.4%) 2017 candidates @Joanne Bunting (DUP) David Douglas (DUP) @Robin Newton (DUP) @Andy Allen (UUP) Andrew Girvin (TUV) John Kyle ...
Last year Richard Murphy, well-known through his involvement with the Tax Justice Network, expanded his ideas into a paperback book The Joy of Tax. His association with Jeremy Corbyn may cause Liberal Democrats to reject his ideas, but I argue here that even if we reject his solutions, which include both Basic Income and local Land Value Tax, we should take seriously his criticism of the existing tax system and his analysis of the purpose of taxation. After a short historical introduction in which he develops the idea of tax as being the band that holds together the Social Contract ...
Embed from Getty Images I've just got back from a holiday, replenishing my Vitamin D in the Canaries. Although I had a wonderfully relaxing time I didn't want to cut myself off completely from things happening back in the UK. Like most hotels across the world, we were offered just two English language TVchannels – BBC World and Sky News – which was a bit limiting. Unlike business hotels, holiday hotels took a while to realise that their customers would value free Wi-Fi anywhere on site, but that is now pretty standard. So I could also listen online to the ...
The Guardian has the story on its web site – see link above Well this is a sobering article indeed but frankly it's not so far away from what I have been thinking. No Government can survive for ever a sustained attack on the living standards of its people and that's what the Tories are creating and indeed deepening. Brexit, especially a Hard Brexit would be a hugely challenging agenda if we were at the top of a the economic cycle, with low debt (personal and public/national), good public services and wages at a decent level. Trouble is we ...
I picked this useful information up from a Waste Care newsletter and thought it worth sharing. The United Kingdom and Italy tied for tenth place among the top-ranked municipal waste recyclers in Europe during 2015, figures published at the end of January by the European Union's statistics body Eurostat suggest. According to the figures, which are submitted on behalf of the EU's 27 member states, as well as other European nations including Norway, Switzerland and Montenegro, the UK's combined recycling and composting rate stood at 43.5% in 2015, down from 43.7% a year earlier. Germany hung onto its spot at ...
The UK and US have both set a national course along similar trajectories recently. Brexit and Trump may not be precisely the same phenomenon, but the resulting governments have some distinctly similar features; a traditional right-wing party being led by its most nativist, nationalist elements, pushing anti-immigration policy and sentiment without regard for the potential [...]
Embed from Getty Images Dear New Member, It's been exhilarating to meet you and so many of your friends and fellows at meetings over the past few months. After years of talking to small numbers of Liberal Democrat members in the corners of pubs or the living rooms of houses, packed meetings of interested and well-informed people warm the soul. Some of the questions thrown at me display levels of expertise on specific policies well above what I've acquired; the only answer I could offer to the new member who asked what I thought we could learn from the Finnish ...
You only have until this Thursday, 23 February, to have your say on the South Glos Local Plan Prospectus. As we reported last month, South Glos has to publish a new Local Plan for 2018-2036. One of the things it will do is allocate specific sites for development - so, for example, if the final Joint Spatial Plan (JSP) for the West of England says there should be another 2,600 homes around yate and Chipping Sodbury, this plan will say more precisely where they should be built. It will also allocate smaller sites, to go towards whatever figure the JSP ...
The weeks pass and the position of the Conservative Brexit government grows ever more unreasonable. Many people who voted to leave the EU would still have been perfectly happy with an "economic association", indeed it was the default option for probably the majority of those who voted to leave: "we should have an economic not political union". Leaving aside the practicalities of how much economic issues require political engagement, the idea of limited economic cooperation is not unreasonable. However the current position of the Conservative government is that Brexit means the end of British membership of any European cooperation groups, ...
The last two Sundays I have been helping with our campaign in Stoke-on-Trent by delivering leaflets. The first visit I set off on a blustery, drizzly day with an armful of slippery leaflets. Within five minutes the leaflets had cascaded to the ground buffeted by the strong gusts of wind. I suppose this is one way of distributing leaflets! Helped by my leafleting companion we managed to retrieve most of the leaflets which now formed a rather soggy jumbled pile. I went on to deliver them but this having happened didn't help the process especially with awkward letterboxes. Being a ...
Tory campaigners in Copeland are feeling very confident. Most of this comes from what they are hearing on the doorstep. "It's like nothing I've ever heard. You turn up to former Labour voters houses thinking you're going to have to make an anti-Corbyn case and they're way ahead of you. The dislike of Corbyn is so profound." An anecdote I heard involved an ex-miner who said his hatred of Cobryn runs so deep he is going to vote Tory for the first time ever. He expressed thanks that his father was not alive to witness this. All of this presents ...
Earlier in the week, on a whim, I collated figures for every vote cast so far this year,* by party, expecting either the Tories or Labour to lead by a decent margin. The actual result surprised me - prior to this week's by-elections, the Lib Dems were leading Labour by over 800 votes despite standing in barely over half the contests. Even after those by-elections, which were decidedly mixed for the Lib Dems (1 hold, 1 gain, 2 losses, 1 no-show), we're still leading the pack, 500 or so votes ahead of Labour. I hadn't planned to share this graph ...
Following concerns from constituents, I have written to University of Dundee Principal Professor Sir Pete Downes expressing dismay at the closure of the School of Humanities' educational and creative adult education classes as of April 2017. Residents are concerned that the replacement which is a suite of credit-bearing modules will be more costly and deviates away from the principles of the adult education classes that have been so successful over the years. These adult learning courses have run for many years and have been really successful. Many, but not all of the students, are at or beyond retirement age and ...
Top orchestra quits Britain over Brexit migration clampdown #takingbackcontrol by kicking out foreign musicians. (tags: ukpolitics music eu brexit ) The Pence Gambit How the Trump presidency might end. (tags: uspolitics ) Reconstruction: The full incredible story behind Russia's deadly plot to stop Montenegro embracing the West Now public. (tags: montenegro russia nato ) Anastasiades is starting to sound like the rejectionists Cyprus Mail's editorial is only a little milder than its columnist. (tags: cyprus ) Our Miserable 21st Century A right-wing essay which none the less points out many failures of the US economy. (tags: Uspolitics )
On the BBC yesterday Liz Truss was anxious to underline that once Article 50 has been invoked then there is no turning back. As the Independent reports, the Justice Secretary told viewers that there is no prospect of Britain staying in the European Union after triggering negotiations on Brexit. But is that true or are the government trying to manufacture a no-win situation for those who believe that, the Theresa May's version of hard Brexit is inappropriate, that we should stay in the single market and that the British people need to have the final say on whatever deal is ...
