Gateshead Council has continuously been reviewing libraries in the borough for the past few years. At cabinet last month, the latest review recommended the transfer of 3 libraries - Whickham, Rowlands Gill and Felling - to the voluntary sector. We know that in 2020, Gateshead Council will no longer receive any revenue support grant from the government. We know that the demands for adult social
I missed the March for Europe in Newcastle today as I had been invited some time ago to two events today. The first was a beekeepers' meeting in Marley Hill, the second was a maintenance day with Planting Up Whickham on Church Green. I was asked to bring a goat to the maintenance day, and after completing the appropriate paperwork with DEFRA, I brought Spotless, our billy goat who was
Back to Wensleydale in the snow and 25 April 1981. We have already seen the milepost at Redmire and some sheep. These two photos were taken at Bedale. The one above shows the single-line token being passed from the signalman to the driver. The one below shows the box from a little further away. Note that the church is still flying the flag for St George's Day. These were the day when no one worried if you leant out of the window and took photographs.
Embed from Getty Images From the Telegraph website this evening: A Brexit "sleepover" planned by the Liberal Democrats for peers voting late has been blocked by Parliament on health and safety grounds. The party had ordered 90 camp beds for their Lords with votes on Brexit Bill changes due to go on throughout the night this month. The news made headlines with battles over the legislation to give the Prime Minister the right to start Brexit talks coming to a head. However parliamentary officials have vetoed the plan because it breaks strict fire regulations in the Palace of Westminster.I asked ...
Some readers will remember my first small impacts story of a small victory in a larger defeat. Whilst failing to keep mental health beds for people with very severe dementia in Durham, rather than have care for all such sufferers moved many miles away to Bishop Auckland, the scrutiny committee (with me at my vocal best) gained agreement to a scheme which would provide financial support to families who had to travel further to visit their relatives. Some months afterwards a local resident whose wife had been admitted to Auckland Park got in touch with me to find out how ...
Let's face it yesterday was a disaster for unionism in Northern Ireland politics. The Assembly shrank from 108 members to 80 but the Unionist members shrank in number from 56 to 40! Yes that is right 18 seats were taken away and the unionists lost 16 of them, 10 by the DUP the other 6 for the UUP. Now last night time after time DUP representatives came on and talked about the media being the reason they were doing badly. Some even blamed it directly on the BBC while being interviewed by the BBC. Arlene Foster at her count was ...
Tesni, the company that is planning to build 215 houses between Bromfield Road and the A49 has successfully applied to remove the controversial foot and cycle bridge across the Corve to Fishmore View. This huge footbridge would have been more than 250 metres long (275 yards) and soar 7 metres (23 feet) above the bed of the Corve. This action follows my request on behalf of Fishmore View residents. They were concerned that their quiet cul de sac would become clogged with parked cars owned by dog walkers using the proposed riverside park the other side of the Corve. Now ...
Bursting bin bags everywhere -Is this the future? In April Camden's new waste contract comes in to force.This has caused widespread concern in the north of the Borough with the flames fanned for political reasons with talk of "bin bias". This will run on possibly until the next Council Elections in May 2018. Admittedly it is our area (as well as NW3 & 5) who will see their weekly "general waste" collection go from weekly to fornightly (recycling remains weekly) and this will indubitably bring problems. The fact that Camden Council is performing very poorly in achieving its recycling targets ...
The Liberal Democrats have selected Jackie Pearcy for the forthcoming Parliamentary by-election in Manchester Gorton: We've selected @jackiepearcey as our candidate for Manchester Gorton! Help get her campaign off to a flying start: https://t.co/by91LM1tXm — Liberal Democrats (@LibDems) March 4, 2017
Sat 4th
18:00
Lib Dems take part in national Day of Action opposing Brexit and supporting #righttostay
Today, across the country, Lib Dems have been taking part in a national day of action, collecting signatures for our petition calling on the Government to give EU nationals the right to stay in the UK and spreading the word about our opposition to the Government's position on Brexit and our call for people to be given the final say on the Brexit deal. This is way too important for all our futures to leave to the Brexit Government. I hope that EU nationals take some comfort from the fact that there is so much public support for them to ...
News from the land of Twitter: Jackie Pearcey selected as @LibDems candidate for Manchester Gorton — Cllr. John Leech (@johnleechmcr) March 4, 2017 Jackie is a fabulous candidate. She has 20 years' experience as a Gorton councillor. She's brilliant. I first met her in a queue at the Torquay conference in 1993 and I just love her plain-speaking manner and sense of humour. There couldn't be a better person to fly the Lib Dem flag. She's in the centre of the photo in between Mamchester mayoral candidate Jane Brophy and the one-man opposition to Labour Cllr John Leech. That man ...
A tweet from John Leech brings news that Jackie Pearcey has been chosen to fight the Manchester Gorton for the Liberal Democrats. Jackie was profiled by the Manchester Evening News in 2010: Originally from Hartlepool, Jackie Pearcey started life on a council estate and has since lived in Leeds before coming to Manchester, where Jackie has been a councillor for Gorton North in since 1991 [she was defeated in 2012].During that time she has been finance spokesperson, education spokesperson and more recently crime and disorder spokesperson. Jackie, a lifelong Liberal, has fought many campaigns as a councillor - from the ...
Brilliant result for our sister party, the Alliance Party, in Northern Ireland – vote share up and proportion of seats held up.* I've written before about what the Liberal Democrats can learn from our sister parties such as D66 and the Canadian Liberals, so the success of the Alliance – a smaller party in a highly polarised political environment – is naturally of interest too. So... what do you think the Liberal Democrats can learn from our colleagues' success in this week's elections? * The number of seats in the Assembly has fallen, so keeping the same number of seats ...
It's just two months to go until every seat in Scotland and Wales and the English County Councils are up for election. Also being elected are the metro mayors. Jane Brophy in Manchester, Stephen Williams in West of England, Rod Cantrill in Cambridge, Beverley Nielsen in West Midlands, Chris Foote-Wood in Teeside, Carl Cashman in Liverpool are all flying the Liberal Democrat flag. Now is a good time to work out what you can do on polling day to help your local campaign team plan their effort. Polling day is incredibly important. Elections can be lost on the day if ...
Before I even start this, let me just say that Liz Leffman, the Chair of the English Party and our wonderful candidate in the Witney by-election is one of my favourite Liberal Democrats and that none of this is her fault. She is one of the most constructive and practical people I have come across in the party and I'm delighted that she is leading the English Party on its journey to reform. However, I got an email from her the other day, sent out by party HQ, that made me furious. Here's what it said: Hi Caron, This weekend, ...
So all the votes have been counted, the transfers shuffled and now we have up to three weeks of negotiations to see if the Northern Ireland Assembly can come together in some shape. But what was the story of the count yesterday in Northern Ireland's second election in 10 months? This election saw a reduction of seats in Stormont from 108 to 90, or each seat returning just 5 MLAs. The turnout was up 10% on last May at 64.8% so every party was able to claim that more people voted for them but it was how that extra 10% ...
So as the dust settles on the count of the 2017 election what does the future hold for Northern Ireland? First lets look at the facts: DUP did secure the largest vote but only by 12oo from Sinn Féin Of the 18 seats that the Assembly lost 16 were Unionist (10 DUP, 6 UUP) There...
The sloppy (and regrettably dominant) media coverage of Cambridge Analytica has been of the form "it worked for Trump, it worked for Brexit so their clever big data targeting is powerful". It's sloppy for a range of reasons. One is that any sensible piece of coverage should start from the knowledge that almost all similar pieces of coverage about other firms in the past has been massively over-hyped. It's possible of course that just because journalists and pundits have uncritically served up hype before that this time they might be right. Possible, but it also means the sensible starting point ...
I've been following politics for about 15 years and I joined the Liberal Democrats in January. When I was first interested in politics, I was pretty right-wing. I was mired in stereotypes about race, sexuality, gender, and the unemployed. I was an avid reader of the Daily Mail and would hang on every word written by Richard Littlejohn. Then Michael Foot died. Now I'm too young to remember Michael Foot, but I'm sure older readers will remember him as being very divisive. Well Littlejohn just couldn't help but call him a "useful idiot" just 3 days after he died and ...
I admit that over the last eight months I have struggled to find anything positive about Brexit. As far as I can see it is going to be an unmitigated disaster, at least in the short to medium term. Businesses will look to relocate within the European free trade area so as to avoid having to pay tariffs on the goods and services they sell to Europe. The City of London financial centre will see many of its institutions hedge their bets by taking jobs over the English channel and goods in the shops will be more expensive because of ...
A large pothole has appeared on Ennerdale Drive at the junction with Borrowdale Drive in Unsworth ward. I have today reported this with Bury Council, however I also noticed that (like a lot of roads in Unsworth and Bury as a whole) that the surface is starting to wear down and come away in larger [...]
Dogs carrying feminist signs at the women's march Interesting article about autism diagnoses I suspect I'm reasonably skilled at masking l Now we're deporting heroes who save lives FFS racists, can we just STOP?! [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
Embed from Getty Images The Northern Ireland election results are now in and they show some very encouraging trends for those of us with a liberal outlook. Our sister party, the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, won 8 seats and got its highest vote share in 28 years. Although their number of seats stays the same at 8, in an Assembly that is 18 seats smaller, that is a major achievement. It also increased its first preference vote share by over 2%. Voters also sent a message that they were opposed to Brexit with the biggest losers being the unionist ...
The following is a small excerpt from my book, "2017", available now in digital form and paperback. Is a free trade deal between the US and the UK a genuine possibility? The Tories better hope it is. Because from where we currently stand, I see only two ways out of Brexit not being a very rocky road: one, a US-UK free trade deal that isn't constructed in a way that is terrible for the UK; two, the disintegration of the EU via a Le Pen presidency, or the Dutch leaving, or Putin's machinations, or whatever other mechanism. If neither of ...
Lib Dem Metro Mayor Candidate Stephen Williams metYate councillors Mike Drew, Sue Walker and Ruth Davis and Parliamentary Candidate Claire Young to discuss further improvements at Yate Station Passengers at Yate railway station will soon be able to buy their tickets in the dry, thanks to a new shelter that is being installed over the ticket machine and kiosk. The roof could be treated with anti-solar glare material to make it easier for passengers to see the screen on the machine. Your Focus Team has been campaigning with local rail users for improvements at the station for many years, after ...
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. It's extremely easy for journalists and pundits to write stories about how whichever was the latest winning political campaign did super-clever things in secret with data to target voters and win. What's almost always lacking from such stories is any serious analysis of what was done and whether it worked. Just because one side won doesn't mean all that it did worked, or even that if it did work it had ...
The Prime Minister is opposing moves to protect the right to stay of EU citizens, such as by opposing the amendments in Parliament which would do just that.
The story is Lib Dem MP Norman lamb's web site – see link above Norman Lamb MP I think it fair to say that I don't see eye to eye with Norman over some things but on this subject he is spot on and always has been. The lack of significant progress fast enough to transform mental health care treatment is inexcusable so I am more than happy to back the stance being taken by Norman and fellow MP's across the political spectrum. With thanks to Jen Robertson for the lead to this posting
RT is Russia Today and they and their acolytes in UKIP and the White House will be mortified by this:
