Saturday saw me in Claydon, on Presidential aide duty, as the Party President, Baroness (Sal) Brinton, came to town. Now, admittedly, we're kind of used to having a Party President in Mid Suffolk, having had Ros in the role in 2009 and 2010, but it's always nice to see someone new. And, as someone had to navigate Sal from lunch in Claydon, to her afternoon event in Henley (no, not that Henley), it fell to me to do the honours. That gave us a nice chance to catch up before she attended the launch of the Suffolk Liberal Democrat manifesto ...

Posted by Mark Valladares on A liberal amongst the country gentry...

Meols Ward Lib Dem Councillors John Dodd, Nigel Ashton and Jo Barton are holding their next advice centre on Saturday 11th March from 11 am to 12 noon at St John's Primary School, Rufford Road, Crossens. We will be there to meet you and discuss any Council problems you may have. No appointment necessary. Just pop in. We also hold a monthly advice centre in Churchtown, at BoxTree Kitchen for Queenscourt café, Manor Road/Cambridge Road, roundabout, fourth Thursday of every month (except December) from 10:30 to: 11.30 am.

Posted by John Dodd on Meols Lib Dems

Canal Routes says: The Leominster Canal was intented to link Kington in Herefordshire to Stourport in Worcestershire (via Leominster) but the whole project became a complete commercial disaster. Only 18½ of the 46 proposed miles were ever completed. It never reached Kington or Stourport and didn't pay its shareholders a single dividend.But it did leave this wonderful relic near Knighton-on-Teme. Teme Valley North Parish says the towpath across the Rea Aqueduct was open as a public right of way until the 1990s - and walkers ignored the warning signs even after that.

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

More comedy genius from Australia's Clarke and Dawe as Malcolm Turnbull, Prime Minister, makes a return visit to talk about the polls.

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack

Jeremy Corbyn's publication of his tax returns has fallen a bit flat amid arguments over whether he has declared all his earnings and declared them correctly. If this discourages such stunts in future, I shall not be sorry. As Simon Titley once argued, politicians have never been so open or available as they are now - and have never been so despised. Equally, the idea that you will win if you are morally pure seems to me misconceived. As I once wrote of the Liberal Democrats: We should not be asking people to vote for us because we are better ...

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

Our concerns about the development off Cold Weston Drive, write Tracey Huffer and Andy Boddington, can be summed up in one photograph. If we look a bit nervous in this photograph, we were nervous. It was pouring with rain and the steep slope plunges down to the A49 bypass. High above us are the gabions, stacked high to support the gardens of a housing development off Cold Weston Drive. These gabions are scary. Very scary. We are not the only people worried. Shropshire Council planners and highways managers are also concerned. The gabions support the gardens of seven houses being ...

Posted by andybodders on Andy Boddington

Embed from Getty Images David Laws has written an article in the Financial Times, but you have to be a subscriber to read it. We will give you a flavour of the piece here so you can decide whether to subscribe (the trial version is £1 for 4 weeks). In May 2010, as the chief secretary in the UK's coalition government, I warned that the choices available to us in Britain's biggest postwar spending squeeze lay between the unpalatable and the disastrous, and that we were moving from an age of plenty to an age of austerity. It has not ...

Posted by Mary Reid on Liberal Democrat Voice
Mon 6th
19:23

Frankie Howerd at 100

The great man would have been 100 today. He was born in a terraced house in York which today commemorates the fact with a blue plaque. Frankie Howerd, as a post on The Downstairs Lounge records, went in and out of fashion several times during his long career. It was good that the found an adoring audience on the university circuit in his final years. Downstairs Lounge writes of an appearance that turned his career around: He had been invited to present the 1962 Evening Standard Drama Awards at the end of January in London's Savoy Hotel. Feeling that his ...

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

The English Party has set out its governance review, with the aim of making it accessible to members and easy to engage with, whilst providing least distraction from current campaigning and the fighting of elections and by-elections. We recognise the importance of ensuring the party in England is relevant and accountable to members, has clarity of purpose and operation and is effective and efficient and have worked hard to embrace these ideals in the range of proposals being put to members. The options for the future of the party in England have been complied by a review group set up ...

Posted by Sally Symington on Liberal Democrat Voice

The issue of refugee children will not go away - both in reality and in terms of a decency-check on the current Government, including the Home Secretary in particular. The Government is adamant that the decision to close the 'Dubs' scheme, which many believed would allow the country to accept a further 3,000 unaccompanied child refugees, was because local government did not have the capacity for more than around 400. The evidence for this is that the Home Office asked councils and this is what councils told it. Simples. The problem with this is twofold. First of all, why did ...

Posted by Chris White on Liberal Democrat Voice
YouGov

Embed from Getty Images I'm afraid we didn't mark World Wildlife Day on LDV last Friday. Fortunately our MEP Catherine Bearder did in an engaging post covering the top wildlife wins and losses in the past year. She writes: 2016 was a historic year in the global fight against wildlife crime. From the ivory bans to the new CITES protection for over 500 species – there is a lot we can be proud of. But we would be kidding ourselves if we think the work here is done. Wildlife trafficking is still a top four global criminal activity and the ...

Posted by Mary Reid on Liberal Democrat Voice

Well that sucks. BT Sport have stunned most casual observers not by re-upping their deal to show Champions League and Europa League football but by locking out all live games and highlights. This means they'll be no terrestrial coverage even in highlight form. This shows us that UEFA are still money-grabbing so and so's but also that BT are here to stay. They don't care if they lose money on this deal because they believe it'll be a loss leader for years to come. Guy Laurent Epstein, who is the UEFA marketing director said, 'UEFA is delighted to have extended ...

Posted by neilmonnery on The Rambles of Neil Monnery

There were two articles in last week's Guardian about the dire straits the Labour Party have created for themselves . The first, by celebrated film maker Ken Loach, argued that Labour's MPs should stop stabbing their leader, Jeremy Corbyn' in the back and ended with the rousing coda: "If [Corbyn and McDonnell] had a powerful movement to sustain them, Labour under their leadership would start to cut back the power of capital, remove multinationals from public services, restore workers' rights, and begin the process of creating a secure and sustainable society in which we could all share." The second, by ...

Posted by Peter Wrigley on Keynesian Liberal

The following piece I penned for our weekly Digital Inspirational email at Blue Rubicon. Do sign up if you'd like such stories in your inbox every week. Move over hype about new social media channels. It's email that is back at the front of the queue as the Huffington Post looks to target Generation Z, building brand loyalty with an audience that hasn't yet set a lifetime of habits as to its preferred news sources. Launching on Monday, The Tea email newsletter will offer exclusive weekly interviews with celebrities. It's also part of a wider trend for email newsletters, often ...

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack

Whilst researching this subject, I couldn't help thinking that here were the ingredients ripe for the design of a board game. It could be something of a cross between "Diplomacy" and "Vendée Globe"? Each player representing a country of choice could set its mission and collaborate with other players to achieve their desired outcomes. Chance cards might include whether, say, an international tribunal has decided in their favour. And tokens could be earned along the way to enable them to reclaim rocks and reefs, build air strips or even patrol the islands with clone submarines? We are, of course, not ...

Posted by Merlene Emerson on Liberal Democrat Voice

It was at around 9:50am that I realised that yet another Sunday was going to bite the dust, hearing Prue Leith describe Jenni Murray as "brave" for entering the lions den of a debate around trans women. And so yet another of my rare days off was consigned to the dustbin of history. The more [...]

Posted by Helen Belcher on Challenging Journeys (Phase 2)

Remember those far off days when the world was focussed on the question, did the US Attorney General mislead Congress and lie on oath in his confirmation hearings and therefore would he need to resign? It was, um, 3 days ago in case you've forgotten. What happened next is classic media management by the White House. If reports are to be believed, Trump was livid that everyone was talking about Jeff Sessions and his allegedly being 'economical with the acualite' rather than how utterly brilliant his address to Congress was (or not) and how great he looked in a bomber ...

Posted by Richard Morris on A VIEW FROM HAM COMMON

Nick Whyte analyses the results of the Norn Iron elections and the potential consequences thereof Sally Wainwright is doing Ann Lister :) it's great to see local LGBT history getting national recognition [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments

I'll just leave this here: Huge fan of the local Tory party campaigning on a manifesto of using EU funding GIVEN IT IS YOUR FAULT WE WONT GET ANY ANYMORE pic.twitter.com/anWyE2kttQ — Ben Weeks (@BenPWeeks) 5 March 2017

Posted by LibCync on LibCync

If you listen to this recording of the opening of Radio One on 30th September 1967, you will notice that a piece of music is played before "Flowers in the rain" by The Move. That piece of music is "Beefeaters" by John Dankworth and his Orchestra (released on Fontana records in 1964). It was Tony ... Continue reading "Flowers in the rain" was not the first tune played on Radio One – this was

Posted by paulwalternewbury on
eUKhost

Embed from Getty Images This piece is long overdue, as I joined the Liberals Democrats back in October 2016. Since then, I have been elected Secretary of Runnymede & Spelthorne Liberal Democrats. I am also deeply involved with the newly formed (or regenerated) Royal Holloway LibDem Society. So how does one defect from UKIP to the LibDems? I shall be frank. I started involvement with UKIP in 2010, at the age of thirteen. This was when the party was an anti-EU pressure group. It felt outrageous and fantastically rebellious to participate in an idea that could undermine the entire establishment. ...

Posted by Alexander Balkan on Liberal Democrat Voice

For some time, I have listened to the words of many Brexit friendly Tory MPs and wondered precisely where they were coming from. Despite singing the praises of free trade and open markets, what the EU has achieved in this arena is always completely discarded by this group. Likewise, getting something similar in terms of trade, only across much more of the world; bigger markets, and even better, on Britain's own terms completely, is what is apparently possible in a post-Brexit world. Coming from a Remain perspective, I have been perplexed by their faith in this regard. But I finally ...

Posted by Nick on nicktyrone.com

Let's call it Catch-23. It is when you load your old version of Word onto a new computer and you are told that Microsoft cannot verify the code online, and that it has to be done by phone (see numbers below). Then you find that telephone verification is no longer available for this version. You are caught in a very familiar double bind. It is familiar also from dealing with many of the new generation of internet behemoths. The service is fine until something goes wrong, then - silence. Try contacting Youtube because your children are being harassed by online ...

Posted by David Boyle on The Real Blog

Today's Guardian underlines deception that was carried out during the referendum campaign by the leave side by revealing that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is expected to use Wednesday's budget to announce that tax revenues will be used to build up a reserve to deal with uncertainties arising from Brexit, rather than increase spending on the health service. So much for an extra £350m a week. The paper quotes Phillip Hammond as saying that he is building up a reserve in case of difficulties arising from leaving the EU, although he stopped short from confirming a report in the Sunday ...

Posted by Peter Black on Peter Black

DUNDEE CITY COUNCIL - WEEKLY ROAD REPORT REPORT FOR WEST END WARD WEEK COMMENCING MONDAY 6 MARCH 2017 Perth Road (at Arnhall Drive) - temporary traffic lights for 3 weeks for gas main renewal. Blackness Road (at Rosefield Street) - temporary traffic lights for one week for Scottish Water mains renewal. Nethergate (West Marketgait to South Tay Street) - closed for 2 weeks for carriageway resurfacing works. SSE Glenagnes Cable Renewal - Lochee Road lane restrictions and closures on Blinshall Street, Fleuchar Street and Scott Street from Monday 6 March for 5 months. Nethergate (at West Marketgait) - closed off-peak ...

EU Top Legal Expert Knocks Down Lords Report on Brexit Payment You gotta pay your dues. (tags: ukpolitics eu brexit ) The Death of M*A*S*H's Col. Henry Blake Truth almost as good as myth. (tags: tv ) Eurozone economy overtakes UK as France and Germany accelerate From the @telegraph!!! (tags: ukpolitics eu brexit ) Vote 2017: Northern Ireland election - Do transfers matter? Answer: yes, sometimes. (tags: elections northernireland )

After a hiatus because of Reasons, I'm back to doing my Patreon-only comic reviews. Patreon backers can read (for free) my reviews of recent issues of Cerebus In Hell, WWE, Star Wars, and The Wild Storm here, and I'll be ... Continue reading →

Posted by Andrew Hickey on Sci-Ence! Justice Leak!