As an antidote to the madness of British elections, I found myself at the Wimbledon tennis site today for the annual press conference to announce the prize money and other changes for the fortnight. But while I was there I saw something else which I'd urge all fans of tennis and broadcasting to have a look at if they can.This year sees a remarkable trio of anniversaries. It's the 90th anniversary of the BBC covering Wimbledon (on radio), which makes it the oldest outside broadcast operation of a sporting event in history. It's also the 80th anniversary of television coverage ...
The Liberal Democrats have become the first major party to commit to ending the "national scandal" of rough sleeping across Britain, including across Greater Manchester. The latest figures show there were 189 people sleeping rough in Greater Manchester in 2016, many are young people and many believe these figures to be only the tip of [...]
At full Council Meetings councillors have the opportunity to ask questions to the 'Joint Authorities' which operate at a Greater Manchester level. At the most recent meeting the Liberal Democrat team of councillors asked three questions to Transport for Greater Manchester: Question - Using less Diesel Buses Following the announcement in London, that no new [...]
Well, I suppose it always did. I mean, the government of the former soviet union was pretty strong, and for decades, stable. And May's press team is not exactly behaving like it thinks it is in a democracy. Seriously, though, what do we expect of our Prime Minister when approaching a negotiation of such complexity as managing Brexit so that we ordinary people don't end up suffering dire consequences for decades? How should she and her ministers behave as we try to rebuild trading relationships with the world from scratch, as we find ourselves isolated and disadvantaged. Frankly, standing in ...
Today the Liberal Democrats announced on their website that the party has hit its highest ever number of members, exceeding the previous high of 101,768 members set back in 1994. The website also says: In the two weeks since the general election was called, more than 14,000 new members have joined us. Since last year's European referendum, more than 50,000 members have joined; making nearly 70,000 since the 2015 general election.If you fancy becoming member yourself, you can join the Liberal Democrats online.
What's this to do with? One of the issues that does get raised with me, not as a major priority, but more of an ongoing irritation, relates to some cyclists regularly riding on the footpath, rather than the roads. What does Darren think? As a cyclists, I cannot pretend that I have never made use [...]
It's certainly short and sweet. What do you think? It's telling people that we are winning again, and that a vote for us will change Britain's future, which appears to be our new slogan. Certainly that's what's painted over the bus.
So, I was preparing for this to be a bit of a quiet day on the election front today. Local elections tomorrow, so the parties would be getting their ducks in a row for that, and perhaps the media would be paying a bit more attention to them as well. (Which prompts a thought, how do polling day reporting restrictions affect general election coverage tomorrow) I mean, there might have been some mileage to be had out of David Davis having a Nicola Murray moment as he stood in front of the latest Tory election poster, but not too much ...
Polling stations open tomorrow for Durham County Council electionsat 7.00 a.m. and close at 10.00 p.m. Ordinary (non-postal) voters will be issued with ballot papers as normal and get TWO votes. Obviously Owen Temple and Margaret Nealis hope you will cast one vote for each of us, for a Liberal Democrat clean sweep. You do not have to take your polling card with you, though it is helpful to polling staff if you do. A name and address is sufficient for them to identify you on the electoral register and so issue a ballot paper, but you do have to ...
Sefton Council have bought back The Strand Shopping Centre which it had previously sold off all its interest in over a number of years some time ago. This display board was put up not so long ago when the last owners took over The Strand. Word is also that the deal is worth anything from £30m to a cool £60m+ (not confirmed) and that the Council is borrowing money to make the purchase. It seems that they intend to finance the loan via the rents charged to the businesses that operate out of The Strand and they are saying that ...
The Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist has been announced, and the popularity of the six books on Goodreads and LibraryThing is as follows: Goodreads LibraryThing owners av rating owners av rating The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead 240219 4.05 1602 4.09 A Closed and Common Orbit, Becky Chambers 15509 4.4 190 4.37 Ninefox Gambit, Yoon Ha Lee 13440 3.96 219 4.02 Central Station, Lavie Tidhar 4835 3.53 124 3.77 After Atlas, Emma Newman 1948 4.21 49 4.38 Occupy Me, Tricia Sullivan 794 3.46 33 3.55 The standout for me is After Atlas, which despite being owned by the second fewest number ...
As Mrs May fires the starting gun for the 8 June election, Lib Dem Leader Tim Farron MP says: "This is a Brexit election and chance to change the direction of Britain. On one side of the debate is Theresa May, UKIP and Labour and on the other side is the Liberal Democrats. [...]
Wed 3rd
14:22
Rennie: Rape clause shows that the Tory mask has slipped & nasty party is nastier than ever
For the last few years, Ruth Davidson has painted herself as the acceptable face of the Tory Party. This time last year, she was an ardent Remainer willing to call out her London colleagues on human rights and the like. Now, she's a hard brexiteer who is prepared to trivialise the effects of the dreadful family cap which prevents families claiming benefits or tax credits for more than two children – unless they can prove to the satisfaction of a civil servant that a third or subsequent child was conceived by rape. To do that, women have to complete this ...
Step 1: bemoan how sanitised and carefully packaged the election campaign visits of politicians are. Step 2: see a politician meet a real voter who doesn't immediately agree with all their policies, offer up all their worldly goods to help their campaign and throw in a marriage request. Step 3: laugh at and make fun of politician for this encounter. Step 4: return to step 1. Politicians respond to incentives. If voters like something, they do it more. If voters don't, they do it less. Your call. Get the best polling and election news by email Keep up to date ...
During the bank holiday weekend local vets dealt with a number of dogs with symptoms of poisoning. Three of those dogs had been at Wapley Common. In one case the vet suggested that the dog had eaten something natural like very mouldy food, mouldy poop etc. We have established that at least two of the dogs had eaten poop in the same location, the picnic field. So we now suspect that this was from an infected animal. The area has been checked and nothing else has been found, and no weedkiller etc is used in the area. There have been ...
In yesterday's second part of the interview, Jo talked about how she entered politics and, subsequently, Westminster. Today, the conversation turns to Easter eggs and body image... The first part of the interview can be found here. Throughout your time in office, one of your bugbears appears to be excessive Easter egg packaging. Seeing as Easter is upon us, I thought it would be an apt topic to discuss. At face value, this doesn't seem a particularly important issue, but when you realise that the excessive packaging causes thousands of tons of waste each year, it clearly is a reasonable ...
Another week passes in Britain's election campaign and the Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May's grip tightens. The more Labour tries to seize the initiative, the better it looks for her. Diane Abbott's intervention yesterday simply proves the point. And yet she was trying to raise a subject people should be talking about more. Ms Abbott is ... Continue reading Diane Abbott's troubles show all that is wrong with the British election →
Canvassing on the doorstep in South London over the weekend, one thing was clear: despite the excitement of a "Lib Dem fightback" this will be a tough election for the party, and we must fight hard to beat the Tories and Labour where we can win on 8th June. In Carshalton, where I canvassed for Tom Brake MP on Saturday, it is clear he is being ruthlessly targeted by the Tory Party. Next door the Sutton Tory MP Paul Scully - who has spent two years agitating for Brexit since beating us – is being buttressed by a similar CCHQ ...
Prime Minister Theresa May visits Cornwall ahead of General Election This is the best liveblog of a political event I have ever seen (as with all liveblogs, best enjoyed from the bottom up) Immigration questions for general election candidates - Migrants' Rights Network Any Lib Dems wanting to supply answers to these, I'm sure Lib Dem Voice would publish I read Doctor Who: The Legends of River Song - here's my review on Goodreads tl;dr it's five short stories; I loved one, really liked one, quite liked two, and hated one. Driving Miss Crazy: Britain's sexist driving licences | Life ...
Regular readers will know that over the past twelve month I have been presented with all manner of cakes. I have been greatly impressed by the range of home baking that local groups have produced. I found that I was holding a competition in my mind as to who was the best. As my term of office draws to a close I think it is time to declare a winner. For a long time Maghull Baptist Church led the bake off. Highly commended goes Clarence High School, Age Concern Crosby, St Luke's Crosby, the amazing Guinness Cake at Mrs & ...
At this stage, I expected three things to be happening in regards to the general election campaigns and polling. One, we would see UKIP's polling numbers deflate and going to the Tories. Two, Labour's campaign would be a gaffe prone nightmare, seeing their numbers dip into the early twenties and possibly the teens. Three, a Lib Dem bounce in the polls , small, but significant, probably getting them to around 15 or 16. The first one is undeniably happening, as Conservative polling numbers continue to be in the high 40s while UKIP is stuck in single digits, even with polling ...
This report relates to the meeting of the Federal Policy Committee which took place on 2nd May 2017, some 20 years to the day since the Labour landslide General Election victory in 1997. This meeting commenced at 2pm and went on well past 10pm. The reason for the length of that meeting was that the only item on its agenda was to agree our manifesto for the 2017 General Election. I am afraid that there is very little that I can say about the contents of the manifesto or the work that underpinned it for reasons that I am sure ...
I met Bob King this week. Bob is a retired solicitor from Shropshire. He was a prisoner of war in WW2 held in Oflag 79. I met him at the Brunswick Youth and Community Centre-known locally as the Brunny. If you don't know the story of the Brunny you may be wondering why an elderly gentleman made a special trip to Bootle. Let me explain. On a cold February night in 1945 the POWs met together. They had understood what living in boring, depressing conditions had done to their morale and realised that this was the same for young people ...
Dear Stuart, Please pass on my apologies to your members for not being able to attend your AGM this year, as I have in the past. As you are aware, I fully appreciate the necessity of radical improvements to our transport infrastructure if any meaningful regeneration for Hastings and Rye is to be achieved, and regret that I will [...]
At full Council Meetings councillors have the opportunity to ask questions to the 'Joint Authorities' which operate at a Greater Manchester level. At the most recent meeting the Liberal Democrat team of councillors asked three questions to Transport for Greater Manchester: Question – Using less Diesel Buses Following the announcement in London, that no new pure diesel double decker buses would be added to the fleet from 2018, and that all single deckers in central London would be zero-emission, what action is Transport for Greater Manchester taking to ensure that the bus network is making a significantly reduced impact on ...
A photograph I took at a Bruges market illustrates the consequences of hoping for the best from a hard Brexit. Fortunately, not everyone is offering Hobson's choice of a strong and stable rotisserie or one that works for the people. There is a way to escape what less brave politicians want you to believe is certain. Nick Clegg in his ... The post Waiting for a hard Brexit appeared first on ten pence piece.
Wed 3rd
08:12Another membership milestone: Lib Dem membership reaches record high on eve of local elections
The Liberal Democrats have reached their highest ever membership! We've just gone over the high watermark of 101,768 set in 1994. The landmark comes as Tim Farron heads to Oxford to rally activists for the party's final push of the local election campaign. More than 14,000 new members have joined the Liberal Democrats in the two weeks since the General Election was called. More than 50,000 members have joined since last year's European referendum and nearly 70,000 since the 2015 General Election. Tim Farron pledged to build the party to 100,000 members by the end of the parliament as a ...
Crossens Saturday, 13th May, St John's Primary School, Rufford Road, Crossens, from 11am to 12 noon. Churchtown Thursday, 25th May, BoxTree Kitchen for Queenscourt café, Manor Road/Cambridge Road, roundabout, from 10:30am to 11:30am.
Albania-Kosovo union would create a weak state, if not an ungovernable one Rakipi on hollow threat of Greater Albania. (tags: albania kosovo ) How Trump Could Get Fired Wishful thinking? (tags: uspolitics )
Interestingly, yesterday's post triggered quite a lot of comments. Not necessarily related to the press releases, but there you go. Feel free to comment about anything covered here, or not, as you wish. Here are some of the press releases not covered elsewhere on our pages that were issued yesterday... Tories 'relaxed' about NHS crisis shows why we need the Lib Dems to be the Official Opposition The government is 'relaxed' about the crisis in general practice because it thinks Labour can't win the general election, Dr Phil Hammond, a former GP and health commentator has said. Commenting on the ...
Liverpool Lime Street Station at night. The Liverpool Echo has the story and more importantly the high speed video on its web site – see link above. Maybe its because I love trains but the video is quite mesmerizing. A Virgin Trains Pendolino train at Liverpool Lime Street Station.
Responding to Labour's announcement it would halt NHS Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs), Liberal Democrat Health Spokesperson Norman Lamb said: "The original purpose of the STP process was a good thing - to bring fragmented parts of the system together. But it is based on the fantasy that there is enough money to
Not everybody can be good at sums, but when launching a policy as the national spokesperson for the supposedly main opposition party it is expected that you know what you are talking about. Alas, the Shadow Home Secretary, Diane Abbott failed that first test yesterday. As the Independent reports, Abbott put in a stumbling radio performance in which she struggled to explain how a pledge to hire 10,000 extra police officers would be funded. She tripped up when asked by LBC host Nick Ferrari how much the key law and order pledge would cost. She initially suggested the bill would ...
Thursday (4 May 2017) is polling day for the Greater Manchester Mayor. Polling stations are open 7am – 10pm. You do NOT need your polling card to vote. If you have been sent a postal vote but not yet sent it in, you can still take a completed envelope down to a polling station before 10pm on Thursday. The election is uses something called 'Supplementary Vote'. which means you get to put your first choice in Column A, and your second choice in column B. Our first choice is Liberal Democrat Jane Brophy – more information here!
Professionals will be holding an information day for people with hearing loss at Radcliffe Asda on Friday 19 May. The event, from 10am to 4pm, takes place during Deaf Awareness Week (15-21 May). For more information, call the sensory officer at Whitefield Library on 0161 253 7512 or email sensory.lib@bury.gov.uk
Residents are invited to meet Dr Irene Lancaster at Prestwich Library on Thursday 11 May. Dr Lancaster will discuss her translation of the biography of the former Chief Rabbi of Haifa entitled Rabbi Shear Yashuv Cohen: Between War and Peace. Rabbi Cohen visited Whitefield, Prestwich and Broughton Park and spoke in local synagogues, declaring these areas to be among the most friendly and hospitable parts of the Jewish diaspora he had ever visited. Local author Dr Lancaster knew Rabbi Cohen well, and advised him on inter-faith work with the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England. The book includes ...
The Liberal Democrats have hit their highest ever number of members, eclipsing the high watermark of 101,768 set in 1994.The landmark comes as Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron heads to Oxford to rally activists for the party's final push of the local election campaign.More than 14,000 new members have joined the Liberal Democrats in the two weeks since the General Election was called. More than 50,000 members have joined since last year's European referendum and nearly 70,000 since the 2015 General Election.Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said: "We are going into these local elections bigger than ever before, with a ...
All of us who have had a finger on the European pulse over the past 40 years have sensed that Britain's Conservative government is on another planet when it talks about the possibility of the country having at least as good a deal with our current EU partners after Brexit as we have now as [...]
Given how quickly the Liberal Democrat membership passed 100,000 after Theresa May called a general election, it's unsurprising if extremely welcome that the party's membership has now hit a record all-time high, topping 101,768. How to join the Lib DemsYou can join the Liberal Democrats quickly, easily and safely online. Membership starts at just £12 a year (£6 for the under-26s on benefits or £1 for students). more That previous high point was way back in 1992, reached at the time of a contest for Party President between Charles Kennedy and Martin Thomas. Kennedy's letter with the ballot papers set ...
