That rather irritating legal necessity to stand for election - my nomination paper - was handed in to Gateshead Council today. Alas, it was accepted. So, into battle I go. I'm really looking forward to being verbally beaten up by the good people of Blaydon. I'm especially excited about the long days and sleep deprivation. I have budgeted for at least one new pair of shoes during the election (I'm
Other than finding out I'd finished last in the seat I was standing in, I did notice a handful of other things about the local elections while on holiday... Obviously it was the Conservatives who had the best night of it, by far. Their 39% projected share of the vote would convert into a healthy-enough 48 seat majority if repeated on 8th June. But they'll easily do better than that when national issues are to the fore. The last 10 polls have them between 44-48%. A little over two years ago, ratings like that would have seemed impossible. The Tory ...
This afternoon I spoke to Kingston U3A about my Life as a Foreign Correspondent — undoubtedly the most popular of all the talks that I have been giving since I joined the lecture circuit a decade or so ago. Most writers and many broadcasters sing for their supper in that way, whether for women's clubs, [...]
The British Waterways hotel boat Water Wanderer makes its way from Nottingham to Lincoln via the River Trent and the Roman canal the Fossdyke. I would guess this dates from around 1970.
Tim Farron has been in Scotland today. He started off this morning in East Dunbartonshire with Jo Swinson, went on to North East Fife with Willie Rennie and local candidate Elizabeth Riches and ended the day in Edinburgh West, at Davidson's Mains Primary School in the Almond Ward with Alex Cole-Hamilton and Christine Jardine. As Alex pointed out in his speech, 13 months ago, that area had no Liberal Democrat representation. Thanks to the power of that #libdemfightback, we now have an MSP and Cllrs Kevin Lang and Louise Young elected with a massive majority. I was there, for the ...
That's the local elections out of the way, we've all had a nice weekend break of following the French election (and for those wondering where the British En Marche! is, try my post on the problems of creating a new centre party) which means there's now nothing in the way between now and June 8th. Yes, it's time to get your head down and head directly for the general election, and wonder if we'll be praying for a brick wall to get in the way of that head-on running between now and then. Before you suffer a major head trauma, ...
After my flirtation with restoration at Embassy Court, let's return to derelict Brighton. The old Hippodrome is tucked in, rather unexpectedly, just behind the seafront. It was built in 1897 and Wikipedia tells its colourful history: Shows of all types were staged there, and top-name entertainers such as Sarah Bernhardt, Sammy Davis, Jr., Gracie Fields, Harry Houdini, Buster Keaton, Lillie Langtry and Laurel and Hardy appeared. Laurence Olivier played the venue early in his stage career—but fell over on his first entrance on his début. One of Charlie Chaplin's first roles was a bit-part in theatre impresario Fred Karno's comedy ...
The car park I'm in tonight has a disclaimer printed on the ticket. They appear to have as much confidence in their brand promise as the British public should have in Theresa May's claims of offering "strong and stable" government. The post Theresa May's promises should come with the same outrageous disclaimer appeared first on ten pence piece.
I know, I know, I said I wasn't going to write about the general election. Unfortunately, when you spend all day every day campaigning, as I have for the last few weeks, you end up with no thoughts in your ... Continue reading →
A Liberal Democrat news release brings the news: Today, Liberal Democrats set out plans to introduce mandatory reporting on the ethnicity pay gap for organisations with 250 employees or more. Employee ethnicity data is currently patchy at best and there is no uniform way to collect it making monitoring and analysis difficult. The Liberal Democrats believe that every person, regardless of their ethnicity, should be allowed to reach their full potential in the workplace. Announcing the policy, Tim Farron said: "Jo Swinson fought an uphill struggle against the Conservatives in Coalition to get gender pay gap reporting into law, but ...
1. In Scotland, Yes lost the referendum, but the 45 per cent who backed it united behind the SNP and became an unstoppable force in first-past-the-post elections. But it is the 52 per cent who backed Leave who have united after the European referendum - or largely so - and united behind the Conservative Party. That is the problem that has made other parties dream of a progressive alliance. 2. Jeremy Corbyn is electorally toxic, which makes an electoral agreements between Labour and other parties impossible. He would drag them down with him. You may think this unfair, but it ...
England has a long tradition of May Queens, but never before had a May who sometimes acts like a queen. 'This is the most important election in my lifetime' she insisted to Andrew Marr on one of his Sunday-morning BBC 1 shows. 'It's about the future of the country and about the national interest'. She made plain her belief that to get the 'tough' Brexit negotiations right the country needs her in charge, which will also ensure a strong economy and 'a country that works for everyone'. She put over the same message even more explicitly on a visit to ...
I don't think these questions will make it onto Trivial Pursuits, but just in case: Q1 Which two divisions in the Durham County Council elections 2017 had the lowest number of spoiled votes in 2017? Q2 Which division in the Durham County Council elections 2017 had the highest number of spoiled votes in 2017? Q3 Which division in the Durham County Council elections 2017 had the highest voter turnout in 2017? Q4 Which division in the Durham County Council elections 2017 had the highest voter turnout in 2017? A1. Consett North and Chester le Street South which both had zero ...
I was struck by this writing in the Independent on-line. How are we to have any faith in a leader who is expected to enter tough negotiations with the EU yet is too scared to open herself to difficult questioning from her potential voters? Her "rally" in Leeds took place in a factory where the workforce (who would no doubt would have represented a good cross section of voters) had been sent home and only party faithful invited to meet her and the press. She then had a further "rally" in a community centre in Scotland which had been listed ...
On the doorstep I have lost count of the number of people I've spoken to, from the chap who was voting remain because he preferred "white immigration" to the person who was telling me that he "wanted his country back". These people all have one thing in common, they feel let down. If they feel their politicians aren't listening to them and they want change they vote for reactionary parties. This has been the case as long as representative democracy has been around. Capitalising on people's fears is how Mussolini got in, the same can be said for the advance ...
At a loose end in London on the Bank Holiday Monday last week, I decided to try the Sci-Fi London film festival and wandered down to Stratford (much nostalgia for Worldcon planning meetings in 2013-14) to try this Kickstarter-funded movie. I saw some familiar faces in the audience, which was very nice. The film is about an astronaut sent to investigate alien signals coming from the outer solar system - moons of Saturn and Neptune and the dwarf planet Eris - and the tensions that arise between him and Earth (i.e. NASA and his wife). It looks and sounds beautiful. ...
Joe Anderson would not be able to do a 'Redrow' in places like Calderstones Park and Sefton Park Meadowlands if our proposals for new legislation were carried The five Liverpool Liberal Democrat Candidates for Liverpool have produced a 5 point ... Continue reading →
Strong and stable Theresa's been given her lines. Yes, Strong and Stable it's on the table, not fact but fable, it's just a label, hopeless, not able, propaganda Babel. May 38 years ago today, a blonde haired woman spoke out of the TV screen and made a commitment to my 16 year old self. 'Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.' I look at Thatcher on the screen now all tight blonde perm, pointy ...
In a recent blog on Prospect, Peter Lilley, the former Conservative MP for Hitchin and Harpenden, explained his support for Theresa May's statement that "no deal is better than a bad deal". Although a 'bad deal' would be more disastrous than no deal at all, the 'no deal' scenario should not be viewed through rose-tinted glasses. It is worryingly implied that a Conservative majority would already accepted that it will not be possible for the UK and the EU to come to an agreement in time, and have lost interest in serious negotiations. The flaw in Peter Lilley's argument is ...
Kent Online wins our Headline of the Day Award. Liberal England adds: Did I ever tell you that I was derailed by cows in Kent? Readers reply hurriedly: Yes.
A press release from the Liberal Democrats today announces that 'Big beasts return to Lib Dem front line as Farron announces election campaign team'. I'm not sure whether Jo Swinson, Vince Cable and Ed Davey like being referred to as beasts – what sort might they be? But here is the full list of the new General Election Campaign Team: Leader Tim Farron President Baroness Sal Brinton Chancellor Vince Cable Foreign Affairs Tom Brake Defence Baroness Judith Jolly Europe; International Trade Nick Clegg Europe Baroness Sarah Ludford Home Affairs Lord Brian Paddick Health Norman Lamb Education Sarah Olney Work and ...
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CPS on when it will announce decision in Tory election fraud cases: "we are working to various deadl...
As I've previously pointed out, the public announcements due from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) over election fraud cases involving upwards of 30 Conservative MPs and officials could upend the general election campaign. Today The Independent has the latest on when that CPS news will come: If it decides to launch criminal proceedings, the investigation could have a dramatic impact on a snap election which was called by Theresa May last month when she was top of the polls. A spokesman for the CPS told The Independent, "We have nothing to add to our previous position which is that we ...
Today, Liberal Democrats set out plans to introduce mandatory reporting on the ethnicity pay gap for organisations with 250 employees or more. Employee ethnicity data is currently patchy at best and there is no uniform way to collect it making monitoring and analysis difficult. The Liberal Democrats believe that every person, regardless of their ethnicity, should be allowed to reach their full potential in the workplace. Announcing the policy, Tim Farron said: "Jo Swinson fought an uphill struggle against the Conservatives in Coalition to get gender pay gap reporting into law, but the fight doesn't stop there. It is shocking ...
The observer has the story on its web site – see link above 'A shadowy global operation involving big data, billionaire friends of Trump and the disparate forces of the Leave campaign influenced the result of the EU referendum. As Britain heads to the polls again, is our electoral process still fit for purpose?' Read this and worry because there's one hell of a lot to be worried about! We have been manipulated by the printed media for generations but this new form of manipulation is far more dangerous and it is eating away at our very democratic structures ...
Time out is gone – the quest is on. Singers representing 42 countries have assembled in Kiev for the world's greatest festival of music and wind machines: the Eurovision Song Contest. The fun kicks off on Tuesday night with the first of the two semi-finals, and this is the one in which UK viewers can vote. Here are the runners are riders. Sweden Robin Bengtsson was the winner of SVT's rigorous Melodifestivalen selection process so you can expect a slick performance. They wisely inserted the word "freaking" to replace a swearier lyric after its victory in the Melfest heats. The ...
Like most Liberal Democrats I was hoping our we would make significant gains in last week's local elections. After all the augurs were good. We'd polled above 30% and come second in the Witney by-election caused by David Cameron's breaking his promise to stay on and sort out the mess he'd made, and won the Richmond Park by-election caused by Zak Goldsmith's keeping his promise to resign and re-fight the seat if the Tories approved the third runway at Heathrow. These were on top of frequent gains in numerous local government by-election, all dutifully reported on Liberal Democrat Voice. The ...
One of the biggest fallouts from Brexit is the future of EURATOM, the European Atomic Energy Community, which manages the procurement and movement of all nuclear materials and waste across the EU, and JET (Joint European Torus), which is a nuclear fusion facility based in Culham, Oxfordshire. EURATOM predates the formation of the EU but they are now legally entangled. The main sticking point for the Tories is their insistence on leaving the European Court of Justice which oversees the agreement. The hard Brexiteers' obsession with the ECJ meant that while exiting the EU did not have to include leaving ...
I took the weekend off from blogging, but the regular general election diary posts will resume later today. However, while I was out yesterday an idea struck me for a prediction contest for a difference. There are plenty of people out there asking for your election predictions in terms of how many seats different parties will win etc, but none that I'm aware of asking you to predict what this will mean to the electoral geography of the country. So that's what I want this contest to consider. The Three Shire Stone (from Wikipedia) Back in December, prompted by a ...
"In my first general election the Liberal Party's policy was that employees and shareholders should have equal rights to share the profits of an enterprise and the determination of a company's direction. This was no wishy-washy Theresa May proposal to allow one token employee to sit on a Board. This was full blown industrial democracy." Iain Brodie Brown says this is one of the distinctive ideas that Liberal Democrats can bring to a progressive alliance. Dave Gorman argues that "the ownership of public assets should be transferred from the state to the public". It doesn't take a dictator to smother ...
How A Small Group Of Pro-Corbyn Websites Built Enormous Audiences On FacebookInteresting, of sometimes worrying, piece. I do baulk a bit at The Canary being liked to a Brietbart of the left. Sure, they're biased, but they ADMIT to being biased. Using alt-left to create a connection-of-type in people's heads between things like The Canary and out and out facists like Brietbart seems to be a false equivalence to me. Weighted blanket that could 'help aid anxiety' for sleepers launchedIf you don't have dogs to weight you down at night this might help gallifrey_times | GT for Sunday the 7th ...
Elections took place in two wards, Hayton and Whitcliffe. Candidates in five wards were elected unopposed. Three councillors will be co-opted into vacancies. Hayton Ward. Erica Garner topped the poll with 170 votes. Mark Clark gained 158 votes and Kevin Newbold 123. Garner and Clark are elected. Whitcliffe Ward. Tim Gill topped the poll with 334 votes. Nicola Paton gained 148 votes and Jim Smithers 110. Gill and Paton are elected. There are three new faces on the council, Erica Garner, Nicola Paton and Robin Pote. The full results Ludlow Town Bringewood Ward Jones, Rose. Vacancy. Ludlow Town Clee View ...
As someone who has spent the last 10 years working in mental health care locally, I was grieved to see the Tories gain majority control of the County Council on Thursday night. The side story however is that the Liberal Democrats have made progress whereas Labour has fallen away – in Hastings. The Lib Dems [...]
There's a message floatin' In the air. Tory Voters talkin' everywhere. "We're not racist and we Like the poor. It's not those things that we're Votin' for" "Yes we know disabled people are going to die, yeah. It's all worth it if we only stop that Labour guy" Tory Voters Tory Voters Tory Voters Never stop and they Never die. As they get older they just multiply. Tory Voters, will they Never halt? If they keep votin' that way It's our fault. We need to show they there's another way, yeah. You don't need to vote tory to make Labour ...
In my book, "2017", I predicted a Le Pen victory yesterday. When I wrote it, Macron had not yet emerged as one of the main contenders. It is amazing for me to think just how much the new president's election win came from nowhere. Let's get the boring stuff out of the way: the idea that Macron is going to mean a worse Brexit than any other candidate would have is nonsense. Some right-wing tabloid got themselves in a tizzy about Le Pen, thinking that electing a hard-line nationalist who has no love for the EU would mean France would ...
Throughout the world, the defining cleavage in elections has largely become that between those advocating the Open Society, against a new wave of parties and movements strongly propagating the Closed Society. In the UK, this is at the forefront of the current election, embodied in the debate around Brexit. Here we see many of the standard clashes in the Open-Closed debate, including on the virtues of globalisation and of international institutions, strong disagreements on immigration, and a debate on whether to take society back to the communities of the past, or forward to the future. In addition, with the rise ...
What's this about then? You may have missed this piece in the Peterborough Telegraph, as the Council (no doubt) would want as few people as possible to know about the "mistake" that they recently made. Basically, Peterborough City Council (PCC) tweeted a warning of an energy firm acting into a fraudulent manner..... However, hours later, [...]
Embed from Getty Images On the New Statesman website, the former Liberal Party leaders praises the current Liberal Democrat leader as "the most under-rated politician in the UK today". Sir David writes: I have known and highly regarded him since I first met him as leader of the student Liberals at Newcastle University. In 2005 he defeated a right-wing Tory MP by just 250 votes. At the next election in 2010 he jumped to a 12,000 majority, much of which he retained in the debacle in 2015. Twice he has persuaded me to address his annual constituency fundraising dinner saying ...
It is, admittedly, unusual to have a proper Marxist as the Shadow Chancellor standing for election. However, as we now have one I think it is right to explain the basic problems with Marxism. There are two key components of Marxist theory: Dialectical Materialism and the theory of Surplus Value. Dialectical Materialism analyses progress into the concept of there being a Thesis, an Antithesis
The latest police community surgery for the West End is at Blackness Library later today :
Responding to reports that the Conservatives are sticking to their failed 10,000 immigration target, Shadow Home Secretary Brian Paddick said: "This is yet another Conservative pledge that they will inevitably break.Theresa May seems to have forgotten everything she learnt in the Home Office - you cannot have a successful economy if you restrict immigration that much. It seems like the Conservatives are intent on harming our economy, first with a Hard Brexit that will yank us out of the Single Market and cost jobs, and now this. "The Brexiteers told us that leaving the EU would mean we could be ...
Microsoft Windows™ - the waltz LOL! (tags: music microsoft funny ) Protecting Citizens' Rights in the Negotiations with the UK Very important speech by Brexit negotiator @MichelBarnier. (Where is UK on this?) (tags: eu brexit ukpolitics ) Guggenheim Made 200 Art Books Free to Download Hooray! (tags: art ) On the state of our democracy Malta's constitutional problems. (tags: malta ) What if Britain crashes out of Euratom? It won't be pretty. (tags: brexit ukpolitics nuclearpower eu )
I have discussed countless times here how the promise by Brexiteers to invest an additional £350m a week into the NHS if we left the EU was undeliverable. Now we have had confirmation from the Health Secretary himself, a man serving in a Government committed to a hard Brexit and the delivery of all the promises that delivered the referendum victory in the first place. As the Independent reports,Jeremy Hunt has now admitted he "can't deliver" the extra £350m a week promised for the NHS by Brexit campaigners. He also said that it would be a "disaster" for the health ...
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