Sleep tight.
Here's a new cartoon from @Adamstoon1 for our third edition @EveningStandard - after Saatchis pic.twitter.com/u2VGmfxbIy— George Osborne (@George_Osborne) June 9, 2017Georgia Grainger has put together a useful guide to the Democratic Unionist Party, its personalities and the scandals in which it has been involved. A couple of examples: 2016-17 ~ Brexit Finances During the European referendum campaign, the DUP funded advertisements which were not run in Northern Ireland - a weird move for a party that only stands in Northern Ireland. A possible, and likely, explanation of is that Northern Ireland has different political donation laws, protecting the secrecy of ...
Sat 10th
19:25
Norway option, at least in the interim, offers the only sensible route out of this mess
Embed from Getty Images The Conservative party likes to boast that it, combined with our FPTP electoral system, provides strong and stable government. Well, a fat lot of strength and stability the Tory party and FPTP system have given us in the last two years! We've had two Prime Ministers, Cameron and May, who will have historians squabbling for years as to whether they are the worst or second worst or third worst Prime Ministers in the history of this country! David Cameron put party before country when he promised an EU referendum, ending with his political shredding. It is ...
Rod Argent and Colin Blunstone were on Lauren Laverne's BBC Radio 6 Music show the other day to talk about the recording of their classic album Odessey and Oracle 50 years ago. This is an extract from the full interview - it starts at 2:12:55
On election night, there were so many results that stood out, that it seems odd to focus on the result Continue reading →
The biggest thing I learned from the result of the general election was that the electorate have a much lower threshold for being taken for granted than I would have ever imagined. Theresa May spent the campaign going from one staged "rally" to another; airplane hangers or factories, stocked with Tory activists given pre-arranged lines to chant. She avoided the actual public as much as possible while appearing on media as minimally as she and her advisors thought she could get away with, and when she was forced to do so, repeated the same boring tag lines over and over ...
A few photographs from my visit to the RHS Flower Show at Chatsworth. Fortunately the event organisers had resolved the difficulties with car parking and queueing that marred the event earlier on in the week. The showground was muddy, even in the marquees, due to the rain that had fallen. A few more duckboards and places to sit would have ... The post RHS Flower Show, Chatsworth appeared first on ten pence piece.
(Photo: sigmalive.com) Considering the various General Election campaigns I've lived through and been involved in, until Thursday night at 10pm I'd have said the 2017 election was the most dismal, unnecessary and polarising in living memory. And then came THAT exit poll. Just as in 2010 and 2015, my initial reaction was disbelief. But unlike those previous occasions this time the exit poll gave cause for real optimism. No doubt it came as a surprise to absolutely everyone, but as the results rolled in it became gradually more obvious that the widely-held belief in the inevitability of a large Conservative ...
Flash back eight weeks to Easter weekend, and consider the position Theresa May and Emmanuel Macron were in then. One of them was an experienced and safe pair of hands, riding high in the polls and with a small, but solid majority in Parliament, while the other was an outsider who'd never run in an election before, let alone won one and while he was doing well, there were questions about how whether he could hold off a challenge from a surging left-wing candidate, and even if he could win, how could he ever hope to put together a coalition ...
Sat 10th
13:05
On Lib Dem Leadership elections: I nail my colours to the mast (& probably upset lots of people)
The vultures are already circling round Tim Farron, despite him having got us a 50% increase in seat numbers, and come within 500 votes of doubling our seats. I've also privately had "Tim must go" messages, or variations thereof, from five separate people; and I'm known as a Tim supporter. Christ alone knows what it's like in Lambite circles. I personally think we need a leadership election like we need a hole in the head, but the party constitution says that there must be a leadership election within a year of a general election (see article 17.2 (g) - sorry ...
Having fought an election on the dangers to the country and the Union of Corbyn taking power with the support of a narrowly based nationalist party such as the SNP and others whom she implies are undesirables, the so-called 'coalition of chaos', Theresa May returns to Number 10 having done exactly that The Conservatives' new partners in government will not be part of a formal coalition as far as we know, but will work on the basis of confidence and supply. That means that they will vote with Theresa May on the Queen's Speech, Budget and No Confidence motions provided ...
In the brave new world of Trump election and Brexit referendum victories, the UK has now thrown in another bitter tasting ingredient - the DUP. A party that competes with the worse elements of UKIP for the most distasteful, backward-looking and illiberal policy positions now has a pivotal role in government. This is a party that is sectarian in nature, is climate change denying and opposes same
Thank you to all those of you (3,398 in North West Durham) who voted Liberal Democrat in Thursday's election, and to all those of you who would have done so had you not decided that we were not going to win in North West Durham, and it was therefore more important to you to stop the Conservative or Labour candidate winning than to express your true preference. We have just experienced an extremely divisive year in British politics, and it appears that many people have reached for the comfort of a return to straightforward "two party politics", or possibly just ...
Please click on the image above to enlarge it for reading I'm looking forward to seeing how the volunteer work to rebuild the former Merseyrail Class 502 EMU is progressing. Here's a shot of a 502 at Ormskirk Station back in the day. And another in LMS Maroon:- The work is being done by the Friends of the 502 Group. Their web site is at:- www.class502.org.uk/
I ought to admit now that my expectations for the election, from a Liberal Democrat perspective, were pretty low. Like the experts, I was fearing net losses and, if you had offered me a nil gain, nil loss outcome at 9.55on Thursday night, I would have taken your hand off at the elbow. That wasn't because I thought we'd run a bad campaign. Far from it, I was quietly impressed with what was said and done. Perhaps I had grown weary with the years of disappointment and loss. But I tuned into the BBC's election night special to check on ...
Well who would have thought it, the Conservatives being kept in office by a political party who seem to have some significant sectarian issues together with other human rights prejudices that are a real worry. Firstly, I was somewhat amused by this Northern Ireland Poster, which may well come back to haunt the DUP. Yes it's from a previous election but you get my drift:- But of course the DUP are allegedly the reason why the NI Assembly fell apart and is still dysfunctional. The issue? Bizarrely it was not not a sectarian or human rights issue, as you might ...
This extraordinary election result has given us plenty to discuss, but one urgent topic concerns the implications for Brexit, the biggest issue of the day. The next few days are going to be critical. Negotiations with the EU are due to start in little more than a week, and the Prime Minister is likely to be re-evaluating her negotiating strategy as you read this. It is easy to say why she should re-evaluate: she went into the election saying that she wanted a mandate to implement her approach to Brexit, and the public hasn't given it to her. In reality ...
From the City Council : Dundee City Council proposes to make an Order under Section 14(1) of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 for the purpose of facilitating traffic management to allow works to sea wall. The Order is expected to be in force for twenty six weeks from 12 June 2017. Its maximum duration in terms of the Act is eighteen months. The effect of the Order is to prohibit temporarily all vehicular traffic in A85 Riverside Drive for (1) a prohibition of right turn from westbound lane into Riverside Approach and Barnetts garage and (2) prohibition of right ...
Yesterday, Shropshire Housing Group submitted new plans for bungalows on the green space on Sidney Road at the bottom of Charlton Rise. Under the revised proposals, there will be five bungalows rather than seven. They will be aligned with the existing bungalows and a greater area of green space will be retained. The Norway Maple, originally one of two, will be felled. All the bunaglows will be social housing. Six new trees will be planted. These will be Quercus robur 'Koster', a fastigiate variety of the common oak with upright branches. Revised scheme for Sidney Road There is no text ...
