A bit of good news this week: the Highways Agency have announced the preferred route for the upgrade to the A1 between the Coalhouse junction at the south end of the Team Valley (junction 67) to Birtley (junction 65). The upgrade comes with a significant challenge: crossing the main East Coast railway. A new bridge is to be built to the south of the existing Allerdene Railway Bridge and the A1
St Mary the Virgin, Bottesford, is a beautiful church, known as "The Lady of the Vale" - the Vale of Belvoir, that is. But it is devoted more to the glory of the Dukes of Rutland than to the glory of God. So much so that the altar has been moved to near the chancel arch. After that it is tombs all the way. The result is a wonderful collection of 17th and 18th century sculpture after that the dukes were buried in a mausoleum at Belvoir Castle. One of the tombs has some dark history attached to it, which ...
I've run my own software company for the last 13 years. While still small, we have looked for new markets for our software. Two years ago I started looking at expanding into Europe – it was close, we had contacts there, and the trading rules were clear, so it wasn't going to be hugely expensive [...]
Four time election winner Dorothy Thornhill has been the directly elected Mayor of Watford since the post was created in 2002. But she is standing down next year, bringing to an end the longest term of office served by any directly elected Mayor. She will continue to be a Liberal Democrat member of the House of Lords, which she joined in 2015. Liberal Democrats in Watford have now chosen Peter Taylor, currently Deputy Mayor, to stand as her successor next May. Peter Taylor said, I am honoured to have been selected as the Liberal Democrat candidate to be Watford's next ...
Richard Jefferies, the 19th century author I wrote my dissertation about, deserves to be better known. So it is good to read this on the Swindon Advertiser site: The work of Victorian nature writer Richard Jefferies is being brought to a new audience this summer. A series of cream tea and culture Sundays is being staged at his birthplace near Coate Water and it is proving popular. "The museum is dedicated to Richard Jefferies but a lot of people have never heard of him," said manager Mike Pringle. "Just wandering around looking at books in cases isn't really doing justice ...
The Leicester Mercury reports: A Labour councillor has quit after being deemed not a fit and proper person to drive a taxi by his own authority. Gurpal Atwal has resigned as the member for the Uplands Ward on Oadby and Wigston Borough Council.The resignation followed the failure of Atwal's court appeal against his council's own finding. You can read the allegations made against him, all of which Atwal denies, in an earlier Mercury report. Atwal blames a former business partner for those allegations and, in a statement issued today, blamed others for his resignation too: "Oadby and Wigston Council officers ...
Embed from Getty Images One of the big challenges of our time is to provide work for all those who need it, work which is useful, fulfilling and which pays enough to live on. And although the British economy is creating around half a million jobs (net) a year, many of them do not satisfy those simple criterion. The need for good quality jobs will increase as the population increases and working careers get longer, yet hardly anyone is thinking about where these jobs are to come from. Government departments, unions and think-tanks tend to concentrate on where jobs have ...
Embed from Getty Images Members are sovereign in the Liberal Democrat party. Members will be consulted on the overall party strategy at the next Federal Conference, prior to a motion being passed. Yet the party leader is expected, both by the membership and by the country, somehow to embody the image of the party. He or she is identified with its perceived success or failure by the media, regardless of how much control they may actually have had. So what do we members think the first duty of the Liberal Democrat leader should be? Surely he must show in outlining ...
Many things hacked me off during the 2017 General Election campaign but I suspect none of them come close to the anger I felt towards the intense and non-stop chatter about progressive alliances. Every single day I saw people talking about how best to work together between parties such as Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens. Instead of finding real ground to take it to the Tories though, activists, local and national parties found more that divided us than uniting us. For this blog post I want to concentrate on Caroline Lucas. She is number one is my crosshairs ...
Commenting on reports that Boris Johnson will undermine UK sheep farmers in a potential UK-NZ trade deal, Liberal Democrat Chief Whip Alistair Carmichael said: "Yesterday it was chlorinated chicken from the States and today it is cheap lamb from New Zealand. It seems to be a competition within the cabinet to see who can do the most harm to Britain's agricultural industry." "The trade deals this government are chasing risk seeing cuts in our food standards as poorly regulated imported goods flood the market. "There should be no trade deals that weaken our standards of animal welfare or food standards. ...
Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable has branded the latest growth figures "weak". Vince Cable said: "We have weak economic growth presided over by a weak government, and this is likely to keep us near the bottom of the international growth league. Manufacturing has actually fallen by 0.5% due largely to a slump in car production, while construction has also fallen. Only the service sector has enabled us to have very modest growth. "We are continuing to see the effects of a weak pound which has hit wages and consumer confidence. It has only been the spending of shoppers, based on ...
Wed 26th
12:40
Employment fees ruling - Govt has wasted workers' taxes trying to undermine workers' rights
The Liberal Democrats have welcomed a Supreme Court ruling that employment tribunal fees are unlawful, and accused the government of "wasting workers' taxes in an attempt to undermine workers' rights." The party called for employment tribunal fees to be scrapped in its manifesto for the 2017 General Election. Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader Jo Swinson commented: "This is a landmark victory for workers and for access to justice. "The government should be ashamed that it fought this case all the way to the Supreme Court. Ministers have wasted workers' taxes in an attempt to undermine workers' rights. "The evidence has been ...
Embed from Getty Images The Communities secretary, Sajid Javid, has issued a consultation to look at a range of measures to tackle unfair and unreasonable abuses of leasehold. The Leasehold Knowledge Partnership and Carlex seek to represent the interests of residential leaseholders and end unfairness in this form of property tenure. Carlex, the Campaign Against Retirement Leasehold Exploitation, represents the interests of retirement leaseholders. They provide the secretariat to the new All Party Parliamentary Group on leasehold and common hold, formed on September 7 2016. Ed Davey MP, has been closely involved in the investigation of Cartel-like practices and Leasehold ...
At 10am this Saturday, 29th July, the WWF are holding a Climate Change Coffee morning in the Ridgewood Cafe, Yate. This will be a chance to find out more about the Climate Coalitiion, how climate change is affecting the local community and what action you can take. You can find out more at https://www.facebook.com/events/408149509578801/
South Gloucestershire Council have published proposals for a new junction 18a on the M4. They are in the early stages of a feasibility study and you will have a chance to have your say in a formal consultation running for eight weeks starting the week commencing 21 August. You can pre-register your interest in the consultation here. Last week Claire Young and other Focus Team members attended an open-air meeting at Pucklechurch about the junction. There is strong opposition there to the Eastern proposal, which would involve building a link road near the village. You can read what the Pucklechurch ...
Embed from Getty Images Two months ago today I joined the Liberal Democrats amongst the peak of political campaigning for the general election (the first in which I was able to vote). Before this year I had seen myself as someone more on the right when it came to business and the economy but also felt strongly in favour of civil liberties. As someone who has grown up in a Conservative stronghold in the South, and only really came to better understand politics under the Coalition government, I had always seen the Tories as the better choice out of the ...
Labour insider on Corbyn's brexittinessit's certainly an interesting piece, but seems to be saying that the best way to stop brexit is to be as shambolic as possible... Dungeons and Doggos!Excellent tumblr. Also available on twitter, instagram, etc. InstagramInstagram photo: All that can currently be seen of Spike Instagram Instagram photo: Dad is watching telly. Pippin is watching me. [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
Tue, 12:56: Deborah Watling obituary https://t.co/kesY5Oo3Ru Very nice by @TobyHadoke. Tue, 16:05: Three Stage Voting and the Hugos https://t.co/aSbcNQyckq Wise analysis. Tue, 18:35: RT @jonathancoe: The Good Life wouldn't work today as comedy. Tom & Barbara would be Remainers, Margot & Jerry Leavers, and they wouldn't t... Tue, 19:35: 18th birthday https://t.co/vzAr7Zq2g9 Wed, 09:00: Great letter in today's @FT - "television documentaries such as Star Trek"!!! https://t.co/Xj2PQL89E1 Wed, 10:45: Vucic's Latest 'Historic' Promise: A Deal with Kosovo https://t.co/lMMUwdLEu3 Sceptical analysis (and a Tolkien metaphor).
This tweet by Sunderland Labour MP Sharon Hodgson crossed my desk this morning. Ignore the totally ignorant use of the apostrophe in "MP's" (she's turned a plural into a singular possessive). Concentrate on the message. This was a tweet from 2nd June, with days to go before the general election and Jeremy Corbyn claiming he would cancel student debt. Labour are now squealing that Comrade Leader
[IMG: MichelleMcManus2010] Michelle McManus Winner of Pop Idol 2003, singer, broadcaster, actress and columnist, Michelle McManus must have brought blushes to the cheeks of Willie Rennie with this passage in her Glasgow Evening Times column: I mean why can't The Doctor be a woman? Some of the most powerful positions in the world are held by women now, just look at our own Scottish Parliament. All of the major parties have women at the helm although let's not forget the Lib Dems and their leader Willie Rennie whose antics at First Minister's questions have fast become my secret guilty pleasure. ...
The Guardian reports that once more members of Labour's shadow cabinet are at loggerheads over whether Britain can hope to remain in the customs union when it leaves the EU. They say that Barry Gardiner, the shadow trade secretary, has argued that the only option open to the UK would be a Turkey-style customs agreement, but claimed that such a deal would be "a disaster" as it would leave the UK in a weak position: However, the shadow Brexit and foreign secretaries, Keir Starmer and Emily Thornberry, have told senior Labour colleagues that Britain could negotiate a better deal than ...
Wed 26th
09:10
Why this latest shift in the Brexit debate could have a profound effect on UK politics
Two things inspired this article. One, Corbyn and Barry Gardiner's suddenly fierce Euroscepticism being given a free voice (and the subsequent kickback from numerous figures within Labour as a result) and two, an article in the Spectator by Ed West entitled "I'm a Leaver who would be happy for a second referendum". They are perfect examples of the poles which are now changing and in many ways inverting the debate around Brexit. On the Left, there is a train of thought that goes something like this: Jeremy is just faking with his pro-Brexit stuff; he is saying what he needs ...
The producers of Love Island staged a coup of sorts when they invited the parents of the remaining contestants onto the show because it was a game changer. The show went from being a voyeuristic visual of flesh, cleavage and sex to one injected with a sense of warmth and charm. Those objects of lust, entertainment and trivia, otherwise known as the contestants, were cast in a different light all of a sudden and it was fascinating watching them interact with their parents. If I had stopped to think about what sort of parent would condone their child going on ...
The Indy 100 article – linked above – is well worth a read I have been banging on for ages about the madness of building on high grade agricultural land around Sefton Borough and indeed elsewhere and this article, although written from a different perspective, really does highlight why I am so concerned about food chain sustainability in the UK. If nothing else, and there's a lot else, the quote below from the article must surely sober up even the most hard line of Brexiters and land developers, but it probably won't:- 'In the early 1990s Britain's self-sufficiency in ...
Having updated residents over the past few years over the council's proposals to improve the tennis courts at Victoria Park, it is great to see the new tennis courts now complete and looking great! There's been very positive feedback from constituents. "Before" and "after" photos below :I'm pictured a few years ago at the old tennis courts - above The new tennis courts are a very substantial improvement
It must be hard to be a certain type of conservative in today's world. Maybe it always was. But today things seem to be changing pretty fast and it must be agonising if you are one of those conservatives who would prefer the illusion of cast iron certainties, and for the world either to stand [...] The post The medicalisation of conservative nightmares appeared first on Radix.
The agenda of the South Planning Committee next week is dominated by three Ludlow schemes for bungalows. They have been called in to committee by Tracey Huffer, who thinks they are sufficiently controversial for decisions to be made by elected representatives rather than officers. All three schemes are promoted by the Shropshire Housing Group. Two of the schemes, for five social bungalows on Sidney Road and a market bungalow on Poyner Close are particularly controversial. Officers are recommending that all three schemes are approved by the committee. If you want to speak at the meeting, you need to apply to ...
