Churchtown Thursday, 24th August, BoxTree Kitchen for Queenscourt café, Manor Road/Cambridge Road, roundabout, from 10:30am to 11:30am. We will be there to meet you and discuss any Council problems you may have. No appointment necessary. Just pop in.

Posted by John Dodd on Meols Lib Dems

I became aware, last week, of a pop-culture phenomenon that had previously eluded me - a book called Ready Player One, which is currently being adapted into a film by Steven Spielberg. Many people were circulating extracts from it on ... Continue reading →

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

The full agenda and directory for September's Lib Dem federal conference in Bournemouth are now out and you can read them in full below. Included in the agenda for Saturday is the latest round of consultation on the party's strategy. Liberal Democrat conference: what you need to knowThe Liberal Democrats hold two federal (i.e. UK-wide) party conferences a year, a weekend in the spring and a week in the autumn. more The agenda also confirms plans for the 2018 Liberal Democrat federal conferences. The spring federal conference will be in Southport and then for the autumn it is back to ...

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack

Above 80 degrees North, you begin to run out of geography. Or, more accurately, land. We're north of Spitsbergen, cruising slowly along the edge of the pack ice in the hope of spotting seals and polar bears. They're out there, somewhere... Occasionally, there is an announcement over the public address system, "there's a group of harp seals off the port side at 10.30", and people grab their binoculars to seek a better view. But most of the day is spent either preparing to eat, actually eating, or digesting what you just ate. I have a nasty feeling that I'm going ...

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

A further snippet from the latest set of British Election Study data: 19% of voters changed their mind on how they would vote between the start and the end of the campaign. Is one in five voters changing their mind during an election a lot? Not really, at least compared to the past. In 2015 it was 17% and in both 2005 and 2010 it was higher as Anthony Wells has pointed out. So all that stuff about the electorate being unprecedentedly volatile this time? Untrue. What was different, however, is that this time the movement was much more one ...

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack

Embed from Getty Images The agenda for Autumn conference in Bournemouth has now been published online. This contains the full text of all the motions that will be debated, as well as speeches and other events in the main hall. The conference runs from Saturday 16th September to Tuesday 19th September. Now is the time to arrange a meeting with your local party to discuss amendments you might like to submit. The deadline for submitting amendments to motions, and also for emergency motions, topical issues and questions to reports, is 1pm on 4th September. As always, you would be wise ...

Posted by Mary Reid on Liberal Democrat Voice
Wed 2nd
17:41

Asking a manager

One of my guilty pleasures is the Ask A Manager blog, written by Alison Green. Other people's problems are always grimly fascinating, but in particular in the artificial environment of the workplace, where people may come across problems that they would never encounter with family or friends and be at a loss as to how to react, the commentary of a sympathetic expert (combined with the awfulness of the problem reported) can be gripping and thought-provoking. (And the thought it provokes is thankfulness that it isn't me on either side of the transaction being discussed.) Humanity is flawed, and people ...

Wednesday As a fluffy elephant, I've noticed you monkeys are in the habit of being bang-up sure things are going to turn out well. Even when they're not. It's called OPTIMISM BIAS. It CAN be useful. Having evolved the ability to imagine the FUTURE, you'd all be plunged into clinical depression without it. (And I'm not making this up: people with low optimism bias tend to suffer with depression.) But it also leads to assuming that WARNING SIGNS don't apply to you: Government Health Warning - I won't get cancer. Speed limits - I'm a safe driver! Brexit cliff-edge ahead ...

After years of calling for tougher passport and border controls, you would have thought that the Daily Mail would be praising EU Schengen countries for doing precisely what the Daily Mail has demanded. Alas, it is not to be. Instead, the Daily Fail is screaming as "Brussels imposes tough passport controls"! Such delays as Britain's borders become more heavily controlled are part of the future

Posted by jonathanwallace on Jonathan Wallace

Europe seems to move from one crisis to the next. The Eurozone crisis was rapidly followed by the refugee crisis and the Brexit vote. Today the latest challenge comes from Poland: a government seemingly determined to change how the country's institutions are structured and the amount of political control exerted on the judiciary. The election [...] The post Everyone who has tried to coerce Europe into unity has failed. Remember that, Brussels appeared first on Radix.

Posted by Joe Zammit-Lucia on Opinion - Radix
YouGov

"It's political correctness gorn mad!" is probably a phrase you would associate more with a gruff, Daily Mail reading, UKIP supporter, than you would with a Guardian reading, quinoa eating, Lib Dem. Political correctness is the stick that progressives get beaten with time and time again by people like Nigel Farage, who like to claim that the left care more about censoring discussion than about common sense politics. I also get annoyed by people who obsess over what you can and can't say at the expense of what is actually true, but my argument is that, increasingly in British politics, ...

Posted by Jon Andrew on Liberal Democrat Voice

Jeremy Corbyn has come under pressure from the media and his own MPs to say something negative about what is happening in Venezuela and to denounce Nicolas Madura. It is sad that one of the leaders of Britain's two major parties has to be cajoled into saying a failing dictatorship is bad news, but there we are. It's good for Jeremy Corbyn that it is the media and Labour MPs that are the ones applying this pressure: they are the two groups of people Corbyn cares about the least in the whole of humanity. Let us play devil's advocate for ...

Posted by Nick on nicktyrone.com

The Daily Mail and Daily Express are all in a lather today about the fact that many British holiday-makers have been hit by prolonged passport checks at continental airports, with the papers accusing the EU of punishing these poor sons of Albion. The irony could not be greater, given that these very same newspapers have [...]

Posted by jonathanfryer on Jonathan Fryer

So the great move forward from the beloved Leader of Liverpool Mayor Anderson has made us all a laughing stock. We will just have to train the dogs to clear up after all! So now we have it folks. The ... Continue reading →

Posted by richardkemp on But what does Richard Kemp think?

Embed from Getty Images The sad passing of Jim Davidson recently brings back memories, as I write this here in Aboyne in the heart of his former constituency. "We can't have another Welshman as leader of the Liberal Party" said Jo Grimond. When Jo resigned as leader in 1967, there were two contestants to replace him: Emlyn Hooson and Jeremy Thorpe. The electorate was the Parliamentary Party of twelve Liberal MPs. Initially, Hooson had the support of six of them which, if he voted for himself, would make him the clear winner. Jo took aside Jim Davidson, the pleasant and ...

Posted by Martin Thomas on Liberal Democrat Voice

Commenting on ONS figures showing that last year there were the highest number of drug poisoning deaths since records began, Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary Norman Lamb said: "These latest statistics highlight the abject failure of the Government's drug strategy. "Lives are being lost but the Conservatives seem wedded to this hard-line approach. "We have to accept the realities facing us and start taking action that works. Rather than locking up addicts we should be giving these individuals the help they need. How many more lives will be lost before the Government realises this?" Candidate for Neath in the general ...

Posted by LD Neath on Aberavon & Neath Liberal Democrats

The observances for the centenary of the start of the Battle of Passchendaele have brought some of the Commonwealth War Grave Cemeteries on to our television screens. The first one I visited was in Papua New Guinea in the 1970s, and in the last few years, especially while helping to write accounts of the Old Boys of the school I attended who were killed in the First World War, have visited several in Northern France and Belgium. I count these visits as among the most moving and humbling experiences of my life: the astonishing numbers, the youth of so many ...

Posted by Peter Wrigley on Keynesian Liberal
Wed 2nd
11:00

My tweets

Tue, 18:59: London sights https://t.co/tdD1oAiCVH Tue, 20:48: Using Ireland https://t.co/DYxXb7AZul @kevinhorourke states the bleeding obvious (which alas still needs to be stated) about Brexit and t... Wed, 10:45: Tolkien's Map and The Messed Up Mountains of Middle-earth https://t.co/fSXCD1eoC8 A geologist writes.

We'll provide the pizza, if you come and make some calls... followed of course by a trip to the pub! The phone bank makes a real difference, giving you the chance to encourage uncertain voters to make their voices heard, and provide real time feedback for the teams campaigning on the ground. It's also really important after the General Election that we continue to be successful in our local government by-election campaigns. Our next Give It A Go - Phoning evening is Thursday 3 August, between 6-8pm when we are focusing on gaining two seats from the Conservatives. We'll provide ...

Posted by ALDC on Liberal Democrat Voice

The Guardian has the story on its web site – see link above Quote from the article 'With the sequel to his blockbuster documentary An Inconvenient Truth about to be released, Al Gore tells Carole Cadwalladr how his role at the forefront of the fight against climate change consumes his life.' I have long held the view that global warming is the greatest threat to the human race but it is often one that takes a political back seat in favour of less important but allegedly more immediate concerns. Just think how much you heard about it in the ...

Posted by Cllr. Tony Robertson on Sefton Focus
eUKhost

It's an increasingly tough life as a polar bear. Climate change has caused a reduction in the amount of sea ice upon which they rely as a platform for catching seals, their staple diet. And sometimes, in high summer, they're forced to make a choice - rely on the sea ice as it retreats northwards, or stay on land and hope to be able to scavenge enough to keep body and soul together. We were supposed to be heading out on the zodiacs to making a landing near a walrus haulout, but the tide had turned unexpectedly, and the last ...

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

It has been obvious to many of us for some time that we are in this Brexit-inspired mess because first David Cameron and then Theresa May, chose to put the interests of the Conservative Party ahead of those of the UK. Now, as the Independent reports, former senior civil servants have confirmed that the Prime Minister is "staring into the abyss" of Brexit by placing party over national interest: Nicholas Macpherson, a crossbench peer and former head of the Treasury, told the Financial Times "All too frequently in the last year the national interest has been subordinated to party interest." ...

Posted by Peter Black on Peter Black

This Sunday's band concert on Magdalen Green features the Forfar Instrumental Band. It starts at 2pm on Sunday 6th August at the bandstand. Details available here.

Wed 2nd
08:18

RNLI Open Day 2017

 

Posted by Alisdair Gibbs-Barton on Alisdair Gibbs-Barton

The miscalculation politicians have always made in negotiating European treaties is that we'll be welcomed with open arms. Time for a history lesson Until recently, few of us were familiar with the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), the international organisation that governs many aspects of nuclear energy activity in member states. Brexit, and the rapidly retracted "leak" that Britain may seek "associate membership" of Euratom has suddenly brought Euratom to the fore. The precise legal situation regarding the UK's continued membership of Euratom is contested, but there is much to learn from the history of this relationship: over the past ...

Posted by Stuart Butler on Political science | The Guardian