The North East Lib Dem regional conference was held today at the National Glass Centre in Sunderland. Vince Cable was the guest speaker and he covered Brexit, the Westminster sexual harassment scandal and the forthcoming budget. I recorded the whole speech on the video above.

Posted by jonathanwallace on Jonathan Wallace

It seems tomorrow's Sunday Times is reporting that police found "extreme pornography" on Damian Green's computer when they raided his Commons office and impounded it in 2008. When we have finished giggling, it might be a good idea to recall that at the time all good Liberals were up in arms over that raid. Here is the House Points column I wrote for Liberal Democrat News that week... MPs Collared Michael Jabez Foster said just one constituent had raised the search of Damian Green's office with him. It was "self-indulgence", he argued, for MPs to debate it. But the people ...

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

Nick Clegg's successor as Lib Dem candidate in Sheffield Hallam has been chosen. Laura Gordon won the selection contest last night. We are pleased to announce that Laura Gordon is our candidate for Sheffield Hallam! pic.twitter.com/y0zUDs8UmH — Sheffield Lib Dems (@SheffLibDems) November 3, 2017 The Star has more details. Following her selection by Lib Dem party members on Friday, Ms Gordon said: "I am really honoured to be selected by the Liberal Democrats to be the candidate in Sheffield Hallam. "The Liberal Democrats have a long history in Sheffield Hallam and it is a privilege to follow in the footstep ...

Posted by The Voice on Liberal Democrat Voice

I have mentioned several times that I was in Sutton Bridge in Lincolnshire on the day that England won back the Ashes in 2009. Here are some of the photographs I took on that visit. They show Sutton Bridge, the Nene and the ornamental lighthouses at its mouth. The blue plaque on one of the lighthouses records that Sir Peter Scott used to live there. I looked through them because of a book I bought years ago largely for its title: The Lincolnshire Potato Railways. It turns out there was a little narrow gauge system at Lighthouse Farm, which is ...

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England
Sat 4th
20:49

No Strings Attached

In a country where abuse of the system matters more than the system itself, giving without conditions is a revolutionary act In India's caste system, there is a class of people known as the Dalits. There are 165 million of them - around 1/6th of the total population. Dalits are not actually a caste; they're ... Continue reading No Strings Attached

Posted by Tom King on Never Cruel Nor Cowardly

On Wednesday, 8 November, BBC local radio will be 50 years old. It is a tribute to presenters, listeners and friends that it has lasted that long. Sometimes it has seemed like it hasn't had many friends in the top echelons of the BBC. It has long been eyed at with envy by commercial broadcasters and local newspapers, who don't get a public subsidy. It has lasted so long because it reaches out to local communities as a friend. On 8 November 1967, BBC Radio Leicester started broadcasting, one of eight stations in the first wave of local stations. Since ...

Posted by andybodders on Andy Boddington

It is Seven long years since the fateful decision to join with the Conservatives to form a Coalition Government. We have seen the unravelling of Liberal Britain :- first the defeat of Electoral reform at the 2011 AV Referendum. Then Defeat in Europe at the 2014 European Parliament Elections, Defeat at the 2015 General Election, and the bitterest defeat of all : the EU Referendum. All of this has flowed from the Coalition Agreement. The Failure of the party to fight our corner on our principles. Free Access to Higher Education was abandoned without a fight and the Students were ...

Posted on liberal-free-voice

Handing out pro-EU leaflets in Brgigate, Leeds's main street, on Saturdays is an interesting experience. Most people walk past and ignore us. A surprising number come quietly to our little stall without being asked and sign our petition to put a stop to Brexit, and only a very few come actually to talk about the pros and cons of leaving or staying in the EU. Every half hour or so we will be abused by an angry pro-Brexit enthusiast. "It's democracy," they'll shout." It's decided. We're leaving . Good riddance.. . " etc" They rarely want to talk about it, ...

Posted by Peter Wrigley on Keynesian Liberal

Our Headline of the Day Award goes to the Swindon Advertiser.

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

Embed from Getty Images In a discursive political column for the Yorkshire Post, Tom Richmond touches upon Jared O'Mara and Sheffield Hallam. After noting how little O'Mara has done at Westminster, Richmond writes: I'm still to be convinced that Labour will do the right thing and fire O'Mara. There's nothing to stop him claiming an MP's salary for the rest of the Parliament as an independent. For, if there was a by-election, the key issue would not be O'Mara's record or Brexit in this pro-EU area, but Labour-controlled Sheffield Council's mismanagement of a key contract that has led to the ...

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England
YouGov

Embed from Getty Images You may recall that the sitting MP for Northampton South, David Mackintosh, was obliged to stand down as Conservative candidate shortly after this year's general election was called. This was because of disquiet in his constituency party over reports about a loan made to Northampton Town F.C. while Mackintosh was leader of the borough council. BBC East journalists have continued to investigate this affair and their latest story appeared yesterday: A Conservative MP's general election fund took hidden payments from a developer as a multimillion-pound loan he personally oversaw paid out. More than £37,000 was channelled ...

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

Here's Christine Jardine MP talking on Politics Scotland about the need for all parties to take action to protect staff and volunteers from harassment. An independent body is all very well, she says, but political parties can't abrogate responsibility and say it's nothing to do with them. Then in Friday's Scotmsn she said that the current harassment scandal might be the "lightning rod" for "cultural change" Frustration was my initial reaction. Frustration at the re-emergence of ugly, degrading behaviour that should have been consigned to the past. Then outrage at the attitude of so many that inappropriate behaviour was excusable ...

Posted by NewsHound on Liberal Democrat Voice

Grand Hotel won the Academy Award for Outstanding Picture in 1932, beating seven films I have never heard of: Arrowsmith, Bad Girl, The Champ, Five Star Final, One Hour with You, Shanghai Express and The Smiling Lieutenant. It did not win any other Oscars, though one of the stars won Best Actor that year for his role in another film. The standout films for the period of eligibility (LA release between August 1931 and July 1932) are surely the Boris Karloff Frankenstein and the Bela Lugosi Dracula, both of which I'm pretty sure I have seen. It's an ensemble piece ...

This is a re-run of the article Jane Dodds wrote for us during the Welsh Lib Dems' leadership campaign, setting out her hopes for the party. I have to start by saying that I am not that happy to be standing against Liz Evans, a colleague for whom I have enormous respect. My only comfort is that the Welsh Liberal Democrats will have a Welsh speaking woman from mid-Wales as their next leader. I believe that the Welsh Liberal Democrats have the talent, the drive, the enthusiasm and the ambition to start winning again, but we need to rebuild the ...

Posted by Jane Dodds on Liberal Democrat Voice

Responding to reports that the government has quietly shelved plans to reduce the rights of fresh EU arrivals because so few are now coming to the UK, Liberal Democrat Brexit spokesperson Tom Brake MP said:"The government did say their priority was to curb immigration. What they didn't tell the public was that their cunning plan to reduce the number of EU nationals coming to the UK was to crash the economy."Ministers have quietly conceded they don't need to reduce the rights of fresh arrivals from the EU27 because so few are now coming anyway. Ministers have already managed to decrease ...

Posted by LD Neath on Aberavon & Neath Liberal Democrats
Sat 4th
11:00

My tweets

Fri, 12:56: From top graduate to fleeing a bedsit - how Universal Credit nearly destroyed me https://t.co/SYYOgTlAED (Right link this time) Fri, 16:05: Are the Tories reliving the John Major years? No. It's much worse than that https://t.co/VBgfvYewvO Ohdearwhatapitynvermind Fri, 18:31: RT @BrianMaguireEU: It saddens me deeply that a democrat like @raulromeva is jailed in Europe because of political cowardice in Madrid and... Fri, 18:50: Caprice and Rondo, by Dorothy Dunnett https://t.co/sKkKKE7VpM Fri, 20:03: RT @nick_gutteridge: Just discovered these photos of @JunckerEU being awarded an honorary degree in Portugal and they've made my day alread... Fri, 20:48: Meet The Herbs ...

What a great result! Whilst anyone who had done any canvassing felt John was going to win few expected him to scoop 56 % of the vote. This was our first by-election GAIN in Southport since December 1938 when a certain Simms Mitchell (of who more on another occasion) won the Talbot Ward by-election. Simms came from a strong Methodist family and his Mother right up to her death in the early 1960s was a prominent member of the Southport Woman's Liberal Association. Simms said he owed his victory, at least in in part to the Tory candidate, a Mr ...

Posted on birkdale focus

Well that was pretty good wasn't it? Last night there were 6 seats up for grabs in England, with a fantastic hat-trick of gains from the Conservatives giving us all something to cheer about as we head into the depths of winter. Across the night we took a mighty 39.0% (up 17.2%) of the vote, showing that like in much of last year if we stand candidates and fight hard we can win anywhere, in spite of our current Westminster polling! We stood candidates in 5 out of the 6 by-elections, which is 1 more than we did in the ...

Posted by ALDC on Liberal Democrat Voice

The ongoing issues surrounding noise and over-night working as Maghull's second railway station is being built has reached the pages of the Liverpool Echo – See link above The photo (click on it to enlarge) above shows the extent of the works on 29th October. The residents suffering noise and disruption to their lives live in the houses to the left of the photo in Maghull's Mersey Avenue. The photo is looking north from School Lane in the direction of the next station on the line – Town Green in Aughton. I think it fair to say that the ...

Posted by Cllr. Tony Robertson on Sefton Focus

Here's how to solve the NHS's chronic underfunding: legalise cannabis | Lily Steele | Opinion | The Guardian Here's how to solve the NHS's chronic underfunding: legalise cannabis After 42 years of sex discrimination laws, why force schoolgirls to wear skirts? | Anna Macey | Opinion | The Guardian After 42 years of sex discrimination laws, why force schoolgirls to wear skirts? Yorkshire Gubbins: Verb School (Free playable episode) Have you ever struggled with point and click adventure games? I have (no, seriously, I am shit at them). This will help. Also it will make you laugh. Don't forget to ...

eUKhost

This is the moment Jo Brand had to explain to the #HIGNFY panel that they should take sexual harassment seriously.

Posted by Peter Black on Peter Black

Some of you might have received an email from me on Thursday night about the EU Withdrawal Bill. If you didn't, then please continue reading. When people voted in the EU referendum last year, nobody really knew what a future deal with the European Union might look like. 16 months on it is now clearer than ever that no deal will be anywhere near as good a deal as the one we have now. To top that off, a catastrophic "no deal" scenario is becoming likelier than ever. The chaos and uncertainty are leading to job losses and higher prices ...

Posted by Tom Brake MP on Liberal Democrat Voice

Further to my recent article about the lack of maintenance of the Miller's Wynd Car Park, residents have also pointed to the poor condition of the infrastructure of the council's Union Place car park - see photos below : I have raised this with the City Council and Neighbourhood Services' Projects and Development Manager has advised : "We are currently reviewing all soft landscaping within all the car parks with a view to carrying out improvements in terms of sight lines, aged plantings , tree works etc . We are pulling this together and working (to) ... hopefully having works ...

Though Armistead Maupin is several years my senior, and has devoted most of his life to writing, fiction rather than history and biography like me, there are quite a few parallels in our lives, as I discovered when reading his entertaining memoir Logical Family (Doubleday, £20). I realised my alienation from the household I grew up in [...]

Posted by jonathanfryer on Jonathan Fryer

96% of councils are concerned that homelessness will increase if the freeze on Local Housing Allowance (LHA) is not lifted, a survey by the Local Government Association has found. It comes after a report by the National Audit Office last month found that the freeze on housing benefit is "likely" driving the increase in homelessness. The Liberal Democrats have called on the Government to end the freeze on in the coming Budget. Wera Hobhouse MP, Liberal Democrat Local Government Spokesperson, commented: "The Conservative's cruel welfare cuts are making it impossible for some families to find an affordable home to rent. ...

Posted by LD Neath on Aberavon & Neath Liberal Democrats

For those of you who do ebooks and haven't yet delved into the City of the Saved, Obverse Books has a weekend sale on, in which you can get ebooks of the first five City of the Saved short story ... Continue reading →

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