The newly opened Mail Rail Ride in London is great. You get to spend about 20 minutes travelling on the old underground mail trains which used to speed the post around central London. There are also two fab museums, one each on either side of the road.
I was a huge fan of Woody Allen's early films, with all their quirky introspection and New York Jewish humour, but in recent years his output has been more patchy. His two love letters to Paris and Rome, for example, were too saccharine for a hard-core European like myself. So I went to see his [...]
Sat 30th
21:37
WATCH: Vince Cable's New Year message - Liberal Democrats are the party who stand up for the underdo...
Vince's New Year message is a little different. It's another of these W1A style videos where he goes completely off piste from the remarks prepared for him by his team. Which would never, ever happen in real life, obviously. He concentrates on the principles that drive the Liberal Democrats, challenging vested interests and standing up for the underdog. He'll be wanting to get over in the next year how the Liberal Democrats have so often been right and ahead of our time. 2018 marks the 30th anniversary of the formation of the Liberal Democrats and in that time we've led ...
October Being Jacob Rees-Mogg is a full-time occupation, or so I argued. I got to the remains of the lead mine at Snailbeach, so 2017 turned out to be a good year after all. Writing an article about Richard Rorty for Liberator left me less sure that I agreed with his ideas. He did foresee the rise of Donald Trump though. A trip to Cambridge convinced me that the railways want you to travel to London and nowhere else, but I did discover film of an old student haunt of mine - the Railway Mania Bar in York. (Don't look ...
Here's the new year message for 2018 from Liberal Democrat leader, Vince Cable, emphasising his ambition to mobilise the strength of the party's 100,000 membership to win the arguments on the major issues facing our country.
Last year I blogged about the discovery of live hand grenades on a recreation ground at Weedon Bec in Northamptonshire. Then the BBC said the Ministry of Defence was examining ways to "provide financial support to the parish council. Now BBC News says it has given the council £500,000 to pay for the clearance work. That sounds generous, but it is not. Since the discovery, the site has needed 24-hour security, which the parish council has has to pay for. This has meant an extra £250 a year in council tax for each household. The BBC quotes the council's chairwoman ...
I blogged in October that Leicester's Dry Dock pub, housed in a boat on Freemen's Common, was due for the breakers yard because the University of Leicester is planning to redevelop the area. Finding myself in that part of the city today, I had a drink there. With students at home and Leicester City supporters at Anfield, it was missing its most reliable customers and almost empty. It did have a good range of beers though. You can read more about the university's plans for the area in the Leicester Mercury.
Your last one for today takes us back to 22 June when Vince Cable announced that he would be standing for leader. #7: Breaking News: Vince Cable announces his candidacy for leader A week after Tim Farron's shock resignation, Vince Cable announced that he would stand to replace him. By the time he announced, all of his fellow MPs had ruled themselves out. He outlined where he wanted the party to go: There are big opportunities ahead. The Conservatives are in disarray and in retreat. The Labour Party outperformed expectations but complacently believes that 'one more heave' will see it ...
Number 8 in our countdown is unique because it contains the words "utter bollocks" used by a senior Lib Dem MP. We do wish Alistair wouldn't hold back and would just say what he means. #8: Alistair Carmichael writes...The truth about those "secret Tory talks" In early July, Twitter erupted in a firestorm of fury when it was reported that Lib Dems were in secret talks to prop up the Tories in Parliament. If people had stopped to think for a wee second, they might have quickly realised that a pro EU party was never going to form any sort ...
Second paragraph of third section: On the political level, there were two main competing elites. An alternative political elite emerged out of parties and movements that challenged the existing regime on a combination of pro-democracy and strong nationalist agendas. They confronted the existing Communist nomenklatura that was keen to preserve its power and accompanying privileges. Both these elites had fundamental shortcomings. The post-Communist elites shed their erstwhile ideological commitments and professed allegiance to new slogans of democracy and nation state, but were structurally predisposed to resisting necessary democratic and free-market reforms. They were also well-placed to translate their pre-existing administrative ...
The Life of Emile Zola won the Academy Award for Outstanding Production in 1938; there were nine other nominees, but I have not heard of any of them. It got nominations in nine other categories and won two, Joseph Schildkraut getting Best Supporting Actor for his role as Dreyfus, and the script winning Best Adaptation; deservedly so. However, The Life of Emile Zola does not make the top ten of either way of counting IMDB votes. There is no doubt at all about the top film from 1937 in our civilisation's collective memory: it is Snow White and the Seven ...
We continue our meander through the top dozen LDV posts of the year with another trip back to January. #9 This is how to respect the referendum result In this post, Rob Parsons tackled the argument that those of us who wish to remain in the EU were disrespecting the referendum result and flouting the "will of the people." Generally speaking electoral votes stand, even if the majority is unsatisfactory. But that is premised on two conditions. The first is that the voters get a chance regularly to change their minds. The second is that the voters were - at ...
The current twitter hoo-hah is on one side between people who (rightly) think various UK tabloid newspapers are full of hate, and (more arguably) therefore anyone who works for them is a hatemonger; on the other, people in an a dying profession (print journalism) who are scrabbling for the last few paying jobs, and inevitably the hate-filled newspapers are the ones paying. Now my personal view is that when Stormzy complains that the Daily Mail has written a racist hit piece about him, the correct response is not "well, we've all got bills to pay" because even if that's true ...
Asking a Labour spokesperson for their party's official line on Brexit is a frustrating experience. Not only should one not expect clarity but consistency is in short supply as well. From what I can gather the Labour Party's position boils down to respecting the will of the people, leaving the EU whilst retaining access to the single market and wanting the best deal for the UK. Essentially, their position is identical to that of the Tories. There are alternatives, including the Liberal Democrats, who are the only UK-wide Party to oppose leaving the EU and who want to see the ...
In time honoured tradition, we are running down our most popular posts of 2017 in reverse order: #10: Remainer myths and post truth politics Back in January, Ben Andrew wrote that, while he was distraught at the referendum result and believed Brexit would damage us, we shouldn't pretend to ourselves that people were going to change their mind: Like most Lib Dems, I think that Brexit will be a total disaster. I think that it will vandalise our economy, damage our universities, and give us less influence on the global stage. However, the response of many Lib Dems and other ...
Second paragraph of third chapter: The promoters of applied science assumed that eventually the mechanization of industry would give everyone more leisure time (even if the work involved only boring routines). The dirty and unhealthy factories of the first Industrial Revolution would be replaced with new structures that were better to work in as well as more efficient. It was also predicted that there would be more gadgets to make life easier in the home. Popular science magazines routinely printed lists of inventions designed to make life easier or more enjoyable, most of which turned out to be useless and ...
Fri, 12:10: RT @LordRennard: @vincecable @Conservatives @jeremycorbyn @MakeVotesMatter At the last general election it took 27,931 votes to elect an SN... Fri, 12:56: RT @MSmithsonPB: It is bollocks for minsters to suggest that electoral system favours LAB. Now CON main beneficiary . GE17 CON win 48.9% of... Fri, 13:45: Just two more days to nominate for the BSFA Awards! https://t.co/DLBmOENebH Fri, 15:04: Ali�nor: La L�gende Noire, vols 3 and 4 https://t.co/XSHSfStAjH Fri, 16:05: A Bitcoin sceptic writes https://t.co/ouHP3yHdrc I had missed the China angle. Fri, 17:43: The Autumnlands, Vol. 1: Tooth and Claw, by Kurt Busiek and Benjamin Dewey https://t.co/5KFKBLf0T4 ...
The threat to free speech on campus is a right-wing fantasy Excellent from Laurie Penny Marvel's "write your own comics" authorised fan fiction thing sounds like a barrel of laughs ... except you'd not be able to mention barrels, related as they are to alcohol, along with a whole bunch of other things including "alternative lifestyle advocacy", which we all know is code for icky queer things. Prime Minister's Papers from 1992 released - The National Archives *sings* It's the most wonderful time of the year (if you're a politics geek) The Last Jedi, toxic masculinity, and showing your place ...
Landing on the doormats of lefty queers (and our allies) nationwide round about now, the new edition of Plus. It's been a while since the last issue of the magazine (which is the journal of LGBT+ Lib Dems, sign up here to get your copy) so suspecting it was a case of "no one's had the time to organise one" I stepped up and volunteered to guest edit an edition. Maybe someone reading this will take on the job of the next one? As the only edition of the mag from 2017, there's a look back at what was in ...
We continue with our countdown of LDV's most popular posts of 2017. #11: Lamb and Mulholland to abstain on Article 50 vote: what does this mean for the Party? The passing of the Bill to trigger Article 50 should have been one of the most dramatic, knife-edge parliamentary votes in the history of time. Unfortunately, because Labour decided that it would just let the Government do its thing, the Bill meandered through its parliamentary stages unencumbered by any sort of parachute to ensure either the possibility of the people having a final say on the deal, EU nationals being given ...
12 months in 12 blog postings – click on each link to read the posting January – Loss of my dear friend 'Uncle Albert':- February – Not being the Tory Party:- March – Developing land north of Maghull's Turnbridge Road April – Maghull's parks, their maintenance and money May – Buying the Strand Shopping Centre in secretive deal June – Bugger Moderation! July – Youth Coffee Bar gone, CAB gone – Labour's regressive policies! August – Those who take land out of Green Belt then protest about its development! September – Rimrose ...
'No' is a brilliant film about the 1988 Chile referendum: "the true story of Chile's 'Mad Men' who fought a dictator with happiness".
In time honoured tradition, we bring you our dozen most popular posts of 2017 in reverse order. #12: Election 2017 headlines – how many Lib Dem MPs are there and who are they? After an emotional election night, you just want a simple post telling you the bare facts, and Nick Thornsby did that. We'd experienced the highs of seeing Vince, Ed, Stephen and Jo back. We'd ensured the anxiety of the nail biting count in Westmorland where our leader was way too close to the Tories for comfort. We were relieved to see Norman, Tom and Alistair re-elected. We ...
Over 45,000 young people (18-24 year olds) presented themselves to councils as homeless or at risk of homelessness in the past year, an investigation by the Liberal Democrats has revealed. The figures show that the real number of young people being affected by the homelessness crisis is far greater than shown by official government statistics. Of the 45,752 who turned to councils to help over homelessness problems, 13,621 or just under one in three were then accepted by councils as statutorily homeless. Figures are based on responses to Freedom of Information requests from 238 of 380 local councils in England, ...
1968 was a milestone in European history (with resonances beyond), thanks mainly to the May "events" in Paris and the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia. Both of these historic moments figure large, mainly in evocative black and white, in Brazilian João Moreira Salles's documentary No Intenso Agora. But so, too, does colour home movie footage of his [...]
