Earlier tonight, Liberal Democrat members in Cambridge took part in a hustings to select one from the shortlist of five to be the party's new Prospective Parliamentary Candidate (PPC).

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack

[IMG: Remember Mr Ed who was in a stable and was a genius?] Now, contrast Mr Ed with the tweet below. The post Remember Mr Ed who was in a stable and was a genius? appeared first on FeministMama @ambitiousmamas.

Posted by ambitiousmamas on FeministMama @ambitiousmamas

Recorded at BFI Southbank on 12 December last year. As they discuss the real-life inspiration from some of their characters, I should mention that the Legz Akimbo Theatre Company (or someone very like them) came to my school in 1974.

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

In my previous post on Austria, I explained some of the background to how Austria's current Conservative-Neofascist coalition ended up in power – the weakened state of Austria's two main parties since 2008/9, the FPO's success in outlasting its hard-right rivals, and then their disappointing election result as the slicker OVP electoral machine of Sebastian [...]

Posted by jubalbarca on Thoughts of Progress
Sat 6th
17:52

New Year, Same Old Me

I've been absent from this blog for a couple of weeks, for a couple of reasons. The main one is that I've been exceptionally busy working on essays, but also Christmas, work, and the traditional hibernation instinct that afflicts many of us at this time of the year! If your home was this cosy, you wouldn't want to leave it either! However, it's the start of a new year, and nearly time for a new semester to start, so I've got my mojo back, and I'm ready to go! I've really struggled with one of my essays. I have had ...

Posted by Dani Tougher on More Than Nothing

Embed from Getty Images A couple of days ago I wrote that the television quiz Pointless reminds us how little most people know about politics. After I had done so, the admirable Alwyn Turner sent me the link to a post he wrote back in 2013 making the same point: An edition of the TV game show Pointless this week had a round based on 100 people naming as many politicians as they could remember who had served in the Labour cabinets of either Tony Blair or Gordon Brown. That is, any cabinet member between 1997 and 2010 ...It's not ...

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

I had a bad brain day yesterday. Bad enough that I needed to be Away from all people, even the people I love. On those days it is very hard to find things to occupy my brain so that I do not fall into a spiral. I don't always manage it. Sometimes putting the radio on helps; often it makes things worse because there will be some depressing idiot (this is why I no longer listen to The Today Programme). Reading sometimes helps, but sometimes doesn't. It depends what I'm reading and what books I have available and whether I'm ...

Jackalope on Masto came up with the idea of #SubSat/#SubscribeSaturday, where a person recs RSS feeds to their readers because human recs are more interesting and variable than algorithms. I thought that was good idea, so here I am with two RSS feed recs for you 1, a podcast: The Curious Cases of Fry & Rutherford https://podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk/b07dx75g.rss In which Hannah Fry and her sidekick investigate all sorts of interesting science questions. It's made by BBC radio 4, so production standards are excellent, and the presenters have a great rapport with gentle humour but also scads of interesting knowledge. 2, a ...

[IMG: What about the 'detritus' created by the Tories?] Who on earth uses the word 'detritus'? How many people on the night before rubbish collection day announce that they are going to put the "detritus out"? I don't know about you but my family... The post What about the 'detritus' created by the Tories? appeared first on FeministMama @ambitiousmamas.

Posted by ambitiousmamas on FeministMama @ambitiousmamas

The week after New Year is always a quiet one news-wise, hence the wall-to-wall coverage given to Parliament's Environmental Audit Committee proposal to levy a 25p levy on disposable cups and their demand that all paper drink cups should be recycled by 2023 or banned altogether. For many people who enjoy a takeaway coffee on the way to work this may seem a bit over-the-top, but as the Mirror points out, cups used by chains like Starbucks and Costa are hard to process due to the plastic lining, and as only three recycling sites can split out paper and plastic, ...

Posted by Peter Black on Peter Black
YouGov

There's a by-election coming up in East Brighton and the Lib Dems will be represented by a dynamic and energetic 18 year old candidate, George Taylor. He explained to The Argus why he's standing and what he hopes to achieve. "I think in Brighton we've got quite a few problems. "Homelessness is the main one. Just on St James's Street where The Argus is you can see so many homeless people, we need to find a solution. "There's also housing. In Brighton it's just too expensive. The chances are I'd still be with my parents if I became an MP. ...

Posted by The Voice on Liberal Democrat Voice
Sat 6th
11:00

My tweets

Fri, 12:56: Stop asking me 'what about men?' https://t.co/rXfHJmh8gG Well explained. Fri, 16:05: Which are the world's worst airports? https://t.co/T0kK0dCsVi Juba was better in my day. But not much. Fri, 18:22: The Power, by Naomi Alderman https://t.co/Ar7ZGhpemJ #metoo Fri, 20:48: The Jangmadang Generation: How millennials are changing North Korea https://t.co/F9sMozEWbz My former colleague @sokeel reports! Fri, 21:30: RT @JasonHalle: 1956 REPUBLICAN PLATFORM * Assistance to low-income communities * Protect Social Security * Provide asylum for refugees *... Fri, 21:51: Not a great night for Reading! Sat, 03:24: I can't believe I got this question wrong on @hqtrivia! https://t.co/RXnqERWTOy Sat, 10:45: ...

Review: LGBT+ Lib Dems' Winter magazineSessions Ending Obama-Era Policy That Ushered In Legal Weed(warning: autoplaying video) They really are just trying to undo every tiny bit of Obama's legacy, no matter what it does, aren't they? 'Would you be willing?': words to turn a conversation around (and those to avoid)I wish everybody who works in a call centre (and those who train them) would read and pay attention to this. Rosamund Pike says actors won't 'play second fiddle' to actressesIt's the usual thing. Men (yes, I know, #NotAllMen) are very supportive of equality right up until the point where they ...

The acronym FBPE, often used as the hashtag #FBPE, now pops up frequently on social media, especially Twitter. It stands for 'follow back, Pro-European Union' and is the label used by a campaign to cultivate a strong pro-European voice online. The basic idea is simple: use it to highlight your support for the pro-European / anti-Brexit cause and others of like minds can more easily find you and join the pro-European community. It's like a pro-EU version of the old* 'follow back Friday' #FF trend on Twitter – an easy way to highlight who else may be of interest to ...

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack

The BSFA Award long lists are out! This is the third year of the three-stage process, similar to the one which was rejected (as I hoped it would be) by WSFS for the Hugos at last year's Worldcon. It works better for the BSFA. First, because there are far fewer categories - only four, compared to 18 for last year's Hugos (and 19 for this year's) - which makes the demands on voters much less. Second, it is only a matter of voting positively for stuff you like rather than for or against particular candidates. I think there are still ...

The latest quarterly update to my PollBase, my database of British voting intention opinion polls since 1943 is now up. It's got all the national voting intention polls and leader ratings from the fourth quarter of 2017 now to add to the series of data running back to 1943. As ever, do let me know any errors or omissions which you spot – such feedback is very helpful and benefits the many users of this data. Thank you! Get polling news and analysis by email I release a new edition of PollBase once a quarter, both adding in the new ...

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack

Some people were concerned that when Vince became leader, the high priority given to housing and homelessness during Tim Farron's tenure in the top job might be lost. Tim famously got involved in politics after watching Cathy Come Home. However, those concerns were allayed at Christmas when helping homeless people was the focus of his Christmas Message and he has written further about those experiences in his regular column for his local paper, the Richmond and Twickenham Times. He wrote about the various circumstances that had forced people he had met to sleep on the streets. One man I talked ...

Posted by NewsHound on Liberal Democrat Voice

Keillor's on the Hawkhill :

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-42584948 The BBC has the news on its web site – see link above Here are a couple of relevant links to previous postings on this blog site about fracking:- My own view is that the future of energy has to green energy and much greater strides towards it need to be made so making the need for fossil fuels a thing of the past. For example what on earth are we doing building any new houses or indeed industrial buildings or any form of building without them having solar panels/tiles on the roof? Have our political leaders ...

Posted by Cllr. Tony Robertson on Sefton Focus