Every time you hear "it's political correctness gone mad" or "it never used to be like this, people are so sensitive now" when the discussion of rape, sexual assault or sexual misconduct is brought up, remember that you're hearing people literally say is "it used to be so much easier to sexually assault people". It's [...]
Only in Market Harborough: Police arrested a naked man in a town centre street at lunchtime today. Officers were called after members of the public saw the man walking about in Adam and Eve Street, in Market Harborough.The Leicester Mercury has the bare essentials.
It's been 2 years since I wrote in this blog about my burgeoning family history research that had been kick-started by the support of Mick Cole in Barry. I honestly don't know where the time goes but it is now exactly 5 years since I finally decided to begin researching my family and it has been quite a ride. As I stated at the time here in my blog, it all began with my paternal grandfather William Benjamin Cole's birth certificate from April 1899. With the help of Mick and so many other family relations, that tentative start has grown ...
Jo Swinson's words were reassuringly unminced this morning when she condemned the appalling behaviour which took place at the President's Club Dinner. She praised Madison Marriage, the FT reporter who wrote about it. All of the women were told to wear skimpy black outfits with matching underwear and high heels. At an after-party many hostesses — some of them students earning extra cash — were groped, sexually harassed and propositioned. There is something deeply distasteful about some of the richest and most powerful men in the country behaving in that way to young women on a tiny fraction of their ...
Malcolm Gladwell's piece a while back for The New Yorker, Small Change - why the revolution will not be tweeted, set people debating over his dismissal of social networking's ability to bring about change.
Last night a lively crowd of Tower Hamlets Liberal Democrats and friends gathered at The Narrow in Limehouse for a dinner to celebrate the Limehouse Declaration, which was really the launching pad for the short-lived SDP (Social Democratic Party). Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Bill Rodgers and Shirley Williams were the "Gang of Four" who led [...]
A Virgin Trains Pendolino train at Liverpool Lime Street Station. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-42804842 The BBC has the story on its web site – see link above The fact that the spending on transportation is so imbalanced is frankly no surprise. Of course government's always over-egg what they are doing and the opposition always under-eggs what the same government is doing. As a rule of thumb the truth is usually somewhere in between. But in this case we seem to have a reasonably credible assessment of what is going on and apart from it being no surprise it is also a disgrace. Now ...
Second paragraph of third chapter: He said quietly at last: "I hadn't reckoned on that. That makes it very difficult." A fascinating book by Shute. His usual competent engineer hero is tasked with organising an archaeologist's air photography mission to Greenland, sponsored by the archaeologist's rich elder brother, and to his dismay accompanied by the archaeologist's daughter. The planning and implementation of the expedition are lovingly detailed; the year is roughly 1937 (the book was published in 1940, but there is no mention of impending war). And then three quarters of the way through, we have a sudden shift; and ...
If you're visiting Yate Common with your dog, please keep a close eye on them. Several batches of meat and other food have been dumped there lately - raw meat, cooked chicken bones, even Baby Bel cheeses. We don't know whether someone thinks they're "feeding the wildlife" but the foxes and birds aren't touching it. This will obviously become potential danger to pets as it decays. Several people are dumping it and it's sometimes appearing daily. Please warn other dog owners.
Winston Churchill suffered from a form of Manic Depression. It affected him throughout his life, and he thought of it as his 'black dog'. Churchill wrote to his wife, Clementine in 1911, discussing a German doctor who may help him and he said this: "I think this man might be useful to me - if my black dog returns. He seems quite away from me now - it is such a relief. All the colours come back into the picture." Others visualise their mental issues in their way, such as depression or anxiety is a small monster perched on their ...
Wed 24th
14:20
Emergency! Place to Stay Needed this Friday and Saturday in London. UPDATE: problem solved.
I now have somewhere. Thank you for all your kind offers xxx [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
This week, Bath MP Wera Hobhouse spoke in a parliamentary debate on a petition calling on the Government to walk away from the Brexit talks with no deal. As ever, she did so with passion and wit. Enjoy.
Although the EU is not a direct contributor to the NHS our exit from it will cause major problems for the social determinants of health as well as direct problems such as a shortage of trained staff Last week the ... Continue reading →
Commenting on the lMF's latest global forecast, Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Vince Cable, said: "It is clear that Britain is under-performing relative to much of Europe, the USA and the rest of the world. It is especially unfortunate that the UK is entering an extended period of economic stagnation just as the rest of the world experiences a growth burst. "The Brexit vote might not have produced a catastrophic collapse yet, but it has dampened investment, and consumer confidence and reduced Britain's global standing. "The IMF's call to avoid any new trade barriers or regulatory realignments vindicates the Liberal ...
Responding to calls from the Lib Dem Spokesman for the Department for Work & Pensions, Stephen Lloyd MP, new DWP Secretary of State Esther McVey agreed that a review into the current rules - past and current - after companies go bust is "something that needs to be brought forward". Responding to the comments, Liberal Democrat Work & Pensions Spokesman, Stephen Lloyd MP said yesterday: "Under current rules, pension obligations are unsecured - meaning that insolvent companies only fund their pension schemes once they have compensated their other supposedly more 'important' secured creditors." "Today I urged the new Secretary of ...
Commenting on the report from the End Child Poverty coalition revealing that in some areas of the UK more than half of children are living in poverty, Layla Moran MP said: "This is an appalling indictment of a Tory Party that are failing to protect the most vulnerable in society. "The gulf between children born in the richest and poorest families is widening, but Theresa May is more preoccupied with the gulf in her cabinet over Brexit. "When we fail our children like this we fail as a society. The government must take action."
The news on Brexit lately has been mostly of a piece, for once. "Brexit: UK has already 'agreed in principle' with EU to Norway-style transition" ran a headline in the Independent on Monday. "Should we stay or should we go? Why the EU customs union issue is threatening to rip Tory party apart" was the Telegraph's much grumpier take on the same subject matter. The point here is, everyone seems to agree that what we are headed for now is a very soft Brexit. Everything that Theresa May has said leads one to believe that this isn't the case – ...
Commenting on the increasing failure by police or prosecutors to disclose evidence over the last two years, Jonathan Marks, Liberal Democrat Justice Spokesperson, said: "This is a growing issue that will undermine our criminal justice system as a whole if we do not address it. "More funding and better training must be provided to police and prosecutors to ensure that proper process if followed so cases do not collapse unnecessarily. "Disclosure of evidence favourable to the defence is a fundamental part of prosecuting fairly. It is clear that government have ignored this issue to date and must now urgently make ...
Commenting on news that the defence element of the National Security Capability Review will be separated out, Liberal Democrat Defence spokesperson Menzies Campbell said:"This separation was both necessary and inevitable. The pressure on the government from all sides and all parties on the need to protect and enhance the defence budget was overwhelming."What it does mean is that when the national security review appears we will only have half the picture."
Wed 24th
11:55
Feminist and trans equality organisations can work very well together - Scotland leads the way
You can hardly open a newspaper these days – including some which should know better – without seeing some horrible, untrue and vicious stories about transgender people. It's terrifying to me as a cisgender woman to see any group of people targeted in this way. Imagine what it must be like if you are transgender. Your very right to exist is being questioned. In the US, an ignorant President undermines you at every opportunity. As Liberals, I would argue that we have an absolute duty to do everything we can to stand up for people who are being targeted with ...
On London's Southbank a collection of Brutalist buildings sprawls across almost nineteen acres of land, stretching from Waterloo Bridge to the London Eye, and, from the opposite bank at dusk, appearing to float like a ship down the River Thames. This assemblage of multiple, multi-use spaces is collectively known as the Southbank Centre. Relaxing with coffee before visiting Southbank Centre. Coffee + Theatre = Life. Built in the early 1950's, as part of the Festival of Britain, the Southbank Centre's various spaces host vast ranges of artistic and cultural activities, ranging from classical concerts in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, (the ...
Tue, 12:56: How it feels to be a Muslim in Trump's America https://t.co/3oH4cXoNmj Not a good feeling at all. Tue, 14:05: RT @CEASSerbia: .@CEASSerbia statement of the day #thumbsup for @JBugajskiUSA Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis @c... Tue, 14:28: RT @EZaharievaMFA: Honoured to present the @EU2018BG priorities to @EP_ForeignAff in #Brussels today and exchange views with the MEPs. Amon... Tue, 17:17: Ys de Legende: v 1 Verraad, by Jean-Luc Istin and Dejan Nenadov https://t.co/TbRsiOlMnf Tue, 19:36: Hamilton! (@ Victoria Palace Theatre in London, UK) https://t.co/YlTQokrlZ3 Tue, 23:58: Damn. https://t.co/2NBz1zQhJJ Wed, 10:27: RT @locusmag: We are very ...
Instagram photo: Dogs lying by the fire in the pub, waiting for their snackette from the doggy menu. I love dog friendly pubs. Instagram photo: "I'm not sleepy I'm just resting my eyes" Ursula K Le Guin is dead and the world is a poorer place How to tell if you've accidentally ended up in a classic Doctor Who episode Men Only: Inside the charity fundraiser where hostesses are put on show The FT is normally paywalled, but they've dropped it for this piece of investigative journalism. It's very interesting. If you like what you see here (or even if ...
What are 'Happenings', and what claims were made about them contemporaneously? Happenings carry the status of a phenomenon that were both 'in time' and 'out of time', despite a renewed interest in their reconstruction and preservation: they were very much a product of their time, as something new, something 'happening', if you will. Happenings, despite claims that they should be ephemeral, carrying the status of myth with an evolution and continuation beyond static documentation, have been extensively documented; on paper and on bodies which redo the work later. Kaprow's notes for '18 Happenings in 6 Parts'Image Source: artplastoc.blogspot.com Allan Kaprow, ...
Let me start with a story, which has to be a little obscure to protect the innocent. The government has a Voluntary Repatriation Scheme for asylum-seekers and refugees who find their home has changed, and who get employment back there. The scheme is administered by the Home Office, who hang on to the passports of [...] The post It isn't public versus private, it is big versus small appeared first on Radix.
Whenever a rather technical public policy question pokes its nose out into the wide world of mass public interest a vacuum is created, a vacuum quickly filled with a gamut on nonsense and conspiracy theory. The collapse of the Carillion has prompted just such fits of hysteria, but while I don't particularly care that a private company has gone out of business, the issue of the pension fund liabilities is one that will recur many more times for policy makers in the UK as a direct consequence of economic policies pursued since 2007. Firstly, let's debunk a couple of myths ...
The End Child Poverty Coalition reveals in a report today that in some parts of the country, more than half our children are living in poverty. What a way to treat the next generation! Lib Dem Education Spokesperson Layla Moran said: This is an appalling indictment of a Tory Party that are failing to protect the most vulnerable in society. The gulf between children born in the richest and poorest families is widening, but Theresa May is more preoccupied with the gulf in her cabinet over Brexit. When we fail our children like this we fail as a society. The ...
I've come across at least 3 rather grand bus shelters in Melling Civil Parish, one on Prescot Road near the junction with Cunscough Lane (now out of use because service buses no longer travel that road anymore), one in Tithebarn Lane (which is very much in use) and another one in Waddicar Lane. All are built of sandstone and I'm guessing that they were erected by Melling Parish Council at some point in the recent past? I'm also guessing that were built after the early 1980's construction of the M58 Motorway as the one on Prescot Road is on the ...
There's an apple pruning session at Ninewells Community Garden tomorrow - Thursday 25th January - from 1pm to 3pm. It is a relaxed and informal pruning session at this lovely garden and no experience is necessary. Tools and training will be provided. Please wear suitable clothing and some sturdy footwear. Meet at Ninewells Community Garden, set in the Arboretum at Ninewells Hospital near Maggie's Centre. For more information please contact 0754 074 6075 or e-mail facilitator@ninewellsgarden.org.uk.
A report published today by the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) shows that the North of England receives an 'indefensible' £2,555 less per person in transport funding. Planned transport investment in London is almost 2.6 times higher per capita than in the North. The North West actually fares slightly better than the rest of the North with spending of £2,439 per person, but still far less than London at £4,155 per person. Recent announcements by Government such as cancellation of electrification schemes in the North, downgrading rolling stock on our railway lines will have made the situation worse. Report ...
Yet another example of how Brexit threatens our way of life has been revealed by the English health secretary. As the Independent reports, Jeremy Hunt has admitted that EU cancer drugs may not be available to British patients after Brexit, describing the risk as "uniquely damaging". Hunt echoed fears already raised by the pharmaceutical industry by acknowledging that the flow of some medicines would be cut off if the withdrawal negotiations break down: Drug giants have told of "significant disruption to the supply chain for medicines" and that customs delays would damage "time and temperature sensitive" materials, without a Brexit ...
