Here's the latest set of official Liberal Democrat party logos in png, pdf and eps formats, including Scottish and Welsh variations.
Oliver Stone's film JFK was released at the end of 1991 and gave rise to this overmanned Late Show panel. Christopher Hitchens and Pierre Salinger (who appears to be in the process of turning into Bernard Ingham) are no longer with us, but Anthony Summers and D.M. Thomas still are. But the 1990s (my favourite decade) are a long way away and it is a surprise to find that the latter published a novel as recently as 2014. A couple of thoughts on this clip. The first is that talking heads make great television as long as their owners are ...
(questions via [IMG: [community profile] ] thefridayfive) 1. Where did you go the last time you took an airplane ride? Home from Cyprus, visiting my brother when he was stationed there. 2. Are you a nervous flyer or a comfortable flyer? I find the actual flying a lot more comfortable than the airport. 3. Window seat or aisle seat? Window 4. What is the worst experience you've had flying? Visiting my aunt and uncle in the RAF when I was little the plane had to land in a thunderstorm. I thought it was fantastic (faraday cage in action!) but the ...
Today I presented my first Bill to Parliament. Its the first legislative step in my campaign to change the law and scrap the Dickensian, archaic and cruel Vagrancy Act from 1824 which is still used to criminalise rough sleeping pic.twitter.com/73lg92ygn1— Layla Moran (@LaylaMoran) February 7, 2018 I have signed Layla's petition. I hope you will sign it too, whichever party you belong to.
Second paragraph of third chapter:Finally in December [1945] he managed to persuade the owner of a large dilapidated building on the Finchley Road in London to rent him two rooms. A friend of my mother describes it well, 'After the war they rented a flat in Swiss Cottage on a stretch of the Finchley Road opposite the old Odeon and close to the famous pub. In those days there was a row of substantial detached houses, each with what had been stables, but then converted into garages with flats above. I remember a very rickety staircase inside the garage up ...
Yesterday in the House of Lords we discussed a report from the European Union Committee entitled 'Brexit: Judicial Oversight of the European Arrest Warrant'. I regard this as a warm-up to the debates we will be having over the course of the Withdrawal Bill when we return from recess. I rose to agree with the Prime Minister. Well, when she was Home Secretary in 2014 she recognised that losing the European arrest warrant would turn the UK into "a honeypot for all Europe's criminals on the run from justice". It seems that in the intervening period she has suffered some ...
We need more men and women out there protecting our safety not wasting money on bureaucracy and fat cat salaries for politicians The Police and Crime Panel met on Tuesday and "approved" the Police Commissioner's proposal for a 7.23% increase ... Continue reading →
Yesterday I took the Leader of the council, Ruth Dombey, to see the progress we are making with our new build council homes. We are delivering 93 new affordable homes across three sites: Fellowes Road, Carshalton; Richmond Green, Beddington and at the old Ludlow Lodge site on Alcester Road in Wallington. At the first site, [...]
Formula 1 recently announced that they would no longer have scantily clad women acting as "grid girls" during races. This seems like a no-brainer to me, but there has been a wave of backlash against the decision. The main argument against it appears to be this: These women have chosen to use their looks to make money, which is their free choice. And now pressure from a bunch of angry feminists has made them lose their jobs. So much for respecting women's choices. Variations of this argument have recently appeared in the Mail, Mirror, Metro and Times. And it is ...
This is my personal view about the Southport Conference Strategy motion - what's good and what can be improved. There are four big ideas: A dual approach to politics. We are an insurgent party In our hearts and minds - we want to use political power for change and reform through government and by working with people to help them to take and use power over the forces that affect their lives. It means practical campaigns for our values, fighting the forces that diminish people's lives and making modern liberalism into a political and social movement. We should win campaigns ...
For the Liberal Democrats and its predecessors the party's strategy for success at general elections was based on the accumulation of random chance through hard work. That isn't a sure footing for future success.
Fri 9th
11:55
Vintage election nights: the time a painter had to come on screen to extend the Swingometer
I have always remembered the classic moment when, during the BBC general election night TV coverage of 1970, a painter had to be brought on to extend the swingometer. This was because the Conservative swings were unexpectedly high, and the swingometer didn't go far enough to cover some of them. In these days of high tech, it is difficult to believe that such a thing happened. Indeed, as I have recalled the incident over the years, I don't think many people have believed me. Well, now for the first time I have found footage of the incident, courtesy of the ...
The current issue of Liberator, an anti-establishment house magazine for the Lib Dems, bemoans the lack of policy on the advance of automation and robotics: If we are heading for a world in [which] relatively few people conventionally work – because machines can perform tasks better and cheaper – how will the non-working population be ... Continue reading Automation should not lead to a workless society. Bad economic management could.
Thu, 18:17: Providence, Act 1, by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows https://t.co/mR6kmaSz8o Fri, 10:45: RT @ivadixit: One of the best things I've read this week has been 11-year-old Violette's letter to the @NewYorker about a Jill Lepore story...
Fri 9th
10:56
Hear me out on this: I'm starting to think we might actually need hard Brexit to happen
It may sound very strange for a Remainer to say that I think hard Brexit has become necessary. But that's where I think we might now be. Despite a terrible, shambolic set of negotiations so far by Theresa May and her cohorts; despite forecasts of economic doom, particularly for the North East and the Midlands, for all possible Brexit scenarios; in spite of everything, public opinion has not really moved on Brexit. We're about 50-50 on the subject as a nation, still. If there was another referendum on EU membership for some reason, it could go any which way, and ...
We need to talk about our relations with the Labour Party. Are they essentially still the centralised, top-down, union-led anti-capitalist party of the past, or are they sufficiently on our wavelength now for us to work with them against the baleful effects of austerity? Should we minimise opposition to them in strong Labour constituencies and regard them as likely future Coalition partners? Perhaps in this country now equality as an ideal should trump freedom, and in practice the need to fight gross inequality and strive for social justice may demand our party working with Labour for similar ends. Yet if ...
The Liverpool Echo has the story on its web site – see link above I'm sure I saw one in Aughton's Winifred Lane last Sunday and the Police helicopter was buzzing around above at the same time.
Global economics is a balancing act. If one side of the scales moves up, the other side goes down. This truism was well-demonstrated by the recent volatility in the world's stock markets. Only a few weeks ago the IMF forecast the best year for economic growth in ten years—3.9 percent. Two weeks later world stock markets plunged. They recovered but left a crowd of nervous investors in their wake. The markets are concerned with profits and it is one of life;s economic ironies that growth can hit profits. The drop started in New York. This is logical because an unpredictable ...
Thanks to a nomination from a reader, our Headline of the Day Award goes to the Independent.
That the UK effectively maintains authority over Overseas Territories such as Bermuda, the Falklands, Saint Helena, the Virgin Islands and Turks and Caicos is an anachronistic leftover from the days of empire. But whilst the situation exists, and laws passed by those territories need approval by the respective Governors, one would expect that the UK Government should apply basic human rights principles to decisions that they are required to authorise. That is why it was such a surprise that the current Conservative government has sanctioned the removal of equal marriage in Bermuda. It is the world's first repeal of same-sex ...
Residents recently raised with me the fact that the street lighting in parts of the Hawkhill by-pass (near Blackness Primary School) and West Port was not on in the morning when it was still dark. I am grateful to the Street Lighting Partnership who promptly resolved this - a timeclock issue, now fixed. The Street Lighting Partnership Manager advised me that timeclocks are being phased out to avoid such issues. She indicates : "We replace the timeclocks with a photoelectric cell which operates on the ambient lighting levels. Currently we are using cells which switch the lights at 35lux in ...
"Our system of corporate governance is rightly envied and emulated around the world" according to the Prime Minister's introductory words in the White Paper on corporate governance. That was before Carillion. And before the evidence given to Parliament by some of Carillion's senior executives (well worth a read for its sheer Through the Looking Glass quality). The reality is quite different. [...] The post Isn't our corporate governance wonderful? No, it's a joke appeared first on Radix.
As referenced in a previous blog, this week we've been looking at specific examples of Performance Art and, what began to be called Body Art, in the early 1970's. What does the term Body Art imply? Personally, I think of tattoos, but, to extend this further to practices that are considered under the umbrella, it is the use of the body as canvas for, or as, art in and of itself; using the body as a medium for artistic expressing in varied forms and formats. The foregrounding of the body explores the relationship between the body as object or objectified, ...
