The second Bury LGBT Pride event takes place on Saturday 7 April and promises to be another fun-packed celebration of diversity. Pop icon Toyah Willcox is the headline attraction on this colourful occasion which features music, food, entertainment and a walking rainbow through the town centre. Tickets for Bury Pride are free and are available [...]
[Trigger warnings: Ableism, anti-autistic bigotry, transphobia, suicide mention] So today, again, is autism acceptance/awareness (accwaretance) day, the day when tons of "allies" and "autism families" talk over autistic people to "raise awareness", while autistic people instead call for people to ... Continue reading →
Alright, so I've arrived. It isn't quite what I expected, but I'm here, which is good enough, I guess. Here is Chişinău, the capital of Moldova, and whilst it is fair to say that it isn't exactly setting the tourism industry alight - I couldn't actually find a guide book - I'm hoping to have some interesting experiences whilst I am here. And it is an interesting place, with a rather unfortunate schizophrenia for such a small, impoverished country. Part of it believes that it is another country altogether, which would like to reunite with Russia (with which it has ...
I'm not someone who becomes rapidly institutionalised. Or so I thought, until I experienced my first-ever hospital in-patient stay just before Easter. After the minor setback of having too low a neutrophil count the previous week, I returned to clinic last Tuesday to see if the G-CSF injections had succeeded in raising it. They had – the count was nicely ... The post Institutionalised appeared first on ten pence piece.
Hi Laurence — wow, is Cix still a thing? I had no idea it was still there. I only know Tony Greaves by reputation, and I think I'd rather just wait for someone to want to talk about those sort of proposals in a public forum.
Current Spirit by Gwyneth Jones The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, by H.P. Lovecraft and Ian Culbard New York 2140, by Kim Stanley Robinson Last books finished Free Radical, by Vince Cable The Man Who Spoke Snakish, by Andrus Kivirähk Jade City, by Fonda Lee No Going Back To Moldova, by Anna Robertson Next books Ammonite, by Nicola Griffith Contes Fantastiques Complets, by Guy de Maupassant Genius Loci, by Ben Aaronovitch
Nick Barlow is not the first person to observe that the Liberal Democrat policy process is broken. "Without the clout of the European Union behind us we are isolated and having to swallow the unacceptable to do the deals that are needed if we are not to remain that way." Peter Black on the unravelling of the Leavers' promises on international trade. Victoria Dilly celebrates the transformative power of the school library. As a teenager, Saul Chandler was an elite violinist, a rare talent. Then, something happened. Fifty years later, reports Alex Vadukul, he has found a refuge in a ...
Starting at 8pm this evening, Talking Pictures TV is showing all the episodes of the 1960s police series Gideon's Way. As I wrote a couple of years ago when I was mildly obsessed with it: This is London before turbocapitalism and moral relativism. It's a city of quiet suburbs and decaying warehouses where the villains are cornered and the police inevitably round them up.Gideon's Way is notable for the number of famous faces who turn up. That is Donald Sutherland above. Look out too for the boy who plays Gideon's younger son: Giles Watling is now the Conservative MP for ...
Increasingly, the online world is the frontline for political struggles. But why leave it just to the extremists and peddlers of fake news to be good at promoting their causes? We liberals, democrats and Liberal Democrats need to step up too. So want to get better at promoting the Lib Dems in what you do online? Then the daily tips in my new short Liberal Democrat Digital Power-Up course are just for you. Hope you find it useful – and feedback very welcome. For my other digital tools and services for Lib Dem campaigning, see the full round-up here.
I agree with a lot of Nick Barlow's diagnosis of the problem (here, if you've not seen it) and a couple of his proposed solutions are good ones, especially abolishing FPC, but one of them made me gasp aloud in horror... Don't give more power to Federal Board, for Cthulhu's sake! There's far too much concentration of power there as it is. My own thoughts of how to improve policy making have, as you might expect, concentrated on conference. I have been mulling a proposal to conference (probably in the form of a constitutional amendment) making it so that MH&AP ...
In January, I wrote a piece about the Liberal Democrats needing to ask themselves some tough questions about their low poll ratings. At the time, I also promised to write a follow up article on some potential solutions. Here it is - for what it's worth! There is an open goal in the centre of British politics, but somehow the Liberal Democrats are not really scoring in the polls, despite some positive announcements on education, for example, which received good media coverage. What do we need to do to turn things around on a significant scale? It's certainly not easy. ...
I've been thinking for a while that the way the party makes policy is not fit for purpose and needs fundamental change. Having spent probably far too much time over the last few days responding to a couple of policy consultations — as well as seeing the recent storm over the consultation about immigration policy — those thoughts have crystallised and I now think the policy process needs to be completely changed from top to bottom. The current system is normally championed as being one in which every member gets the chance to have a say in policy, but that say gets so swallowed ...
In 2010, Parliament set a target for the government to eradicate child poverty by 2020 in the Child Poverty Act. The big three parties at the time, the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Labour all agreed that this was a worthwhile target and strived to achieve it. However since then, we have seen a majority Conservative government attempt to abolish this target, stopped only by the House of Lords, as well as seen child poverty trend upwards, with the Institute for Fiscal Studies forecasting that it will reach over 5 million children, or 37%, by 2021-22. The government set out a ...
Sun, 12:56: RT @IMcMillan: You say Carmina And I say Burana, You say Burana And I say Carmina, Burana, Carmina Carmina, Burana, Let's Carl the whole... Sun, 15:55: RT @Dublin2019: PRICE RISE COMING Act before 00h01 Irish time on 3rd April to lock in current rates to Dublin 2019. Don't forget that we h... Sun, 17:03: The Church of Sveti Jovan Kaneo by Lake Ohrid, with the Albanian mountains in the distance. @ Ohrid https://t.co/5aKEfsbW7x Sun, 21:57: This year's Hugo ballot: Goodreads/LibraryThing stats https://t.co/SA9QiOE68D Mon, 08:22: RT @Dublin2019: The 2018 Hugo, 1943 Retro Hugo, and 2018 associated award finalists have ...
Did we really think that the claims of Brexiteers, that countries would be lining up to do advantageous trade deals with us once we leave the EU, was ever going to happen? As unevidenced wishful thinking goes, it was one of the more starry-eyed promises made by the Leave campaign last year. The Trade Secretary and arch-Brexiteer, Liam Fox, should know, as he has accumulated thousands of air miles in the last year knocking fruitlessly on closed doors. The promised land of free, unadulterated trade enriching our economy once we turn our back on the biggest free trade bloc in ...
A little belatedly, it's time for the 2017 version of my annual post about the gender balance amongst council candidates and councillors in the big May round of elections.
In the years before the 2008 crash, Vince Cable built a reputation for seeing further ahead than most in politics and economics. Vince's essay in the new Social Liberal Forum book "Four Go in Search of Big Ideas" enhances this record. Writing before recent revelations about Cambridge Analytica, he identified: "the heart of the worries growing deeper about the data giants: that by filtering the information we receive they can influence not just the goods and services we consume but how we vote and, indeed, what we think". Vince sets out the threat to democracy: "Even if the owners of ...
After spending several thousand words responding to the 'Power to people and communities' consultation yesterday, I didn't feel like doing the same for the consultation on tuition fees, especially as the consultation group clearly have decided to propose a graduate tax and are just looking for a bit of feedback before finalising their ideas. So here's my response to them. Firstly, I'm disappointed that this consultation appears to believe that discussing the funding of undergraduate higher education can take place in a vacuum, without any consideration of the knock-on effects to the rest of the HE sector and the way ...
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-43559636 The BBC has the story on its web site – see link above I love to see this kind of direct action. For far too long supermarkets have been promoting the use of far too much plastic packaging instead of looking for more environmentally friendly alternatives.
Do you know, I'd almost forgotten that I was today's duty Editor. That's what a four day weekend does for you. Well, that and the fact that today's Liberal Democrat Voice is brought to you from Chisinau, the capital of Moldova! I'm here in part to explore a little known corner of what some describe as New Europe, and also to meet some Moldovan liberals, which should be interesting given the local politics here. So, moving on, what have we got for you today? First up is Gordon Lishman, who offers us a report of Vince Cable's views on internet ...
DUNDEE CITY COUNCIL - WEEKLY ROAD REPORT REPORT FOR WEST END WARD - WEEK COMMENCING MONDAY 2 APRIL 2018 South Union Street/South Marketgait at Dundee Railway Station - northbound nearside lane closure from 9.30am for 6 weeks for footway works. Glamis Road (at Blackness Road) - off-peak temporary traffic lights on Friday 6 April for Scottish Water ironwork repair.
Mon 2nd
06:47
Shropshire Council has one highest gender pay gaps of all councils - it must stop making excuses and...
At 2pm on Maundy Thursday afternoon, just as everyone was slipping away for the Easter break, Shropshire Council issued a press release detailing how much men and women are paid by the council. I have taken a reality check on this. Its positive tone belies the reality that Shropshire Council is bumping along the bottom on closing the gender pay gap. Only 12 councils in England pay women less than Shropshire Council. Maundy Thursday was a good time to bury bad news and there was certainly bad news to bury. What the council was anxious to slip out before the ...
