I once discovered that there is an Orthodox monastery in the shadow of the Stiperstones. The other evening I arguably topped that by turning up a Buddhist retreat in White Grit. It doesn't just have a strange name: White Grit is a strange settlement. Originally a lead-mining village, it now consists largely of modern bungalows that must have been put up long after the mine closed. I was once bitten by a Jack Russell in White Grit. As the village is just over the Powys border, I complained about it to the then MP for Montgomeryshire, Lembit Opik, when I ...
Embed from Getty Images It's quite something to have a split over your local election manifesto when you have only one councillor, but Leicester's Conservatives have managed it. Last week I blogged about their election promise of a tram system from the city that would reach as far as Market Harborough. Today, reports the Leicester Mercury, the city's only Tory councillor, Ross Grant, poured cold water on the idea: "Nobody mentioned it to me. I wasn't consulted at all. "If somebody had, they would have been told that I have been consistently against having a tram system in Leicester. "It ...
The UK should not be a hostile environment, says Jonathan Fryer. In 1968 the Conservatives won control of Sheffield and captured every council seat in Leicester. Lewis Baston looks at their local election landslide that year. Paul Saffer knows what the Queen should do: "Monarchists make much of HM's sense of duty. Well, what greater service to her nation could she perform than to lay out for its future historians, and her humble subjects generally, her uniquely privileged testimony on the events and personalities of her reign?" "In the fall of 2016, Harvey Weinstein set out to suppress allegations that ...
Last May I was delighted to be elected to represent Dunfermline South in Fife Council after many years hard work. Of course, after the campaign, the important work of representing my constituents began, and I joined an excellent team of councillors holding the SNP/Labour coalition to account. With great enthusiasm, I was given the role of our education spokesperson in the Council. A few months into the job, I noticed something in a national news report that concerned me. The Scottish Government had a recommended School Uniform Grant for all children from the least well off families, but that different ...
Current Islandia, by Austen Tappan Wright The Road to Middlemarch, by Rebecca Mead Ammonite, by Nicola Griffith Last books finished Spirit by Gwyneth Jones Rose, by Russell T. Davies The God Instinct, by Jesse Bering The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag, by Robert A. Heinlein The Christmas Invasion, by Jenny T. Colgan All Systems Red, by Martha Wells Next books Contes Fantastiques Complets, by Guy de Maupassant Dark Matter, by Blake Crouch Looking For JJ, by Anne Cassidy
Sadly little surprise that the BBC politics team is erasing bisexuality again. It's over a decade since they were taken to task over reporting about another prominent left-wing bisexual MP, Simon Hughes, as John Pienaar declared that someone who had talked about having relationships with men and women was therefore gay. Expect a lot more of this as a retelling of the Thorpe saga is heading for TV screens (carefully timed, you note, for publicity just ahead of a round of elections). There is a simple yet remarkable story that his career was ended by the demands of his ex, ...
Mon 23rd
17:09
Publication of Report on Sexual Impropriety Complaints Handling - an update from Special Investigati...
In November 2017, I was appointed by the Federal Board of the Liberal Democrats as Special Investigation Counsel to conduct an investigation and produce a Report on the handling of sexual impropriety complaints within the Party. I am pleased that, after a period of being embargoed, the report has now been published and you can access it here. My appointment was one of a number of steps taken by the Federal Board in response to concerns expressed by members of the party towards the end of last year. These concerns related to allegations of sexual impropriety that were, at that ...
Perfidious Albion - that's what they call us. Content to say one thing and do another, it's a particularly wounding nickname for a country that considers aspects such as "a gentleman's word is his bond" to be articles of faith*. When thinking about my country, I wonder how far we have come along this road, as it is not the case one's word can be taken as honest these days - a lot of daily life seems stricken by continually having to prove one is who one says one is. Annoying for me, as a relatively privileged person, but potentially ...
I stand out on the left at the annual Battle of Katia memorial service at the Royal Gloucestershire Hussars memorial just outside Gloucester Cathedral yesterday, Sunday 22nd April. My grandfather, Charles Henry "Harry" Walter, was a volunteer in "D" Squadron with his horse, Susie from August 1914 to April 1918. Two days after this report ... Continue reading The Royal Gloucestershire Hussars remember the Battle of Katia
The Liverpool Echo has the story on its web site – see link above I saw a copy of the controversial leaflet last Sunday and what actually stood out to me about it was the fact that local head teachers were pictured in it. I know I would be having a word with any head teacher of a school I was a governor of if they appeared in a political publication – indeed I had to tackle a head teacher over this very type of thing a few years back. Of course they will all quite properly have their ...
"Not technically beautiful, she has an engaging laugh": 35 years of being described by men The picture of Vince Cable you never knew you needed to see How plastic-eating bacteria actually work - a chemist explains As Brexit approaches, we need to ditch the "hostile environment" for good If you like what you see here (or even if you don't) please consider dropping me a tip: [IMG: Paypal Donate Button] [IMG: Buy Me an uncaffeinated beverage (because I'm allergic to coffee) at ko-fi.com] [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
For some reason I seem to have been included in a mailing from Maria Eagle the Labour MP for Garston & Halewood. You can see part of it below. I left out boring pictures of people out campaigning and details ... Continue reading →
[IMG: Image may contain: 2 people, people smiling, text] See how the EU-Mexico trade agreement benefits companies and communities across the EURead the exporters' stories
As I have predicted for a long time, signs are definitely there that HM government understands the only way to avoid a hard border in Ireland is at the very, very least to remain in what will effectively be the Customs Union post-Brexit, semantics aside. I say the very least as that may not be enough, but it is certainly a bare minimum step to avoiding this problem. Everyone knows this. Actually, having said that, a lot of the media seems not to understand this still given some of the questions you hear on TV and radio. It has come ...
Thank you once again to everyone who signed our 82 bus service petition. The great news is that both the 82 and X49 bus services will be extended to Chipping Sodbury from 27th May. Our petition in autumn 2016 showed that hundreds of people wanted the 82 service to run to and from Chipping Sodbury again, so they wouldn't have to change buses in Yate. At the time we were told that wasn't possible, but we have kept up the fight. We are delighted that First Bus has finally listened. Not all of the changes being made by First Bus ...
Sun, 12:56: RT @KeohaneDan: A thread critiquing this piece by @HughRBennett (It is longer than I had originally intended) https://t.co/oNuZb7zNAj Sun, 15:39: RT @DTzantchev: A big gathering of joyful people at #GrandPlace in #Brussels for the 🇧🇬 #GrandHoro today. https://t.co/vIuOF2Xsye Sun, 15:56: "Antwerp is not ready to elect an Orthodox Jew" https://t.co/Bmkbw1QJBb Sun, 16:05: I believe in the UN, but it needs to examine its conscience over Syria https://t.co/UCOZu3Zlpe Martti Ahtisaari writes in sorrow. Sun, 16:12: RT @EvaMaydell: Bulgarian Kukeri chasing away any bad spirits just before the start of #GrandHoro #EU2018BG #Tradi https://t.co/p09rKoVMgI Sun, 20:48: Republicans *And* Democrats Should ...
The investigative work of Amelia Gentleman in the Guardian has uncovered the implications of Theresa May's 'hostile environment', and let us not kid ourselves with talk of Amber Rudd's resignation, responsibility for this falls squarely upon the head of our Prime Minister. Former Conservative speechwriter, and now a member of the Liberal Democrats, Derek Laud wrote for the Guardian over the weekend. In his powerful piece, he highlights that the impact of Government policy on Windrush pensioners is not an isolated error; It cannot be incidental that some of the most important issues facing us today are about matters of ...
For such a small territory, Palestine has generated a disproportionate amount of books; I have several shelves-full in my library. But most of those works are about history, war and the search for peace. Literature rarely gets a look in. So Marcello Di Cintio's journey among Palestinian writers in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel, Pay [...]
With opinion polls starting to show that voters are having second thoughts about Brexit, the Independent reports on an important intervention by one of the Ministers charged with making it happen. According to the paper, Brexit Minister, Steve Baker has said that MPs will be able to force Theresa May to accept a fresh referendum on Brexit in a showdown vote as early as the autumn. He has conceded that the crucial vote on the exit deal would not, as expected, be a "take-it-or-leave-it" choice, because "parliament can always seek to amend motions". He agreed that a possible amendment would ...
One of the things about being an Englishman by birth, but not by parentage, is that your perspective of what it means to be English can be slightly different from that of those whose English heritage can be traced back through generations. For me, at least, with an Indian father and a Scots mother, there is a desire to fit in to some extent, and that manifests itself in a generalised belief that people are broadly reasonable, given the opportunity to be so, and that the eccentricities of life here – queuing, cricket, the weather – are things to be ...
I never went inter-railing, as so many of my friends did in the 1970s, but I have now to mark the imminent arrival of my sixtieth birthday. I went with my children and family, and the trip included Rome, Venice and Vienna, and – my goodness – was I didactic. I'm surprised they never throttled [...] The post Nationalised and 'privatised' rail, the Treasury rules appeared first on Radix.
I seem to be dividing my very limited knowledge of things horticultural between Maghull in Bloom and Lydiate in Flower these days and my latest trick has been to learn how to attach Gateway Planters to Lydiate boundary signs. We put one up at either end of Southport Road/Myerscough Lane to start with a few weeks back and have now added another 3 on the Civil Parish boundaries with Maghull on Kenyons Lane and on both Bells Lane and Punnell's Lane with Great Altcar. They are all now planted up like the one below at Punnell's Lane. The planting was ...
It's St George's Day today, the anniversary of Queen Anne being crowned at Westminster Abbey (1702), and of the chartering of Connecticut as an English colony in 1662. And, coincidentally, on this day in 1516, Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria endorsed "The German Beer Purity Law", which I think we could all support. I've been spending the weekend celebrating a significant anniversary, and clearly you've all been outside enjoying the fine weather (except our Scottish colleagues, who've been at their Conference), or campaigning for elections, as we've got precious little in the kitty for publication today. So, I'll be winging ...
I welcome guest posts on Liberal England. As you can see from this list of the 10 most recent ones, I am happy to consider a wide range of subjects. If you would like to write a guest post yourself, please send me an email so we can discuss your idea. "You're all the same" - Katie BarronThe trouble with Seamus Milne - Tim HallSave the University of Leicester's Vaughan Centre for Lifelong Learning - Sally BirchThe peculiar contradictions of Scotland's Named Person scheme - Simon CalvertThe straight line of racist politics from 19th century South Carolina to Donald Trump ...
DUNDEE CITY COUNCIL - WEEKLY ROAD REPORT REPORT FOR WEST END WARD - WEEK COMMENCING MONDAY 23 APRIL 2018 South Union Street/South Marketgait at Dundee Railway Station - northbound nearside lane closure from 9.30am for 3 weeks for footway works.
