The sun was beating down in Sofia, the sky was blue, there wasn't a cloud to spoil the view. But there was Brexit in our hearts... Yes, it was time for the Spring Council meeting of the ALDE Party, hosted by our Bulgarian sister party, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms. The key items of business were the continuing work towards the 2019 European Parliamentary election manifesto and the adoption of the 2017 audit. In truth, the latter was never going to be an issue – finances are healthy, and likely to become more so. Progress on the manifesto has ...
Sometime in the late 1960s I went with a school friend in his father's yellow-and-while Ford Anglia to a big race meeting at Silverstone. After some heavy googling I think I have worked out which day it was: 27 April 1968. That was the day of that year's Daily Express Trophy, which appears to be the sponsor's name for a race better known as the British Racing Drivers' Club International Trophy I am sure I have the right race because I remember this programme from a long-vanished scrapbook of my childhood souvenirs. It also places the meeting after my first ...
Well, people vote... and campaigners also campaign. If you're not used to political campaigning, what happens on polling day (and indeed the very fact that it's a super-busy day rather than the quiet day it usually is in the political news coverage) can be a bit of a mystery. So here is my list of the five main things campaigners get up to on polling day: 1. Delivering campaign literature Even on polling day, people are still making up their minds for sure how to vote – and those who think they have made up their minds might yet change ...
Jonn Elledge has produced a thorough guide to this week's London borough elections, dividing the contests into the really interesting ones, the slightly interesting ones and the frankly pretty boring ones. His overall prediction? My instinct is that the Tories are going to get battered, but that some of the more excitable predictions of Conservative losses are unlikely to be delivered on.He also Labour has failed to manage expectations. As a result, if it does not win Westminster (a borough it has never controlled) it will look like failure. Of the three borough where the Liberal Democrats have hopes of ...
Non-fiction: 1 (YTD 17) The God Instinct, by Jesse Bering Fiction (non-sf): 2 (YTD 13) Mrs Miniver, by Jan Struther Something Like Normal, by Trish Doller sf (non-Who): 7 (YTD 35) New York 2140, by Kim Stanley Robinson La Belle Sauvage, by Philip Pullman Spirit by Gwyneth Jones The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag, by Robert A. Heinlein All Systems Red, by Martha Wells Islandia, by Austen Tappan Wright Binti: Home, by Nnedi Okorafor Doctor Who, etc: 4 (YTD 14) Doctor Who: The Official Annual 2010 Genius Loci, by Ben Aaronovitch Rose, by Russell T. Davies The Christmas Invasion, by ...
"I've had people on street stalls ask me what our position is before signing a petition for a people's vote on the final deal. I've had people read that text and still want to check that this means they are signing something against Brexit." Mark Argent says the Lib Dems need to make their opposition to Brexit clearer. Bob Hudson asks whether the privatisation of adult social care is reversible. "By the turn of the millennium, the city's leaders realised that family flight was draining the city of energy, creativity and a long-term tax base - and giving it a ...
Our Homes Secretary, Ms Amber Rudd, has resigned. Her wording suggest that it's all over a technicality - she "inadvertently" (which means "unintentionally") "misled" (which means "lied to" )a parliamentary committee by claiming that the Home Office did not have targets for deporting immigrants. So that's all right then. A minister has made a mistake and taken the blame, high standards have been maintained , our constitution has worked and our government can resume its course, proud that the the niceties have been maintained. It is not all right. What is needed is not just a change of minister (though ...
www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43912327 The BBC has the story on its web site – see link above This is a subject I have commented on before and one that quite clearly needs proper Government regulation to stop exploitation. Many car parks owned by supermarkets, shopping centres and retail parks are now outsourced to parking companies who use CCTV to catch out the unwary. But I fear that the process has become one of not only managing car parks but of using them as a cash cow to make as much money as possible. From the land owners perspective the value of all land ...
There are only three meetings at Blyth Town County in May ( and technically one isn't a town council meeting anyway) Thursday 10th May Annual Meeting of the Council Thursday 24th May Town Meeting Thursday 31st May Environment Committee Meeting All meetings are scheduled to be at Arms Evertyne House, and to start at 6:30 pm
Current The Road to Middlemarch, by Rebecca Mead Ammonite, by Nicola Griffith Luminescent Threads, edited by Alexandra Pierce and Mimi Mondal The Day of the Doctor, by Steven Moffat Last books finished Islandia, by Austen Tappan Wright Binti: Home, by Nnedi Okorafor Next books Contes Fantastiques Complets, by Guy de Maupassant Dark Matter, by Blake Crouch Looking For JJ, by Anne Cassidy
I liked my words piled up like rubble walls without the glue of mortar, or the craft of dry-stone dikes – while rhythm, although it was my heartbeat, sometimes passed me by, or faced-off the wrong way – for I enquired in alleyways: wracked like conscience (a fleeting visitor, discovered in the night) by a [...]
Yate Town Council's annual Beating the Bounds walk takes place on Sunday 6 May - an ancient tradition revived as a family walk to explore Yate Common. Meet at the kissing gate opposite St Briavel's Drive at 3 pm. Beating the Bounds is a traditional local activity for Rogation Sunday, walking round the boundaries of the Common so that people know what they hold as a community asset. In some places they beat the bounds of an entire parish, or ride round the boundaries of larger parishes. The Common was nearly sold off for housing some years ago, but a ...
A line I heard in a public house recently summed up for me the problem with the present incarnation of the Labour Party. A long-standing Labour supporter from Leigh in the north of England said to me "the problem is Labour is now more Hampstead than Hull". Data revealed as part of a recent opinion poll conducted for the Evening Standard, bears out my ersthwhile friend's pithy analysis. It showed that in London, the party pof Corbyn has more support among the higher earners of the ABC1 demographic than it does among the C2DE group of working class voters. The ...
High court blocks Amber Rudd attempt to deport witness Just in case you thought Rudd wasn't totally embedded in this. The UK's Inhumane And Cruel Immigration Detention System Must End British High Commissioner's baby son denied a UK passport after being born in Trinidad Fury as NHS recruits 100 doctors from India only for Home Office to deny them all visas The racists won. So are they happy now? | Stewart Lee "Prince Philip's embarrassing colonialist gaffes of old seem now like the charming handmade racist woodcuts of a delightful artisanal bigot, compared with the mechanised Model T Ford production ...
Mon 30th
11:54
Christine Jardine MP: Last week's Commons debate confirms natural majority for the customs union
From the back of an agricultural vehicle used to transport shooters, Christine Jardine MP addresses the gathered throng in a barn in South Fawley, North Berkshire Well, it was certainly a venue to remember. Yesterday, deep in the North Berkshire countryside, in a barn on a farm in South Fawley, local people gathered to hear Christine Jardine MP, who had driven all the way from Edinburgh for the occasion. In order to project her voice over the seated audience, Christine mounted the back of handy large agricultural vehicle. She said she felt a bit like President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who ...
Amber Rudd had to go. Wherever you can rightfully apportion blame here – and May, as usual, deserves quite a lot – Rudd telling parliament there were no deportation targets, later proven not only to be false but that Rudd had knowledge of them when she spoke to parliament meant she could not stay in post, even in this ridiculous political era we are experiencing when people can remain in the cabinet after pulling stunts that would never have been tolerated in any previous government. I was slightly worried that May would appoint someone as Home Secretary on one of ...
Sainsbury's and Asda have agreed a merger which would account for 30% of the UK grocery market, further concentrating the market in just a few hands. Commenting, Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable said: "The grocery market - and the British shopper - already suffers from the mid-market being dominated by just a handful of big players. What the merger of the second and third biggest supermarkets threatens is the creation of even more concentrated local monopolies, so it is obvious that there must be an investigation by the Competition & Markets Authority, starting immediately."
Responding to news that Amber Rudd has resigned over the Windrush scandal, Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesperson Ed Davey said: "It's clear that Amber Rudd has ended up, at least partly, being the fall guy to protect the Prime Minister. Theresa May must face questions now given these dreadful failures largely took place under her watch as Home Secretary."
Sun, 12:56: Essential and awful reading about the Alfie case. https://t.co/aLCeQlJycU Sun, 13:54: RT @CrisisGroup: #Armenia's new leadership and #Azerbaijan must pay attention to avoid triggering a new conflagration along Nagorno-Karabak... Sun, 16:05: RT @EleanorRylance: I despair of this country at times. My district council had undertaken to accept 8 families under the government's Sy... Sun, 20:48: On the Prowl for Bruce Springsteen's Irish Roots https://t.co/L5xjb7Y6b2 An unexpected connection with Jedward. Sun, 22:17: RT @pault_cam: The amazing Convention Centre Dublin, where we will be running the 2019 Worldcon. We've just finished three days of planning... Sun, 22:22: RT @pault_cam: A ...
Last Wednesday (April 26th) The Government suffered its largest defeat so far on the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill. This Cross Party amendment, led by Lord Tyler for the Lib Dems, which is now added to the Bill, raises the legal bar which Ministers must meet in order to exercise "Henry VIII" and other executive powers The Government's Bill previously read: A Minister of the Crown may by regulations make such provision as the Minister considers appropriate to prevent, remedy or mitigate..... any failure or deficiency arising from the withdrawal of the united kingdom from the EU. The amendment altered this ...
Recently, an active and experienced Liberal Democrat campaigner challenged me over the party's messaging on Brexit. He suggested that this was coming across as confused. My first instinct was to defend what we have been doing, but on reflection, I think he has a point. The aim of this article is to ask the question a little more widely. From the inside My impression is that there our parliamentarians and media office have been doing an outstanding job in trying to hold the government to account in the mess over Brexit, and of making people aware of this. I was ...
It seems strange that nobody seems to have commented on this photo. In holding hands with the President and First Lady, President Macron seems (inadvertently?) to be holding up the sign of the horns. This sign can have many meanings. In Southern Europe, it has long been known as the symbol for the "cornuto" (Italian [...] The post Why on earth did Macron use the horn symbol? appeared first on Radix.
I posted a few days ago about the new cycle track being constructed from Switch Island alongside the A59 (Northway) towards Maghull and the need for it to reach Liverpool Road South as opposed to just to the cycle/pedestrian (Toucan) crossing just by the A59 River Alt bridge. Following discussions with Sefton Council I can now add to the original posting. The first part of the project, which is presently being constructed, is funded by Highways England who are taking the works to where their responsibility ends at the crossing. From there to the Liverpool Road South junction is Sefton ...
Just when we thought that the Liberal Democrats in coalition had killed off the idea of compulsory ID cards, along comes two former Labour Home Secretaries to try and breath some life into the idea. As The Times reports, Charles Clarke and Alan Johnson claim that if Theresa May had not abandoned plans to introduce ID cards as home secretary in 2010 then thousands of undocumented British citizens would have had their status regularised. That assertion of course depends on when exactly the Home Office destroyed all the documentation relating to these citizens. However, attractive as the idea may seem, ...
The Mother of Parliaments had seen many fine sons, not least those who sat on the Liberal benches, but the number of daughters was far too few for the health of the nation. Elizabeth Shields, Liberal MP for Ryedale (1986-87) Today is the 60th anniversary of the Life Peerages Bill, which enabled women to sit in the House of Lords. Since that time 250+ women have sat on the red benches in Parliament, this represents something like 18% of all life peer appointments since 1958. The House of Lords is currently 26% female, so things are (slowly) improving, but the ...
Good morning, once again, and welcome to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. You might never guess that I'm a member of the Federal International Relations Committee... I've been here to attend the ALDE Party Council meeting that took place on Saturday, and I'll be reporting on the mood at that meeting later in the day. Also, I'll be covering progress towards a European Liberal manifesto for the 2019 European Parliamentary elections, and the selection of a Spitzenkandidat for the Presidency of the European Commission. It was another punishing week for the Government in the Lords on the European Union Withdrawal ...
British Home Secretary (Interior Minister) Amber Rudd has fallen on her sword; her position had indeed become untenable over the weekend with revelations about how much she encouraged the "hostile environment" to "illegal" immigrants and approved of the policy of deportation before appeal, despite having tried to distance herself publicly from it all. The inhuman [...]
DUNDEE CITY COUNCIL - WEEKLY ROAD REPORT REPORT FOR WEST END WARD - WEEK COMMENCING MONDAY 30 APRIL 2018 South Union Street/South Marketgait at Dundee Railway Station - northbound nearside lane closure from 9.30am for 2 weeks for footway works. Perth Road (at West Park Road) - temporary traffic lights for up to one week for gas main repair. Lochee Road (at Tullideph Road) - temporary traffic lights from Tuesday 1 May for 5 days for Scottish Water mains repair.
