The 2018-19 cycle of council by-elections has kicked off this week with four seats to fill across three wards: two Labour defences, one Conservative defence and one Green defence. And a full slate of Lib Dem candidates, hooray. Skerton West, Lancaster A Labour defence in a ward without a Lib Dem candidate in 2015 but with a presence for the party in the September 2017 council by-election here. Skerton (Lancaster) result: LAB: 57.8% (+20.8) CON: 27.1% (+1.2) LDEM: 9.4% (+9.4) GRN: 5.8% (-3.7) Labour HOLD. No UKIP. (-20.4) and Ind (-7.4) as prev. — Britain Elects (@britainelects) May 17, 2018 ...
This extract from the BBC television series Railway Roundabout shows the very last slip coach to operate on Britain's railways, which dates the filming to 10 September 1960. Read all about slip coaches on Mike's Railway History.
In the days when we Liberal Democrats still imagined we might come out of the Coalition alive, I wrote in the Leicester Mercury: Crisis? What crisis? When I joined the Liberal Party in the late 1970s we were finishing behind the National Front in parliamentary by-elections and our former leader was about to go on trial at the Old Bailey for conspiracy to murder. That's a crisis.As it turned out, Jeremy Thorpe did less harm to the party's long-term prospects than did Nick Clegg. The extraordinary story of Thorpe and the conspiracy to murder which he initiated is to be ...
From the Leicester Mercury: Grassroots Labour members in Leicester have called on Liz Kendall to send a letter of support to party leader Jeremy Corbyn. The Leicester West Constituency Labour Party (CLP) passed a motion to applaud the Labour leader's "long track record of opposing all forms of racism and anti-Semitism". CLP members agreed to write to Mr Corbyn expressing their support for him in the anti-Semitism row. And they requested that the Leicester West MP - who in 2015 ran for the party leadership against Mr Corbyn - do the same.The Mercury says Liz Kendall attended the meeting but ...
A blast from the past with one of the 1988 local election broadcasts from the Social and Liberal Democrats (then in its brief post-merger phrase of trying to go by the short name of The Democrats).
Second paragraph of third cahpter: The Professor's database had a lot of material from the twentieth century. She called it the last Romantic age when the Earth was still diverse and exciting. She said it was a simpler age when the moral choices were clear. 'When we met our first aliens,' said the Professor, 'we had to accept the reality of moral relativism. A Martian is biologically hardwired differently from a human, who is hardwired differently from a Draconian. You can't find a basic moral common ground - only a constantly flexing point of equilibrium.' Well, this was unexpected. I've ...
National Police Chiefs have said that rural police officers might end up carrying guns because of a lack of specialist counter-terrorist officers. Ed Davey has said that this would be a disproportionate move. Police Officers carry out dangerous and often lifesaving work on our behalf, not least in the face of ongoing threats including terrorism. We must therefore ensure that armed officers are able to respond quickly to situations. However, any move towards routinely arming officers would be totally disproportionate and contrary to the principle of policing by consent. There needs to be sensible guidelines in place to ensure that ...
If anybody should resign over the Windrush scandal, it is Theresa May. It was her determination over a long period as Home Secretary to foster what she called a hostile environment for illegal immigrants, and her determination to produce one regardless of the cost to others that has created the tragedies that we see unfolding almost daily. This is not a flash in the pan, it is the result of years of hard work on her part. Any claim she has to be a Christian is negated by the evidence of years of consistently pushing hard line vicious rhetoric and ...
Foster Care fortnight is a national campaign which aims to promote fostering services across the UK. Have you ever considered Fostering with Bury Council? Call us for an informal chat on 0800 9555 311 The following information is from Bury Council: Currently there is a national shortage of foster carers and this is certainly true in Bury. Currently many of our Bury children are being placed with foster carers outside of the borough as we just do not have enough foster carers for the number of children and families needing support. Foster Carer Fortnight serves to highlight the national shortage ...
The poverty premium is taking a crippling toll on people who can least afford it. It's estimated that every year those living in poverty pay an extra £490 for the basics of energy, phones, white goods, food and furniture. But how can it be fair that the poor pay more? The problem is that the rental payments of Britain's 11 million renters aren't recorded or recognised in the same way that mortgage payments are. This means some of the least well-off pay the most to borrow. All the while, over two-thirds of renters – in both private and social housing ...
On this day in 1990, the World Health Organisation removed homosexuality from its list of 'mental disorders'. Since 2004 the anniversary of this has been used to promote awareness of the legal and cultural discrimination LGBT+ people still experience around the world. In the UK that we have come a long way towards achieving equality - and yet we know that, for many, there is still a stigma around their sexuality or gender identity. Imagine being a teenager struggling to reconcile same-sex attraction with the teachings of their parents, or religion. Think about why you may not know many people ...
As D.I.Y. Gene Editing Gains Popularity, 'Someone Is Going to Get Hurt' I think we now know how the world is going to end, don't we? The spectacular power of Big Lens | long read I have Nikon lenses in my glasses. Just saying. Take our Sats maths quiz to see if you're smarter than an 11-year-old I got 24/25 on this. Smug mode engaged. This Is Not a Review of Lars Von Trier's 'The House That Jack Built' "I don't want to watch any more films in which all the female characters are killed... You can write a film ...
Wed, 12:56: No Enemy But Peace - Richard Meyer, Antarctic Press, and Jawbreakers https://t.co/fSP182eWAq The latest comics kerfuffle. *sigh* Wed, 14:53: RT @eucopresident: Looking at latest decisions of @realDonaldTrump someone could even think: with friends like that who needs enemies. But... Wed, 16:05: Abraham Wald and the Missing Bullet Holes https://t.co/9CzyX60QHs Brilliant. Wed, 18:11: Crash Override, by Zoe Quinn https://t.co/G1O9kImucj #gamergate Wed, 20:48: How Britain made me a citizen of nowhere https://t.co/0Qt7Tt5Xa4 Paul Taylor laments. Thu, 08:12: RT @EZaharievaMFA: Ahead of the #Sofia summit: Truly believe that the #European perspective for the #WesternBalkans is irreversible. This h... Thu, 08:59: RT ...
I find myself often trying to figure out what Theresa May is doing these days. As in, what is the strategy she is pursuing exactly, not just in terms of Brexit, but everything else too. One must begin by recognising that most of her premiership is about Brexit and roll from there. Instead of laying out a realistic plan for leaving and then sticking to it, she came out in the Lancaster House speech in January 2017 really hard, with red lines over red lines. No money to be paid to the EU; out of everything conceivable; we'd negotiate the ...
The plans for a community fair in Sunniside to raise funds for the village's Christmas tree are moving forward. We had a meeting on Monday evening at the Whinnies Community Garden where the fair will be held on Saturday 14th July. This will be the first community fair in Sunniside but hopefully it will be an annual event. There will be more information to follow as the details are sorted out.
6,000 skilled people were denied entry to the UK last year due to visa caps. The Campaign for Science and Engineering reported on a Freedom of Information request to the Home Office which showed that thousands of workers had been denied entry between December 2017 and March 2018. The Government have refused over 6,000 applications for skilled overseas workers holding a job offer due to an arbitrary cap on visas, including engineers, tech professionals, doctors and teachers. Many posts up and down the country are being left unfilled because overseas workers can't get entry. We need more nurses, doctors and ...
It is most probably far too late to get anywhere in challenging the validity of the EU referendum result, but nevertheless the extent to which the Vote Leave campaigns were prepared to break the rules to win is well worth noting. It is already a matter of record that the campaign group Leave.EU has been fined £70,000 for breaches of election law in the 2016 EU referendum. According to the Electoral Commission, this group, which was separate from the official pro-Brexit group Vote Leave, failed to report "at least" £77,380 which it spent. The Electoral Commission said Leave.EU had exceeded ...
Fronting onto Bold Street – the last part of the original Liverpool Central overground station still standing. www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xUhxQ37Tqk Photos of the former station are on You Tube – see link above. Note – There's a small issue on the video that requires explanation. Liverpool's Exchange Station was not directly closed as part of the Beeching cuts, it went as part of the building of the Loop and Link underground section of the Merseyrail system, being replaced by Moorfields underground station near by. It did, however, lose it's direct services to Scotland and the north which were transferred to Lime Street ...
The financial crash of ten years ago was something of a paradox for conventional economists. It took most of them by surprise, and dented their reputation. And yet economists became more important than ever to the running of our world. But now, to listen to most of them, the equivocation is over. We're back to ... Continue reading Secular stagnation: the curse that still haunts developed economies
It's not all Brexit glamour in the House of Lords, and whilst most attention is on the series of defeats inflicted on the Government with regard to the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, the business of government limps along otherwise. Here in Suffolk, the various District and Borough Councils have been pairing off in an attempt to staunch the financial bleeding, merging back office functions, creating joint teams covering planning, council tax collection, and all of the various things done at sub-County level. Waveney and Suffolk Coastal have sought to merge into East Suffolk, whilst St Edmundsbury and Forest Heath aim ...
I was recently relating to a friend that, on my last skiing holiday in Switzerland, I was charged two Swiss francs for a glass of tap water in a mountain restaurant. "It's enough to turn you into a Marxist," he responded. My friend is a successful businessman and an investor in early stage companies. Marxist [...] The post It is time to go beyond Karl Marx and Adam Smith appeared first on Radix.
This week is Mental Health Awareness Week. The theme is this year is stress. Stress can pervade our lives, but one aspect is stress at work. Keeping a mentally-healthy workforce is best for everyone: the employees, the business and the customers. Being self-employed as a musician, workplace stress has a slightly different connotation. I'm preparing this week for a solo piano recording on Friday. It can be highly stressful and intense, but I've done enough of these projects to know how to manage my stress. And it is in managing stress that workplaces are now realising they need to put ...
Responding to reports that more than 1,600 engineers, tech specialists, teachers and NHS staff offered jobs in the UK were denied visas between December and March, Liberal Democrat Science Spokesperson Layla Moran MP said:"These figures are truly shocking. These are people that the Government should be bending over backwards to welcome to the UK. Instead they are being denied visas for vital roles in our NHS, schools, universities, science and tech sectors."These are some of the most saleable people in the jobs market who can and will go elsewhere if the Government doesn't get a grip and sort this situation ...
Residents have reported concerns that the electronic door entry button at Blackness Post Office, to assist customers with mobility difficulties, is still not working and so I again took this up with Post Office Limited. The company's External Affairs Manager has responded positively as follows "Thank you for getting in touch in relation to the door entry button at Blackness Road Post Office. I have asked the field team to raise this issue with the postmaster. You may know that the vast majority of our post offices are operated by independent agents. As such Post Office ltd is not responsible ...
At last week's meeting of Blyth Town Council Councillor Adrian Cartie was elected Mayor of Blyth Congratulations Adrian !
