Congratulations to the young activists who displayed this banner at Labour Live today. It reminds me of the day a friend and I carried an "Abolish Hunting" banner around the Fernie Hunt Pony Club gymkhana, though I suspect that was rather more dangerous. Photo stolen from Guido Fawkes' chief reporter Ross Kempsell.

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

The Home Secretary should make medicinal cannabis available to all who need it, says Christine Jardine, after Sajid Javid granted an emergency licence for Billy Caldwell to be treated with the drug. His supply had been confiscated by customs earlier this week. Christine is supporting her constituentKaren Gray, whose son Murray has Epilepsy and needs the drug to control his seizures: Sajid Javid has done the right thing for a young boy enduring unimaginable pain. These treatments can have enormous benefits for patients like Billy Caldwell and my constituent Murray Gray. The Home Secretary should now take common sense steps ...

Posted by The Voice on Liberal Democrat Voice

Today's entry will do nothing to quieten the gossip in the Bonkers' Arms. There have already been allegations that Lotd B. gets racing tips from the Wise Woman of Wing, and this looks like the work of the Elves of Rockingham Forest to me. They are never short of a bob or two. Saturday In view of my comments on Monday, I feel it only fair that I should let you know when I am writing this. It is the afternoon of 19 May and I am about to settle down to watch the F.A. Cup final. I rather fancy ...

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

The wires are to reach as far north as Market Harborough, as I blogged the other day, because National Grid power lines cross the Midland main line at Braybrooke. Today I went to look for that spot. Some 35 years ago a footpath crossed the railway there. Today you use a footbridge. Because I did not take a map with me this afternoon (it was rather a spur-of-the-moment visit) I did not find that bridge. At least I got so far out of the village looking for it that I decided to walk back to Harborough. Exploring the village I ...

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

Last year I became Chair of the new Federal Training Committee, set up to make sure the Party's training meets our long term needs. I have to admit that delivering training is one of the most fulfilling things I do as a Liberal Democrat. Whilst winning elections is intoxicating, there's nothing quite like bumping into someone months after a training event and hearing them excitedly tell you about the next steps you've inspired them to take. Do you have ideas about how to take the party's training up a notch? Do you want to ensure the party offers the training ...

Posted by Sarah Green on Liberal Democrat Voice
Sat 16th
18:57

The Happy Prince ****

In Richard Ellmann's magisterial biography of Oscar Wilde, the Irish playwright's final couple of years — in other words, the period between his release from prison and his death in the Hotel d'Alsace in Paris — gets somewhat short shrift, partly because Ellmann himself was a dying man as he struggled to complete his book. [...]

Posted by jonathanfryer on Jonathan Fryer

I was reminded today of an issue that first popped up on the Maghull Community Page of Facebook a few weeks ago by a lady who phoned me (my apologies to her as I can't recall her name) to see if I could explain why it will be more expensive to travel from the new Maghull North Station to Liverpool than from the nearby Maghull Station. A good example (from the Merseyrail web site) is that a Day Saver ticket from Maghull Station costs £3.90 yet less than a mile up the line to Ormskirk the same journey into Liverpool ...

Posted by Cllr. Tony Robertson on Sefton Focus

Apologies for not putting this up yesterday – it appeared after we had set up for the day – and it was one of THOSE days where we couldn't get online. So, a belated Eid Mubarak to all who have been celebrating.

Posted by The Voice on Liberal Democrat Voice

A few years ago I posted about a visit to the Three Tumuli of Grimde near Tienen. These are three first- or second-century Roman graves; when we went five years ago, they were covered in trees and undergrowth. (Also F, then 13, was noticeably smaller than he is now.) The tumuli are being cleaned up. Here's B contemplating where the undergrowth used to be: And a panoramic view showing the width of the site: It's all under construction right now, and we probably shouldn't have gone into it, but I think it will be striking when it is finished. Not ...

Sat 16th
15:04

World Cup, Day Four

View Poll: World Cup, Day Four You should be able to vote using your Facebook or Twitter account, even if you aren't on Livejournal. Congrats to lexin, trepkos, vilakins, tournesolavande and me for calling Uruguay's victory yesterday. Nobody called either of the other two matches.

YouGov
Sat 16th
14:18

Six of the Best 798

"Few watching this week's pitiful events will have thought that Westminster any longer has much claim to be called the Mother of Parliaments." Chris Grey on another week of Brexit. Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin reckon universal basic income and rewilding can save society from collapse. It's undeniable that the Donald Trump is wrecking the US-led international order. The only question left, says Fred Kaplan, is whether he's doing it on purpose. "Macfarlane says it has been inspiring to hear of how the book is making a genuine difference. Among the many messages and photographs he has received was one ...

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England
Sat 16th
13:16

1

Trees grow among rocks Granite boulders overhang Lichen covers all Advertisements

Posted by AL Franklin on Maintain the Advance!

miss_s_b | The Blood is the Life for 15-06-2018 I posted The Blood is the Life for 15-06-2018 to my dreamwidth blog 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

It may be because I am, at heart, someone who believes that you can affect real change only by building coalitions of interest, that I find myself increased perplexed by what this country has become in the past two years. Winning a referendum by a relatively small proportion was hardly a staggering endorsement for leaving the European Union, but I did expect there to follow an inkling of the strategy that might lead us to a stable outcome. I was to be disappointed it seemed. I then assumed that those tasked with guiding the country through the negotiations with the ...

Posted by Mark Valladares on Liberal Bureaucracy

In a further extension of the welcome trend in this Parliament of seats which aren't (yet) target seats also getting on with selecting their candidates early, Paul Edgeworth is the latest in Houghton and Sunderland South: delighted to be selected as @LibDems Parliamentary candidate for Houghton and Sunderland South constituency at the next General Election (whenever that may be!). In the meantime I'll be working to get more @WearsideLibDem councillors elected across Sunderland, Houghton & Hetton pic.twitter.com/FfRrqWk1BA — Paul Edgeworth (@PaulEdgeworth) June 15, 2018

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack
Sat 16th
11:00

My tweets

Fri, 12:56: The Question: Why is the modern offside law a work of genius? https://t.co/CID4qgTvsT A passionate essay on an often misunderstood subject. Fri, 13:31: World Cup, Day Three https://t.co/1Enn36wU1d Fri, 13:50: RT @lowflyingrocks: 2018 LV3, 14m-31m in diameter, just passed the Earth at 11km/s, missing by 330,000km. https://t.co/7x3ZvHa3z9 Fri, 16:05: The Hod Complex: England and the 1998 World Cup https://t.co/AT0bZho1Fc Tremendous long read. Fri, 18:22: The 2018 Hugo finalists for Best Novel https://t.co/uJYlkBqLle Fri, 20:17: Well, I drew Portugal in the @APCOBXLInsider office sweepstake, so I am smiling right now! Fri, 20:17: RT @Dimitrov_Nikola: In the months ahead, international ...

Like many other people today, including most Tories, I am outraged at the actions of two Tory MPs in effectively talking out a bill on Mental Health before forcing a private members bill that had the full the support of the Prime Minister. and which sought to outlaw up-skirting, into an uncertain purgatory through the simple use of one word - 'object'. As the Guardian reports, the voyeurism (offences) bill on upskirting, the taking of surreptitious, sexually intrusive images, was put forward by the Liberal Democrat MP Wera Hobhouse after a campaign by Gina Martin. Police have declined to prosecute ...

Posted by Peter Black on Peter Black

In June of 2004, a bunch of up and coming Liberal Democrats together wrote "The Orange Book", a publication which had the subtitle "Reclaiming Liberalism". Within Lib Dem circles, it was highly controversial: most of its ideas and outlook were significantly to the right of your average Lib Dem activist (that not being particularly difficult, as Leon Trotsky was to the right of many of them at the time). It also represents the Lib Dem portion of the future Lib-Con coalition in a very nascent form: of the ten authors who contributed to "The Orange Book", seven went on to ...

Posted by Nick on nicktyrone.com

Good news from Southwark: We won all three seats in the deferred election for London Bridge & West Bermondsey! Congrats to all three top candidates! That means that, nationwide, the @Libdems gained more seats in the 2018 local elections than Labour did! pic.twitter.com/yt2Q3ndWxs — Southwark Lib-Dems (@swklibdems) June 15, 2018 In Doncaster, we stood a candidate and got 2.8% of the vote from a standing start. If the local party can find some of those people and engage them, then that is how we start to claw our way back up in places where we are not strong.

Posted by The Voice on Liberal Democrat Voice

Rear view of Bootle New Strand shopping centre The Liverpool Echo has the story on its web site – see link above So on top of an alleged £32.5m purchase price, financed via a loan, Sefton Council is now going to spend another £3.15m on this shopping center. And we all thought Sefton Council was short of a few bob! Not short of money for pet Bootle projects it seems. Just when are communities like Formby, Maghull etc. going to see this level of investment in their retail facilities from Sefton Council? Maghull Square for example is down at ...

Posted by Cllr. Tony Robertson on Sefton Focus
eUKhost

Radical Liberalism is a distinctive philosophy that presents a superior alternative both to capitalism in its established form and to socialism. Existing capitalism, as propounded by the Conservatives, and socialism as proposed by Labour, are systems both based on the concentration of property and power in few hands. The central principles of capitalism in its purest form are the free exchange of goods in an unregulated market; limited taxes to pay for limited government, and private ownership of property. The central principles of socialism are government control or regulation of the market; high taxes to pay for expanded government services; ...

Posted by Joe Bourke on Liberal Democrat Voice

From the Curator of Museum Services at the University of Dundee : David Blyth + Nick GordonThe GaffRunning until 29th June 2018D'Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum, University of DundeeOpen Fridays 2pm- 4.30pm. By appointment at other times. Welcome to The Gaff. Inspired by the preserved vestiges of D'Arcy Thompson's personal collection, Scottish artists David Blyth and Nick Gordon pay homage to this visionary man of Natural Science through playful response to the displays at the D'Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum. With reference to Thompson's seminal book On Growth and Form, the exhibition showcases individual sculptural works by the two artists unified through ...

Sat 16th
00:17

Dunston Station damage

I was in Dunston yesterday with Councillors Kevin McClurey and Peter Maughan to look at the state of the ticket machine in Dunston station at the request of residents living near Ravensworth Road. Sadly the front of the machine has been badly damaged. We have reported the damage to Northern Rail and hope to see repairs done shortly.

Posted by jonathanwallace on Jonathan Wallace