Last Monday was Autistic Pride Day. I couldn't commemorate it then because I was shepherding a pair of neurotypicals around a crowded, sensory-overstimulating, city I don't know. There was also an Autistic Pride Picnic in Manchester today, which I was ... Continue reading →
Embed from Getty Images More than £240,000 of counterfeit football kits have been seized by our Trading Standards officers ahead of the World Cup.So begins a press release on the Leicestershire County Council website. The release goes on to quote Labour peer Lord Toby Harris, who turns out to be the chair of National Trading Standards: "People across the country are excited about the World Cup and fans should be able to expect that the World Cup merchandise they are buying is genuine. Legitimate businesses should also be able to operate without being undermined by criminal businesses flogging fakes. "I ...
"Months before the United States narrowly elected Trump, the United Kingdom narrowly elected to withdraw from the European Union. Both votes advanced Russian foreign policy goals — in the latter case, by splitting up the Western alliance. (Trump has energetically pursued this strategy, too.) Russia employed many of the same tools to influence both elections." Jonathan Chait joins the dots. Ray Lakeman's sons died after taking ecstasy. In an interview with Decca Aitkenhead he says that had the drugs been legal and regulated, it might have saved them Paul Butler reviews a book on the renewal of urban life in ...
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 521st weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere ... Featuring the five most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (17 – 23 June, 2018), together with a hand-picked seven you might otherwise have missed. Don't forget: you can sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox — just click here — ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging. As ever, let's start with the most popular post, and work our way down: 1. I was wrong about Labour ...
It's just two years to the day since a good half of the nation woke up to the horrifying fact that we had voted to leave the European Union. I say "a good half" because although 37% of those entitled to vote opted for "Leave" and only 34% voted to "Remain," that left some 28% who didn't bother to vote so were presumably satisfied with the way things were, the 16 and 17 year-olds, thought to be overwhelmingly in favour of remaining,(and most affected by the decision) were not allowed to vote, and neither were the even more immediately affected ...
Sun 24th
17:32
We're all horrified at Trump's treatment of immigrants and children but let's not forget the UK is p...
I tried to avoid hearing the recording of the children crying after being taken from their parents at the US border. I could only imagine their despair and fear at not knowing if or when they were going to see them again. Tiny children, who had no way of understanding what was going on, were thrown into turmoil. No wonder there were comparisons to torture. Vince had strong, but also salutary words: Good to see government ministers speaking out on #TrumpConcentrationCamps. But let us not be too pious. British migration policy divides families and often deeply inhumane. — Vince Cable ...
That and more from this Thames News TV piece on the 1986 Liberal Party Assembly in Eastbourne, featuring David Steel and the famous defence debate.
The sun smiled on the fourth annual Wallington Music Festival as hundreds of people gathered to hear local musical talent perform throughout the day. The musical feast began in the library with Rhodri Williams playing a selection of popular pieces on the Mallinson Room piano, followed by Willow Rivers performing her own stunning compositions. [...]
The prospect of Brexit is changing the dynamic on the ground in Northern Ireland. Whitehall's failure to come up with a way of keeping its promises on both Brexit and the Good Friday Agreement is causing huge problems for the UK in negotiations, to the extent that yet another deadline will be missed at next week's summit. But it's clearly impacting the mood in Northern Ireland as well. How much, though, is another matter. Opinion polls There has been a flurry of opinion polls recently indicating that support for a United Ireland is up from a few years ago. But ...
Sun 24th
13:38How Lib Dems have made the news this week - Gosport, upskirting, trains and cannabis oil
It's worth noting that Lib Dem MPs have featured in some of the top headlines this week. What does that tell us about the kind of things we do and the people we are? Well, Norman Lamb spoke about how he ordered the review into the deaths of elderly people at Gosport War Memorial Hospital after the NHS closed ranks. Lamb told BBC Newsnight: "I just think it's horrific and there has been a real systemic failure here, a closing of ranks in my view and a sense that ordinary people just weren't being listened to at all, and an ...
Between them, these two accounts provide an excellent regular flow of messages to enjoy and to share to help promote the Liberal Democrats and our policy on Europe. First up, former Liberal Democrat MP Matthew Green. He's remarkably indefatigable at finding new Liberal Democrat party members on Twitter and welcoming them. So why not follow Matthew too and join in welcoming new members too? It's a really simple but effective way to make the party stronger and larger. Second, the brilliant Remainer Now, which shares stories from Leave voters who now want Britain to stay in the EU. So again, ...
A Labour campaign organiser has been convicted and fined for failing to include an imprint on a newspaper wraparound for the Ilford South constituency at the 2017 election.
View Poll: World Cup, Day Twelve You should be able to vote using your Facebook or Twitter account, even if you aren't on Livejournal. Yesterday was a rare day when all three matches were won by the favourites. For some bizarre reason I ticked the Sweden-beats-Germany box; otherwise I would have joined po8crg and johnny9fingers in calling all three correctly.
This track comes from When the Devil's Loose, the second album by A.A. Bondy. He was previously lead singer with the band Verbena. David Raposa says of Mightiest of Guns:If any tune on this album deserves to be called "Dylanesque" (possibly the most unbearably portentous modifier/honorarium thrown in Bondy's direction), it's this one, with its plainspoken torrent of elusive yet evocative images - "And the shadows go like ghosts across your rope/Or take the world and burn it in a spoon." Each verse offers its own portrait of quotidian drama enlivened by Bondy's wracked croon and tasteful strokes of arcing ...
Sat, 13:50: World Cup, Day Eleven https://t.co/nw3YvQpEEE Sat, 16:05: RT @scottmeslow: so proud we here at https://t.co/qLaGnMrVoX get to debut the 100 PERCENT REAL script for that star wars: the last jedi rem... Sat, 18:57: Casablanca, and Everybody Comes to Rick's https://t.co/N0ySYHIZHR Sat, 20:48: John Molyneux: Tolkien's World - a Marxist Analysis https://t.co/pqpDvsRJZB Food for thought!
The key theme of the 200th Executive Committee of Liberal International, which finished in Berlin last night was climate justice — how climate change and other environmental problems can be tackled in a way that improves people's lives. A striking difference between Green and Liberal political parties is that whereas the former are eco-centric, the [...]
The Great Exhibition of the North was launched on Friday evening. I attended the launch event. A brilliant summer evening with a lovely sunset over Tyneside, what a great backdrop to the concert, fireworks and drone display. My video of the event will be ready shortly but you can view a few of my photos on the above link.
If a former reality star, albeit a rather rich and brash one, can take the Republican establishment by storm and win the White House, then why can't others do the same? It is fair to say that Trump has both polarised and radicalised American politics in a way not seen since Nixon won the White House in the middle of widespread protests over the Vietnam war. But the most interesting manifestation of this phenomena is not in the Republican Party, many of whose politicians appear to have conceded their principles to Trump's dystopian agenda, but amongst Democrats, where a new ...
Gateshead Lib Dems had an action day in Dunston Hill and Whickham East ward yesterday. The aim was to deliver our local Focus. As a back up in case we completed that job was to make an incursion into Labour held Lobley Hill and Bensham ward to deliver a survey form. Job done on the Focus delivery though some members took patches for delivery over the next couple of days. So we managed to get a
Yesterday, I caught up with Jane Dodds briefly at the People's Vote rally in Parliament Square. Wales voted to Leave in the referendum, so I wondered if people there were now starting to wonder if they had made the right decision. Jane is offering a vision of hope and optimism to Welsh people with particular focus on tackling inequality and loneliness so we talked a bit about how that's going. Here's our chat: * Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
There's something strange going in within the Liberal Democrats, and it isn't helping us, or showing us up in a very favourable light. Last month we had an astonishing success in the Richmond upon Thames borough elections. In 2014 the Conservatives won 39 of the 54 seats; this time we won 39, reducing the Tories to 11 and the Greens picked up four thanks in large part to an arrangement with us. It was an outstanding achievement for Gareth Roberts and his team. But in the weeks since then, there seems to be a movement afoot trying to pretend that ...
The Liverpool Echo has the article on its web site – see link above Yes we all know how badly the Northern Rail meltdown has affected negatively the lives of train users across the north of England but it's worth saying yet again that the troubles actually predate the now infamous May timetable changes. Users of the Ormskirk – Preston route were seeing far too many cancellations before May and Southport – Manchester travellers were suffering often overcrowded and unreliable trains. May's timetable changes just made it all much worse. Southport – Manchester trains now virtually all go into ...
Triggers: Creating behavior that lasts - becoming the person you want to be by Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter is a rather more straightforward and readable book than its clunky double-subtitled name might make you fear.
Today's Sunday band concert at Magdalen Green features the Forfar Instrumental Band - starting at 2pm. Here's the 2018 list of Sunday band concerts :
