A pleasant recent interview with the great man from a New York radio station. Winwood's musical background - a father who played jazz and time served in a church choir as a boy - is typical of many figures of the Sixties generation.

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

Four council by-elections this week, and four Liberal Democrat candidates. Results details as they come... Syston Ridgeway, Leicestershire County Council Nitesh Dave was the Liberal Democrat candidate in a ward the Conservatives held: Syston Ridgeway (Leicestershire) result: CON: 59.7% (+2.1) LAB: 18.5% (-2.3) LDEM: 11.0% (+5.0) GRN: 7.2% (-1.3) UKIP: 3.6% (-3.5) Conservative HOLD. — Britain Elects (@britainelects) June 28, 2018

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack
Thu 28th
23:17

Six of the Best 801

Rafael Behr explains why Britain needs fewer Boris-style bullshitters and more backstage legal bores. Banning plastic straws may be hip, but there are much better ways to fight pollution, says Adam Minter. "During the 20th century, there were dozens of camps in Britain, which housed tens of thousands of Belgians, Jews, Basques, Poles, Hungarians, Anglo-Egyptians, Ugandan Asians, and Vietnamese." Jordanna Bailkin uncovers the history of British refugee camps. Zeitgeist Tapes podcast reviews A Very British Scandal. "Radical Essex sets about showing us a different side to the county, and introducing us to alternative figures from its history." Read the review ...

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

Theresa May's opposition to a third Runway #heathrowexpansion pic.twitter.com/vJw5pVGAZN— I was a JSA claimant (@imajsaclaimant) June 25, 2018

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

A few years back, I was one of the contributors to Great Liberal Speeches. Here is my piece on a seminal speech in defence of civil liberties, made by George Tierney in 1819. The issues are still very pertinent today: defending civil liberties in the face of claims they are getting in the way of protecting our security. George Tierney, who led the Whigs in the House of Commons between 1817 and 1821, was born in 1761 in Gibraltar to a wealthy merchant family. After growing up in Gibraltar and Paris, he went to Eton and Cambridge. He trained as ...

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack

Second paragraph of third chapter: Daniela will help me make sense of whatever's happening. I picked this up early last year when it seemed to have some buzz behind it, but have only now got round to reading it. It's a rather impressively done multiple time-line story. Our protagonist gave up a potentially brilliant academic career for the sake of his relationship with his partner; fifteen years on, his alter ego from a different fork comes to displace him. The parallel universe science is a bit wobbly, and the writing a bit staccato in places, but the central question is ...

[IMG: Image result for gillian martin] Gillian Martin's appointment as junior education minister was opposed by opposition parties (Photo: BBC) First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has announced that she will not be putting forward Gillian Martin for a ministerial role today, after it became apparent that the Scottish Government would lose the vote to confirm her in office. Scottish Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, and the Conservatives were set to oppose her confirmation as the new junior minister for education on the basis that a 2007 blogpost - in which Ms Martin made offensive remarks about transgender people, disabled people ...

Posted by Andrew on A Scottish Liberal

Embed from Getty Images Helen Mirren once told the Daily Express: Two phrases I hate in reference to female characters are 'strong' and 'feisty'. They really annoy me. It's the most condescending thing. You say that about a three-year-old. It infantalises women. I've been pondering on a long list of words that are only ever used to describe women. 'Feisty' is top of that list, but there are many more that worm their way into our everyday conversations. At work women in senior positions are described as 'ambitious', 'bossy', 'strident', 'shrill', 'abrasive', 'pushy', 'sassy', 'bitchy' or 'bolshy'. In contrast, women ...

Posted by Mary Reid on Liberal Democrat Voice
Thu 28th
12:46

World Cup, Day Sixteen

No matches tomorrow, so no poll today. Yesterday was another day of surprises, with nobody expecting South Korea to beat Germany. Most people expected Brazil to beat Serbia; but of those, only coughingbear expected Sweden to beat Mexico, and only sevenorora forecast the Costa Rica-Switzerland draw.

Layla Moran has been writing on Huffpost on the fallout from Airbus's announcement that it will pull out of Britain (with the loss of thousands of jobs) if there is no transition deal on Brexit. She writes: The difficulty for those of us campaigning against an extreme Brexit ripping us out of the world's largest market is that not enough people feel that the economy is nose-diving. ... Take Airbus. It is looking for a breakthrough later this week at the European Council meeting, or else. It was a brave announcement, that if we don't secure a decent trade deal, ...

Posted by Mary Reid on Liberal Democrat Voice
YouGov

Lib Dems were disappointed, but not surprised, when Hertfordshire Tories voted to enhance property developer profits by reducing the amount they have to pay to provide school places. The change in policy, from the upper end of the range allowed in the regulations to the bottom end, was proposed by officers because it was 'too [...]

Posted by chriswhite on Chris White
Thu 28th
11:00

My tweets

Wed, 13:17: World Cup, Day Fifteen https://t.co/ZO4uMujFqK Wed, 18:02: Waiting for takeoff and the news of the Germany-South Korea match comes through - sudden solidarity with total strangers! Wed, 18:03: RT @damonwake: If only there were a handy German word for delighting in another's misfortune. #GERKOR #worldcup Wed, 18:38: Old Friends, by Jonathan Clements, Marc Platt and Pete Kempshall https://t.co/xICqIsQQPR Wed, 22:50: RT @apcoworldwide: Will #SCOTUS Justice #Kennedy's retirement be a galvanizing issue for voters? APCO strategic counselor Ambassador @Tim_R... Thu, 10:45: RT @mtredden: 1/ It's not a big mystery what would happen if abortion were suddenly illegal across large ...

Thu 28th
10:33

What Is Writing Worth?

There is a massive paradox at the heart of Britain's creative industries: though these are now worth over £90billion a year (and growing much faster than the economy as a whole), writers' earnings have been declining sharply. In other words, the packaged goods are booming, but the people who produce core content are not getting [...]

Posted by jonathanfryer on Jonathan Fryer

Two years on from the EU referendum and Walter Benjamin's haunting observation that "the very past itself is at stake" seems appropriate. What sort of future Britain will have depends, to a large extent, on how a working majority of voters and politicians understand her past. For, as the UK's former judge on the European Court of Justice, Sir Konrad Schiemann, noted in a 2012 lecture on the EU as a Source of Inspiration, "what you find inspiring depends to a degree on where you come from and what you're looking for". Born in 1937, Schiemann was probably the last ...

Posted by Edward Robinson on Liberal Democrat Voice

The resignation of the Leader of the Welsh Conservative group in the Welsh Assembly was the clearest sign yet that the fallout within that party over Brexit has arrived this side of the Severn Bridge. As the Western Mail suggests, Andrew R.T, Davies resignation comes in the wake of increasing unrest amongst some of his colleagues over his forthright criticism of major Welsh employer, Airbus, who warned last week of the impact of Brexit on their business. After the company warned there could be significant job losses in the wake of Brexit, Mr Davies accused them of making threats and ...

Posted by Peter Black on Peter Black

This year's Chipping Sodbury Big Lunch event will be exactly on the 800th anniversary of Chipping Sodbury being granted a Market Charter by King Henry III. This allowed William Crassus, the Lord of the Manor, to hold the first market in Chipping Sodbury in 1218. The 2018 Big Lunch will be medieval themed and for this year only is taking place in August instead of June. It will be held on Sunday, August 12th 2018 from 12 noon to 6 pm. Lots of medieval themed entertainment is planned including maypole dancing, a special medieval play performed by Sodbury Players, stocks, ...

Posted by Paul Hulbert on Focus on Sodbury, Yate and Dodington

Nationalism, those of us in the centre ground of politics are told, is a very bad thing: inability to work together across borders, tribalism, "othering" of people from other nations, an inability to see the big picture in an era of global crises. A wise man said that patriotism can be a force for good, [...] The post Tribes matter, people need to belong – but not just to nations appeared first on Radix.

Posted by Peter Fischer Brown on Radix
Thu 28th
07:00

Maggie's Penguin Parade

Find out more here!

There is only one meeting at BTC scheduled for the next two months Thursday 12th July -- Full Council The meeting will be at Arms Evertyne House, starting at 6:30 I imagine that it will be preceded by a Public Question time , but this is to be confirmed

Posted by Alisdair Gibbs-Barton on Alisdair Gibbs-Barton