Six council by-elections this week. Five Liberal Democrat candidates, including one in the Liberal Democrat defence (phew). The others are three Labour defences and one each for Conservatives and Plaid. Results as they come. Besses, Bury Gareth Lloyd-Johnson was the Liberal Democrat candidate. Besses (Bury) result: LAB: 51.1% (-7.6) CON: 36.2% (+16.2) EDEM: 3.7% (-7.8) LDEM: 3.6% (-0.7) GRN: 2.8% (-2.6) UKIP: 2.5% (+2.5) Labour HOLD. — Britain Elects (@britainelects) July 19, 2018
The BBC's changes to the Sunday / Daily Politics have got most of the headlines, but in amongst the changes is this: BBC Parliament, will continue to broadcast live and replayed coverage of Parliament and the devolved parliaments and assemblies, but will not air when they are not sitting. The channel will also no longer make bespoke programmes. [Press Gazette] That means goodbye to live TV coverage of party conferences. Goodbye too to the messages from friends such as, "I saw you on TV the other day. You were holding a pen very firmly". It also means one of the ...
The BBC's Nicholas Watt seems to have been trawling the bars of the Parliamentary Estate looking for dinosaurs. And he struck gold. One former Tory minister has this take on pairing row: The mistake @JulianSmithUK made was to arrange pairing with a pregnant lady. Ladies have been having babies in this place for donkeys years. They never needed pairing before now [@joswinson gave birth earlier this month] — Nicholas Watt (@nicholaswatt) July 19, 2018 There are times when this sort of language is entirely justified and this is one of them. Back in the 90s when the Tories were embroiled ...
Three years ago I wrote: The most substantial British railway line I have travelled on that has since closed is the Woodhead route from Sheffield to Manchester. After that comes March to Spalding. When I was a student in York there was a regular service from Doncaster to Cambridge and I once used it to have an afternoon in Ely. March to Spalding was closed in 1982 and all freight workings were diverted via Peterborough. It was an expensive line to operate because of all the level crossings in the flat Fenland landscape. This video shows what remains of the ...
Embed from Getty Images Good stuff from the Liberal Democrat peer William Wallace in the Yorkshire Post: When Theresa May became Prime Minister she promised to heal the divisions in British politics and society that the referendum campaign had opened. Two year later, those divisions have widened, rather than narrowed, with violent language and threats appearing in newspaper headlines and online messages. And the Prime Minister has remained silent, two years later, about the underlying threat to democratic debate and dialogue - and to the safety of our politicians - that this presents. Last week I met two MPs, from ...
Thu 19th
20:04
The scandal over the TNS grant is not just a problem with administration, it's a political issue: Th...
Yesterday reports into yet another scandal from the Keith Barrow era at Shropshire Council were released. The auditors' reports soft pedal on criticism and fail to answer key questions. The focus is entirely on the administrative processes. Yet the main failure was in political leadership not in administration. This was a £3.5million Shropshire Council programme. Just £80k went to TNS. I have heard no complaints about any other funding under this programme. But TNS is based in Oswestry, it is Keith Barrow's favourite football team, and the grant - which is claimed to have been a loan - was awarded ...
More road works... A length of the B4060, the main road between Wickwar and Chipping Sodbury, will be closed from 23 July until 4 August 2018. Drainage works will be taking place from 700m south of the junction with Frith Lane, heading 50 metres towards Chipping Sodbury.
Based on the works included with the Hugo Voter Packet. 6) Rivers Solomon, having read their novel: An Unkindness of Ghosts. Second paragraph of third chapter: She returned there now, desperate for the sanctuary of her private garden and laboratory. She spun the handwheel and opened the hatch, eyes closed reverently. Pungent florals scented the air. Really surprised by how much other people loved this book. I thought the world-building was completely implausible, a generation starship where a corrupt hereditary oligarchy rules an enslaved underclass, but there are only two medical experts, one of whom is routinely brutalised by the ...
Remember when the Tories cheated in order to win the tight vote in Parliament, just like Vote Leave cheated to win the EU Referendum? Tory Chairman Brandon Lewis, paired with Jo Swinson who was at home with her two week old baby, should not have voted on Tuesday night. He honoured that in the first few, but in the really crucial ones, on the European Medicines Agency (which the Government lost) and the customs union, (which the Government narrowly won), he cast his vote. Now, had he voted in the earlier divisions, Alistair Carmichael, our Chief Whip, might have noticed ...
George Dunk was a much-loved presence on the Lib Dem scene for decades. I first knew him through his wife, Sandra, who was the Party's fantastic candidates officer. She died very suddenly in 2004. He was such a kind and funny man who always had a story to tell and he is incredibly missed. He died at the end of April. This Saturday, his memorial service will take place at St James Church, Bermondsey, Thurland Road, SE16 4AA at 11:30 am. It's just off Jamaica Road, and three minutes from Bermondsey tube station. There will be a gathering in a ...
To Defeat Far-Right Nationalists, Don't Try to Imitate Them This article is very frustrating, because while it lists lots of things NOT to do, it doesn't give the slightest clue as to what WOULD be effective. I suspect that's because the author doesn't know. Because none of us know. And that's really frightening. Ex-UKIP councillor Stephen Searle guilty of murdering wife - the comment from his colleague has to be seen to be believed. Following the verdict, former politician Bill Mountford told BBC Suffolk he still considered Searle "a friend", adding "these things happen". Mr Mountford, who was leader of ...
This I was chatting to a (pretty senior) press person about the forces of gravity holding Lib Dem polling figures below the double-digit mark. Their response was that we were playing it too safe and needed to do something alarming. This was whilst waiting for the Commons' votes on Monday night. Neither of us thought for one moment that that event might be our current leader and our former leader missing a Commons vote on a Jacob Rees-Mogg amendment designed to make the cobbled together Chequers agreement even less palatable to the EU. The Government won the vote by a ...
Wed, 12:56: 50 years on, the Beatles film Yellow Submarine tells the story of the Sixties https://t.co/qNAHiGR892 Great article. Wed, 16:05: Neal Ascherson reviews 'My Life as a Spy' by Katherine Verdery https://t.co/6VJHPeROC3 Fascinating and unnerving. Wed, 17:12: RT @CrisisGroup: Conflict prevention is not a visible job, but @CrisisGroup works everyday to prevent, mitigate and resolve deadly conflict... Wed, 17:34: RT @PabloPerezA: .@Vestager replies to Trump's words 'Your tax lady, she really hates the US': "I've done my own fact-checking on the firs... Wed, 18:42: The 2018 Hugo finalists for Best Series https://t.co/bYGSB1C380 Wed, 20:40: RT @JenniferMerode: Boris Johnson today: ...
I have never been on an aeroplane and I do not have a passport, but think of myself as a European. I am also a patriotic Englishman and I love the country in which I was born. My father came here at the age of seven with a sun-darkened skin and speaking with a Greek accent. He was born in Smyrna in 1922. His life, and those of his parents, and my mother's parents, and my partner's grandparents were all scarred and disrupted by war and conflict, the consequences of which still reverberate in our lives today. And now my ...
This collection of nodding dogs had more backbone than some of those in the Labour Party in Liverpool On the last vote on the motion from us to start the process of abolishing the Elected Mayoralty more than one third of the ... Continue reading →
Sadly it seems so, whilst the building and ever deepening crisis in our social care system gets worse every day. The Guardian has an opinion piece on its web site by Polly Toynbee on this matter, please have a read of it via the link below:- To true Brexiters such as the majority of the Tory Party and the Labour Leadership it's probably the case that they put leaving the EU before just about everything; it's their cult-like religious goal and nothing can be allowed to get in the way. Of course in reality, not something Brexiter MP's are ...
The on-going row within Labour over their stance on anti-Semitism took an ugly turn yesterday with party officials saying that action will be taken against a senior Labour MP after she had a blazing row with Jeremy Corbyn. As I have posted previously, this internal row has been sparked by the party's ruling executive adopting a new code of conduct that defines antisemitism differently from the more broadly accepted meaning of the word. Although Labour's new code of conduct explicitly states "antisemitism is racism" and is "unacceptable", it stops short of signing up in full to the definition of antisemitism ...
The digital profile of the Liberal democrats is not making use of the huge opportunities the internet provides. I am a young Liberal Democrat who is often annoyed at our lack of digital presence as a party. This is a time where, due to our small number of MPs, we aren't often appearing on the mainstream media and so it is the best possible time to start creating media of our own. A strong social media presence has two key benefits for the party. It will solidify our base of support with current members and simultaneously attract new ones. The ...
When cracks appear, they can either be fixed, or they can be papered over for a while, or they can start to spread dangerously. The first crack in European unity over Brexit has appeared. Mr Seehofer, leader of the CSU and German Minister for the Interior, has stated that it is important that the EU [...] The post Cracks opening up on the EU side too appeared first on Radix.
The latest Sunday Bandstand Concert on the Magdalen Green Bandstand takes place this coming Sunday (22nd) at 2pm. The Dundee Instrumental Band will be playing - all welcome - don't miss it!
The conflation of liberalism with centrism is a topic I've discussed before and no doubt will again. Like with all arguments about political terminology it's an unwinnable argument, by its very nature; I can use "liberal" to mean a certain thing and someone else can attach a very different meaning and there's no ultimate arbitration [...]
