Here we go again. In January the Electoral Commission rejected complaints from a Conservative MP about the Remain campaign in the European referendum. Now they've done so again with further complaints: The Electoral Commission has dismissed allegations made by Tory MP Priti Patel about the spending of pro-EU groups during the 2016 Brexit referendum. The watchdog said there was no evidence that laws on campaign spending had been breached... Ms Patel also claimed a number of campaigners with links to BSIE had been late in registering payments, but the Electoral Commission said: "The Commission has not been provided with, or ...
After I climbed the hill to Nevill Holt - regarded by most scholars as the inspiration for Bonkers Hall - I quoted something I wrote in Liberator to mark 20 years of Lord Bonkers: As a teenager, armed with a water bottle and Ordnance Survey map, I cycled out to find Bonkers Hall many times, only to return defeated on every occasion.I did cycle the countryside around Market Harborough when I was a teenager and am still haunted by the thought of what I must have seen and could have photographed. But one thing is wrong in that quotation: I ...
Remember back in March, I almost spontaneously combusted when I read the consultation paper on immigration. Anything that put the word "robust" before "humane" really didn't have a place in a liberal party as far as I was concerned. After I wrote that piece, I became more hopeful at what I though was a genuine attempt by the working group to engage with members. I know that they received a huge amount of feedback suggesting that they should take a more compassionate and fair approach. We don't know what the policy paper says yet as it hasn't been published but ...
Patrick Butler writes in the Guardian: Northamptonshire county council's catastrophic financial collapse, and the desperate measures it now proposes to balance the books, reflect management incompetence on a grand scale as well as the punishing effects of eight years of austerity cuts.If you want a more detailed explanation, watch the video above. It emphasises that the Conservative mania for privatisation has also played its part.
Caron Lindsay has the floor: "Can I just make a very polite suggestion to those who are briefing the press about potential changes to the way we elect leaders and who can stand in those elections to make sure that they understand our party's processes for doing these things?" "It is late, but not too late, for Lord Hall to withdraw his "guidelines" and admit an honest mistake. If he does not, history will judge both him and BBC coverage harshly, when it is too late to do anything about it." Raymond Snoddy says the Beeb's policy on Brexit is ...
Officers have threatened me with a complaint to the council's monitoring officer if I leak a word of secret conversations on future development sites around Ludlow. When I get a minute, I'll write on the details and why they are fundamentally flawed. But if I do so, I am told I will be reported to the "monitoring officer". This is the equivalent of being dragged out of class by the ear when I was an infant and made to stand before the head teacher (that happened a few times). Welcome to Shropshire Council 2018. Huge telescreens dominate Shirehall pumping out ...
Second paragraph of third chapter: Elle était grande et mince, du calibre des girls de music-hall. Traversant la rue en courant, sur ses talons trop hauts, elle pénétrait dans un petit bar où elle allait sans doute boire un café et manger des croissants. She was tall and slim, with the build of a music-hall dancer. Running across the street on extremely high heels, she went into a little bar where she was probably going to have a cup of coffee and some croissants. I had never previously read any of the works of Georges Simenon, one of the best-known ...
Second paragraph of third chapter: I'd realised it was a cage early on, of course. All that business of me not getting out of the doors and stuff was sort of a clue. The question now was of who or what was doing it, and there was only one obvious answer. This novel is rooted in two earlier works - Stone's original introduction of the character of Jason Kane in Death and Diplomacy, and Philip Purser-Hallard's story "Sex Secrets of the Robot Replicants" from the anthology A Life Worth Living (which I read last year but don't seem to have ...
Can I just make a very polite suggestion to those who are briefing the press about potential changes to the way we elect leaders and who can stand in those elections to make sure that they understand our party's processes for doing these things? Because some things that the journalists are writing are just wrong. Over the last week, we've seen a number of stories in the press which seem to be drip-feeding out some sort of process to change the rules for the election of a leader. There's an article in Buzzfeed today which says that the rules for ...
What Happened When I Tried Talking to Twitter Abusers "There's a lot of discussion about how we need to reach out and talk to people who disagree with us - how we need to extend an olive branch and find common ground - and that's a lovely sentiment, but in order for that to work, the other party needs to be ... well, not a raging asshole." Universal Credit hands power to abusers, MPs say Mass gathering of golden retrievers in Highlands - BBC News They're all good dogs. If you like what you see here (or even if you ...
Few things have made me quite as angry as SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford's revisionist interview in The Times (£)last weekend in which he claimed that the SNP's vicious campaign against Charles Kennedy in 2015 was nothing to do with him and he was in fact the victim. He said: I did not enjoy the election campaign in 2015 but that was more to do with the characterisation of me from the Liberals. I'm not in any way blaming Charles, who was the MP. It was the campaign against me. It was pretty nasty. Blackford objected to the Liberal Democrat ...
Public opinion is moving towards supporting a referendum on the terms of the Brexit deal, once we know what they actually are. But plenty of campaigning and lobbying is still required to turn that trend into a victory. One way of helping make that happen is to sign up to add your voice to the campaigns looking to win over the public. There are lots of anti-Brexit petitions floating around, so here's a selection of most important ones to help you find where to add your name: Give People a Final Say on Brexit Deal – the petition launched by ...
I am appalled at the remarks that Shropshire Council leader made on BBC Radio Shropshire this morning. His response to the failure of the council under his leadership to work within budget has led to a recruitment freeze. That means we won't have the staff to deliver services. What does Nutting say? Staff will have to run a little faster. Why shouldn't they. That's the world we live in. This is the same Peter Nutting that refused to come Ludlow to discuss the row over parking charges because he needed a week off. It's deckchairs on the beach for Nutting. ...
Wed, 12:56: 'The Time Traveler's Wife' Adaptation From Steven Moffat Gets Series Order At HBO https://t.co/T6r62vAuLV Executive... https://t.co/RFpeNrPHNR Wed, 16:05: The Writing of E. Nesbit by Gore Vidal https://t.co/ePwo3OxVA2 From 1964, and well worth reading. Wed, 20:48: RT @DavidHenigUK: There's a Brexit madness afflicting UK politics and it appears to be getting worse. A boringly moderate and old fashioned... Wed, 21:43: Wit, Wisdom and Timey-Wimey Stuff: the Quotable Doctor Who, by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright https://t.co/bnr0nKpYnE Wed, 22:55: The Man Within My Head: Graham Greene, My Father and Me, by Pico Iyer https://t.co/L2luPMpSwV Thu, 09:15: Mark Eyskens, former prime ...
As the anti-Semitism scandal within the Labour Party spins out of control, reaching new, ridiculous heights, palace intrigue appears to be rearing its head at long last. John McDonnell has tried to take the whole thing a lot more seriously in what appears to be an attempt to show leadership. Granted, it wouldn't be difficult to demonstrate more leadership on the issue than Corbyn, but check out this quote from the shadow chancellor: "The issue for me is that it's upsetting but partly because you think how have we got ourselves in this situation." Admission of any guilt for this ...
Yesterday, Tim Farron sent round an email to party members the other night saying this: Mine was a lonely voice two years ago. The UK had narrowly voted to leave the EU. The next day, I committed the Liberal Democrats to fight back. I said the British people must have the final say on any Brexit deal – with the option to Remain in the EU. Back then, even our friends weren't with us. Not the remain media or remain MPs from other parties. Not even the big remain organisations. But together, we've changed all that. Polls this week show ...
The National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) has published its calculation of the price of the prime minister's Chequers proposals, which they say would weaken economic ties and cost us £500 a year each. They add that if we leave with no deal, then each individual will lose £800 a year. As the Independent reports, the NIESR study warned the UK economy was on course to grow at its weakest rate since 2012, even if it retained nearly full access to the EU for its goods and services. The problem is that the white paper that followed Chequers ...
Justine Greening's recent call for a multi-option referendum on Brexit brings to the fore the central dishonesty of the Referendum. Brexit cannot just mean Brexit: if it is to happen it will have to be a specific Brexit. And it is becoming increasingly clear that there is no feasible specific Brexit that can command the support of all those who voted for Brexit in general in the referendum. Following Greening's call, Yougov carried out an opinion poll asking about preferences between three options, which we can call Remain, Soft and Hard. The Soft option was described as `along the lines ...
Not so long ago this would have read more like the setup for a movie about an eccentric person. Now it's the sobering reality behind Boris Johnson's urging for us all to be just a bit more cheerful.
For the last couple of decades, the question has raged as to who would win the media wars: content providers or media platforms that can beam everyone's content? The battle has, over time, resulted in the belief that one needs both. Platforms like Netflix have moved into content provision while content providers continue to acquire [...] The post Who will win the AI race – content or platforms? appeared first on Radix.
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