Mon 6th
22:40

An announcement

This is a version of two posts made over on my Facebook Page. For those who don't do Facebook, I'll be posting here regularly over the next couple of weeks. After a bit of a false start, I was able to announce on Saturday that I am a candidate in the selection for a Lib Dem Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Bristol South. Unfortunately, due to a late withdrawal, I'm now the only candidate (other than RON: "Re-Open Nominations") Nevertheless, we are now in a two week campaign period - messages of support or volunteers to help are welcome! If you ...

Posted by Andrew Brown on the widow's world

Finding a book or piece of ephemera you wanted used to take hard work and lots of luck. Now you just go to eBay. Sure enough, when I got it into my head to get a copy of the programme for the first pantomime I was taken to - Cinderella at the Watford Palace - it took seconds to find a copy for sale online. It arrived today, so I can tell you that my first trip to the theatre took place between Boxing Day 1966 and 21 January 1967, so I would have been six years old. Cinderella, it ...

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

So, Boris's mask slips. A couple of weeks after it was reported he was hanging around with racist populist Steve Bannon, he comes out with all sorts of racist guff about women wearing burkas and niqabs. The worst of his comments is this: If a constituent came to my MP's surgery with her face obscured, I should feel fully entitled - like Jack Straw - to ask her to remove it so that I could talk to her properly. If an MP can't talk to a constituent who has come to make representations to them or who has come looking ...

Posted by Caron Lindsay on Liberal Democrat Voice

The title of Cambodian opposition leader Sam Rainsy's new book (Cambodia Once Again Will Stun the World, Balland, €15) reflects the boundless optimism that the man himself displays, despite the many hard knocks he has received over the years and his involuntary status of political exile. I guess the allusion in the title is to [...]

Posted by jonathanfryer on Jonathan Fryer

It's high summer in Rutland and, as we begin another visit to the Hall, Lord Bonkers is in the mood to go exploring. Monday To demonstrate solidarity with our friends in the European Union I have been residing at the Hotel Splendide in Antibes. Yesterday I returned to the Hall to find that the scents of early summer - jasmine, wisteria, honeysuckle - had been supplanted by the scents of high summer: buddleia, lemon verbena, damask roses. Remind me to give Meadowcroft an emolument. This morning I decide to enjoy our own countryside at its finest by undertaking an expedition ...

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

Along with Alan Moore and Ray Gosling, Jeremy Seabrook makes up a school of literature: working-class Northampton grammar school boys who found national fame. Seabrook is a beautiful writer who was first known for his Hoggartian analysis of working-class culture and its decline. He later moved on to write about poverty in developing countries. In 1971 Seabrook wrote a book about Blackburn - City Close-Up. He has been back there for the New Statesman, and here is his conclusion: Arbitrary withdrawal of benefits has driven people to food banks, evicted families and forced many young people to sleep on other ...

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

Well I've been singing that tune for a very long time now, with specific reference to the encroachment onto the Green Belt in Sefton Borough. The BBC has the story on its web site – see link below:- www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45079648 My major objection to the vast amount of Green Belt being lost to housing in Sefton Borough, especially with regard to the Maghull & Lydiate area, was of course that the land is predominately high grade arable land that grows the food we eat. To sacrifice such land when only around 2% of England is made up of this level of ...

Posted by Cllr. Tony Robertson on Sefton Focus

Councillor Howard Sykes is the Liberal Democrat Group Leader at the Local Government Association. Here he guest blogs about the challenges facing adult social care. People have a right to live the life they want to lead. High-quality adult social care and support plays an essential role in this. It is also vital to society. It strengthens communities, reduces pressures on the NHS, supports around 1.5 million jobs and contributes as much as £46 billion to the UK economy. But work to find a long-term funding solution for adult social care and support has been kicked into the long grass ...

Posted by guestcontributor on Mark Pack
Mon 6th
18:32

Monday reading

Current In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, by Marcel Proust The Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters Last books finished The Martian Inca, by Ian Watson The Politics of Climate Change, by Anthony Giddens High-Rise, by J. G. Ballard Now We Are Six Hundred, by James Goss, illustrated by Russell T. Davies The Life of Our Lord, by Charles Dickens "Ill Met in Lankhmar", by Fritz Leiber The Region Between, by Harlan Ellison Next books Pioneers: Huawei Stories, ed. Tian Tao Anno Dracula - Dracula Cha Cha Cha, by Kim Newman Nobody's ...

Brexiters such as Jacob Rees-Mogg used to argue that there was plenty of merit to be had in a referendum on the exact terms of any Brexit deal. This, for example, is what he said in 2011: "It might make more sense to have the second referendum after the renegotiation is completed". Then in 2012 David Davis also talked up the merits of a referendum on the exact terms of Brexit, with a 'mandate referendum' (on the principle of Brexit) to be followed by a 'decision referendum' once the details are sorted: "The purpose of this strategy is to maximise ...

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack
YouGov

Third page (Louise Michel's funeral cortège arrives in Paris): A biography in graphic form of French revolutionary feminist Louise Michel, who, to my shame, I had not previously heard of. Actually it is more of a portrait than a biography, concentrating on two particular periods of her life - the Paris Commune, and her subsequent exile in New Caledonia where she horrified and disgusted her comrades by taking sides with the indigenous islanders. The argument is interestingly made that her politics links with the Utopian literature of the day - Edward Bellamy in particular, also Charlotte Perkins Gilman appears in ...

In my ongoing struggle to overcome chemo-brain, I've recently created a rudimentary (*) weather forecaster. It's based on a Raspberry Pi Zero W that came as part of a gift subscription to the MagPi. It incorporates a BME280 sensor (for reporting pressure, temperature and humidity) and a LCD display. The current prototype Not pretty, but functional. It requires just 3 ... The post Raspberry Pi weather forecaster appeared first on ten pence piece.

Posted by tim on ten pence piece
Mon 6th
14:40

Summer Ran Dry...

Don't forget to upload your Big Butterfly Count results by the end of August, there is still time to take part, the count runs until the 12th of August. More details on YouTube here ~ Big Butterfly Count Please take part in this year's RSPB Swift survey ~ details here. They are on the amber list and numbers are plummeting in the UK. Too hot to garden and ground baked solid, so here's some photos instead from when the summer ran dry... french beans painted lady red admiral painted lady carrots 'lawn' Ewok? onions drying long-tailed tit long-tailed tits in ...

Posted by Trisha xx on ripplestone review

In the last six months, more than one hundred home-based and residential care providers have ceased trading, affecting more than 5,300 people, as providers hand back contracts to more than sixty councils, affecting thousands of people. Social care faces a £3.5bn funding gap by 2025. Social care is in crisis and we have a government which is turning a blind eye to it. Obsessed with Brexit, they have repeatedly ignored the challenge of social care and kicked it into the long grass. A long-delayed green paper on social care that was promised for June has yet again failed to materialise, ...

Posted by Howard Sykes on Liberal Democrat Voice

Opinion polls tell us that the voting public have now moved very marginally in favour of remaining in the EU, and, according to this recent report in the Guardian, significant sections of the Labour party are now calling on their leaders to support a second referendum. I find this encouraging but also worrying. Encouraging becasue, as the article makes clear, for trade union members (and working people in general?) "Brexit was a bad idea in 2016 and things have only got worse. The final agreement must go back to the people." This from former union leader Billy Hayes. A current ...

Posted by Peter Wrigley on Keynesian Liberal
Mon 6th
11:00

My tweets

Sun, 12:56: RT @GuitarMoog: Still seeing 'hard Brexit' and 'revert to WTO rules' used to denote a No Deal Brexit. Both are misleading. No Deal means n... Sun, 16:05: RT @DmitryOpines: 1/ Hi. I've negotiated in the WTO, unlike the author of this article who appears to have read the title of some WTO agree... Sun, 20:23: RT @jamesDsibley: I see the people who don't understand how the EU works have seamlessly moved on to not understanding how the WTO works Sun, 20:48: RT @halletecco: How to build a 1 trillion dollar company: https://t.co/s0SzgeuhA1 Sun, 21:54: Aztec Century, by Christopher ...

Six months ago, in my increasingly erratic reporting of events in the House of Lords, I touched upon the debate on the restoration and refurbishment of the Palace of Westminster. So, what happened next? There was agreement that, as bits of the building were either falling on people or were in danger of burning down or filling with sewage (or both at the same time), that it was really high time that Parliament vacated the building so that it could be modernised for the new age, with technology built in and new services provided. And then it seemingly went quiet. ...

Posted by Mark Valladares on Liberal Democrat Voice

I, like many, have chosen to holiday on the continent this year. I say many because France is even more packed with Brits than usual this year. It makes sense: this is the summer to do it, as we literally have no idea whatsoever if we'll be allowed in without some shitty American-style visa hassle in 2019. Perhaps Southeast Asia will get the traffic next summer. Being here during the May-Macron "summit" confirms what I would have figured was the French view of both the meeting and Brexit in general. They want their president to be strong and give the ...

Posted by Nick on nicktyrone.com

Yes, it is hot. The heat has also added a layer of what I can only describe as degradation to our public services. But before I describe it, I don't want to be pigeon-holed as someone who believes that all services should be managed by ministers, as they were before – say – the start [...] The post The degrading business of using UK public services appeared first on Radix.

Posted by David Boyle on Radix

I note that the latest proposals for debate at Autumn Conference on migration policy have come in for some stick from my editorial colleague. And with good cause, for apologising for what is necessary and appropriate is never a good way to convince people that what you need is, indeed, necessary and appropriate. But I come bearing something rather more practical, in that I want to talk about what underpins any immigration and asylum policy, regardless of how liberal it is, or otherwise. For, no matter what your starting point is, you have to administer it properly. So, without actually ...

Posted by Mark Valladares on Liberal Democrat Voice
eUKhost

Today, Liberal Democrat Voice is brought to you from Boston, Massachusetts, home of the mighty(ish) Red Sox, and the heartland of the American forces in the 1776 Rebellion against all that was good and decent. Or, in other words, where plucky freedom fighters liberated their nation from the colonial oppressors. You pays your money, you takes your choice... The United States is an odd place. For all the talk of freedom, you often need to present proof of age to buy beer at a ballpark or in a supermarket, albeit that this depends on the state you're in. Maine seems ...

Posted by Mark Valladares on Liberal Democrat Voice

DUNDEE CITY COUNCIL - WEEKLY ROAD REPORT REPORT FOR WEST END WARD - WEEK COMMENCING MONDAY 6 AUGUST 2018 Riverside Drive (at Riverside Approach) - temporary traffic lights for 4 weeks and prohibition of right turn from Barnetts Garage for 2 weeks for gas main renewal. Riverside Approach open until this phase is complete. Glamis Drive (Hazel Drive to Hillside Road) - closed on Monday 6 August for Scottish Water manhole repair. Forthcoming Roadworks All Under One Banner Parade - rolling road closure on Saturday 18 August affecting the following streets: Arbroath Road, Princes Street, King Street, Cowgate, Panmure Street, ...