Six council by-elections this week. One a Liberal Democrat defence and one (thankfully, a different one) without a Lib Dem candidate. This though still leaves the Lib Dem candidate tally at three higher than the last time these wards were fought. By a random quirk, four of the wards are ones which in years far gone by the Liberal Democrats won but where more recently the party has been weak for an extended period of time. That makes for a good set of contests to see how broad the party's recovery is. Bude, Cornwall The Liberal Democrat defence this week, ...
Brexit Secretary Dominic Rabb has told Northern Ireland businesses that trade across the border that in the event of "no deal" they should "speak to Dublin". So it appears that individual businesses many of them small and medium sized businesses are going to have to make deals with our nearest EU neighbour. This is a dereliction of duty on behave of Her Majesties Government, it is throwing Northern Ireland and the many hard working entrepreneurs who have flourished since the Good Friday Agreement under the bus. The agri-food industry in particular will be lacking their EU supplements, some in this ...
Talking Pictures TV, my favourite channel, is showing this 1970 paranoid thriller starring David Hemmings on Bank Holiday Monday at 9pm.
The story of how Basil d'Oliveira was omitted from the England party to tour South Africa in 1967/8 after scoring 158 in the last test of the summer, apparently because the Apartheid government would object to his selection, has been told many times. As Matthew Engel writes for the Guardian Sportsblog today: It is impossible to know what happened in that selection meeting; everyone in the room is now dead. Was the chairman, Doug Insole, being honest when he said tortuously: "I think we have got better players"? Some cricket writers thought so. But Arlott, by now the Guardian correspondent, ...
By Lamberhurst [CC BY-SA 4.0 ], from Wikimedia Commons Between North Kilworth Wharf and the village there used to be a railway station. Welford and Kilworth stood where the Market Harborough to Rugby line crossed the main road. When I went to look for it on Saturday I had a feeling that there had been a lot of the station left to see years after its closure in 1966. By chance I met an old friend this week, and he recalled photographing its remains in the late 1980s, when you could still see the concrete lampposts that appear in the ...
Second paragraph of third chapter of Dracula Cha Cha Cha: 'You saw the assassin?' Silvestri asked. 'Il Boia Scarlatto?' Second paragraph of third chapter of Aquarius:Before leaving, Timmy asked Kate something she'd heard before. I had not read any of the previous books in this series, an alternate history in which vampires became visible in society in the late nineteenth century when Count Dracula married Queen Victoria, and history runs more or less along the same course as we know, except with added vampires. The first part of the book is a novel, Dracula Cha Cha Cha, set in Rome ...
This is a brief update on the mural project. We have agreed an outline design. The project artists are brainstorming detailed designs. We have a great team of artists working on this project. It is not an exclusive project, so if you want to join the team, contact us through our Facebook page. With the support of the new site owner, we are hoping to be on-site later next week to prepare the boards and sketch the outline design. The area will be secured with wire Heras Fencing and platforms put in place to give access to the boards. The ...
The issue of obesity presents liberals with a dilemma. On the one hand obesity has serious health effects which have impacts not just on individuals but also on health service costs. On the other hand, body confidence campaigns encourage people to feel good about their bodies and condemn fat shaming. So how can we, as a nation, reduce obesity while still respecting individual freedoms? Where is the balance to be found between societal and individual responsibilty? We have been here before, of course. There were similar debates around seat belts, motorbike helmets and smoking. In all three cases public well-being ...
Sandy Lane Changing Rooms building in March 2016 I've not come back to this subject in a while as I've had little to report but things are moving again I'm happy to say. To recap my last posting from January this year said this:- Last week The Parish Clerk, Parish Chairman and I met again with a representative of Liverpool County FA to take forward our discussions and seek their support for our project. At present our two potential major funding partners are likely to be the Football Association and Sport England and we will be progressing applications to ...
Jo was understandably furious when her pairing arrangement with the Tory chair, Brandon Lewis, was violated. She spoke about the experience at the Edinburgh International Book Festival yesterday evening. According to the Express and Star, she said: The mechanism of pairing is outdated and just doesn't work. We need a different system, which would be proxy voting, so that when you had an MP that was on parental leave, they would entrust another MP of their choice to vote on their behalf. This is something that the House of Commons actually discussed earlier this year, and one of the committees ...
Today's publication of UK Government plans for a no deal Brexit was meant to reassure us, but as the Independent's Economics Editor, Ben Chu comments here, the reality is that they have exposed how isolated and vulnerable we are outside of the European Union. The reality, he says, is that so much would be entirely out of ministers' hands, leaving us at the mercy of decisions taken in Europe. Mr Chu argues that the major issues for the UK economy, and the ones that ought to be front and centre of all this, are the movement of goods, keeping planes ...
There is something awfully familiar about the government's Brexit No-Deal advice. Those of use who are old enough to remember the 1970s and 80s will recall the "Protect and Survive" advice in which we were told how to sit out a nuclear war by taking shelter under the dining room table. After a few days, it would be safe to go out into the fallout (provided you were over 30 years of age). Always
Best known for his role as Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation, actor Patrick Stewart has been a supporter of the Labour Party since holding up posters for it in the 1945 general election at the age of 5. But now that's changing. The news comes in an interview with The New European: I ask him if he will be voting Labour again, and, after a long pause, he says, in a quiet and sad voice, probably not - so long as it supports Brexit and seems unable to deal swiftly and decisively with obvious evils such as ...
miss_s_b | The Blood is the Life for 22-08-2018 I posted The Blood is the Life for 22-08-2018 to my dreamwidth blog No Recourse to Public Funds: An unpleasant, unreasonable, unconscionable rule I agree with this post. If you like what you see here (or even if you don't) please consider dropping me a tip: [IMG: Paypal Donate Button] [IMG: Buy Me an uncaffeinated beverage (because I'm allergic to coffee) at ko-fi.com] [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
Dogs are barking out against Brexit in a Wooferendum, because they want to give people a voice. Also, canines were never consulted about Brexit - and that ain't right, surely...
Local Liberal Democrat Focus Team members joined First Bus this morning at the publicity launch for the new "South Glos Lynx" services starting on 2nd September. The distinctive bright yellow buses, numbered Y1 to Y6, will take contactless payments - hence the "Ricardo" character in the photo. Strangely quite a few non-local Conservatives turned up for the launch. However First Bus confirmed again this morning that they gave us the Cranleigh Court bus back because of a meeting with Yate Town Council, nothing to do with the Tory MP who as usual is trying to claim all the credit. All ...
Wales and Scotland have a devolved assembly/parliament and a single tier of local government. Northern Ireland could have if their politicians would sit down and agree a programme of government instead of playing yahoo politics. In England there is no serious devolution and the system of local government is a dog's breakfast with elected mayors, police commissioners, the London assembly and a wide range of councils with different powers. Yet a working party in the Liberal Democrats has managed to come up with an even bigger mess than currently exists because they won't argue for radical change. 'Devolution on demand' ...
Wed, 12:46: RT @jonlis1: So gov will not, after all, deport 3 million people. Great. But there's no moral superiority in declining to act like Idi Amin... Wed, 12:56: 'Spectacular' ancient public library discovered in Germany https://t.co/9M8p8fBqAX Wow - bang in the middle of Cologne! Wed, 14:34: Home to a future president of Israel, the inventor of Haagen Dazs ice-cream, and founder of Beaverbrooks the jewell... https://t.co/y9K37MbjLd Wed, 16:05: Brexit: Beyond the transition https://t.co/5cjq6xeXkj @AndrewDuffEU looks forward to the next ten months. Wed, 18:42: Fair Trade, by Laura T. Reynolds, Douglas L. Murray and John Wilkinson https://t.co/cMuyGmDnjO Wed, 20:48: GDPR, ...
To judge from the headlines in the liberal press, or liberal commentators on the BBC, you would think Donald Trump's presidency in the US was on its last legs. This follows the conviction yesterday of two of his (formerly) close advisers, and his being implicated by one of them in an illegal pay-off. But these ... Continue reading Liberals still don't get the Trump phenomenon. He is not in danger
Courtesy of Dark Horse Analytics comes this expert advice on how to improve your graphs, cleverly compiled into one animated gif.
In the collective unconscious of the Czechs, throughout the second half of the twentieth century, the main enemy of their nation sat in Moscow. Two years were traumatic for them: 1948 and 1968. In February 1948, Stalin ordered the communist party to sabotage the post-war national unity government and seize power by force, even if [...] The post For Prague, Russia is no longer the enemy appeared first on Radix.
On Monday I did make some comments on social media about the decision of the We Deserve Better campaign in Belfast disinviting Elaine Crory and John O'Doherty to speak at the end planned for 28th August. For readers not in Northern Ireland Elaine works for the Belfast Feminist Network and Alliance for Choice, John for the Rainbow Project and Love Equality NI. Therefore the views of a leading feminist arguing for women's reproductive rights and a leading LGBT+ and equal marriage advocate were silenced. I have taken some time to read through the threads on the We Deserve Better Campaign ...
