A happy glimpse of life on the Bonkers Hall Estate (whatever Ofsted says). Friday Like many landowners, I have built a narrow-gauge railway to carry produce and fertiliser about my estate. Some years ago I hit upon the happy idea of allowing the Well-Behaved Orphans to run it for me. This morning, having business with Matron, I decided to take the train and see what sort of a fist they are making of it. The train I intended to catch was cancelled and the one after it was delayed because of "lineside equipment failure in the Kitchen Garden area". Not ...

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England
Fri 14th
23:24

Six of the Best 817

Jane Chelliah fears we are about to see the hollowing out of the Liberal Democrats. "Devolution must be democratic, and all authorities must have a democratically-elected assembly. Devolution should be downwards from Central Government, not taking decisions or responsibilities away from local government." On a happier note, Tim Pickstone introduces the policy paper on Power for People and Communities that will be debated at Conference. Eric Klinenberg says public libraries are being neglected just when we need them most. "Popper emphasized that he had known all the titans of twentieth-century science: Einstein, Schrodinger, Heisenberg." John Horgan remembers a challenging meeting ...

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

We're looking forward to seeing as many of you as possible in Brighton over the next few days. Tahir, Kirsten, Paul, Mary and I will be there. Tahir and Mary will also their Federal Conference Committee hats on so will be very busy indeed. Come and say hello to us if you see us around – and do come to one of the fringe meetings we are holding and sponsoring. Everybody wins – how feminist and LGBT organisations work together on equality issues First of all, on Saturday between 1 and 2 pm in the Sandringham Room in the Metropole, ...

Posted by Caron Lindsay on Liberal Democrat Voice

Millions of people know that Britain is heading down the wrong path. Very few know what they can do about it. The Lib Dems have to become home for the despairing liberal millions. It's now or never. What's so wrong with Britain today? Well, we can't find room for even 3,000 child refugees for starters. We let freeloading multinationals take us for a ride. We're not doing enough to stop climate change. Millions of families struggle to afford to eat. The young have to earn twice as much as their parents did to afford a house. Women and minorities earn ...

Posted by Jim Williams on Liberal Democrat Voice
Fri 14th
19:32

New Projects

I'm soon going to be starting two new projects, and I thought you might all like to know about them. Now, I know that I've started a lot of projects on here, and only a small fraction of them have ... Continue reading →

Posted by Andrew Hickey on Sci-Ence! Justice Leak!

The Liverpool Echo has the story on its web site – see link below:- It's the section of Northway between the Hall Lane and Dover Road/Liverpool Road South junctions and the accident seems to have been on the southbound carriageway. It seems that the Police were chasing a stolen car just before it was involved in the crash. The vehicle was travelling on the wrong side of the road. The driver of the stolen car ran from the scene but was arrested I understand. We can only hope that the seriously injured person pulls through.

Posted by Cllr. Tony Robertson on Sefton Focus

I am very pleased to be presenting the policy paper Power for People and Communities at Conference, having chaired the group that developed the paper. The proposals set out a strong agenda for devolution and localism within England. We are arguing for greater financial autonomy for local authorities, STV in local elections, making it easier to establish Town or Community Councils in urban areas, strengthening the powers of local government over issues from education to health to planning, and also reforming the Social Value Act to encourage the use of public or not-for-profit providers when commissioning local services. Judging by ...

Posted by Tim Pickstone on Liberal Democrat Voice

Second paragraph of third chapter: He had the advantage of surprise, but that was short-lived. In the matter of strength and reflexes he was as near animal as a man can reasonably be, but the creature he fought with was in its own element. Stark grappled with it and it shot upward from the water like a tarpon, breaking his grip. He saw it briefly above him in the cluster-light, outstretched arms shaking diamond drops, body girdled with foam. It looked down at him, laughing, and its eyes were like pearls. Then it was gone in a curving arc that ...

Our social security spokesperson Stephen Lloyd has been talking about how badly the Government has cocked up the implementation of Universal Credit for a while. We supported it in coalition but as soon as we were consigned to the back benches, depleted, the Tories ripped loads of money out of it. He's now written for the Huffington Post about what a nightmare this new system is. And a crucial part of this incentive was the Work Allowance. This is the maximum amount a UC claimant can earn through employment, before their benefit payments are reduced. However in the Summer 2015 ...

Posted by NewsHound on Liberal Democrat Voice

A 507/508 EMU Merseyrail unit at Crescent Road level crossing – Birkdale, Southport. The Liverpool Echo has the story on its web site – see link below Quote from the article – 'A Merseyrail driver was forced to carry out an emergency stop on a train in a terrifying near miss when three people stood in the path of the oncoming train. The driver of Merseyrail's Hunts Cross to Southport service reported the "harrowing" incident shortly after 4.30pm on August 31. As the service was passing through Birkdale, three people appeared from behind a passing train going in the ...

Posted by Cllr. Tony Robertson on Sefton Focus
YouGov

Speculation about plans by Liberal Democrat leaders wanting to change the name of the party is a long-running favourite of the media and, for those who remember the post-merger years of pain, a source of angst for activists given how long it took for the party to get its name right. The headlines today suggest another round, such as PoliticsHome's, "Vince Cable: Lib Dems could change name in push for new centrist movement". But what Vince Cable actually said was rather more tepid than the use of 'could' in the headline implies: Changing names is a superficial thing. Maybe because ...

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack

The Home Office Has Decided Not To Introduce National Abortion Clinic "Buffer Zones" "it concluded that these incidents were not widespread enough to warrant national preventative measures." - I wonder how many women being harrassed and browbeaten is too many, then? The Liberal Democrats' proposed new immigration policy will not appeal to Remain voters Let's have a proper debate about Vince's party reforms One of those occasions where I have become annoyed enough to actually write an article for Lib Dem Voice What voters actually think about a "no-deal" Brexit Interesting from Rob Ford. miss_s_b | I writ a post ...

What people often struggle with when it comes to Lib Dem economics is not the detail of our specific policies - which voters frequently don't have the time to dig into, in any case - but our economic vision. Labour has a Big Idea, nationalisation, which dominates its economic agenda. The focus on Corbyn's renationalisation plans was out of proportion to their potential impact, because it fits with how people see Labour's economics, putting more of the economy under state control in the hope that permanently benevolent governments will somehow manage to run it all for the public good. The ...

Posted by James Baillie on Liberal Democrat Voice

[IMG: A roundup of what is making the news in Malaysia] This is the second in the series of 'A Round up of what is making the news in Malaysia'. I explained the reasoning behind it in my first post. Malaysian politics continues to excite and... The post A roundup of what is making the news in Malaysia appeared first on FeministMama @ambitiousmamas.

Posted by ambitiousmamas on FeministMama @ambitiousmamas
Fri 14th
11:00

My tweets

Thu, 12:56: Photographing These Abandoned Space Shuttles Made Me a Russian Target https://t.co/xfE7l4Z3r3 Wow. Thu, 13:28: How do you pronounce "secretive"? Thu, 15:30: RT @peterwalker99: One unexpected no-deal Brexit effect: we're less likely to get warned about space debris heading towards the Earth. No,... Thu, 16:05: Friends' Chandler Bing, and his homophobia, are the worst thing about watching the NBC sitcom in 2015. https://t.co/kAS0MnPgMl *shudder* Thu, 18:12: Vurt, by Jeff Noon https://t.co/rS7pmd27wR Thu, 20:53: RT @deirdreheenan: #OnThisDay in 1916, Roald Dahl was born in Llandaff, Cardiff. #RoaldDahlDay2018 https://t.co/o9lhDWPvnU Fri, 09:46: RT @EURACTIV: Tweets of the Week is out! πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡ΊπŸ¦ The ...

I am on the second leg of my five and a bit hour journey to conference, so I figured why not do the [IMG: [community profile] ] thefridayfive 1. Have you ever experienced a hurricane firsthand? Nope. 2. Have you ever experienced outside heat over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celcius)? Nope 3. When and where was the coldest temperature you have ever experienced? It sometimes gets to like -10 here in winter... I live in a REALLY boring country. 4. Is your household prepared for a possible power outage of two to seven days? Probably not. We have never ...

A year ago, Emma Walker hadn't got round to joining the Liberal Democrats. She finally took the plunge in November 2017 and since then has made a massive impact. She's launching a pioneering recruitment campaign (of which more in due course) and at last week's Scottish Conference, she proposed her motion on ME. ME Action Scotland were there and tweeted about the occasion. They think it might be the first time a political party has adopted a policy on ME in the world. Today a bit of ME history was made when delegates @scotlibdems autumn conference voted to support motion ...

Posted by Caron Lindsay on Liberal Democrat Voice

Yesterday remained fairly quiet. I was given a nebulizer in the morning as a precaution against pneumonia. Other than that, I spent most of the day sat on the bed or chair, doing very little. I've been asked to make my movements slowly and deliberately from now onwards, to avoid the risk of a fall. With my haemoglobin levels dropping, ... The post Transplant +2: Slowing down appeared first on ten pence piece.

Posted by tim on ten pence piece

Our bold proposals would raise £15bn per year from the UK's wealthiest citizens, which we would use to revive public services and create a citizens' wealth fund Much of the anger in today's politics stems from an ongoing stagnation in ... Continue reading →

Posted by richardkemp on But what does Richard Kemp think?

As anyone glancing down the Lib Dem Voice homepage will become rapidly aware, Vince has recently laid out his plans for the future of the Liberal Democrats, and party grandees and official social media accounts are pumping out a slickly coordinated and prepared promotional run of articles and ads. Whether this is remotely appropriate during a consultation on a draft paper, I'll leave as an exercise for the reader - but I wanted in any case to discuss the detail, so let's cut the rhetoric and talk about the fine print that's been conspicuously missing from recent articles. Do these ...

Posted by James Baillie on Liberal Democrat Voice
eUKhost

Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader Jo Swinson made two powerful interventions in Parliament today. One was a speech. The other required no words, but did require the presence of someone else. "There is nothing honourable about deliberately breaking a pairing. it is cheating, plain and simple."@joswinson argues for a vote on proxy voting, after her paired vote was broken earlier this year by a Conservative MP. pic.twitter.com/ncqsQXtIID — Liberal Democrats (@LibDems) September 13, 2018 All of which reminds me that years back Jo Swinson was one of the pioneering campaigners to ensure that footage of Parliament could appear on YouTube, back ...

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack

The shop unit above, which is next to Town Green Station, has been empty for some months now ever since the previous occupant (Spar) closed down. I regularly cycle this part of the world and usually stop at the small parade of shops. This empty unit has made me ponder, bearing in mind we are taking of an affluent area which I have heard referred to (obviously jokingly) as Ormskirk's stock broker belt. And the ponder? Why has it remained empty for the past 6 months or more? My first thought when the Spar shop closed was that within a ...

Posted by Cllr. Tony Robertson on Sefton Focus

This last weekend, I attended the Big Tent Festival of Ideas and it was great. The festival is the brainchild of George Freeman MP. It is intended to bring together people of all political persuasions to discuss ideas and how we can drive positive change. It is just the sort of thing that is so necessary [...] The post The sheer relief of not talking about Brexit appeared first on Radix.

Posted by Joe Zammit-Lucia on Radix

My Conference preparation has not been entirely successful so far. The biggest failure was the lamination of my voting pass. Somehow I put the bit with the hole at the wrong end. I am going to ask my work colleague to rescue it with a hole punch this norning. The galling thing is that I took the most care I've ever taken doing it. As I vainly struggled with the approximately 723 million items on my to do list yesterday morning, I started to thinking about all the people who make Conference happen and thought it would be a good ...

Posted by Caron Lindsay on Liberal Democrat Voice

 

Just as a follow-up to my anecdote yesterday about Ree-Mogg baiter, Ian Bone, I thought I would see what was available on the interweb about the anarchist's time in Swansea. There are a number of interviews with Bone, dubbed the 'most dangerous man in Britain' including this piece for the Guardian in which the origins of the Alarm newspaper are alluded to: Bone had started his first anarchist paper, Alarm, in Swansea. It comprised handwritten sheets of paper with punchy graphics and funny headlines. "There was a lot of corruption in Swansea and we got a couple of council leaders ...

Posted by Peter Black on Peter Black

Responding yesterday to a report from the Z/YEN Global Financial Centres Index announcing London has been overtaken by New York as the top Financial Centre, Liberal Democrat Leader Vince Cable said: "There is remarkable complacency in some parts of the City of London - and among Brexiter politicians - about their future and how they can adapt to Brexit no matter what. But they face intense competition from Asia, the US, and now mainland Europe. It's going to be an uphill struggle for the City to maintain its status as a world-leading financial centre. "The Chequers white paper, already dismissed ...

Posted by LD Neath on Aberavon & Neath Liberal Democrats

The ability of our MPs to keep an eye on the actions of government has been dealt a major blow. The reports of the parliamentary boundary commissioners were published this week. These periodic reviews rearrange the constituency jig saw, altering the size and shape of the pieces that make up our electoral map. All previous [...]

Posted by stephenwilliams on Stephen Williams' Blog