Three council by-elections this week: two Conservative defences and one Labour. The latter was in Moor Ward, Chesterfield, with Tony Rogers the Liberal Democrat candidate.
This metal sign is appealing but impossible to read. Its location across the entrance to a yard, and a ghost sign on the neighboring building, give a big clue to what it once said.
Richard Alderman, the 'Democracy Rutland' councillor, today received a six-month community order for his posts on Facebook. He will have to wear an electronic ankle tag to monitor a 7pm to 7am curfew. As the Leicester Mercury has said he intends to carry on as a councillor, he had better hope there are no evening meetings. BBC News quotes the judge: "You advocated support for killing by execution and assassination (of Mrs May and Ms Soubry) because you disagreed with their views. "You did so with the recent memory of the killing of a British member of parliament. I am ...
Clun: Very quiet With it being National Poetry Day, it is opportune that the London Review of Books has just posted a new podcast: In the latest instalment of their regular series, in which they consider major poets of the 20th century - or in this case the long 20th century - through a lens of the pieces written about them in the LRB archive, Seamus Perry and Mark Ford turn to Worcestershire lad and old-type natural fouled-up guy, A.E. Housman.
Beware the superficial when assessing Theresa May, Britain's Prime Minister. Most of the time she seems very weak, but somehow she survives as her position is much stronger than it looks. Conversely this is punctuated by moments of triumph, when she seems to sweep all before her. This always precedes a major reverse. Yesterday as ... Continue reading There are alternatives. Theresa May is in deep trouble
... with huge apologies to Diane Clare for the complete balls-up I made of her face. It turns out that trying to do clever shading just looks like beard. Ooops. Still, I'm happy with John Carson's sideburns, and that's the main thing. [IMG: An ink drawing of an iconic scene from Plague of the Zombies] Click to embiggen. Prompts: Spell and Flame Media: Goulet notepaper, Noodler's nib creaper fountain pen, Caran D'Ache water brush, KWZ inks Cappuccino. [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
In many newspapers, on many radio and tv programmes at the moment, transgender people are attacked and marginalised. So called "gender critical feminists" take to the biggest media outlets in the land to complain that "debate" is being shut down and their "legitimate concerns" are not being listened to. The thing is, these actions are not consequence free. A report earlier this year by Stonewall found that 41% of transgender people had experienced a hate crime in the last year. That is not far off being half. I often hear parents of transgender children say that there are two things ...
Here are the latest national voting intention figures from each of the main pollsters currently polling in the UK. To put the numbers into longer context, take a look at PollBase, my database of polling figures going back to 1945, which is updated quarterly and remember the warning about individual polls. Polling company (italics indicates not poll in last month) Con Lab LibDem Ukip Green Con lead Fieldwork Method BMG 35% 40% 12% 5% 3% -5% 28-29/9 Online ComRes 39% 40% 9% 5% 2% -1% 26-27/9 Online Delta Poll 37% 40% 8% 6% 5% -3% 14-16/8 Online ICM 41% 40% ...
I've recently been reading Anthony King and Ivor Crewe's history of the SDP and it got me thinking about the possible lessons the SDP has for anyone who wanted to try and set up a new party in the centre and/or create a new party as a centrist split group from the Labour party. I don't think 'the SDP failed, therefore any split now from Labour would also fail' is an argument with much strength but I think it's worth understanding why it happened and why it failed before we go insisting that there are direct parallels between it and ...
The Frome Model of Enhanced Care is a GP focussed, community serving and using way of creating, assessing and delivering comprehensive health and well-being skills, services and attitudes, in, with and for a community, at a low to negative net cost. Its administration is remarkably inclusive, heterarchical or flat. It is so attractive that it merits awareness, analysis, adoption and adaption to spread its remarkable and measured attributes. It has delivered 5 years of medical care with social cohesion. It saves money and is more enjoyable! Somerset CCG reckons some £2 million saved. Hospital admissions have gone down although admissions ...
Once we were new and immediacy could guide us! Now that quisling young intensity has passed since consciousness began to tire; of holding on like paint the sun has faded until it flaked away, cover wrinkling into splits and decayed character; of some older habits that have lingered past their time, reminders that the past was [...]
Thu 4th
12:20
Why the Boris speech wasn't as popular with Tory activists as some would have you believe
The big occasion at Conservative party conference, beyond question, was the Boris speech. The queues for it really were impressively epic, notable even further at a conference in which the hall had mostly been half-full at best for other speeches. This has led to a media narrative that Boris is the next leader in waiting, [...] The post Why the Boris speech wasn't as popular with Tory activists as some would have you believe appeared first on Radix.
Responding to warnings from the Chief Executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland that a "bad Brexit" could push the UK into a recession, Liberal Democrat Brexit Spokesperson Tom Brake said:"There can be no disputing that Brexit will be disastrous for the UK economy, not least the retail and construction sectors. No one voted for this. No one voted to be poorer."However, there is still time to protect the UK economy by giving the people a final say on the deal, including the option to remain. Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn should back these calls. If they don't, they will ...
Responding to Theresa May's address to Tory party conference, Liberal Democrat Leader Vince Cable said: "As somebody who takes dancing seriously, I was delighted to see Theresa May show that she is developing her new hobby. But she was dancing on the head of a pin, confronted by an audience full of people plotting to oust her. "She said the Conservatives must be a 'party for the whole country', yet she has overseen widening divisions in our society. Trapped by the rabid ideologues of the Conservative right-wing, Mrs May has been driven to illiberal extremes on Brexit, welfare and immigration, ...
Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs spokesperson Christine Jardine MP has today condemned the UK Government for failing to support the claims of third generation Chagossians for British citizenship, as the Guardian reveals Taniella Moustache from Milton Keynes faces deportation when she turns 20. The Home Affairs Committee report on the Windrush generation recommends that the government support the British Indian Ocean Territory (Citizenship) Bill and "allow anyone who can prove that they are descended from a person born on the Chagos Islands to register as a British overseas territories citizen and thereby have a right to remain in the UK". Christine ...
The Rise of Netflix Competitors Has Pushed Consumers Back Toward Piracy Because there are now too many exclusive content providers... The human tendency towards favouring a monopoly is a funny thing Dear dads: Your daughters told me about their assaults. This is why they never told you. DFE caught adding tuition fees to school funding claims * headdesk * weekly_food_challenge | Challenge #55 - Kitchen Surprise Fascinating survey of autistic people and their relatives I found some of the differences between actual autistic people and allistic relatives of autistic people quite striking. Ruth Hunt responds to the transphobes petitioning Stonewall ...
The irony at the heart of Jeremy Corbyn's leadership is the mismatch between his sources of popularity and his achievements as leader. Perhaps his greatest source of popularity is the perception as a man of principle. (One that I disagree with given my own experience as a constituent, but one clearly many people passionately hold.) Yet perhaps his greatest achievement is to have kept together in a large coalition people with extremely disparate views – particularly on immigration and on Europe. Despite frequent critical noises about immigration and a long record of backing Tory Euro-sceptics on Europe he has managed ...
Wed, 12:56: Miles Vorkosigan and "Excellent Life Choices": (Neuro)Divergence and Decision-Making in Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga... https://t.co/ueZS5QHBNv Wed, 16:05: How Disinformation Harmed the Referendum in Macedonia https://t.co/hgWp6U4UTa And it's not surprising to learn who was behind it.
Today whilst sitting in a local café I saw something vaguely disturbing - which I seem to see almost every day now. This may be rather an unusual subject for a blog, but I just had to sit down and write this piece. A parent had obviously just picked up his daughter from school - she was maybe five or six year's old - and taken her out for a well-meaning treat. But after five minutes or so, I noticed her just staring out of the window. The father was on his mobile phone for almost the entire length of ...
Literally a few yards outside of Lydiate, at the bottom of Bells Lane where the road takes a sharp right hand turn and becomes Altcar Lane in Great Altcar Civil Parish stands this house. The datestone goes back to 1596 and looks like this:- The building has always interested me because of the date stone, so I've tried to find out a bit about it. Here are a couple of links that offer more information:- historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1073148 You'll need to scroll through a couple of pages of the 2nd link to find the relevant part. A bit of history right ...
The Tories may well be keen to play down the impact of Brexit on the economy and on jobs as 'Project Fear' but it is not just politicians who are sounding off about this, it is the men and women who actually make the decisions, and who have the fate of people's jobs in their hands. And so, as the Guardian reports, the Japanese carmaker Nissan has warned the government that serious disruption will be caused to its huge manufacturing operation in the north-east of England if the UK fails to secure a deal with the EU that avoids a ...
Next Spring, European citizens will vote for the new European Parliament. There are many reasons to believe that 2019 elections will be the most significant in EU's history. This pivotal political struggle will take place between the neo-nationalist wave (in the disguise of the so-called souverainism) and the conservative establishment, which includes the once-socialists and [...] The post Prepare for the first great electoral battle with the souvrainists appeared first on Radix.
