No music today, I'm afraid, for we have another clutch of press releases, including one which some of our readers might vaguely recognise as an overdue recycling of an old theme... PM must come clean on immigration plans Lib Dems: Only alternative to Brexit is a 'People's Vote' FOBT change finally ending cruel grip of industry on vulnerable people It's time Fox was given his P45 Tories can no longer bury Brexit truth PM must come clean on immigration plans Responding to Theresa May's speech to the CBI conference this morning, Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesperson Ed Davey said: Theresa ...

Posted by Mark Valladares on Liberal Democrat Voice

The MP for Eastbourne, Stephen Lloyd, is intending to vote for the government's Brexit deal in Parliament. Here's why in his own words: I campaigned and publicly debated for Remain during the 2016 referendum, and still believe that remaining within the European Union is in the best interests of our nation. I also made a promise during the campaign that I would not support calls for a second referendum, and would support the final negotiated deal the Prime Minister brings back to the Commons. And as my constituency Eastbourne knows, when I give my word to the town I keep ...

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack

I tried another of Leicester's new pubs on Saturday - The Two-Tailed Lion in Millstone Lane. It's website describes it as a traditional English free house with modernist flair, situated in a listed building within the historic Greyfriars area of Leicester.Recommended for its building and select range of real ale and craft beers.

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

I previously covered how the House of Lords voted to 'refer back' the judgement against Lord Lester (whose membership of the Liberal Democrats is currently suspended) over allegations of sexual harassment. The turnout of Liberal Democrat peers in the vote was relatively low as it happened at the same time as the Liberal Democrat House of Lords group was holding an away day out of London. Of those who were there to vote, they split as follows: In favour of upholding the ruling against Lord Lester Kishwer Falkner Meral Hussein-Ece (whose speech is well worth reading) Dick Newby (Lib Dem ...

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack

Lord Bonkers has sometimes written about Bonfire Night at the hall, but until now I did not realise that Halloween was celebrated there too. Wednesday Today is Halloween, when ghosts and demons walk abroad and the streets of Oakham are thronged with the sheeted figures of defeated candidates from long-forgotten by-elections. The Revd Hughes, very wisely, takes the day off and bars the shutters at the Vicarage. The Well-Behaved Orphans, being little horrors themselves, always demand a scary bedtime story from me on this night. I decide to call their bluff this year by reading them the most frightening thing ...

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England
Mon 19th
20:11

Transplant +68: York

As part of my recovery from the SCT I've just returned from a long weekend in York. Other than a few day trips and a weekend there when my children were very small, it's somewhere I've never spent much time. There was also a weekend at York University on an Open University management course in [...] The post Transplant +68: York appeared first on ten pence piece.

Posted by tim on ten pence piece

Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat leader, is holding a meeting in Oadby on 6 December, starting at 5.30. The meeting will take place at John Foster Hall, Manor Road, Oadby, Leicester LE2 2LG and is being organised by Harborough, Oadby & Wigston Lib Dems. Tickets are free - apply online if you would like to attend.

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England
Mon 19th
17:57

Monday reading

Current The Prisoner and The Fugitive, by Marcel Proust Burr, by Gore Vidal Last books finished Hardwired, by Walter Jon Williams 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem, by Ruth Padel Next books The Stone Book Quartet, by Alan Garner And the Mountains Echoed, by Khaled Hosseini The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon

Today is World Toilet Day. No, this isn't a joke, WTD is observed every year on 19th November. Last year's theme was "Wastewater" - this year's is "When Nature Calls." I urge (a common verb in discussing our need for toilets) you to look up the details here: http://www.worldtoiletday.info/wtd2018/ One of the things I do is give talks on behalf of "Water Aid." Probably the most attractive feature of Water Aid's work, in both interest and fund raising, is helping to provide safe, clean and reliable supplies of water to the 750 million people in the world who don't have ...

Posted by Peter Wrigley on Keynesian Liberal

Ten per cent - TEN PER CENT - of the population of Cumbria are using food banks! said a fellow church-goer to me in horror, after a Sunday service in a West Cumbrian village church. We were discussing the local bearing of the damning findings by the UN rapporteur Philip Alston, reporting on the effects of austerity policies on Britain today. After a twelve-day tour of Britain's towns and cities, Mr Alston, UN expert on extreme poverty and human rights, spoke in stark term about his findings, in London on Friday. Clearly shocked by what he had found, according to ...

Posted by Katharine Pindar on Liberal Democrat Voice
YouGov

While the Suez crisis was unfolding some of us ten year olds in a junior school playground discussed our vague awareness of Government incompetence. It was not my first school. I was born in the tough Scotswood Road area of Newcastle. Crucially I was an only child so my parents, living in a two room flat couldn't get on the council house waiting list. This led to my father joining a ground-breaking self-build housing scheme, which in due course led to us moving across town. That may well have contributed to my assumption that alternative solutions to problems were part ...

Posted by Geoff Reid on Liberal Democrat Voice

Social media has been filled with opinions on how Shami Chakrabarti's interview on the Andrew Marr show went this past weekend. A large chunk of left-wing opinion seems to feel that Marr was bullying towards her in a way that may possibly have been sexist or even mysogynistic. Having watched the interview a few times now, there is no way Marr is being sexist. There is never a point at which he uses any language that could be interpreted as such. I think this argument is just rubbish. As for bullying, well, he goes at her pretty hard, this is ...

Posted by Nick on nicktyrone.com

A few years ago back on my old blog, I did an occasional series of posts that ̶s̶h̶a̶m̶e̶l̶e̶s̶s̶l̶y̶ ̶r̶i̶p̶p̶e̶d̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶T̶V̶ ̶G̶o̶ ̶H̶o̶m̶e̶ carefully parodied various parts of TV, films and politics. Collected here are some of the more amusing ones, along with a entirely new idea too: (With thanks to Justin McKeating and Jennie Rigg for some of the Twitter conversations that led to these, but please blame only me for the bad bits) Eggbound "I have a very particular set of dietary requirements"The Pitch: Following a freak accident on a previous mission, inexplicably Irish-accented CIA agent Brendan McPuncherson ...

Posted by Nick Barlow on Stories by Nick Barlow on Medium
Mon 19th
11:00

My tweets

Sun, 12:56: Rare microbes lead scientists to discover new branch on the tree of life https://t.co/6Ht8cqIuth The hemimastigotes... https://t.co/spir2P77nR Sun, 17:09: Good thread on Raab. https://t.co/eo2I7vka2U Sun, 19:25: A visit to the ruins of Sirmium https://t.co/uuhaIlWey9 Mon, 08:38: RT @damonwake: Crunch Brexit talks today for the EU 27. Main message from the very cold doorstep -- no we will not be renegotiating the dea... Mon, 09:08: RT @LaszloAndorEU: 10 critical moments of the 10 years of #FinancialCrisis. Do you agree these were the most important ones? More importan... Mon, 09:33: RT @anandMenon1: Nailed by ⁦@MattChorley⁩ in ⁦@timesredbox⁩ https://t.co/6fXX8hYa6D Mon, 10:45: ...

Daisy Cooper, St Albans Liberal Democrats Parliamentary Candidate said: Since the vote to leave the EU, Brexit has brought nothing but bad news. EU health workers have been leaving the NHS at an alarming rate, businesses are investing elsewhere and now we find out that the Conservative government's deal would tie us to EU rules but without [...]

Posted by chriswhite on Chris White

The Guardian recently offered an interactive tool which allowed readers to guess how many votes May's deal would get in the House of Commons. (Apologies that I cannot find the link to the tool at the moment). I had a fiddle around with the tool. What was astonishing is that whatever way one tweaked the tool, May was about 50-60 votes short of a majority. The basic problem is that there is a chunk of Tories, and probably DUP members, who will vote against the deal. The only way to make up the shortfall caused by those votes against, is ...

Posted by Paul Walter on Liberal Democrat Voice

End of the line from Wigan, the Merseyrail service to Liverpool is accessed under the bridge. The Liverpool Echo has the story on its website – see link below:- Ormskirk Station – The train in the foreground is Preston bound (when it's not being replaced by a bus). The one behind it is Liverpool bound. I'm informed that this week is going to be yet another commuting challenge on many Northern routes because of the lack of availability of trains i.e. too many of them are bust. And the reason they are bust? Well for those of you who ...

Posted by Cllr. Tony Robertson on Sefton Focus

Strongmen rule - Erdogan, Trump, Bolsonaro, Putin, Savini. Where Liberal Democracy and the 'bourgeois parties' fail to present their electorates with a strong, credible leader, the political vacuum is increasingly filled with political strongmen. Populists, nationalists, radical right-wingers, the game generally follows the same rules: wishy-washy liberals have brought the country down, national pride must [...] The post Take me to your leader - the challenge for Keir Starmer appeared first on Radix.

Posted by Peter Fischer Brown on Radix

By far the most remarkable interview over the weekend was that on Sky News between Sophy Ridge and Jeremy Corbyn. As the Guardian reports not only does the Labour Leader appear to believe that the UK can get the same benefits outside the EU as inside, a view debunked by two years of detailed negotiation and every statement by an EU leader, but he continues to stick to his pro-Brexit line despite the clear downsides of such a position. The idea that Labour can somehow get a better deal than that delivered by Theresa May is both unevidenced and not ...

Posted by Peter Black on Peter Black

At a time when the Government, or at least some of it, is offering the British public a Brexit deal which appears unacceptable to Remain and Leave supporters alike, where five Cabinet Ministers have taken it upon themselves to go try to redraft it in their own image, regardless of the fact that they might need to agree it with the European Union, the fact that the Leader of the Opposition cannot even bring himself to say how he would vote should there be a second referendum might seem like a mere sideshow in a Whitehall farce. One need not ...

Posted by Mark Valladares on Liberal Democrat Voice
eUKhost

The Liverpool Echo has the story on its website – see link below:- My recollection is that this NHS Trust has gone through testing times in the recent past and issues such as these bullying allegations can't be anything but more bad news. An organisation like the NHS needs to have exemplary industrial relations so why do we keep hearing of staff working for it being unhappy with and having a lack of confidence in NHS whistleblowing processes?

Posted by Cllr. Tony Robertson on Sefton Focus

From Dundee Money Action : You're invited to join us for our second open day on Thursday 22nd November to hear more about the work of Dundee Money Action and how we are able to support your client base. This event will take a similar format to our previous event held at the end of August, which was very well received by those who attended, with very positive feedback about the content and information provided about our service. We are running four identical sessions over the course of the day - one hour sessions starting at 9.30am, 11am, 2pm, 3.30pm, ...

This is a summary of all the changes (I think) to car parking charges in Ludlow from this morning. Shropshire Council has made it clear there will be no leeway for people that misunderstand the new rules. Be careful about pop and shop, which is now cut to five minutes plus a ten-minute observation time. The system has also gone largely digital. The cost of residents' permits is now £100, three times the West Midlands average of £35. Only one permit is allowed for each household and only for a vehicle registered at that address. Residents' permits All permits are ...

Posted by andybodders on Andy Boddington

The new episode of A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs is now up. It's a look at "Good Rockin' Tonight", called by some the first rock and roll record. Find out how a shortage of insect secretions and ... Continue reading →

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