I've spent my evening helping Colchester Liberal Democrats to select their new PPC, which is why this is a bit late in the day. I'm hoping that we'll have their press release tomorrow, which is why I'm not telling you who won... So, without further ado, here are today's press releases... Davey: Brexit gambling UK's safety and security Liberal Democrats lead the march to a people's vote Labour must guarantee a people's vote The Economist backs a people's vote Brexit would put the brakes on Britain, F1 bosses warn Davey: Brexit gambling UK's safety and security Responding to the Home ...

Posted by Mark Valladares on Liberal Democrat Voice

The Welsh Government wants to drive a 14-mile, six-lane motorway through the Gwent Levels. Here the Gwent Wildlife Trust makes the case against the new road. Read more about the campaign to save the Gwent Levels.

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

The new Liberal Democrat Prospective Parliamentary Candidate (PPC) for the constituency of Derbyshire Dales is Robert Court. A physics teacher in London before becoming headmaster of Birkdale School in Sheffield for a dozen years, Robert Court has lived in the constituency for the last twenty years. He joined the Liberal Democrats shortly after the EU referendum two years ago. On being selected, Robert Court said: I never intended to become so involved in politics until last year, when something snapped. I decided I could not stand by and do nothing when our political world was so sullied by lies and ...

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack

As soon as Getty Images allowed private users to embed their images free of charge, I have made free use of that facility. Sometimes I even based a post on one of their images.For the past couple of days, Getty's images have not been displaying on this blog. All you can see is a notice saying the image is no longer available for use. Except, when you go to the Getty site you find the image is still there and is still available for use. I shall not embed any more Getty images until this glitch has been fixed. When ...

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

My council ipad needed to be "migrated" so I lost half the morning going into the civic centre to sort this out. From there I headed to Marley Hill to deliver the last of the Focus newsletters I had. And in the evening, I headed to Sunniside Club where, as Chairman of the Sunniside History Society, I ran the meeting (which included our Christmas buffet - 54 people attended). I used my

Posted by jonathanwallace on Jonathan Wallace

Wall to wall meetings starting with corporate scrutiny (I asked questions about Gateshead Council's carbon footprint), then a seminar on Universal Credit, then a meeting with the director who deals with waste collection and cutting back trees and finally off to Sunniside Club to test the projector for the History Society meeting the next day. Last month the projector would not work so instead

Posted by jonathanwallace on Jonathan Wallace

When I was a teenager and had already decided I was a Liberal, two of the big names in civil liberties campaigning were Patricia Hewitt and Harriet Harman of Liberty - or the National Council for Civil Liberties as it then was. Twenty years later they were both impeccably on-message New Labour ministers, sharing Tony Blair's exasperation with "libertarian nonsense". Another 20 years on and I find Shami Chakrabarti is set on the same path. As one viewer put it last night: It's incredibly sad to see Shami Chakrabarti the former head of Liberty, whose aim is to protect rights, ...

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

"If the British are determined to plough on, that is their right. But now that they know what Brexit really means, they deserve the chance to say whether they still want it." - The Economist

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack

There was a Christmas fair at Lobley Hill Community Centre on Saturday afternoon which was run by Groundwork, the environmental charity. They invited me to bring a couple of our goats to the fair. Sadly, the rain discouraged many people from attending but the goats were popular with those who did come. Alas, we were outdoors for the whole of the afternoon! We were a bit wet!

Posted by jonathanwallace on Jonathan Wallace

Second paragraph of third chapter:Over the course of the last week, in the guise of the Escapist, Master of Elusion, Joe had flown to Europe (in a midnight-blue autogyro), stormed the towered Schloss of the nefarious Steel Gauntlet, freed Plum Blossom from its deep dungeon, defeated the Gauntlet in protracted two-fisted combat, been captured by the Gauntlet's henchmen and dragged off to Berlin, where he was strapped to a bizarre multiple guillotine that would have sliced him like a hard-boiled egg while the Führer himself smugly looked on. Naturally, patiently, indomitably, he had worked his way loose of his riveted ...

YouGov

Shropshire Council is consulting on where new housing and employment units should be built over the next 20 years. Its plans are ambitious and wants the county to grow faster than it would from demographic change alone. The process of writing the new plan is only part way through. This article explains where we are now. The consultation on preferred development sites runs until 31 January 2019. Shropshire's current local plan is known as the Core Strategy. It was published in 2009. It is a rather wordy statement of general principles, typical of planning documents at the time but becoming ...

Posted by andybodders on Andy Boddington

I recently found a couple of Pathescope films shot by my father in the early 1950s. The more interesting one is of grasstrack motorcycle racing in September 1951. Pathescope is a 9.5mm cine film format with the sprocket hole in the centre. It was introduced in 1922 and was most popular with amateur film-makers in [...] The post Cine film of grasstrack motorcycle racing, Hopwell Hall, 1951 appeared first on ten pence piece.

Posted by tim on ten pence piece

I went along to the still new Maghull North Station (on Merseyrail's Northern Line to Ormskirk) today to have a look at the just installed piece of artwork which celebrates the work of the former Moss Side Hospital and its pioneering treatment of shell shock. Of course, the hospital is long gone and the new Poppy Fields Housing Estate now occupies the site. Here are some shots of what I think is a quite striking piece of artwork which is sited adjacent to the station ticket office:- It was unveiled by local historian and former Maghull GP Dr John Rowland ...

Posted by Cllr. Tony Robertson on Sefton Focus

The York Conference will be one of the most historic in our 30 year history, taking place just 2 weeks before we are scheduled to leave the EU. A lot could happen between now and then, up to and including a General Election or a People's Vote on the deal. Whatever happens it is an important opportunity for us to get together and work out what our next steps are. It is also where the leader's plans to extend the franchise for leadership elections to a new supporter class will be debated. There are many strong views on both sides ...

Posted by The Voice on Liberal Democrat Voice
Fri 7th
12:13

Taking back control

That the government has been defeated in the Commons, not once but thee times, on its Brexit plans, is good news. The votes, to force the government to publish the formal advice it has received on the legal consequences of Brexit, to turn down a government compromise to refer that matter to the Privileges Committee, and to permit Parliament to suggest and debate alternatives if and when Mrs May's "deal" is voted down, show that Parliament is, at last flexing its muscles. Ironically, this is exactly what the Brexiteers demanded in the Referendum: that we should "take back control" and ...

Posted by Peter Wrigley on Keynesian Liberal

In her Scotsman column, Christine Jardine highlighted the plight of asylum seekers. According to the group Medecins Sans Frontieres, there is now no search and rescue taking place in the Mediterranean. Only the Libyan coastguard is picking up people in its waters and taking them to detention centres. So far this year, it is estimated that 1,277 lives have been lost, many of them children. It's only a little over three years since public opinion in this country and across the globe was outraged by the image of a toddler - three-year-old Alan Kurdi - lying dead in the breaking ...

Posted by NewsHound on Liberal Democrat Voice

Sadly a subject I keep returning to as the troubles with the Northern Assist franchise seem to get deeper when you thought they had already reached rock bottom. Below is a link to the Lancashire Evening Post date 6th December all about the rail chaos on the Ormskirk – Preston Line. The lady and quoted in the article was one of the contributors to the OPSTA public meeting I attended and reported on only a few days ago. here's a link to that previous posting:- A train from Preston pulling into Ormskirk Station. Chris Jackson Regional Director of ...

Posted by Cllr. Tony Robertson on Sefton Focus
Fri 7th
11:00

My tweets

Thu, 12:56: RT @Dublin2019: Progress Report #2 is out now. Get it here: https://t.co/JspCeuCHB1 Thu, 13:58: Very much worth bearing in mind that EU also wants to avoid backstop coming into force. UK spectre of EU wanting to... https://t.co/8aN4TzUmFs Thu, 15:11: RT @CrisisGroup: There is place for #Europe to assert itself on the basis of shared values. But it must do so consistently and get its own... Thu, 15:12: RT @CH_Events: @PeterWestmacott Values-based solidarity echoed by @BradStaples as key, "especially when the world seems so fragile". Europe... Thu, 15:13: RT @maxfras: @BradStaples on European foreign policy USP: putting the citizen ...

[IMG: Confronting fear and anxiety] The Five Truths About Fear by Susan Jeffers FEAR TRUTH #1 The fear will never go away as long as you continue to grow! Every time you take a step into the unknown, you experience... The post Confronting fear and anxiety appeared first on FeministMama.

Posted by ambitiousmamas on FeministMama
Fri 7th
10:25

Taking a gamble

There has been a long running and heated debate over the controversial Fixed Odd Betting Terminals that are sited in virtually every betting shop across the country. The debate centres arround a proposal for restricting the maximum stakes on these machines to £2 down from the current £100. This is opposed by the gaming industry. They along with other opponents of the reform argue that it will drive the gambling addicts to online betting and also lead to job losses due to betting shop closures. It is a fact that the profits from FOBTs have fed the growth in shops ...

Posted by David Warren on Liberal Democrat Voice
eUKhost

Responding to the Home Affairs Select Committee Report on the Home Office and Brexit, Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesperson Ed Davey said:"Security co-operation with the EU - from Europol to the European Arrest Warrant - helps to put criminals behind bars and keep our communities safe. Brexit would throw all that away."Theresa May is asking us to bet the safety and security of the British people on her ability to negotiate a brand-new treaty within the next two years. Based on the evidence of the last two years, that's not a gamble anyone should be prepared to take."And on immigration, ...

Posted by LD Neath on Aberavon & Neath Liberal Democrats

The Independent reports that the government has watered down a commitment by Theresa May to protect EU citizens' rights in the event of a no-deal Brexit, despite an earlier pledge by the prime minister. The paper says that an explanatory note published on Thursday, by the Department for Exiting the European Union said it would continue the existing settlement scheme for EU citizens living in the UK, but make it less generous compared with what is spelled out in the withdrawal agreement: The less generous no-deal scheme would only apply to people living in the UK before 30 March 2019, ...

Posted by Peter Black on Peter Black

Sherlock Holmes offered the solution to the current Brexit conundrum admirably when he told Dr Watson in the Beryl Coronet: "when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." At the moment the two possibilities before parliament are the deal negotiated by Prime Minister Theresa May and crashing out with no deal whatsoever. The latter would be the result of the rejection of the first if no plan B, C or D appears on the political horizon. The first possibility will be rejected by parliament because it turns what used to be imperial Britain into ...

Posted by Tom Arms on Liberal Democrat Voice

Next Thursday's Shropshire Council meeting is dominated by financial matters. But even though the council is struggling to make enough cuts to balance its budget, we can't lose sight of longer-term issues like climate change. Shropshire Council is a major employer and has a major carbon footprint. But it rarely ever thinks about its role in reducing carbon emissions. That's why a cross-part groups of councillors have tabled a motion on climate change and the need for the council to act to reduce its impact on the environment. The motion has been proposed by Shropshire Council's Green Party councillor, Julian ...

Posted by andybodders on Andy Boddington

I was in the US the week of the mid-term elections and it was interesting to watch the campaigning, listen to radio and TV ads, and speak to people about their feelings. The most noticeable thing was the extreme polarization of US political debate. It was reminiscent of the Brexit debate in Britain – a [...] The post The meaning of the blue ripple appeared first on Radix.

Posted by Joe Zammit-Lucia on Radix

The lack of a long-promised footpath/cycle path from Park Lane to the new Maghull North Station continues to frustrate those who could make good use of it. However, Sefton Council has told me that it will eventually be provided via the developer of the Poppy Fields Housing development – I've mentioned this previously on this blog site. But the other day I was asked where the path will come out onto Park Lane? Well, it was originally constructed when the Ashworth South site was going to be a brand new prison (yes the majority of the path is there already) ...

Posted by Cllr. Tony Robertson on Sefton Focus

A quartet of council by-elections this week, featuring two Liberal Democrat defences and a full slate of Lib Dem candidates – an improvement on when these wards were last fought as one went without the party putting up anyone. Wester Ross, Strathpeffer and Lochalsh, Highland A very tough Liberal Democrat defence because of the nature of council by-elections in Scotland. With the usual contests being via STV in multi-member wards, when a vacancy comes up it is filled by the alternative vote (AV). That makes sense. It also means that you can have won a seat in a ward with ...

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack

Tonight - Friday 7th December - at 7.30pm at Platform, Riverside Drive : The Wighton Singers will present carols from Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales - some familiar, some not, but all worth hearing! Admission is free (donations welcome) and places can be reserved by emailing info@newscottish.org