Small boys on the platform isn't it? You may also enjoy the video Steam at Shrewsbury in the 1960s.
"If the Brits are serious about securing access to the Single Market for goods, they will have to begin negotiations with, essentially 27 other countries after March, each of which will have a veto, as will the new European Parliament. What happens to the £100 billion or so worth of services the UK sells to EU countries every year is anyone's guess. Services are not usually included in trade deals and 'passporting' is due to end." Edward Robinson says the prospect of Brexit gives him the shivers. "A little less aggression and a little more listening and Rory Kinnear might've ...
[IMG: The Catholic Church and the Indian nuns of the #metoo movement] Does the Catholic Church have a strange predilection for sex related misdemeanours and scandals? If not why does it remain silent apart from occasional apologetic proclamations from the Pope? If it does want to be... The post The Catholic Church and the Indian nuns of the #metoo movement appeared first on FeministMama.
So Theresa May is going to be meeting with party leaders tonight and over the next few days to find a way forward on Brexit. Which party leader is best qualified for facing her down on daft ideas? Our Vince sparred a lot with her when they were in Cabinet together. She hated immigration. As business minister, he saw its benefits and fought for student visas. Obviously he's going to tell her she needs to put this back to the People and she needs to rule out No Deal, but if you were Vince, what would you be saying to ...
There were many times during this afternoon's Vote of No Confidence debate when I wanted to throw something at the television. I didn't, because the only things close by were expensive and belonged to my employer. This country is facing the biggest crisis since World War 2 and the Government and Opposition spend the afternoon slinging insults at each other, pantomime style. When we face a no-deal fall off a cliff which will kill people. Fiddling and burning or what? It was hardly the stuff of Gladstone, of Lloyd George, of Churchill as Jeremy Corbyn finally moved his motion of ...
So for various reasons including not actually having my own room for most of the last few years my audiophile tendencies have gone unloved. My lovely Technics turntable sat lonely and unconnected. My vinyl languished on its shelves. Recently I got my room back. So I decided to reward myself for getting it (mostly) sorted out, tidy and shipshape by buying myself one of these. Oh. My. God. I am hearing some songs as I haven't heard them in YEARS. All those people who tell you that there's no audible difference in sound quality between compressed digital stuff and analogue ...
Second paragraph of third story ("The Island", by Peter Watts): Is it really too much to ask, that you might talk to us now and then? Thirty stories here; I had read three of them before, two of which I ranked bottom of their category in the 2010 Hugos but the third, Lucius Shepard's "Sylgarmo's Proclamation", I rather enjoyed. Most of them I enjoyed a lot more, with a particular shout to Robert Charles Wilson's "This Peaceable Land, Or, The Unbearable Vision of Harriet Beecher Stowe", in which the American Civil War never happened and slavery is abolished by more ...
South Glos Council will be resurfacing two lengths of Shire Way between 8 pm and 6 am every night from 4th to 9th February. They will be planing off the surface first, so there is going to be quite a bit of noise. The parts to be resurfaced are coloured brown on this map - a length either side of the entrance to Woodchester, and the full Shire Way frontage of Maisemore and Cherington. The road will be closed each night for the work - South Glos say "We will make every effort to ensure that access to properties and ...
After the historically unprecedented defeat of May's Brexit deal, what comes next? In her speech to the House of Commons, Theresa May promised not to run the clock down and to reach out to senior parliamentarians to work out what Brexit deal could pass the House of Commons. Unfortunately, this promising development was immediately undercut by briefing that she wished to maintain her "red lines" which just can't be done if she wants to get a Brexit deal through Parliament. It was said of Lyndon B Johnson that nobody knew better how to count votes in a legislature - an ...
In his response to the government's dramatic defeat in the Commons last night Jeremy Corbyn claimed that the most serious crisis facing the country was that we are led by an incompetent government. Therefore he was moving a motion of no confidence in it. He was wrong. True the government is incompetent, and most of us can't see much sign of competence in the official opposition either. But that is not the most serious crisis facing the country. The most serious crisis facing the country is that we can't make up or minds what to do about Brexit. Unless we ...
Paddy Ashdown became the leader of the Liberal Democrats in 1988. He inherited a party which was not in a particularly good place. The merger of the Liberal Party and the SDP had been difficult, to say the least, poll ratings were low. Worse still Dr David Owen continued to lead a separate force supported by MPs Rosie Barnes and John Cartwright. Thatcher appeared to be going on forever, still with a comfortable Commons majority and showing no signs of going anytime soon. Labour under Neil Kinnock was modernising a party very much on the left. Dreams of breaking the ...
I returned to Chester last week to attend the BPS occupational psychology conference. As I arrived early, I took the opportunity to re-shoot two of the 1952 photographs of Chester that I'd got wrong last...Continue Reading The post Chester in 1952 vs 2019 appeared first on ten pence piece.
If Britain shares a characteristic with the EU it is the capacity to muddle through with a fudged compromise. So I, like most people, expected Brexit to go that way. But after last night's vote in the House of Commons against the government's negotiated deal with the EU, I now don't think that is likely. ... Continue reading Britain is heading for a no-deal Brexit on 29 March
Wed 16th
11:15
Why after last night's historic loss by the government, it is Jeremy Corbyn who is in real trouble
It is a sign of the very strange times we live in that the government could lose a vote by a whopping 230 votes and still no one was surprised when the prime minister did not resign. Or that the no confidence vote to be held in its wake is expected to be won by the government. Further, that this wasn't just any old vote on something sort of random, like when Brown's government lost the vote on the Gurkhas in 2009, but the prime minister's signature piece of legislation, the one she has spent her entire two and half ...
Tue, 16:05: Not Lance Parkin's biggest fan, but he added a lot and his books are generally better than Brian Hayles', so he get... https://t.co/MASlSy8lkN Tue, 17:11: In search of lost Brexit: how the UK repeatedly weakened its own negotiating position https://t.co/ESVeWLxJp6 Good... https://t.co/licv9BAuHP Tue, 17:45: For some reason this didn't work first time. Favourite female companion: has to be Leela of the Sevateem, as brilli... https://t.co/YM0Hqk0Szz Tue, 18:37: Tuesday reading https://t.co/YaH0HZLFnl Tue, 18:40: My inner ten-year-old is utterly thrilled!!!! https://t.co/QnaJ0bXgGb Tue, 19:43: RT @anguswalkertalk: Labour's @TulipSiddiq arrives for the vote in a wheelchair. Astonishing that there isn't a proxy ...
So Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn's coalition of chaos has hit the buffer of a massive 432-202 defeat in the Commons. What happens next? Well, the EU needs to come up with an alternative we can support, parps Boris, Britain's highest-paid armchair general. After two and a half years of bending over backwards to enable our whacky demands that replace the previous combination of opt-outs and special-cases they had allowed us since the 1970s perhaps the EU will have had enough and go for the only fix they can deliver: By next Tuesday all 27 nations can have ratified a ...
Wed 16th
10:17
Lib Dems vs Brexit: Sarah Ludford Internationalism and social justice is the liberal way
A cracker of a speech from Sarah Ludford looking back at Liberal figures all the way back to the repeal of the Corn Laws: My Lords, normally I would try to reflect speeches from across the House in my winding-up, but this evening I will concentrate on the Liberal Democrats. This is partly because the loss of our late colleague Lord Ashdown is much on our minds. Obviously the primary grief is felt by Jane and the family, but we too, his political family, are nothing short of devastated. We badly miss his voice. Tweets of Paddy's from two months ...
I have a six year old daughter, Xanthe, who is developing something of an interest in politics. She likes to see women in politics, which is both understandable and positive. In fact, I'd go so far as to say she admires many women she sees working in the political arena - irrespective of which party they belong to. There is one thing we disagree on, however: she has remarkable sympathy for the Prime Minister. Her logic is that Mrs May works hard, has a cabinet of out-of-control self-serving idiots, has inherited an unenviable situation and feels bound to honour the ...
By Renaud Girard in Beirut Since the start of the decade, the movement known as the 'Arab Spring' has represented a clash between two ideologies, the liberal western ideology and the Islamist ideology of movement of the Muslim Brothers. This is war where neither will emerge as a victor. It is a war that has [...] The post How the West lost influence in the middle east appeared first on Radix.
It may seem strange to argue that the Tory Government's 220 vote defeat on a major plank of policy is not just a failure of Government, but of the opposition as well, but bear with me. There is no doubt in my view that Theresa May is the architect of her own misfortune. She squandered a Tory majority in 2017 with a snap General Election, which she effectively lost. Despite that she hitched her fortunes to the DUP, making any settlement with the EU impossible, just because of the Irish border issues. She is a fighter, but she is flailing ...
With all the other political high-jinks in Westminster, the long-awaited judgement in the Thanet 2015 General Election expenses case has probably not caught the attention of those most likely to be affected by it - Candidates and their Agents. In brief, this outcome challenges some of the most commonly held interpretations of the electoral law. Moreover, it requires urgent parliamentary attention BEFORE any new poll. Liberal Democrat activists may like to be reminded that even the Conservatives now accept that the current legal position cannot be allowed to continue. In the last few days of the June 2017 General Election ...
The history of the past couple of decades has been of futile attempts to appease the fantasies of die-hard Brexiter zealots. Media driven distorted representations of the EU have cowed successive Prime Ministers, bringing the UK to its present state of ignominy. The vision of peaceful cooperation has continually been maligned by ministers who have ... Continue reading An Ignominious National Tragedy Unfolds
I am looking forward to participating in next Monday's Dundee Pensioners' Forum Question Time :
Wed 16th
06:28
Shropshire Council budget: Bus subsidies cut, park and ride fares up and new housing company burdene...
Shropshire Council has cut £48 million from its budget over the last three years under pressure of government cuts. It will need to cut, or in its words "save", £18.5m next year. The council has now set out details of the proposed cuts and is asking for public comments. The lengthy litany of cuts is grim. In this article, I look at buses and Shropshire Council's plan for a new debt-ridden housing company. I also review other cuts that will affect how Shropshire Council works with local communities and will make Shirehall more distant from Ludlow than ever. Proposed cuts ...
You never quite want to believe the predictions, especially when they are in your favour, but it can't be argued that tonight wasn't a massive rejection of the May deal. Here's what was said in the aftermath... Cable: This is the beginning of the end of Brexit Brexit Must be put Back to the People - Welsh Lib Dems (see here) Cable: After Govt defeat the only way forward is a People's Vote (see here) Cable: This is the beginning of the end of Brexit Responding to the no confidence vote tabled tonight in the House of Commons, Leader of ...
