It's been a slightly hectic day today, but I've got my nomination papers in – I'm running for re-election to my Parish Council in mid-Suffolk. Have you got yours in yet? Time's running out... Cable: Only route out of this crisis is a People's Vote Responding to the vote on the Government's withdrawal agreement losing by 58 votes, Leader of the Liberal Democrats Vince Cable said: Today's outcome was entirely predictable. No amount of parliamentary trickery can breathe life back into May's deal. The only route to resolve the crisis is a final say with the option to Remain in ...
Tonight was meant to be a time of deep national gloom for me and millions of people who wanted Britain to remain in the European Union. The second anniversary of Theresa May's triggering of Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty was set to be Brexit Day. But MPs have now rejected her Withdrawal Agreement for [...]
What's the least used station in Northamptonshire? After some thought, you might come up with Long Buckby. But you'd be wrong. The line from Oxford to Banbury cuts through the far south west of the county, and there you will find King's Sutton station.
Having covered the case of Richard Alderman, I had better notice this piece in the Rutland & Stamford Mercury:An investigation has found that disgraced Rutland councillor Richard Alderman did not breach the council's code of conduct. The report by Wilkins LLP, which has been made public this week, found that Mr Alderman, was not acting in an official capacity when he posted a series of offensive comments on social media about national politicians, despite one 'menacing post' being made after he was elected. It also found that in an interview given to the Rutland and Stamford Mercury three days after ...
I wrote a sceptical post when I heard the story about there being the bodies of climbing boys in the chimneys of the Palace of Westminster. It seems I was right. An article on the University of Kent site reports the work of Dr Henrik Schoenefeldt. "My current research project at Parliament has involved undertaking detailed studies of the historic chimney system of the Palace. This involves extensive building surveys and archival research and has provided insights into the unique design of the smoke extract network of the Palace. "This was fully integrated into the 19th-century ventilation system. The research ...
Fri 29th
18:48
Vote Leave drops its appeal over Electoral Commission finding that it repeatedly broke the law
Via the Electoral Commission's Twitter feed comes this news of the Vote Leave dropping its appeal over a series of offences.
It looks like if due to an extension of the Article 50 process that the UK does take part in European Parliament elections then The Independent Group will run candidates, despite the risks involved: The Independent Group has applied to register as a political party in order to stand candidates in any European elections that come about as a result of a long extension of the Article 50 process. In order to be able to put forward candidates on regional lists under the system of proportional representation used to elect Members of the European Parliament, any group must be registered ...
Fri 29th
15:55
Cabinet minister: 'It is May's inability to engage in the most basic human interactions that brought...
BBC Newsnight's political editor, Nicholas Watt, quoted a cabinet minister last night, providing perhaps the clearest insight yet into the Brexit mess. Here's what Watt said: In cabinet, I am picking up complete and utter dispair. I said to one cabinet minister "Why is the Prime Minister holding a vote when she is pretty sure she is going to lose?" and using very strong language, this cabinet minister said to me: "Fuck knows. I'm past caring. It's like the living dead in here." This cabinet minister then went on to say: "Theresa May is the sole architect of this mess. ...
So today, at the fourth time of asking, success! And no, I don't mean Theresa May getting her dreadful EU withdrawal bill through parliament, which lost for a third time, by 58. On not Brexit...Continue Reading The post Transplant +198: Maintenance Rituximab on not Brexit day appeared first on ten pence piece.
This is an excerpt from the Commons debate two days ago on the Letwin/Benn proposal to have a series of indicative votes on Brexit. Jacob Rees-Mogg is wearing an extremely expensive suit and sporting his plummiest accent. He quotes history from the Tudor era, but subsequent events seem to have slipped his mind. He seems to have forgotten a little thing called "The Civil War". Fortunately, the self-deprecating, avuncular Oliver Letwin is on hand to give him a history lesson. My own MP has a substantial supporting role in this video as the twinkly eyes behind JRM. It is worth ...
After a strong hold last week in Esh and Witton Gilbert division in Durham, this week saw another Lib Dem seat up for grabs in Wallington North ward for Sutton LB. Sutton LB, Wallington North LD Barry Lewis 1039 [38.2%; -7.7%] Con 709 [26.1%; +0.5%] Ind 381 [14.0%; +14.0%] Lab 301 [11.1%; -5.6%] Green 166 [6.1%; -2.3%] UKIP 104 [3.8%; +0.5%] CPA 17 [0.6%; +0.6%] LD Hold Percentage change from 2018 With London falling outside of the election cycle this year, the Sutton Lib Dem team were able to run a great campaign to get Barry Lewis elected and keep ...
You are a politician. You have been invited to be on television. You want to drop signals to your supporters about how cool and on message you are, so you hastily arrange a pile of books to be behind you on camera. Dominic Raaaaaaab picked such telling volumes as perjurer Jonathan Aitken's biography of Nixon for his 9 book display. [IMG: [personal profile] ] matgb and I think this would make a good meme. Pick nine books to showcase your political views to the world before you've even said a word. Here's what I would put in my Raab Book ...
On 29 March 1979, polls opened in the Liverpool Edge Hill by-election less than 9 hours after the bombshell vote of no-confidence in Jim Callaghan's Labour Government which I wrote about last night. Whoever was elected could potentially not be MP for very long. It was Liberal David Alton who grabbed the seat from Labour with a massive 30.2% swing. He took his seat the next week, made his maiden speech 3 hours later and fought the election on 3 May where he consolidated his win, albeit with a reduced majority. He remained an MP for the next 18 years. ...
Wera Hobhouse made the case for a People's Vote in the Commons on Wednesday. You can watch her speech here. At the time of writing the embedding thing was broken. The text follows: In 2016, 17.4 million people voted to leave the EU. Today, after almost three years, we still have at least six different Brexit versions in front of us. None of them was on the ballot paper for the people to vote for in 2016. Each defender of their Brexit option makes some claim that it represents the will of the people. That is why we need to ...
Thu, 12:30: https://t.co/vq5A9vMV3a Thu, 12:30: RT @MrNRowcliffe: Painful reading, but necessary. https://t.co/hG2EgBhhNy Thu, 12:56: What Britain looks like after Brexit https://t.co/5IzGgG0Qh9 A piece from the week before the 2016 referendum by Da... https://t.co/zV1OdIA4d0 Thu, 13:00: https://t.co/GvbL4jLOEp Thu, 13:05: RT @mattbxl: This is a very good thread indeed. Broadly agree with the 3 key issues. I'd also flag Parliamentarians and ministers not bothe... Thu, 15:12: RT @BrigidLaffan: Great thread & complements the article https://t.co/6x0Upg2OIg Thu, 16:05: Wow!!! https://t.co/lDsUoiNZRB Thu, 17:11: RT @Feilimoc: The 100 largest EU islands 🏝️ https://t.co/QjuJt1S48t Thu, 19:01: RT @Oxenstierna_IRL: this is very good, astute and on-money analysis, ...
"The person who proves me wrong is my friend". [Socrates] Austerity seems to involve a set of theories and practices whereby the financial and economic matters which resulted in the "crisis" of 2008 are addressed. This seems to involve reducing governmental expenditure on infrastructures so that such expenditure matches or approaches the taxation income. Any difference between infrastructure expenditure and tax revenue seems to be met by governmental borrowing. This facet of Economics seems to be based upon the premises and assumptions of current Economics theory and practice. The precipitating factors in the crisis are to be found in the ...
The British government, the Brexit process and parliament are being held to ransom by ten MPs who represent a narrow sectarian community who since the 17th century have used every dirty trick imaginable to cling to their precarious political perch in Northern Ireland. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) could care less about the rest of Britain. In fact, they don't even consider the majority of the Northern Ireland electorate, who voted to remain in the EU. Every political decision that they make is judged through the prism of the Protestant Ascendancy and political separation from Catholic Southern Ireland. That is ...
HEB meeting 19th March 2019 Sutton Town Centre Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Plan Agreed to go out to consultation Carshalton Village Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Plan Agreed to go out to consultation Housing Revenue Account 30 year Business Plan annual update Agreed Council/Sutton Housing Partnership Management Agreement review Agreed SHP Annual Delivery Plan [...]
It may not apply to us, here in the UK, but the Guardian reports that advertisers will be required to provide verifiable public contact details before they can run political campaigns on Facebook, in the latest attempt by the social network to increase accountability for so-called dark adverts. The move is part of a raft of changes in the buildup to the European elections in May, when citizens from across the EU will vote in new MEPs: Facebook's political advertising restrictions will launch in the EU27 on Friday, following partial rollouts in six countries including the UK, US and India. ...
This blog post is an extract from Nick Silver and Zoe Hodge's book A Guide to New Political Movements, now published on Kindle... From the time of its inception to the Presidential election, La République En Marche had existed for just over one year. Founded by Emmanuel Macron, a strange mix of former investment banker [...] The post The strange phenomenon of En Marche appeared first on Radix.
I came across this youtube video of old photographs of Bootle & Litherland recently and thought it was worth sharing:- www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmvoYiILFQc I spent my whole working life in Bootle so got to know parts of it well indeed. Here are a few of my own more recent photos of the area:- Bootle's North Park Bootle Village Gateway Bootle Golf Course at dawn Balliol Road buildings Bootle Townscape Liverpool – Southport Merseyrail line in the snow just north of Bootle New Strand Station St Monica's Bootle Wallart in former railway tunnell Leeds Liverpool Canal in Bootle Johnsons the Cleaners factory
Only the two council by-elections this week – a Liberal Democrat defence in London and an SNP seat in Scotland. Clackmannanshire Central, Clackmannanshire As ever in Scotland, the council election were originally done as multi-member wards using STV, but with only one vacancy in a by-election, the voting system switches to AV. John Biggam stood for the Liberal Democrats – a particularly welcome move given that there was no Lib Dem the three previous times the ward was up. Clackmannanshire Central (Clackmannanshire) first preferences: SNP: 40.9% (+2.6) LAB: 31.9% (-8.0) CON: 19.8% (+3.2) UKIP: 3.3% (+3.3) GRN: 2.5% (-2.7) LDEM: ...
I have welcomed the decision by Dundee City Council to streamline the Traffic Regulation Order process, to speed up changes to waiting restrictions in the city in future. The process of getting traffic regulations in place to improve parking and access for residents has been utterly torturous in the city in recent years - slow, bureaucratic and not customer-friendly. As an example, Kinloch Park in the West End, next to the entrance to Ninewells Hospital, had single yellow lining agreed, following a site visit with most of the street's residents, Head of Roads and Transportation and myself in December 2016. ...
The Liberal Democrats have slammed the Conservative Government for using tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money to promote Theresa May's controversial speech last week where she blamed MPs for her failure to pass her EU withdrawal deal. Liberal Democrat Brexit spokesperson Tom Brake said the speech itself was "outrageous" but using taxpayers' money to promote it was an "insult" and "really takes the biscuit." According to Facebook's ad library, which publishes a record how much is spent on advertising, the UK Government spent between £12k and £30k in one day promoting the Prime Minister's speech. Since October last ...
The number of children living in absolute poverty across the UK has risen by 200,000 in a year, to a total of 3.7 million.Responding to the government data release, Liberal Democrat DWP Spokesperson Christine Jardine said:"This government should be absolutely ashamed of itself for presiding over the first increase in absolute child poverty in six years."The main culprits - the benefits freeze, the arbitrary two-child limit, and huge cuts to Universal Credit - were policy decisions, not accidents. Yet what would normally be front-page news has been buried by the never ending chaos of Brexit. "The Liberal Democrats refuse to ...
My apologies for lateness this evening, as I've been distracted by the Opening Day of the 2019 baseball season. And, as my beloved Cincinnati Reds won, I'm in a good mood... Tories have pushed 200,000 children into poverty The number of children living in absolute poverty across the UK has risen by 200,000 in a year, to a total of 3.7 million. Responding to the government data release, Liberal Democrat DWP Spokesperson Christine Jardine said: This government should be absolutely ashamed of itself for presiding over the first increase in absolute child poverty in six years. The main culprits - ...
