After our European election leaflet delivery today, we popped into the Dunston Festival at Dunston UTC. Sadly, I couldn't stay long (but I was there long enough to get a burger!) as I had to drive Fiona Hall back to her car for her next event in Newcastle. It was good to see the Dunston Lib Dem Councillors at the festival as well (see photo above). Like me, all 3 had been delivering European
Fiona Hall, the lead Lib Dem candidate for the North East in the European election, visited Gateshead today. Quite a few people turned up to help so we split into a number of teams. I took Fiona and two others to Festival Park to deliver the estate. From there we went to Windmill Hills in Bensham. Other teams delivered in Dunston, the Staiths Estate and Felling. Lots of leaflets went through
From BBC News this evening: The Liberal Democrats have lifted the suspension of former leader David Steel, according to a senior party source. Lord Steel had the whip removed over comments he made to a child abuse inquiry about the late MP Cyril Smith. The source told the BBC that the whip had now been restored while the party recast the procedure being followed in its investigation into the comments.Lord Steel was suspended after telling the inquiry that Cyril Smith had admitted abusing youths to him. One odd thing about this affair is that Steel told us the same thing ...
There's a sentence I never thought I'd write. Don't get too excited, but look at this... European Parliament voting intention: BREX: 34% (+6) LAB: 21% (-7) LDEM: 12% (+5) CON: 11% (-3) GRN: 8% (+2) UKIP: 4% (+1) CHUK: 3% (-4) via @OpiniumResearch, 08 May Chgs. w/ 23 Apr — Britain Elects (@britainelects) May 11, 2019 * Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
BBC News wins Headline of the Day. The judges had to go for a lie down afterwards because of all the excitement.
Crest Nicholson has planning permission for 137 homes in Ludford parish off Foldgate Lane. This was controversial at every point but was approved by a planning inspector who had spent a few days in the area. That's history. The housing is set to be built. Now plans have been submitted from the owners of the Grade II listed Foldgate Farm for a further five homes in their orchard. Impact on heritage, site access and the impact on the orchard are likely to be the biggest issues. The application has been submitted from Richard and Clare Maddicott (19/01940/FUL). Their agent describes ...
Earlier today I headed over to the constituency of Labour arch-Leaver Kate Hoey for a spot of #StopBrexit campaigning.
When Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader Jo Swinson spoke at the Liberal Democrat European Parliament election manifesto launch, she had a simple message: bollocks to Brexit.
You can buy them from Awkward Squad in black with yellow print for curvy people, yellow with black print for less curvy people, black with yellow print for less curvy people, and also a non-t-shirt tote bag for your focus leaflets. In the event I make any profit (and full disclosure, in the time I have been running the store I've made a small loss because it costs £10 per month to run) it will go to LGBT+LDs to fund pride packages. [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
Fri, 12:56: How John Smith's death changed the course of British history https://t.co/rE3AzfQ80Z An interesting counterfactual. Fri, 16:05: Don't fear the eurosceptics https://t.co/eMuWVfp6Zc Robust stuff from Daniel Gros. Fri, 17:11: RT @everywhereist: You know what? Vasectomies are reversible. Why not just make all men get them? And then if they're truly ready to be a f... Fri, 22:05: RT @Otto_English: Withering take-down of Claire Fox, Farage and the Brexit Party in this week's Private Eye. https://t.co/8g0lwM4VVL Fri, 22:05: RT @gerrylynch: Why no massive social media campaign about Brexit Party candidate Claire Fox's support for the legalisation of child porn a... ...
The BBC are their own worst enemy. They don't appear to understand the concept of balanced reporting, often allowing people to get away with challenging incontrovertible facts in the interests of airing an alternative opinion to their main guest. They have consistently promoted Nigel Farage above any other politician, most recently allowing him to dominate a Question Time debate without the chair reining him in, and hosting him on that programme over 30 times. And on Radio Four's Today programme, presenters consistently take a pro-Brexit line in their questioning, whilst on other radio stations some of the most outrageously inaccurate ...
Except in Northern Ireland, the d'Hondt electoral system will be used to elect UK Members of the European Parliament. The d'Hondt system is a party list system, it allocates seats to parties proportional to their share of the vote. But the small number of seats in each region means that the seats can only be allocated at an approximation to proportionality. That approximation gets better as the number of seats in a region increases, but even in a ten seat region it is a pretty rough approximation. What tends to happen is that the higher proportions of votes are over ...
One of my favourite posts on this blog is the one about Bill Nettlefold. He was a minor poet of the 1930s whom I met as a teenager and later found quoted in the introduction of the Penguin anthology Poetry of the Thirties. The poem quoted in that introduction, an odd and angry denunciation of T.S. Eliot, was the only Bill Nettlefold poem I had ever found. That was until a couple of days ago, when someone very kindly posted three more of his poems as a comment on my original post. They are all derivative of the young W.H. ...
Campaigners, outside Maghull Town Hall trying to save Sefton Borough's high grade agricultural land from development. I think I first met Peter Greener in 2011, although it could have been earlier, when we were fighting a planning application that would have breached the Green Belt on the western side of Lydiate. It went all the way to a Planning Inspector's Inquiry which was held at Bootle Town Hall over a couple of days. Peter, myself, Andrew Blackburn, Robbie Fenton (Andrew, Robbie and I were at the time Sefton Councillors for Park Ward) and a representative of the Sefton Branch of ...
That's the title for the talk I'm giving on Monday night for Merton Liberal Democrats, with Lib Dem supporters from other areas very much welcome to attend too.
Some thoughts on how the Liberal Democrats are doing - and rather an unusual week for the party as it comes to the end of Vince Cable's leadership.
