Umm... NEW: Cross-party group form "MPs for a Deal". In a joint statement Stephen Kinnock, Rory Stewart, Norman Lamb and Caroline Flint said: "Even at the eleventh hour it's not too late to agree a deal to ensure an orderly exit from the European Union." — Michael Savage (@michaelsavage) September 6, 2019 Rightly popular though he is in the Liberal Democrats for his efforts on issues such as mental health, I suspect quite a few Lib Dems will read that and quietly give thanks that he is standing down at the general election.
Of the various Lib Dem activities I've been doing in the past couple of years, one of them has been acting as a council member for the Social Liberal Forum. The SLF was founded as an anchoring and organising group for the party's centre-left and left in February 2009, and functioned as a centre of [...]
Gosh, that's embarrassing. Yesterday evening, I came home from a meeting of my County Association of Local Councils and felt the urge to both write it up for my blog and produce a report for my Parish Council and clean forgot about Liberal Democrat Voice. And so, you get a bumper(ish) edition at the end of what has been an utterly bewildering week... Luciana Berger MP joins the Liberal Democrats (covered here) Lib Dem membership rises to over 120,000 Bill to stop no-deal passes through the Lords Lib Dem membership rises to over 120,000 The Liberal Democrats have today announced ...
Fri 6th
22:00
"God I felt in the right place" LDV talks to Dr Phillip Lee MP about his dramatic entrance to the Li...
It was a moment of high drama. As Boris Johnson started his statement on the European Council on Tuesday afternoon, Phillip Lee walked into the Commons Chamber. Rather than turn left to the Government benches as he had every time since his election in 2010, he turned right and took a seat next to Jo Swinson. This afternoon I spoke to him, just after he had been talking to the Washington Post and he relived that moment. It wasn't easy on a personal level. You can imagine, I was a member of a political party for 27 years, I've got ...
Liberal Democrat councillor Andy Boddington reports from Ludlow: Good news on the pothole front. Our town is riddled with potholes and a bumpy ride is quite normal. While a few of the big potholes have been patched, the backlog remains large. The council's consultants have now identified 82 defects within Ludlow that require repair. ... They will be repaired overnight on 9-11 September.Which gives me an excuse for posting another photograph of the town and this headline.
Earlier this year Newcastle, Gateshead and North Tyneside councils published proposals to tackle illegal levels of vehicle emissions in the urban core around the Tyne bridges. Two proposals were put forward. The first was for a toll payable when using one of the bridges. The second was for a clean air zone which would have charged the more polluting vehicles. My problem with the first was that
Over on The Times website you will find this gem: Sir Nicholas is more horrified by Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Commons leader. His behaviour this week, lolling on the front bench, was "repulsive", he says. "He is in serious danger of believing his own shtick. He is an absolute fraud, he is a living example of what a moderately cut double-breasted suit and a decent tie can do with an ultra-posh voice and a bit of ginger stuck up his arse. You do not behave like that as leader of the House." Both men went to Eton but Sir Nicholas says ...
Fri 6th
18:38News from the Membership Department - 60k people joined us this year - and how to get a replacement ...
There are now (as of the time I'm typing) 120,995 members and 17,083 registered supporter of the Liberal Democrats. That's a record high – and means that just shy of 60,000 people have joined the Liberal Democrats as either a member or supporter this year. Most of them have joined, since fantastic local elections in May. This latest membership surge comes after six months of extensive work to try and make membership better for everyone. This all started with the implementation of the Supporter's Scheme – which enabled us to do some really extensive work on the party's membership database ...
Second paragraph of third chapter: New Ararat had been quiet all through the Fifth Harvest Festival; the nearby gas giant Naphil put out more heat than it received from 23 Kranii, and Naphil's orbit around its star was very close to circular, so harvest happened all year round. Shun-Company had decided on a rotating schedule of Harvest Festivals, where the children, who had little else to do but sweep floors, herd goats, weed herb patches, fettle agricultural machinery, tend the comms station in the Best Parlour, and clear the South Field of meteors, could weave little dolls of potato leaves ...
It's not only current MPs joining the Lib Dems. Member of Parliament for Stoke-on-Trent South 2005-17, Rob Flello, has now joined the Liberal Democrats: The Rubicon is crossed. I've just ended my decades long commitment to a Labour Party I no longer recognise and joined the @LibDems @ChukaUmunna @lucianaberger — Rob FlelloPersonal (@RobertFlello) September 5, 2019 Welcome one and all. If you're one of the new members, you may find this useful. Or if you've got lots of new members in your patch, this may help.
Rebecca Hanson (Bootle), Lib Dem Leader Jo Swinson & Keith Crawdron (Sefton Central) are ready to take on Jeremy Corbyn's MP's in Bootle (Peter Dowd) and Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) constituencies when the starting gun is fired for the soon to happen General Election.
There's much good to be said about how key Liberal Democrats use Twitter effectively to reach the media, opinion formers, members, supporters and the wider public.
On Wednesday, wearing my Sunniside History Society chairman's hat, I went to Bamburgh Castle and Seahouses on our annual outing. 21 of us took the trip. A good time had by all. Photos from the trip are above.
In preparation for a prime ministerial visit to our allotment, we have finished digging the ditch!
On behalf of Liverpool Liberal Democrats, I have welcomed the news that Luciana Berger has joined the Liberal Democrats. I do so not only as the Leader of the Lib Dems in Liverpool but also as the now ousted Lib Dem PPC for Liverpool Wavertree! Yesterday was an exciting day which started at 9.15 with a call from Jo Swinson giving me the news. I was able to tell her that I was certain that Liverpool Lib Dems would be supportive of this. We had already agreed as a Party to not fight against as a Change UK candidate. We ...
I've covered this issue a number of times on this blog site and am still sceptical of smart meters myself. Here's an article from the USwitch web site:- Would be interested to hear of others views though, both positive and negative.
The Evening Standard has the scoop: In an exclusive interview, the Remain campaigner announced plans to stand in The Cities of London & Westminster with a campaign billed as a mini-referendum on Boris Johnson's threat of a no-deal Brexit. Sitting Tory MP Mark Field had a reduced majority of 3,148 at the 2017 election in the constituency where 72 per cent of residents voted Remain in 2016. Mr Umunna said: "I worked as a solicitor in the City and West End and I know they are the last places that should be represented by one of Mr Johnson's MPs who ...
Thu, 12:56: RT @thhamilton: The trouble with "Jeremy Corbyn is stopping us having an election" as an electoral attack line is that voters can only vote... Thu, 16:05: Reader, he blocked me. https://t.co/8tMacsS5dn Thu, 17:11: RT @redhistorian: The last time Conservatives accused Parliament of defying "the will of the people", they ended up supplying weapons to pa... Thu, 17:54: RT @K__McGee: You can translate "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" into Ancient Greek as Ταχίστη αλώπηξ βαφής ψημένη γη, δρασκε... Thu, 18:01: The Berlin Trilogy, by Jason Lutes https://t.co/WPuO3hE0pM Thu, 18:19: RT @severincarrell: BREAKING Boris Johnson memo ...
As opportunity unfolds with the current political crisis, the Liberal Democrats could appoint a unit to examine three issues on which the Party can lead. Coupled with its grass roots organization, these initiatives, messaged skillfully, could help propel the Party into government. Their aim would be to ensure that:- The United Kingdom's political system never again produces the geographical and economic divide that has led to a critical mass of citizens feeling ignored and left-behind. Europe's modern institutional structures create both regional cohesion and sovereign flexibility so that the type of divisiveness experienced in Britain is addressed long before it ...
Fri 6th
10:23
Shropshire Council says that a development of just eight homes on the Linney will lead to a loss of ...
The numbers are shocking and I am sure they will be challenged by the developer. A calculation by Shropshire Council's tree team suggests that around 644 trees will have been lost during the lengthy seven year saga to develop the site at the rear of Linney House on the banks of the Corve, if the current development of eight homes is given the green light to go ahead. This is a high end estimate. It more likely that only a third of that number will be lost without replanting. The council's tree team notes that only an indicative landscape plan ...
Much confusion comes to a head even among those who should be more articulate when there is talk of money outside micro-economics. Most recently with the Libra being touted by Facebook and Friends and with mini-BOTs in Italy. My purpose here is to offer a neglected approach with the intention of enabling a better understanding of what is happening, not the detail. In particular, how mini-BOTs might be designed to defeat the objections of Gresham's Law, which says that bad money drives out good. Essential features of money are often overlooked: 1) Money is, first and foremost, for paying taxes, ...
The man who very politely asked Boris Johnston to please leave my town, and in doing so helped to create a hashtag for our times, spoke for many of us. The Prime Minister is trying to emulate Trump, but his bumbling is convincing nobody, even devout Brexiteers, who were amongst many of his critics when he was in Wakefield yesterday. And who was it who agreed to allow Johnston to politicise police cadets in the way he did, using them as a backdrop for his highly politicised pro-Brexit speech? In doing so he failed to even tend to the cadet ...
History does NOT repeat itself. But that does not mean that there are no parallels between the past, the present and future or that we cannot learn from the lessons of the past. At the moment Remain pundits are busy drawing comparisons between the dark days of 1930s with the current state of British and world politics. The populists and Brexiteers dismiss such suggestions as fear mongering and claim that the dark clouds on the horizon are actually the sunny uplands. History is not an exact science. Political axioms cannot be tested in a sterile laboratory environment that allows historians ...
After quite the few days in British politics, we have three council by-elections this week, two of which feature Liberal Democrat candidates. Wainbody, Coventry James Morshead stood for the Lib Dems in a ward where in the party's best days it finished third and in its worse fifth. No more, however, because he and the team took the Lib Dems up into second with a big swing from Labour: Wainbody (Coventry) result: CON: 53.2% (+1.8) LDEM: 21.6% (+16.0) LAB: 18.6% (-16.4) BREX: 6.6% (+6.6) Conservative HOLD. No Grn (-5.0) and UKIP (-3.0) as prev. — Britain Elects (@britainelects) September 5, ...
Following the recent opening of the West End Community Fridge, I have been in further discussion with the Service Manager - Environment in the council's Neighbourhood Services to get the promised improvements at the Miller's Wynd car park undertaken. I am therefore pleased to have been advised that the walling repairs and removal of weeds have now taken place :
Lib Dem candidate Tracey Henry came within 32 votes of winning a safe Labour seat in Hull tonight. Such a huge leap forward for @traceyuk40 and her team from @libdemsinhull in St Andrew's and Docklands Ward. More than tripled vote since May. Labour 837 Tracey Henry (Lib Dem) 805 Con 193 — ALDC (@ALDC) September 5, 2019 * Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
