My Twitter feed is exploding with outrage at Iain Duncan Smith's knighthood. Why should the architect of the hated Universal Credit be honoured? But that outrage has been turned on the wrong target. Universal Credit, which takes six benefits to which working-age people may be eligible and merges them into one payment, has long been advocated by welfare experts. The problem lies not with the system but on the government's unwillingness to provide enough funds to make it work humanely. Remember that IDS resigned from the cabinet over this issue in 2016. Here is part of his resignation letter:Throughout these ...

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England

April "I am a Liberal. I want to be able to get on a train at St Pancras and take a pork pie anywhere I damn well please." I had a go at those elitist Remoaners you here about. And I got all philosophical on my readers' assess: "Things are transient: we are more permanent." I found the site of Stamford's medicinal spring beside the Welland. Donald Trump was invited to pay a state visit to Britain and I pointed out that we used to know how to deal with such unsavoury visitors. Read how the people of London dealt ...

Posted by Jonathan Calder on Liberal England
Sat 28th
17:19

Electability

II is now a given of UK politics that whoever Labour elects as its leader, he or she will be scorned, derided, misrepresented, mocked and denigrated by the 80% of our press that supports the Tories. In my own adult lifetime Harold Wilson was patronised for having been a King's Scout, liking HP sauce and apparently decorating a wall inside No 10 with a flight of pottery ducks. Neil Kinnock was routinely derided as a "Welsh Windbag." Ed Milliband was pilloried for having a Marxist father and intelligently eating bacon sandwich (hint, hint, he's actually Jewish so should be eating ...

Posted by Peter Wrigley on Keynesian Liberal

Third para of "She Was Good-She Was Funny":In the meantime there was plenty to do. Walt hauled water uphill by sled from a hole he had chopped in the lake. He split and stacked firewood. He shoveled snow from his rather lengthy driveway. He taught himself to cross-country ski and visited his few and odd neighbors.Second para of third story in My Morning Glory and other flashes of absurd science fiction: "My man," he says, sliding into the booth. "Where's Vera?" Two very short collections by David Marusek (who I met when we were room-mates for the 2004 Worldcon in ...

Most Shropshire councillors arrived at December's council meeting by car. It seems that habit has conditioned them to be oblivious to the need to calm our streets. To reduce speeds in residential streets. To make them safer. Equally important, to make them more pedestrian friendly. To encourage mutual respect between different ways of travelling. To promote active travel - by foot and on cycles. The council did agree to introduce 20mph outside schools. But most of the Conservatives voted against areawide 20mph limits to slow traffic on residential streets on the instruction of the council leader Peter Nutting. That is ...

Posted by andybodders on Andy Boddington

Second and third paragraphs of third chapter: — Athos ! Porthos ! Aramis ! Les deux mousquetaires avec lesquels nous avons déjà fait connaissance et qui répondaient aux deux derniers de ces trois noms, quittèrent aussitôt les groupes dont ils faisaient partie et s'avancèrent vers le cabinet, dont la porte se referma derrière eux dès qu'ils en eurent franchi le seuil. Leur contenance, bien qu'elle ne fût pas tout-à-fait tranquille, excita cependant, par son laisser-aller à la fois plein de dignité et de soumission, l'admiration de d'Artagnan, qui voyait dans ces hommes des demi-dieux, et dans leur chef un Jupiter ...

The Sound of Music won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1965, and picked up another four: Best Director (Robert Wise), Best Music (Irwin Kostal), Best Sound Recording and Best Film Editing. Doctor Zhivago also won five Oscars that year, beating The Sound of Music for three of them. The other Best Picture nominees were Darling, Doctor Zhivago, Ship of Fools and A Thousand Clowns, none of which I have seen. For once, IMDB users agree with the Oscar voters, with The Sound of Music on top of one ranking and second to For A Few Dollars More on the ...

Sat 28th
13:16

And Then We Danced ****

Georgian traditional dance, truly a form of ballet, is an expression of the nation's soul, but it it is also a manifestation of the age-old human mating display. The girls glide gracefully, their eyes focused on the ground, in virginal modesty, while the young men stomp and strut their stuff, like peacocks on parade. Just [...]

Posted by jonathanfryer on Jonathan Fryer

I picked up this postcard at Wirral Transport Museum recently and having tracked the same photo down in the book 'Southport in the age of the tram' by James Dean & Cedric Greenwood I can say that the authors say this of it:- Company cars 16 and 11 pass on Lord Street at the junction with Eastbank Street Square about 1907-08. The book credits the photo to the Geoff Price Collection. They go on to say that the neo-Elizabethan timbered building on the right is Lomas's (later Cannell's) a high-class fashion store which opened in 1905 Click on the photo/postcard ...

Posted by Cllr. Tony Robertson on Sefton Focus
Sat 28th
11:00

My tweets

Fri, 15:27: The monuments of Laeken cemetery, especially those by Ernest Salu https://t.co/nf1v4n4n1c Fri, 18:11: Revelation of the Daleks: novelisations by Eric Saward and Jon Preddle https://t.co/V1r8pvUT5A Fri, 18:54: RT @kateheartfield: Overall I find Wikipedia really useful for a historical fiction writer, but last night around 2 a.m. I discovered what... Fri, 20:48: RT @eugenewei: The original Blade runner was set in 2019, and wow did it ever nail some predictions about life today! https://t.co/8AKCQdrx... Sat, 11:13: Fifty shades of white: the long fight against racism in romance novels | Books | The Guardian - published in April,... https://t.co/ZoUw7CLihD Sat, ...

YouGov

Many of our readers will remember speeches given at Conference by David Buxton. They were notable because they were given in British Sign Language. On each occasion a member of the wonderful BSL interpreting team switched roles and gave the spoken interpretation. At the end we all showed our appreciation with jazz hands instead of the usual clapping. David was our Parliamentary candidate in East Hampshire, where he increased the Lib Dem vote by a very creditable 9%. But: I've ended up having to pay £5,000 out of my own pocket for sign language interpreters, which has been very disappointing ...

Posted by Mary Reid on Liberal Democrat Voice

I don't have a lot of sympathy for Tom Watson when he says that he left parliament because of the "brutality and hostility" he experienced within Labour. In the Guardian, the former Deputy Leader of the Labour Party says that even though he was renowned in the party as a savvy organiser and occasionally brutal scrapper, Watson said he left in part because of the aggression he had faced within Labour. He said at one point police told him that a Labour supporter had been arrested for making a death threat via the party that Labour officials did not inform ...

Posted by Peter Black on Peter Black

Congratulations to the fellow Liberal Democrats spotted so far in this year's honours list, and do let me know of any omissions. Liberal Democrat peer Floella Benjamin (known to many as the former Play School TV presenter) becomes a dame for her services to charity: I am buzzing with excitement like a little girl. I just feel so happy and thrilled, and honoured and privileged to be able to accept this honour. For the last 40 years, I believed that you have to give back and you have to try and think about other people as much as you can ...

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack

Entries to the city's 54th Annual Photographic Competition are now welcome, with a closing date of 3rd February 2020 Open to all photographers living within the boundaries of Dundee, and to all members of Dundee Photographic Society, the competition is run every year in conjunction with Dundee City Council. Full details are available here and if you have any queries, please contact Dundee City Council, Neighbourhood Services on 434781.