When I was young the actor Roy Kinnear was a permanent presence on television. He died in September 1988, aged 54, following a riding accident while filming in Spain. This tribute to him was broadcast the following month.
I have a four legged friend called Chester, he's a Chocolate Labrador and it seems that, like me, he enjoys riding trains. Chester waiting for his train at Rice Lane Station He and I have escaped from Roy Connell, his owner, a couple of times now and spent some time riding on Merseyrail. We have travelled from Ainsdale to Maghull and more recently had a run out on the Kirkby line. It turns out that prior to my taking Chester on a train he'd never been on one! Fancy that 10 years old and never been on a train, that'll ...
The year began with a big push at work on the future status of Kosovo, with a full-scale report and also an op-ed by me. We also did a report on the EU's crisis response capacities which I'm still rather proud of, and got me a quote in the Washington Times. My new intern, A, from Kazakhstan, started working with me. I went to Rome to speak to the NATO Defence College, spoke at the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, and also to Ljubljana to brief the Slovenian foreign minister as he took up the OSCE Chairmanship-in-Office. Here's me waiting ...
On each page of the BBC News website there is a link to Why You Can Trust BBC News. Whilst there are more untrustworthy sources, such as the Daily Express daily warnings of blizzards and the Mail warning us about foreigners, especially that Duchess of Sussex troublemaker, the BBC is not quite as trustworthy as it would have us believe. Take this article about Netflix. It is attempting to attack Netflix on the grounds that it declared a profit of just £2.35 million. It quotes a think tank with estimates of subscribers, revenues and profits. This think tank has an ...
If you were told about a researcher for Lloyd George, who had links with George Orwell, who became a journalist and flew with Hitler and then discovered a famine in Ukraine, which Stalin wish to keep secret, you would have believed it was the plot for a film. It is, but it is also based on fact. The film "Mr Jones" is on General Release from 7th February. It shows how a young Welshman (and a Liberal), Gareth Jones, who had worked for Lloyd George, in 1933 gained a visa to visit Moscow to seek to obtain an interview with ...
As Ed Davey has said in a speech reported on this website, "if Brexit has taught us anything, it is that there are many serious divisions to fix. The UK is divided by inequality". And he added that those who voted for Brexit did so "because your communities have been let down for decades. Because Governments have ignored you". I would suggest that voters are not actually protesting against Europe but rather against the many changes caused by extreme 'Milton Friedman' economics over the last 40 years. To repeat a paragraph from a previous article of mine published on this ...
[IMG: CANZUK and dependencies] On Friday the UK left the European Union and has now entered a transitional period, intended to develop a trade agreement with the EU and other areas in the world. I feel, therefore, that it is important to discuss what our party should be doing moving forward, and can see that there will be a good deal of debate over this and the options, most likely: rejoin as soon as possible, rejoin after a time or other alternatives. Here, I shall make the argument for the latter case and chiefly examine what I believe to be ...
Mon, 12:32: RT @StevePeers: 1/ The Commission has just published the proposed negotiation mandate for the future EU/UK relationship: https://t.co/zhinK... Mon, 12:56: RT @jonworth: Also this is why I'm not going to follow Brexit as closely from now on. Until UK faces up to the trade-offs inherent in the p... Mon, 12:57: RT @davidallengreen: The 1688 "glorious revolution" was contested for another sixty years in Great Britain, effectively ending only with an... Mon, 16:05: How the SNP must change if Brexit Day is to be followed by Independence Day https://t.co/EmicyWpzw2 @ChrisDeerin se... https://t.co/VEtXk2SLvz Mon, 18:31: Roots and Wings: Ten Lessons ...
What should Lib Dems do now? Should we just be campaign to rejoin the EU? Or something else? I suggest that we fix Brexit first. Last year people voted Conservative because they thought Brexit was a distraction from Britain's real problems. Over 70% of the public thought this. Most people who voted Remain thought this. They thought that the only way to get Brexit out of the way, was to push it through. Of course this isn't true. Brexit isn't over. And we'll be stuck with the problems it creates for decades. But if we campaign to rejoin straight away, ...
Since the Seabraes bridge opened in 2015, I have had to report numerous lift breakdowns to the City Council and there have again been problems recently. I have now been updated by the Team Leader in Dundee City Council's City Development Department Infrastructure Team, as follows : "Following discussion with our internal property colleagues, the recent fault with the lift has been with the landing call buttons 'which when pressed' have not called the lift as highlighted by your constituents. I have been advised that the buttons were recently replaced, however this has not completely resolved the problem. Lift engineers ...
