International Nurses' Day has an added poignancy this year. In hospitals across the globe, nurses and other medical staff don't just get exhausted after long shifts, but they risk their lives looking after people with Covid-19, getting them back to ... Continue reading →
Normal People, I read, has become BBC Three's biggest hit to date, with more than 23 million downloads globally. I also read that the show has been dubbed "the raunchiest ever BBC show" because of the 41 minutes of sex scenes scattered through its six hours. These facts may not be unconnected. Normal People, a novel by Sally Rooney, was adapted for the screen by Alice Birch. Alice Birch also wrote the play The Lone Pine Club, which was an affectionate homage to the books by Malcolm Saville. I travelled to Sheringham to see it and then reviewed it on ...
[IMG: What triggered your midlife crisis? A famous person?] One always think of oneself as young till confronted with something from one's past which conveys the message of the ageing process. In other words,...
Michael Meadowcroft points us to a short document on the principles of liberal democracy that he once helped Leeds Lib Dems draw up. Natalie Bloomer is right to emphasise how the government's response to Covid-19 is putting the working class at much greater risk. "All can now see that social care and our system of social support is worth much higher esteem; but how or whether we translate a new mood into a new system is uncertain." Alex Khaldi on social care after Covid-19. Patrick Barkham explains how forest schooling is helping children from every background: "I assumed that most ...
Tue 12th
18:29
We are in the middle of a health and economic emergency. What does Shropshire Council do? Send traff...
There was no market in Ludlow today. The image on this bog was from better times. There never is a market on a Tuesday outside December. Anyways, we have no markets at all now. The town centre is quiet. It is like that everywhere. Shropshire Council's reaction to this has been to send in traffic wardens today to slap yellow tickets on vehicles breaching the confusing rules for parking in our town centre. I asked today council leaders why they were doing this. The response was civil enforcement officers (CEOs) are there "to enforce law and order". To which was ...
A month when I visited Berlin and London for work, and I have a note that I was in Bath too, but am really not sure why. (Anne's birthday fell in the middle of my Berlin trip, so we must have celebrated at the weekend.) I also got a really weird phone call from someone who felt it really important to tell me that "je suis" is "Jesus" with "I" in the middle. At work, I took some time off Crisis Group to do a chunky bit of consulting for my future employers Independent Diplomat. I also applied for a ...
Amazingly, our bin collections have continued as normal during lockdown. I can remember what happens when they are not collected over a long period of time, so am really grateful that the service has not been curtailed. During the Winter of Discontent (1978-79) waste was not picked up for around 4 weeks. Piles of smelly rubbish appeared on the streets and rats were seen. There was no recycling in those days, so food waste was mixed in with plastic and paper. We were encouraged to "Burn or bury all you can" – a rather unfortunate public message to appear on ...
Today, Acting Leader of the Liberal Democrats Ed Davey has raised concerns that the Prime Minister has misled Parliament regarding his response to his question yesterday on the changing of the Government's slogan, calling on Boris Johnson to correct the record urgently.Yesterday, Ed Davey asked the Prime Minister to confirm "reports that neither the chief medical officer nor the chief scientific adviser signed off yesterday's shift in the public health message from "Stay at home" to "Stay alert"?" - which the Prime Minister denied.However, at the press conference yesterday evening both Professor Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, ...
From the Guardian website: Boris Johnson has been accused of misleading parliament by denying that his top medical and scientific advisers had not signed off his government's new "stay alert" slogan. The acting Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, claims the prime minister misled MPs "inadvertently or otherwise" by telling them in a debate in the Commons on Monday that the claim was "not right". Davey has asked Johnson to come back to the chamber to "clear up this discrepancy" and ensure that Hansard, the official record of parliamentary proceedings, is clarified so that it is accurate.Well done, Ed. Boris Johnson ...
Tue 12th
15:00
Covid-19: We are long past the point where we should give the UK government the benefit of the doubt
Political conclusions drawn so far from the horrific tragedy of COVID-1,9 and the lamentable UK response, have often been hurriedly deployed in support of a range of political viewpoints. Perhaps the most common is that the regrettable UK response has been due to the NHS being starved of funds due to 'austerity'. Per person NHS budgets have been squeezed over a long period, and this almost certainly contributed to the NHS's problems, and more money is needed, but it cannot be the whole story; or even perhaps the main story. The UK spends the same or more on health, and ...
It was at the Squash World Masters at Cologne in 2010 that I first met Jim Dougal. The tournament got off to a rather rocky start, despite having the tournament director who had run a successful European Masters tournament in Krefeld about a year before. After a crisis meeting a couple of days in, things [...]
It is understood that output from the party's General Election 2019 Review panel will be published this coming Friday. In February, the party's Federal Board announced Dorothy Thornhill, member of the House of Lords and former Mayor of Watford, as chair of the diverse team of 15 people with deep and varied experience of related fields. They were tasked, in the words of the party President Mark Pack, with conducting: ...a review into both the General election and the European elections. This review will be run independently of those who ran the elections, with a panel of experts who have ...
The one thing that any government needs during a pandemic is accurate information to enable ministers to properly direct resources and make decisions on the restrictions that need to be imposed to keep us all safe. It was disturbing therefore to find that Betsi Cadwaladr and Hywel Dda university health boards failed to report 85 and 31 Covid-19 deaths respectively. As Wales-online reports, the reason for this was that they were not using the correct IT system. As the Chair of the Senedd's Public Accounts Committee says, a significant amount of public money has been spent on NHS ICT systems ...
There seems to be something in either our British psyche or our system that pushes us towards conflict rather than co-operation. It is right that the government should make proposals, and that the opposition parties should, where necessary, criticise them and propose alternatives. I'm happy with that: it is our system. Sir Keir Starmer is treading a fine line between probing the the holes in the government's often vague and inadequate proposals and avoiding too bellicose an approach which could alienate the electorate which is still largely supportive of the government. The Tories are still 20 points ahead in the ...
Every cloud has a silver lining. The coronavirus pandemic is no exception, and I don't just mean a bump in profits for Amazon, Zoom and face mask manufacturers. The health crisis has sparked a priority rethink. What is more important, seeing family and friends or the latest pair of Jimmy Choo shoes? Who is more important to society: bankers and lawyers or dustmen and nurses? Do lives come before the health of the economy or vice versa or are they inextricably tied? Do we prefer the roar and pollution from cars and planes or the sound of birdsong, the smell ...
Mon, 12:56: RT @FinancialTimes: Why I've had to change my mind about networking https://t.co/yxTvZaAB6D Mon, 13:14: RT @StephenFarryMP: I can confirm that I have also received advice from PSNI regarding a loyalist threat. Solidarity with @patsymcglone @St... Mon, 16:05: RT @GarethFouche: I'm not crying, you're crying. https://t.co/UbybXkxhAq Mon, 17:11: Thoughts from a churchyard https://t.co/lArsK1Q21m Filling in the hours during the pandemic. Mon, 18:51: The Long Song, by Andrea Levy https://t.co/dX4pUjoNtL Mon, 20:48: RT @NewYorker: A cartoon by Brooke Bourgeois. https://t.co/w6CVDGMwKn Mon, 22:37: RT @MSmithsonPB: My nomination for the fool of the day. Surely an MP would know that opposition leaders ...
What difference with the new Gov strategy make?Changed arrangements?As local councils and firms wade through the 60 page document issued yesterday about what we are now allowed to do, and wait for the additional guidance coming today - it is unclear what it will mean for local services from tomorrow. Don't expect sudden opening up of lots of thingsPlay areas and outdoor gyms will stay shut under government instructionsCourts eg basketball at Kingsgate, fishing, and possibly tennis (if cleaning arrangements can be sorted) will be open, but only on the strict social distancing rules, so groups playing a basketball game ...
Tue 12th
09:24Non-publication of SAGE minutes could mean that the government are taking decisions contrary to the ...
Over on the Debated Podcast there is an excellent interview with Judith Bunting, a scientist by training, who was PPC for us in Newbury and West Berkshire in 2015 and 2017, and also MEP for the South-East of England from 2019-2020. Will Barber Taylor engages with Judith on the following topics: How Judith had an "absolutely seminal" moment at the 2011 Feltham and Heston by-election, while knocking on doors for our candidate, Roger Crouch. She felt a calling to help the residents. The sharp difference of standing as a PPC for Westminster, where door knocking and name recognition is everything, ...
Today, 12 May, is St Pancras's Day and also Steve Winwood's birthday. So it's always a big deal here on Liberal England.
From Dundee Rangers Service : What sort of buzzing and crawling things live in your garden or local green space? Join the Dundee Rangers Service online and share what you've found. We might not be able to get to you, but by the magic of modern communications you can share film/pictures of your discoveries with us and we can tell you about them. We'll be online waiting for your queries and will do our best to answer them! Remember to be careful not to hurt yourselves or the animals you're filming. Use gloves and small paintbrushes (to brush the creatures ...
