Govt must review exports of security equipment to US Lib Dems: PHE report fails to properly address inequalities in our society Govt must extend transition given NI Assembly vote Govt must review exports of security equipment to US Responding to news that President Donald Trump has threatened to use military force to quell protests in the United States following the murder of George Floyd, Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs spokesperson Alistair Carmichael said: Today the US President threatened to use force against his own citizens. As things stand, our Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister have stood silent. Their silence is shameful. ...
I forgot to post this one yesterday, so I'm already not living up to the title... Castrovalva is the first Doctor Who story featuring Peter Davison as the Doctor, and for the first time in one of these DVDs I've ... Continue reading →
Tue 2nd
21:39
Lord Bonkers' Diary: The former has upped sticks to Seattle and the latter has fled to China
Today Lord Bonkers turns to the Coalition, which is younger readers may remember. Incidentally, he met Clegg last year just before he began his new job in the US. Tuesday Do you remember the Coalition? I have memories of it, though it might be more accurate to speak of "flashbacks". Whenever I questioned their actions, Clegg and Alexander assured me they were making Britain a better place to live. Yet now I find that the former has upped sticks to Seattle and the latter has fled to China. You may feel that rather gives the game away. Lord Bonkers was ...
Simon Beard explains the importance of compassion in the public health response to the current pandemic: "The impact of Covid-19 on people's mental health will depend greatly on how we respond to it. That is why a group of psychologists and I have put together a briefing note through the Association of Liberal Democrat Engineers and Scientists arguing how we could combine health, education and social policy interventions to form a a compassion based approach to recovery and resilience." "The difficulty in sustaining the assertion that Corbyn might have won, if 'Blairite' officials had not sabotaged the campaign, is that ...
Tue 2nd
19:48
Unwelcome guerrilla Covid-19 signs in Ludlow, scarecrow strangers, and ambiguous signs that lead to ...
Last Saturday, Shropshire Council fixed signs around Ludlow town centre promoting Covid-19 social distancing. By Monday, some had been defaced and many had been removed. Others had been covered over with Covid-19 conspiracy messages. Guerrilla signage promoted the "Shropshire Corona Resilience Network" with the message "Fraud Pandemic". I think we are all going a bit mad during lockdown. Nothing is madder than stealing scarecrows from Knowbury and planting them at random locations around the area, including The Buttercross. They were a children's project. That's where what might have seemed to be a good joke turns sour. There is considerable confusion ...
I wrote yesterday about Derry Girls as one of the shows I have been enjoying during lockdown. Another, Unorthodox, is also a Netflix show: in an internal poll of my Brussels colleagues, it came out the clear winner, so we gave it a go, and we thoroughly enjoyed it. It's the story of Etsy, from an ultra-Orthodox community in Brooklyn, who flees a bad marriage in Brooklyn to try and find her mother in Berlin, and ends up finding much more than she expected; meanwhile her husband Janky and his disreputable cousin Moishe go to Berlin to try and find ...
I've talked often enough in the past about the problems with Liberal Democrat hustings, especially in all-member ballots such as for party leader. The standard format traditionally imposed on most hustings is dull. A series of hustings take place around the country, eating up huge amounts of time for relatively small overall attendance. At each, questions have to be addressed to all the candidates, often are taken in groups and follow-up questions frequently not allowed. It all makes for blandness. It doesn't put candidates on the spot. It doesn't test out them out. It doesn't make them have to be ...
After Happy Monday, today is Blackout Tuesday. I have mentioned before that I have been attending the Great British Home Chorus during lockdown. Every weekday at 5.30pm Gareth Malone leads a 30 minute rehearsal from his garden shed – the broadcasts are usually live, with all the risks that entails. Yesterday, he didn't start with a warm-up as expected but spoke from the heart about racism and the fallout from George Floyd's murder in Minneapolis. It was a very powerful statement, and you can watch it here: Gareth Malone then introduced us to his own beautiful 4 part arrangement ...
Being a Liberal Democrat member since 2014, I have unfortunately seen the complete collapse of the Liberal Democrats in respect of having any real continuous identity. Our "identity" today is a remembrance of the broken Brexit movement, and, like most voters, it is questionable to say what the Liberal Democrats really stand for apart from bitterness. Yes, we did do very well in terms of our opposition to Brexit and I, like many others, fought hard for us to Remain. But Brexit itself, as an argument, is finished. And it's time for the Liberal Democrats to go through a series ...
Each state in the United States has its own army, called the National Guard, under the control of the state governor. In the present emergency, following the tragic death of George Floyd, some state governors have felt that their local police forces were about to be overwhelmed and have used the National Guard to reinforce [...]
[IMG: Hyperloop all cutaway] Concept art of Hyperloop inner workings Today, my work in Europe is nearly complete. The European Parliament committee gave its final vote in favour of an "opinion" for which I was responsible before the UK's MEPs' untimely exit from Brussels. I was working with advisers assessing amendments from all parties until the last hour of my last working day. In the next month or so, the subject goes to full parliamentary Plenary session as part of the bill entitled "The Strategic Innovation Agenda for the European Innovation and Technology Institute (EIT), to encourage innovation and talent ...
Congratulations to Lola Beal aged 9 - the winner of the competition to design a logo for Yate Ageing Better Competition. Her prize is a session in the Armadillo cinema room with her friends and family once it reopens. She designed tree of life topped with interconnecting circles, reflected the objectives of the YAB project in bringing our community together as well as illustrating how life for all of us in an ageing community can be very fulfilling with many overlapping life experiences and activities. Councillor John Gawn Chair of the YAB Committee commented: All the designs were very good. ...
The statue of Lloyd George in Parliament Square As a relatively new member I'd like to share an observation. I've come to suspect that there's a propensity for retrospection within our party, a tendency to look back to days gone-by, to times of greater influence and power, to reminisce of beloved leaders of a bygone era. A sense of shared history can help any group of people to bond, to define the group identity. It can provide a sense of comfort and continuity. It can even provide hope. Yet there's a subtle difference between that and a common outlook, a ...
One of my favourite wines is Chateau Musar, a rich, earthy red that has been produced in Lebanon for the past 90 years from grapes grown in the Bekaa Valley. Wine production in that region is far, far older, however. In fact, drinking alcoholic beverages such as wine, beer and aniseed-flavoured araq in the Middle [...]
Mon, 12:56: RT @CER_IanBond: I really enjoyed this piece by @hugobrady for @IWM_Vienna on @donaldtuskEPP . I know he wasn't everyone's cup of tea, espe... Mon, 15:07: The fan who gave the Hugos their name will celebrate his 100th birthday tomorrow. https://t.co/jJMdNIi2sP Mon, 16:05: RT @JewelStaite: I keep getting different versions of "I used to have a crush on you but now I don't" because of my posts lately. Like...?... Mon, 16:30: RT @FreemaOfficial: Man is morally responsible for his acts because man has the freedom to will good or evil & the intelligence to know the... Mon, 17:11: The ...
Dictatorship, populism, authoritarianism are all slippery terms of political shorthand. But then so is democracy. Even Hitler reckoned he was offering an alternative form of democracy because he, "ein Fuhrer," was serving "ein Volk." Authoritarian regimes tend to defend their crimes with reference to "the people." Following the Second World War the communist bloc spawned a plethora of "People's Republics" in Eastern Europe. One year after the tanks rolled into Prague as the vanguard of an invasion to crush the Prague Spring of 1968 by Soviet and other Warsaw Pact forces, I visited Prague, Bratislava and Brno with a small ...
During the Coronavirus crisis, YouTube have worked to try and filter out what they deem as disinformation on CoVid. The first big example of this was removing David Icke's channel from the site after he'd done a few videos on the virus from his own unique standpoint. For some of you, this might be easily justified – Icke dabbles in extreme conspiracy theory mongering, the most famous example being his assertion that the world is run by shape-shifting lizards. I am not here to defend Mr Icke's views. Yet I think that removing his channel was the wrong decision. Not ...
"Testing statistics still fall well short" of official standards - that's the damning verdict from the Chair of the UK Statistics Authority, David Norgrove.
It is said that the winners take the spoils, and with regards to the 2016 referendum on leaving the EU, that certainly seems to be the case. The Guardian reports that an artificial intelligence firm hired to work on the Vote Leave campaign may analyse social media data, utility bills and credit rating scores as part of a £400,000 contract to help the government deal with the coronavirus pandemic. The paper says that the company, Faculty, was awarded the contract by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government last month. However the full details of its work for the ...
It's a busy time putting the Liberal Democrats back on track: the big independent election review, a leadership timetable, plans for an online party conference that would be a first for British politics, creating a new party strategy, updating our policy and more.
A mock-up of a Class 777 – The new Merseyrail trains that will soon replace the Class 507/508 EMU's I've not actually snapped a new Class 777 live so the two shots in this posting are of the the mock-up which was on public view a while back at Liverpool Lime Street Station and Pacific Road in Birkenhead. However, there are videos appearing on You Tube now of the testing of the first batch of new units on the Merseyrail Network and here's a link to one:- www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOzovLI3Qno&feature=youtu.be This shows a Class 777 at Sandhills and at Bootle Oriel Road ...
It was a good decision. A task and finish group set up by Shropshire Council had recommended that hefty annual charges should be imposed on businesses for having A-Boards outside their property. The brakes were put on that proposal at the council's cabinet yesterday councillors expressed unease about yet another charge on small businesses, especially at a time when they will be struggling due to recover from Covid-19. I remain opposed to charges for A-Boards but we need stronger guidance on where they are placed. We should only introduce charges if retailers don't follow those new guidelines A-Boards. Unfortunately, the ...
I want to describe his trip to Durham during the lockdown as somewhere between "grossly irresponsible" and "utterly foolish". But it is a little too easy to write him off. This is the man who took a pile of grievances about things that had little to do with the European Union and coalesced them into a vote for Brexit — even though this will make life worse for most of those who voted for it. This is the man who (apparently) took last year's parliamentary stalement and Boris Johnson's illegal prorogation of Parliament and enabled the Tories to win a ...
2 big stories The controversy over the death of George Floyd continues and the Chair of the Liberal Democrat Campaign for Race Equality, Roderick Lynch, notes; Just as we have a moral obligation to speak out against the injustice we're witnessing in the US, we also can't ignore the failings here in the UK. In the UK 26% of instances of police using firearms are against black people, despite black people making up only 3.3% of the population. 51% of young men in custody in the UK are from black, Asian or minority ethnic backgrounds, despite these groups making up ...
Further update - for Tuesday 2nd June - from Councillor Fraser Macpherson (West End) and Councillor Craig Duncan (Broughty Ferry) : SELF EMPLOYED AND FURLOUGHSelf-employed people whose work has been affected by coronavirus will receive a "second and final" grant in August. They will be eligible for a second payment in August of up to £6,570. The Chancellor has also set out how employers will have to start sharing the cost of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme. From August they will have to pay National Insurance and pension contributions, and then 10% of pay from September, rising to 20% in ...
