"If it could only be like this always - always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe and Aloysius in a good temper."Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
Lucy Furlong explains the genesis of her recent chapbook Sward. Published by Sampson Low, Sward: Skin of the Earth is the product of my last walking and writing project centred around Tolworth (for now). Six months plus of walking up and down the central reservation of the A240 from Tolworth Roundabout to the end of the Royal Borough of Kingston Upon Thames and the boundary with Surrey. Sward was a performative series of radical walks, of reclamation and acknowledgement that this central reservation, a slim strip of grass, trees, and in some places cracked pavement, concrete and detritus, is a ...
Caroline Close and Emilie van Haute's collection, Liberal Parties in Europe, is a substantial, serious study coming in at just under 400 pages and with an eye-watering academic price tag to match. Ranging over 28 countries, 20 of which get more detailed study, this comparative work investigates how liberal parties have evolved over time, their similarities and their differences. A notable comparative theme is how liberalism produces party structures that tend towards more decentralisation and greater power for individual members. One comparative theme that is under-developed in the book is the importance of the rules of politics, especially the choice ...
Friends, Lib Dems, countryfolk, lend me your ears. I come to bury the coalition, not to praise it. But I'm not here to damn it either. I just want to move on. Same-sex marriage. The Green Investment Bank. The tripling of our renewable energy usage. All Lib Dem policies that we should be fiercely proud of. But, if we're going to celebrate them, we need to acknowledge that they came at a human cost – and that we voted for that. As a party, we are too quick to brush off these people who we hurt as collateral. We shrug ...
Hello! I'm Mark Pack, author of both 101 Ways To Win An Election and Bad News: what the headlines don't tell us, along with maintaining the largest database of national voting intention polls in the UK, stretching back to 1943. Although most attention understandably and rightly is on other things, the polling companies running semi-regular voting intention polls. Below the table, you'll find the option to sign up to email updates about new polls and also a set of answers to frequently asked questions about political polling. You might also find my podcast interview with one of the UK's leading ...
An important trial opened in Istanbul today, though the 20 defendants are not present. These are 20 Saudi men accused of complicity in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018 when he called at the Saudi consulate to get documentation ahead of his wedding to his Turkish fiancée, Hatice Cengiz. Security cameras captured [...]
Most liked photograph: https://instagram.com/p/CBniuvngLNx Most viewed and liked video: https://instagram.com/p/CAfqCjDg8X4 The two above both had four comments, as did this: https://instagram.com/p/B9qqwyGg5CQ
Much lighter than Picard, we also watched the six episodes of Staged, a comedy starring David Tennant and Michael Sheen as two actors called David Tennant and Michael Sheen, with their wives Georgia and Anna playing fictionalised versions of themselves, and writer/director Simon Evans and his sister Anna playing fictional versions of themselves too. There are also cameo appearances from a couple of very big names as themselves, and Nina Sosanya plays the funder of a theatrical production of a play that David and Michael have signed up for. Here's the BBC trailer:New comedy series #Staged, starring #DavidTennant and @MichaelSheen, ...
Tories sneer when they use the term "left wing". They point to the terrible failures of authoritarian states like North Korea. But if left wing is about poverty reduction, why do we let them call North Korea left wing? In contrast to its northern neighbour, South Korea has had extraordinary success in reducing poverty, whereas "leftwing" oil-rich Venezuela has been a catastrophe. If some states that call themselves "leftwing" aren't, the same is true of political activists. In 2017, Jeremy Corbyn proposed a radical manifesto. But the IFS and the Resolution Foundation found that Corbyn's manifesto failed to reverse many ...
My pursuit of the writings of David Lloyd George has turned up Then and Now - Economic Problems after the War a Hundred Years Ago by Mrs H. A. L. Fisher, with an introduction by Lloyd George. Fisher compares the economic disruption following the Napoleonic Wars with that following the First World War. Lettice Fisher was an economist and historian, and chaired the executive of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. During the Great War she was a welfare worker amongst the munitionettes of Sheffield. The hardships she saw suffered by unmarried mothers led her to found the National ...
Fri 3rd
14:15
Three things we don't need in this leadership campaign: a goody, a baddy and more policy
In politics it's always tempting to think we can resolve problems by resorting to the same old solutions. That usually involves lionising a goody, demonising a baddy and a rollicking good debate about policy. In the debate over our leadership, I'm seeing many people seeking to create a goody and a baddy, and loads of people banging on about policy. But I don't think we should be focusing on those in this leadership campaign. Here's why. Let's start with the first problem. The traditional good v bad argument. We need to stop this nonsense. The fact that Ed served in ...
There is a current running through this government. It is one of confusion. But, despite my best efforts to not impune motives, I am coming to the view that the current running through this government is one of callousness. Not always intentional, but incredible, too. Sometimes the callousness is because of the confusion.The one caused by the other. So we have loss of life due to Covid-19 in the highest numbers per head of population in the world, caused by lack of testing, tracing, PPE, etc. But that is only a part of it. Confusion here is in the delivery, ...
What's the best book I've read? The worst? Or the one I've never got round to finishing? Find out the answers to these and more in my appearance on Iain Dale's Book Club podcast: The President of the Liberal Democrats talks about his book BAD NEWS: WHAT THE HEADLINES DON'T TELL US and in a new feature on the podcast we take him to a desert island where he chooses the books that would help him wile away his days. Long-term readers will not be surprised to know that Anthony Price and Eugene Burdick feature in my answers. We also ...
Thu, 12:56: Xi's Hong Kong Power Play Puts China Ever More at Odds With West https://t.co/E2lb16UP65 From @PeterMartin_PCM. Mea... https://t.co/bNWuejei8W Thu, 15:03: New paper from @AndrewDuffEU: https://t.co/u35TDM35s1 UK shd accept the overall architecture proposed by the Commis... https://t.co/q24tW2UXqe Thu, 16:05: Moldova Shuts Down Bootleg Helicopter Factory https://t.co/wKQ7NeMAtB Headline of the month. (OK, it's early in the month.) Thu, 16:32: Marriage next. https://t.co/TTcuocOcTj Thu, 17:11: Jaka's Story: What It Was in 1988, and What Cerebus Used to Mean https://t.co/fup8U7zPbu Where Dave Sim went wrong. Well argued. Thu, 18:14: Thursday reading https://t.co/eFEBbLOZjC Thu, 18:44: Top Facebook posts H1 2020 https://t.co/keOGqy5scY Thu, 20:27: ...
An open letter to the candidates for Leadership of the Liberal Democrats. 3rd July 2020 Dear Leadership Candidate, Though the espoused commitment of the Liberal project to achieve racial equality within the UK may indeed be sincere, a lack of diverse representation at all levels of the party betrays the fact that as liberals we have found it inexplicably difficult to practice what we preach. In a post imperial, post-Brexit Britain, the rightful place for British Liberalism surely, should be at the vanguard of the fight for racial justice and equality. Yet on issues of race, we find ourselves perennially ...
A welcome adoption of the electoral system favourite with Liberal Democrats, the Single Transferable Vote (STV), by the Labour Party. Elections to Labour's National Executive Committee (NEC, the equivalent of the Liberal Democrat Federal Board) will use it in future, as the Electoral Reform Society reports: Good news from a successful campaign this week: the Labour Party has scrapped First Past the Post voting for its National Executive Committee elections. It means constituency representatives will now be elected using the gold standard of PR: the Single Transferable Vote. The ERS campaigned for the move alongside Fair Internal Labour Elections, Open ...
Fri 3rd
10:12
Bromfield Post Office and Village Shop to close from the end of August - we need to think of alterna...
Ludlow Farmshop has announced that Bromfield Post Office & Village Shop will close permanently on 31 August 2020. This is a big loss to Bromfield parish, whose residents have benefited from the convenience of a local store, along with postal and banking facilities. But the operation has been loss making for several years. Those losses, funded by the Earl of Plymouth trustees, have increased. Covid-19 has been the final blow. With the temporary closure of The Clive and Ludlow Kitchen, and reduced trade on these reopening, no more losses can be sustained. It is expected that post office staff will ...
It is true to say that new technology has revolutionised our lives, especially during the current lockdown, but there is always a downside, and in this case it is our environment. The Guardian reports that a new UN report has found that at least $10bn (£7.9bn) worth of gold, platinum and other precious metals are dumped every year in the growing mountain of electronic waste that is polluting the planet. They say that a record 54m tonnes of "e-waste" was generated worldwide in 2019, up 21% in five years. The 2019 figure is equivalent to 7.3kg for every man, woman ...
It is becoming increasingly clear that the clique now in charge of 10 Downing Street, though first class campaigners, are not much good at responsible government. In campaigning they won the Brexit Referendum against all the odds, and then an 80 seat majority in the Commons. Sadly they use the same techniques in government as proved so successful in these campaigns: wild promises, exaggerated ( world beating) language, distortions of the truth, careless optimism. The choice of tomorrow , Saturday 4th July, for an easing of social restraints, is a prime example of this: a well-known holiday date, and a ...
Tony was a Conservative councillor in the Maghull area of Sefton Borough in the 1980's and 1990's. If memory serves he represented Park Ward for a number of years until the late 1980's when a political power shift took place in the Maghull & Lydiate area and the Lib Dems came to the fore. Tony was also a member of Maghull Town Council which is where I came to know him following my election to that Council in a by-election in 1985. Again, if memory serves, I think he continued to be a member of the Town Council until the ...
As the COVID-19 era has progressed, more and more data has pointed towards a deeply harrowing truth – the virus is having a disproportionate impact on BAME groups. According to research from ICNARC, approximately one-third of the COVID-19 patients admitted to Intensive Care Units (ICUs) have been from BAME groups, despite the fact that just 14% of the UK population is BAME. Added to this, black ethnic groups have experienced the highest diagnosis rates, and both black and Asian groups have experienced higher death rates than the white British majority. In order to understand this disparity, it is important to ...
i) births and deaths 3 July 2001: death of Delia Derbyshire who arranged Ron Grainer's theme tune to make it as we knew it from 1963 to 1979. ii) broadcast anniversaries 3 July 1965: broadcast of 'The Watcher', the first episode of the series we now know as The Time Meddler, with newly acquired companion Steven fainting on the Tardis floor and then refusing to believe that they are in 1066. Features the First Doctor picking up a Viking headpiece and asking, "What do you think this is? A space helmet for a cow?" One of the great episode endings ...
Residents will recall that I recently highlighted the need for "gull proof" bins on Riverside Drive near to the Bridgeview Café. I raised this with the City Council and have received the following helpful update from our local environment manager : "An update on the bins beside the Bridgeview Café. We managed to locate the 3 gull proof bins that were originally installed at this location and removed by the contractors on the building of the sea defences. These were installed back at their original locations yesterday and the other litter bins removed. Hopefully this will resolve the problems we ...
