More trouble for Ed Davey's leadership campaign. This item appeared on the Liberal Democrats' website today:A complaint has been made about Ed Davey's campaign's conduct in its communication with members as to their voting intentions, specifically that they instructed canvassers not to disclose the identity of the campaign they were actually calling on behalf in calls made on the 11th and 14th of July 2020. The Returning Officer has considered this matter carefully and has taken representations from the Campaign. The Returning Officer has found that the campaign, in so doing, acted in a way that was likely to mislead ...
This advertisement comes from a 1945 issue of Punch. The Liberty Shoe factory, designed by H.H. Thompson and built in 1918-19, stood on Eastern Boulevard. It was Listed in 1993 but fell into a state of disrepair and was demolished ten years later. Inevitably - this is Leicester - a block of student flats went up in its place. The factory was topped by its own Statue of Liberty, which is still to be found nearby.
Following the publication of the research report Where next for the Liberal Democrats?, I invited one of its co-authors, Professor Tim Bale, back on the show to talk about what the report found and the lessons for future Lib Dem strategy.
July 2007 was a fairly dramatic month. My mother-in-law came to stay with us to help with B, whose behaviour was becoming more and more challenging. She stayed in Belgium while the rest of us went on our usual holiday, taking in the two Roald Dahl museums in Buckinghamshire and Paul Cornell's birthday party. See also speculation on the future of Latveria, and local megaliths. Paul Cornell was not the only person to have a birthday that month. Because of long journeys (also a work trip to Cyprus with crazy flight connections) and sleepless nights, I managed to read no ...
Last Thursday Clive Lewis a Labour MP was the first non-Liberal Democrat to give the Social Liberal Forum's Beveridge lecture (you can access it HERE ) entitled '21st-century progressive alliances & political re-alignment'. Clive Lewis called for 'a progressive alliance of the mind', involving individuals, campaigns and movements. After outlining the great challenges facing us all today, he said that there is a crisis of democracy in our country, with people turning to the wrong solutions such as Brexit and populism. "Liberalism", Clive continued, "is a powerful political philosophy with important things to say about individual freedom, democratic politics and ...
If Joe Wicks can do PE on YouTube, perhaps we could rope in Bobby Seagull to do some maths. Continue reading →
I have never agreed with the debate around TV censorship, these past few weeks with the broadcasters initially pulling and then u-turning on a string of British comedy programs previously deemed offensive. Many of you would have noticed the return of the 1990s TV Series "The Real McCoy" which was mysteriously "lost" and then subsequently "found" now being shown on BBC iPlayer. The show is a satirical take on Black British culture and the lived experiences of the children of the Windrush generation. The BBC joined other media outlets in removing content found to be racially insensitive in the wake ...
Human rights abuses against Muslim minorities in Xinjiang have been highlighted in UK media in recent weeks, but the phenomenon is hardly new. In fact, ever since the Chinese Communist Party gained power in 1949 the government in Beijing has sought to colonise this "New Frontier" with Han Chinese and to suppress Turkic culture and [...]
"We aren't puritans. We aren't miserable. We aren't automatons. We are liberals. So why oh why is the party resorting to wringing its collective hands about 'unhealthy' Eat Out to Help Out discounts?" Judging by the reaction on Twitter, Max Wilkinson speaks for many party members. Peter Franklin calls on the chancellor to repair the public finances after Covid-19 by introducing a form of land value taxation: "If Rishi Sunak introduces it, we'd be facing a truly remarkable moment in British politics: the first step toward a seemingly impossible political philosophy - Tory Georgism." "A holistic approach is needed to ...
Yesterday I wrote to a friend whom I first met when we both worked as teachers in Papua New Guinea. He is now a Roman Catholic priest and works in the Solomon Islands. He does not have access to the internet and his copies of the Manchester Guardian Weekly arrive in bundles, often months late, so along with personal chit-chat I like to give him up-to-date information. Here's what I found about the incidence of the coronavirus in the various countries in which we are both interested, have friends, or worked. As at 4thAugust, 2020: Country Total deaths Death per ...
The 2019 Autumn Conference approved a generally good Policy Motion F29 Tackling the Climate Emergency, listing actions which reduce UK emissions to net zero within a few decades. It included point 2d - "Greening the taxation system to make the polluters pay and to reward progress towards net zero." This appears to be a statement of intent rather than a genuine action point. I believe that we should go further, committing to a carbon tax designed to: reduce carbon emissions - globally fight poverty protect the UK economy against unfair competition from overseas polluters This might sound a classic trilemma ...
The LGA published its own '7 principles for social care reform' on 27 July. These, each with an accompanying ask of Government, are set out below. More than 30 prominent national organisations from across the care and health sectors acted ... Continue reading →
Tue, 12:56: Terrific from Garret. https://t.co/miIhwGh24a Tue, 16:05: The U.S. Military Is Turning to Science Fiction to Shape the Future of War https://t.co/DVpbN9vh8w Very interesting from @AndrewLiptak. Tue, 17:11: RT @thauma_idesthai: friend of a friend has made a plugin that replaces all instances of "the economy" with "Lord Mammon," and i think this... Tue, 18:29: Listen to the Moon, by Michael Morpurgo https://t.co/eGDkoX24PW Tue, 19:35: From the @telegraph. https://t.co/PEF7sWPsGC Tue, 20:48: RT @jaxel222: This is Katie Ledecky swimming the length of a pool without spilling a single drop of the chocolate milk balanced on her head... Wed, 08:21: I Was ...
Liberal Democrats leadership contender, Layla Moran has highlighted a huge flaw in a Covid life assurance scheme for health and social care workers - nobody knows about it and as a result claims are virtually non-existent. As the Huffington Post reports, to date the government had made just two payouts for key worker deaths on the front line: Despite at least 300 health and social care workers losing their lives after contracting the disease, just 21 claims for the £60,000 had been successful as of July 23 - and only two families had received the cash so far. Now, a ...
Our current government relishes declaring some aspect of the UK's performance is "world beating". However, when it comes to housing policy, we are mostly superlative in all the wrong ways. Between 1970 and 2019, the UK saw the largest increase in the real price of housing of any OECD country. London is perhaps the second most expensive city in the world. "A Review of European Planning Systems" notes that "The UK stands out as a country with very high real rates of growth of house prices and low rates of housebuilding" and infers a link with our usually unpredictable and ...
i) births and deaths 5th August 1935: birth of Wanda Ventham, who played Jean Rock in The Faceless Ones (1967), Thea Ransome and the Fendahl Core in Image of the Fendahl (1977) and Faroon in Time and the Rani (1987), a nice regular spacing of her appearances over the decades. 5th August 1968: birth of Matt Jones, author of TV stories The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit (Doctor Who, 2006) and Dead Man Walking (Torchwood, 2008), as well as the excellent Bernice Summerfield story Beyond The Sun (novel, 1997; audio play, 1998). 5th August 1973: birth of Paul Kasey, ...
Bus service 4 has not operated since the start of the COVID-19 health emergency. As the only bus service covering Windsor Street, Magdalen Yard Road and Roseangle (as well as also passing Pentland and Logie), I asked Xplore Dundee if there is any chance of its resumption in the near future. The company's Operations Manager has responded as follows : "Unfortunately, at this time, we are unable to operate service 4. We have had to concentrate all of our resources on mainstream services to allow for physical distancing measures. I cannot give you any indication of when this will change." ...
