New stats demand wellbeing be addressed at heart of Government The Liberal Democrats have called for the appointment of a Minister for Wellbeing and new wellbeing assessments to make sure laws "empower people to live healthier lives." The call comes in response to new statistics which reveal increasing anxiety and depression among young women aged 16 to 24 years while only half of young people said they were satisfied with their health. Liberal Democrat Health Spokesperson Munira Wilson said: The impact of poor and overcrowded housing, insecure employment and our broken welfare system on the mental health and wellbeing of ...
The death of the actor Frank Windsor was announced today. In the 1960s he was, if not the most famous police officer on television, then the most famous sidekick. His character John Watt accompanied Stratford Johns' Charlie Barlow through the popular series Z Cars and Softly, Softly. You can view them both in this clip from a 1968 episode of Softly, Softly. We first see Frank Windsor with my early hero Norman Bowler as Detective Sergeant Harry Hawkins and then the mighty Stratford Johns comes in. BBC Genome tells me that this episode (Take Them in Singles) was first broadcast ...
Liberal Democrats condemn Tories' attacks on rule of law Government must prepare for international 'lifeboat' system for Hong Kongers, Liberal Democrats warn Liberal Democrats condemn Tories' attacks on rule of law In a policy motion passed this evening at the Liberal Democrats' Autumn Conference, the Party has condemned "Dominic Cummings' long history of attacking the rule of law". The motion stated "the rule of law is fundamental to our society", calling for the Government to drop plans "to restrict judicial review, weaken the Human Rights Act or undermine the rule of law in any way". Following the motion being passed, ...
Second paragraph of third chapter:Before bed, I had written to Glisselda about Abdo and Lars's success. A page boy interrupted my breakfast with an invitation to the Queen's suite. I put on a nicer gown than I would have otherwise and went to the royal family's wing of the palace. The guard, who was expecting me, let me into an airy sitting room with high ceilings, salon couches around a tiled hearth, and draperies of gold and white and blue. At the back of the room before the tall windows stood a round table set for breakfast, and behind it ...
From BBC News: Norbury Hill, situated between the Stiperstones and Long Mynd in Shropshire, has an asking price of about £200,000. The Middle Marches Community Land Trust wants to bring the 94 acres back into public ownership and has raised most of the funds it needs. The trust is appealing for pledges to find the last £50,000 in 24 hours. Oliver Goode, from the land trust, said: "It [the hill] used to be wonderful flowerage meadow, which has gradually diminished over time. "What we want to do is bring the whole meadow back into its former glory so it can ...
or With Merseyside/Liverpool City Region being somewhat the centre of attention presently due to the recent spike in Covid 19 it's been interesting to hear how the media and politicians interchange Merseyside with Liverpool City Region. I've even seen a posting on Twitter explaining what Liverpool City Region is made up of as even on Merseyside it's a matter of some confusion with Joe and Jane Public. First a bit of history. Merseyside was created as part of the big local government reorganisation which came into effect in 1974. It comprised and indeed still does comprise the council areas of ...
What caused Brexit? Was it inevitable? Why do the right love fighting culture wars even though each culture war gets fought on more liberal territory?
Fri 2nd
17:30
Weekend for wellies and brollies as Ludlow and the Marches get Amber Warning for Storm Alex rain
The Meteorological Office, the Met Office to you and me, has issued an Amber Warning for rain along the Marches from midday tomorrow, Saturday. We are used to rain here. There has been a Yellow Warning for rain in place since yesterday. And you don't need a warning to know it is wet out there. Today's Amber Warning is more serious. We are promised a deluge of rain from midday Saturday until 6am on Sunday. At the moment river levels are low for the time of year so we are not yet expecting flooding from the Corve and Teme. But ...
Throughout history the Caucasus region has been one of the world's key geopolitical fault lines and a potentially explosive ethnic, religious, cultural and political melting pot. It links Europe and Asia. It connects the Black Sea to the riches of the landlocked Caspian. It straddled the Silk Road which connected the Turkic-speaking tribes which stretched from Anatolia to China's troubled Xinjiang region. The Caucasus region is at the centre of dividing line between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Islamic world of Central Asia. It has been disputed, fought over and occupied by the Ottomans, Russia, the Mongols and Iran. ...
This post first apppeared on the Radix UK blog... I am one of the few people in theUK to have written at any length about the need for authenticity. As such, it ought perhaps to be me who points out what a thoroughly bad idea it is to use robots in care homes to counteract loneliness. That was the story on the front page of a recent Guardian, and it seems to me to suffer from the whole corrosive technocratic worldview which brought us exam grades by algorithm and government by tickbox. It reminds me horribly of the ideas put ...
Now that the European Commission has made good on its threat to go to law following the UK Government's refusal to remove sections from the Internal Market Bill, Liberal Democrat Brexit Spokesperson Christine Jardine said:;"Contrary to the belief of senior Government figures and their families, breaking the law has consequences. It beggars belief that Boris Johnson and his Government seem to think that not only are they above the law, but they can get off scot-free when breaking it."How can Ministers seriously condemn other countries, like Russia and China, for failing to respect international treaties if they don't do the ...
Responding to reports that the Home Office is considering converting disused ferries to process people seeking asylum in the UK, Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesperson Alistair Carmichael said:"We all want to prevent people from making dangerous attempts to cross the Channel, but these absurd Home Office proposals are not the answer."Tory Ministers are showing no regard either for the wellbeing of asylum seekers or the island communities they want to turn into detention camps."Instead of coming up with ever more impractical, ever nastier ways of treating asylum seekers, the Government must restore safe and legal routes to sanctuary for refugees ...
Council by-elections have restarted with a four-way contest (three Independents, one Labour) in the ward that covers the various smaller islands on the northside of the Orkney Islands. The far flung nature of the ward helps explain its electoral oddity: there is only one polling station, and it is not in the ward. Unsurprisingly, postal voting is common. North Isles (Orkney) first preference result: IND (Woodbridge): 69.9% (+46.1)* LAB: 17.3% (+17.3) IND (Stevens): 8.2% (+8.2) IND (Adams): 4.6% (+4.6) Independent HOLD. *Daughter succeeds father.https://t.co/JIuQ2Kh6o7 — Britain Elects (@BritainElects) October 2, 2020
Having long campaigned on LDV for Universal Basic Income, it was heartening to see UBI adopted as party policy at Conference. The challenge now is to transform Conference vote into a credible manifesto commitment, and a persuasive electable UBI policy. Recent LDV articles have advocated UBI on various grounds, including Leyla Moran on precarity, Paul Hindley and Daniel Duggan on social justice, Anton Georgiou on inequality, and Jane Dodds on empowerment. Others including Malcolm Berwick-Gooding have asked how UBI can be funded. Chris Northwood and George Kendall have proposed income tax, and Darren Martin a transaction micro-tax. The web site ...
I am delighted to post about some new craft items available in my Etsy shop, including cards and crochet. Click here to go straight to the shop. Set of four bright abstract cards. Crochet cotton household cloths. Acid Green Cotton Twine Coasters. Fridge Magnets suitable to Post.
There was a heartening article in The Guardian yesterday with the headline "Paul Stephenson: the hero who refused to leave a pub - and helped desegregate Britain". Paul Stephenson is a black Briton who in 1964 refused to leave a pub in Bristol after he was told by the landlord "We don't want you black people in here - you are a nuisance." He was arrested and spent several hours in a police cell. He was cleared and awarded damages in the subsequent court case, which was widely reported in the press. The repercussions from his act of defiance must ...
There are so many different rules and regulations concerning COVID-19, even within England, that it is not surprising that many people are confused. Even the Prime Minister the other day "mis-spoke" about the Rule of Six that the government had announced about the limit to any group meeting together. That rule was immediately broken by [...]
Thu, 12:45: RT @AndrewCreak: Some nice news for 2020, Belgium now has a trans deputy prime minister! Congratulations Petra De Sutter!! https://t.co/Pe... Thu, 12:56: A Message from Members of the UK and Irish Publishing Community — The Second Shelf https://t.co/OOkRV6qrTZ Non-binary lives are valid, trans women are women, trans men are men, trans rights are human rights. Thu, 15:14: RT @lowflyingrocks: 2020 SN6, 5m-10m in diameter, just passed the Earth at 6km/s, missing by 976,000km. https://t.co/R2PKGFCzZz Thu, 16:51: RT @HamillHimself: That debate was the worst thing I've ever seen & I was in The Star Wars Holiday Special. Thu, 17:11: ...
It's been another surprisingly eventful month, given how quiet things have been in recent years, with the emergence of the Gateway 14 project dominating our thoughts. There's no doubt that, with the District Council as the developer, something will happen, although what that is may take some time to emerge, especially given the damage to the economy caused by the pandemic, and the changes in how we are likely to work going forward. Parish Council met on 21 September to agree our strategy, and concluded that, whilst the plans are effectively just a draft outline, our aim should be to ...
The BBC report on the conclusions of parliament's Welsh Affairs Committee that "negligible" progress has been made by the UK government to replace EU funds in Wales after Brexit. They say that the committee views the absence of detailed plans to replace £375m a year in European funding as showing a "lack of priority": Currently, Wales and other nations in the European Union receive EU Structural Funds to support economic development - such as infrastructure, businesses and skills - with poorer regions receiving greater investment. With higher levels of economic deprivation, Wales received five times more in funding per person ...
A year ago, I presented a motion to Shropshire Council calling for a county tree bank. The motion was carried. The idea was to seek a modest financial contribution from everyone who had to remove a tree but could not replace it. This would purchase trees to be given to suitable homes. The motion also asked the council to plant at least one tree for every resident by 2050 - a minimum of 350,000 trees. During the debate, councillors bemoaned the loss of the council's popular community tree scheme, which had been dropped due to budget cuts. Now the scheme ...
i) births and deaths 2 October 1932: birth of Gabriel Woolf, who played Sutekh in Pyramids of Mars (1975) and voiced the Beast in The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit (2006). He also voiced Rossiter in the Big Finish Sixth Doctor audios Arrangements for War (2004) and Thicker Than Water (2005). (We don't see his face, no no photos.) 2 October 1950: birth of Ian McNeice, who played Winston Churchill in several Eleventh Doctor stories between 2010 and 2011. 2 October 1972: birth of Graham Sleight. Happy birthday, mate! ii) broadcast anniversaries 2 October 1965: broadcast of "The Exploding ...
Wendy Chamberlain is the new Liberal Democrat MP for North East Fife and her cat Hobbes is competing to be Westminster's top cat You can read his manifesto and vote for him on the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home website. Hobbes, I am informed, is named after Hobbes in Calvin and Hobbes and not after the philosopher.
