Liberal Democrats: Rising unemployment shows Chancellor must do more Liberal Democrats: Record high hate crimes must be combatted Liberal Democrats: Rising unemployment shows Chancellor must do more Responding to the statistics released this morning showing that unemployment has reached 4.5%, the highest level in over three years, Liberal Democrat Treasury Spokesperson Christine Jardine said: Today's figures throw into stark and depressing relief the scale of the issues facing families and businesses and act as a reminder that the Chancellor must extend more help. Liberal Democrats have warned that by prematurely ending the Furlough scheme, this Government is potentially leaving thousands ...
It's an extraordinary moment in the covid crisis when the govt begins ignoring SAGE & even the CMO says the tier system doesn't go far enough. We support a circuit breaker – otherwise the cost to lives & livelihoods as well as to jobs in our communities may be too harsh to bear. — Ed Davey MP [IMG: 🔶] [IMG: 🇪🇺] (@EdwardJDavey) October 13, 2020
Maybe Uther Pendragon never lived at Tintagel Castle, but recent archaeological investigations suggest that it did flourish as a high-status settlement just after the Romans left Britain. And the Arthurian connection is one of the things that brings visitors to this spectacular site on the North Cornwall coast. It used to be a difficult one for visitors to access or interpret. Sometime in the 14th or 15th century a natural land bridge collapsed here, taking part of the castle with it. What was left looked like two fortresses facing one another across a chasm. In 2019 an elegant and spectacular ...
A while ago a reader pointed me to the article The smug style in American liberalism by Emmett Rensin, suggesting there were lessons for liberals and the left in Britain.I think he was on to something: By the 1990s the better part of the working class wanted nothing to do with the word liberal. What remained of the American progressive elite was left to puzzle: What happened to our coalition? Why did they abandon us? What's the matter with Kansas? The smug style arose to answer these questions. It provided an answer so simple and so emotionally satisfying that its ...
On both sides of the Atlantic we appear to be led by men (yes, mostly men) who have thrown away all pretence of honesty and consistency and are prepared to behave shamelessly in order to achieve their ends. In this country the government has promised that nothing shall be done in any future trade deal to undermine Britain's high standards of farming. OK, says the House of Lords, so let's amend the Agriculture Bill so that our higher standards of food safety and animal welfare are enshrined in law. Not necessary, says the government, because that's what we're going to ...
Second paragraph of third chapter:This week, for example, I visited Peru for the first time (one stop on the metro) courtesy of the Cebichería-Marisqueria restaurant. Luckily, I was with friends who were regular customers (he Catalan, she Peruvian) because although the menu was written in Spanish, it was a Spanish liquidised over the centuries with Quechua (now the fifth most spoken language in Catalonia), not to mention Aymara and the numerous tongues of the Amazon. Not understanding a word, I stared, nonplussed, at dishes such as cebiche, chicharrón, and papa a la huancaina until my friends did the ordering for ...
Luisa Porritt has tweeted this today: I'm delighted to have been selected as the @LibDems candidate for Mayor of London. Thank you to everyone who voted for me! I'm looking forward to introducing myself to more Londoners over the coming months and showing them my vision for our capital. #Luisa4London pic.twitter.com/CmFI7tBGPe — Luisa Porritt (@LuisaPorritt) October 13, 2020 On being elected, Luisa said: I love London - it's where I grew up and it has given me so much. But existing challenges of rising costs and climate change alongside the impact of Covid-19 mean that this is a crucial moment ...
Tue 13th
15:20
Party Awards: Thay Thayalan, a strong campaigner with a problem-solving, can-do attitude
Our third Party Award features Thay Thayalan, former Mayor of Kingston, who won the President's Award at this year's Conference. Watch the whole Party Awards segment below and read the full submission in support of Thay under the cut. * Long standing commitment to anti-racism and equalities issues both in the community as well as now on the Council * Founding member of Kingston Racial Equality Council (KREC) * Has been Chair of KREC and on its Board for many years * Has a real problem-solving and can do attitude * Has helped bring the sometimes disparate parts of the ...
[IMG: Lump of coal (Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez (Lmbuga Commons)(Lmbuga Galipedia)Publicada por/Publish by: Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez / CC BY-SA (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/))] Since 1974, applications have been welcomed each year around this time from residents of Folkestone to apply for the Town Mayor of Folkestone's Christmas Fund for assistance with their winter expenses. Prior to 1974 this was known as the Mayor's Coal Fund and gifts of coal were distributed to those eligible. Each year local business and individuals make donations to the Mayor's Christmas Fund and payments are then sent in January to Folkestone residents aged 75 and over who ...
The government has turned crisis into catastrophe by deciding to retain the 2021 GCSE and A Level examinations and institute rigorous mock exams beforehand. It displays a woeful ignorance of teaching and learning, combined with a total failure to learn from past mistakes. Students have not been at school for six months and their return this autumn is marked by further periods of absence due to Covid-19 outbreaks and quarantine requirements: something highly likely to increase as autumn turns to winter. The current pressure on both students and teachers to catch up on missed learning, while managing ongoing disruptions in ...
Writing for the Independent, Vince Cable notes that the public health measures necessary to curb Covid-19 are falling most heavily on the Red Wall seats that gave Boris Johnson his majority last year: Residents in these afflicted areas would have no particular reason to blame the government for their misfortune were it not for one piece of serious incompetence. In most countries where there are areas with rising infections there is an effective test and trace system to isolate clusters and super-spreading individuals. Germany, Korea, Sweden, China and Japan are, in different ways, controlling the disease in this fashion. Highly ...
The SAGE meeting on 21st September warned that covid cases may be doubling every week and that a package of interventions would be needed to bring R below 1. This didn't happen. Cases continued to rise from 4,368 that day to 13,972 yesterday. Yesterday the Prime Minster announced his new (urgent, delayed and briefed for a week) three tier system of local measures. This amounts to: – a Medium tier of no change – a High tier of no household mixing indoors – largely no change for authorities already under local measures, though a useful simplification, and adding Nottingham, Glossop ...
The UK Government's undoubtedly genuine attempt to encourage people to retrain in the face of mounting unemployment came unstuck yesterday, when they put out a rather crass advert that not only stretched credibility but also underlined their own neglect and underfunding of the arts. As the Independent reports, officials were foreced to pull a heavily criticised advert that suggested a ballet dancer could "reboot" her career and retrain as an IT worker amid the coronavirus pandemic. Prime minister Boris Johnson's official spokesperson admitted the advert, which was launched amid anger at the relative lack of government financial support for the ...
The month of October in the UK is celebrated as Black History Month (BHM), which I must admit, I was not aware of till couple of weeks back. So, when I read about it, I thought 'why not to write few lines for the people like me who may have not paid much attention to BHM?' Black History Month is celebrated to recognise the struggle of black people for equal rights and civil justice. This celebration of BHM is for achievements to the contribution of black people, who, despite so much hardship, strive to contribute to humanity in every way. ...
Mon, 12:56: 8 Science Fiction Novels by Authors of Color for the End Times https://t.co/RUZbcPY3i8 Starts with @tochitruestory. Mon, 13:08: Whoniversaries 12 October https://t.co/mEopoP6TiN Mon, 18:40: June 2008 books https://t.co/1gi8njYSCo Mon, 19:06: RT @AndrewPRLevi: .@AlokSharma_RDG the panic in this message is unhelpful. No one knows what the UK-EU relationship will be. That's on yo... Mon, 20:07: This is hugely entertaining. @GregHands in fluent German, he and @DavidMcAllister using "du" to each other. I hope that the Youtube channel has English subtitles/translation for those who can't follow the original. https://t.co/aHxJiirABG Mon, 21:33: In general I will cheer the Cambridge team against ...
Camden councillor and former MEP has been voted by party members to be the party's new candidate for Mayor of London.
i) births and deaths 13 October 1923: birth of Cyril Shaps, who played Viner in The Tomb of the Cybermen (Second Doctor, 1967), Lennox in The Ambassadors of Death (Third Doctor, 1970), Professor Clegg in Planet of the Spiders (Third Doctor, 1974) and the Archimandrite in The Androids of Tara (Fourth Doctor, 1978). [IMG: John_Viner[1].jpg] [IMG: LennoxTAOD[1].jpg] [IMG: Herbert_Clegg[1].jpg] [IMG: Archimandrite[1].jpg] 13 October 1997: death of Ian Stuart Black, author of The Savages (First Doctor, 1966), The War Machines (First Doctor, 1966) and The Macra Terror (Second Doctor, 1967). ii) broadcast anniversaries 13 October 1979: broadcast of third episode of ...
As reported recently in the Courier (see below), I have called for the City Council to extend its free parking period in Dundee's West End car parks given that the coronavirus health emergency situation continues. The council took the sensible decision during the lockdown in the spring to make all its car parks free to use to assist key workers in the city centre and also people working from home in other car parks that charge across the city including in the West End. However, it now intends to bring back car parking charges into seven West End car parks ...
Tue 13th
06:30
Government restrictions to control coronavirus leaves England in tiers but no local impact on Ludlow...
The government is to introduce a three tier scheme for controlling the spread of coronavirus. Despite some reports on local media yesterday morning, Shropshire and Telford and Wrekin are at the lowest tier, the medium alert level. That means no change to restrictions from now. The rule of six will still apply and pubs will close at 10pm as now. During the last few weeks, the infection rate in the Shropshire unitary area has grown from 14 cases to 66 cases per 100,000 people over seven days. If the rate continues to increase in the next few weeks, we are ...
There's only been one talking point in Scottish politics for the last week - and it's the truly ridiculous case of Margaret Ferrier, the MP for Rutherglen and Hamilton West. When news initially broke of Ms Ferrier's apparently outrageous failures to observe basic Covid-19 related public health rules, I didn't rush to judgement. Several other MPs have broken the rules, as indeed did the PM's advisor, Dominic Cummings, who went as far to give a barely credible defence of his actions to a press conference. I imagined further information would come to light in the days afterwards, which would give ...
