The National Statuary Hall. It's not a name that trips readily off the tongue. It's a big hall with about a hundred statues in it. Each state is allowed to choose two statues, which they can replace if wanted. When I was shown round it in 2019, I noticed Rosa Parks. Her statue was not chosen by her home state, Alabama. In an exception to the rule, she was placed there by unanimous vote of both chambers of the Congress. That speaks volumes. When I watched the mob invasion of the US Capitol this evening, the first interior image showed ...

Posted by Paul Walter on Liberal Democrat Voice

Second paragraph of third chapter:Who hasn't argued with their mother at some point about tidying their room, and had differing interpretations of what constitutes mess?A short book by a biochemist who proudly flies the flag of her own autism diagnosis, explaining how people work from her point of view. From her point of view seems to mean mainly comparing human interactions to phenomena in biochemistry, which may be insightful for people who know more than I do about biochemistry, but since I don't, it was a matter of explaining something I already more or less understand - human behaviour - ...

The Yellow Advertiser reports: A former councillor has been jailed and ordered to pay more than £28,000 back to Redbridge Council after committing electoral fraud. Chaudhary Mohammed Iqbal, who was a Labour councillor for Loxford for more than two years, admitted in October that he gave a false address when applying to be councillor and later lied to the police. He was today jailed for 68 weeks and must pay back £18,368 he received in expenses and £10,000 towards the cost of the by-election to replace him. Iqbal, who actually lived in Cecil Avenue, Barking, at the time, pretended to ...

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack

I am hosting a webinar on women and justice. It ties in with the CPS consultation on the prosecution of rape offences. Do you think that the legal system has failed women? Join me as I chair a webinar featuring: former Chair of the Bar Council Amanda Pinto QC barrister and part-time Crown Court Recorder Maryam Syed and Elaine Storkey, author of 'Scars Against Humanity', a book about violence against women and girls. Baroness Lorely Burt will be introducing the session and psychologist Dr Jermaine Revalier will be co-chairing. The timing of the webinar coincides with the deadline for comments ...

Posted by Isabelle Parasram on Liberal Democrat Voice

It's one of many pieces of commonly used political jargon that most of the public has either not heard or or isn't sure what it means.

Posted by Mark Pack on Mark Pack
Wed 6th
11:29

Hope Gap ****

Behind many a facade of comfortable bourgeois existence there lies a bitter truth of estrangement or loss. In William Nicholson's Hope Gap (now available on Netflix) it soon becomes clear that the charming if somewhat unmodernised detached house in the picturesque coastal town of Seaford is like a large cage in which a married couple [...]

Posted by jonathanfryer on Jonathan Fryer

Political Wire's Taegan Goodard wrote a few hours ago: It Appears Democrats Have Won Control of the Senate As of this post, there is still no official projection in either U.S. Senate runoff in Georgia, but the New York Times's needle is very confident that both Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff will win. It's not official but it's very hard to see a path for either Republican short of a major tabulation error. That would mean the U.S. Senate will be comprised of 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris breaking any ties. It's an unbelievably dramatic ...

Posted by Paul Walter on Liberal Democrat Voice
Wed 6th
11:00

My tweets

Tue, 12:56: When philosopher met king: on Plato's Italian voyages https://t.co/Y71yFLjMf6 Interesting on philosophy and political leadership. h/t @a_m_wegner Tue, 14:10: A thread on the likely Boundary Commission recommendations for the Northern Ireland seats. The next round of constituency boundary reforms has just kicked off. There will still be 650 MPs, 543 from England (+10), 549 for Scotland (-2), 32 for Wales (-8) and 16 for NI (same). Tue, 14:12: The new Northern Ireland parliamentary constituencies - update https://t.co/szLU7w3ow6 Tue, 14:20: Always annoying when you make two mistakes in the first tweet of a long thread. New numbers are 57 ...

I noted, a few days ago, that the inclement weather and the generally sodden nature of the countryside offered a challenge in the then circumstances of Tier 4 restrictions. Well, the national lockdown makes things a bit more trying, especially when you're restricted to a limited number of grounds for going outside. It therefore shouldn't have come as a huge surprise that day one of the new lockdown dawned cold, grey, wet and windy. Luckily, we needed bread and milk, which at least gave me an excuse to walk the more than four miles to and from the Co-op at ...

Posted by Mark Valladares on Liberal Bureaucracy

If there is one thing that has become clear from this pandemic, it is how incompetent the current Tory government is. Not only have they bungled the timing of lockdowns, leading to thousands of unnecessary deaths because of the Prime Minister's indecision, but they allowed the virus to spread unchecked into care homes housing some of those most vulnerable to the disease; they failed to equip care and NHS workers with PPE in a timely fashion, exposing them to infection, while at the same time awarding contracts for the supply of this protection to friends and colleagues without the proper ...

Posted by Peter Black on Peter Black
YouGov

The last piece I contributed to Lib Dem Voice appeared a couple of years ago in August 2018 and was entitled Why Aren't We Doing (Much) Better? That posting (which does seem, at least in part, to have been vindicated by subsequent events) was prompted by a critical analysis of party performance in The New Statesman: this one, which could reasonably be accused of being "Why aren't we doing (much) better 2", is prompted by a critical analysis of party performance in The Spectator. Not, interestingly, from The Spec's ever-growing army of cultural warriors of the libertarian right, but from ...

Posted by Richard Fisher on Liberal Democrat Voice

i) births and deaths 6 January 1955: birth of Rowan Atkinson, who played the Ninth Doctor in The Curse of Fatal Death. 6 January 2009: death of John Scott Martin, Dalek operator and player of many parts in Old Who. ii) broadcast anniversaries 6 January 1968: broadcast of third episode of The Enemy of the World. Formerly the only surviving episode of the story (but the rest has now been found), with Denes kept prisoner in a corridor (!), Victoria working in the kitchen, and Salamander realising that something is up. 6 January 1973: broadcast of second episode of The ...

Latest update from Bailie Fraser Macpherson (West End) and Councillor Craig Duncan (Broughty Ferry) during the COVID-19 health emergency : As residents will be aware, stay at home advice has become law, just as it was in the lockdown last year. This means it will only be permissible to leave home for an essential purpose. This will include caring responsibilities, essential shopping, exercise, maintaining a shared parenting arrangement and being part of an extended household. Unlike the lockdown last year, the frequency of outdoor exercise is not being limited. MEETING OTHERSA maximum of two people from up to two households ...