Daniel Kawczynski, the Conservative MP for Shrewsbury and Atcham, today made an apology on the floor of the Commons for bullying parliamentary committee staff. As the Shropshire Star explains: The Tory MP made the statement for acting in a "threatening and intimidating manner" towards the complainants after he was unable to join a committee hearing due to technical problems. A disciplinary report said the Shrewsbury and Atcham MP consumed a "significant amount of alcohol" on the day and phoned the manager of the committee staff while under the influence, behaviour that was "grossly unprofessional". The incident occurred in April 2020, ...
One of the most glaring contradictions of British politics is the increasing attention paid to economic inequality by academics and the public, whilst decisions made by the central government do little to address this problem and actively make it worse. I suspect this has to do with wealth inequality being framed as an abstraction; something to be vaguely 'tackled' rather than a clear narrative about how policy should improve the lived experiences of ordinary people. A positive Liberal case for mass ownership could be the remedy to this problem.Liberals have long seen property as fundamental for creating liberty. For the ...
This is a great illustration of the one-party state mentality of Labour in the North East. Martin Gannon, Labour leader of Gateshead Council, doesn't like the fact that the Sunderland Echo carries lots of stories about the local Lib Dems. With what appears to be an example of too much time on his hands, Martin fired off some shots via Twitter over yet another article in the newspaper about the
Second frame of third story ("Man-hating Madness"): I got this in 2019 because one of the stories, "Battle for Womanhood", was up for the Retro Hugo that year, which I was administering, and it won - topping the poll at nominations stage and convincingly carrying the final ballot. I voted for it too, and on reflection I'm really not sure why; these are a weird set of stories combining an attractively subversive feminism with some pretty awful racism against the Japanese. (But the Chinese, who of course are allies and victims of Japan, are all right.) I almost gave up ...
Maya Forstater has won her appeal. Consequently, it is now clear that gender critical beliefs are protected under the Equality Act. Equally so are beliefs about gender identity. It is not a judgment for or against either belief (the judgment makes very clear that it expresses no view on the merits of the debate). Rather,Continue reading "Maya Forstater judgment: A victory for liberal values"
When somebody finally says they regret having voted for Brexit, we are confronted by the problem that there is on the face of it so little that we can do that's positive. Even if we have a repentant Brexiter in front of us, "I realise I was wrong", the automatic response is "It's too f****** late now, isn't it???" and to say so shoutily because there is no other relevant emotion to fit the moment. So we need to construct something positive to move on with and get the Bregretter to engage more positively with whatever might happen next. As ...
At the weekend we met with old friends and new from our European sister parties for ALDE Congress, albeit via a Zoom link, as the Congress was online for the first time. It was my privilege to lead a diverse Lib Dem delegation of around forty, which in addition to the official categories for diversity, included several UK nationals resident in the EU and a few EU citizens resident in the UK. Ahead of the Congress we had met to propose amendments and again to discuss the amendments tabled by other delegations. These are negotiated in the "Working Groups", which ...
New statistics show that renewable energy generation growth has slowed significantly in the last year, despite promises from the Conservatives to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 and to make Britain the "Saudi Arabia of wind energy." Offshore wind generation capacity grew by just 4% in 2020, compared to 20% the previous year. Onshore wind increased its capacity by just 1.1%, continuing a downward trend since 2017, when the Conservatives made it significantly harder to build new onshore wind farms. Solar capacity increased by 1.6%, continuing its limited growth since the Conservatives cut subsidies for solar power in 2016. Wera Hobhouse, ...
The latest issue of the Journal of Liberal History, just published, is a special issue on the early-nineteenth-century roots of Liberalism - a somewhat neglected period in party history. Historians generally treat 1859 as the date that the Liberal Party came into existence, when three parliamentary factions - Whigs, Peelites and Radicals - agreed to unite under Palmerston to oust a minority Conservative administration. Yet, in truth, the Liberal Party can trace its roots back to a much earlier period in the nineteenth century. The term 'Liberal' came into common use in the 1820s. As the authors in our special ...
Sun, 12:46: RT @herszenhorn: Message just now from handler about Boris Johnson's closing G7 news conference as summit host: "Unfortunately the UK does... Sun, 12:56: Nevil Shute's On the Beach, adapted as an Australian newspaper comic strip in 1957 https://t.co/WQYwx3NtuO Wow Sun, 15:43: Wandered into a baptism ceremony at the eleventh-century St Peter's Church in Bertem. People have been bringing their children here for christening for a millennium. https://t.co/5OxVBwu57d Sun, 21:34: Two ancient churches: St Peter's, Bertem and St Verona's, Leefdaal https://t.co/hW7FBGNtzn Mon, 05:58: Dreamed I had done no revision at all for my university exams. In fact I have ...
It's a momentous day because Netanyahu has been voted out of office and like his predecessor Ehud Olmert now faces the prospect of jail and so will hopefully disappear. He leaves power as Prime Ministers often do because he lost. But as Anshel Pfeffer in today's edition of Ha'aretz points out, he is overall a winner. The man who was written off so many times as a passing and inconsequential politician, even after his first term as prime minister in the 1990s, became Israel's longest-serving leader - even longer than the founder, David Ben-Gurion. Someone who managed to hold onto ...
i) births and deaths 14 June 1937: birth of Michael Ferguson, director of The War Machines (First Doctor, 1966), The Seeds of Death (Second Doctor, 1969), The Ambassadors of Death (Third Doctor, 1970) and The Claws of Axos (Third Doctor, 1971) 14 June 1985: death of Graham Leaman who played four roles in five Old Who stories: the captive Controller in The Macra Terror (Second Doctor, 1967), Price the communications office in Fury from the Deep (Second Doctor, 1968), the Grand Marshall of the Ice Warriors in The Seeds of Death (Second Doctor, 1969), and an un-named Time Lord in ...
The Mirror reports that a billionaire property tycoon gave £150,000 to the Conservative Party, 48 hours after the government approved a housing scheme by his firm: John Bloor, 77, a director of Bloor Homes who has a £1.3billion personal fortune, is one of the Conservative Party's largest donors. On March 15, ministers formally gave the green light to a Bloor Homes proposal to build hundreds of homes on rural land in Ledbury, Herefordshire. Two days later on March 17, Electoral Commission records show, Mr Bloor's firm Bloor Holdings gave a donation of £150,000 to the Conservative Party. The Ministry of ...
DUNDEE CITY COUNCIL - WEEKLY ROAD REPORT REPORT FOR WEST END WARD - WEEK COMMENCING MONDAY 14 JUNE 2021 Perth Road (at Riverside Drive) - off‑peak temporary traffic control for one week for lining work. Brook Street, Dundee- temporary traffic lights for 2 weeks for City Fibre H3G project. City Road (Tullideph Place to Logie Street) - closed southbound on Monday 14 June (7.00pm to 1.00am) for BT work. Logie Street (at Ancrum Road) - temporary traffic lights on Monday 14 June (7.00pm to 1.00am) for BT work. City Fibre H3G Project - rolling road closures commencing on Tuesday 15 ...
