We are all now aware of the financial and procedural deficits of Liverpool Council over the past 10 years. We have had a regeneration department that has gone rogue leading to huge losses to the tax payers of Liverpool, reputational ... Continue reading →
Dave, my brother-in-law, has just died after living with Parkinson's for several decades. What follows below is not the whole story of Dave by any means, just the bits I remember best. (We're remembering him by suggesting donations to Parkinson's UK.) I've known him for more than fifty years. It was a bit of a surprise when I worked that out; I hadn't realised that I was so old. I was about 18 when he married my sister, the first occasion I'd ever been to in proper formal dress. My parents insisted on that sort of thing. He was doing ...
Titanic won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1996, and equalled both the record of fourteen nominations set by All About Eve, and the record of eleven wins set by Ben-Hur. The other ten were: Best Director (James Cameron), Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Original Dramatic Score, Best Original Song, Best Sound, Best Sound Effects Editing and Best Visual Effects. Kate Winslet and Gloria Stuart were nominated in Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress respectively, but did not win. (At 87, Gloria Stuart remains the oldest ever nominee for Best Supporting Actress.) The ...
Speaking in a House of Commons debate on fuel poverty on Thursday, Wera Hobhouse, Lib Dem MP for Bath, said no one should have to make the choice between feeding their family or heating their home. The pandemic has made things even worse. People working from home faced an extra £16 a month on energy costs, adding up to £195 a year for those on poor value tariffs. She said the clearest example of the Government's failure was the scrapping of the green homes grant only five months after it was introduced with only 6% of the budget spent. No ...
Sat, 12:56: RT @DecKelleher: Perceptive and eloquent piece by @denisstaunton on the recent provocative and aggressive article by @DavidGHFrost and @Bra... Sat, 18:04: 480 days of plague https://t.co/CcQHTb8nv2 Sat, 19:23: RT @law_and_policy: Fundamental constitutional reform? We cannot even sort out the hereditary element of the House of Lords Today's law an... Sat, 20:48: Tremendous piece. https://t.co/QVXZDBPll3
Imagine, just for a moment, that you don't eat for a month. Imagine that for months, if you are lucky, you have one "meal" a day; meal meaning a watery soup. Imagine that when or if you are lucky enough to board the plane, you have no idea where and when you will land. Imagine that you have no choice, none whatsoever. Imagine that you are taken, against your will, to a concentration camp, without knowing whether you will walk free again. Imagine that you are unable, for months, to contact your loved ones. Imagine that if you are lucky ...
Bob Seeger entered the lower reaches of the UK singles chart a dozen times, but this - which I suspect is his best-known song - wasn't a hit over here. All Music tells us its beauty comes from its softened piano and half-powered musical flow. It isn't a ballad, but Seger manages to master the tempo to perfection in order to set the song's mood so that it's just right. Seger wrote the song after traveling to Hollywood and meeting people who enjoyed living the high life -- motivated by power, greed, and the opportunity to take risks whenever possible. ...
The Mirror reports that the Government faces legal action over claims ministers used private email and WhatsApp accounts to conduct official business. They say the Good Law Project (GLP) is launching a judicial review bid over the practice, which they say is "unlawful": The public interest group said that current rules governing the use of private communications for government business are not fit for purpose. And they said it "seems unlikely the policy is being followed." If successful, they aim to "force Government to put in place proper policies to close this accountability gap for good." It comes after the ...
Sun 11th
09:03
World Review: A president assassinated, a president suing, a president withdrawing and Covid soaring
In this weekend's review, LDV's foreign correspondent Tom Arms talks of events in Haiti, a basket case of a country whose presidents tend to come to an untimely end, including this week President Moise. Joe Biden is continuing to withdraw from Afghanistan. Donald Trump is suing Facebook. Both difficult strategies. The delta variant of Covid-19 is causing cases to rise rapidly around the world, especially in countries with low levels of vaccination. Vaccinating Africa must become a priority to save lives in the Southern and Northern Hemispheres. Joe Biden is wrong and right. He is wrong to think that the ...
Here's my latest monthly report, from the party website: Sarah Green's brilliant victory in Chesham and Amersham shows the huge political opportunity for us – as long as we can continue to apply the lessons from our 2019 election post-mortem. As part of this, a trio of motions have been submitted for our autumn federal conference. One is from the Federal Board (FB) on the party's strategy. The other two are from the Federal Policy Committee (FPC), on the party's values and our policy platform. Hopefully all three can be debated in sequence, so we agree values, strategy and platform ...
Sun 11th
08:42
Covid Watch 151: Is Boris Johnson gambling on tonight's Euro final to boost herd immunity?
Crowding together. Shouting. Singing. Welcome to the excitement of football. As England and Italy prepare for the Euro final, scientists are concerned that football is helping drive up Covid-19 infection rates by allowing potentially super spreader events such as the finals at Wembley and Wimbledon. It is predicted that seven million pints will be served during the Euro final tonight in pubs across the land. Health secretary Sajid Javid has suggested we might be heading towards 100,000 new cases a day. Did he take sporting events into account? It's coming home but could coronavirus also be coming home with the ...
Crowding together. Shouting. Singing. Welcome to the excitement of football. As England and Italy prepare for the Euro final, scientists are concerned that football is helping drive up Covid-19 infection rates by allowing potentially super spreader events such as the finals at Wembley and Wimbledon. It is predicted that seven million pints will be served during the Euro final tonight in pubs across the land. Health secretary Sajid Javid has suggested we might be heading towards 100,000 new cases a day. Did he take sporting events into account? It's coming home but could coronavirus also be coming home with the ...
I received this very sensible suggestion from a resident who lives very close to the Roseangle playpark : " .... would it not be a good idea to have "children playing" signs on approach to Roseangle play park? There are of course the 20mph signs, but people do sometimes rattle quite fast down Roseangle and I think it would be good for drivers to be alerted to the fact that there may well be children around." I raised this with the City Council's Traffic & Road Safety Team Leader who has responded positively as follows : "We will consider the ...
Embed from Getty ImagesIf your team wins the FA Cup when you are 10 then the rest of life is bound to prove a bit of an anticlimax. Those years are being covered by Chelsea Fancast, which is putting up a separate podcast on the club's fortunes since its 1970 victory over Leeds. The collection is not yet complete, but there are already plenty of good things to enjoy. I had forgotten just how well we did in the mid-1980s, finishing sixth in the old first division in 1984/5 and 1985/6, while the 1982/3 podcast makes clear how close we ...
