Embed from Getty ImagesSomething I discovered from the coverage of Emmanuel Macron's victory over Marine Le Pen at the weekend is that there is still a French possession in North America. Saint Pierre and Miquelon are two small islands off the South-West coast of Newfoundland. Their six thousand inhabitants are French citizens, elect their own deputy to the National Assembly in Paris and take part in in senatorial and presidential elections. This time the islands saw a narrow victory for Marine Le pen, who received 50.69 per cent of the votes cast. The islands form the last remnant of the ...
The Baltic country of Lithuania, with a population of fewer than three million, has become a European lightning rod for liberal democratic values in the battle against authoritarianism. Key Belarus and Russian opposition figures are in exile there. Democratic Taiwan has opened an office in Vilnius to push for a tougher stand against Chinese expansion. Here are a few lines from my recent conversations. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, wife of opposition figure Sergei Tikhanovsky, now jailed by the Belarus regime; It's very important to understand that people who have been living in dictatorship for 27 years, also have to study how it ...
Morning found me at a self-service hotel buffet, with the only staff in sight restocking and clearing away - low-paid staff are clearly kept to a minimum in Liechtenstein. But I had plans. First, a walk down to the river, stopping at the Rhinepark Stadion, home of the mighty FC Vaduz and the not-so-mighty Liechtenstein national football team, before heading for the Altebrucke, a wooden covered bridge spanning the Rhine. It would have been churlish not to walk to Switzerland and I didn't hesitate to cross. Then on to Triesen to catch a bus to the southernmost community in the ...
I want to encourage all Liberal Democrat candidates in the local election to sign this pledge of support for trials of universal basic income (UBI). If you are a candidate in London you can sign a London-specific pledge. This initiative is being promoted by the UBI Labs Network, one of the leading organisations campaigning for UBI in the UK. The Liberal Democrats made UBI official party policy in 2020 and this is a great opportunity to show that party members up and down the country support UBI. It may seem like a small thing to sign a pledge like this. ...
Mon 25th
11:56
Snake on the loose in Pontesbury is finally captured after teenager spots it in car park
The Shropshire Star wins our Headline of the Day Award. My photograph shows a) a different car park in Pontesbury and b) a cat not a snake. And, yes, the cat has just caught something. As I explained at the time: For reasons I may explain one day, I was in Pontesbury photographing its former police station and magistrates court. In the car park behind it was a black and white cat with a rodent it had just caught and killed. Though I had never met it before, when the cat saw me it began to make that odd chirruping ...
Sun, 15:33: My quest to find all of the surviving stucco ceilings by Jan Christian Hansche has come to an end, I think. Today I visited the last of his surviving work that is on display. https://t.co/SOHCql5c6U Sun, 15:38: The stucco ceilings of Jan Christian Hansche, part 10: biography, the ones you can't see in Gent, and the Kasteel van Horst https://t.co/A0Kdix4c7d https://t.co/FumbY8zIJZ Sun, 21:39: RT @spignal: France is a country that loves chucking out incumbents. Yet Macron got the best first-round score for an incumbent president s... Sun, 21:54: So for the third time in the last four elections ...
It's always nice to see some positive news, and the re-election of Emmanuel Macron to the French Presidency yesterday was reassuringly clear cut. Mind you, given that 42% of those who voted chose such an overt friend who of Vladimir Putin, one should remain alert in terms of what happens after Macron's second term ends, especially given the current weakness of France's traditional "big two" political parties. But that's a problem for another day. Slovenia also had elections yesterday, and a political party formed only a year ago, the Freedom Movement has swept to power, defeating the outgoing Prime Minister, ...
DUNDEE CITY COUNCIL - WEEKLY ROAD REPORT REPORT FOR WEST END WARD - WEEK COMMENCING MONDAY 25 APRIL 2022 Greenmarket (access road) - closed approximately 100m from junction with South Marketgait for sewer connection from Monday 25 April for 2 weeks. Riverside Drive Taxi Rank - closed from Monday 25 to midday on Tuesday 26 April for Scottish Water mains repair. Riverside Avenue (at Premier Inn) - westbound nearside lane closure on Wednesday 27 April for Scottish Water work. Forthcoming Roadworks Blackness Avenue (Perth Road to Shaftesbury Road) - closed on Monday 2 May for CityFibre works. Osborne Place - ...
The Independent reports that government ministers may have been misleading us when they argued that Rwanda is a perfectly safe place to send refugees. The paper reports that a former top Rwanda diplomat forced into exile has attacked government claims that his country is safe to receive refugees from the UK - likening it to "a detention camp": Boris Johnson and Priti Patel have insisted asylum seekers are to be given "a one-way ticket" to the east African nation, after crossing the Channel, will be treated humanely and given a new start in life. But Theogene Rudasingwa, Rwanda's ambassador to ...
