No, the name's not something out of Lord Bonkers' Diary: as this video shows, it really existed. The school was at Tixover Grange, which is near Stamford but in Rutland. I have seen something of Wilfred Pickles lately, because Talking Pictures TV repeated the situation comedy For the Love of Ada. I watched it on the grounds that anything with Irene Handl in it was worth seeing. It proved to be gentle and likeable - I can see why it ran to four series and a cinema film. Pickles himself strolled through it rather like a North Country Kenneth Horne. ...
Liberal Democrat Newswire #196 came out recently and you can now also read it in full below. But if you'd like to get future editions emailed direct to you as soon as they are published, just sign up now: Welcome to Liberal Democrat Newswire #196 and before we get stuck into this edition, congratulations to our councillors newly elected since last time, along with their agents: Sarah Uldall, Susan Grounds, Nanette Davies, Suzanne Thomas, Richard Choi, James Rigby, Hannah Butler, Kerry O'Rourke, Tom McCann and Tricia O'Brien. Last week's by-elections, detailed below, included both a Lib Dem win by one ...
Tom Crewe writes about 19th-century photography in the London Review of Books - Camille Silvy was an early and fashionable practitioner of the art: The apparent sombreness of most Victorian sitters has fostered many modern myths, the most common being that their expression is a product of long exposure times, which required people to remain tense and still. In fact, exposure times were already short by the 1860s, especially if the light was good, and later in the century almost instantaneous. Victorians kept their mouths shut largely because the conventions of portrait photography were those of the painted portrait: you ...
An interesting paper was published recently. Intracellular metabolic gradients dictate dependence on exogenous pyruvate This was from the same lab as the excellent paper A non-canonical tricarboxylic acid cycle underlies cellular identity. An interesting question that the paper answers is what drives the need for external pyruvate. The paper concludes "The requirement for pyruvate over lactate
Thursday 24th April saw four principal by-elections (each of them with a Lib Dem candidate), including a Liberal Democrat defence. Congratulations are due to Cllr Tom McCann and the West Berkshire team, who held Thatcham North East, despite an increased field. Both Labour and Reform were new onto the ballot, and their combined support was much more than the dip in the Lib Dem vote share. West Berkshire District Council, Thatcham North East Liberal Democrats (Tom McCann): 690 (41.1, -14.8) Conservative: 428 (25.5%, +0.1) Reform UK: 367 (21.9%, new) Green Party: 127 (7.6%, -11.0) Labour: 65 (3.9%, new) Liberal Democrat ...
Embed from Getty ImagesEd Davey gets a good write up in the Guardian today and is not afraid to sound optimistic about Thursday's local election: According to Davey, the general election trend of less ideologically minded Conservative voters fleeing a party they see as overly weighted towards populism and culture wars has shown no signs of slowing under Badenoch. "People who were lifelong Conservatives haven't forgiven them, they're not impressed by the leader, and some are put off by this talk of some sort of arrangement with Reform," he said. And: While Davey is making no predictions, he is scornful ...
"He inherited an economy from Wilson suffering from low growth and high inflation which threatened to destroy all Callaghan and his party held dear. 'There are,' he told MPs on his election, 'no soft options facing Britain.' His solution - attacked by the left as the one Conservatives would have followed - was to reduce public spending while encouraging private sector investment."Steven Fielding argues that Jim Callaghan is the prime minister Keir Starmer most resembles. "Both sides of the culture war profited from caricatures of Francis as Pope Woke. The reality was less clear-cut. He distrusted the liberal impulse to ...
There's a concept in accounting known as goodwill. It's defined as the difference between the overall value of a company (as measured by the amount that someone is willing to pay for it) and the market value of its individual tangible assets. Goodwill reflects the value of the company's brand, reputation, customer relationships and other things that are difficult to quantify but that make the company what it is. What started out as a simple accounting technique to make balance sheets balance reveals a deeper truth about organisations of all types. Goodwill tells us that they are so very much ...
Making your maiden speech in the Lords is, in many ways, perhaps more daunting than doing so in the Commons. You're surrounded by ex-Ministers, many of whom have been responsible for policy making in the field being debated, or have a professional reputation. And, on Friday, our former colleague in this place made his maiden speech in that place, in a debate on a paper from the Lords Communications and Digital Committee, "The future of news"... My Lords, it is both an honour and a privilege to be making my maiden speech. I give sincere thanks for the warm welcome ...
I am a good and true mirror, an in-the-blood chameleon; I know the taste of discipline, free spirit and conformity. But what is my desire? All blank.
In July, voters across the country decided that what they wanted more than anything was to give the Conservatives a good electoral kicking. And so they did. In seats where there was an obvious challenger (or at least, where someone could establish themselves as the obvious contender), voters flocked to them. In other seats, where that choice wasn't really so obvious, they appear to have leant towards Labour based on the national polling figures at the time. In my own county of Suffolk, that led to Labour victories in places like Suffolk Coastal, where Labour had come fourth in the ...
Are memories so short in this Labour government that they don't appreciate the dangers inherent in the sort of deregulation that caused the 2008 banking crash? The Independent reports that Rachel Reeves has told senior economists and business leaders that she wants to rip up regulations on the financial services sector brought in after the this crash. The paper says that Reeves has been desperately looking for ways to kickstart economic growth in the UK, which has flatlined since Labour came to power last July with the country teetering on the edge of going into recession: She said: "Excessive regulation ...
DUNDEE CITY COUNCIL - WEEKLY ROAD REPORT REPORT FOR THE WEST END WARD - WEEK COMMENCING MONDAY 28 APRIL 2025 Riverside Approach - closed until Friday 2 May for Scotland Gas Network work. Blinshall Street (Douglas Street to 50 metres south) - closed until August 2025 for construction works. Douglas Street (Blinshall Street to Brown Street) - temporary traffic lights until August 2025 for construction works. Brown Street (south of Douglas Street) - closed until August 2025 for construction works. Scottish and Southern Energy Networks Elmwood Cable Renewal Scheme - temporary traffic lights and road closure from Tuesday 4 March ...
