John Rogers takes us on a walk along a curious strip of land that runs through Leyton in East London but once belonged to the parish of Walthamstow. His blurb on YouTube explains: Known as the Walthamstow Slip, nobody knows exactly why this wide piece of land came to belong to the people of Walthamstow. There are some great stories to explain this curious anachronism, including the possibility that it follows the course of an ancient trackway. The walk starts on Leyton Flats, Epping Forest, near the Eagle Pond where this is an old stone parish boundary marker. We then ...
Sun 4th
18:42
Reality arrives, 2025 edition: how did the polls and projections do? - The Week in Polls
The latest edition of my weekly political polling round-up, The Week in Polls, is out. As it says: Elections for Mayors, especially outside London, are greatly underpolled in the UK. Thankfully, both last year and this year there has been an emerging pattern of pollsters producing Mayor polls even without being paid by a media outlet to do so. Of course there is a publicity self-interest for them in doing this. But we should be grateful for their willingness to run such polls – especially as polling Mayor contests is harder than polling general elections. That is because turnout is ...
Before polling day, I covered the extreme and unpleasant views of Donna Edmunds, then a council candidate for Reform UK. She was elected on Thursday for Hodnet ward, Shropshire, but is now already an ex-Reform councillor as she has posted about being suspended by the party. Not, however, for those views but for expressing her desire to defect to another party. Here's what she had posted that has caused her suspension: [IMG: Donna Edmunds message that caused her suspension] Donna Edmunds message to a voter on social media. "Rupert and Ben" refers to Reform UK MP turned independent Rupert Lowe ...
That didn't take long. Debra Edmunds, who won the leafy Hodnet ward of Shropshire Council on Thursday, has been suspended by Reform UK. Reform UK Exposed has a Twitter thread about her. As they say, she has a bit of a chequered political past, but I've not yet been able to discover which part of it has upset her party's HQ. Later. I think Jim Hawkins has found the answer.Donna Edmunds, elected to Shropshire council as a Reform councillor for Hodnet on Thursday, has already been suspended from the party! Possibly because she unwisely posted in public, before the election, ...
Reform is on the rise. Led by the garrulous Farage, it is hoovering up votes across the country by doing one simple thing: articulating the grievances of the working classes. While it is generally recognised that populism rarely leads to stable government, there is a growing realisation that Reform has a point. It's not easy, but if we look beyond their abhorrent views on race, religion and equality, they are articulating an economic critique. Okay, characterising it as a 'critique' is a bit of a stretch - it lacks intellectual rigour or depth - but Farage's economic cri de coeur ...
Has there every been anything cooler, more bad ass, in British pop than Jet Harris smoking that cigarette? Maybe Hank Marvin is too good natured to be cool or bad ass, but he manages to look as though he's just been got out of bed and is playing in his dressing gown. And this is from 1960. As well as recording hugely popular instrumentals like this and Wonderful Land as a group, the Shadows also backed Cliff Richard - a much-traduced artist. Time to tell the story of how Marvin became the first guitarist in Britain to own a Stratocaster:By ...
Was it a portent? A few hours before the polls closed on Thursday, much of Shropshire was deluged as thunderstorms swept the county. As new shoots geared up for growth in our parched gardens, the skies glowed orange across much of Shropshire. The Conservatives have been routed from Shropshire. The Liberal Democrats now control Shropshire Council after sixteen years of Conservative mismanagement. We Lib Dems have taken 42 sests out of 74. The Tories held on to a miserable seven seats and not a single cabinet member survived the carnage. Some fled or retired before the battle. The others were ...
Ed Davey was on Laura Kuenssberg for the second Sunday in a row to talk about the local election results. It was a good interview but I have one rather large note for him at the end. Kuenssberg challenged him on the fact that our vote share didn't move? Shouldn't you have been hoovering up in share of the vote, she asked. Here is how the interview unfolded: We had a fantastic night, Laura, winning a majority in Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Shropshire, becoming the largest party in and almost winning in Gloucestershire, Devon, Hertfordshire and Wiltshire so we were very ...
Kashmir Donald Trump says that the Kashmir problem goes back thousands of years and is very complicated, which is his way of saying that he doesn't want to be involved. To be honest we can talk about the roots of Hinduism, the invasion of the Mughals, the British Empire, and etcetera. But in reality the Kashmir problem dates back to the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent. At that time the semi-autonomous kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir was given the option to join India or Pakistan. But there was a snag. The monarch—Maharaja Hari Singh was a Hindu while the ...
With thanks to SJ Bogue and Dundee Memories, a great early 1960s aerial shot of the West End from Perth Road at Seabraes looking west. The photo was labelled "1950s" but we think it must have been taken from the Tower Building and this did not open until 1961. We also note the Perth Road tramlines are gone so the photo was clearly taken after 1956 when the tram service ended. The number of large factory chimneys in the photo show just how much the area has changed over the last 60+ years!
It's almost as if Donald Trump is dictating their agenda. A total of 677 councillors controlling ten councils and two elected Mayors, facing huge funding challenges, massive school and social care pressures, and deteriorating infrastructure but Reform's first priority appears to be tackling their anti-woke agenda. The Independent reports that Andrea Jenkyns' vow to get rid of council diversity officers as one of her first acts as the new Reform mayor for Lincolnshire has fallen flat after it emerged that the county council doesn't employ any. The paper says that Nigel Farage and Dame Andrea have put getting rid of ...
