Word has reached me that English Council, upon being invited to adopt the changes sought by the motion passed in Harrogate by Federal Conference, have chosen to do so, or not, as the case may be. There was a clear majority in the room, but not sufficient to overcome the two-thirds hurdle required to amend the English Party's constitution. This leaves things a bit pear-shaped, in that the suggestion that the English Party (or to be more precise, the English Candidates Committee) was the cause of much of the unhappiness with candidate selections has been somewhat reinforced. But, without the ...
Nearly 2 million to be hit by £9 billion "stealth tax bombshell" by the end of the decade Labour needs to "learn to u-turn faster" on two-child benefit cap Davey on Farage speech: "Trussonomics on steroids" Triple lock: from privatising the NHS now Farage "wants to come after people's pensions" Badenoch must rule out Rupert Lowe joining Conservatives 9,523 Scots waiting on social care assessment or care package Nearly 2 million to be hit by £9 billion "stealth tax bombshell" by the end of the decade The Labour government's plans to maintain the income tax threshold freezes introduced by the ...
Dinting is a station on the Glossop line from Manchester Piccadilly and was also on the Great Central's Woodhead route from Manchester to Sheffield1 before that closed in 1981. Between 1968 and 1990 a nearby locomotive shed was home to the Dinting Railway Centre, where you could often find famous locomotives like Blue Peter and the Flying Scotsman visiting. The LeiceExplore YouTube channel has rebranded as What Once Was, but offers the same high-quality noseh's around industrial and historic sites. Subscribe and like away. Here the two Steves discover the site of the railway centre and Dinting viaduct, before exploring ...
In the 1 September 1988 issue of the London Review of Books, Conrad Russell reviewed Alan Ryan's "political life" of his father Bertrand Russell. Here is a little personal reminiscence from that review: My father's situation in 1918 was not an enviable one: he was 46, and had just lost his job, suffered imprisonment and social disgrace, and was facing the failure of his marriage. He had, in effect, no inherited money left, and, it must have seemed, a very bleak future indeed. Many men have broken under stresses no greater than this, and that the writing which came out ...
The Lib Dems recognise the need for more council/social housing for families, but little is done about the many young people who are forced to live with their parents until well into their 30s. There is inadequate provision of suitable affordable accommodation, either to rent or buy, for young people with limited resources, particularly when they have first left care, school, college, university or the armed forces. Single people do not get priority for social housing, and can remain on councils' Band 5 waiting lists for years, limiting their opportunities and social mobility to move where the jobs might be. ...
Thank you... It is always good to start with thanking colleagues, and this month marked the final full council for Gareth Morgan. He has served an amazing 52 (!) years as a councillor, having been first elected to then Montgomery County Council in 1973 as a Liberal. Given all the political ups and downs for our party and its predecessors in the years since, that is a particularly impressive run. It is also a run that enabled Gareth to do so much good for local residents' and for promoting our values. Thank you, Gareth. I suspect that may be the ...
Embed from Getty ImagesThe Guardian obituary by Jane O'Grady brings out the importance of the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, who died last week: "Imagine," runs the opening of After Virtue, "that the natural sciences were to suffer the effects of a catastrophe", that science and science teaching have been deliberately abolished, and only charred pages, disconnected scientific terms and meaningless incantations remain. This, said MacIntyre, is our current moral situation. ... All we have are "the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts which now lack those contexts from which their significance is derived". This is why we regard moral argument as ...
Recently, I joined the Liberal Democrats; or rather rejoined as I was briefly a member a few years ago. I have been politically active since I was a teenager, for the majority of that time as a member of the Labour Party. My return came after a long period of reading and reflection. For some time, I had been aware of my growing unease at the culture within the Labour Party (which is exceptionalist, toxic and tribalistic), and the Party's underlying philosophical basis (which is authoritarian). Eventually the cognitive dissonance required to be a Labour Party member was too tiring, ...
Our joint weekly ward surgery takes place tonight. This week it is as follows : Blackness Library (Tuesdays 5pm - every week during school term time) All welcome - no appointment necessary!
The highlight of today's Hay Festival is Donald Trump's niece Mary telling broadcaster, Samira Ahmed the inside story of the Trump family and its patriarch, and the effect it had on her own life. The Washington Post provides some highlights: Trump's crass and demeaning remarks about his enemies — calling them pigs, ugly, fat and losers — is rooted in his upbringing, according to his niece Mary L. Trump, who has written a new memoir, "Who Could Ever Love You." This is the third book she has published since 2020, all of them critical of her uncle. It's safe to ...
Tue 27th
00:01
Britain's worst road traffic accident took place 50 years ago today: The 1975 Dibble's Bridge coach ...
Today, 27 May, is the 50th anniversary of Britain's worst road traffic accident. In it, 32 coach passengers and their driver lost their lives when a coach lost braking power while descending a steep hill in North Yorkshire and crashed through the parapet of a bridge at the bottom. The passengers, all women, were on a day trip from the town of Thornaby-on-Tees in North Yorkshire to Grassington in the Dales. Strangely, I have no memory of hearing about this disaster on the news at the time, nor have I ever heard it referred to since. It's odd how some ...
