From a quick late night glance at the Birthday Honours I have found just two Liberal Democrats from searching political service and local government. Mike Cox, Party Treasurer and Bourmemouth Councillor gets a CBE for public and political service. From other parties, Penny Mordaunt becomes a dame and I was really pleased to see Glasgow Labour MSP Pam Duncan-Glancy get an MBE. Council Leader Stephen Giles-Medhurst from Three Rivers gets an OBE. Congratulations to Mike and Stephen. There may well be Lib Dems in there who are being honoured for other things. Do let us know. The list is here. ...
It was building the Great Northern and London & North Western Railway (GN&LNWJR) that brought my hero J.W. Logan MP to the Market Harborough area. You can see, from the sturdy bridges that remain to this day, that Logan & Hemingway knew how to build railways, Borders and Beeching traces the disused line from Welham Junction, just north of Market Harborough, to Newark, though the stretch through Melton Mowbray is missed out. As Eastern Leicestershire is not heavily populated, the GN&LNWJR was always more of a freight line, serving many local ironstone quarries and also bringing coal from the East ...
This week saw the first non-Thursday by-election of the new cycle, with a Labour defence in Stroud on Wednesday. The Green Party narrowly beat Reform UK and the Conservatives, as Labour were pushed into fourth place. Thank you to Mike Stayte and the team for flying the Lib Dem flag mid-week. Stroud District Council, Severn Green Party: 439 (27.8%, +10.0) Conservative: 425 (26.9%, -6.6) Reform UK: 421 (26.7%, new) Labour: 177 (11.2%, -21.3) Liberal Democrats (Mike Stayte): 112 (7.1%, -9.1) UKIP: 5 (0.3%, new) Green Party GAIN from Labour This was followed by four Thursday elections, three of which had ...
3000 No, I'm not quoting the Busted song - this is the approximate electorate for this year's Lib Dem Local Government Association Group Elections! It's a number of councillors that only a few years ago would have looked completely inconceivable and it's a testament to the hard work of councillors and campaigners across the country that we're in range of overtaking the Tories as the 2nd largest party in local government. Our 2025 cohort join us during the most critical time for local councils in over 50 years with Local Government Reorganisation and local budgets stretched to the absolute limit. ...
This week's council by-elections started with one of those rare Wednesday contests, the first for several months: Severn (Stroud) Council By-Election Result: [IMG: 🌍] GRN: 27.8% (+10.0) [IMG: 🌳] CON: 26.9% (-6.6) [IMG: ➡] RFM: 26.7% (New) [IMG: 🌹] LAB: 11.2% (-21.3) [IMG: 🔶] LDM: 7.1% (-9.1) [IMG: 💷] UKIP: 0.3% (New)Green GAIN from Labour.Changes w/ 2024. — Election Maps UK (@electionmaps.uk) 2025-06-11T23:08:52.850Z This counts as two Reform UK gains, one each from the Conservatives and Labour. For what all this means for the running total of council by-election results since the last May elections, see my council by-elections scorecard ...
"In cases of adult rape, it takes the police an average of 344 days to decide whether to press charges (for all other crimes, it is 41 days). During this period, victims have no right to independent legal advice or representation unless they pay for it themselves. The court backlog of rape cases is at a record high. Court dates can be scheduled and then postponed with as little as 24 hours' notice - I've heard of this happening to a victim more than twenty times."Lili Owen Rowlands volunteers with a rape crisis helpline. Charles Wright looks back on Kemi ...
I'm pleased that Sister Sid is doing so well, but I worry about those Lincolnshire refugees. I don't know how long they are put up at the Bonkers Arms, but I do know that the Stilton mines are always looking for new recruits. Friday Sister Sid drops in from the Convent of Our Lady of the Ballot Boxes to lobby me about American tariffs on the Heard and McDonald Islands, where he has relatives. Cook provides us with an excellent fish lunch and is quite unperturbed by Sid's requesting his be served raw. "It's just like that Japanese stooshie you ...
The Friends of Blackness Summer Fayre takes place at Blackness Primary School tomorrow - Saturday 14th June - between 10am and 12 noon - all welcome!
It only took twenty-four hours after Chancellor, Rachel Reeves sat down in the House of Commons in the wake of delivering the outcome of her comprehensive spending review, for the UK economy to kick back with some serious questions as to how sustainable her plans really are. The first sign of this was the news that the Office for National Statistics had reported gross domestic product fell by 0.3 per cent in April, compared with growth of 0.2 per cent the previous month, marking the biggest contraction since October 2023. This has now led to a warning by the influential ...
