Edmund Gordon writes in the London Review of Books: I was​ a competent name-caller and a precocious smoker, but my schoolboy talents stopped short of anything that involved a ball. Catering to my eight-year-old son's tennis abilities has involved a serious learning curve. The atmosphere on the London and South-East nine and under circuit can be surprisingly intense. Pint-sized competitors gather outside the clubhouse, doing warm-up exercises and footwork drills. The moment they step on court most of them become nervous wrecks. They lie about line calls and bicker over the score; if they lose, they fall howling to the ...
Three Lib Dem MPs have been shortlisted in the Political Purpose Awards. From the Nature 2030 website: The Political Purpose Awards recognise the efforts of UK politicians who have supported and championed environmental causes over the last year, incentivising more MPs to devote their time to protecting nature. The awards return for their third edition in 2025, in partnership with Ecotricity. This year's awards celebrate eight categories, including two new awards: Wildlife Crime Prevention and Rewilding and Restoring Nature. This year's shortlist was judged by an esteemed panel of campaigners, NGOs, and journalists, all of whom are deeply involved in ...
Thanks to a nomination from a Liberal England reader, the Dorset Echo wins our Headline of the Day Award. In their ruling, the judges expressed the view that if anywhere deserves to be called "the home of knobs" it is Cattistock.
Jo Swinson has long been interested in challenging the conventional way of determining economic success. She's a graduate of the London School of Economics and when she was a Lib Dem MP, and leader, she promoted the idea of measuring wellbeing and not just GDP. She has spent the past five years as the Director of Partners for a New Economy. This week she was interviewed about the work of PANE in the Observer. She had some important observations to make about the timidity of some centre-left governments: We are in this moment of rupture, where the old economic consensus ...
July lies heavy like blowsy yellow roses fading, full of scent
In the slow unravelling of Labour's Welfare Reform Bill, something revealing happened — not just about policy, but about power. For all the promises of "stability" and "competence" that Keir Starmer had promised a year ago, we instead saw a government conducting itself like an actor who forgets their lines but insists on taking centre stage anyway. The Bill, in its first draft, was a monument to both arrogance and clownish stupidity. The Government insisted for weeks that its plan would still go ahead for economic and social necessity, despite the mounting rebellion that they faced. Under pressure — moral, ...
During my week's holiday (walking in Conwy with an Anglo-German group) I've completed reading two short books which I picked up almost by accident during my stint as a volunteer in our local library. The first, by Michael Peel (a journalist with the Financial Times and formerly their foreign correspondent), has the rather lengthy title "What Everyone Knows about Britain, Except for the British" and argues that we look at ourselves intercostally though a trick mirror, but from abroad we are seen not as the "Great Power" we think we are (and maybe used to be) but as a seedy, ...
"In the year since the election, Labour has gone from dominating the youth vote to being in a three-way race with the Greens and Lib Dems." That's Dr Stuart Fox from the University of Exeter talking to the Express about a new study he has led of the voting preferences of people under 30. The paper doesn't say where the study is published, but what it does say about it is encouraging for the Liberal Democrats: People under 30 were asked how likely they are to vote for a party by giving a score out of ten, with seven or ...
So, having asked a bunch of questions designed to smooth the selection process, a Returning Officer's mind turns to what the various parts of the Party want to see. And that's a particularly relevant consideration given the debates we've had about candidate selection this year. The debate in Harrogate revolved around two core themes: Diversity - by including the Vice President responsible for working with ethnic minority communities, this would be built into the process and made a key priority. In addition, action would be taken to encourage greater representation of women amongst the candidate pool. Scheduling – a co-ordinated, ...
When I was 17 I thought this was the best LP there had ever been or ever could be (with the possible exception of The Kick Inside by Kate Bush).
We recently received concerns about the deteriorated state of the road surface in Hillside Place. We raised this with the roads maintenance partnership and were promised repairs. However, given the extremely poor road condition, we asked about the possibility of future resurfacing and were advised as follows : "Hillside Place did not make it into this year's list for resurfacing work, but it will be scored again this year for possible inclusion in next year's list."
The Guardian reports that polling indicates plans to change the House of Lords by removing only the remaining hereditary peers do not go far enough in the eyes of the public. The poll finds that just 3% of those surveyed backed the government's plans, with 56% of respondents agreeing that ministers should additionally limit the number of peers the prime minister is able to appoint to the upper chamber for life. The hereditary peers bill is due to enter its report stage in the House of Lords today after five days of debate with line-by-line consideration of more than 100 ...
