Last night, my two ward colleagues - Jonathan Mohammed and Marilynn Ord - and I met up with Planting Up Sunniside in Sunniside Club to sort out some of the details of the Christmas tree switch on event on 26th November. The switch-on will be on 26th November on the grassed area opposite Sun Hill. at about 5pm. More details to follow.
Prunella Scales died yesterday at the age of 93. We all remember her as Sybil Fawlty, and in his DVD commentaries on the series, John Cleese (who was 86 today) recalls that she brought much to the role that he and Connie Booth had not imagined. Fawlty Towers was the better for it. But there was more to Prunella Scales than Fawlty Towers. She was Elizabeth II in Alan Bennett's A Question of Attribution and played Queen Victoria in a one-woman show for many years. There were other successful television sitcoms and a surprising number of films. The second of ...
"For 25 years, governments have been promoting executive elected mayors in English local government, an enthusiasm fully endorsed by the current government in a white paper in 2024 and bill in 2025. Existing legislation allows central government to transfer to these mayors all the functions of local councils, subject only to scrutiny arrangements which involve no more than a power to ask the mayor politely to think again. It empowers central government to turn all elected councils into functionless talking shops, and to create mayors who are local kings."David Howarth takes aim at Labour's demolition of local government. Alison Bennett ...
I joined the Liberal Democrats six years ago. I was 16, I'd just finished my GCSEs and I wanted to make a difference. I believe in Liberalism, and the party's preamble spoke to me. After all, who wouldn't want a free, fair and open society? Well, as it would seem, quite a lot of people. But nevertheless, I campaigned in elections during 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, 3 times in 2024 and again in 2025 and I'll continue in 2026 for my local election campaign. We lost most of those elections. All 5 of the ones I stood in we lost, ...
Take a moment and imagine at the next General Election, the closing polls come in. That ping comes through on your phone, the announcement comes up on the TV, the person next to you turns and says "Reform is winning....the exit polls look like tomorrow we'll have Nigel Farage as our Prime Minister...". Then, over the next few years a Reform government takes away the rights and freedoms of millions up and down our country in a toxic wave of populism. We know sadly the polls show this is very possible but we know it's not inevitable. This is the ...
Tue 28th
13:14
Important party elections, next steps on PR and growing our local government base (LDN#202)
Liberal Democrat Newswire #202 is a bumper edition including news about the important internal party elections for which ballots are going out today (Tuesday). If you'd like to get future editions emailed direct to you as soon as they are published, just sign up now: Welcome to Lib Dem Newswire #202, a bumper edition including party election news, the latest on campaigning for electoral reform, analysis of how the Lib Dem local government base has grown and much more. Details are also included of continuing Lib Dem local government gains – a marked contrast from Labour, Conservatives and even the ...
So many of us in LGBT+ community – and countless allies, too – feared that the Supreme Court ruling earlier this year would challenge the dignity and identity of trans and non-binary people across our country. Shortly after the ruling, I insisted on meeting the Supreme Court Justices following the judgement and made it clear to them just how much trauma, pain and uncertainty has been created by it among our trans and non-binary community. It is gut-wrenching to see this reverberate through our party, particularly in the last 24 hours, and to have spent yesterday speaking with some of ...
This letter is being written in the context that the Returning Officer for the party elections has rewritten the quota rules in the party constitution through. The effect of these changes, whilst the wording is unclear, appears to be to create a new category of "binary biological sex" through which the quotas in section 2.5 are to be applied. It further reduces the available section 2.6 quota for sexual minorities, and creates a new, separated section 2.6 quota for gender minorities. We, the undersigned, understand and believe the following to be the case: The quotas in section 2.5 of the ...
For what I believe is the first time, Wiltshire's Gazette & Herald wins our Headline of the Day Award. Don't worry: the historic parts of the brewery have not been razed - the judges just liked the headline.
We have a simple rule in Gateshead Lib Dems for action days: always go for lunch together in a local hostelry or in a member's house. On Saturday, at the end of our action day in Dunston Hill and Whickham East, we gathered at the Waggon Team pub near Lobley Hill. Very nice!
I have known lots of Tory voters in my life and a fair few Tory members and many of them have been decent people who want the best for our country, albeit they have different ways of achieving it to us (the same could be said for Labour supporters). But on October 18th the Tory Party changed and I do not believe any decent person can now vote for them. Their " rising star" Katie Lam, who is a shadow Home Office Minister, says that she wants to deport millions of people who have "Indefinite Right to Remain" (ILR). She ...
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 Independent reports that Nigel Farage has described comments made by one of his MPs as "ugly" and "wrong" after she said she was driven "mad" by advertisements featuring Black and Asian people, but stopped short of calling her remarks racist. The Reform leader was responding to an appearance on TalkTV over the weekend, when Sarah Pochin, the MP for Runcorn and Helsby, responded to a viewer who complained about the demographics of advertising, saying she thought the viewer was "absolutely right", adding that "It drives me mad when I see adverts full of Black people, full of Asian people." ...
