I've struck gold with this 1959 report on Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop at Stratford East from the BBC arts programme Monitor. The first comment on YouTube reckons you can spot Pat Phoenix. James Booth, Dudley Sutton, Yootha Joyce, Richard Harris and Glyn Edwards among the company. I've long been interested in Stratford East's links with ITV sitcoms: half the cast of On the Buses (Stephen Lewis, Bob Grant, Michael Robbins) came from the Theatre Workshop. I didn't know before seeing this that, through Pat Phoenix, it was also linked with Coronation Street. Joan Littlewood's remarkable career proved there is an ...
David Howarth knows how to make the BBC less afraid of Nigel Farage: "Proportional representation would free the BBC from fear, but more than that, since under PR many parties would enjoy a reasonable prospect of entering government and so of supplying the secretary of state for culture, the BBC would have better incentives to maintain impartiality among democratic parties." "Calling Andrew entitled is beside the point. He was raised with no economic purpose and now he finds himself as a connector to whom no one wants to be connected. 'I have no idea who he will socialize with,' one ...
Human Rights protect us all-and we must defend them There are moments in politics when you can feel not just the temperature of the debate shift, but the very foundations of our democracy tremble. Last week, in the House of Commons, Ed Davey delivered one of those rare speeches that cut through the noise. Calm, principled, and grounded in the best traditions of British Liberalism, Ed reminded Parliament and the country why the European convention on Human Rights-which Britain helped create, championed by none other than Winston Churchill-remains essential to who we are as a nation. It shouldn't need saying, ...
Searchlight stabbing high through – beyond – our vision's range past our hearts' desire
Last week has been hard and the subject of a lot of soul searching. I'm a Lib Dem for a lot of reasons. I believe in the values of liberalism and appreciate how the party approaches the nuance of those values in balancing individual and community or societal freedoms. I think a political movement that represents this and campaigns for a liberal vision of society that balances these freedoms to empower people, through decentralising of power and moving decision making closer to those it affects is an important thing for our society and is a way out of polarised extremism. ...
A few photos from last weeks Gateshead Lib Dem social at the Tynesider on Gateshead High Street.
Last week I posted a bar chart of council by-elections in October. It seems I jumped the gun. A revised bar chart has since been circulated which is an improvement on what was already a good result.Every party expects to make some losses in council by-elections but since the May local elections the Lib Dems have defended 28 seats and lost only 2. For all my years in politics, I've never
Last week, I wrote about the appalling Tory plan to deport millions of legally settled people. This plan involved cancelling the Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) of people who are not UK Citizens if they were (among other things) living in a council house, not earning more than £38,700, or had a disabled dependent receiving State benefits. As Shadow Home Office Minister, Katie Lam, said at the time, this policy would target "a mostly, but not entirely, culturally coherent group of people." It seems this may have been a step too far even for the Tories. The Guardian reports that ...
A bit of a fun night last Friday as we sat at home waiting for the next knock on the door. I think we overdid the sweets however. Five big boxes of chocolates ended up being too much. It looks like what's left over will go to the Sunniside History Society meeting on Wednesday to be raffle prizes! I suspect I won't be taking the mask with me.
Sunniside History Society will be meeting at 7pm on Wednesday 5th November at Sunniside Social Club. The speaker is Dr Paul Stott who will be talking about the shipbuilding industry in the North East. I will be chairing the meeting.
Mon 3rd
10:34
Heather Kidd welcomes project to restore habitats at old industrial sites in rural Shropshire
A new nature recovery project, the Rescuing Rocks and Overgrown Relics scheme, is will restore natural habitats at four sites in the Shropshire Hills. The locations involved include Poles Coppice in Pontesbury, Snailbeach and The Bog. The work will include scrub management and coppicing to expose rocky habitats that support species like slow worms, grayling butterflies and bird's-foot-trefoil. It will be carried out by Shropshire Council's outdoor partnership team and the Shropshire Hills National Landscape team, with help from volunteers. Heather Kidd, the Liberal Democrat leader of Shropshire Council, told BBC News she is delighted by the project: "Bringing these ...
These are two lists of reviews looking at mainly acetyl-CoA, but also other acyl-CoAs. They were selected by a search using chatGPT for the first one and Claude for the second one. Some are behind a paywall. My plan is to read through these and draw out conclusions I will separate out the ones which are behind a paywall. Acetyl-CoA: a central metabolite and second messenger (Cell Metab, 2015
A new West End Family Club is starting today. All are welcome to come along and join in with the taster sessions later today and again on 17th November at The Friary from 3.30pm to 5.30pm. Join in with free fun activities and a teatime meal too!
We were told by the popularist right wingers in 2016 that voting for Brexit would solve illegal immigration and strengthen our economy, unfortunately for the rest of us those promises turned out to be nonsense. Now, they're at it again, claiming that the answer to all of our problems lie in us joining Putin's Russia outside the European Convention on Human Rights, as if further isolation from the rest of the World is going to make us stronger. This has not stopped Badenoch's Tories casting one last desperate throw of the dice by joining Farage's Reform in wanting to ditch ...
