I was in the Lib Dem office today to do a bit of printing. We have a Gateshead Lib Dem media event coming up tomorrow in Gateshead so the printing was for a handout flyer. We will be marking a year since the Gateshead Flyover was closed. Gateshead Labour leader Martin Gannon said in March that "I can safely predict [the Flyover] will be gone by the end of this year." (BBC 18th March 2025)
Embed from Getty ImagesAn anonymous letter to the Guardian's Consumer champions: I subscribed to Your Party at its shambolic start and am now finding it impossible to cancel my membership. No one replies to emails. My local party branch told me it can't help. The portal requires me to open a new account and commit to another payment in order to cancel anything. I tried to block the payments from my Amex card but they managed to sneak a £5 payment again this month. My attempt to reclaim the money from my card issuer was rejected. I'm so frustrated that ...
Yesterday at Gateshead Civic Centre there was a briefing for councillors on equipment that can be used to help older people wth dementia continue to live at home rather than go into a care facility. While most of the equipment had a passing resemblance to remote controls, ipads and mobile phones, my attention was drawn to this little critter which I dubbed Robo Dog. It is designed for
Keir Starmer's digital ID project is a techno-authoritarian's wet dream, argues Carole Cadwalladr: "This is a policy that wasn't in the Labour Party's manifesto, that no party faithful campaigned for and that no voters were told about on the doorstep. Instead, after some brief ground softening by pet journalists in friendly newspapers, it appeared out of almost nowhere in late September." David Nowell Smith shows that accusations of "left-wing bias" against the BBC have a long history and arose from newspapers' fear of competition: "The first coordinated newspaper campaign against the 'Reds' at the BBC was initiated by the Daily ...
These days we Liberal Democrats often divide ourselves, broadly and crudely, into "economic liberals" and "social liberals". Economic liberals tend to start from the market, prioritising entrepreneurship, low taxes and preventing state interference. Social liberals tend to start from human rights and social justice, usually assuming a greater level of taxation and regulation, and thus of state activity, than economic liberals. But there is a substantial overlap in belief, and the crude characterisation of the last two sentences by no means describes all liberals. The labels are as traditional as the idea, and I suspect have ceased to be useful ...
I loved this when it came out as a single in 1972. Almost 40 years later, I saw The Zombies play Market Harborough and Rod Argent shaking hands with the front row of the audience after playing this keyboard solo.
We are holding a Thursday street surgery tonight to speak with residents on any local issues or concerns they may have. Should you have an issue you wish to discuss with us, e-mail us at westend@dundeelibdems.org.uk or call Dundee 459378 and we will be pleased to meet you - many thanks.
The Independent has an important opinion piece on the consequences of the UK cutting international aid and its impact on our soft power abroad. The article points out that major reductions in development funding from the US, Germany, France, and the UK mark the biggest contraction in aid spending in decades, adding that by some projections, aid spending by the top donors in the world will decline by $67 billion (£50bn) from 2023 to 2026, a drop of almost a third: This is driven primarily by Donald Trump's administration shuttering the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and cancelling ...
