An old BBC documentary on a well-studied subject, but the talking heads here are of a high quality. I've not heard Manfred Mann interviewed before, for instance.
In Loughborough today in connection with a thing, I didn't have time to visit the preserved Great Central Railway. But I did strike lucky when I crossed a bridge just south of Loughborough Central station.
The IMF recently highlighted a 25% cut in aid to Sub-Saharan Africa — largely, but not solely, driven by Trump's dismantling of USAID. The UK's own cuts echo a wider trend: aid is being redirected, relabelled under different expenditure lines or simply eliminated as defence spending and domestic social security demands crowd it out. Some of those cuts exposed genuine waste. But the scale is not sustainable — particularly for fragile low-income states where aid accounted for up to 6% of GDP. For them, this is potentially brutal. Aid remains a fiscal lifeline for millions. It is also in our ...
Thu 16th
19:17
Labour's weakening of local government will do nothing for voters' confidence in the political syste...
So Harborough District Council is to disappear, subsumed into a single authority for the whole of the county outside the city of Leicestershire. And Leicester is to be expanded to make the hole in the doughnut bigger. City boundaries have to be expanded from time to time, but I'm not sure the areas Leicester is taking will be delighted. For some years there has been criticism that its elected mayor Peter Soulsby, now in his fourth term, is keen on prestige projects in the city centre, but less interested in bread-and-butter issues like litter and the state of the pavements ...
The Liberal Democrats have today announced the names of five new members of the House of Lords. They are: Julia Aglionby, Executive Director of the Foundation for Common Land, Professor of Practice at the University of Cumbria, and agricultural valuer Hannah Kitching, former NHS physiotherapist, Mayor of Penistone, and former Leader of the Opposition on Barnsley Council Tim Leunig, Chief Economist at Nesta, Senior Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Government, Director of Economics at Public First, and former senior civil servant Dave McCobb, Liberal Democrat Director of Campaigns who masterminded the party's best ever election results, and former Hull ...
[IMG: New Lib Dem peers July 2026] The five new peers. News from the Liberal Democrats: Five new Liberal Democrat members of the House of Lords have been announced today: Julia Aglionby, Executive Director of the Foundation for Common Land, Professor of Practice at the University of Cumbria, and agricultural valuer Hannah Kitching, former NHS physiotherapist, Mayor of Penistone, and former Leader of the Opposition on Barnsley Council Tim Leunig, Chief Economist at Nesta, Senior Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Government, Director of Economics at Public First, and former senior civil servant Dave McCobb, Liberal Democrat Director of Campaigns ...
The Independent reports that Rachel Reeves has said that the UK holds "no alliance" more important than its relationship with the EU in what is anticipated to be her final major speech as Chancellor. The paper adds that reflecting on her two years in the Treasury, Chancellor Reeves urged Britain to be "much bolder" and go "much further" in pursuing closer ties with the bloc: Ms Reeves also defended her record, stating the economy had "beaten the odds" under her stewardship and she had proven her credibility in "every decision" since Labour was elected. She concluded by urging incoming prime ...
