The news last week from the US Mid-term elections has been utterly seismic, as noted by Caron here. But something else really big has happened which deserves separate focus. While the party poppers were being swept up from the Democrat celebrations, officials in Mississippi were quietly and labouriously sifting through ballot papers. The vote for the state-wide US Senate post was too close to call. A real nail-biter. NAACP's* Legal Defense Fund website takes up the story: Mississippi advocates and legal advisors, including the Legal Defense Fund and the Mississippi: Count Every Vote coalition, worked tirelessly all across the state ...
I met up with volunteers from Friends of Sunniside last night to discuss arrangements for forthcoming events. The first is on Saturday 14th November (11.30-3pm) when Cornerstone Church holds its Christmas fair. Alas, I will not be able to make this event as I am at a conference in Northumberland.On Sunday 29th November (4pm-6pm) Cornerstone Church will be holding a Christmas celebration
The latest edition of the email newsletter for my podcast, Political Fictions, is out and you can also read it in full below. But if you'd like to get future editions emailed direct to you as soon as they are published, sign up now: Get the books As well as covering some books in the podcast, we also mention others in the newsletter's bonus content. You can browse all the books mentioned and get them for yourself via my Bookshop.org page (affiliate link). The books available include the one this time's film was based on and my blog post on ...
On Monday I met up with Plant Up Sunniside to put the final touches to the Switch on Sunniside event on 25th November. I've booked the Christmas donkey and "reindeer". Santa is coming as well. There will be live music from Anna Reay. There will be no Christmas tree as such this year, sadly. The cost of buying a tree (plus delivery, installation, insurance etc) from the Council has jumped
I love publishing guest posts here on Liberal England. Have you thought of writing one yourself? It could be on Liberal politics or culture or... anything really. Why not an article about a local campaign or quirky piece of history? Perhaps you have a book to promote? Please drop me an email if you'd like to discuss your idea first. I'd hate you to spend time on a piece I really wouldn't want to publish. Here are the last 10 guest posts on this blog:In praise of outgrounds: How cricket in small towns made a roaring comeback- Matthew PennellWhy has ...
The BBC reports that Reform UK's leader in Wales says she stands "firmly" by one of her Senedd members who was banned from speaking in the parliament for claiming white people are being "replaced" in the UK. This is a well-known and recognised white nationalist conspiracy theory, often associated with anti-Semitism: The party's Welsh leader, Helen Jenner, said Joe Martin's ban was because of "undue pressure" from governing party Plaid Cymru and was an "infringement on freedom of speech". Martin had been told he would not be allowed to speak in the Senedd's chamber until he apologised for the remarks, ...
Embed from Getty Images"You have a home with us," Pippa Heylings has said in an open letter to Green members who feel environmental issues have slipped down the party's agenda in recent month reports, Politics.co.uk. Heylings, who is the Liberal Democrat spokesperson on energy security and net zero as well as being MP for South Cambridgeshire, published her letter as COP31. the United Nations' annual climate change conference, got underway in Antalya, Turkey. In it, says the website, Heylings (seen nearest the camera in the photo above) sets out five environmental commitments championed by the Lib Dems: She cites the ...
Wed 11th
18:36
Save the date! Lloyd George Society and Liberal Democrat History Group meeting with Damian Collins a...
When Britain declared war on Germany in August 1914, David Lloyd George was Chancellor of the Exchequer and Herbert H. Asquith was Prime Minister. On 6 December 1916, Lloyd George replaced Asquith as Prime Minister, leading a wartime coalition that included the Conservative Party. Lloyd George's ascendancy (via stints as the Minister of Munitions and the Secretary of State for War) is just as controversial now as it was in 1916. Ultimately, it created a schism within the Liberal Party, pitching the Lloyd George group against the Asquith loyalists, from which the party would never recover. Yet, under Lloyd George, ...
British politics has never been short of defectors. It has, however, been rather less well supplied with defectors whose principles survived the journey. Christopher Brocklebank-Fowler was one of the exceptions. A Conservative MP who crossed the floor to join the SDP, subsequently embraced the Liberal Democrats and eventually found his way into Tony Blair's Labour Party, he was a political traveller of unusual range. As the One Nation Liberals prepare to publish our founding pamphlet, Beyond the Right, his career challenges the increasingly tedious assumption that One Nation politics is the proprietary invention of the Conservative Party. Born in Banbury ...
"The public's disgust with Trump is now inextricably bound up with disgust for that other cult - the smug-maxxing techno-narcissists who think we all want to live in the world they're designing."Tina Brown looks at America after the midterms. Sol Gamsu finds that Britain's schools are segregated by social class - in London in particular: "For post-16 education, London's state schools and colleges are very unequal. In affluent western boroughs such as Richmond upon Thames or Kingston, working-class students are heavily concentrated in further education colleges, with a larger number of more middle-class state schools." Lindsey Blumell says the media ...
Once, long before you were born, I played this over and over again on the jukebox of The Bird in Hand, Henstridge. The pub also had a bar billiards table, so it was a good evening.
During the Senedd election the now-First Minister said that his first goal was to show people what a Plaid government can do. Yet rather than focus on the key issues of health, education, and the cost of living, it seems that they are still obsessed with independence, and it is the taxpayers who are picking up the bill. The BBC reports that the case for Welsh independence, as well as more devolution for Cardiff Bay, will be considered by a new body set-up by the Plaid Cymru Welsh government. The news website says that the so-called National Commission for Wales ...
Ah Ghostwatch on the BBC!! (Spoiler Warning) I will set the scene for you, I was 10 years old it was a Saturday 31st October to be exact. My parents were always a bit more liberal where bedtimes were concerned on a Saturday and I was looking for something to watch on a Halloween night. I seem to remember seeing an advert for Ghostwatch during the week and I think I joined the program about 10 to 15 minutes in so it was already in full swing. The first thing I recognised were some very familiar faces. Michael Parkinson a ...