Jago Hazzard sets out the history of Golders Green station, and tells us about the history of the London Underground and of London suburbia in the process. You can support Jago's videos via his Patreon page. And why not subscribe to his YouTube channel?
I was on Sky News soon after news broke about Labour abandoning its plans to cancel council elections: Prior to the u-turn, I wrote about the issue over on my newsletter about work in Parliament, A Lord's Eye View: We discussed in the House of Lords the latest round of election cancellations announced by the government, cancellations that mean in some cases councillors elected for four years will get three unelected years on top, serving seven years in post. To make matters worse, the Secretary of State suggested that it is a choice between democracy or getting potholes fixed, "They ...
Mon 16th
18:30
All aboard the status quo: We don't need a department for growth; we need a department for beyond gr...
Let me make this clear: GDP is not an accurate measure of prosperity. Nor is it an adequate measure of wealth. As Robert U. Ayres argues in "The Economic Growth Engine", it is a measure of economic activity. It only accounts for capital that is generated as a result of the depletion of "natural capital" (i.e the environment). It does not account for societal wellbeing; nor does it account for the losses of wealth (i.e pollution) resulting from the depletion of "natural capital" resulting from economic activity. So with all of these limitations, why on earth are policymakers, politicians, and ...
Chris Dillow argues that if government wants to foster economic growth, it will have to fight for it: "Right now, the social transformation needed to raise growth requires the government to face down the powerful interests of, if not capital in general, then at least the more regressive elements of it such as rentiers, monopolists and media barons." Virginia Heffernan investigates Jeffrey Epstein's favourite intellectual salon, Edge. She finds that it infiltrated Harvard, muzzled the humanities and preached master-race science. "'Free School Meals' and 'Free School Clothing' were an absolute lifeline for us ... That support meant I could walk ...
On NATO, the extremes are a risk Britain cannot afford For once, Keir Starmer is right. When he says that Reform UK on the Hard Right and the Greens on the Hard Left pose risks to NATO and, by extension, Britain's national security, he is identifying something serious. From opposite ideological poles, both parties advance instincts that would weaken the alliance that has underpinned European security for over seventy years. That should concern all of us. Reform's worldview is, from what I can tell, rooted in a kind of muscular unilateralism. Alliances are treated with suspicion. Multilateral commitments are portrayed ...
By any measure, opening a bank account in the United Kingdom is a serious business. You prove who you are, where you live, and pass security checks designed to stop fraud and protect the public. Yet on social media—platforms that shape elections, fuel abuse, and influence our children—anyone can appear with a fake name, no identity, and no accountability. It's an absurd imbalance, and rather than ban people from social media, it's time we corrected it. If we were to apply the same identity-verification rules used by UK banks to the creation of social media accounts it would be a ...
Gateshead Lib Dems had yet another action day on Sunday. The aim was to deliver the latest Focus newsletters across a fair chunk of Bridges ward. This was achieved. I had only 2 conversations with residents while I was out delivering. The first was with someone who had voted Labour at the last general election, is not interested in Reform and was thinking of voting Lib Dem. Our task is to
Gateshead Lib Dems recently held what could be called an envelope stuffing event. We had 25,000 letters to stuff into envelopes and then label them. We never expected to complete the task on the day so we arranged for our Gateshead West branch meeting last week in Winlaton to stuff another ward's envelopes. So Ryton had 3500 envelopes stuffed and labelled at the meeting. The task was not finished
In our latest Focus newsletter we put forward a suggestion that we apply for village green status for the grassed area next to Sun Hill on Sunniside Front Street. The areas was home to the Sunniside Christmas tree in November and December. Go back further in time to the 1970s and there were plans for a library on the site. It never happened as austerity (under the Labour government) put an end to
The Liberal Democrats have proposed a network of "Hobby Hubs" to combat what they call a "silent epidemic of loneliness", as a lack of community spaces is forcing people to find human interaction online. These hubs could libraries, community centres and pubs where groups could meet for activities. The network would be integrated the into NHS social prescribing programmes, giving GPs additional options when recommending activities for their patients. The BBC News report on this plan says the party estimates that £42m of funding per year could help hobby hubs in England stay open for an additional 300,000 hours. It ...
The Guardian reports that Keir Starmer is facing calls by MPs for an inquiry into the commissioning of a report that made "baseless claims" about journalists who were investigating a thinktank linked to the prime minister. The paper says that the calls add to pressure on the Cabinet Office minister Josh Simons, who commissioned a report in 2023 on journalists investigating Labour Together, the thinktank that would help propel Starmer to power: The research was paid for and subsequently reviewed by Simons when he was director of Labour Together, according to sources and documents seen by the Guardian. In an ...
So I watched Simon and Laura, and found that, despite the presence of Ian Carmichael, who I always struggle with, it justifies the enthusiasm of that British Film Institute video I posted the other day. But there is one scene that brought unexpected pleasure - click play above to watch it. Peter Finch (Simon) has left his wife and is on his way back to Leicester. His agent (played by Hubert Gregg) catches up with him at St Pancras with news of the offer for the couple to star in the new BBC series. It really is St Pancras, right ...
In 1907 the American philosopher William James was invited to deliver a series of lectures to Manchester College in Oxford. (It was not then part of the University of Oxford: it educated Nonconformist students, who were barred by the university.) After delivering the lectures, he went to stay with his brother, the novelist Henry James, in Rye. Seamus Perry, in the London Review of Books, tells what he got up to there: He was very excited to learn that G.K. Chesterton was staying at the inn next door. Intensely curious to see what Chesterton looked like, and much to his ...
I will mourn alone without rags or shared comfort for life left behind
Here is a list of the councillors which Reform has shed from the May 2025 local elections and from those elections in by-elections since. The latest update is the departure of John Roddy, elected as recently as last August. Donna Edmunds (Shropshire, suspended by Reform UK and then quit the party) Luke Shingler (Warwickshire, now an independent) Desmond Clarke (Nottinghamshire, resigned as councillor) Andrew Kilburn (Durham, resigned as a councillor) Wayne Titley (Staffordshire, resigned as a councillor) Mark Broadhurst (Doncaster, expelled by Reform) Adam Smith (West Northamptonshire, suspended by Reform and then expelled) John Bailey (Durham, resigned as a councillor) ...
The Guardian introduces us to Tyler Ballgame - this is the title track from his first album, which was released last month: "Not long after his first trip to London, a video of him performing live at a Los Angeles bar called the Fable began circulating online. By the time he came back to the UK to perform at Brighton industry showcase the Great Escape, he had signed to Rough Trade. Critical hosannas began raining down on Ballgame: he has variously been compared to Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman, Jim Morrison and Tim Buckley." And ...
Endangerment Finding It is true that, as President Trump says, that ending the 2009 "Endangerment Finding" of the Obama Era will be a major boost for the American car industry. It will probably help the Europeans as well. It is also true that it will save car buyers more. Trump is on the money when he says that the move will knock $2,800 off the price tag of every new car that rolls off a Detroit assembly line. It is also a gold-plated economic fact that the deregulation will put billions of dollars in the pockets of fossil fuel companies ...
The Guardian reports that judges have humiliated ministers by insisting Palestine Action should not be banned under anti-terrorism laws in a ruling that has left thousands of its alleged supporters in legal limbo. The paper refers to the verdict of the high court on Friday that the government's proscription of the direct action group was "disproportionate and unlawful" and that most of their activities had not reached the level, scale and persistence to be defined as terrorism: The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, was urged to respect the court's decision after the three judges said the ban, introduced by her predecessor ...