As I travel around my ward, I spot things that fall into the categories of Good, Bad and Ugly. This one definitely falls into the Good category. This is the daffodil bed ay Byermoor next to the A692 and very close to the border with Co Durham. It comes up blooming every year and makes a great display for people coming into Gateshead.
Welcome to my summary of the latest national voting intention polls for the next general election, along with the latest MRP projections and party leadership ratings. If you'd like to find out more about how polls work, how reliable they are and how to make sense of them, check out my book, Polling UnPacked: the History, Uses and Abuses of Political Opinion Polls, or sign up for my weekly email, The Week in Polls: General election voting intention polls PollsterConLabLDGrnRefLab leadFieldwork Find Out Now 17% (-1) 16% (+1) 11% (+1) 20% (nc) 25% (-1) -9% (4th, vs Ref) 8/4 GB ...
I've got quite a black eye! Florence, one of my nanny goats, had two babies yesterday but her udders where so full of milk that the babies could not suckle. I therefore took her to out milking shed and encouraged her to get onto the milking stand. That was when it happened. I made the mistake of bending over as she jumped onto the stand. The result was an impact as her horn collided with my
There was only one principal council by-election this week. The count took place on Friday morning, so the result didn't filter through until later on Friday afternoon. Kent County Council, Cliftonville The Green Party has taken the seat of Cliftonville in Kent from Reform UK. This result was perhaps inevitable given the turmoil surrounding the previous holder; having only won the seat last year amidst a wave of Reform gains from the Conservatives, the incumbent councillor was suspended by Reform following a guilty plea in February regarding a domestic incident, which ultimately triggered this by-election. Beyond the individual conduct of ...
There can be little doubt that the language used by politicians has coarsened over the past few years. Just look at this exchange between a Democrat pundit and the Republican White House as reported in the Independent newspaper. "In an expletive-laden video on the Politicon YouTube channel posted earlier this week, Carville said if the Democrats take control of the House of Representatives and the Senate, they will launch investigations into Trump and his family, which will eventually lead to the president's resignation. "The Democrats are going to investigate you to no end," Carville said. "Then they're going to go ...
With the big May local election polling day nearing, there was only one principal authority council by-election this week, in Kent. Remarkably, 10 of the councillors elected for Reform last year have departed the party. As for this contest: Cliftonville (Kent) Council By-Election Result: [IMG: 🌍] GRN: 38.8% (+26.7) [IMG: ➡] RFM: 33.1% (-7.0) [IMG: 🌳] CON: 15.2% (-4.5) [IMG: 🌹] LAB: 10.4% (-11.6) [IMG: 🙋] Ind: 1.3% (New) [IMG: 🔶] LDM: 1.2% (-1.9)No Ind (-3.0) as previous.Green GAIN from Reform UK.Changes w/ 2025. — Election Maps UK (@electionmaps.uk) 2026-04-10T11:26:43.554Z Thank you to Mo Shafaei for being the Lib Dem ...
Most Liberal Democrat MPs, and most of the limited number of target seats we have yet to win, are in the South of England, with inevitable consequences for the policy positions we adopt. So it's good to see two reports on BBC News about Ed Davey visiting areas in the North where we hope to do well in next month's elections. One is about a visit to Stockport, where the report says we are "eyeing full control". Ed also spoke of the party making gains "in places like Preston and Manchester and Trafford". He is pictured sewing a blazer at ...
Like Alanis Morissette, the judges are amused by irony, so BBC News has strolled away with our Headline of the Day Award.
I wonder if Labour spot the irony in this banner. The issue at hand here is the closure of the Gateshead flyover which, a year and a half ago, was found to be in a poor and dangerous state. The resulting closure has added to the congestion next to a zone where Labour's one way system has itself added to congestion in the town centre. "Brought to you by Gateshead" - the words are really
And here it is: * Mary Reid is a contributing editor on Lib Dem Voice. She was a councillor in Kingston upon Thames, where she is still very active with the local party, and is the Hon President of Kingston Lib Dems.
The Independent reports on warnings by a senior MP that Britons could face higher household bills for years to come - even if the fragile ceasefire in the Middle East holds. The paper says that Graeme Downie, a Labour MP who sits on the energy select committee, has warned it "will still take a long time for prices to return to normal" and the full impact of the crisis on the cost of living could be felt "until 2027/28 at least": His comments follow warnings from experts and industry figures that the two-week ceasefire - which is already in jeopardy ...
Cole-Hamilton sets out plan for a skills revolution Scot Lib Dems call for investment in affordable housing in Mid Scotland & Fife Cole-Hamilton sets out plan for a skills revolution Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton has today set out plans for a skills revolution as he met with young scientists at Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh today. The Scottish Liberal Democrats will: Create a new industrial strategy that focuses on what we're really good at and what we can be good at, and throw the weight and levers of government behind businesses that can help us achieve greater success in ...
Here's the tally of seats changing hands in principal authority council by-elections held between the May 2025 and the May 2026 local elections: Con Lab Lib Dem Green Reform SNP Plaid Ind/ Other Net Con [17] +2 (+2/0) -9 (+3/-12) +2 (+2/0) -21 (+2/-23) -1 (0/-1) – +2 (+3/-1) -25 Lab -2 (0/-2) [16] -5 (0/-5) -8 (0/-8) -30 (+1/-31) – -2 (0/-2) -7 (0/-7) -54 Lib Dem +9 (+12/-3) +5 (+5/0) [35] +2 (+4/-2) -2 (+2/-4) +2 (+2/0) – +4 (+4/0) +20 Grn -2 (0/-2) +8 (+8/0) -2 (+2/-4) [8] +2 (+2/0) – – -1 (0/-1) +5 Ref +21 ...
Lord Harborough's Curve: photo by John Sutton Many railway enthusiasts will know the story of the Battle of Saxby and Lord Harborough's Curve, told here by the Leicestershire Museum Collections site:In mid-November 1844, railway surveyors were making their way slowly through the Leicestershire countryside. George Stephenson had sketched out his preferred route for the Syston & Peterborough Railway and now they were taking the levels. Four miles east of Melton, near the village of Saxby, they reached the estate of Lord Harborough, whose ancestral home of Stapleford Hall stood nearby. His Lordship hated the very idea of railways and had ...
On the 9th April 1917, Easter Monday, the poet Edward Thomas was killed in the Battle of Arras. His family were Welsh, and his father Philip was an active Liberal and attendee of the National Eisteddfod in 1906. He was a friend of David Lloyd George long before Lloyd George became President of the Board of Trade. In 1936 David Lloyd George, prime minister Stanley Baldwin, and poet laureate John Masefield signed an appeal to create a memorial to Thomas, and on 2nd October 1937 it was unveiled on the Shoulder of Mutton hill in Hampshire. 'Adlestrop' is probably Edward ...
The Liberal Democrats have a habit of arguing through books. The Orange Book, the Little Yellow Book, the Green Book; each tried to say something important about the future of our party. But taken together, they still leave one tradition unnamed: liberal social democracy. These books aren't just publications, but attempts to define what kind of party we are. The Orange Book laid out a deliberate statement of intent in 2004. It was a serious effort to restate one kind of liberalism and carve out a path that distinguished us from the Conservative and Labour Parties at the time. The ...
Food prices have become one of the biggest pressures on family budgets in Britain. Yet behind the rising cost of the weekly shop lies a deeper problem: a food system that is failing households, farmers and the economy alike. In the past decade, we have experienced the highest food price inflation in 40 years. UK production of some of our most nourishing foods, such as beans, fruit and vegetables, is stalling as they no longer offer a viable livelihood for farmers. Domestic fruit and vegetable production has dropped by 16% since 2015, and we see the largest trade deficits for ...
Samira Shackle meets victims of successive governments that have sought to reduce immigration while insisting universities recruit more overseas students: "Each year, about 400,000 international students are granted study visas to the UK. A significant proportion do so with the help of education agents: middlemen paid by universities to find foreign students. In 2023, UK universities spent a total of £500m on education agents - but there is very little oversight of how these agents operate." "In places like Kootenai County, where white Christian Republicans hold a supermajority, local politics is mutating into something undeniably extreme. North Idaho offers a ...
Last week, the party announced an emergency transport package: 10p off fuel duty, £1 bus fares, a 10% rail cut, lower VAT on public EV charging. And the reaction from members has been... pretty muted. I think that tells us something. There's a shared instinct here that the package doesn't quite land, and it's worth working out why. It's not that responding to a crisis is wrong. People are paying more to get around because of a war they didn't start, and a responsible opposition should have something to say about that. The question is whether what we're saying is ...
My computer has been malfunctioning for the past two weeks: hence a dearth of comments on the several dire problems facing the world The Space flight. There has been a rather pathetic attempt by the BBC to generate excitement about this project. I know it is very clever but it was successfully done fifty years ago, when technology was much less advanced, and flights to and from the International Space Station have become routine since. So why be thrilled with this one, even if it is a little bit further and we get new pictures of the other side of ...
Nation Cymru reports that a prominent Reform Wales figure has announced she will leave the party citing "serious concerns" over parachuted Senedd election candidates and allegations of racism. The news site says that former UKIP Assembly Member for South Wales West Caroline Jones told followers on Facebook on Tuesday (April 7) that she had quit Reform UK 24 hours ago but had not received any acknowledgment from senior party officials: In a statement to Facebook she wrote: "It has been over 24 hours since I have formally submitted my resignation from the Reform UK party. "After more than 13 years ...