The hunting of cetaceans in the Faroe Islands has brought into sharp focus what many of us already understand – the health of our oceans matters to us all. The hunts, known as the grindadráp, see dolphins driven into shallow bays and killed in a practice that has drawn widespread concern for animal welfare. Images of these brutally killed animals sit uneasily with our ambitions for a more sustainable, humane, and internationally engaged future. And these ambitions do not have borders. Although some choose to defend the grind as tradition, all the evidence shows most Faroese people do not participate ...
Earlier on this week, ambulances belonging to a Jewish volunteer emergency medical service were deliberately attacked outside a synagogue in Golders Green, one of London's most established Jewish neighbourhoods. These were not military vehicles. They were not symbols of any state or government. They were ambulances. Vehicles whose sole purpose is to save lives, staffed by volunteers who respond to emergencies. They were targeted because they serve the Jewish community and this should shake every one of us to the core. This was not an isolated incident. It sits within a deeply troubling pattern. The Community Security Trust recorded 3,700 ...
The Conservatives at the County Council having thrown a large chunk of public money at trying to persuade us that what Suffolk really needed was a Unitary County, the Secretary of State, Steve Reed, has concluded that the three Unitary solution proposed by the Districts and Ipswich Borough Council was his preferred choice. I have to admit that I'd rather have seen a rebirth of East and West Suffolk, as I was of the view that two councils, each serving around 400,000 residents, was probably more faithful to the criteria laid down by the Government and would offer two vaguely ...
This review appears in the latest issue of Liberator - no. 434. You can download it free of charge from the magazine's website. George Orwell: Life and LegacyRobert Colls Oxford University Press, 2026, £14.99 I read Nineteen Eighty-Four as a teenager because it felt like a moral duty and as a student regarded the four paperback volumes of George Orwell's Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters as a sort of bible. So I wonder if Rob Colls (who taught me on my MA Victorian Studies course long ago) is right to say we are now living at peak Orwell. The imperative ...
If you heard jeering on you way into the spring conference at York, it appears from that it probably came from militant young badgers. And good luck to them, I say. Thursday I am summoned to the residence of the King of the Badgers, which is to be found on the Bonkers Hall Estate, beneath the triumphal arch I had erected to celebrate the victory of Wallace Lawler in the 1969 Birmingham Ladywood by-election. He tells me that the younger badgers have seen Ed Davey's video opposing the replacement of Winston Churchill by a badger (or other form of wildlife) ...
The Guardian reports that political donations from British citizens living abroad are to be capped at £100,000 a year from Wednesday, in a move that is likely to limit further funding from Reform UK's Thailand-based mega-donor, Christopher Harborne. They add that the new representation of the people bill will also include a temporary ban on donations in cryptocurrency: Steve Reed, the communities secretary, said the legislation would be applied retrospectively from Wednesday subject to parliamentary approval, as the move was urgently needed to protect UK democracy. He said he was "not prepared to allow any window of opportunity for malign ...
More than 17,000 children waiting longer than a year in temporary accommodation David Chadwick calls for Government action to protect Rural Community Transport Schemes Greene: Aspiring politicians must campaign with decency Greene: Offord and Reform should reject secretive crypto donations Collien Fernandes: Renew Europe calls for EU action to close loopholes on AI deepfake abuse More than 17,000 children waiting longer than a year in temporary accommodation Scottish Liberal Democrat housing spokesperson and Central Scotland candidate Paul McGarry has today accused the SNP of "catastrophic neglect" as he published figures showing that over the past five years, there have been ...
I probably heard the repeat of it near Christmas in 1968, but it was this BBC Radio adaptation of The Box of Delights from 1966 that introduced me to the book's magic. And I discovered recently that Stanley Unwin was in it. Click play on the video above and you will hear a short scene between Abner Brown, Sylvia Daisy Pouncer, Rat and Rat's nephew Alf. The nephew is played by Stanley Unwin. Unwin understood that his act worked best in small doses, which is why he turns up making cameo appearances in all sorts of unexpected places.
The usual: cat reported missing. Then it was found dead in the street; its stalk and mewl and problematic claws no more. Perhaps hit by a car... The neighbourhood has grieved: 23 have posted sad emojis, 8 sent their condolences. Now. Black or white, that cat does not catch mice.
Liberal Democrat Newswire #207 came out last week and you can now 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: Welcome to Lib Dem Newswire #207, which includes a look at why the Lib Dems need more local election candidates, a discussion of James Graham's hit play This House, news of how the Cabinet Office moved very slowly to correct an error in government pay and more. First, however, congratulations to the new Lib Dem councillors since last time, and their ...
Here at LDV Towers, we receive all sorts of interesting invitations, most of which we can't respond to. You know, we're busy people with jobs and other commitments. But here's one that we've been asked to share with you... The BBC Wales Your Voice Live: Ask the Leader is on Wednesday, April 8th in Haverfordwest. The audience will have the opportunity to put questions to the leaders of the Welsh Conservatives, Plaid Cymru and Welsh Liberal Democrats ahead of the Senedd election in May. BBC Cymru are looking for audience members and, as they are obliged to try to balance ...
The latest annual report from 5654 & Company and MessageSpace into the social media usage of MPs is out and it shows a drop in use of Elon Musk's X: [IMG: Social media consumption table for MPs] Note also, though, that after the promising debut of Bluesky in the statistics last year its usage among MPs has, on this measure at least, dropped. It usage varies hugely by party: 54% of Lib Dem MPs say they visit Bluesky every day, compared to 29% of Labour and 0% of Conservative MPs. Here is the full report. Sign up to get the ...
There are many lessons to come out of the deluded Trump actions in the Middle East. This is a conflict which will take time to evolve and, in some ways, will never be completed as people will hold resentment for what has happened down the decades. However, there are already a number of things that have become clear. The most important of these is that we must look to renewable energy and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. That is why I am delighted with an announcement that has been made that the Government has taken a 'Sunshine' Bill promoted ...
"After months of rhetoric from Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves blaming newts and bats for supposedly blocking growth, it's good to see the Land Use Framework recognises nature restoration is a priority, underpinning all our other uses of land. Senior civil servants in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs now view their ministry as a 'department of land', and regard implementing the Land Use Framework as their overriding mission."Guy Shrubsole welcomes the news that revealing who owns England has just become government policy. Josiah Mortimer finds that Reform UK councils are dismantling the fight against climate change. Sarah ...
Somewhere in England right now, a teenager and their family are waiting. They have been waiting, in many cases, for more than five years just to see a specialist. Not for a diagnosis of cancer or a referral for surgery. For someone to talk to about their gender. While they wait, puberty continues. For some of them, that process is a cause of profound, daily distress. That is what this debate is actually about. Earlier this week, Westminster Hall debated a petition calling for the cancellation of the PATHWAYS clinical trial into puberty blockers for children with gender dysphoria. The ...
The old boy pays tribute to the hard work, much of it performed out of sight of members, that ensured our spring conference in my old stamping ground of York was a success. Wednesday For many years our hard-working conference stewards received back up from Violent Bonham Carter's boys. Now that, depending which account you believe, Violent is either lying low after a failed attempt to steal the Crown Jewels or inside a concrete pillar under the Chiswick Flyover, other groups are asked to lend a hand. You will recall Tom Brake's fearsome Carshalton Casuals, while the sisters from Our ...
Blur were better than Oasis. Modern Life is Rubbish was better than Parklife. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Liberator 434 is out and you can download it for free here. You can also sign up for an email when each new Liberator comes out here. What's in this issue? There's Commentary, Radical Bulletin, Letters, Lord Bonkers' Diary and: WHY AREN'T THE LIB DEMS DOING BETTER? Pursuing remaining Tory seats puts a ceiling on Lib Dem ambitions when greater opportunities lie among left-leaning voters, argues Paul Hindley SPREADING POWER Radical change is needed to defend what we value most, says Roz Savage MP FIX THE NHS FRONT DOOR An over-stretched health service must be rebuilt from community level, says ...
It's that time of year again. My social media feeds are all full of pictures of groups of people out canvassing or leafletting, of people handing in their nomination papers. It must be the start of the "official" campaign for the huge array of national and local elections coming up on May 7th. The Scottish Parliament, the Senedd in Wales and every Council seat in London is up for grabs along with local elections around the country from Liverpool to some places where they didn't know until a few weeks ago that the elections were back on again. I have ...
Stephen Bush, in his newsletter on the Financial Times website, makes an interesting point, suggesting that John Major's much-maligned 1990s 'cones hotline' was both a) an idea ahead of its time and b) illustrates why our electoral system is under growing pressure. He quotes a recent speech by Major in which the former Prime Minister argued that recent General Elections have thrown into doubt the continuing validity of the "first past the post" system of voting, and that as voting preferences spread more widely it provides distorted results. Major argued, quite correctly that the democratic case for examining this is ...
