BBC News wins our Headline of the Day Award for this story from Norfolk. A wasp comments: It said "wildlife" on the door, and we're wildlife." To their credit, the Norfolk Wildlife Trust's staff appear to view things in much the same light.
As chair of Sunniside History Society, I have arranged a visit to Ravensworth Castle (or what is left of it after the demolition squads of the 1930s and 1950s had finished their work). What is left is the stable block, the two Medieval corner towers, the ice house and a corner of the John Nash mansion. The trip will be on Saturday. If you want to join the visit, come to the Sunniside
Among the other issues with this from Kemi Badenoch on the selection by her party of former neo-Nazi Joshua Bonehill-Paine is that it is extremely dismissive of the importance of services that councils deliver and which have huge effects on people's lives, such as their roles in education, child protection or social care: It's OK for criminal ex-neo Nazis to run your bins is a hell of a line. — Chris Terry-Enescu (@cjterry.bsky.social) 2026-08-05T08:17:24.435Z
Cornerstone Church recently took over the former Sunniside Methodist Church building. I am delighted that Cornerstone took on this project as it ensured the building continues to be available for use by the community and the heritage of the Sunniside was retained and protected. On Sunday, the church held its first community fair. I was there to run the Sunniside History Society table. My
The Hundred may be struggling for spectators, but cricket's One-Day Cup is thriving by using grounds that do not usually see professional cricket. Matthew Pennell explains why. Neath, Mansfield, Gosforth, Farington, Arundel, York and Cheltenham. Towns and cities you wouldn't normally link together, but what they have in common is they all hosted sell-out games of cricket in the first week of the One-Day Cup. These are a combination of brand new, rediscovered or longstanding outgrounds that are proving very popular with fans. This is despite relative indifference from the ECB and county squads being depleted by the existence of ...
The EHRC's Code of Practice for services came into force this week. Single-sex services are now offered on the basis of biological sex, and providers may ask a person to confirm theirs. 167 MPs signed Nadia Whittome's motion to disapprove it, the majority of Liberal Democrat MPs among them. It was never debated. One fact has been almost entirely absent from the argument, and it changes the shape of it. The law has regulated lavatories and changing rooms since the 1890s. Every one of those provisions regulates what must be provided. Not one regulates who may walk in. There is ...
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: Ellen Wilkinson: pioneering politician and thriller writer Our next podcast episode features our first book! We will be discussing pioneering MP Ellen Wilkinson's locked-room murder mystery The Division Bell Mystery. Her political career culminated in being Minister of Education in Clement Attlee's 1945 government, the first woman to hold that post or its predecessor posts. So ...
It appears that it isn't just Reform UK who have a problem with vetting candidates. The Guardian reports that a former neo-Nazi activist with convictions including for harassing a Jewish MP has been selected as a Conservative candidate for a local election in Somerset. The paper says that Joshua Bonehill-Paine, the creator of the viral Crewkerne Gazette series of AI clips, is due to stand for election to Somerset council next year in a new Crewkerne South district. He told the Guardian he was an executive member of the Tories' Yeovil branch, working as an events organiser: "The branch and ...
This television film about the Flannan Isles, their lighthouse and the mysterious disappearance of its three keepers in 1900 was made by Finlay J. Macdonald in 1970. The light went over to automatic operation the following year. I once had bed and breakfast at Breasclete on the west coast of Lewis, and the owner was the grandson of one of the men aboard the Hesperus when it went out to the isles to see what was amiss with the light. It had not been seen to shine for 10 days. The film will tell you what they found there. Finlay ...
BBC News has posted a positive write up by Susana Mendonca of the Green/Lib Dem administration that has run the London Borough of Southwark since May's local elections. At those elections, the Green Party won 22 seats and the Lib Dems 12, then used their combined majority to take control. Southwark is the only London borough currently being run by such a coalition. The Lib Dems secured three posts in the leadership team, including that of deputy council leader which is filled by their group leader Victor Chamberlain. Chamberlain told BBC News: "The more we started talking, the more we ...
Andy Burnham has successfully changed the mood music of our politics to inject a soupçon of confidence and even optimism, but there are various potential stumbling-blocks which could dent if not destroy his and our hopes. Top of the list in my view is: North Sea Oil Rumour has it that he is "minded" to authorise more drilling in the North Sea Oil Field. Anything which provides jobs (and the elusive "growth) is always a temptation for Labour politicians (the clue is in the name) but he should resist it - even the device of attaching new drilling to an ...
Stefan Wolff, Elīna Šteinerte and Hervé Ascensio have investigated Russia's military indoctrination of Ukrainian children in its occupied territories: "The headteacher of the local school, accompanied by heavily armed soldiers, went from house to house to question parents who do not send their children to school and had not yet applied for Russian passports. He threatened them with the removal of their parental rights. He also said their children would be placed in institutions if they didn't yield to the pressure to do so." "The university's own financial reports show that 16 members of the University Executive Board are paid ...
The judges were aghast. What, never again see Lincoln Cathedral or the stone buildings of Stamford? Nevertheless, they gave Hull Live our Headline of the Day Award for its tale of a pissed off hedgehog rescuer.
The latest edition of my email newsletter about work in Parliament, A Lord's Eye View, 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: Welcome to my latest update on work in the House of Lords, this time mentioning a welcome move by the Hansard Society. The problem of commencement [IMG: brown concrete building during sunset] Photo by Ian Kelsall on Unsplash As someone who has written about, and repeatedly raised in Parliament, questions about the quality ...
A rare mid-week local history related post today, as Nation Cymru reports that the organisers of a major national survey of Welsh chapels are appealing for public help after receiving responses for just one in 10 of the buildings identified so far. The news site says that Capeli Cymru, a new project from The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, has launched a census to map Wales' chapels in April 2026, which aims to build the most comprehensive picture in over a century of their condition, use and future, safeguarding one of Wales' most distinctive cultural ...