A film about farming and the harsh winter of 1946/7. In particular, about the flooding that hit the Fens when the snow finally thawed and the efforts to recover from it. Those floods form the background to Malcolm Saville's book The Luck of Sallowby. Here's his description of the fight against the floodwaters: Now they were close against the wall they saw it was only a few inches higher than the rising water which stretched before them in a turbulent brown lake, whipped into waves by the gale. And these waves beat against the wall ceaselessly and the spray from ...
I am in the midst of what I self-mockingly describe as a Frank Sinatra-esque farewell tour from the Town and Parish Council sector. What with my tenure on Creeting St Peter Parish Council fated to be terminated next May, I've taken the view that an organised handover of my various posts was a necessity, predominantly for the organisations concerned. And so, I advised my colleagues on the Board of the Suffolk Association of Local Councils (SALC) that I would stand down as our representative on the National Assembly of the National Association of Local Councils (NALC) on 31 July, allowing ...
Adam Webster, full-time father and part-time Associate Professor in Law and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, argues that the government must rethink how Britain conceives work, care and family life. As he says in an 'expert comment' issued by the University of Oxford's media people, we have built a world where parents are expected to be simultaneously working and present for family. It's all good stuff, but I was struck by this sentence: In the 1950s, 80 per cent of mothers in the UK stayed at home and the school run was part of their domestic routine. ...
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch is right about one thing: social care reform demands serious thought. But she is wrong to insist that the answer cannot involve asking those with the broadest shoulders (the very richest) bear the biggest burden and contribute a bit more through taxation. If we are serious about fixing one of Britain's greatest public policy failures, there will be a cost. We must be honest about that. For me, this is not an abstract political argument. It is deeply personal. In July 2022 my mum died two days after waiting eleven hours for an ambulance following a ...
Five principal authority by-elections took place last Thursday, across four councils. The Liberal Democrats were not defending any seats, and though we did not win a contest during this relatively quiet week we still came out with some very strong results. East Devon DC, Exmouth Brixington Conservative: 537 (35.2%, -2%) Lib Dem (Andrew Colman): 450 (29.5%, -3%) Reform UK: 439 (28.7%, new) Green Party: 101 (6.6%, -2.1%) Conservative HOLD Well done to Andrew Colman and the local team for a very strong second place in East Devon. Being only 88 votes off winning must have hurt. But keep your heads ...
Two recent reports have drawn attention to what human rights organisations and UN investigators describe as one of the defining features of Israel's assault on Palestinian life: the systematic targeting of Palestinian children. The first report, published by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry, examines violations against Palestinian children since the beginning of the genocide in Gaza. The second, by the leading Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem, documents the killing of children by Israeli forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank. While focused on different contexts, the reports paint a strikingly similar picture. They reveal a pattern in ...
As ever, Lord Bonkers was ahead of the curve on the climate crisis. Perhaps the sands at Trescothick Bay remind him of the deserts of southern Rutland? Wednesday They say these heatwaves will soon render the South of England uninhabitable, which is a bit of a facer seeing as we Liberals have worked so hard to ensure we don't have MPs anywhere else. But don't despair: the arid south of Rutland is simply teeming with life - human life included. Of course, if the Home Counties do turn to desert it will require changes to the way we fight elections ...
Parliament is now fully in recess until September – the House of Lords sat for an additional week – and now there's not much "politician on politician action" for five weeks, leaving the field open for commentators and journalists to speculate on what might come next. And, given that the line between reporting and comment is now so blurred, it becomes increasingly hard to separate the two. Now I'm not the sort of person who tends to don rose-tinted spectacles and opine about how much better things were in the past – improvement is very much in the eye of ...
The Times reports that Reform UK's bank account was frozen during the last election after the party received potentially illegal donations from the mother of George Cottrell, the criminal who bankrolled Nigel Farage. The paper says that the party was unable to make or receive payments through its account with Arbuthnot Latham, a London private and merchant bank, for a two-week period that included polling day on July 4, 2024: The Reform treasurer at the time repeatedly asked the bank for an explanation, urging it to unfreeze the account. However, Arbuthnot Latham refused. It said it could not unfreeze the ...