Sad news. On Friday we learnt of the passing of Noel Rippeth, former Leader of the Liberal Democrats and Leader of the Opposition on Gateshead Council. He was a founder member of the SDP in 1981 and had been a Lib Dem campaigner ever since. He was elected to Gateshead Council in 1992 and became Leader in 1994, holding the position until 2010. Unfortunately, poor health forced Noel's
Yesterday, Together Alliance, a coalition of civil society groups aimed at standing up to the far right held a march in London at which our Leader in the London Assembly, Hina Bokhari, spoke. Watch her speech here. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Hina Bokhari OBE AM (@hinabokharild) Hina has written before for us about her own experience of racism and Islamophobia. Nobody should have to put up with that.
And so another week with Rutland's most celebrated fictional peer draws to a close. I also found the The Blue Bell that weekend and can heartily recommend it. York remains a wonderful city. Sunday What with the badgers and the nuclear warheads, I give the leader's speech a miss and spend my time in The Blue Bell, Fossgate, instead. I am told Ed Davey had those alpacas he met the other day sitting in the front row. Poor empty-headed creatures, they will vote for anyone who admires their hairstyles. Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10. Earlier ...
Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime was a hit for the Korgis in 1980. The two founder members of that band, Andy Davis and James Warren, had previously been members of the Seventies prog and folk rock band Stackridge. Stackridge had the distinction of being the opening and closing act at the first Glastonbury Festival in 1970. Beck recorded his version of the song for the 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I heard it again on the radio recently because it's the title track of a new compilation of Beck covers.
As the Scottish elections get underway, we know that one of our five MSPs will definitely not be returning to Holyrood. Elected in a 2019 by-election, Beatrice Wishart announced some time ago that she would be standing down at this election. Since then, she has been Shetland's voice in Holyrood, standing up for the islands and for women's rights and safety. This week, she made her final speech at Holyrood summing up the problems that islanders face with transport, affordable housing and connectivity. She finished by urging future MSPs to work together constructively across party. Enjoy. The full text is ...
Our current economic models are not fit for purpose. They fail to tackle the social-ecological crisis. And people know this. Since 2008, a pattern has emerged. From Brexit in 2016, to Boris' victory in 2019, to Labour's victory in 2024, the Greens and Reform's ongoing political boom, all these political phenomena share one common thread. Frustration. Anger. Resentment towards the status quo. And rightly so. Our political leaders, regardless of political party (excluding the Greens), all talk about "going for growth". We blindly chase economic growth, but we never seem to ask the question: at what cost? Who does economic ...
Anybody who thinks that the USA's Immigration Compliance and Enforcement officers is unique to that country should take note of the UK's equivalent force, though there are no shootings here and they are much better behaved. Earlier this week, the Guardian carried a detailed feature on how the Home Office enforces its policies. They said that officers have searched thousand of businesses in search of illegal workers, reporting on one raid at Mandira's Kitchen in Guildford last year: The raid is one of more than 17,400 on businesses carried out since Labour came to power in July 2024 - a ...
A derelict cottage in Great Tew, 1980. Photo by Kim Traynor The Beckhams' plans to light the pond at their Cotswold home have upset their neighbours, reports BBC News: One neighbour, James Worthington, said in a comment on the Beckhams' planning application the plans were "more akin to Miami or Florida not Great Tew". Great Tew, it seems, is a honeypot for celebrity residents from Princess Beatrice up to Taylor Swift. When I saw Great Tew in 1982 it was very different. So different, in fact, that the village lay largely derelict. I can remember seeing trees growing through the ...
For the past year, the Liberal Democrats in Gateshead have been working on the manifesto for the local elections due to be held on 7th May. We have condensed the full document, called Get Gateshead Going, into a leaflet which has now been delivered to 30,000 houses across the borough. I am pleased to report that a copy of the leaflet was delivered to my house yesterday. On Tuesday we
On Saturday 21st March, Whickham Voluntary Library held their Easter fair. I take goats to each of the library's fairs so they can help raise funds. This time I took Nettle, one of our milking nannies, and one of her as yet unnamed babies. They raised £31, not as much as they raised at Christmas last year. Still, £31 is better than nothing.
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 18% (+1) 16% (nc) 12% (+1) 20% (+1) 24% (-1) -8% (4th, vs Ref) 26-27/3 GB ...
The list of Reform UK candidates for the Welsh Senedd who have now been dropped in one form or another is: Cory Edwards: quit as candidate after Nazi salute controversy. Patrick Benham-Crosswell: quit as candidate saying Reform UK has "sunk deep into the sewer". Meanwhile, Reform candidates in Scotland have also gone and Reform UK councillors keep on going too. Sign up to get the latest news and analysis
The controversy over Nigel Farage's publicity stunt at Portman Road, the home of the Tractor Boys, and my (very) local football club, has demonstrated the truism of the first Valladares Rule of political crisis, i.e. it's not the wrongdoing itself that is fatal, it's the botched coverup that follows. If it had simply been that Nigel Farage and his PR team had entered Portman Road under false pretences and used the stadium as a backdrop for a publicity stunt, well, it would have asked some serious questions of the club staff but a few slapped wrists later and everyone might ...
As a member of the planning committee in Liverpool, I know that our powers are limited in terms of what we can allow to be built and what we can prevent from being built. We struggle to both meet Government housing targets and at the same time ensure that the housing being built is relevant to Liverpool's housing needs not just now but in the future. A recent enquiry to our officers within the council revealed that over a 5-year period about 9,000 new units of accommodation would be provided but of this approximately 90% would be in tower or ...
I might have known who was behind this policy. At lunchtime on the Saturday I left Lord Bonkers to his own devices and went to look for the blue plaque on Frankie Howerd's childhood home. Saturday I brave the crowd of placard-waving badgers to enter the conference. Who should I meet but Freddie and Fiona? "Ed's going to announce that the Liberal Democrats will be the first party with its own nuclear deterrent." "'I want an atomic bomb with a bloody bird of liberty on it,' he'll say." "We'd like the submarine to live in Rutland Water so we can ...
America's NATO allies are—according to Donald Trump—"cowards" for failing to join his war in Iran. He later added that the US would "never forget" the position of the Europeans at this "critical juncture" in world history. Trump's anti- NATO rants reveal an astonishing ignorance of the legal and political obstacles facing other world leaders who want to wage an ill- conceived and poorly executed war which threatens to escalate and plunge the world into economic depression. It is not entirely clear how, but Trump alone of the world's democracies appears to ride roughshod over international and domestic laws to wage ...
If you want a bite to eat in Swansea, then one of the many alternatives is the food hall in the newly refurbished Albert Hall. It is the latest incarnation of this historic grade II listed building. The website Save Britain's Heritage featured the Albert Hall as their building of the month in January 2021. They point out that the building opened in in 1864 as a music hall which hosted speeches by some of the big names in Victorian society including Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde and David Lloyd George. They say that after it ceased use as a music ...