It's been a bad week for Children in Salford. At the start of the week, St. James RC Primary School in Pendleton was the subject of an arson attack, which saw the roof severely damaged – but thanks to the quick response and bravery of local firefighters, the damage was contained and valuable equipment and school work was saved. On Thursday, the Salford Advertiser & Manchester Evening News broke the story that I had feared could happen again. Earlier in May of this year, OfSted inspected Salford's Childrens Services and it seems the report is going to, once again, rate ...
At around 1.30am last night/this morning, I was awoken from a sound sleep by an almighty crash from outside. It's the kind of sound you know is so, so, wrong. On examining the scene it became clear that a Toyota had hit the metal barrier opposite my house, chopped a concrete post in half, lost it's bumper, rode up the barrier and then buried itself into my neighbours Clio – writing both cars off. How the car hasn't flipped onto it's roof or smashed into my own car, I will never know. How the occupants survived the incident, only they ...
From 233 in 1984 to 158 in 1989 to 124 today. I need to check the figures but it will be about that. Bill, and old friend who died last year really cared about his community in Elm Tree and set off in 1984 to carefully log the position and condition of the trees planted on the Elm Tree estate, off Elm Tree Avenue. He recorded 233. Being Bill he went around again in 1989, checking the status...
It's probably not a good time to be woring in the corporate HQ of Punch Taverns. In a public relations disaster for the pub and restaurant group, the Greycoat Boy pub in Westminster turned away a pre-booked party from LGBT Labour on the grounds that they didn't want a gay group in the pub. LGBT Labour ...
For the first time since the general election I have called on my team of deliverers (taking them my new local ward Focus) and, of course, took the time to thank them for all the effort they put in during the election. I was expecting some sort of fall out from the coalition, but the very opposite seems to be the case. All my deliverers I have spoken to (there is one more away) seem pleased, all were keen on the idea of a Focus outside of election time, and when delivering one delivery round myself, I found a new ...
Swedish dockworkers to boycott Israeli ships and goods
Today I visited the Great Central Railway. What should I see when I came down the stairs at Loughborough Central station but Sir Berkeley, the locomotive that was once nicknamed Paddy Logan? Regular readers will know all about him.
A combination of lucky chances took me to Murton today on what should have been a brief visit to check on a headstone in the churchyard - my great great grandfather's to be precise. It was too nice a day to leap straight back into the car after seeing it and photographing it so we just had to wander further up the hill. Imagine my surprise and delight to find my great grandfather's headstone up
Before we get down to some very serious who business, what do you tink of the new lay out? A bit less professional but a much better design (is what I'm hoping you'll say!) Well that was a pretty good Dr Who wasn't it? In case you had somehow missed it this was the one written by ...
In my ward in Gateshead we are carrying out a survey of constituents about what they think of the Coalition. Today we launched the survey. I delivered 100 houses last night and this morning, my ward colleague John McClurey and I, called on the same houses to collect replies. We collected 19 and I expect some to come back by post. We will roll it out over the ward in coming weeks. I haven't added
Making our way gently along the Stratford Canal we came to Preston Bagot Lock with it's interesting lock keeper's cottage with a barrel roof which is typical of the architecture on Warwickshire canals. It was built originally in 1810
I spent the day at the Corstorphine Fair. This amazing community event I am delighted to say is well supported by the Western Edinburgh Neighbourhood Partnership. I will post in more detail about the Partnership and Neighbourhood working in the future. Anyho' the Fair was a great success allowing many local groups to raise much needed funds and to publicize their work. The local Neighbourhood Team not only had a stall but also their new mobile library on display. It looked great and was very well kitted out. This library takes its services to the far reaches of rural West ...
As the uber-secretive Bilderberg group meets in Spain this weekend, lets cast our mind back 33 years to when they met in the fading surroundings of Torquay's Imperial Hotel and messrs Hattersley, Thatcher, Healey, Schmit etc met over cocktails to shoot the establishment breeze. Then, in 1977 it felt like the "fag end" of a political era. Labservatives had been failing to get to grips with the country's ills since the war. Strikes, three day weeks...we all know the script. The ill fated Lib-Lab pact had just been announced to an underwhelmed electorate, keeping Labour in power until collapsing in ...
Whilst political pundits struggle to fathom the implications of coalition and 'new politics', the signs are that Lib Dem voters are optimistic and that they are responding well to the new vision. It seems that when the new order combines with a strong local campaign and a candidate who offers the traditional Lib Dem promise of 'service and action all year round' success follows. A series of elections over the last two weeks brought first an encouraging result in the extended Parliamentary election in Thirsk and Malton. This being a safe Tory seat with a notional majority of over 14,000 ...
Sorry but I missed the weekly list for 10th to 16th May which had two applications for the ward. Haven't been any others in recent lists though. The two applications were in Garry Drive "Erection of boundary brick wall and gates (retrospective)" (10/0385/FUL) and at Citygate for "Erection of four one bed and four two bed flats and works to parking area" (10/0367/FUL). Apologies for the delay in reporting these!
This morning I joined Chorlton Park Councillors Norman Lewis and Bernie Ryan (Tony Bethell was doing the surgeries) and local residents from New Barns Ave to clean up the passageway that runs from the back of New Barns Ave through to Barlow Moor Road. We managed to fill a skip with rubbish and brambles and ...
Yesterday I was invited to speak at the first North West neuromuscular conference, which was held in Manchester. I have been a member of the the all-party Group during the last Parliament, and I have been asked by Muscular Dystrophy Campaign, who support the work of the APPG to stand as the Lib Dem vice-Chair of the Group. 'Muscle disease' ...
Last night, it was wonderful to see the Newbury Town Hall chamber full to bursting with LibDem activists for David Rendel's post-election thank you party. I can vouch for the fact that this was the happiest campaign in memory. The numbers who turned up at the party were way in excess of those expected and it was great to see many faces that I did not recognise – new faces in other words.
Back when Cix was the main way of talking to other Lib Dems online, a tradition emerged of posting Lib Dem MPs' maiden speeches so that people could read them and respond - a tradition LDV would like to continue. Earlier today, we read Simon Wright's speech, and tomorrow we will bring you David Ward. Duncan's speech is also available to view here at the Parliament website until 1 June 2011. Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to make my maiden speech so early in this Parliament. I congratulate the hon. Members for Harlow (Robert Halfon) ...
BP is not the equal of the United States government. This president needs to tell BP 'I'm your daddy, I'm in charge, you're going to do what we say. You're a multinational company that is greedy and you may be guilty of criminal activity.' It's time that we understand, BP does not wish this thing well. They have been negligent. They need to whip out their checkbook and start moving into action and the president needs to push them. James Carville I'm a big fan of James Carville, former Clinton campaign guru who always has had a colourful turn of ...
The first ever Causley Festival is in full swing in town today and I managed to get to a few of the events this morning. As well as the Buttermarket with children's entertainment provided by LADS, there was an art exhibition in St Mary's, a book signing with Tessa Hainsworth, a performance by the youth section of the town band and a poetry walk with Jane Nancarrow (video below). There's lots more going on this afternoon and evening.
I have no problem with people displaying England flag from every part of their car, every corner of their house or any orific of their wish. Howver, I am totally perplexed by all the flags of St george flying this year which ahve, in large letters across them "ENGLAND". How dim do Tesco and the other sellers of these flags think we are ? Surely our flog is pretty recognisable ? It's not the world's most complicated flag, and unless you are from Georgia, it is unlikely to be mixed up with any other nation's flag, so why do we ...
Sat 5th
14:40
The LDV Saturday caption competition: Lib Dem deputy leadership "Tim Farron cashes in" edition
There's no prize at stake - just the opportunity to prove you're wittier than any other LDV reader ... (Photo credit: Alex Folkes/Fishnik Photography). Here's contender for the Lib Dem deputy leadership Tim Farron at the Lib Dem conference last autumn, drumming up funds for the party. What do you reckon he might be thinking, or saying? The winner of our most recent caption competition, the "Simon Hughes mucks in" edition - according to The Voice's judging panel of one - was this one by Phil Rodgers.
St. Albans South Local Authority: Hertfordshire County Council Electoral Region: Eastern Last contested: 2009 Martin John Frearson (Liberal Democrat) 1,482 votes (42.1% +2.6%) Mehmet Salih Gaygusuz (Conservative) 1,250 votes (35.5% +4.1%) Iain Charles Grant (Labour) 540 votes (15.3% -0.1%) Kate Helen Metcalf (Green) 249 votes (7.1% -6.7%) Liberal Democrat HOLD with a majority of 232 votes (5.6%) on a swing from Liberal Democrat to Conservative of 0.75% Ashley Local Authority: St. Albans District Council Electoral Region: Eastern Last contested: 2008 Andy Grant (Liberal Democrat) 774 votes (49.5% -0.5%) John Paton (Labour) 354 votes (22.6% +9.3%) Christopher John Baker (Conservative) 342 ...
I love the World Cup. I love the skill, the passion and the excitement of watching the world's best players compete to win the greatest prize in the world's most popular sport, and I love the fans who travel thousands of miles to support their national side, even though most of them will return home ...
Welcome to the nineteenth in a series of posts going through the full coalition agreement section by section. You can read the full coalition document here. Although when talking about other parts of the agreement I've sometimes being quite critical about the parking of issues with commissions or reviews, the commission on long-term care is a good move. It has a clear remit, has to report within a year and tackles an area which requires policies that have a chance of long term cross-party agreement given the nature of the subject. The failure of cross-party talks prior to the election ...
Back when Cix was the main way of talking to other Lib Dems online, a tradition emerged of posting Lib Dem MPs' maiden speeches so that people could read them and respond - a tradition LDV would like to continue. Scheduled this weekend are Simon Wright, below, Duncan Hames and David Ward. Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for giving me this opportunity to make my maiden speech. I am pleased to follow the maiden speeches of the hon. Members for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) and for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) and of many other Members who have spoken today with great ...
The Rachel Corrie has now been illegally boarded by the Israeli military in international waters. As usual the BBC's immediate reaction is simply to retail Israeli propaganda. The Rachel Corrie has been boarded "with the full compliance of the crew", BBC News tells us. That is almost certainly not true, unless you count without violent resistance as "full compliance". If that were true, you might wonder why Israel had jammed - again contrary to maritime law - all the Rachel Corrie's communications with the outside world, and why they are still jammed. The BBC did not mention that. The organisers ...
Election expenses forms! Don't you just love 'em! These are nothing to do with claiming financial support from the taxpayers of the land. They are simply for proving that we agents have not broken the laws on what we are allowed to accept as donations or spend on campaigns. All the money is raised by Liberal Democrats and supporters, in our party's case. Gerald helps me with the accounts because he's good at it. Thank goodness for Gerald. Anyway what I really want to say is that doing the expenses forms has reminded me how wonderful the people at Liberal ...
Century Falls confirmed me in my opinion of Russel T Davies. He has some bloody good ideas, but doesn't half string them together badly. It was nice to have a not-standardly-pretty female lead, and lots of female secondary characters. It passed the Bechdel Test with flying colours. But the dialogue was awful. The Short films were something of a mixed bag. The Image was total bobbins, but vaguely interesting because it had David Bowie in it. The Cicerones was very atmospheric and felt very League of Gentlemen, but ultimately lacked a payoff. The Island had amazing sound design, but no ...
I saw a number of commentators admiring Cameron's performance at Prime Minister's Questions this week, using epithets such as "statesmanlike". Leave it out. He's in his honeymoon period anyway, facing an acting Labour leader. But, because of the coalition arrangement he has three other advantages: 1. He doesn't have to defend the worst excesses of Conservativism, because such sharp edges have kindly been nixed from the Coalition agreement by Andrew Stunnell etc and the rest of the LibDem negotiators. 2. A lot of the things which Labour would have criticised Cameron for not doing have been kindly added to the ...
I've been intrigued these past couple of days to see the main Labour blogs fall over themselves to argue that the current three front-runners for the Labour leadership – now they have the MP nominations needed to be on the ballot – should urge their parliamentary colleagues to nominate one of the three also-ran contenders to ensure "the widest possible field of candidates in the leadership election". I can understand the principle behind the campaign, of course. Frankly, if I were in the shoes of a Labour member (as I was for a number of years), I would welcome a ...
I, apparently, sound considerably posher in real life than I do on the internet. This is presuably because my writing is in my headvoice which is primarily that of my Dad, and he's from Salford. Not that location affects poshness, but it does kind of have an effect on perception of poshness. My actual out loud voice, on the other hand, is more a product of where I grew up, and well, I went to school in Eton. No, not Eton-the-school. You'd know if that. Just Eton-the-place, or near to it. That's probably the nearest town you've heard of, anyway. ...
I have been catching up on reading some old Private Eye's when I came across an interesting little gem in Media News. It seems that during the General Election a proposal to stage a version of the leaders' debates on Radio Five Live with all three speakers replaced by Clangers was vetoed by management. Presumably, Adam Boulton would have been played by the soup dragon. The failure to execute this idea is a great loss to British broadcasting. It is a shame Oliver Postgate is not still alive to champion it for the future.
The decision by the Liberal Democrat-Conservative Government to open up its books to public scrutiny has inevitably started to make the headlines today. The Guardian reports that one of the first things the media noticed is that the government was owed nearly £600m in bad debts last year. They say that the data reveals tens of millions of pounds lost in unpaid student loans and overpaid benefits at a time when the Labour government was getting to grips with the scale of the crisis of the public sector deficit. The data also shows that spending on consultants, in every case ...
Anybody who spends any time at the Hay Literary Festival will appreciate the confusion faced by visitors who think that they are in fact still in England. That is not because the town itself exudes Englishness, it has a distinct Welsh identity in my view, but because for more than a week we are surrounded by the English intelligentsia, none of whom appear to have a clue about devolution or Welshness. That is reflected in all the coverage, even by the now politically-correct BBC, even though the festival organisers themselves do make an attempt to deal with the issue in ...
Islington Council is running a wildlife survey and urging residents to take part: Anyone with a garden, balcony or even a window box, can take part and there is a chance to enter our prize draw to win some fabulous wildlife gardening goodies! A free wildlife gardening pack is also available for all those who request a survey form... Taking part in the wildlife survey will help us: find out what the variety of gardens are like in Islington find out what wildlife visits our gardens and assess how best to help the wildlife that may be struggling. discover what ...
Simon Hogarth, The Guardians sketch writer and Saturday Diarist:- May I be the 475th journalist to say that David Laws's departure was a disgrace? A month ago we were being told that if Britain didn't have a credible government within three days of a hung election, the markets would go mad, the pound would collapse and our credit rating would be on a par with Greece, Portugal and Del Boy.But now, when it turns out that the chief secretary to the Treasury - one of the men whose intelligence and determination created the coalition that calmed so many hysterical fund ...
Sometimes I come across bloggers who are much better than me. This is one of those times. This is an absolutely brilliant post from emptywheel. The argument is this. Israel claims its standoff with Hamas is the equivalent to an armed conflict in international law, entitling it to take naval action on the high seas. Equally, the US claims its "War on Terror" is equivalent to a formal armed conflict, justifying its extra judicial killings particularly by aerial drone. This US argument has just been comprehensively rejected by the United Nations in a comprehensive legal report issued this week. ...
As of this morning, this is the state of the Labour leadership nomination race. It's hard to be certain exactly what's going on, but let's speculate anyway... Was it a mistake for both John McDonnell and Diane Abbott to stand? Probably. They are fishing in the same extremely small pool of Labour left-wingers, and by ...
[IMG: Bookmark and Share]
The Annual Council meeting is where the new mayor and leader of the council are elected and the deputy leader and executive are appointed. There is also formal notification of the appointment of members to committees and other bodies. Cllr. Margaret Court was elected Mayor for a second consecutive term and Cllr Sean Brennan was ...
After an extended election break, we're reviving our Saturday slot posing a view for debate: The election campaign of 2010 will, above all, be remembered for the transformative effect of the television debates, and the breakthrough of Nick Clegg. They were, in the main, substantive discussions in which real policies – and real political differences – were openly debated. But they also re-inforced the impression that British politics is, above all, about personality; and in particular, that the quality politicians need above all is empathy, an ability to connect with the voters they seek to represent. Empathy is a vital ...
Many people comment how moist and thick my sponge cake is. For a seemingly simple cake, a sponge can be trying to get right, but glorious when you do. The secret for a moist cake is to make it big enough and for a well-risen cake is to fight the curiosity to peek! 4 eggs any ...
Imagine if you lived in Westminster, in the middle of London, but your nearest chemist was in Peckham - 5 miles away. Your nearest supermarket is in Muswell Hill and dentist is in Brent. Your nearest cinema is in Bromley and secondary school is in Richmond. That's the situation if you live in Cornwall - where services are, on average, many miles away from where you live and are produced in an excellent report from Cornwall Citizens Advice Bureau. Access to services depends on transport, whether public or private. In rural Cornwall however, many services require a private car to ...
Today is Anna"s 11th birthday. I can"t believe I"m awake at this ridiculous hour. It"s a bit like the day she was born, when we finally got up to the ward at 5 am or so. I had been awake for some 26 hours at that point so you would think I'd want to sleep, but all I could do was look at my gorgeous little baby in wonder, gratitude and astonishment. Those feelings haven't diminished one bit in 11 years. As I watch her sleep now, I have 11 years of amazing memories to make me smile. Obviously she's ...
During the election the Conservatives appeared to have been converted (or maybe, post Thatcher, reconverted)to the long established Liberal belief in powers to and trust in local government. Unfortunately the signals so far from the coalition are that this is more campaign rhetoric rather than a belief to be put into practice. One of the economies proposed by the Treasury is that Council Tax is to be frozen for two years. This sounds reminiscent of the cartoon character who, in financially strained circumstances, decided to cut out the wife's beer. Today there is an announcement that local councils are to ...
The Daleks. Writer: Terry Nation Directors: Christopher Barry and Richard Martin DVD Availability: As Disc 2 of The Beginnings Box Set While An Unearthly Child was the start of Doctor Who, The Daleks is the story where what we now think of as Doctor Who actually started. Well, sort of. More than any other story ...
Forgot to link this a couple of days ago. Vote Germany!
List of links: Today's list of news, stories, blog articles and so on that I have tagged as particularly interesting or excellent in my news reader. As ever, clicking on the titles should take you to the full version of the story on its home site... House Points: The Daily Telegraph, David Laws... and David Cameron by/at: Boatang & Demetriou The Guardian, Orwell and selective 'Liberal' outrage by/at: The Adam Smith Institute Blog Stoned Drivers vs. Drunk Drivers by/at: Frank Davis Fighting For Harm Reduction by/at: Social Liberal Forum Profit motivation versus purpose motivation by/at: Big Brother Watch The EU ...
On Question Time this week there was a comment that mass murder may occur even if guns are not available. Personally I think it is a lot easier to kill people when you do have guns. Now YouGov have been asking if guns should be banned and 70% say that they should . At least that's what yesterday's headline in The Sun says. 'Ban gun say 70%'. In the body of The Sun's text you read 'seven out of ten Britons want a complete ban on guns or tougher firearm laws'. Maybe I should not believe any part of the ...
