I've just re-watched all three Star Wars films. The original versions, not the "Special Editions". These were the Laserdisc releases, transferred to DVD by a nice man.Now, Mr. Juan Lemon says that I hate the three modern imposters because I'm watching childrens' films with jaded cynical adult eyes, whereas the originals, while also being childrens' films, are part of my childhood and so I forgive them. Having watched them again, I don't think he's right. The originals are much better films than the imposters full stop.The scripts are better (even the slightly ropey second one); while lots of the dialogue ...
I read only today the rather manipulated (in my opinion) story of Sunny Hundal, the man behind Liberal Conspiracy, joining the Labour Party. I note he wrote the article last week, but the picture of his online application was from five weeks ago (stage managed ?), leading me to believe that everything I have ever thought about the Liberal Conspiracy site is right. For starters, it has barely ever been Liberal. Its ethos is always to support Labour. The biggest conspiracy is the name itself, which was always a misleading title seemed to me to be aimed at getting hitswhilst ...
The Labour triballists have gone into full on attack mode with the news tonight that the government is planning to downgrade the service offered by NHS Direct. John Prescott is one of many whose Twitter feed screams: "This is disgraceful. ConDems set to axe NHS Direct. http://bit.ly/cJvnxV We must stop them #savenhsdirect". The plan is ...
The paucity of postings in the past few weeks is indicative of the fact that I've dared to take a holiday! Thanks as always to my fellow councillor, John Fletcher, for keeping up the work in the ward while Alan Lewis and I took time off.Obviously it's not something to advertise in advance, so apologies to those of you who might have tried to contact me during August. I did pick up some of the
Nick Clegg is quoted in a short piece on the Guardian website this evening: The reception he had received was "quite different in different parts of the country," he told the Times. "There is a particularly acute anxiety about the future at the moment in some of the big northern cities. I think it's principally because people remember the 1980s as a particularly vicious recession for them and their families."The article also quotes Mike Hancock as saying that Nick faces a "sticky" party conference. Speak for yourself, Mr Hancock.
I recently wrote to the Operations Manager of Stagecoach Strathtay as follows : "I have received complaints about an alleged lack of staffing at the Seagate bus station - people saying there are few staff on, it taking ages to be served, people missing buses as a result. Can you advise me of the current situation? Many thanks." I have received the following positive response : "Fraser Seagate Bus Station is currently under review and staffing levels is high on the agenda. The staffing of the above is currently split between ourselves and Citylink but I agree the present set ...
I was waiting in Clun for the Secret Hills Shuttle to take me back to take me back to Bishop's Castle. Every time the light changed I felt compelled to take another photograph of the bridge. There was a man sitting on a bench nearby smoking a cigarette. "Everyone takes lots of pictures here," he said. "There must be something about it." He also confirmed by conclusion that the only place in Clun that a T-Mobile customer can get a signal is the top of the castle mound. He climbs up there several times a day to make calls. Usually, ...
It's Friday once more so here we go... And this week it's about F1 and the future of politics! 1. @Danzi94 All I have to say to him is #Spidey4Leader! 2. @TheFifthDriver The official Vodafone McLaren Mercedes twitter feed. I am a big F1 and McLaren fan! 3. @emma_louise__ A young Liberal Democrat who is ...
Labour have won Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council's Brotton Ward by-election. The result was as follows: Doreen Rudland (Lab)... 565Barry Hunt (Ind).......... 351Val Miller (Lib Dem)...... 315Donald Alan Agar (Con).. 220Michael George (BNP).... 33 There was a 27.76 per cent turnout.
Barry Stocker on Liberal Vision looks at the ideas of the American liberal philosopher John Rawls. He is a blind spot as far as I am concerned: I am more of a Mill, Popper and Rorty man. Lynne Featherstone writes about the Coalition government's decision to outlaw wheelclamping on private land: "As soon as I became a Home Office minister with wheel clamping as part of my portfolio, I was deluged by letters from other MPs (representing their constituents) asking when we would do something about rogue clampers." "The Russians call it Kompromat - the use by the state of ...
I've recently had two root canal fillings, and I was wondering what the prognosis was for keeping them in the long-term, so I did a web-search and came across this video which did not give me the information I was looking for, but is entertaining:
Floodwaters are still rising in Pakistan; the area covered to date is larger than the UK. These are the worst floods in many decades, they began a month ago with the rain hammering the country's northwest region, over 1,600 people have died and the floods are affecting over 17 million people with 1.2 million houses being destroyed, leaving an estimated 8 million people homeless. The waters are now spreading through the rice-growing belt in Sindh province, 4.25 million acres of land and crops have been destroyed or extensively damaged. The scale of the disaster is overtaking the relief efforts and ...
Well, I'm sure many will continue to watch episodes via cable, but "Last of the Summer Wine" and "Heartbeat" have their last episodes aired this Sunday (I am only 98% sure in the case of Heartbeat but if it isn't this Sunday it will be soon after). I don't know what Yorkshire is going to do without these two giants displaying their wonderful county. Summer Wine has been going for 37 years and about 300 episodes. Heartbeat has been going for 18 years and about 400+ episodes. I can't say I am a Summer Wine fan, but we have been ...
Government officials in Ankara have confirmed that talks have been held with the imprisoned leader of the banned Kurdish PKK military group, Abdullah Ocalan. In fact, according to reports in the Turkish press, such exchanges with the prisoner have been going on secretly for some time. The new openness has come about partly because Mr Ocalan ...
It must be something to do with me being here in Bangor, last time I was here briefly it was David Laws that came out today it is Crispin Blunt. There are differences between the two cases, the first had been with his partner for a number of years the second had been married and coming to terms with his sexuality has led to a split from his wife at the age of 50. I've noticed some of the younger bloggers and tweeters don't seem to get that there was an issue with being out publicly even not that long ...
I read with a certain amount of amusement this morning various tweets about a by election in Sheffield this morning with the hashtag #LibDemolition. However it's complete spin and this is why. The share of the vote in the May election was as follows:- Labour 46.9% Lib Dem 21.8% Conservative 14.4% UKIP 9.5% Others 7.3% ...
It's not often I start your Friday with a static image but here you are. Christ of St John of the Cross is the paiting by Salvidor Dali that inspired this poem by Edwin Morgan (which I cannot embed. It is an excuse to combine my favourite artist with The Scots Makar the national poet of Scotland who died last week. He also wrote the poem read out by Liz Lochhead at the opening of the Scottish Parliament on 9 October 2004. Here it is: Open the doors! Light of the day, shine in; light of the mind, shine out! ...
The interweb ( read twitter and blogs) is alive with news that Tory Minister Crispin Blunt has issued a statement saying he has "come to terms with his homosexuality" and is leaving his wife. As Guido (probably correctly) points out the timing of this announcement probably means one of the Sundays was going to run an expose - If true how very sad! Is it really news these days that someone is gay? What Mr. Blunt does in his own bedroom and what his sexual preferences are should be no ones business but his own. All I care about is ...
The Bishop of Durham has made some interesting comments on the BBC. Most of the interview was pretty uninspiring but the radio4 website quotes the following passage from the extended version... The retiring Bishop of Durham, Dr Tom Wright, has called for a renewed focus on social mobility in the light of "the long failure of the enlightenment project" If you think this is a one off it isn't. Back in 2008 Mr.Wright said "We are paying the long-overdue price for the arrogance of the Enlightenment." I am not sure how you could judge the success or failure of the ...
A warm welcome back to our by-election watchers after our short summer sojourn. The smattering of by-elections that took place on the 12th and 19th yielded very little in the way of news, with no gains or losses to report on, so we shall recommence with events from the 26th. August 26th celebrates the anniversaries of two seminal events. Firstly, it was 221 years since the newly-created French National Assembly adopted the 'Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen', a foundational document of liberal democracy and of the concept that citizens can possess inalienable human rights. It was also ...
So here it is, my lovely new home. It needs a lot of work and TLC but once I am in and settled, all that can be taken care of. Its nothing a coat of paint and some basic DIY ... Continue reading →
Todays announcement that the economic growth for the last quarter is higher than originally forecast is welcome news. In fact at 1.2% it is the best quarterly growth for 9 years. But Labour are of course claiming all of the credit. Now while Labour undoubtedly should receive some credit, so should the opposition for pushing home the necessary policies that are improving commercial confidence and establishing a better business environment. Sadly Labour refuse to give any credit to the Coalition Government at all. Stange then is it not, that they also refuse to take any blame for the past 13 ...
Shock! Horror! BBC2's Newsnight has uncovered a shocking fact about charities: apparently it can cost quite a bit to attract new donors. I know – whodhavethunk? Here's the story which headlined the show last night: Last year, 750,000 people signed on the dotted line, giving an average contribution of £90 a year. But a Newsnight investigation has found the charities are often paying the companies, in effect, £100 or more for each signature they collect, meaning in many cases the company is paid more than the charity will raise from that donor in the first year. It is surely not ...
[IMG: smoking-makes-me-horny] You really couldn't make it up.... A "Research Study" (oh how I hate those words) in New Zealand has concluded that "The tobacco industry may be using websites such as YouTube to get around a ban on advertising cigarettes" (note the word "MAY" in that sentence). How have they arrived at this conclusion? Well, the researchers searched for five tobacco brands on YouTube and analysed the first 20 pages of video clips containing any reference to the firms. They looked at 163 clips in total and concluded that "20 looked very professionally made" . Evidence of well-made pro-tobacco ...
What would a minority Conservative government look like? It is now widely accepted, by Jack Straw among many others, that a coalition between Labour and the Liberal Democrats would, sadly, have been unworkable. The numbers didn't add up, we suffered real difficulty - whichever account you believe - negotiating with Labour, and there was the ever-present threat of nationalist lobbying. So the alternative was a Conservative minority government. And what would this government have been able to pass through parliament with the support of the next biggest party Labour? What policies would be implemented by a minority Conservative government with ...
An odd bit of press from the "one press release a week if you're lucky" Lib Dem media centre today: Commenting on the 10-fold rise in the number of obesity-related surgeries carried out on the NHS in less than a decade, Liberal Democrat health minister Paul Burstow said: "Over the last 13 years we've become the country with the highest rate of obesity in the whole of Europe." I like to imagine that he said that in between bites of a Big Mac Meal whilst funnelling pints of ale down his gullet and ordering a Chinese takeaway. But I doubt ...
For some random reason today I was reminded of a website that was popular about 7-8 years ago that was able to tell you how many people share your name in the UK. Having done a quick google search I've found a site which still does this. You can search your full name and see how many people share it - apparently there are 3,532 people with my name. By contrast one of my sisters only shares her name with 49 others! Aside from this - and some random facts about Angry Squirrels - you can also search by just ...
[IMG: john-rawls] Rawls was a philosophical specialist in political theory and ethics who spent most of his academic career at Harvard, where he was a colleague of Robert Nozick, author of Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974). Nozick made capitalist libertarianism an object of study in academic political theory, and helped defined the argumentative methods used by many current political theorists. Rawls' work was even more influential, and Nozick's book is itself, in part, a reaction to Rawls. The publication of A Theory of Justice, together with related journal articles going back to the 1950s, transformed political theory, both with regard ...
Fri 27th
12:33
Norwich Lib Dem campaign office running like a well oiled machine when we arrived. Expect nothing le...
Norwich Lib Dem campaign office running like a well oiled machine when we arrived. Expect nothing less when @simondrage is in charge!
Via song_of_copper (and thank you so much for the postcard!) comes this bit of lazy but interesting memeage which will fit the bill nicely before I prepare to go and look at some goths in PVC. According to the oracle; The Blogalyser reveals...Your blog/web page text has an overall readability index of 21.This suggests that your writing style is overcomplicated (to communicate well you should aim for a figure between 10 and 20).Your blog has 15 sentences per entry, which suggests your general message is distinguished by verbosity (writing for the web should be concise). CHARACTER MATRIXmale [IMG: male] [IMG: ...
See my photographs from last year's event.
There is much that politicians say that we may all agree on We wish to change politics itself, to bridge the gap between governed and government and to try to address the deep seated and damaging disaffection with politics which has grown up in recent years Tony Blair 1996, 14 May, Speech to Charter 88 ...
Local journalists have been extensively briefed over the last couple of days that the salaries of the top earners at County Hall are to be reviewed as part of the emergency budget process. That's good news and a success for the campaign that has been run by local papers and myself over the last months. The review is also said to include consideration of ending the vast payoffs to senior officers. Although the fact that the amounts of these now need to be made public is entirely coincidental. Cornwall Council has one of the top 30 earning officers in the ...
Yesterday afternoon I had to go in to Norwich. A five mile journey took 55 minutes at 1.30 in the afternoon (not exactly a rush hour). When I got there, virtually every car park was full, and to be honest, the hassle meant I would go elsewhere to shop if I possible could. Now I explained why Norwich's roads are in such a mess at the moment a few weeks ago with both Norwich City Council and Norfolk County Council seemingly conspiring to make every journey in to Norwich impossible from the North of the City. Since the, however, things ...
The county council is no longer prepared to put in posts in the Beechwood Avenue verge: these cost £100 each. They also cause problems to the district council in relation to grass cutting. While this is a disappointment to many, the district council is bringing in verge restrictions street by street. Chris will press for Beechwood Avenue to be high on the list.
A poll conducted by LDDPR last month got some positive exposure last week with a mention in Antonia Senior's opinion piece in thursday's Times "Over to you: Tell me why drugs must stay illegal." It was also referred to at greater length in Mark Easton's excellent blogpost "Drugs Policy: The British System" the day before. I feel it is important for the results of this poll to be explored further as some of the implications are profoundly important for the progress of the debate on drugs policy in this country and beyond. Almost all polls conducted prior to the one ...
Like many people, I've been frustrated by the lack of firmware updates to the Elonex 511EB ebook reader. There are several bugs which are frustrating to many users – as judged from the comments on this blog. With the Amazon Kindle dropping to a lower price, this ebook reader really needs to be updated if it wants to stay competitive. [IMG: 511EB in the grass] Well, I'm pleased to say that it looks like there will be a firmware update – and soon! I emailed Hanvon – the OEM who manufacture the device – and got this response. Our testing ...
I've not reviewed either my Nexus or any apps for it, but I've found Wordfeud to be an exception. It's a Scrabble clone for Android phones and it's really good. [IMG: Wordfeud Home] [IMG: Wordfeud Game] It allows you to play at your leisure against one opponent per board, with 20 boards at any one time. The GUI is nice and clean and I don't have a problem with the adverts. It's still an early version so there are some issues, the biggest one being that it needs to run the game via a server, and as popularity grows the ...
I have just entered this competition on author Keris Stainton's website in which you have to tell about an embarrassing moment. The best stories, published anonymously to spare the guilty, will be voted for by readers on her blog. An iPod Touch is up for grabs. I am fairly certain that many of the readers of this blog will have a suitable experience to enter so I thought I'd tell you about it. As far as the iPod Touch is concerned, I got one in April and although it is slowly reprogramming my brain to want every single Apple product ...
Inspired by the LDV Friday 5, I've just been checking the stats for the Lib Dems online petitions. Here are the results for the last week: Five most active local constituencies with online petitions: East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow Bedford Hornsey and Wood Green Ealing Central and Acton Lanark and Hamilton East Five most active online campaigns Save our ticket offices - http://www.ourcampaign.org.uk/saveourticketoffices Stop the Dovesdale Incinerator - http://www.scotlibdems.org.uk/pages/stopdovesdaleincinerator Save Bedfordshire Police - http://campaigns.libdems.org.uk/savebedspolice Borough-wide 20mph limit in Haringey - http://campaigns.libdems.org.uk/20mph Save Bradford on Avon Swimming Pool - http://campaigns.libdems.org.uk/savebradfordonavonpool Looking at Winchester, our most popular online petitions over time have ...
Currently we have an 8 week lead-in time for issuing blue badges. This is due to a number of factors - the introduction of the new ACS computer system, one staff member (out of 6) being on long-term sick leave and most importantly an unprecedented increase in the number of applications. In addition, the Department for Work and Pensions are being more stringent in awarding Disability Living Allowance, by refusing more claims or awarding for shorter periods. This means more of the Blue Badge applicants have to be assessed, and re-assessed at shorter intervals. With an aging population, and possibly ...
After the kids TV finished on FIVE this morning, I forgot to turn over and was suddenly presented with the a programme called "The Wright Stuff". This programme supposedly looks at "The stories of the day" and has a couple of generally ill informed, so called "experts" with no discernable qualifications to speak on the topic of current affairs other than the fact that they appear to be not exactly "A" list names. This morning, the programme had on an American, who I have never seen before or heard of, who repeated the common line from journalists at the moment, ...
Welcome to a series where old posts are revived for a second outing for reasons such as their subject has become topical again, they have aged well but were first posted when the site's readership was only a tenth or less of what it is currently or they got published and the site crashed, hiding the finest words of wisdom behind an incomprehensible error message. Today's is a review I wrote back in 2006 of a Demos publication from 1997. (Can you tell I was trained as an historian?). The main message of the piece has stood the test of ...
Here is my column, published yesterday in the Ham & High, on the government's decision to ban wheel clamping on private land. Denver booted out! When the Denver boot (wheel clamp) was introduced in this country - I remember wondering what the logic was of this new 'solution'. A car is parked illegally or dangerously - so let's make sure it stays in its illegal or dangerous position for much longer – by immobilising it! Ever since then - this poor solution (albeit to a very real problem) - has caused untold misery. The horror stories abound: from the disabled ...
[IMG: Peugeot Advert] Peugeot's new mobile advert has a couple of critical flaws – but has just enough innovation to redeem it in my eyes. Read on to find the two basic mistakes they made, how to solve them, and the cool feature you should be incorporating into your adverts. Clicking on the advert takes you onto a fairly swish looking landing page. There are some clear calls-to-action, and some attractive graphics. [IMG: Landing Page] I find the text a little hard to read. Let's zoom in. [IMG: Zoomed in image text] Yikes! The whole site is an image! This ...
On the 20th October one of the greatest raconteurs in the Liberal Democrats is coming to Belfast. I know of very few Liberal Democrats who tire of hearing Paddy Ashdown tell his stories, the stories of his life and his experiences. Seeing as he is coming to the place where he grew up (indeed attending Garth Prep School here in Bangor) and where he spent some time of his military service it is somewhat of a homecoming. Indeed it was his spending his formative years in Northern Ireland that Jeremy John Durham Ashdown was never know as that for the ...
Celebrate the 200 year anniversary of Cheadle Green, discover the history of Cheadle Hall and view the improvement project. Saturday 11th and Sunday 12th September from 11am to 4pm at Cheadle Green. For more information, please contact Brian Nash 0161 474 4519 or brian.nash@stockport.gov.uk. View Cheadle and Gatley in a larger map
He only got elected 2 weeks ago and now he's off. This must be some sort of record. You can read the story in the Medway messenger here
i) births and deaths 27 August 1946: birth of Peter Craze, brother of Michael 'Ben Jackson' Craze, who played Dako in The Space Museum (1965), Du Pont in The War Games (1969), and Costa in Nightmare of Eden (1979). ii) broadcast anniversary 27 August 1991: radio broadcast of episode 1 of The Paradise of Death, starring Jon Pertwee, Elisabeth Sladen and Nicholas Courtney as the Third Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith and the Brigadier. Sarah and her dimwitted assistant Jeremy Fitzoliver investigate the new Space World tourist attraction on Hampstead Heath; The Doctor and Brigadier are looking into it as well, ...
It's Friday, so here's a fistful of lists that sum up the past week on Liberal Democrat Voice: 5 most-read stories on LDV this week 1. Knowsley Council pays Labour over £250,000 for conference appearances (11 comments) by Mark Pack 2. Coalition puts up strong defence on IFS report (80 comments) by Iain Roberts 3. Those Kennedy defection rumours (37 comments) by Iain Roberts 4. Kennedy defection rumours - another reason journalists are losing the public's trust (54 comments) by Stephen Tall 5. Lab ex-MP plans to write to LDs asking them to defect. Yes, that really is the story. ...
Reading the software license from Microsoft for Windows Live Movie Maker (and it is a standard license that applies more widely to Microsoft products), I found this: 4. How You May Not Use the Service. In using this service, you may not:... use the service in a way that harms us or our advertisers, affiliates, resellers, distributors and/or vendors, or any customer of ours or our advertisers, affiliates, resellers, distributors and/or vendors [IMG: Microsoft Live and Bill Gates. Photo credit: niallkennedy on Flickr] The use of "harm" there is an extremely broad prohibition. Imagine I was an unhappy customer of ...
Neil O'Brien has a fascinating riposte to the Institute of Fiscal Studies in this morning's Daily Telegraph, which suggests that the analysis was rather limited in its scope and in its understanding of fairness: One issue is that the IFS report looks only at the effect of tax and benefits, not people's incomes - in other words, what the state does for people directly, rather than what it helps them to do for themselves. This ignores not only policies aimed at getting the economy moving and cutting unemployment, but all the other things the Government does. On this analysis, if ...
This morning's Western Mail reveals that a report commissioned by the Welsh Government and carried out by polling firm Ipsos Mori has found that only a third of organisations and individuals that engage with the Assembly Government believe it is well managed. Most respondents (70%) also said they found it fairly or very easy to obtain information from officials, while nearly a quarter (23%) said it was fairly or very difficult. But other stakeholders said the Assembly Government needed to be more "proactive" in reaching out to organisations, and that much contact had been one-way: An NHS organisation said: "I ...
This is the (slightly qualified) verdict of Chris Moss writing in time out. This is an excellent article that gives a good flavour of the character and history of this great city. If you have never been to Hull and have all of the standard misconceptions about this place then read this - you may then gain a little understanding about why so many people move here and stay. You can read the full article here H/T ohwhenthehull (via twitter)
A couple of years ago I wrote about the 1967 British film The Whisperers: Besides Edith Evans there is a late performance by Eric Portman. He even shares the screen in one scene with Leonard Rossiter - two of my very favourite actors together ... Rossiter steals any scene he appear in, and how ever good he is there is always a note of Rigsby in there somewhere too. That seen has now turned up on Youtube...
In yesterday's only West Midland by-election Labour gained the Heath Hayes and Wimblebury Ward on Cannock Chase District Council from the Conservatives.
Over at the Guardian's Comment is Free website, former Lib Dem MP Evan Harris argues that it's misleading to say atheist doctors are 'more likely to hasten death', and asserts that the real issue is adequate patient consultation. Here's an excerpt: Read in isolation, the headline of the Guardian's report into newly published research on doctors' attitudes and behaviour ("Atheist doctors 'more likely to hasten death'") might lead you to think that there are a bunch of humanist physicians poised, with potassium chloride-filled syringes, over the bedside of sick patients. However, the article itself informed us that the problem did ...
Labour pundits were eagerly predicting the Lib Dems would be slaughtered in a Sheffield local by-election yesterday, and would simply be hoping to avoid coming last. The reality was a little different. Labour comfortably held on to their safe Woodhouse seat, with both them and UKIP taking votes from the Conservatives, who were pushed into fourth place, just a few votes ahead of the BNP. The Lib Dems came a clear second place, with the party's vote down just 0.5% on the May result, and well up on every other election in the last few years, as Labour struggled to ...
How Not to Run a Campaign Event « Bad Conscience - http://bit.ly/9xxhZ7 < Ouch. Mind you I once ran a training event with 0 attendees # Mark Littlewood has been called many things over the years. Influential left-wingers is a new one though @leftfootfwd http://bit.ly/cePUyF # The @markpack/engine-group Daily is out http://bit.ly/bvIopg - featuring @JonAkwue @JoshFeldberg @tomagotchi @markpack @imckee # Neither you nor I know anyone who'd want one of these, right? http://bit.ly/cLEE1G # @JoshFeldberg Not quite sure what to make of it, but will run it for a few days and see. Certainly interesting attempt at visualisation in reply ...
Yes, this week was always going to be a challenge because of having two sessions in the one week with Richard Kerrigan my personal trainer, I realise most of my readers will actually have more sympathy for Richard's challenge having me as a customer rather than me, but you can't blame me for trying now can you? I came away a little disappointed yesterday as there were two tasks I didn't see through to the end and actually conceded defeat, which really annoyed me. Both were new challenges in Richard's attempts to get me fit and it has made me ...
It's no great revelation that a council by-election in Sheffield in the current political circumstances is not exactly a mouthwatering prospect. But that's what we ended up with. But despite this and despite the bravado of Labour, the Liberal Democrat vote tonight has hardly changed at all. In the end, whilst Labour's vote was up, ...
I've a piece in this week's Pod Delusion talking about Tesco and planning permission – slightly drawn from my experience of sitting on Nottingham's planning committee when Tesco are trying to get a permission out of us. You can find the recording here.
26th August. Aldbury and Wigginton Ward of Dacorum Borough Council. By-Election caused by disqualification of previous Conservative councillor due to non-attendance. RESULT Liberal Democrat (Rosemarie Hollinghurst) 593 64.7% (+28.0%) Conservative 305 33.2% (-23.7%) Labour 18 2.0% ( -4.4%) Total votes 916 Turn out 46.71%
Generally I welcome comments on my blogs but occasionally I receive advice that is usually anonymous and not quite on my wavelength. I received two anonymous comments recently from the blog written on the 18th August and I am expecting a further reply. As I didn't publish the last comment due to obscenity I will tell you about it in this blog. It was from a UKIP supporter who strongly believes that Liberal Democrats did not support a simple "in or out" referendum on Europe. This is wrong but it certainly reinforces my idea of the level of political knowlege ...
