Once again something is #nickcleggsfault – this time he is failing to deliver proposals for a fully-elected House of Lords. Instead it will be only 80% elected, including Church of England bishops remaining. This act of incompetent wanton vandalism, worse than the LD compromise on tuition fees, is evidence Nick Clegg should just go home before he does something worse. Oh wait. The last time the Lords was radically reformed was in 1911, by a Liberal government. The Conservative party and the Labour party have been in government on and off since then, and between them have accomplished the massive ...
When the Liberal Democrat Spring Conference voted overwhelmingly against Tory-led plans for NHS reform, it seemed to many that this would introduce friction into the workings of the coalition. Now, however, David Cameron has been forced to rein back the ambitious plans following criticism from all sides. When Norman Tebbit and Shirley Williams are both strongly critical of the same policy, and for the same reasons, you know that there's something wrong with it. Both coalition parties agree on the need for NHS reform, but the Liberal Democrats approach is that patients come first. This means having elected health boards. ...
"A rumour raced round the market that a certain Q.C. had been heard to state in the National Liberal Club the previous evening that as it was already an important part of a doctor's function to extend lives threatened with extinction, and one that was practised daily, he entirely failed to see that any question should arise."
When I was appointed Pensions Minister last May my first priority was protecting current pensioners. It was widely assumed that the spending review would see cuts to a range of forms of help that pensioners receive. But despite the spending pressures, the budgets for bus passes, free television licences, free prescriptions and the Winter Fuel Allowance have been protected at the level set out by the previous government. Better still, where Labour had planned to cut Cold Weather Payments to £8.50 per week we have made them £25 permanently to protect the most vulnerable when the temperature is below freezing. ...
The county's monthly economic update is the usual mixed picture, and enthusiats may want to read all of it here For those who just want some headlines here they are for February 2011: The number of people claiming Job Seekers Allowance, and the %age of the County Durham population claiming out of work benefits both rose in March, though the figures are considerable lower than a year ago. The number of unfilled job vacancies at Jobcentres also rose rose quite sharply. The number of house sales rose, though many fewer houses have been sold in the last twelve months than ...
Preston Park management group met this morning with some good news and some sad. The good news was mostly already public - the successful bid for lottery funding to restore the walled Kitchen Garden and orchard. Preparation work is already underway on the ground for that. One discordant note is the loss of a walnut tree, aged something between 70 and 200 years old. Apparently walnuts are very
The other of the two Torchwood audiobooks released last month, written by the reliable James Goss and read by the excellent Kai Owen. It's a decent enough urban fantasy/horror tale, set in what is effectively a haunted department store, featuring also a rival capitalist version of Torchwood called Firestone. I was not as blown away by it as I was by the companion story Ghost Train, but it's an honourable addition to the Torchwood range.
Welcome to Broxtowe Enews, brought to you by the Liberal Democrats and edited by David Watts, the leader of Broxtowe Borough Council. A special welcome to the new readers that we have this week. We are now in the official pre-election period, when the council is by law prohibited from making any controversial or significant decisions. As a result the news is a bit quiet this week, and will be for the next few weeks. However the work of the council does go on, although all the big stuff now has to wait until after 5th May. That being said, ...
Knowsley Council is set to receive £57,569 extra this year through the New Homes Bonus, it was announced today. Through the New Homes Bonus, the Government will match the council tax raised from new homes for the first six years, with a further bonus of £350 per year for each new affordable home. Empty homes brought back into use will also qualify. The cash was announced on Monday in the House of Commons and is new money over and above councils existing budgets. Local authorities are free to spend their money on anything they like, from Council Tax discounts for ...
Posted by Chris: In desperation Labour candidates have been distributing leaflets in the Council elections which are blatent lies about the Lib Dems and the "vertical pier.". Some are even trying to distance themselves from the Labour Councils decision to go ahead with this folly. Below I answer some of these lies and half truths. LABOUR LIE: Even after they knew the results of their survey (with 97% against) the Lib Dems carried voting for the vertical pier. Quite simply there were no legal grounds to refuse planning permission. You can't turn it down just because the people don't want ...
I received an email this morning from a supporter of the Social Liberal Forum asking me to back their campaign calling for the government's health policy to be amended in four specific ways. Two of which are sensible and uncontroversial - providing more local democratic accountability and slowing down the pace of change to help the NHS through its toughest settlement for decades and avoiding another massive reorganisation. The third is some fairly meaningless waffle about market reform and cherrypicking profitable services (surely impossible unless the NHS charged market rates for its services), so can probably be safely ignored. But ...
I promise that this is the final one of the series of posts (for now ... as there's always another quarter end ...) which relate to my blog stats. This time it's a graph of the number of page views tenpencepiece.net has received every week since the start of 2009 (my first post was in November 2008 and the site moved here from wordpress.com during in October 2009.) The figures don't include hits from the automated robots that Google and others send out across the internet to look for content to enable their search engines to work – these are ...
A post on PsychCentral blog was headed: Mouse Brain Study May Have Implications for Anxiety, PTSD Lord Bonkers comments exclusively for Liberal England: PTSD, I am informed, is the modern term what we used to call "shell shock". During the Great War, I am afraid to report, this condition was little understood and often mistaken for cowardice. The result of this misapprehension was that many mice were tried by courts martial and then shot for cowardice. That was the idea, at any rate. However, mice being (in my experience) very small and given to running about a lot, they proved ...
With the news that Andrew Lansley's NHS reforms are going to "pause" for more "consultation" it is worth reflecting on how we reached this point. David Cameron has been a lot more relaxed than his recent predecessors as PM regarding tightly controlling the activities of ministers and their departments. And good on him I say. I think ensuring ministers have proper power to implement their programmes is generally a good thing and should lead to less "government by tabloid headlines". However I do think in the case of the NHS that Cameron perhaps should have been a bit more attuned ...
It appears that this morning's stress was not without reward. Witness me, all candidatey. Now lets see if I can actually get elected this time. Or at least beat last time's number of votes. [IMG: Dreamwidth] [IMG: Livejournal] [IMG: Blogger] [IMG: Facebook] [IMG: Tweet this] [IMG: Delicious] [IMG: Flattr this] [IMG: LibDig] [IMG: Bit/ly] [IMG: StumbleUpon]
Yesterday I noted that Labour's candidate in the Leicester South by-election had metamorphosised from Jonathan Ashworth to Jon Ashworth. I am reliably informed that this transformation took place halfway through Labour's internal selection process.
Geoff Sproson writes: I have a question for the council members, for the management boards or trustees of Natural England, English Heritage and Shropshire Wildlife Trust. Is the preservation of a vital and vibrant local community any less important than the preservation of a heathland, a lead mining site or a grove of ancient trees?
St Peter's church lies at the far end of a cul-de-sac leading off Thurcaston Road. It is a delightful backwater and makes one forget Leicester and the nearby traffic. On the E is Belgrave Hall, on their W is Belgrave House, their former gardens (now public) leading down to the little river with to the NW its packhorse bridge (mentioned by Leland) of seven arches...says my Leicestershire Pevsner. Belgrave Hall, once the home of the 19th century Liberal MP John Ellis, is now a museum. It was recently threatened with closure, but that plan has now been dropped. Belgrave House ...
A couple of weeks ago I received a piece of paper from the Folkestone Labour Party (and there I was thinking they were some sort of mythical beast...). Shall we take a look? Despite: rising food and fuel prices, cuts in wages and benefits and despite escalating unemployment... What a way to start, going straight for the apocalyptic angle... "Tory Shepway Council increases rents by a whopping 6.47%" Hmm... that does sound bad, I wonder why this is and what Labour proposes to do about it... "In the words of former Lib Dem now Tory Councillor Sue Wallace "I cannot ...
In the 2000s we knew what to do. We had a big goal - to win, prepare for and deliver the Capital of Culture in 2008. We did it well. The drive, impetus and partnership which enabled us to have ... Continue reading →
[IMG: image] I can't tell you how good it feels to have been asked to stand as a candidate for the Liberal Democrats in the May local council elections for the Dane Valley ward. I will be joining Bill Furness local Liberal Democrat campaigner, and Matt Brown, a fellow commentator on local matters. I hope that if you've agreed with my views over the near five years I've been writing this weblog, that you will consider voting for me and my fellow Liberal Democrat candidates here in Dane Valley and elsewhere. I feel things need shaking up locally, many councillors ...
When I got to page 15 of my Metro this morning, I was somewhat taken aback by the advert from the Police Federation. I think it is cheap and nasty scaremongering. Don't get me wrong, organisations have the democratic right to their views, and to voice them, but cheap scaremongering from the Police Federation is just that, cheap. The Police Federation is an organisation I have worked with over the years, mainly when I worked for Vince Cable MP, who at the time was the Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Police. According to their website: the Federation ...
"When did you come closest to death?" – You know the question on those celebrity questionaires. Of course, we all have clever answers ready. "How often do you have sex?" I've got a particularly clever answer ready for that one. But we'll never be asked those sorts of questions, will we? Not us mere mortals. Up until yesterday, my answer to "When did you come closest to death?" would have been: in about 1979 at Crackington Haven Cornwall when I stupidly went swimming during a roaring storm. I'd been determined to go for a swim, and had ridden on my ...
[IMG: IXU_0245] [IMG: Creative Commons License] photo credit: acme ...Are here on the West Berkshire Council website.
[IMG: March for the Alternative] [IMG: Creative Commons License] photo credit: C. G. P. Grey We're hearing that it's all Andrew Lanlsey's fault. He can't explain the NHS reforms so the Cam is going to have to. But hang on a minute. Lansley was given an unprecedented series of his own on Radio Four's PM programme. Everyday for a week he had oodles of time to explain the reforms. He has explained them over and over again. But the whole idea is still completely unnecessary and a recipe for completely pointless upheaval. Even Paul Daniels couldn't present them in a ...
Liberal Vision's tagline is 'looking forward to freedom'. That assumes we aren't as free as we might be. I have often written about moving towards a more liberal society. Here is a possible roadmap to how we might get there. Having a liberal party making the case for liberalism, and fighting poverty, is a start. Nick Clegg recently positioned the Liberal Democrats in the radical centre and made it clear he sees the party's core as being liberal. Of course, one can argue over what that means but let's presume this will lead policies that give people more control over ...
This weekend I was one of over eighty classical liberal university students to attend the UK Liberty League's first ever Freedom Forum conference in Birmingham. Speakers included Mark Littlewood and Steve Davies (both of the Institute of Economic Affairs), Alex Deane (formerly of Big Brother Watch), Guy Herbert (NO2ID), Simon Clarke (Forest), Mark Wallace, Simon Richards (Freedom Association), Graham Aitkin (Students for a Sensible Drug Policy), Tim Evans (Cobden Centre), Conservative MP Sajid Javid and Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming. Liberal Vision's Tim Cox was a panellist for a discussion on how the current crisis can help us make the ...
Parking charges for shoppers in Prestwich will be scrapped a week today (on April 11thgiving a timely boost to local businesses. The changes were secured by Liberal Democrat Councillors whose amendment to the Council budget targeted Fairfax Road parking charges as a main priority. These charges were bad from day one, making it hard for ...
Labour have refused to provide any detailed alternative to the Coalition's tax and spending plans. They have also implied that during their recent period in government that nobody challenged their irresponsible tax and spending plans. This is simply a lie. Not only did the IFS explain their irresponsibility as far back as 2003 [PDF], but so did the Liberal Democrats. There's an easy way to test how responsible we were while we were in opposition. Every year since 1992 the Liberal Democrats have produced an Alternative Budget setting out our alternative to the government's tax and spending plans, as well ...
Local residents who live around Heaton Park are raising concerns over Manchester Council's proposal to have a permanent events license for the park which could see 3 day rock-festivals for nearly a quarter of a million people. The proposals, currently being consulted on by Manchester Council, would allow for an unlimited number of events in ...
When liberals make the case for liberalism they tend to focus on the importance of individuals running their own lives. They also tend to get bogged down in explaining why markets work. Their opponents focus on what will happen to the poor if markets were unregulated or introduced into public services. In that debate it is easy to fall back on technical arguments and miss the bigger picture. While some liberals will make a moral case for liberalism it is not done in a consistent manner. Perhaps it is time to start talking far more about how a more liberal ...
Welcome to my weekly round-up of two blogging highlights from the past week: the post that I found most interesting or enjoyable to write and the post from someone else that I found most interesting or entertaining. A post from me...Ten WordPress plugins to help make your blog shine [IMG: WordPress logo] Good content produced at the right time is at the heart of any successful blog. Good content often needs a helping hand courtesy of sensible promotion too. All of which is to say that fiddling with the technical details can be a tempting distraction from main business at ...
Neil Stockley has written an insightful piece on the challenges for the Liberal Democrats in government. It is not easy for the smaller party in a coalition government, especially when that government is making difficult decisions, to be popular. The cuts have yet to start but there already seems to be a view that they will have a devastating effect. That said, a recent opinion poll implied that people were broadly in favour of the cuts. Perhaps the best advice to the third party at this stage is for it to hold its nerve, keep making its case and wait ...
Tuesday sees the launch by Nick Clegg of a social mobility strategy for the government, including a new 'report card' to track the government's progess. The phrase "social mobility" is one I still don't like. It is too much like that other inside-politics phrase "street furniture". Councillors and council officers talk about street furniture works, improvements, strategies, investments and proposals with abandon but you never hear someone say, "I've just moved into my new flat and the local street furniture is lovely". Street furniture matters, but falling into the habit of using an uncommon piece of jargon hinders understanding, explanation ...
In the film of "The Hireling" chauffeur Ledbetter (Robert Shaw)invites his employer Lady Helen Franklin (Sarah Miles) to come to his boxing club where she will meet Captain Hugh Cantrip (Peter Egan). She asks, "Isn't he a Liberal ?". Ledbetter replies "Well, his politics may be a bit funny but he's a good bloke" or words to that effect. I don't have L.P.Hartley's book so I can't say if this
I have had something of a frustrating morning, and I have missed my body conditioning class because of it. I'm sure you all recall last year me saying that we'd get our forms in for the council elections in plenty of time and we wouldn't have the stress of being minutes before the deadline again... Yeah. The deadline was at noon today, and at half past nine I was queueing up at the electoral services desk in Westgate house congratulating myself on being two and a half hours early; given my Douglas Adams approach to deadlines I thought this was ...
The concluding part of the story McAuley began in The Quiet War, Gardens Of The Sun is a Solar System-spanning tale of politics and genetics. It picks up all the plot threads and characters from the first novel and then follows them over several years as the repercussions of the Quiet War play out on the personal and societal level. It's not one to pick up if you haven't read and enjoyed The Quiet War, as you'll likely get completely lost in the number of different characters and settings, especially as many of the sub-plots don't interact with each other ...
In assuming that Andrew Lansley had it all in hand, David Cameron and Nick Clegg have taken an enormous risk. "It all seems slightly dramatic to me, but I tend to hope that Lansley knows what he's doing," sums up what friends in the Conservative Party have said to me about the NHS reforms over the past few months. This remains the danger within any government: to assume someone else is getting on with it and knows what they are doing. I remember a friend in the Labour Party once saying to me, as we debated during the lead up ...
Police are warning people to beware of bogus callers posing as census collectors. If you haven't filled in your census form, you may get a call from the census field staff. Although there have been no cases of this kind in Avon and Somerset, the advice follows a recent complaint to Trading Standards in Leicestershire another part of the country about a bogus caller, trying to enter someone's house by posing as a census official. PC Andy Williams, who works on the forcewide team that tackles distraction burglary, said: "In our experience, fraudsters will take advantage of any situation to ...
The former heads of MI5, Crown Prosecution Service and the BBC say the 'war on drugs' should be abandoned in favour of evidence-based policies that treat addiction as a health problem, according to a new All-Party Parliamentary Group on Drug Policy Reform. Leading peers - even including prominent Tories - say that despite governments worldwide drawing up tough laws against dealers and users over the past 50 years, illegal drugs have become more accessible. Vast amounts of money appear to have been completely wasted on unsuccessful crackdowns, while criminals have made fortunes importing drugs into this country. Many people have ...
I am not in the habit of saying, "I told you so", especially as there have been so many occasions when I didn't. However, I did take a look at Conservative health policy a year ago and noted the sea of contradictions that existed then. And, as far as I can tell, not much has changed. This explains an awful lot, and is a precursor for future potential difficulties. You see, the Conservatives don't really get localism or at least, they don't really understand its implications. With localism, you get difference, not consistency, and you place your trust in local ...
Please see the Social Liberal Forum's special webpage about the NHS reforms at http://socialliberal.net/sign-the-statement/. As a member of the SLF's Council I'm proud to be associated with this very important campaign to get the Health and Social Care Bill significantly amended. I would urge all Liberal Democrat members to both sign the statement and sign up to SLF which on more and more issues represents the mainstream of Liberal Democrat thinking. socialise this: [IMG: add 'Lib Dems Demand Changes to Health and Social Care Bill' a Del.icio.us] [IMG: add 'Lib Dems Demand Changes to Health and Social Care Bill' a ...
If you are a LIb Dem party member and, like me, were alarmed at the Government's proposals to re-organise the NHS, then now is the moment to do something about it. These proposals were not in our manifesto and they were not in the Coalition Agreement, so I would argue that Lib Dem MPs are not duty-bound to support the relevant clauses in the Health and Social Care Bill. Instead, they should be lobbying for substantial amendments. Spring Conference passed a motion that opposed these changes - and we are a party where it is the members, through their delegates ...
The About My Vote web site has published a useful video guide to the forthcoming referendum on moving to a fairer voting system. Enjoy.
Ed Balls' spin doctor, Alex Belardinelli, sent out an excited press release on Saturday revealing that the Observer was to "splash" on a predicted rise in household debts. "These figures underline Ed Miliband's warning about the cost of living crisis facing families in the squeezed middle," it said. Of course, this wasn't the Observer's splash, but Balls' man was right that his story would appear on the Observer's front page the next day. Unfortunately, the second paragraph of this story got its facts wrong. "The Office for Budget Responsibility has raised its prediction of total household debt in 2015 by ...
David Cameron, Chris Huhne, Ed Miliband: I'm talking to you. Back from drop off at the school gate where, as parents, we work together to marshal our children. Inevitably one child will call the other one some stupid name or tease them. Another one will be given a cuddle because they are upset because they have just been called a name. As parents we tell our children that name calling is unacceptable. But as politicians we seem to positively encourage it. In the past week alone David Cameron described Ed Balls at the "most annoying person in British politics", Chris ...
With just a month to go, over the weekend the final push from the Yes to Fairer Votes campaign was launched: You can help spread the fairer votes message by sharing the video on Facebook and Twitter using the links here.
After a very busy weekend I am back on the canvassing trail this evening, swapping spousal goodwill for votes as I don't return home from work and canvassing until the hours of darkness. This week also sees the penultimate Council meeting of my Municipal year, a Licensing panel tomorrow night. Hopefully I will meet some ...
Inspired by Michael's post about the last time Omagh made all the wrong headlines I thought I'd look at what my memories where of that day back then and the differences with now. It was a glorious afternoon on 15 August 1998. I was wearing just by polo shirt as I was playing on the NICS bowling green, on the Stormont Estate, in a Junior Irish Cup Semi-Final match. That afternoon I first suspected something was wrong by an increase in traffic heading into the estate and up towards the Castle and the Office of the Secretary of State. Later ...
Here's another one who opposes both electoral reform and reforming the House of Lords, which he now belongs to, none other than the former Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, John Prescott.
Excellent explanation by Chris who, as we all know, cannot be described as an Orange-Booker !
This morning's news stories see a very useful attack by Plaid Cymru, which underlines their Labour allies culpability in failing to reform the Barnett formula but. more importantly, highlights the fact that if Labour had won in May 2010 some of the cuts being visited upon the Welsh budget would have been even worse. In the Western Mail, Plaid Cymru MP, Jonathan Edwards makes the claim that Labour would have cut the Assembly Government's capital budget by more than the Coalition administration that replaced it. He says that Treasury figures published at the time of Alistair Darling's 2009 Budget indicated ...
Liberal Democrats have pressed for Herts County Council to be compensated by the contractor for the costs of fixing the various design and build errors caused by the contractors building the new London Road Fire Station. County Councillor Rob Prowse, a councillor for St Albans, asked during the full meeting of the County Council last week: 'Can you let us know the costs of remedial works and whether this contractor will continue to be used on other projects?' The Conservative administration confirmed that it was finally seeking compensation and was sympathetic to the idea of the contractor being removed from ...
I was delighted to read that Barack Obama has decided to run for a second term. Whilst support for him has dipped there is evidence that he is in a much better position for re-election than Bill Clinton was at this stage. What did surprise me though was how close the next US election is! It only seemed like yesterday that Obama was swept into office on a wave of good will. Time will tell re Obama's future but US election campaigns do seem to have gotten longer and longer. When you read Theodore Whites seminal text "The Making of ...
President Obama has today kicked off his re-election campaign with the promise that it will be "a campaign that's farther-reaching, more focused, and more innovative than anything we've built before." A quick look around the re-designed website shows that a lot of the same principles from the famous 2008 campaign remain, with community activism and ...
In the words of Thomas Jefferson, "the loathsome combination of Church and State" still persists in our constitution. Most notably the Head of State and the Spiritual Lords in the upper chamber. Of course, the public would not be best ... Continue reading →
Roy Greenslade, in his Guardian blog, points us to an amusing exchange between two Lib Dem county councillors and Suffolk chief executive Andrea Hill. Last Sunday Kathy Pollard and Caroline Page published an attack on Hill in the Mail on Sunday: Look at us here in Suffolk. Last year, nearly half of our workers earned £17,000 or less. Yet they are represented by a few people who think nothing of spending £122,000 on 'consultancy', £500,000 on gagging orders for ex-employees, £750,000 to set up friendship groups in a county where friendship groups proliferate for free - and where the chief ...
Just a quick comment on the Tory manifesto, launched this morning before I head off to Dunfermline for a hot date with some envelopes. I lead such a glamorous life......... There is a huge inconsistency between their policy to reintroduce prescription charges at £5 an item, saying that free prescriptions take too much money out of the NHS, and their plan to give a £200 Council Tax cut to pensioner households. I watched the other week as Scottish Conservative Deputy Leader Murdo Fraser told the Scotland on Sunday health debate that all the speakers as MSPs could easily afford to ...
The latest issue of The Economist features a brief article about the woes of Germany's liberal Free Democrat Party (FDP). The FDP has fared disastrously in opinion polls and state elections since entering a coalition with Angela Merkel's CDU in 2009. There is an obvious comparison with the Liberal Democrats, who are also in coalition with the main centre-right party here. Our opinion poll ratings have halved since last year's general election. But we should not read too much across from the FDP's experience. German politics is very different. They use a form of proportional voting, for a start and ...
Today's Guardian carries a piece entitled Plans for tuition fees in disarray, ministers say. There is concern that many universities are planning to charge students fees of more than the £6,000, which means that the average of £7,500 for which the Government had budgeted is looking inadequate. The implications for public spending are considerable. The ...
At long last - and after much pressure from local residents and councillors - the 3 Boroughs of Camden, Barnet and Brent and the relevant police teams have agreed to work together to try and sort out some of our regular Cricklewood problems and complaints. This week is the designated "Clean up Cricklewood week" - we hope the effects will not just be temporary. See below for Camden's plan: Issue(s): In conjunction with a pre planned tri borough working partnership with Brent and Barnet, and the local Met Police SNT who have targeted, amongst other aspects: littering / fly tipping ...
I wasn't the first in the party, and I doubt I'll be the last, to say the Liberal Democrats need to make more of our achievements in government. There's little doubt the balance of power in the Coalition lies with the Tories, but with five members of the Cabinet and sixteen further Government Ministers, we must have some kind of influence, right? Well we certainly seem to. I recently came across a document outlining how the Liberal Democrats have been meeting their various manifesto commitments in government. It included some of our key pledges, such as raising the basic income ...
Gildas the Monk has done another post about the interrelationship between the courts and parliament. I don't entirely agree with it, but it is worth a read.He finishes:On a wider front, if the Judges themselves do not get a grip and stop the tide of draconian orders which threaten to undermine fair reporting and free speech, Parliament must act to re-assert its Sovereignty. Lawyers and judges
Er, no. The Telegraph and the Mail are claiming that a black poet was airbrushed out of Yes to AV literature for the west country. Predictably, this is a load of bollocks. Benjamin Zephaniah didn't feature in leaflets sent to the west country - but only because the leaflets used in each area are different. In this case, Benjamin Zephaniah was left out in favour of Tony Robinson. This is because Tony Robinson comes from the west country and Benjamin Zephaniah does not. If you want any further indication of whether Yes to Fairer Votes is racist or not, just ...
I have today said that the City Council and its Education Convener should be prepared to sit down with Dundee pupils who are protesting about the council's education cuts to listen to their concerns and see what can be done to address them. This follows the protest outside Tayside House on Friday when the pupils were told that they should make an appointment with the Director of Education after the Easter holidays. The pupils should have the opportunity to put their case earlier than that to show the council is listening - with the Education Convener and opposition spokespersons as ...
Jonathan Calder reports how Cornish councillor Jeremy Rowe is finding Twitter useful as a way to communicate with residents in his area who are hard to reach through traditional politics. Cllr Rowe's local experience compliments the message that Google search data gives about people wanting to find politicians on Twitter. (If you are a councillor or local candidate and wondering how to build-up your own local following, see The secret to getting 1,000 ward residents to follow you on Twitter.) [IMG: Speed camera] Paul Walter reports on speed cameras: "After an eight month switch-off, the 72 speed cameras in Oxfordshire ...
What The Hell Have The Lib Dems Done? A useful reminder that we're not JUST figleaves covering a big Tory cock. (tags: libdemmery) A Call for Reviewers Strange Horizons is after female reviewers. I'd love to do this but I'm restraining myself, because I'm already not-doing too many Things, and can't cope with another Thing to guilt myself about not doing. (tags: scifi feminism) Another post about rape « Fugitivus "The way men and women interact on a daily basis is the way they interact when rape occurs. The social dynamics we see at play between men and women are ...
The link is to a high court appeal (that is from a district judge).This was an application for (in this case) a father to pay a capital sum in support of his child under Schedule 1 of the Childrens Act 1989. This is an area of law that is not in any way well known.As with many areas of family law it leaves far too much to the discretion of the judge. Going back to my previous post about law.
The perceived health of an election candidate can predict how people will vote according to recent research, and voters can form opinions about how healthy a candidate is based solely on the way that person moves. In The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, a clear illustration of how we form subconscious conclusions about other people ...
Are you concerned about the massive housing developments planned for our town? South Glos and developers are planning 3000 new houses for Brimsham Park, north of Yate, plus more at Peg Hill. But it doesn't stop there. Elswick Park (the Sea Stores) is already being built. Then there's the Coopers factory site on Westerleigh Road and the housing planned to go along with Waitrose at Chipping Sodbury, and South Glos intends to sell off much of the Rodford School site for housing. Just as worryingly, there are attempts by developers to put houses on sites that aren't even on South ...
It looks as if Warrington MP David Mowat could be the first Conservative MP so far to back the alternative vote in May's referendum. The Liverpool Daily Post reports: A Warrington MP is ready to defy David Cameron by voting to scrap the first-past-the- post voting system - potentially making him the only Conservative to do so. David Mowat said he was considering backing a switch to the "alternative vote" (AV) for Westminster elections in the nationwide referendum to be staged on May 5. The Warrington South MP described himself as an "agnostic" on the issue, but also stated his ...
The proposals for the Pinkham Way development are causing deep concern amongst local residents. The North London Waste Authority (NLWA) want to build a giant waste treatment plant and vehicle depot at Pinkham Way. It is huge. It will process the waste from seven local boroughs. It will be one of the largest biological and mechanical treatment plants in Europe. The land is owned by Haringey – but the application is from NLWA and Barnet – who will use part of the site to situate its fleet vehicles involved in waste, recycling and street cleaning. The site is in a ...
One of the arguments I keep hearing against the Lib Dems regarding AV is that there are loads of more important things than electoral reform (the economy, the health service, schools etc. etc.) and that it is disgraceful that the party should have insisted on a referendum on AV as part of the coalition agreement above all these other things. Margaret Beckett was at it on Any Questions this week, although Lynne Featherstone rightly pointed out that lifting the lowest earners out of tax and the pupil premium and green investment were all considered of equal importance too given they ...
Well, you can find out here. A good counter to the emotive language being thrown at us by the other parties. We shouldn't put up with being the get out of jail free card for the likes of Labour and the SNP - they are flinging mud at us in the hope that they won't be scrutinised on their own record. Well done to William Summers for coming up with such a simple and effective idea.
Well, it's been a while since last the Voice rounded-up the polls — but with Scottish/Welsh/local elections just weeks away, it's time to dust down our spreadsheets and take a look at the current states of the parties. A total of 35 polls were published during March. Now, as our readers know, LDV doesn't cover them with the same breathless excitements as other parts of the media. Most poll movements are within the margin of error, so it is only looked at over a period of time that you can detect whether there has really been any significant movements between ...
The latest edition of the North City Locality Team Newsletter has been published, it's worth noting that on page 10 there is a piece about a potential move of premises of the ArC (the Children Centre in the Arbury ward), from St Lukes church to 82 Akeman St. The team are currently consulting with the local community, partner agencies and stakeholders about the proposed move. If you would like more information or would like to comment, please do not hesitate to get in touch with the team (the contact details are in the newsletter). The newsletter is available (as a ...
Mon 4th
07:00
In search of inspiration - is there a niche within the Liberal Democrat blogosphere for someone like...
Those of you who know me fairly well will know that I am, at heart, reasonable. A bit impetuous at time, yes, but generally slow to anger. City life can be a bit irritating, but even when I'm annoyed by something, my response is generally argued rather than ranting. In short, I'm not the classic angry blogger. However, being vaguely annoyed by something acts as a motivation to comment, and has kept me going as a blogger for more five years. And that's my problem. Since I transferred my job to Ipswich, a lot of the things that irritate me ...
It frustrates me and it frustrates me greatly. I have my personal gmail.com e-mail account and also my official Ceredigion Council .gov account. When I go through my official e-mails in the latter, I usually find myself faced with countless e-mails inviting me to conferences in London. It drives me absolutely spare. They're all well intentioned yes, but getting an e-mail inviting me to the Barbican as an example, for a policy conference at an extortionate rate really does leave me wanting to pull my hair out. Hello? Check where you're sending the e-mail too - ceredigion.gov.uk. Yes, that's C-E-R-E-D-I-G-I-O-N. ...
Above : I am pictured beside the box in question A new large-style utility box in the West End installed by BT Openreach has rightly incurred the wrath of local residents because, not only is it large and unsightly, it did not require planning permission to be installed. The box - on a prominent site at the roundabout at the west end of Blackness Road at the roundabout with Glamis Road and Glamis Drive - is much larger than adjacent utility boxes and has been installed as part of BT's "super broadband" installations. It is used to convert signals from ...
It is a cliché of debating that if you need to cite Hitler and the Nazis to support your case than you have probably lost the argument. Chris Huhne came near to this last week when he accused Sayeeda Varsi, fellow cabinet member but a leader of the "No" campaign, of conducting a "Goebbels-like campaign." Not quite Hitler, I know, but it did lead to at least one "Nazi" headline. There is alwas a dangner in a debate about elecoral reform that anoraks such as myslef will cloud the issues by arcane discussions about different systemns. So far this has ...
i) broadcast anniversaries 4 April 1964: broadcast of "Assassin at Peking", seventh episode of the story we now call Marco Polo. The Khan wins the Tardis from the Doctor at backgammon, but releases the Tardis crew and allows Marco Polo to return to Venice when they prevent Tegana's assassination attempt. 4 April 1970: broadcast of third episode of The Ambassadors of Death. The Doctor and Liz realise that the astronauts are absorbing so much radiation that they must be aliens; but Carrington's men are in pursuit. 4 April 2008: broadcast of Exit Wounds, last episode of the second season of ...
