Welcome to Broxtowe Enews, brought to you by the Liberal Democrats and edited by David Watts, on behalf of the Lib-Dems in Broxtowe. This is the last newsletter before Christmas so may I wish all our readers a happy Christmas and a very prosperous new year. 1. Christmas Car Parking In Broxtowe Christmas shoppers can take advantage of additional free parking in Broxtowe Borough Council's car parks this festive season. In addition to there being no parking charges after 4.00pm Monday to Friday in all Council car parks (except Station Road car park near Beeston train station), there will also be ...
Paul Emmines has conducted interviews with three members of the cast of the classic BBC adaptation of John Masefield's A Box of Delights: Foxy Faced Charles (played by Geoffrey Larder)Sylvia Daisy Pouncer (played by Patricia Quinn)Chubby Joe (plaed by Jonathan Stephens)Patricia Quinn is the widow of Sir Robert Stephens, who played the chief villain Abner Brown.
I remember the beginning of 2016 and I remember feeling positive and hopeful. I remember saying that this was the year everything would change for the better. I would get a new and better job. I would finally get back ...
I'd be happier with receiving a free 2017 calendar from Partners for Improvement in Islington if I hadn't also just received a bill from them with a big increase in their management fee for the property I'm in.
The Conservative MP for Yeovil, Marcus Fysh, has been accused of bullying the moderator of a local online forum with threats of legal action.
On Friday I posted a video of the Flying Scotsman crossing the Welland Viaduct and quoted Wikipedia to explain where you can find that remarkable structure. Its entry included this detail: Before the extensive privatisation of British Rail, repairs were regularly made to the structure by the Kettering and Leicester civil engineering staff. Many of the older bricklayers reported having seen the imprints of children's hands and feet in the bricks, from where they had walked on the clay-filled moulds before firing in the kiln.I'm not sure I believed it, but it was a nice story so I quoted it ...
Saving our Green Spaces has been at the forefront of our campaigns not only last May but for the past 50 years More than two years ago Liverpool City Council agreed at its Cabinet to a partnership with Redrow Homes. ... Continue reading →
The 'shaman' scandal that brought down President Park Geun-hye illustrates many of the weaknesses of Korean society but also the vitality of its democracy. Teddy Cross – https://www.flickr.com/photos/tkazec/30021968224/ The competition for strangest political story of 2016 is a tough: Donald Trump is now leader of the free world, the Prime Minister of India decided to nullify [...]
To the general public, ALCS is a meaningless set of initials, but for tens of thousands of writers in Britain (and beyond) who have signed up as members of ALCS the Authors Licensing and Collecting Society is like a fairy godmother who, year in year out, sends one a cheque (or these days usually a [...]
On Saturday, the English Council voted to abandon the ban on new members voting in party selection contests. The controversial ban had been suspended temporarily in the face of the huge surge of new members since the May 2015 general election. But only temporarily - until yesterday.
Back in January, Willie Rennie called out both Amazon and Nicola Sturgeon over low wages and poor working conditions at the company's Dunfermline depot. A couple of months later, he found himself banned from the premises after Amazon management cancelled a planned meeting with workers to discuss the issues. Things haven't got any better for the beleaguered employees at the depot. This week, the Courier revealed that some seasonal workers were sleeping out in tents in this weather to save the costs of commuting to and from the depot. Then an undercover reporter working for the Sunday Times (£) wrote ...
Here in the land that is base for HBO's Game of Thrones the talk of a Red, White and Blue Brexit as first described by Theresa May and increasingly mentioned by others since is not universally going down well. Let me explain why (in the language that GoT fans will find familiar). Queen Arlene, First of Her Name surveys her Kingdom of the North from her White Keep (Parliament Buildings, Stormont). She was very much in favour of Brexit and her sigil is St. Edward's Crown on a background of Red, White and Blue. However, outside the gates of the ...
It's almost exactly six years since Vince Cable was taken off the Sky merger case after he was secretly recorded saying that he had declared war on Rupert Murdoch." History shows that he was right then and he has been vocally opposing the latest attempt by Murdoch's Fox to take control of Sky. Coincidentally, before the takeover hit the headlines, Vince gave a lecture in which he explored the relationship between media ownership and plurality of opinion and explained why it mattered: Whatever our views about particular opinions expressed in the press and about particular owners, the health of the ...
When I heard the start of this tracked use to introduce a programme on Radio 4 Extra, I thought it must be by some mellowed-out West Coast hippies and date from around 1970. It turned out to be a track from Belle and Sebastian's first LP, Tigermilk, which was issued in 1996. Billboard's review of the LP describes it thus: My Wandering Days Are Over: Written after Murdoch met Isobel Campbell, the cello player who would complete the band's lineup, "My Wandering Days" folds the B&S origin story into a larger narrative about a guy hanging up his dancing shoes ...
List the places where you spent a night away from home this year, marking places where you spent two or more non-consecutive nights with an asterisk. *London, England Munich, Germany Skopje, Macedonia Dubrovnik, Croatia *Belgrade, Serbia *Barcelona, Spain Manchester, England Cluny, France *Belfast, Northern Ireland Leiden, Netherlands Den Bosch, Netherlands Tbilisi, Georgia The Hague, Netherlands *Loughbrickland, Northern Ireland Brussels, Belgium (referendum night) Birmingham, England Washington DC, USA Portland OR, USA *Kidderminster, England *Dublin, Ireland Morchard Bishop, England *Frankfurt, Germany Amsterdam, Netherlands Tirana, Albania Cambridge, England Markbeech, England Helsinki, Finland Chicago IL, USA That's 28, the same as last year's record ...
It's been interesting watching the reaction from some to the Liberal Democrat victory in the Richmond Park by-election. One trend I've noticed is people (generally from the left) pointing out that Tim Farron hasn't said that the party would never be in a coalition with the Tories again it means that the party is clearly just a bunch of evil Tories in disguise, can never be trusted and are somehow responsible for everything bad that has ever happened. Now, while the interpretation might be a bit extreme, the basic fact is true in that Tim Farron hasn't ruled out coalitions ...
Back in August, I said that I couldn't support the Open Britain organisation (the evolution of the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign) because it was too enthusiastic about restrictions on free movement of people and because it wasn't calling for a referendum on any Brexit deal. I still can't sign up to them for the same reasons. However, I do accept that there are areas of common ground between our organisations. This weekend they have conducted some very useful research which shows that half of Leave voters are not prepared to be a penny worse off as a result of ...
What's this about then? Earlier this year, the Tory controlled City Council, announced (via the Peterborough Telegraph), that over ".... 270 affordable homes in Peterborough will no longer be built after the city council agreed a swap deal to secure land for a new secondary school." So what's the problem? You may remember several years ago [...]
Voting in the Liberal Democrat committee elections closes at midnight this coming Wednesday.
I am a great fan of Round Britain Quiz on BBC Radio 4. It is one of those quizzes where you scratch your head cluelessly but every now again get the answer ahead of the contestants. I was reminded of the quiz on Friday, when @EnglishFolkfan alerted me to a cartoon in the Guardian. Having... Continue reading Is Ludlow an ivory tower? "Yes" says Guardian cartoonist, Martin Rowson →
From my post Too few people know about Richard Jefferies (February 2010): This photograph shows the top floor of the house at Coate, which is where Jefferies wrote as a young man. I took it when I visited the museum last summer. The lifesize figure on the bed, reading intently with his heels kicked up, was rather sweet. But one thing puzzled me. "Did Victorian boys wear short trousers?" I asked the guide from the Richard Jefferies Society. "Well, you see," he said, "there was an exhibition in town last year about Swindon in the Second World War...."
Sun 11th
08:55
A longer read for the weekend: Baroness Kate Parminter's Burntwood Lecture on Brexit and the Environ...
[IMG: Kate Parminter] This week Liberal Democrat peer Kate Parminter became only the second woman to deliver the prestigious Burntwood Lecture to the Institution of Environmental Sciences.. She spoke of the challenges facing the environment from Brexit in a 45 minute lecture entitled "Separation Anxiety." Read her full lecture below: It's an honour to have been asked to present the Burntwood Lecture this year, and to follow in the footsteps of such an illustrious parade of former speakers. Many of your previous guests have been eminent scientists or fearless campaigners; I stand here tonight to deliver this lecture (pause) as ...
The Guardian reports on a remarkable interview with former UKIP leader, Nigel Farage in which he tells the paper that he is relieved to no longer be Ukip leader because it had meant "having to deal with low-grade people every day". He further confirms his status as a man-of-the-people and champion of the working class by claiming that his £85,000-a-year salary had left him "poor" compared with his City banker friends: Farage said he now has global ambitions beyond the Eurosceptic party, including negotiating trade deals with the US president-elect, Donald Trump, and finding a solution to the Middle East ...
This posting is only partly about the recent Italian referendum on constitutional changes but stay with me as it references things happening here too. I can't claim to know a great deal about recent the Italian Referendum but what got me was an interview conducted by the BBC in Rome where they were asking people attending a football match how they had voted. Amongst those being interviewed was a chap who said I voted no because I don't like Renzi. Renzi was the Italian Prime Minister calling the referendum. Now excuse me but what kind of answer is that for ...
DUNDEE CITY COUNCIL - WEEKLY ROAD REPORT REPORT FOR WEST END WARD WEEK COMMENCING MONDAY 12 DECEMBER 2016 Perth Road (West Park Road to Glamis) - occasional temporary traffic lights for 2 weeks for gas main/service connection works. Oxford Street (Blackness Road to Cambridge Street) - closed for 2 weeks for gas main repair.
Ways to Actually Help Autistic People A rebuttal to @normanlamb by @HickeyWriter. (tags: autism ukpolitics ) Murderers and Meths Drinkers: A strange, grim tour of 'The London Nobody Knows' James Mason's 1967 exploration. (tags: films london ) The lakes of the world are disappearing *gulp* (tags: climatechange )
I've been meaning to blog on the Richmond Park by-election and some of the nonsense talked about the Lib Dem victory being a result of a putative 'Progressive Alliance' - whatever that is. But as usual the estimable Jonathan Calder got there before me. So instead I thought I'd share the declarations and acceptance speeches of the Richmond Park and Sleaford and North Hykeham by-elections which I think sum up both campaigns and the qualities of the new MPs for both seats.
