With the very welcome recent progress on electoral reform in Wales, I invited Jess Blair from the Electoral Reform Society Cymru to join me on Never Mind The Bar Charts. Feedback very welcome, and do share this podcast with others who you think may enjoy it. Show notes The Local Government and Elections (Wales) Bill. STV explained (words). STV explained (animals). Public support for electoral reform. Join the Electoral Reform Society. Jess Blair on Twitter. Music by Hugo Lee. New to listening to podcasts? Here are some tips on how to listen to podcasts. Enjoy the show? Spread the word ...
Churches within Yate have organised Drive-In Christmas Carols on the Riverside Car Park, the one near the cinema, supported by the Town and Parish Councils, Yate Shopping Centre and the community. You will be able to sit in your car, COVID-safe with your "bubble". There will be music on the sound system and the words will be up on the big screen. Esquire Coffee will be open for take away food and drink. There are two sessions, at 6 pm and 8 pm. Booking is ESSENTIAL - tickets are going very quickly. You can book here - https://www.yateparish.org/carols - click ...
On 28 July 1968 The Beatles held a mini magical mystery tour, being photographed at various locations across London - Rolling Stone has the full details. One of the places they visited was Old St Pancras Church, which we visited the other day with John Rogers as he followed the course of the River Fleet. The video above shows the loveable moptops being photographed in various parts of the churchyard - look out for the tomb of Sir John Soane, which inspired Giles Gilbert Scott's classic telephone box - and meeting the locals.
We have seen William Henry Gladstone, the Grand Old Man's eldest child, twice before. As a small boy he amused Queen Victoria and shortly after that he went to a prep school at Geddington in Northamptonshire. Today I learnt from Twitter that he was also a footballer. He played for Old Etonians in the FA Cup and for Scotland in their first unofficial international against England in 1870. William Henry was Liberal MP for Whitby at the time of the international. There was another MP in the Scottish Team: John Wingfield Malcolm, a Conservative who sat for Boston.
"The Persistence of Vision", by John Varley won both the Hugo and Nebula for Best Novella, awarded in 1979 for work of 1978. (The 1979 Worldcon was the first one in Brighton.) The second paragraph of the third section is:It was substantial enough that I felt it would be unwise to crawl over it. I had crossed many wire fences in my travels and not got in trouble for it yet, though I had some talks with some ranchers. Mostly they told me to keep moving but didn't seem upset about it. This was different. I set out to walk ...
Let's start with something positive: you can donate to the Legal Defence Fund for Transgender Lives, being held by the Good Law Project, right now. I hope if you're not convinced already, this article will convince you to do something - if you have some cash to spare, donating to the Good Law Project is one thing you can do. Thank you. Last week, The Scottish National Party voted in a new National Executive Committee. The incoming committee is being celebrated for their more hardline stance on independence - as well as their eagerness to scrap progress on trans rights. ...
During last year's election, I took a brief secondment from my usual role to join the team at the political consultancy Datapraxis – this is where the relationship started that resulted in the Winning For Britain report I co-authored with Ian Kearns earlier this year, and that I know many in the party have found useful. Another of the organisations I got to know during that time was Valent Projects and in particular its Director, Amil Khan. An investigative journalist and social media strategist, Amil was digging into what the Conservative Party was doing online – and what he was ...
Our Headline of the Day Award goes to this seasonal effort from the Liverpool Echo.
You may hope - with Trump on his way out - that his UK protégé may have given up the tricks of the Trump playbook. However, take a look behind the Brexit and Covid headlines this week, and you will get a glimpse of some devious destruction of our constitutional conventions. In his Dimbleby Lecture of October 1976 former Lord Chancellor Viscount Hailsham - a true Tory if ever there was one - warned against Britain's slide towards "elective dictatorship". With the recent publication of a draft Bill to repeal the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, his illustration of the power ...
Timothy Garton Ash offers his manifesto for a renewal of liberalism: "At its best, liberalism has always understood that human beings never are what Jeremy Waldron has called the 'self-made atoms of liberal fantasy,' but rather live embedded in multiple kinds of community that speak to deep psychological needs for belonging and recognition." "The most surprising feature of Britain since the Brexit referendum is just how unhappy Brexiters have been." Chris Grey probes the psychology of the Brexit ultras. Should we have to respect or just tolerate abhorrent views? Ruth Smeeth on a debate in academia. Nick Hunt reviews The ...
New polling from YouGov reports: Despite the 2011 Alternative Vote referendum where the UK public decided to keep the first-past-the-post system (67.9% for, and 32.1% against), data from one of YouGov's political trackers shows there is currently greater support in the public for proportional representation (42%) than for the current electoral mechanism (33%). The YouGov Democracy Study reveals a deep public split on the perception of the UK election system: four in ten (40%) Britons think the system is unfair, and slightly fewer (38%) think it fair. When the results are split across age groups, there is a clear generational ...
I don't mind mistakes. Everybody makes them and the helter-skelter of regulating the statute book in time for our leaving the EU has no doubt led to many errors in the wave of 2019 regulations which were put before us. If they could not be spotted at the time by government lawyers, perhaps the opposition parties can be forgiven for letting them through. I understand another SI similar to this to amend mistakes is in the pipeline, and I would expect others to follow. First, the 2019 Civil Jurisdiction and Judgments Regulations, inadvertently broadened the special jurisdiction rules with the ...
Tue, 12:56: Britain's little ports caught in a Brexit storm https://t.co/x3L3jij3jN #takingbackcontrol #onlyaconsiderableupside Tue, 13:47: Totally agree. https://t.co/OyetzpAWeT Tue, 14:28: UK caves. Inevitably. https://t.co/kjaTH4k82W Tue, 14:48: A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, by the High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change (2004) Reflects on both what states' mutual obligations now are and what the new security threats actually are. #nwbooks https://t.co/nJkwaWuukY https://t.co/94RftL7qSu https://t.co/YoVxh6wiQa Tue, 15:29: @eurorealist speaks. https://t.co/e4lJ06yLfu Tue, 15:48: Ōoku: the Inner Chambers, vol 6, by Fumi Yoshinaga This volume crystallised some of the problems I have with the series for me. I think I don't know the ...
At the moment there is a continuing flood of Brexit stories underlining the failure of the UK Government to appreciate the enormity of the task they have taken on, or the complete failure to deliver on ridiculous promises made during the referendum and afterwards, that were always rather far-fetched anyway. The latest, and one yet to appear on the side of a bus, is the judgement by the National Audit Office that the Home Office's failure to deliver a new digital border system to monitor the movement of people and goods into and out of the UK will cost the ...
Today is a day for celebration and reflection. As we celebrate the 72nd anniversary of the United Nations proclamation and adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we can reflect on all that has been achieved and all that remains to be worked on. When the UN general assembly first voted to adopt the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UK delegation expressed frustration that the proposal included moral obligations but lacked legal force. It was not until 1976 and the International Covenant on Civil and Political rights that the majority of the articles in the Declaration gained legal ...
i) births and deaths 9 December 1938: birth of Waris Hussein, director of An Unearthly Child (1963) and Marco Polo (1964). 9 December 1944: birth of Eric Saward, script editor 1982-86, author of three Fifth Doctor stories and one Sixth Doctor story; a somewhat controversial figure. ii) broadcast anniversaries 9 December 1967: broadcast of fifth episode of The Ice Warriors. Clent prepares to use the ioniser; the Ice Warriors prepare to use their sonic cannon. 9 December 1978: broadcast of third episode of The Androids of Tara. The Doctor tries to rescue Romana, but it's her android double; the real ...
Over the years, I have had numerous requests for better lighting at the steps from Pentland Avenue down to Scott Street. This has always proved a difficult site to provide a solution at as this earlier response from the Street Lighting Partnership Manager indicated : "I have looked at several option for lighting these steps over the past year or so and I cannot find a suitable option for these steps. Having looked at solar powered light for the steps and subsequent talks with manufacturers, they all come to the same conclusion (that) there is insufficient sun light during the ...
BBC Radio Shropshire this morning announced the retirement of one of the great stalwarts of local radio, Eric Smith, after almost 50 years in the studio. For many people in Shropshire and beyond, Eric Smith is the first voice that says hello to them in the morning. It is a comforting voice. Familiar. Measured. Fun. And if you are being interviewed by him, as I know from experience, he can be challenging. That's want we want and what we need in local radio. To be informed and entertained. Image: BBC Radio Shropshire In the BBC local radio network of 40 ...
