Embed from Getty ImagesReading An English Affair: Sex, Class and Power in the Age of Profumo by Richard Davenport-Hines I came across a pleasing quote from Rebecca West's The Meaning of Treason: While everybody knows Englishmen are sent to public schools because that is the only place they can learn good manners, it unfortunately happens that the manners they learn there are recognised as good only by people who have been to the same sort of school, and often appear very bad indeed to everybody else.
Next Monday evening, from 6-7 pm, the Federal Board are having an online q and a session for all party members. Party President Mark Pack will be taking questions and I'll be there alongside former Welsh President and AM Bill Powell. I'd really like to see loads of you there, not least because doing this was my idea and I'll look like an idiot if nobody turns up. We had some really useful discussions in the Federal Board booth at Federal Conference. In fact, believe it or not, I was even able to give some information about the English Party ...
Responding to Conservative Party Chairman Oliver Dowden's comments this morning on HGV drivers, Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesperson Alistair Carmichael MP said: "It is staggering that just 20 fuel tanker drivers from abroad who applied to work here are now on UK roads. "In the face of a national crisis and our ports going into gridlock, the response from Conservative ministers is too little too late. This incompetence will mean more empty shelves and more misery for British consumers in the run-up to Christmas. "The immigration system is broken, and it is hurting everyone. The government needs to end their ...
The government has missed its 2020 fuel poverty targets and is already at "high risk" of failing to meet its goals for 2025, a report by the Committee on Fuel Poverty has found. Commenting on the findings, Liberal Democrat Leader and former Energy Secretary Ed Davey MP said: "The Conservatives are failing millions of hard working families and leaving them in fuel poverty at a time when energy bills are rocketing. "As a result of this Government's abysmal failures, people could find themselves unable to heat their homes this winter. With empty shelves in the supermarket and soaring energy bills, ...
First frame of third page (should be second frame if I followed my usual practice, but I like this more): Deep on the bottom of the ocean lived a whale. She was a hundred thousand years old. This won the Willy Vandersteen Prize last month, for the best comic in Dutch of the last two years. (I raise my eyebrows a little at this, as Zidrou, the writer, is a Francophone, and the book was published in French as La Baleine bibliothèque before the Dutch version came out.) I previously read and enjoyed Judith Vanistendael's De maagd and de neger; ...
The Guardian reports: An MP has been found guilty of harassment and is expected to face demands to stand down from her seat. Claudia Webbe, the independent MP for Leicester East, was accused of carrying out a campaign of harassment through unwanted telephone calls against Michelle Merritt, a female friend of her partner... Webbe, a close ally of Jeremy Corbyn, was elected as Labour MP for Leicester East but had the whip withdrawn after being charged. Claudia Webbe MP (IND, Leicester East) has been found guilty of one count of harassment. Any prison sentence will result in an automatic recall ...
Tue, 13:05: RT @davidallengreen: Why does it matter if the United Kingdom government breaks international law? And does such a breach really mean the... Tue, 17:26: RT @sylviademars: https://t.co/gZqJiijdqr Tue, 17:30: I don't recall a single person in the UK actually saying this at the time. Does anyone else? Needless to say, the EU never tried to encourage UK forces to reverse the referendum result, using NI or otherwise. But the point is to keep fighting, for the sake of fighting. https://t.co/bYIekvzCtC Tue, 18:17: June 2013 books https://t.co/jKfAXAkLDI Tue, 20:02: RT @davidallengreen: @law_and_policy "No-one here is expert in Northern Ireland", ...
Reacting to new statistics released yesterday which show that there has been a 9% rise in hate crimes since last year - now the highest on record - Liberal Democrat Justice and Equalities Spokesperson Wera Hobhouse MP said: "Violence and abuse of any kind has no place in our society. It is unacceptable that so many people are victimised simply because of who they are. This has to change. "There are even more hate crimes - against women - that are not included in these statistics, because the Government still refuses to make misogyny a hate crime. It's time for ...
Wed 13th
10:30
High Court ruling on trafficking victims shows Conservatives must abolish hostile environment
Reacting to the High Court's ruling earlier this week that trafficking victims should be granted leave to remain in the UK, Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesperson Alistair Carmichael MP said: "It shouldn't have taken a court to tell the Home Office that victims of trafficking - some of the most vulnerable people in our country - should be protected. Instead of appealing this judgment, the Government should implement it in full, so that victims are supported when they come forward, helping to bring their slavers to justice. "The Conservatives' hostile environment is undermining the fight against modern slavery. Priti Patel ...
Responding to concerns from homelessness charities that the number of women relying on their services is increasing, Liberal Democrat Women and Equalities Spokesperson Wera Hobhouse MP said: "The Conservatives pledged to end rough sleeping, but now their policies are making it worse - especially for women and girls. They ignored all the warnings about cutting Universal Credit and ending the eviction ban, and now we are seeing the tragic results. "No one should be forced to sleep on the streets. The Government must get on with the job of ending rough sleeping by 2024, including banning 'no-fault' evictions as they ...
Reacting to Lord Frost's speech in Lisbon yesterday on the UK-EU relationship and the Northern Ireland Protocol, Liberal Democrat Home Affairs and Northern Ireland Spokesperson Alistair Carmichael MP said: "This Conservative Government is playing out like a badly-written farce. The same minister who just months ago was trumpeting the Government's botched Brexit deal now says it's intolerable and has to be changed. "After all the upheaval British businesses have suffered and all the challenges they face now, they need certainty and support from the Government, not more pointless posturing. The solution to disruption and shortages is working together with our ...
Wed 13th
09:55
LibLink: Alistair Carmichael - Liberalism is the most effective counter to competing nationalisms
writing in the Scotsman, Alistair Carmichael challenges both the SNP's view that independence is inevitable because so many young people support it and the older voters will die off and the Conservative view that those young people will become more conservative and risk averse as they grow older. Both of these views are blinkered - and, frankly, complacent. We should have higher ambitions than some kind of "demographic destiny". When we are talking about no less than the future of Scotland, our people deserve a little more by way of ideas and ideals, and a little less talk of inevitability. ...
If it wasnt bad enough that some Ministers have been governing using WhatsApp and private phones, the Guardian has revealed that government rules on these messages are creating a failure of transparency and accountability. The paper says that ministers and civil servants are required by policy to set instant messaging chats to delete automatically, in violation of British law on public records and freedom of information. A legal challenge by the not-profit organisation the Citizens seeks to overturn this process. They are concerned that the likes of WhatsApp and Signal, which have a disappearing messages option, are being used to ...
The British government waited too long to impose a lockdown in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, missing a chance to contain the disease and leading to thousands of unnecessary deaths, a parliamentary report has concluded. The 150-page report ... Continue reading →
I was hugely disappointed to see the recent decision to not return to an in-person spring conference in Spring 2022. York has been proud to be the home of the Liberal Democrat Spring Conference in recent years. A return in Spring 2022, after the terrible events of the last 18 months would have been a real boost to party morale. When we attend the 2022 Autumn conference, it will have been over 1,000 days since we last heard a leader's speech from the hall. Despite the Lib Dems being in administration in York since 2015, nobody in the party thought ...
There is a new Tenant Grant Fund the City Council is administering to help prevent evictions as a result of COVID-19 related rent arrears between March 2020 and August 2021. This fund enables local authorities to prevent homelessness and sustain tenancies by assisting tenants with rent arrears problems where a tenant is in either in the social or private rented sectors, and has faced difficulties due to Coronavirus. More details are in the poster below :
"Tonight in Line Up, Spencer Davis, an arts graduate and leader of a pop group topping the charts this week, Paul Jones, singer from the Manfred Mann Group who was sent down from Oxford University and Neil Farrow a journalist and a psychology student. They're here to discuss the newest of the television pop shows, A Whole Scene Going. Later there'll be an interview by Joan Bakewell with Joseph Losey." This edition of Late Night Line Up, a BBC2 arts magazine programme, was broadcast on 19 January 1966. Spencer Davis comes over as the teacher he used to be, while ...
