The high flying political career of Newcastle City Council's leader Nick Forbes could be about to come crashing down. With local elections looming in May, Labour selections are taking place and Nick seems to have run into a sticky problem - his ward branch in Arthur's Hill have opted for a different candidate. According to local sources, Cllr Forbes was beaten by a "landslide". It turns out that
A terrorist incident? The possibility is always in the back of your mind on the commute to London. Has something awful happened at Waterloo? A few months before the pandemic my local station is crawling with men in Hi-Vis jackets talking earnestly to people as they go in to catch their trains. Police too. What has happened? They warn of an incursion. Trespassers. All these people are here to protect us from danger. Cool. Shame all these helpful people are never present when you arrive home late at night and there's a drunk guy who shouts at you outside Domino's. ...
This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging which will fall in 2023. Every six-ish days, I've been revisiting a month from my recent past, noting work and family developments as well as the books I read in that month. I've found it a pleasantly cathartic process, especially in recent circumstances. If you want to look back at previous entries, they are all tagged under bookblog nostalgia. As was increasingly routine, I had two work trips to London that month; also Anne and I went to a concert ...
Ed Davey used his question to the Prime Minister today to tackle the Prime Minister on the Government's attitude to fraud: Lib Dem leader Ed Davey asks if Boris Johnson "understands the hurt he and his ministers" cause fraud victims "when they write them out of the crime figures" "This government hates fraud... we're helping people any way we can," PM replies#PMQs https://t.co/LkNnzYyQNh pic.twitter.com/nzgSPAyR4C — BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) February 9, 2022 He demanded that Boris Johnson correct the record after misleadingly claiming crime has fallen, and apologise to the four million victims of fraud he has written out of the ...
Responding to the confirmation that Foreign Secretary Liz Truss will fly to Moscow tomorrow to meet with her Russian counterpart, Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Layla Moran MP said: "In her meetings with the Kremlin, Truss must make it clear to Russia that we will no longer tolerate Putin's cronies stashing their dirty cash in our country. "Conservative Ministers have been continuously missing in action. When the US, French and German foreign ministers last met to thrash out a plan, Truss was too busy chasing the sun in Australia to attend. "To use this crisis as an opportunity for a ...
Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey has challenged Boris Johnson to correct the record after misleadingly claiming crime has fallen, and apologise to the four million victims of fraud he has written out of the picture. The UK Statistics Authority last week officially rebuked Boris Johnson and Priti Patel for misleadingly claiming that crime had fallen, following a letter of complaint by Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesperson Alistair Carmichael. Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng then claimed this weekend that fraud isn't something people experience in their day-to-day lives. Analysis by the Liberal Democrats show there were 100,393 fraud offences referred to the ...
Yesterday, our Andy Boddington asked if democratic dystopia was now the order of the day after the incident where Keir Starmer was threatened outside Parliament. He said: I was not prepared for a prime minister who, like Trump, became estranged from the truth. And like Trump, doesn't understand that when you get something wrong and that is leading to civil unrest, you apologise. We have always had protests. Protests don't concern me. I have taken part in many. What scares me is the way that legitimate differences in points of view have become entangled with madcap and frankly dangerous conspiracy ...
There are all sorts of oddities and curiosities to be found in old Parliamentary debates, including the occasion during the Second World War when...
The right to vote is an intrinsic part of any democratic state. As the "United Kingdom," we pride ourself on the rich tapestry of culture that has enacted wide-ranging legislation to protect the needs of all our citizens. Yet, representation of our overseas population, some 5.5 million citizens, is woeful. A full one million citizens, myself included, are currently disenfranchised due to an arbitrary 15-year limit, and another one million are under-age and tied to their parents' constituency. For nearly 40 years, voter participation sat at 1-2% of all British citizens abroad and while Brexit elevated this number to 5%, ...
My good friend Cllr John Potter, the Leader of Preston Liberal Democrats, and I have written to the Chief Constables of Lancashire and Merseyside asking them to speed up their investigations into local government problems in Lancashire Council and Liverpool ... Continue reading →
Within the past hour, Pippa Crerar at the Mirror has tweeted out yet another picture of a Downing Street "work event", this time showing the PM next to a tinsel clad staffer with an open bottle of bubbly on the desk. EXCL: New bombshell image shows Boris Johnson with open bottle of bubbly at No 10 Christmas quiz https://t.co/2eK8mNvjdu — Pippa Crerar (@PippaCrerar) February 9, 2022 Our Home Affairs spokesperson Alistair Carmichael said that this showed that Boris Johnson is not fit to be Prime Minister: These new images confirm what we already know – Boris Johnson is not fit ...
Nick Ramsay, former Conservative Shadow Finance Minister in the Senedd, has joined the Welsh Liberal Democrats. He will stand as a Liberal Democrat in the Monmouthshire Council elections this coming May. Nick lives in Raglan. He served as a Monmouthshire County Councillor before his election to the Senedd in 2007. He held many shadow ministerial roles in the Senedd. He chaired the Enterprise and Business Committee and, more recently, the Senedd's influential Public Accounts Committee. He is a keen fundraiser for local charities such as Love Zimbabwe, and was appointed as a Vice President of Chepstow Mencap. After he joined ...
Tue, 12:56: Will Kate Forbes be Scotland's next leader? https://t.co/Oy0HjCxOyt Very interesting. Tue, 16:05: Good thread. Two of these currently held by Unionists, five by Nationalists. And the Nationalist ones look safer, in general. https://t.co/lxSz4XIjOa Tue, 16:41: This keyboard for my iPad arrived at my house today. It had arrived in Belgium in 16 September, 145 days ago. In the meantime it has been waiting for customs clearance through @bpost_nl. I lost count of the number of phone calls and emails I sent asking what had happened to it. https://t.co/Sp9LWfKaSk Tue, 17:11: RT @HickeyWriter: The thing that gets me about ...
In most financial transactions one should always remember the phrase, caveat emptor, the principle that the buyer alone is responsible for checking the quality and suitability of goods before a purchase is made. It is a motto that billionaire Tory donor, John Armitage might well want to have engraved on his wallet. According to the Guardian, Mr Armitage, the co-founder of the hedge fund firm Egerton Capital, who has given £3.1m to the Conservatives, including more than £500,000 since Boris Johnson entered No 10, has has suggested that Johnson should resign, saying that the prime minister was "past the point ...
It was, perhaps, indicative of how this administration operates that, on Tuesday night in the House of Lords, the Minister responding on behalf of the Government following the Statement on Levelling Up had managed to find time to carry out a word count on the White Paper but hadn't actually found time to read the Technical Annex. It's that sort of document, sprawling across multiple ministries, proposing all manner of good things but with a lack of precision or, equally importantly, funding, to make any of it realistic. Indeed, in some cases, the dependencies are already in trouble. I offer ...
Oh, I do like a bit of railway history especially if it involves Nottinghamshire or Merseyside. So imagine my delight when Phil Rimmer shared some very interesting photos with me regarding the Mersey Railway which he found and purchased on a stall at the National Model Railway Exhibition at Alexandra Palace about 5 years ago. Interestingly, Phil's grandfather Thomas, on his Dad's side, was once Station Master at Southport and with a name like Rimmer a Southport connection is of course no surprise. Well here goes with the photos, with any copyright issues being noted where I know them. Any ...
Many thanks to all the residents who contacted me about the tree damage at Seabraes following the recent Storm Malik. One tree has sadly been uprooted and another is leaning badly. I took this up with the City Council's Head of Environment and have been promised that the department has added Seabraes to the sites where action is required following - initially - Storm Arwen and subsequent high winds.
