Much of the Devon and Somerset Railway, which ran from Taunton to Barnstaple and closed in 1966, has been lost beneath the Devon Expressway. Yet it turns out there is still plenty of interest to be found along the route, including the brick piers of a towering trestle viaduct. If you enjoy these videos, you can support Paul and Rebecca Whitewick through their Patreon page/
Sun 13th
21:03
"A county of leftist whingers begging for handouts": Conservative peer's comments on Yorkshire
"[I] fear I'm going to find it transformed into a county of leftist whingers begging for handouts" - Lord Moylan on Yorkshire.
The Mould effect: 0% to do with politics, polling or the media, but 100% fascinating and fun.
So the SNP Government has assured Scots, with all the confidence of a Vote Leave spokesperson saying that there would be £350 million a week for the NHS, that their State Pensions would continue to be paid by the UK Government if Scotland became independent. Will this persuade older Scots, who overwhelmingly voted to remain in 2014, that independence is worth pursuing? Alistair Carmichael, in a column for the Scotsman, thinks not. By Blackford's reckoning, if Scotland secedes from the United Kingdom we can still keep the good bits (like the currency or our pension entitlements) while leaving behind the ...
Over towards the Stiperstones, the Shropshire Hills are full of stories that you could once enter a pub there and find rock and roll royalty, drawn by Ronnie Lane's studio there, giving an impromptu concert. I once helped a BBC journalist pin down the truth of one of these stories: Lane and Eric Clapton played the Drum and Monkey pub (now named Abel's Harp) in March 1977. And on Christmas Day last year an anonymous comment on a post here placed Mick Jagger in these hills too:I spent three summers in the mid 70's living at the More Arms for ...
A Beautiful part of Norfolk, although not sure how isolated it will be in the summer. Was able to indulge two of my current passions, churches and pillboxes, add in a light house. The church was especially beautiful with hints of the Rood Screen. The font was especially pretty and looked old.There were a couple of interesting plaques on the wall, overall a very calm and tranquil experience. Beautiful views of the sea from the churchyard.
Sun 13th
15:16
Big Bang Shrewsbury redevelopment plans are too risky - the council should move to the Guildhall
It is the stuff of dreams. It is also the stuff of nightmares. A radical redevelopment of Shrewsbury town centre between Pride Hill and the River Severn is expected to cost at least £77 million. Most of this money could come from loans expected to cost council taxpayers around £4m a year. The scheme will involve the sale of Shirehall and a construction of a new civic centre on Raven Meadows in a building that will cost more than £37m. Shropshire Council is being too ambitious. It has a poor track record having purchased three shopping centres which have since ...
F and I went to Gent last weekend to track down a couple more of the seventeenth century stucco ceilings of Jean-Christian Hansche. One of them is in the library of the law faculty of the University of Gent;Luc De Bie, the faculty secretary, wants it to be known that he is very happy to show visitors around by appointment, and he gave us a great tour of the buildings as a whole. I think I would recommend going at a warmer time of year, to take advantage of the courtyards. The building is lovely, but I'm afraid I only ...
Sun 13th
14:47
President's Update, February 2022, Europe, Party reform, supporting candidates, new Vice President
The next steps in our European policy There's a lesson we should learn from Brexiters. It's that for most of the road to the tragedy of the 2016 referendum they weren't Brexiters but Euro-sceptics. For most of that time, they weren't campaigning for Brexit to happen tomorrow, but against a particular aspect of the EU. That is how they built up a broad coalition of support to get Brexit through. In turn, we need to do the same in reverse – to recognise that even many Remainers are put off by 'let's rejoin the EU now!', but that even those ...
As someone who has received a national honour (a CBE), as has my wife Erica, you might expect me to be personally concerned about an abuse of the honours system. I have no idea who nominated Erica or me. In ... Continue reading →
Yet another week where the Prime Minister has floundered, and the country has struggled. The week started with a Tory former chief whip urging Boris Johnson to withdraw an insinuation about the Labour leader Starmer refusing to prosecute the serial sex offender Jimmy Savile and which saw scenes where Starmer was accosted outside Parliament. 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 ...
Responding to Brandon Lewis' comments this morning, in which he defended the remarks made by Defence Secretary Ben Wallace that there is a "whiff of Munich in the air from some in the West", Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Layla Moran MP said: "There's a whiff of something else coming from this Conservative Government, who have time and again turned a blind eye to Russian interference in this country. "With UK nationals having to leave Ukraine, it's time to flush out Putin's associates within our borders. Kremlin-linked Russian oligarchs have pumped their dirty cash into Britain for far too long, ...
The Liberal Democrats have said Boris Johnson should be barred from handing out knighthoods, peerages and other honours when he steps down as Prime Minister. The party's Chief Whip, Wendy Chamberlain, has written to the chairs of the House of Lords Appointments Commission and the Cabinet Office Honours Committee urging them to reject Johnson's resignation honours list if he puts one forward. It comes after recent reports Boris Johnson has promised knighthoods and peerages to Conservative MPs to persuade them not to hand in their letters of no confidence to the 1922 committee. Liberal Democrat Chief Whip Wendy Chamberlain MP ...
The Liberal Democrats have accused the Government of leading Britain into a 'cost of loving' crisis ahead of Valentine's Day, with loved-up couples set to fork out more for their night of romance this year. With inflation at its highest level in nearly three decades, an analysis by the party has found that the average couple having a romantic night in will pay out £89.08 for the full works this Valentine's Day, representing an extra £6.02 (7.25%) compared to last year to wine and dine each other and leaving partners with less bang for their buck. A Parliamentary Question tabled ...
Sat, 16:12: Howl's Moving Castle https://t.co/fo1N4mYXvt Sat, 18:14: Saturday reading https://t.co/L2ztBiFheW Sat, 19:01: RT @chortle: 'He knew funny better than anyone' | Tributes after stand-up comedy director Paul Byrne dies at 45 https://t.co/g2UkZmYUg7 htt... Sun, 10:45: How London almost got its own Eiffel Tower | CNN Travel https://t.co/FdPQJxWcp6 London was once on track to have its own bigger, better Eiffel Tower, a gigantic metal creation that would reach to 1,200 feet. But as the creation rose over the city's suburbs, it all went wrong.
The Health and Social Care Bill 2021 is currently in the House of Lords and will shortly be returning to the House of Commons where it is likely to receive a mixed reception with some believing that it will lead to further privatisation and others opposed to the 1.25% precept on National Insurance. In recent months the "cost of living" crisis has been added to that of health and social care. Rising food and energy prices will hit those on low incomes disproportionately as they are essential items. The recent two-part BBC programme "The decade the rich won" highlighted the ...
AS we start to come out of the pandemic, the appalling impact of Brexit is starting to hit home. The Guardian reports that official figures, marking the first full year since Brexit, have found that UK exports of goods to the EU have fallen by £20bn compared with the last period of stable trade with Europe. The paper says that numbers released on Friday by the Office for National Statistics showed that the combined impact of the pandemic and Britain's exit from the single market caused a 12% fall in exports between January and December last year compared with 2018: ...
There is a skincare range designed specifically for the older woman. Can you believe that? Finding skincare that works on the changing texture of an older woman's skin is a thing of the past. Violet Jordan offers a one stop shop from cleanser through to make up. The range is superb. I was extremely fortunate ... The post Skincare specifically for midlife women appeared first on A Midlifer in London .
Putin Vladimir Putin must be as happy as a five-year-old who has just inherited a sweet shop. Statesman after stateswomen are trekking to Moscow to implore him not to plunge Europe into war by invading Ukraine. If the Russian leader's intention was to put himself and Russia at the centre of the world stage then he has succeeded. At the top of this week's visitors' list was French President Emmanuel Macron who spent five hours talking geopolitics across a table the size of a football field. Macron was in Moscow with several hats: President of France, current President of the ...
