The actor Stephen Lewis, who died in 2015, was born on 17 December 1926.
Shropshire Council has been stalling on setting up a volunteer scheme to clear pavements of snow and ice for nearly a decade. Yet this week alone, there have been many reports of falls including broken bones in Ludlow alone. It's shocking and it is time to for the council act by introducing a volunteer snow warden scheme and clearing some particularly dangerous pavements and footpaths itself. I hate to say it's the tip of the iceberg given the weather conditions but the map that illustrates this article is based on 89 reports incidents of falls and dangerous pavements sent to ...
As a follow-up to my post on how to read the Lib Dem election results, here's a shorter post giving my own read on what happened. Before we get going, I'd like to get the elephant in the room out of the way: I was fairly well short of being elected, and I'd like to [...]
Here's the latest tally of seats changing hands in principal authority council by-elections held since the last May round of local elections.
Gone are the days when the Tories were the party of low tax. Nowadays, they just pretend to advocate lower taxation rates, while hiking them surreptiously. The Independent reports on research that has identified that Britons will be paying £150bn in extra National Insurance contributions and income tax over the next six years. The paper says that the decision by the prime minister and his chancellor Jeremy Hunt to freeze tax thresholds will cost the equivalent of £5,000 for every household in the UK. The Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that the combined impact of freezing income tax and NIC ...
There is a new descriptive term that is entering the political lexicon – Elected Autocrats. The European Parliament recently used the term to describe Hungary's Viktor Orban when it suspended EU payments to the country. It can also be applied to Vladimir Putin and Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. There are a few Asian and African leaders that also come under this heading and there are signs that it is creeping into Western democracies. An Elected Autocrat is an elected political leader who was most likely voted into office in free elections, and then used their power to consolidate their ...
Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
I was reflecting upon health and safety in the workplace when it occurred to me that the biblical parable of the Good Samaritan has something to say on the matter. To remind the reader, it is a story related by Jesus of a traveller who is robbed and beaten on the highway and left half-dead. Two of his own countrymen, one a priest, sees him but passes by on the other side of the road. It is a Samaritan, a person whose nationality would traditionally make him hostile to victim, who takes pity, attends to him, cleans his wounds, brings ...
Boney M. were huge: Boney M. are the only artists to appear twice in the top 11 best selling singles of all time in the UK, with Rivers of Babylon in seventh place and Mary's Boy Child/Oh My Lord at number 11. They are also one of six artists to sell a million copies with two singles in the same year. And that's from Wikipedia, so it must be true. I was pleased when Mary's Boy Child turned up in the charts because I once sang it at a primary schools' music festival. Plus "And man will live for evermore ...
Details of how you can help the Dundee United Community Trust with its excellent 'Festive Friends' support over Christmas :
