The latest eFocus from the Low Fell Lib Dem team was published today. Issues covered include:Lib Dems demand budget action to save leisure facilities;Council budget plans target the environment;Tech for beginners;Low Fell Community Pre-School;Dental scans;Lights left on at Dryden Centre.You can read eFocus on this link.
Neal Lawson believes there's no point Labour winning the next election unless it acts to dismantle our toxic electoral system. "Truss was the product, not the source, of her party's problems. She embodied a Conservatism that embraced creative destruction, that was dismissive of caution and contemptuous of institutions, that prized ideology over experience and regarded opposing voices as heresies to be burned out; a Conservatism that had ceded power to irresponsible think-tanks, contrarian newspaper columnists and a dwindling party membership that nobody has elected." Robert Saunders shows that the forces that gave it Liz Truss still dominate the Conservative Party. ...
A nice spot of alliteration wins the Guardian our Headline of the Day Award. "Really, Mr Calder," remarked one of the judges, "this is like something from the work of J.G. Bollard." "Your Honour is most amusing," I replied.
Yesterday our Prime Minsiter, Rishi Sunak anounced five priorities for the remainder of his premiership. For some strange reason the pre-announcement for the speech (now called a "teaser" I believe,) didn't mention any of the five priorities, but concentrated on his apparent determination for all students to study mathematics up to the age of 18. The reason why his PR departement decided on this tactic excapes me. However, since almost everyone has had an education of sorts, everyone thinks they are experts on it and most hold strong opinions, so it could be a useful distraction. Most people, in their ...
Yesterday brought the bizarre news that senior NHS staff have been advised by the Welsh government to discharge people from hospital who are well enough to leave, even without a package of care being in place. This drastic advice comes in the light of news that one in nine beds are effectively blocked because patients who are in recovery do not have adequate arrangements in place to look after them if they went home. According to the BBC, the seven health boards in Wales have nearly 1,800 patients medically well enough to leave hospital, the Welsh government has called the ...
Extremists can hold main stream parties to ransom in a binary, first past the post system that we have in the USA and UK. That's why the likes of Boebert are currently dominating Congress. Regular readers of this blog might ... Continue reading →
Wed, 12:56: Exclusive: how Covid-19 shook Britain's children - in their words https://t.co/UG8aGLrjNz Heartbreaking stuff. Wed, 21:23: August 2019 books https://t.co/DsJnIiQVLe Thu, 12:00: RT @bbcdoctorwho: Yasmin Khan: Sheffield police officer turned time traveller, and the Thirteenth Doctor's most devoted companion 💙💙 A ver...
Over on UnHerd, historian Robert Saunders makes a good point about Liz Truss: The danger for the Conservative Party is that it turns to one of two comforting myths to explain the Truss debacle. One loads the blame entirely onto Truss, insisting that "the notes were right. It's just that they were in the wrong order". The same think-tanks who had hailed Truss's rise to power now likened her to a "hubristic, or crazy, or incompetent" chef, who had bungled their "perfect and delicious" "recipe". A second myth blames a "Remainer coup", driven by the "anti-growth coalition" and "the Remainer ...
On 4th January, Rishi Sunak announced plans to enforce the study of mathematics until students turned 18. This would be a major departure from current education policy of free subject choice for post-16 students in England. This was immediately met with criticism from a range of groups, from education professionals who argue that the teacher shortage of maths professionals is just too great to cope with the additional demand, to people who had a bad experience in school with maths. The former problem is one I have substantial sympathy for, the latter is not a credible argument. If we go ...
You probably missed the Conservative Way Forward paper published on December 10th which argued that cutting the money allocated to equality, diversity and inclusivity staff and training in the public sector could save enough 'wasteful' spending to allow for tax cuts. You're more likely to have noticed when the Daily Mail splashed the story across its front page the following week. You may also have seen this week's coverage of the Taxpayers Alliance report that prisons have spent £11m over the past two years on equality, diversity and inclusivity staff and training, presented as another 'gross' waste of government spending. ...
As the school Christmas holidays continue, Michael's weekly ward surgeries at Harris Academy and the West End campus (St Joseph's RC and Victoria Park Primary Schools) do not take place today. Please call us on Dundee 459378 if you have any local issues or problems we can assist with. Our surgeries return next week - Fraser's on Tuesday 10th January; Michael's on Thursday 12th January.
Embed from Getty ImagesRichard Tice announced yesterday that his Reform party would put up a candidate in every constituency at the nest general election. There will, he said, be no deals with the Conservatives, even where a sitting Tory MP holds similar views to Reform. From which we can conclude that Tice thinks the Tories will lose that election, with or without intervention from Reform. So his best bet of being relevant afterwards is if disappointed Tory members decide they lost because of Reform and then demand that their party moves further to the right to attract Reform voters. But ...
