"I believe that the leadership is making a serious mistake. Our policy on rebuilding trade and cooperation in Europe can be popular - if only we let people know about it. There is no credible answer to the challenges Britain faces without it. And, even better, it distinguishes us very clearly from Labour, which is running scared of Brexit." Duncan Brack asks why Ed Davey never talks about Europe. Andy Boddington reports that Shropshire is to receive no 'levelling up' money to revitalise its bus services: "The operating costs of bus companies have increased significantly over the last year following ...
Apparently the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-Un, is suffering from a midlife crisis that is causing him to cry everyday while drinking and eating excessively. Quite why the newspaper has termed his condition as a 'midlife crisis' is quite beyond me because he is only 39. From my research, the midlife crisis is a ... The post You Do Not Want THIS Type Of A Midlife Crisis Experience appeared first on A Midlifer in London .
The latest edition of my weekly political polling round-up, The Week in Polls, is out. As it says: This week I return to my editorially self-destructive line about political polling: it's often much more boring than you may think or the headlines make it. But it's interesting that it's boring so keep reading, please. Find out more by reading this edition of The Week in Polls here, and you can sign up below to receive future editions direct to your email inbox:
It's possible, just possible, that British politics may return to a relative normality in 2023.
Looking for an account of the meeting against the Boer War that Arthur Quiller-Couch chaired at Liskeard in 1899, I came across this tribute to one of the speakers, Emily Hobhouse. It comes from the Western Morning News for Friday 11 June 1926, when she had just died at the age of 66. It's more about her male relatives than Emily, but it's a start as an introduction to someone I want to know much more about. (John Hall's book, whose cover I've used as an illustration here, looks the place to go for that.) A Cornish Humanitarian Opinions differ ...
I have passionately supported European integration since I first became aware of the European Economic Community around 1962. I am as die-hard a Remainer as you can find. Despite that, I consider calls within our Party asking our leaders to campaign for re-join to be naïve. To re-join something means basically to restore what existed before. If I fail to pay my subscription to the Chartered Institute of Taxation, I will be expelled. If I pay the missing subscription in a reasonable timescale, I can re-join and do not need to take any membership examinations; examinations that must be taken ...
Polling from Survation of councillors from different parties shows some striking difference between the parties.
Embed from Getty ImagesI love Pat Nevin. I loved him as a player at Chelsea and I love him as a broadcaster now. I think everybody loves Pat Nevin. The other night he was the summariser on a Chelsea game and named a change Graham Potter needed to make and why - bring on Aubameyang, even though he's not looked that interested lately, so Havertz could play a little deeper, which suits his game - just before Potter made it. And the change worked. That is the sort of analysis listeners crave and so rarely get. And then there was ...
I think that most of us had worked out that the appointment of Richard Sharp as the chair of the BBC was a political act, designed to bring the corporation to heel and to help the Conservatives, few of us knew that it was also a personal appointment in which an interesting relationship between Sharp and the then Prime Minister, Boris Johnson was not disclosed as it should have been. Today's Sunday Times has an exclusive in which they allege that the BBC chairman helped to arrange a guarantee on a loan of up to £800,000 for Boris Johnson weeks ...
Ukraine Ukraine is tank country. It is part of the flat and fertile North European plain which stretches from the Urals to the North Sea. That very same corridor has throughout history doubled as a military highway for invading armies head East or West. This geopolitical fact is why Russia started the Ukraine War with a massive arsenal of 10,000 tanks and Ukraine had 2,500. Since the fighting started nearly a year ago, the Russians have lost about 1,500 of their tanks. But relatively speaking to the initial size of their forces, the Ukrainians have fared worse with a loss ...
With its changes in pace, this Jam B-side (it's on the flip side of Strange Town) pays homage to Ray Davies in the shape of the Kinks' song Shangri-La. What's it about? Theories implicate Julie Burchill, a notorious groupie of the New Wave era and John Fowles's 1963 novel The Collector.* And All Music is sure it knows: If "Strange Town" took a cynical look at England's capital city, that single's flipside, "Butterfly Collector", was a bitter expose of the London club scene or, more accurately, one particularly egregious (if unnamed) club owner. Using and abusing bands to further her ...
With dark evenings and mornings, residents have been reporting faulty streetlights to Shropshire Council. Last Wednesday's cabinet was told 7.25% of the council's 20,000 streetlights currently have faults (around 1,450 lights). A faulty lamp should be repaired or replaced within five working days but the current delays mean it is taking 10 to 15 days to get the light back on. Some jobs are scheduled for work within 28 days, for example when the light standard has to be replaced or when an LED light is installed for the first time. These jobs are taking are taking up to 42 ...
