Time for another post about Barbara Cartland, the liberal Conservative and social reformer. Four years ago the BBC screened a documentary by Damian Le Bas about the experience of Romany Gypsies in its series A Very British History. (There's a page for the programme on iPlayer, but you can't view it at present.) The Welwyn Hatfield Times published an article about it at the time, and Dame Barbara featured prominently:Going into the 1960s, the travelling way of life was still there but by the end more and more gypsies were becoming 'settled'. Large numbers were forced to abandon their nomadic ...
Budget setting in Scotland's Councils is challenging to say the least at the moment. The cumulative effect of a decade and a half of SNP Government underfunding makes for some very tough decision making. There was unexpected drama in Edinburgh's historic City Chambers this afternoon as the Labour administration's Council budget was defeated and that of the Lib Dem group passed instead. Labour's budget was defeated due to tactical voting by the 10 Green Councillors, who split their votes amongst the opposition parties. In addition, a suspended Labour Councillor resigned from the group during the meeting, bringing their number of ...
There has been no news of the actor Julian Sands since he disappeared last month while walking in the San Gabriel Mountains in California. It seems we have to fear the worst. Late last year, the Guardian published a piece on the making of The Box of Delights. In it the director of the series, Renny Rye, recalled: Julian Sands also loved the story and wanted to be involved, even though he'd just finished The Killing Fields and I'd already cast most of the parts. He just has one line as a Greek soldier. Devin Stanfield, who played Kay Harker, ...
Caron Lindsay reports on Lib Dem Voice: Ed Davey heads out on the road today. He's doing a 25 stop tour of Blue Wall seats ahead of the local elections and starts in the Lib Dem stronghold of Three Rivers. The Council has been in Lib Dem hands for decades, but the parliamentary seats have so far eluded us. His tour will take in Dominic Raab's constituency of Esher and Walton, John Redwood's seat in Wokingham, and other ultra marginal Blue Wall seats from Cheltenham to Cheadle.
Evidence that the Tories are continuing to operate the hostile environment against asylum seekers is highlighted by this article in today's Guardian, which reports on plans to cut the backlog by sending questionnaires to refugees that will demand that claimants reply in English within 20 working days or risk refusal. The paper says that the Home Office will begin sending out copies of the 11-page document today, to about 12,000 people from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Libya, Syria and Yemen as part of Rishi Sunak's plans to cut the "legacy backlog" of 92,000 asylum claims. They say that the move is meant ...
One of the important bits of our internal party democracy is that each of the Federal Committees needs to submit a report to Conference, which is subject to a vote. The chair of the Committee also takes questions at Conference. These accountability sessions are often boring, but can, occasionally, make important changes. Back in 2021, a member used the report session on the Federal Board to submit a request for a separate vote which ended the Steering Group project. This had been introduced as a way of streamlining the decision-making process which many people, myself included, saw as reducing accountability. ...
There was another hat-trick of Lib Dems at PMQs yesterday, and this time they tag-teamed to show the Conservatives up for failing to keep key health pledges in their manifesto. Watch here, with the text exchange after the video. First up, Ed Davey on the missing 40 hospitals. The NHS is in crisis after years of this Conservative government running it into the ground and there is still no sign of progress on the long promised 40 new hospitals. And Conservative MPs just jeer from the sidelines. It is an insult to millions suffering across the country. pic.twitter.com/uhiJnMH0Yp — Liberal ...
Ed Davey heads out on the road today. He's doing a 25 stop tour of Blue Wall seats ahead of the local elections and starts in the Lib Dem stronghold of Three Rivers. The Council has been in Lib Dem hands for decades, but the parliamentary seats have so far eluded us. His tour will take in Dominic Raab's constituency of Esher and Walton, John Redwood's seat in Wokingham, and other ultra marginal Blue Wall seats from Cheltenham to Cheadle. Today in Three Rivers, Ed will highlight shocking figures showing just 2% of local burglaries result in a suspect being ...
