"Inept Approach to Public Finances" - Welsh Lib Dems Respond to Welsh Gov Accounts Report Responding to a Senedd report on Welsh Government accounts, Welsh Liberal Democrat Leader Jane Dodds MS said: This report highlights an inept approach to Wales' public finances from the Labour Party which shows a failure to protect public services during the pandemic. £155 million is an extortionate amount for Wales to have missed out on. It is also clear that neither Labour nor the Conservatives can be trusted to tackle fraud and that Welsh Labour criticisms of the UK Government losses to fraud during the ...
Mon 27th
21:04
Follow Stephen Sondheim and Hal Prince as they prepare the first West End production on Sweeney Todd
I first posted this in 2010 after watching the film, where "Johnny Depp sounds like David Bowie and you fear little Toby may break into a tap dance at any moment". Meow. In those days this wonderful early edition of The South Bank Show was on YouTube in seven parts. Today you can enjoy the whole thing in a single video. We follow Stephen Sondheim and Hal Prince as they prepare the first West End production of Sweeney Todd, which stars Daniel Massey and Sheila Hancock. Am I getting nostalgic - I watched this when it was first broadcast in ...
Find out the answer to that... and speculate on what Tim Harford and Matt Forde would be like as MPs with the latest episode of Never Mind The Bar Charts. Feedback very welcome, and do share this podcast with others who you think may enjoy it. Show notes Public Preferences for Integrity and Accountability in Politics: the research report we discuss. Ipsos trust data. Alan Renwick on Twitter. Image by David Mark from Pixabay. Theme tune by Hugo Lee. New to listening to podcasts? Here are some tips on how to listen to podcasts. Check out some of this show's ...
This is a blog about accusations of lying, refusals to retract and thumping of tables in the council chamber. It is also about councillors misbehaving and about the complaints made against them. I have been concerned about behaviour at council meetings for some time, including the Southern Planning Committee. The behaviour of some of the Conservatives at the last full Shropshire Council on 2 March was a disgrace. It was an embarrassment to the council's reputation. I cannot believe this would be allowed in any other major council without excluding the member concerned. There were also twelve complaints from the ...
There was a constitutional amendment on the agenda for the recent York conference (item F15 on the agenda) that sought to amend the rules for ensuring gender diversity on the party's committees (clause 2.5 of the constitution). The part of the amendment that has attracted most attention was the removal of non-binary people from the text, but the other proposed change was much more concerning from a practical point of view as a returning officer. This was the removal of the words "self-identification" as the means of determining whether a candidate is a man or a woman. I've conducted internal ...
When Kate Forbes and Humza Yousaf entered the room at Murrayfield for the announcement of the SNP leadership election, Kate was smiling and looking like she had not a care in the world. Humza's face was in his boots and he looked like he had the weight o the world on his shoulders. I thought that Kate had won, but when the result came through, and Humza was proclaimed leader, you can maybe understand why he looked so miserable. His margin of victory was that cursed ration of 52.1% to 47.9% over Kate Forbes, and we all know from Brexit ...
Mon 27th
12:30
Met police found to be institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic - Now what?
The Baroness Casey Review into the Met Police makes for very grim reading for all Londoners. The contents outline some horrific attitudes and behaviours towards minorities, women and LGBTQ+ people across the city it polices as well as within its own ranks. Baroness Casey has simply held a mirror up to this organisation and stated very clearly this has to change. What makes reading the report even more depressing is that these same issues within the Met were identified back in 1999 in another independent review – the MacPherson report. This report only arose from years of campaigning by the ...
Mon 27th
11:30Most Leicester councillors deselected by Labour's NEC are from minority ethnic backgrounds
From the Leicester Mercury this morning: Nineteen sitting councillors have been told they cannot stand as a Labour candidate in the coming May election, after party heads decided to take the decision out of the hands of local members and placed the national executive committee (NEC) in charge. But both deselected councillors and their constituents are questioning the party's motivations after it was revealed that a majority of those deselected are from a minority background. Fifteen out of the 26 BAME Labour city councillors have been removed from their positions compared with just four of the 22 white Labour councillors. ...
The Welsh Liberal Democrats have called for the creation of a "Celtic Sea Powerhouse" to serve as a new economic region for Wales harnessing green technology on the first day of their spring conference. The policy comes on the back of the announcement of freeport status in Milford Haven and Port Talbot. The policy calls for the cutting of red tape in Wales to establish floating offshore wind farms which can currently take up to 10 years for floating offshore wind to be given planning permission. The Crown Estate Estimates the Celtic Sea has the economic potential to accommodate up ...
Sun, 14:48: RT @alexmassie: The last echo of an old, old psalm. On Kate Forbes, the Free Kirk, and the things that made Scotland, well, Scotland. http... Sun, 16:05: RT @A_Zedig_Diboine: since this thread is popular i decided i'd share the worst case of middle and micro management i've encountered in my... Sun, 19:22: Sunday reading https://t.co/DSdt1b6bfe Sun, 20:48: RT @FXMC1957: PHOTO OF THE DAY: Two Daleks trying to board a London bus (1963). https://t.co/jDO3zkHk4Q Mon, 09:37: If you think that only Americans can be trusted to run Worldcons, you could always try changing the rules so that nobody else ...
Those of us who have been in politics a long time will remember the huge fuss, especially from Labour spokespeople, when Secretary of State for Wales, John Redwood returned £100m of the Welsh Office's budget unspent to the Treasury in 1995 at a time when public services were under-pressure and the Welsh economy was under the cosh. Well it seems that the Welsh Labour Government have just repeated the trick, though in this case it wasn't intentional, just incompetence in not spending the money on time. Wales-on-line reports that the UK Government has taken back £155m allocated to Wales because ...
DUNDEE CITY COUNCIL - WEEKLY ROAD REPORT REPORT FOR THE WEST END WARD - WEEK COMMENCING MONDAY 27 MARCH 2023 Abbotsford Street (at Seymour Street) - temporary traffic lights from Monday 27 March for 4 days for telecommunications mast maintenance. Seafield Road (at No 28) - closed from Tuesday 28 March for 3 days for Neos duct repairs. Forthcoming Roadworks Perth Road (at Springfield) - temporary traffic lights from 9.00am on Monday 3 April to 6.00am on Tuesday 4 April for Scottish Water work. Abbotsford Place - temporary traffic lights Thursday 6 and Friday 7 April for Hyperoptics work. Abbotsford ...
