One of my favourite stretches of canal is the five miles from Cromford to Ambergate in Derbyshire's Derwent Valley. I first came across it in 1977, which was when our English teacher had wangled the funds to take his A level set on a field trip to D.H. Lawrence country and we camped beside the river at Ambergate. At that time those five miles of canal were in navigable condition and the Cromford Canal Society ran popular horse-drawn trips along them. But round about 1990 the society broke up in the midst of a scandal whose details I cannot remember ...
As Will Jennings has spotted, since 2021 we've entered a new period of Labour being consistently rated better than the Conservatives on immigration.
The most deprived 20 per cent of local authorities are getting a smaller share of local government and police funding than they need, while the least deprived 20 per cent are getting a larger share then they need. That's one of the conclusions of, a new report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. You can download the report from the IFS website. The Guardian story about it says: The government's levelling up plans for England are being hampered by a funding system that is 'not fit for purpose' and deprives the poorest areas of the financial support to match their ...
It's easy to think that the latest Trump indictment in Georgia is more of the same – 33 more charges to add to his existing 78 – and that people have grown numb to all of this. But the Georgia charges are significantly different in several ways. Trump won't be able to pardon his way out of any conviction (even the Georgia governor can't pardon someone convicted in these circumstances, along a board can do it after the detainee has spent at least five years in jail), he's charged with 18 other defendants, it's a sprawling case involving conspiracy and ...
The Guardian has an article asking "Can Sunak's rightwing war on 'woke', migrants and the environment save the Tories?" with contributions from a panel including our own President, Mark Pack: It is, after all, the Liberal Democrats - not the rightwing populists of Reform - who have taken four seats off the government with record-breaking swings in byelections this parliament. The message from voters to Lib-Dem canvassers in those contests was very consistent. It was about the NHS and the cost of living, about sewage and failing public services. It was about being fed up with the Conservatives, their lockdown ...
It seems a long time ago now, since Boris Johnson swept the red wall seats and won the 2019 general election with the promise to level up the poorer areas of the UK. Unfortunately, as many of us said at the time, the rhetoric would never be matched by action. The evidence for that is cited in this article in the Guardian, in which the Institute for Fiscal Studies finds that the government's levelling up plans for England are being hampered by a funding system that is "not fit for purpose" and deprives the poorest areas of the financial support ...
With the start of the new school year, our surgeries return this week. Fraser's weekly ward surgeries commence today and take place during school term time. They are as follows : Tuesdays at 5pm prompt - Blackness Library Tuesdays at 5.45pm prompt - Ancrum Road Primary School All residents welcome - no appointment necessary.
