A 41st anniversary is a milestone for any comedy troupe. Here actors from The Comic Strip Presents - Peter Richardson, Nigel Wallace, Alexei Sayle, Gary Beadle and Julia T. Wallace - remember the good old days. I don't remember much about Gary Beadle, while Julia T. Wallace was to find fame in 1986 with The Life and Loves of a She Devil. One question remains: why wasn't Peter Richardson in The Young Ones rather than that other bloke no one can remember?
There were 4 principal council by-elections this week. Unusually there were 2 on Wednesday and then 2 on Thursday. But it was great to see Lib Dem candidates in most elections and some very positive results too. Beginning with Wednesday night - there were two elections on Haringey London Borough Council. Thank you to David Schmitz and David Vigoureax for standing in South Tottenham and White Hart Lane wards respectively and giving hundreds of Lib Dem supporters in the area a Lib Dem option on the ballot paper. Labour held both wards. But in both elections the result was tight ...
There seems to be this kind of unwritten consensus that the way to approach life is to get a good job, put in the hours, build a career and then continue to work hard until you retire. At that point, you can do all the things you wanted to do. Thankfully, a growing number of people are fighting back against this ridiculous way of thinking. And I'm one of them. This is not to say that work and career are not important. Because they are. We can all thrive through personal and professional growth. We all need the sense of ...
Last month Michael Meadowcroft wrote an obituary for Michael Steed in The Guardian, but it has only just appeared in the print edition where it occupies a whole page. It focusses on his pioneering work as a psephologist, working with David Butler and John Curtice on, amongst other things, some new approaches to measuring election swings, and as a Lecturer in Government at Manchester University. Amazingly he had been a member of the Liberals, followed by the Liberal Democrats, for 65 years. He was at various times a Parliamentary, European and Council candidate. I only got to know him a ...
Fri 6th
17:01
Mirror publishes list of 14 seats where Labour supporters can help defeat the Tories by voting Lib D...
From today's Mirror: The Compass campaign group has published details of 14 constituencies where the Lib Dems are best placed to topple the Conservatives - and urged Labour supporters to switch allegiance Tactical voting campaigners have revealed how Labour supporters switching their loyalty in 14 'unwinnable' seats could help oust the Tories. So the Mirror isn't yet backing such tactical voting, just putting the idea out there, you understand. The Mirror is remembered as having influenced Labour supporters to vote tactically in the 1997 general election, but its readership was higher then and there were fewer sources of information and ...
There is an increasing hole in our democracy, a place where election candidates and political parties are finding increasingly difficult to reach. I refer, of course, to gated communities and those many high-rise blocks where access is by code or fob. This is not assisted by owners and managers of these houses making it almost impossible to contact them to seek access. I have personally been escorted off the premises by officious caretakers who point blank refuse to give details of who manages the blocks. Now whether this only applies to political parties with whom they disagree, I have no ...
Britain's participation in the European Convention on Human Rights has long been a great example of how changing the wording of a polling question can change the answers you get.
At our Spring Conference in York we passed a policy which stated, we would 'end deep poverty within the decade'. This commitment has made it into the pre-manifesto passed at Bournemouth along with establishing 'an independent commission to recommend annual increases in Universal Credit to achieve it'. Also at York we passed that we would fundamentally reform the welfare system 'by introducing a Guaranteed Basic Income by increasing Universal Credit to the level required to end deep poverty within the decade and removing sanctions'. Ending deep poverty in the UK means ensuring that no-one has an income below the deep ...
This fishy story wins Plymouth Live our Headline of the Day Award. Well done, everybody.
I attended the fringe meeting titled "Is International Liberalism dying? Persuading the world that the future is liberal" in the Autumn conference. One panel member expressed a sentence like this: "The reason the Global South countries are not cooperative with the West is so-called Liberal Imperialism." Coming from one of Global South countries - China – 19 years ago, I knew different answers, which could be the more realistic ones, yet have rarely been noticed by the West. Thanks to Rachel Smith's encouragement, I raised my hand up for the first time in this conference, and got the attention of ...
The Guardian reports that dozens of cross-party MPs and peers have joined a campaign for an "immediate stop" to the use of live facial recognition surveillance by police and private companies. The paper says that the former cabinet minister David Davis, the Liberal Democrats leader, Sir Ed Davey, the Green MP Caroline Lucas and the former shadow attorney general Shami Chakrabarti are among 65 members of the House of Commons and House of Lords to call for a halt to the technology's use: The campaign is spearheaded by the privacy advocate Big Brother Watch and is also backed by 31 ...
There has been a lot of excitement surrounding yesterday's by-election in Rutherglen and Hamilton West. In the run-up to election day, various media outlets were suggesting that a Labour victory would be "seismic". After the result was declared, Anas Sarwar called the outcome "seismic", while Keir Starmer reflected that the result was "seismic". The absence of other superlatives underlines an obvious lack of imagination, but is all the excitement justified? No... and yes. A Labour win in Rutherglen and Hamilton West is hardly a "seismic" result for Scottish politics. This is a constituency that has only been held by the ...
After Wednesday's two by-elections, Thursday brought a Parliamentary by-election and two further principal authority council contests. The results include a really impressive move up into second place in Lambeth, in the ward containing MI6's HQ: Vauxhall (Lambeth) Council By-Election Result: [IMG: 🌹] LAB: 42.0% (-11.1) [IMG: 🔶] LDM: 27.9% (+16.8) [IMG: 🌍] GRN: 18.1% (-2.1) [IMG: 🌳] CON: 11.3% (-4.3) [IMG: 🚩] SOC: 0.6% (New) Labour HOLD. Changes w/ 2022. — Election Maps UK (@ElectionMapsUK) October 5, 2023
Following on from the last West End Community Council meeting to discuss possible future community uses of Riverside Pavilion for the local community, the community council has arranged an open day at pavilion to allow local residents and community groups to look around the building. The City Council has agreed to open Riverside Pavilion tomorrow - Saturday 7th October - between 1pm and 3pm and all are most welcome to attend.
Embed from Getty ImagesAn issue of Fortean Times generally provides something of interest for this blog. And the November one has hit the jackpot in the shape of another person who may have found the Bonkers Hall Estate. That is not an easy thing to do. I once wrote that: Growing up in Market Harborough, it was hard to ignore Lord Bonkers. If you climbed any of the hills that ringed the town then the slender spire of St Asquith's, the gaunt pinnacles of the Home for Well-Behaved Orphans and, most impressive of all, the towers, domes and follies of ...
