Sunak Connect speech: "An arsonist offering to put out the fire" Welsh Lib Dems demand action in South Wales fire service scandal Sunak Connect speech: "An arsonist offering to put out the fire" Responding to Rishi Sunak's Connect speech in Lancashire this morning, where the Prime Minister urged voters to continue voting for his party, Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader Daisy Cooper MP said: Rishi Sunak is like an arsonist offering to put out a fire. This mess is the fault of Conservative Prime Ministers crashing the economy, hiking taxes and letting the NHS crumble. He is living on another planet. ...
Mark, We have halved inflation. Reduced our debt. And now, we are able to focus on the long-term decisions to strengthen our economy. We will CUT TAXES for 27 million working people, helping people keep more of their money. We are doing this by cutting the main rate of National Insurance Contributions (NICs) from 12% to 10%. For the average worker earning £35,000 a year, that means a £450 tax cut. That means we can now CUT TAX for 27 million people. Rewarding hard work. With the largest ever NI tax cut.Yes, I got my e-mail from the Conservatives - ...
Yer man travels to Croydon to find the remains of a railway station that closed in 1983 - you can support Jago's videos via his Patreon page. The page for Spencer Road Halt on the Disused Stations site gives its history: On 1July 1906 a new halt was opened between Coombe Lane and Selsdon in an attempt to attract more passengers to the Selsdon Line. Spencer Road Halt had two 100 foot timber platforms made our old sleepers but no buildings, just a wooden name board and a row of posts for holding oil lamps in winter. A lattice footbridge ...
Barney Ronay often appears the Private Eye's Pseuds Corner. That's because he writes intelligently and allusively about football, and nothing reveals the Eye's roots among public school boys of the 1950s more clearly than that column. For the Eye, being dismissive of football is still an important social marker - you prefer rugby, of course - and artistic or other esoteric interests are to be teased out of your classmates in case they affect their ability to run the Empire in later life. (As I once blogged, it took the public schools decades to notice the dwindling of the British ...
Elon Musk just keeps on giving people reasons to move away from X/Twitter. But of course one thing it still has in its favour is the number of people and communities that are still there. Which is why I've been winding down my X/Twitter use rather than – at this stage – going completely cold turkey. It's been farewell so far to a couple of my accounts there, @BarChartPodcast and @LibDemNewswire. The podcast itself though very much continues as do the more general Lib Dem updates. You can sign up to get them by email instead below, or I've started ...
Whilst the Commons returned today, the Lords has a little longer to recover from any Christmas/New Year excesses, resuming its work on Wednesday. There are three items of particular interest as far as the Liberal Democrat benches are concerned, all of which are scheduled for Thursday. Wednesday, however, sees Oral Questions on levels of mould in social housing, HMRC's processing of tax returns (a topical one, I'd suggest), NatWest branch closures and account terminations, and, most topically of all, potential Government proposals to reverse convictions of sub-postmasters linked to the failed Horizon software. The Automated Vehicles Bill reaches Day 1 ...
This post first appeared on the RADIX UK blog.
Whilst the House of Lords doesn't return to formal action until Wednesday, the work of its committees continues. And, between Christmas and the New Year, the Justice and Home Affairs Committee published its report "Cutting crime: better community sentences". With our prisons overcrowded to the extent that inmates are being sent home early, and with the Probation Service still recovering from a botched and wholly unnecessary reorganisation, the Committee's timely call for better use of community sentences, with their required punitive element, will hopefully receive a welcome from an incoming administration following the General Election later this year. Committee Chair, ...
This old bloke is who I see when I look in the mirror every morning. I may think I am 17 inside but I am clearly 71 outside! But like every old war horse when the trumpet sounds for a ... Continue reading →
In the last week I'm sure many of you will have watched the TV drama, read newspaper reports and heard radio phone-ins about the Post Office Horizon scandal. There's so much out there I won't repeat the basic fundamentals in this blog but I do hope to make a few original points which you should ... Continue reading Horizon – a 25-year scandal
Almost 4,000 cancer-related surgeries have been cancelled in the past year, an 8% rise on the previous year, shocking figures uncovered by the Liberal Democrats have revealed. The figures show that 3,947 cancer operations were cancelled in 2022/23, up from 3,662 the previous year. Of these, 304 were cancelled due to staff being unavailable or sick, 302 due to a lack of beds and 150 because of equipment issues. Over 13,000 cancer operations have been cancelled in the past four years, the research shows. The figures were uncovered through Freedom of Information requests with data provided by 56 of 137 ...
At last some good news, the Guardian reports on comments by Danny Kruger, a leading backbencher Tory MP and founder of the increasingly influential New Conservatives group, that the Conservatives face "obliteration" at the next election after leaving the country in a worse state than they inherited it in 2010. Kruger told an event last year that the Conservatives risked being ejected from power this year having left the country "sadder, less united and less conservative" than they found it: Speaking to a private event of Tory members organised by the thinktank ResPublica last October, Kruger said: "The narrative that ...
Dial-OP is a community project run by Dundee Volunteer and Voluntary Action which offers a lifeline to many lonely and isolated adults in Dundee. With the help of volunteers, Dial-OP provides information, connectivity and reassurance through our three service activities; Morning Call, Blether Buddies and the Information Line. Volunteers play a fundamental role in the delivery and success of the project and are supported by a small team of DVVA staff. Contact details : Number Ten 10 Constitution Road, Dundee, DD1 1LLPhone : 305757E-mail : dialop@dvva.scot The Morning Call service can provide a daily check in telephone call or text ...
