Good news from the BBC News Shropshire pages: A farm attraction which closed in 2021 is to reopen after gaining charitable status. Acton Scott Heritage Farm near Church Stretton had been operated by Shropshire Council for 47 years but the authority said it was losing £168,000 per year. The attraction, which appeared on the BBC's Victorian Farm series, was handed back to the Acton Scott Estate in April. Trustees said becoming registered as a charity paved the way for it to open later in 2024. I took the photo above when I visited Acton Scott back in 2010. It gives ...
The most famous account of a parliamentary by-election must be the one by Charles Dickens in The Pickwick Papers: the Eatanswill by-election. Dickens make the town of Eatanswill sound very like political Twitter: It appears, then, that the Eatanswill people, like the people of many other small towns, considered themselves of the utmost and most mighty importance, and that every man in Eatanswill, conscious of the weight that attached to his example, felt himself bound to unite, heart and soul, with one of the two great parties that divided the town - the Blues and the Buffs. Now the Blues ...
Welcome to my summary of the latest national voting intention poll from each pollster currently operating in Britain. If you'd like to find out more about how polls work, how reliable they are and how to make sense of them, check out my book, Polling UnPacked: the History, Uses and Abuses of Political Opinion Polls, or sign up for my weekly email, The Week in Polls: General election voting intention polls PollsterConLabLDGrnRUKCon leadFieldwork WeThink 23% (nc) 45% (-2) 9% (nc) 5% (-1) 11% (-1) -22% 1-2/2 Techne 23% (-1) 45% (+1) 10% (nc) 6% (-1) 10% (+1) -22% 31/1-1/2 Survation ...
At last some frank admissions by a Brexit-supporting Tory Minister about the downside of the UK leaving the EU. The Independent reports that conservative minister Andrea Leadsom has dismissed the concerns of business chiefs over the costly new checks imposed on imports from the EU as the "price you pay" for Brexit. The paper says that this leading Brexiteer defended the "friction" in the new system for physical checks at the border - describing it as "the costs of doing business": Ms Leadsom said British firms must "adapt" and could even consider "changing their trading arrangements with the EU" if ...
Christine Jardine was on Any Questions last night along with Ann Widdecombe (representing the Reform Party), Thangam Debonnaire and Sir Robert Buckland. She travelled to Bridgwater in Somerset. The first question was on whether we should have closer relations with the EU, following this week's news from Northern Ireland and the fourth anniversary of Brexit. Christine said that Northern Ireland is a very special case and we should welcome this week's agreement as a starting point. She pointed out that the people of Northern Ireland had been denied democracy for years because of this. Too cheers from the audience, she ...
As residents are aware, over many years, the former rail goods yard at Seabraes behind Roseangle has been fenced off due to decontamination works by contractors for site owners Scottish Enterprise (SE). It was pointed out to us that recently, although the hoardings along the path from Roseangle are still there, the east entrance (where Greenmarket roadway currently ends) was wide open and the public could walk into the site. We raised several questions with SE - below - along with SE's responses : Q : Is the access at the east end intentional? A : Access is not intentional ...
