Readers of a certain age will remember Rinka. She was the dog shot to persuade her owner, Norman Scott, not to talk about his affair with the Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe. Now it's the US's turn to live through a political scandal about a shot dog. Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, was one of the favourites to be Donald Trump's running mate this November. But she appears to have ruined her chances of becoming Vice President by publishing a book. The Guardian takes up the story: "Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old," the South ...
The latest edition of my weekly political polling round-up, The Week in Polls, is out. As it says: Thankfully it's been a busy week for polling on the Mayor contests coming up on Thursday. The paucity of polling until this week has been a shame both because of the importance of the contests in their own rights and also because we have quite a few new pollsters on the scene. Seeing how those who have put their reputations on the line with Mayor polls compare with reality and with more established pollsters is going to be of particular interest. Find ...
The Green Party have changed their candidate in Crawcrook and Greenside in Gateshead. Ordinarily, that is not a significant issue....except Crawcrook and Greenside is their target seat in Gateshead....or so it was. The change of candidate hampers the ability to win, for any party in a ward that is of interest to them. I hear from people on the ground that there is less activity from the Greens in
Private Eye reminds us of the genesis of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal: Conceived in 1996 as one of the first private finance initiative contracts, between the Post Office and the Benefits Agency on the one hand and computer company ICL on the other, the Horizon IT system had an unpromising start. It had been set up to create a swipe card system for payment of pensions and benefits from Post Office branch counters. When, in May 1999, the plug was finally pulled on what the Commons public accounts committee called 'one of the biggest IT failures in the ...
A big hit at the time, the story of a journalist investigating the story of a woman who insists her son was wrongly jailed for the murder of a policeman, has aged remarkably well, helped by that basic plot still being sadly contemporary.
Sun 28th
13:00
Liberal Democrats must push for recommendations of Fulford Report to be properly implemented
The report of Judge Coroner Sir Adrian Fulford was the conclusion of a long process that started well before the horrifying attack in Forbury Gardens in that warm summer after lockdown in 2020. The attack rocked Reading and the communities around it hard; the report of the Judge Coroner should rock the country. The process it concludes and summarises is a litany of failure after failure, from the clunking fist of state agencies such as the rotten Home Office right down to local, entirely understandable human failures on the ground which didn't have good processes around them to stop them ...
Scottish Lib Dem Leader Alex Cole-Hamilton has declined to help Scotland's beleaguered First Minister Humza Yousaf. We need to remember that Yousaf's predicament is entirely of his own making. He would not be facing a confidence vote this week had he not unceremoniously handed the Greens their jotters and booted them out of the Government on Thursday this morning, just two days after saying they were worth their weight in gold. Alex understandably responded to Yousaf's invitation to talks by asking him how on earth he could expect anyone to trust a word he said, given the way he had ...
Judy Dyble was the original female singer with Fairport Convention, but was ousted when the band met Sandy Denny. Jackie McAuley was the keyboard player with Them and played on their most famous records - Baby, Please Don't Go, Gloria and Here Comes the Night - alongside Van Morrison. In 1970 the two got together as Trader Horne and recorded a single album, Morning Way, which Wikipedia claims "has reached legendary status and it is considered one of the lost gems of the 1960s", though someone has added 'by whom?' and 'citation needed' afterwards. Here Comes the Rain is not ...
I was in Ryton again yesterday, campaigning for Steve Kelly. I was delighted we were joined by Ione Rippeth who retired as Councillor for Ryton in 2012. She is still remembered fondly by local residents after 12 years. This ward will be one of the ones to watch in the early hours of Friday morning.
United States of America Here's the problem facing the US Supreme Court: Should US presidents – in and out of office – have total or partial immunity from criminal prosecution for acts they committed while in the Oval Office? Or does the failure to provide this blanket immunity expose past presidents to political vendettas by their successors or other political opponents? Or would Donald Trump's appeal for blanket immunity – in the words of Justice Elena Kagan – "turn the Oval Office into a sea of criminality." This week the Justices heard oral arguments from lawyers representing Trump on one ...
We recently received complaints about the deteriorated state of the road surface - including potholes - in Hillside Road in the section from Glamis Drive to junction with Hillside Terrace - see photo. We raised this with the Roads Maintenance Partnership and received the following helpful feedback : "(The roads inspector) has raised an order for repairs to be done, timescale approximately thirty days and also for a patch longer term when resources are available."
