So I went to Halford. This was an agricultural village centuries before there was even an inn at Craven Arms. So much so that the church, St Thomas's, which was almost entirely rebuilt in the 19th century, has a Norman doorway. But I did not spot this and was not lucky enough to photograph it by chance, so I can pretend I did. What I did appreciate was the World War I memorial lychgate, which records all the men from the village who gave their lives. It includes one who died from wounds in 1920 - a reminder that the ...
Wed 14th
20:23
Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust given 20 hectare site near Market Harborough as a memorial
A 20 hectare site near Market Harborough has been donated to the Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust in memory of James Adler, the chief executive of Ashdown Forest, who died at the age of 42. The trust's YouTube channel says it: plans to transform the site into a truly special reserve bursting with wildlife and rich in biodiversity, positioning it firmly within the hearts of the local community while increasing the area of land protected for nature within Leicestershire and Rutland. The land has been generously gifted by Michael Adler as a beautiful legacy to his son, James Adler, the ...
The life of the country writer can be riven with contradictions. This blog's hero Richard Jefferies, for instance, spent a significant period of his childhood in South London, and seems to have been happier there than he was with his family back in Wiltshire. This makes me wonder if the endless adventures and exploration we see in his Bevis: The Story of a Boy are as autobiographical as is usually assumed. And Coate Water outside Swindon, beside and upon which these adventures were set, was an artificial reservoir built to supply the Wilts & Berks Canal. As an adult writer, ...
Our final stop, for now, on the Maiden Speech Tour takes us to South Cambridgeshire. Pippa Heylings MP made her debut on 26 July. The text is below: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and congratulations on your new role. I also congratulate the hon. Member for East Thanet (Ms Billington), with whom I worked before we both came to this Chamber, through UK100 and elsewhere, on local climate action, which I will speak much about today. I also congratulate the Minister and the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero. It means a great deal to me to ...
I am pleased to be associated with CCLA, I chair the LA bit of it. This meaning local authority. Although it is a relatively small fund its moral purpose leads it to take on the corporate big and bad boys ... Continue reading →
What should be our overall party line on taxation and public spending? We have a new government that came into office promising not to raise any of the major revenue-raising taxes. It claims that it has now discovered far larger holes in public spending plans than it had expected. The reality is that the Conservatives and their media allies managed to focus attention in the run-up to the election entirely on the level of taxation, without addressing what that implied for public services and long-term investment. So Labour are now stuck. They knew well before the election (as the Institute ...
It's beyond infuriating. We've waited 14 long years for a so-called centre-left Chancellor, only to find ourselves on the brink of more belt-tightening when we desperately need bold, transformative action. After the havoc of a global pandemic, a bruising cost of living crisis, and a recession that destroyed the livelihoods of millions, Rachel Reeves is already sounding the alarm for further austerity. Instead of rallying for the public investment we so desperately need, she's searching for corners to cut and taxes to squeeze from the working and middle classes. But let's be clear: the money to fund our public services ...
Our maiden speech tour today, like yesterday, starts in Sussex in the constituency of Lewes represented by James MacCleary. The text is below: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I thank the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Douglas McAllister) for his excellent speech. He is clearly very knowledgeable about his area and I think he will be a hugely positive addition to this House. It is a huge privilege for me to represent the Lewes constituency. It is my home and it is where I am raising, with my partner, our young family. I want to start there, with my ...
Michael is pictured at the lift to the Seabraes bridge. We recently received concerns about lift breakdowns - the first such concerns in rather a long time. We raised this with the City Council and received the following feedback from the Principal Engineer (Design & Property Services) : "See below a response from DCC maintenance team with regards to the lift. We have recently been made aware of a couple of breakdowns with this lift. Unfortunately, due to the lift's external and remote location it susceptible to misuse, dirt collecting in the door tracks, corrosion etc, which have been contributing ...
The Guardian reports that Labour MPs have begun quitting X in alarm over the platform, with one saying Elon Musk had turned it into "a megaphone for foreign adversaries and far-right fringe groups". The paper says that over the weekend, newly elected MPs took to WhatsApp groups to raise growing concerns about the role X played in the spread of misinformation amid the far-right-led riots in parts of England and Northern Ireland: Two Labour MPs are known to have told colleagues they were leaving the platform. One of them, Noah Law, has disabled his account. Other MPs who still use ...
