This week saw the first principal council by-elections for a month with 3 seats being contested - one each in England, Scotland and Wales. In Hillrise ward on the London Borough of Islington we finished a strong third with over 15% of the vote - increasing our share and jumping ahead of the Green Party compared to the previous election. Well done and thank you to our candidate Imogen Wall. Interestingly this very seat had been contested in a by-election just a few months ago in May. Labour held but with a huge fall in their vote. Islington LBC, Hillrise ...
Embed from Getty ImagesOn the opening day of the new Premiership football season, Calum Miller, the Liberal Democrat MP for Bicester and Woodstock, has called for some games to be shown on free-to-viws television channels. In a letter to Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary he says: "I am calling on you to have discussions with the Premier League to tear down the paywall and give football back to the country." The Lib Dem manifesto at the general election included a pledge that at least 10 Premier League games would be screened free of charge. According to the Mirror, an agreement ...
HFM News has the latest on the Market Harborough Skunk. She's called Dominika and belongs to Jayne McLaughlin from Braybrooke. The video in my post from this morning was taken in a garden near Ashley Way in Market Harborough. And in an interview with HFM News, Jayne says there are reports of spooked dogs in the woods by Stinford Leys. Her advice if you find Dominika in your garden is not (for obvious reasons) to try to pick her up, but to find a way to keep her contained there. And Jayne's phone number is at the end of the ...
Unsurprisingly given Elon Musk's recent antics, more and more Lib Dems are looking at giving Threads and/or Bluesky a try. One problem with starting off in a new place is finding people to follow, so here are a pair of threads where Lib Dems have been introducing themselves on each: Lib Dems on Bluesky, along with a list of Lib Dem MPs on Bluesky Lib Dems on Threads If you are interested in political polling, you may also find this Bluesky list useful. I suspect a reader or two will be thinking, 'but what about Mastodon?' From what I have ...
Three principal authority council by-elections this week, all Labour defences. First up, a by-election in Jeremy Corbyn's constituency, where the general election result was not mirrored as the pro-Corbyn independent did not take the seat off Labour, but the Lib Dems did move ahead of the Greens: Yesterday's Hillrise (Islington) council by-election result:LAB: 43.3% (-19.1)IND: 24.1% (+24.1)LDEM: 15.7% (+5.9)GRN: 14.4% (-6.9)IND: 2.4% (+2.4)Valid votes cast: 2,233Labour HOLD.https://buff.ly/3SNZ2rO — Britain Elects (@britainelects.bsky.social) 2024-08-16T11:55:44.884Z
The latest report from the IFS this week, 'Cheapflation and the rise of inflation inequality', found that in the years 2020 to 2022 inflation hit the poorest hardest. Their staples such as milk, butter and pasta rose more in price in supermarkets than did higher-priced foodstuffs. They paid 29.1% more for their groceries, compared with 23.5% for better-off households. The IFS calculated that if the poorest 25% of households had faced the same inflation rate for groceries as the richest 25%, their annual food bills would have been cut by £100. While food price inflation has reduced in the last ...
I still rely on Twitter and @solarpilchard for all my local news. (Read the this afternoon's update!) @RSPCA_official@ChrisGPackham here is a visiting skunk - no less - to our garden last night in Market Harborough. After some Facebook community sleuthing work today, someone missing a skunk that looks just like this has been in touch to try and entice it back tonight at dusk...! pic.twitter.com/CL9rqPpcwH — Alison H (@AlisonHooper) August 15, 2024
We recently received concerns about the safe crossing of Shepherd's Loan at its north end at the junction with Perth Road. As one resident put it : "The top of Shepherd's Loan is problematic. Pedestrians can step into the road just as the light for traffic turns green, as there is no pedestrian light or control at all and pedestrians can't see the Shepherd's Loan light so there is no way to know the light is changing. I've seen people step into the street just as cars are pulling off." We raised the issue with the road safety team leader ...
The Independent reports that Labour's education secretary has confirmed that the government does not plan to lift visa restrictions imposed on international students by the previous Conservative administration. They say that the restrictions, introduced in January, bar most overseas students from bringing family members to the UK: Bridget Phillipson was asked in an interview with Sky News whether the visa rules should be reversed. She responded: "We don't intend to change that." The cabinet minister praised the "tremendous contribution" international students make to the country, both economically and in local communities. She said: "In economic terms, into where it comes ...
