Lib Dems call for vote on Winter Fuel Allowance cut this week to avoid 'damaging public trust' DIY A&E: Scots treat their wounds and make slings over fear of hospital waits Sharp rise in 999 callers making their own way to hospital Cole-Hamilton responds to Swinney conference speech Lib Dems call for vote on Winter Fuel Allowance cut this week to avoid 'damaging public trust' Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader Daisy Cooper has written to Rt Hon Lucy Powell MP, the Leader of the House of Commons, demanding that MPs be given a vote this week on the government's proposed cuts ...
Embed from Getty ImagesTalking Pictures TV is showing the 1960 British film The Siege of Sidney Street at 22:05 this evening. Thrill to Peter Wyngarde as Peter the Painter. The siege. a real event from 1911, is famous because the Liberal home secretary Winston Churchill called out the Army to deal with two Latvian revolutionary anarchists and had himself photographed at the scene, apparently directing operations. This gives me an excuse to repeat this extract from Lucy Masterman's biography of her husband Charles, who at the time was Churchill's deputy: The "Sidney Street incident" had taken place while we were ...
I have been to one of the best 17 pubs in Britain. Remembering a post from July about Grace Goodlad and Duncan Borrowman's pub in Oswestry, the day after showing the philosophers around Malcolm Saville Country I broke all my rules and customs and headed for the north of Shropshire. The Bailey Head occupies a great position in the centre of town, and the orange umbrellas outside display a Liberal Democrat's knowledge of which colour stands out best from a distance. I found Grace and Duncan behind the bar. We talked Shropshire politics, I sampled their beers and the regulars ...
The latest edition of my weekly political polling round-up, The Week in Polls, is out. As it says: Last week Conservative peer Robert Hayward held an event in Parliament about how the polls did at the general election. The tone of Robert's comments, and those of the two pollsters taking part (Martin Boon and Will Jennings), were rather more negative about how the voting intention polls did than my own post-election write-up, though I was more critical of how some MRPs performed. But once you scratch under the surface, I'm not sure that our views are that much different. More ...
Yes, I watch and sometimes do participate: I have a presence in the monstrous carnival, sharing pencil torchlight with the earnest and the playful – and lithe vixens who flaunt their sculpted eyeliner as if it was by Klimt (or Pokemon) ~ Self-styled creators who crave value by the gram: curating perfect versions in reflection through lens and code, through signal stripped from noise, our fetish marked by idle likes on graven images that we exalt – but which debase us in our own esteem
[IMG: Mark Pack speaking at Islington Liberal Democrats AGM 2018] The days are getting shorter, the football has started up again and the first few "x days to Christmas" signs have already been in the shops for distressingly long. Yes, Liberal Democrat local party AGM season is fast approaching. To help Liberal Democrat local parties get the most out of their AGMs, here is a reminder of a simple factsheet giving 10 tips for them. Follow them and you'll turn an AGM from a boring, business meeting that no-one really likes coming to into an interesting and successful event. That ...
Every band needs a lost genius, and with the Move it's Ace Kefford. He played bass on their first hits of the Sixties, but left the band in mid 1968 because of the stresses of touring. After leaving the Move, he worked on a solo album with the producer Tony Visconti, but it never appeared. In 2003 the tracks he had recorded for it appeared on a CD, Ace the Face, that promised "the lost album and more". The more was some tracks by the Ace Kefford Stand, the band he formed in 1968, and Daughter of the Sun is ...
The Connecting Carers Café for carers in the West End restarts at Blackness Library on Monday 2nd September - 10.30am - 12.30pm. The café meets every second week after that but runs a drop-in between if you need support or a chat. For more info, please call Virginia of Dundee Carers Centre on 07515 067075.
The Guardian reports on fears by the sector bosses that Labour has discarded its social care commitments and seems set to repeat the failure of previous governments to tackle the care crisis. The paper says that announcements by Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, that she would not cap costs for older people's care and Stephen Kinnock, the care minister, that he would scrap a fund giving training for 37,000 care workers, have alarmed the social care sector. Writing in the Observer, the chief executives of Care England (CE), the Homecare Association (HA) and the National Care Forum (NCF) say ministers have ...
