Is it déjà vu? Or are there six principal council by-elections again? What's different this week is a majority of seats sees holds in lieu of changing hands. The Tories defended their two seats, while the Lib Dems and the independents held on to their own. It was, unsurprisingly, another bad night for the governing party in Westminster, as Labour saw a collapse in vote share across the board, barely holding on to one seat and losing the other to Reform. Starting with the good news, it was a run-away win for Cllr Andy Waters in the Dodworth ward in ...
The 3083-yard Butterley tunnel is the great obstacle to the full restoration on the Cromford Canal. It was condemned as beyond economic repair as long ago as 1909. In this great video, Trekking Exploration - subscribe to his YouTube account at once - begins at Codnor Reservoir, the first of three that supplied water to the summit level of the Cromford Canal. He then visits the Eastern portal of Butterley Tunnel before following the length of it above ground to the Western portal. He ends at Hartshay Wharf near Ripley. If you want to see what conditions are like beneath ...
The University of York student newspaper York Vision has an interview with the city's famous son Vince Cable. Asked for his reaction to Rachel Reeves's budget, Vince says: "It was necessary to have a substantial increase in taxation because public services are in a very poor state. I think people have to get used to the idea that if they want good public services, they have to pay for them. That means taxation. So, yes, I agree with that. "I think the big negative thing, which is not about the budget itself, but the preparations. I think the Labour Party ...
He has rashly pledged that he will do a sky dive if his Christmas single with the Bath Philharmonia Young Carers' Choir gets at least 10,000 downloads next week. "Love is Enough" can be downloaded here. You all know what to do... * Mary Reid is a contributing editor on Lib Dem Voice. She was a councillor in Kingston upon Thames, where she is still very active with the local party, and is the Hon President of Kingston Lib Dems.
Although they cannot be condoned, public executions of former Syrian secret police in Damascus, Latakia and elsewhere in Syria, following the new HTS-led government, are not exactly unexpected. When Hafez Assad came to power with the support of the Soviet Union in the 1960s, Moscow helped the new regime set up the brutal, hated Mukhabarat secret police. The Mukhabarat , led mostly by Alawites, were known not only for mass torture and 'disappearances' to keep Hafez Assad in power, they also had their tentacles all over the Syrian military and economy, deploying widespread 'confiscations'. His son Bashar Assad, reportedly considered ...
On 7 June 2015, an EU member state held a referendum on a political change, one that its proponents said would send a message to the world about how enlightened the country was, but its opponents said would erode the country's national identity. When the result was declared, it was an emphatic 'no', with just over 70 per cent voting the proposal down, in an 87 per cent turnout, with those who would have most benefited from the change feeling undervalued or rejected. No, as you will have gathered, it wasn't 'that' referendum held in June the following year, but ...
There must have been a time when arguing that Die Hard is a Christmas film, or that The Muppet Christmas Carol is the best filmed version of the book, was novel and interesting. That time ended some years ago. But there is one character in John Masefield's The Box of Delights, a book that, like A Christmas Carol, encompasses the Christmas and pagan sides of the festival, who would certainly agree about Die Hard. She is Maria Jones, who complains: "Christmas ought to be brought up to date. It ought to have gangsters and aeroplanes, and a lot of automatic ...
Led by wife and husband team Karen and Don Peris, The Innocence Mission could be compared to 10,000 Maniacs, having some kind of alternative folk style. Only they weren't as well known and had only one sort of hit, Bright as Yellow. With the exception of a couple of songs, I never liked 10,000 Maniacs as much as I expected, finding the lyrics a overly worthy and earnest and the tunes not particularly memorable. The Innocence Mission, whose work I somehow stumbled upon a few years ago, seemed at once more musically creative and lyrically enigmatic. It's also typical of ...
I have long given up any pretence of keeping up with which music artists are popular, in the charts (if that's still a thing) or even appearing on Jools Holland. For a time after I had passed the age for following these things I still subconsciously the information by hearing what my stepchildren were listening to and even trading recommendations with them. Even after they left home I still read the music press, for example the late lamented Word magazine, which catered for older people who took popular music seriously. But I haven't found a good substitute for that publication. ...
Six principal authority council by-elections this week. Five of those had Liberal Democrat candidates, one up on the last time these seats were up. Dodworth (Barnsley) Council By-Election Result: [IMG: 🔶] LDM: 49.7% (-1.7) [IMG: ➡] RFM: 24.3% (New) [IMG: 🌹] LAB: 16.1% (-18.5) [IMG: 🌳] CON: 7.1% (-6.9) [IMG: 🌍] GRN: 2.8% (New)Liberal Democrat HOLD.Changes w/ 2024. — Election Maps UK (@electionmaps.uk) 2024-12-12T23:52:13.648Z
We recently received complaints about the state of the Harris Academy pool changing rooms. The staining looked unhygienic and we raised this with Tayside Contracts (which is responsible for the cleaning of the facility) querying if this was a cleaning issue or some form of further repair intervention is required to remove this. We had a very prompt response from the Managing Director of Tayside Contracts as follows : "Our cleaning team have reported that the power washer was faulty. This has now been rectified and we do not anticipate that this problem will recur."
The BBC reports that the Welsh First Minister, Eluned Morgan is confident that Wales will not see local authorities going bust, after the Labour leader of Flintshire council warned the threat of bankruptcy had not gone away. They say that an average 4.3% funding increase for councils that was announced on Wednesday, a £253m increase for the next financial year, is less than half the budget shortfall councils are facing. Speaking to BBC Radio Wales Breakfast, Morgan said she recognised the "massive pressure" facing local authorities, but that money was being made available for the first time "in a very ...
