It's not much to look at, but this notice from the Birmingham Mail for 23 October 1963 sets a new record for the earliest press mention of Steve Winwood I can find. The previous record was 3 December 1963, and because new titles are being added to the British Newspaper Archive all the time, it's possible that this one will be broken too. Here again, though he was only 15, Steve Winwood shares top billing with Spencer Davis. The band has not yet become the Spencer Davis Group. This notice is on page 2 of the newspaper. Stories on page ...
The ghost of the 1960s has come back to haunt Gateshead residents and Gateshead Council. On Friday last week, the Council took the emergency decision to close the A167 flyover in central Gateshead following a structural inspection. Public safety comes first and so, in avoiding crumbling concrete dropping onto people and vehicles, this major arterial road has closed until further notice.The
This is one that an algorithm suggested, possibly influenced by my recent listening choices of obscure 1970s and 80s artists. I was surprised I had never heard of this, because back in 1981 when it reached Number 21, I did follow the charts and watch Top of the Pops etc. Not having heard the song before nor even heard of the artists I looked them up to read the sad story that Fassbender committed suicide in 1991. It seems that although this song made the charts and led to television appearances, the next two singles failed to repeat this success, ...
"The lesson of the 1974 reorganisation is not that it put in place a robust system of local government which would survive for 50 or 70 years like the previous arrangements, but that it heralded a near-permanent revolution of structures and types of leadership."Tony Travers on the perils of reorganising local government. Freethinking Economist asks why Labour expects to improve Britain's record on economic growth when its policies are so similar to those that have been tried in the past. "In the years AD ('after Dennett'), the story continues and - in large part because of Dennett - philosophy of ...
It is a cliche of the policy-commentariat to point, laughing, at the number of Growth Plans to have sprung from the Government this century, and how badly correleated this is to success at their subject matter. The 2000s had the Five Drivers of Productivity (discussed here) – Investment, Skills, Innovation, Enterprise, and Competition. In 2010 we had Four Pillars of Growth (Stability, Effective Government supporting Investment, Dynamic Markets and "supporting individuals to reach their full potential"). This can't have worked, because in 2011 there was a Plan for Growth, built around us being more competitive, a great place to grow ...
There is an abbey, Launde, in the heart of England. The air is always sweet there and it's quiet. A little heaven here on earth. And I think to myself: "I'll live here one day, when all my work is done." These were Thomas Cromwell's last words in the wonderful Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light yesterday evening. Launde is a real place and still much as Cromwell described it - a green bowl in the hills of High Leicestershire. Today Launde Abbey is a Church of England retreat house. Its website sets out the site's history: Launde Abbey ...
I'll freely admit that I've been a bit sceptical about the campaign to rejoin the European Union. Not because I don't believe that we should be within the fold rather than outside it but rather, I felt that we needed to be clear as a nation about what we really wanted of the relationship. Also, having put our neighbours through the psychodrama that was Brexit, they needed to be confident that we really meant it before attempting to negotiate a return. The Party itself has struggled with determining a campaigning stance. Those who joined the Party as a campaigning vehicle ...
There are many reasons why the Tories levelling up agenda failed, not least that those Tories in better off areas started demanding the same consideration as the red wall seats. Chiefly, it was the way the whole agenda was managed, cherry-picking projects, making local councils jump through hoops to access the cash and telling them they had to find matched funding from scarece resources, failing to tackle the real structural problems, red tape, top-down control freakery, and, it now transpires, not actually spending the money allocated to the project. The Guardian reports on freedom of information requests that reveal that ...
English Devolution plan: Deafening silence on social care Revealed: 15 years of NHS ambulance time wasted already this winter – up from 10.5 years last year English Devolution plan: Deafening silence on social care Commenting ahead of government's English Devolution plan, Liberal Democrat Local Government spokesperson Vikki Slade MP said: The deafening silence from the government on the social care crisis is hugely concerning. Council budgets are on the brink. The previous Conservative government pushed so many local authorities to the edge of bankruptcy. Without properly investing in social care more of the vital services that councils provide will disappear ...
DUNDEE CITY COUNCIL - WEEKLY ROAD REPORT REPORT FOR THE WEST END WARD - WEEK COMMENCING MONDAY 16 DECEMBER 2024 Seafield Road, Dundee - closed from its westmost end (in cul-de-sac) extending for a distance of no more than 20 metres in an easterly direction to facilitate a site access for a new housing development until November 2025. Blinshall Street (Douglas Street to 50 metres south) - closed until April 2025 for construction works. Douglas Street (Blinshall Street to Brown Street) - temporary traffic lights until April 2025 for construction works. Brown Street (south of Douglas Street) - closed until ...
