A thorough survey of a vanished local industry and its associated railways. At 33:20 we visit Nevill Holt, which is believed by many scholars to be the inspiration for Bonkers Hall.
The results for the final by-elections of the year are here! It was Labour defences across the board for this week's three contested seats. Labour held on to only one, suffering a huge loss of vote share to the Lib Dems, while the Tories and Reform each gained a seat from the ruling party in Westminster. Starting off with Greenwich LBC, Steve Day stormed into second place in West Thamesmead, where we were fourth last time voters went out to the polls. Labour's support while dropped from over 60% to under half while the Lib Dems almost quadrupled their vote. ...
I've found it! When I disappeared down the rabbit hole of the childhood of the British film actor and producer Michael Medwin in August, I came across an account of talking about it at some event where he shared the platform with Edward Fox. But I couldn't find it again after I emerged into the fresh air. Now I have. I was thinking of an interview with Andrew Young of The Herald - Medwin was about to play Colonel Pickering to Fox's Professor Higgins in a touring production of My Fair Lady that was coming to Glasgow. Young writes:It was ...
This blog's hero Neal Ascherson has a piece in the new London Review of Books. It's a review of Julian Jackson's France on Trial: The Case of Marshal Pétain. Pétain, a hero of the first world war, headed the collaborationist Vichy regime after the German invasion during the second. After the Allied victory, he was tried for treason, convicted and sentenced to death. Because of his age (he was 89), this was commuted to life imprisonment and he died in 1951. Ascherson writes of the detailed charges bought against Pétain: Nothing shows better than this trial the way perspectives on ...
Congratulations to Shaffaq Mohammed and Mark Pack who have been appointed to the House of Lords! Cllr Shaffaq Mohammed has been Leader of the Liberal Democrat Group on Sheffield Council for 13 years and was a former Member of the European Parliament for Yorkshire and the Humber. He was a youth worker before he got directly involved in politics. Back in 2011, he wrote about his story, from a boy in Kashmir to Leader of Sheffield Lib Dems. More recently he has been chairing a Carers' Commission for Ed Davey, developing policy which has been so prominent in our campaigning ...
John Hiatt is hard to categorise as an artist. He seemed to come out of the New Wave movement and could have been seen as an American Elvis Costello. But then he also seemed to be part of the Americana, new country thing and a bit like a rockier version of Steve Earle. I suppose, though genres shouldn't matter. His best and most successful albums Bring the Family and Slow Turning were hardly off my turntable (or actually tapedeck) in the late 1980s. But then the quality of his albums dropped abruptly it seemed and I allowed myself to be ...
Liberal Democrat Newswire #191 came out earlier in the week and you can now also read it in full below. But if you'd like the convenience of getting it direct by email in future just sign up now: Welcome to Lib Dem Newswire #191, the last edition before Christmas. And so perhaps the last edition too before Ed Davey goes skydiving: [IMG: Evening Standard - Ed Davey: I'll do skydive if my Christmas single gets 10,000 downloads next week] You can help make that happen by getting the song here. If you still have some last minute present shopping to ...
Another Christmas, another year literally flew by. It seems like only yesterday we were making New Year resolutions! I have been thinking quite a bit about how to best describe 2024. Has anything spectacular happened? Has anything dramatically changed? Was it a good year? What have I learnt from 2024? For me, it didn't have one defining moment, however it was built by often taking baby steps, being persistent and recognising each day as a gift, even when it was hard and challenging. Campaign of positivity There were moments this year when I often felt hopeless and deflated. Global conflicts, ...
Christmas is a time for traditions, so in the run up to Christmas it is time against for this piece of comedy genius with a Christmas flavour from the Australian duo, Bryan Dawe and the late John Clarke. The authorities are having a little immigration problem as a troubleshooter for Australian Immigration reveals: Perhaps the Australian authorities need to partner up with NORAD to get on top of the issue. Either way, I do hope things get sorted as Clare and Dawe have some great present ideas.
Three 'normal' principal authority council by-elections this week to round off the electoral contests for the year, and they nicely contain a full slate of Liberal Democrat candidates, one up on the last time these wards were up. There are also three contests for the City of London Corporation, one of which say expelled Liberal Democrat Jo Hayes stand (unsuccessfully) as an independent. Let us start with an impressively large swing from Labour in Greenwich: West Thamesmead (Greenwich) Council By-Election Result: [IMG: 🌹] LAB: 45.1% (-16.7) [IMG: 🔶] LDM: 32.7% (+24.2) [IMG: ➡] RFM: 8.9% (New) [IMG: 🌳] CON: 8.0% ...
Thanks to Mark Pack for this bit of Christmas silliness.
December is bowel cancer awareness month. Bowel Cancer UK is the the UK's leading bowel cancer charity. It has a vision of a future where nobody dies of the disease. You can read more about its excellent work at www.bowelcanceruk.org.uk
The Guardian reports that the damage from Brexit to trade links with the EU cost the UK £27bn in the first two years. The paper says that researchers based at the London School of Economics found that trade barriers had been a "disaster" for small businesses and had forced thousands to stop trading with EU nations: The academics from the Centre for Economic Performance looked at evidence from more than 100,000 firms, and found that by the end of 2022, two years after the UK signed the trade and cooperation agreement (TCA) with Brussels, total British goods exports had fallen ...
