The Bridgewater Canal has suffered a major embankment collapse at Dunham Massey in Cheshire. You can see the damage caused in the video above. With the inland waterways under financial pressure since the scrapping of British Waterways by the Coalition, there are fears that some canals could be lost to navigation. The Bridgewater, certainly, will be closed for months while repairs are undertaken. Later. I'm told that the Bridgewater was never owned by British Waterways. It's currently owned by the company that also owns the Manchester Ship Canal,
Wed 1st
20:27
Liberal Democrat History Group meeting on our performance at last year's general election
Embed from Getty ImagesThese days the Liberal Democrats don't just talk about history: we make it. The outcome of the general election on 4 July 2024 was extraordinary. Compared to the 2019 election, our share of the vote rose by less than 1 per cent, to 12.2 per cent, but our number of MPs jumped from 11 (plus 4 by-election gains) to 72, the highest number since 1923. The Lib Dem History Group is holding a meeting to discuss this remarkable performance at the National Liberal Club, London SW1, on Monday 27 January. You can find full details of the ...
I've never really been one to mark the New Year. We're often away, but that's as much for reasons other than the celebration of the turning of the page from year to year. But 2024 did see a few changes, mostly psychological, I'd suggest. I turned sixty which, whilst the day itself didn't really resonate, has led to a mild sense of, well, it's hard to explain really. I do feel that I'm slightly slower, slightly "older" and thus mildly more cautious. And, of course, this is absurd. Physically, nothing has changed, in that my weight is pretty constant, my ...
"Some strategists are agonising about us reaching a peak, because we're only first or second in 99 seats - I'd say that's a nice problem to have, considering where we were in 2015."Matthew Pennell looks at how the Liberal Democrat fared in 2024. Maria Kuchapska says Russia is reviving Soviet-era punitive psychiatry in occupied Ukraine: "In the Russian-occupied Luhansk region, Pavlo Lysianskyi, the director of the Institute for Strategic Studies and Security, stated that 31 minors had been sent to forced psychiatric detention this year alone. Echoing the 1971-5 Five Year Plan, new psychiatric penal institutions are being erected in ...
An interesting paper was published in the week before Christmas. Mitochondrial quality control: the real dawn of intervertebral disc degeneration? The summary states: Intervertebral disc degeneration is the most common disease in chronic musculoskeletal diseases and the main cause of low back pain, which seriously endangers social health level and increases people's economic burden. Disc
It isn't often that I agree with Peter Hain, but his call for progress to be made on restoring the Palace of Westminster before it is consumed in flames like Notre Dame is absolutely right. This is an issue I have blogged about before, here, here, here and here, and it gets more urgent as time passes. The Guardian reports that proposals for a multibillion-pound restoration will not now be published until the end of 2025, even though the issue has been on the table for over a decade. The Canadians sorted this out some time ago. managing a major ...
Last 1 January it was Martin Carthy's recording of January Man, so I've given him the night off this time round.
