Reeves in China: Chancellor must come back now with serious plan for growth Cole-Hamilton: Scottish Water must ensure no gaps in sewage monitoring Reeves in China: Chancellor must come back now with serious plan for growth Responding to the Chancellor's announcements in China amidst the ongoing market turmoil at home, Liberal Democrat Treasury Spokesperson, Daisy Cooper MP said: The Chancellor must come back now to urgently address the ongoing crisis in the markets and announce a serious plan for growth. She should reverse the misguided and self-defeating jobs tax, scrap the broken business rates system and start rebuilding our trade ...
Charles Darwin was born on 12 February 1809, and the 21st DarwIN Shrewsbury Festival celebrates his legacy with a month-long programme throughout his birth month. About 40 events are scheduled, including guided tours, music, lectures, art exhibitions and interactive activities An extensive programme of music and talks will highlight Darwin's life story, home and garden, impact on modern science, relationship with his wife, Emma Darwin, and musical connections Interactive educational opportunities for children and families will run throughout February half-term. Full details here.
Luke Clements says everyone should be talking about Tash Ashby. "Tash Ashby was 21 years old when she died. At the time of her death, she was street homeless, living in the undergrowth around Hereford bus station. Her lifeless body was found in her tent. Tash Ashby was taken away from her birth parents in 2011. Both her birth parents were at her inquest, along with her sister. Their pain was evident." Chris Grey looks at the new year's Brexit news: "So this, coming up to five years since the day we formally left the EU, is the level to ...
The latest edition of my weekly political polling round-up, The Week in Polls, is out. As it says: Writing about political polling every week for 143 weeks now (and often enough before that too) has seen me gradually refine a core list of beliefs about political polling. Top of the list is that polls are more accurate than many people realise, as it is the rare polling misses that get much more attention than the regular polling hits. Second is that the answer to most problems with political polling is to have more polls, please and more coverage of polls, ...
So the General Election review is out. See my earlier post for the basics and some thoughts on the rejection of the idea of a "progressive alliance." As promised here are my initial thoughts and I'd welcome yours in the comments. This was much easier reading than previous reviews given that we had done well. So often, we've spent our General Elections waiting for something to go horribly wrong and for once, it didn't. I found some very sensible acknowledgements of the factors that worked and recommendations for the future. I loved the way that the recommendations were organised into ...
The party's review of the General Election campaign has been published this morning, so we can all put our feet up in front of the fire on a cold Winter's afternoon and digest its findings. The review was written by a panel chaired by Tim Farron. The other members were Cllr Ade Adeyemo, Paul Farthing, Cllr Donna Harris, Cllr Emma Holland-Lindsay, Mike O'Carroll and Cllr Sally Pattle. In an email to members, Tim Farron said: We have returned to the House of Commons as the third largest party, a real force to be reckoned with under Ed's leadership. While it ...
As a successful Black singer-songwriter from the UK, Joan Armatrading was once a phenomenon, in the Seventies, even unique. I can remember Noel Edmonds playing her records early in the decade (see? we were all young and cool once), but this is the title track from her second album, which came out in 1980. Americana UK reckons the song is about just what it seems to be about: a woman in a transatlantic relationship that's going nowhere:The song is from the pre-internet age when it took about a week for a letter to cross the Atlantic. Shockingly expensive overseas phone ...
With the end of another, rather interesting, quarter, another update to PollBase, my database of British voting intention opinion polls since 1943 is now up. Download the new version here. Changes this time include: Additional data on when polls were published by adding to more Parliaments the column showing the first day of fieldwork as a full date. Thank you to Andrew Bernard for sharing his data on this with me. In some cases, where there are no exact fieldwork dates shown, the first day of fieldwork date is a best estimate. Additional NOP polls from the 1959-1964 Parliament, along ...
Our general election review team is publishing its report to members today. There's an all member email rolling out through the day from the chair, Tim Farron, with the subject line "Published: Liberal Democrat 2024 General Election Review", and the Federal Board has had an initial discussion of the review with more detailed implementation planning to come. Many thanks to the review team for the hard work in pulling together a comprehensive review quickly, and to everyone who responded to their consultation. The recommendations they make are in some places challenging and will be hard work to achieve, but in ...
The Observer reports that plans under consideration by ministers mean that MPs would no longer be able to rake in huge sums that can see them more than double their parliamentary salaries by signing contracts with media outlets. The paper says that they have been been told that talks on further tightening rules on MPs' outside interests, including media contracts, will be started by leader of the House of Commons, Lucy Powell, at a hearing of the all-party standards committee on Tuesday: Current and former MPs, including Reform UK's Lee Anderson and the Conservative former MP and minister Jacob Rees-Mogg, ...
Why is Trump after Greenland? Trump has three reasons for wanting to acquire Greenland: The world's largest island has substantial deposits of 43 out of 50 of the "rare earth" minerals. It guards the eastern approach to the melting Northwest Passage It straddles the route that Russian ballistic missiles would take in an attack on America's East coast. "Rare earth" minerals are essential to the building of batteries, computer chips and modern defense equipment. The country with the largest rare earth deposits is China. This makes Americans very nervous. However, just because the minerals are there does not mean they ...
With thanks to Margaret Speed and Dundee Pals, the Milnbank Road playpark including an old style police box.
