Here's a treat from four years ago: Stewart Lee appears as the guest on Alexei Sayle's podcast. They talk about the inevitable apocalypse, Beryl Reid, dinner parties, comedians of the Music Hall era and Lee's film King Rocker.
In recent years, the United Kingdom has seen a troubling increase in Holocaust denialism, fuelled by disinformation, a lack of historical education, and the actions of influential public figures. The surge in ignorance about the Holocaust and a disturbing normalisation of anti-semitic rhetoric point to a deepening cultural and societal issue which is actively proliferating on social media. A Worrying Decline Knowledge and the Rise of Hatred A recent study highlights the gaps in Holocaust knowledge among Britons. Over half (52%) of respondents were unaware that six million Jews were systematically murdered during the Holocaust, while 22% grossly underestimated the ...
Congratulations to the Daily Record, which waddles away with our Headline of the Day Award.
Embed from Getty ImagesAugustus Carp, our Defections, Principles and Opportunism Correspondent, has drawn my attention to the remarkable career of Alan Amos. What follows comes from research by Mr Carp, backed up by Wikipedia. Amos was first heard of as a Conservative councillor in Ealing, sitting between 1978 and 1987. He unsuccessfully fought Walthamstow at the 1983 general election, but had more joy four years later, when he was elected for Hexham in far-off in Northumberland. He was to become a victim of John Major's Back to Basics campaign, or rather of a briefing given to the press by the ...
This week sees elections to Seanad Éireann, the Irish Senate, following elections to Dáil Éireann, the more powerful lower house of the Oireachtas or parliament. Unlike other elected upper houses, and indeed its predecessor, the Seanad in the Irish Free State, it is elected completely in tandem with the lower house, and in its entirety, so when the Dáil is dissolved, so too is the Seanad. Senators are a mix of indirectly elected and nominated members, 43 chosen by TDs (Teachtaí Dála or Dáil Deputies), local councillors and outgoing Senators, to represent five vocational panels, Administrative, Agricultural, Cultural and Educational, ...
Last week Gateshead full council meeting took place. The Lib Dems had a group meeting before the start of the council proceedings to discuss amendments to motions. The group meeting was a bit crowded as we are beginning to outgrow the opposition office. So in a cramped room, over homemade lunches, we went through the motions and amendments.The motions debated at full council were:support
The Federal Conference Committee met on Saturday to run through a number of items leading up to Spring Conference in Harrogate, which is being held from 21 to 23 March 2025. This will be our first return to Harrogate in almost 16 years. We had a large number of items submitted to Conference, in addition to report backs to the Committee from our Constitutional & Standing Orders Working Group. We are delighted that so many people have already registered for Conference and we encourage any members who have not yet signed up to Conference to do so via: LINK We ...
Sometimes you have to sit down and talk if you want to get things done. By any metric the SNP are failing the people of Scotland. An early election had already been ruled out (Labour are abstaining). It's why all along we've been trying to shape the Scottish Budget to unpick some of the damage the SNP have done over the last 18 years. The result? Our priorities will now be backed by hundreds of millions of pounds of government investment. Thanks to the Scottish Liberal Democrats, the Scottish Budget now includes: Further investment in drugs and neonatal services totalling ...
The first Dundee Climate Café of 2025 takes place this morning at Dundee Rep in Tay Square from 10.30am to 12 noon. All are welcome and there is no need to book. The Climate Café® movement has a shared ethos of community led, inclusive, welcoming spaces for people to simply come together with a cup of tea or coffee, to chat and act for our climate. You can read more about Climate Cafés at www.climate.cafe
The Independent reports that the government is being urged to pour more funding into the care system after new projections showed the country is facing a social care timebomb as the number of over-85s is set to double over the next two decades. The paper says that Ramzi Suleiman, policy and public affairs manager at the Carers Trust, has issued a stark warning to the government, arguing that the sector is "nowhere near ready for this rise in older people" as it is "already creaking at the seams": Projections from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that, by mid-2047, ...
