With the world becoming a scarier place, it's time to return to the Shropshire hills and some more behind-the-scenes footage of the making of Gone to Earth. This is the Powell and Pressburger film adapted from the novel by Mary Webb. This video starts with Cyril Cusack baptising Jennifer Jones at Lords Hill Chapel, which stands above the lead-mining village of Snailbeach on the Stiperstones. Later there are shots of David Farrar on his horse, Jones chatting to local children who are extras in the film, and of a horse race. When this appears in the film, Ludlow Castle is ...
There are 6 principal councils by-elections this week held across England and Scotland. Labour suffered big losses vote share wise but managed to hold 3 out of 4 of their seats, losing one to the SNP. Meanwhile, the Conservatives and Lib Dems also comfortably held their seats in their respective wards. In Brent LBC, Cllr Charlie Clinton comfortably held the seat in the Alperton ward while second place Labour's vote collapsed. Congratulations to Cllr Charlie and the team for the win and securing our place on the council! Brent LBC, Alperton Liberal Democrat (Charlie Clinton): 1743 (48.5%, +2.0%) Labour: 827 ...
Leicester was an exception at last year's general election. Labour lost two of the city's three seats - one to the Conservatives and one to an Independent. Alistair Jones. associate professor in politics at De Montfort University, looks at those results and at Leicester politics in general in the current issue of Liberator: All three Leicester parliamentary constituencies have been treated akin to personal fiefdoms by previous Labour MPs, going back to the 1980s and 1990s. Consequently, the central and regional party had held little sway. In 2023 and 2024, the central Labour Party decided to reassert its authority, regardless ...
Welcome to my summary of the latest national voting intention polls for the next general election, along with party leadership ratings. If you'd like to find out more about how polls work, how reliable they are and how to make sense of them, check out my book, Polling UnPacked: the History, Uses and Abuses of Political Opinion Polls, or sign up for my weekly email, The Week in Polls: General election voting intention polls PollsterConLabLDGrnRefLab leadFieldwork Techne 22% (nc) 25% (-1) 12% (nc) 7% (-1) 26% (+1) -1% (vs Ref.) 19-20/2 GB Find Out Now 20% (-1) 24% (+1) 12% ...
Fri 21st
18:19
Biohacking Team withdraws from XPRIZE Healthspan - Team continues to work to improve people's health
The Biohacking Team has withdrawn from XPRIZE Healthspan. We think the prize is a really good idea and the science behind the judging is really good. However, we are not willing to sign the competitors agreement. XPRIZE have asked that the competitors agreement be kept confidential and hence we should not give our reasons as to why we will not sign the competitors agreement. Signing the
Ten years ago I wrote in Lib Dem Voice about the need for a governance review of the English Party. I urged consideration of what functions of the State party could be better delivered at a Federal level, recognising money and time are always in short supply (not much changes there then!). In that article I highlighted the Westminster candidate approval process as a function that should be coordinated Federally, with key State and Regional volunteers therefore benefiting from a more efficient, joined-up structure. More broadly I pointed out; "The current situation is a mess. Most members think they belong ...
Embed from Getty ImagesThis morning Elon Musk's attack on Volodymyr Zelensky was in the news. Here's the Independent: Elon Musk has accused Volodymyr Zelensky of "feeding off the dead bodies of Ukrainian soldiers" as the Trump administration continues ferociously lashing out at the Ukrainian president. The Tesla owner wrote on his X site, without evidence, that Zelensky is "despised by the people of Ukraine" in a post that refuted Kyiv's claims that the president has a 57 per cent approval rating. Earlier this week Trump had claimed that the Ukraine leader had an approval rating of '4 per cent'. "If ...
Liberal democracy is not the default setting for forms of government. Autocracy, or dictatorships, are. Liberal democracies, and the open and liberal societies on which they rest, have to be constructed through political struggle and persuasion, and defended once established through similarly vigorous activity. We can all now see how direct and determined current attacks on liberalism are: well-funded, by a cross-national coalition of hard-right parties actively supported by the Trump Administration in the USA. This week they gathered in London for the second conference of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, jointly funded by Paul Marshall (majority owner of GB ...
The government's White Paper on devolution within England proposes unitary local authorities with a minimum population of 500,000, as discussed in part one of this article. The other significant structural proposal is for Mayoral Strategic Authorities (or Combined Authorities) to be rolled out across all of England over time. The Paper suggests a minimum population of 1.5 million for MSAs where practicable. This proposal is a dog's dinner at many levels. Where to begin? Nationally, we will continue to see Greater London as a single authority of nearly 10 million people whilst most of non-metropolitan England will likely see a ...
A new memorial to the five schoolboys killed by a mine on Swanage beach in 1955 will be unveiled on 10 May from 10.30am. The event will take place in front of the War Memorial in Swanage, and a short service will also be held in memory of the boys. I came across the story last year when I found a folder of press cuttings I had saved back in the Nineties - think of them as pre-internet bookmarks. Today's news comes from the gofundme page set up to raise money for a new memorial.
Ed Davey tells the BBC that defence spending should increase to 2.5% of GDP: As explained in the clip, the increase would be paid for by taxing technology giants who have been make huge profits recently. Sign up to get the latest news and analysis
As Liberal Democrats our first task is to keep our society as fair, free and open as we can. This society is threatened by a more aggressive Russia and a less reliable USA. This threat has to be right at the top of our thinking. The external environment has changed a lot and will require us to spend more on defence. Determining how much more should be based on what it will cost to meet the threats we face. It shouldn't be based on what Rachel Reeves thinks we can afford in order to balance the books, or on what ...
After Tuesday's Liberal Democrat win, Thursday brought another five principal authority council by-elections, including two with Lib Dems after no candidates before. (This is why that matters.) Whalebone (Barking & Dagenham) Council By-Election Result: [IMG: 🌹] LAB: 54.9% (-15.6) [IMG: 🌳] CON: 25.2% (-4.2) [IMG: 🌍] GRN: 10.3% (New) [IMG: 🔶] LDM: 9.6% (New)Labour HOLD.Changes w/ 2022. — Election Maps UK (@electionmaps.uk) 2025-02-20T23:24:42.555Z
From Blether Tay-Gither's secretary : Blether Tay-Gither is the Dundee Storytelling Group and its next meeting details are as follows : Thursday 27th February - 7pm to 9pmLocation, Cake or Dice, Commercial StreetTheme: Rats and Ravens In the still dark evenings of winter we thought we would go for a dark theme: Rats and Ravens. It has something gothic about it, something Poe. Both rats and ravens feature often in many stories, they are messengers, familiars, those who travel between worlds. Come along to our storytelling club to share a story, on the theme or anything at all, or just ...
The Independent reports on a new tell-all book by former Tory chief whip and ex-Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire MP, Simon Hart that they say is filled with startling claims and surreal moments from the ailing Conservative government's final months. The paper says that the book covers orgies, Matt Hancock's abrupt departure to the I'm a Celebrity... jungle, a Tory MP becoming stuck in a brothel, and the various misconduct scandals that engulfed members of Rishi Sunak's government: Hart recalls that, just one month into the job, an MP elected in 2019 called him at 2.45am to report that he ...
