Letters to SunnisideGateshead Lib Dems have been working on a major project to produce 25,000 letters - and then deliver them to residents. Today I delivered a few 100 in Sunniside. I'm pleased to report that they were positively received, at least by the handful of people who stopped to talk to me in the village. I will deliver more tomorrow morning and also take bundles of letters to people who deliver them (more) |
Birtley deliveryGateshead Lib Dems recently had an action day in Birtley but I was unable to attend. Instead, I agreed to take a couple of patches which I would deliver in my own time. The problem with that was that it took 2 weeks for me to take delivery of the Focuses. At the moment we have huge quantities of literature to produce and deliver so the handover of the Birtley patches to me kept getting (more) |
Cllr Fran Lister joins Lib Dems from LabourThe Leader reports news of a new recruit for the Liberal Democrats: Labour councillor Fran Lister has defected to the Liberal Democrats after a series of disagreements with Flintshire's ruling Labour-led coalition over education policy... Cllr Lister's decision to join the party was 'not taken lightly' accepted Flintshire Liberal Democrat Group leader Cllr Andrew Parkhurst, but he added that her values were closely aligned with his group's. Cllr Fran Lister, who represents Brynford & Halkyn ward, added: The Liberal Democrats at Flintshire County Council are a strong and constructive voice within the council. They share my belief that politics should ... (more) |
Fighting breaks out at Kibworth vs Gumley cricket match in 1873At Kibworth library today in connection with a thing, I came across this report from the Leicester Chronicle (2 August 1873): The cricket match which took here on Saturday between the Kibworth and Gumley Clubs was wound up with a scene - we might almost say a tragedy - which, with the exception of occasional poaching affrays, is happily seldom heard of in the rural districts. It appears that a quarrel arose through some objections taken as to the fairness of certain individuals engaged in playing quoits. High words were soon followed by blows, and the pugilists were speedily reinforced ... (more) |
Labour embraces rewilding in an attempt to stymie the GreensWe have another illustration of the truth that governments are much nicer when they are afraid of losing. White-tailed eagles, pine martens and beavers will be released across England before the May elections as the Labour government attempts to staunch the flow of nature-loving voters to the Green party.Plans to reintroduce these lost species to the country have been mooted for years, but the previous Conservative government failed to get them over the line after opposition from landowners and its own MPs. Emma Reynolds, the environment secretary, is understood to have told the regulator Natural England to dust off these ... (more) |
Scottish Liberal Democrats call for measures to tackle medical misogynyScottish Lib Dem Women, the official Lib Dem organisation representing women, took a motion to Scottish Conference at the weekend which called on the Scottish Government to improve women's health care. Medical misogyny refers to the gender bias or discrimination women can experience when accessing healthcare. Instances of medical misogyny include the dismissal of pain as "normal", a lack of research into women's healthcare and a general lack of understanding among many GPs. Medical misogyny can lead to longer waiting times for gynaecological care, which have increased by more than 250% over the last seven years in Scotland. The motion ... (more) |
The Joy of Six 1480"The memoir shows that for Mandelson the cast of people who matter is very narrow, he is always the betrayed rather than the betrayer, his press critics are always acting in bad faith, and he is never adequately rewarded or appreciated." James Butler on the fall of Peter Mandelson. "'At the moment, you've got Reform, who are weaponising concerns around net-zero', she says, and 'the Conservatives recklessly rowing back on the very infrastructure they created to tackle climate change, which is the Climate Change Act;". Noah Vickers talks to Pippa Heylings, the Lib Dem spokesperson on energy security and Net ... (more) |
From broadsheet to outrage factory: the decline of the Spectator and the TelegraphLiberals should care about the collapse of serious conservative journalism. Not because the Spectator and the Daily Telegraph were ever friends to progressive politics (they weren't), but because a functioning liberal democracy depends on a press that engages honestly with reality across the political spectrum. What has replaced these publications' particular brand of reactionary journalism is something considerably worse: reactionary journalism stripped of any pretence to intellectual seriousness. And that is bad for everyone. Let us be clear about what these publications actually were. The Spectator spent much of the twentieth century providing intellectual cover for policies that entrenched inequality ... (more) |
Government bows to Lib Dem pressure on Andrew filesThe Government agreed to a Lib Dem motion to release the files relating to the appointment of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor as a trade envoy back in 2001. The commitment came during a Lib Dem opposition debate yesterday. The debate obviously couldn't focus on any of the legal issues surrounding anyone at the moment, but MPs from most parties took the opportunity to raise their concerns. It's good that the victims and the disgusting misogynist culture came in for criticism, but will this lead to meaningful change? Here are some of the highlights of the debate. It is highly unusual to hear ... (more) |
Reform embracing frackingThe Guardian reports that Lincolnshire's Reform party mayor, Dame Andrea Jenkyns, has courted the head of an American oil and gas dynasty in the hope of bringing fracking to the county. The paper says that documents released under a freedom of information request reveal that when Egdon Resources, a British subsidiary of the US fracker Heyco Energy, announced a major gas discovery in Lincolnshire's Gainsborough Trough last year, Jenkyns reached out personally to the company asking how she "could help with your recent gas find in my county": Fracking was effectively banned in England in 2019 because of concerns it ... (more) |