Liberator 436 is out!The ew edition of Liberator available Liberator 436 is out and can be downloaded for free here. You can sign up to be emailed when each new issue comes out here. What's in this issue? MAN OF MANY FACES John Leech assesses the Andy Burnham he knows from Manchester politics LIBERALS IN WONDERLAND The new Liberal Democrat strategy has plenty to say about the 'how' of politics but there's a loud silence about why people should support the party, says David Grace LIB DEM NARRATIVE – THE SEARCH GOES ON Jonathan Calder takes a look at the Yorkist pressure group's ... (more) |
Plans for horse laundry facility at farm approvedEmbed from Getty ImagesBBC News wins our Headline of the Day Award for this tale from West Yorkshire. The judges were left wondering just how large the washing machines are going to be. (more) |
Lord Bonkers' Diary: Wandering Bodmin Moor at full moon and devouring constituentsYes, Jeremy Thorpe really did pester the voters from a hovercraft that summer and Paul Tyler was on board. Lord Tyler's lawyers have asked me to point out, however, that at no time did he turn into the Beast of Bodmin at full moon or devour his then constituents. I bet he did though. Tuesday Do you remember when hovercraft were all the rage? The boffins told us that within a decade we would have one each and use them to commute to the moon. As it turned out, they proved a great disappointment, but it was aboard a hovercraft ... (more) |
Big money should not buy electionsI have always been amazed at the vast amounts of money which are spent on elections in the United States of America. The money has always dwarfed anything that we can spend in the UK where there are, within reason, restraints on what we can spend both in the run up to an election and during it. This has come to the fore recently with The Dirty tricks which seemed to have occurred within the reform UK party about the people who have been making contributions to them. In the UK not only is there some control over the amount ... (more) |
Steve Winwood and Viv Stanshall: Boy in Darkness"I suppose I sort of went underground a little," Steve Winwood once told Classic Rock, looking back on the mid Seventies: One of his 'underground' activities involved a musical liaison with the eccentric Bonzo Dog man Viv Stanshall. The pair had already co-written Dream Gerrard for Traffic's swansong album and collaborated on Stanshall's solo record Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead. They then concocted a soundtrack for a film version of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast, hoping for financial backing. It never arrived. They did, however, manage to funnel some of its ideas into Sir Henry At Rawlinson End, Stanshall's surreal satire of upper-English ... (more) |
Tom Arms' World ReviewDonald Trump Donald Trump has discovered the virtues of fighting forced labour—provided he does not look too closely at America's record. This week he slapped tariffs of 10-12.5 percent on 60 countries—including the UK—because they imported goods from countries that used forced or abusive labour. Well, so does the United States. In fact, several of its home-grown companies have, in fact, been prosecuted for using forced labour. And this is according to reports from America's State Department, the Department of Justice and the Department of Labour. But first the issue of importation. Trump is on reasonably firm ground using the ... (more) |
The infected blood scandal highlights the siloed nature of WhitehallThe latest edition of my email newsletter about work in Parliament, A Lord's Eye View, is out and you can also read it in full below. It's about the very long-running infected blood scandal. If you'd like to get future editions emailed direct to you as soon as they are published, sign up now: Why can't the Cabinet Office do what other departments can? [IMG: The Cabinet Office on Whitehall, London] The Cabinet Office, apparently unable to do what other departments can do. Just before the House of Lords broke up for the summer we had a debate on the ... (more) |
Reading UlyssesI've started on James Joyce's Ulysses. I've long enjoyed Anthony Burgess, and he was a great admirer of Joyce, so I suppose it was inevitable. I'm not trying to spot every reference, or look up every obscure word, but just to read it like any other story book. Analysis can come later, if I fancy, and my old copy of Burgess's Here Comes Everybody: An Introduction to James Joyce for the Ordinary Reader will no doubt come in handy. I see fiction as entertainment and escapism - you're not going to discover the meaning of life, or your place in ... (more) |
Newcastle Pride - the videoFilmed today. (more) |
Newcastle PrideIt was Newcastle Pride today. After my ward surgery I headed over to Newcastle Civic Centre to be part of a sea of colour for the parade to the Monument. Good to see lots of people from Gateshead Council LGBT support network.One of the first people I bumped into was Cllr Henry Gallagher, mayor of Newcastle. (more) |