I watched Prime Minister's question time yesterday in which Keir Starmer was put on the spot over his party's pledge to freeze council tax. I'm sure many voters will also be questioning that promise today as they contemplate their finances and how much is being asked of them from their local authority. It may well get worse: The Guardian reports that the government's plans to cut at least £5bn from disability benefits could end up driving more costs on to cash-strapped councils. The paper says that the Resolution Foundation thinktank believe that up to 1.2 million fewer people could be ...
Ed Davey has responded to Donald Trump's announcement of tariffs with various countries. He said: Today Donald Trump has launched a destructive trade war that threatens the jobs and living standards of people across the UK and around the world. We need to end this trade war as quickly as possible – and that means standing firm with our allies against Trump's attempts to divide and rule. The Prime Minister should bring our Commonwealth and European partners together in a coalition of the willing against Trump's tariffs, using retaliatory tariffs where necessary and signing new trade deals with each other ...
Wed 2nd
22:24
Boris Johnson to speak at the model for Bonkers Hall - and opera singers are up in arms
Boris Johnson is to appear at the Nevill Holt Festival in conversation with Andrew Roberts on 14 June. And you will be aware that it's a rare scholar now who denies that Nevill Holt Hall is the inspiration for Bonkers Hall.* Thanks to the great Solar Pilchard on Bluesky, I find that this news has gone down badly with the nation's opera singers. A cutting from Van Magazine runs: Sudden Holt Opera professionals were already pretty angry with the country house opera company Nevill Holt, which a few years ago made the rather sudden switch from supporting opera to a ...
The success of the Netflix series Adolescence, and my doubts as to how far it reflects reality, has put me in mind of the BBC television play Responsible Child from 2019. This showed how the legal system deals with a 12-year-boy who has helped his older brother murder their abusive stepfather. Responsible Child was the first play directed by the BAFTA-winning documentary maker Nick Holt, who was interviewed at the time by Deadline: Tell me how Responsible Child came about. I was up in Scotland making The Murder Trial, probably for about 18 months in total, looking at various cases, ...
Kemi Badenoch has a problem at prime minister's questions. Every time she attacks Labour on the economy, Keir Starmer simply has to hang the record of the last Conservative government round her neck to win the exchange. But she has another, as the Guardian live politics blog pointed out. She lacks support from her own side of the House: Towards the end of the session Greg Smith asked a question that backed up the Badenoch "jobs tax" critique. ... On its own, a single question like this is unlikely to make much impression. But half a dozen of them might. ...
Welsh politicians have spent two and a half decades in the Senedd pointing out the inequities of the Barnett formula which is used to determine the level of funding for public services here, but the latest outrage around this outdated Treasury methodology is threatening to have a real impact on public services this side of Offa's Dyke. The BBC reports that Wales' public services face a shortfall of up to £65m as a result of the National Insurance increase because, although chancellor Rachel Reeves has committed to covering the public sector costs in England, here in Wales the UK Treasury ...
Martin Wolf, as so often, had it right in the Financial Times the other week. He argued that in the multi-headed crisis we now face, the proper response of government is to tell the voters that this is both a national and a global emergency and that national economic and fiscal policies will have to take these exceptional circumstances into account. The impact of Trump's tariffs on the global economy could plunge us all into a deep recession. Labour knew when they came into office that Russia's attack on Ukraine had raised difficult questions about replacing stocks of equipment and ...
[IMG: Lib Dems in sunshine with Mike Ross, Mark Pack and Shaffaq Mohammed] If you were at our recent Spring conference, you will hopefully have heard all about my campaign to become the first Mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire. Last weekend, we were joined by Party President Mark Pack in Hessle, East Yorkshire, to formally launch our campaign for the mayoralty. It was an honour to be joined by Lord Pack and by so many activists, both from across the region and further afield, such as Lord Shaffaq Mohammed and a team from Sheffield. We've also had a visit ...
"Part of this is down to the increasing centralisation of politics. The prime minister's role has expanded dramatically over the decades, and cabinet government has been a fiction for a long time (Nigel Lawson claimed that cabinet meetings were the only time during the week that he got a rest). Even minor departmental decisions now have to be signed off by the centre and slotted into a communications grid."Sam Freedman on the rise and rise of political advisers. Luke McGee suspects Putin is up against his biggest opponent yet - Trump's ego: "Trump clearly wants something that looks like a ...
Our electoral system cannot cope Securing 30% of the vote in a general election used to be a general election losing vote share for Labour or the Conservatives. But it is now quite possible that the winner of the next Westminster general election will not top 30%, and that we will have four political parties within 10-15 points of each other. First past the post is really not designed for that... This comes with two important implications for ourselves. One is the continuing importance of local elections, both in their own right and also as a way of establishing credibility ...
Last week, I came across an article by Chris Whiting on Lib Dem Voice, which you can read here. Chris makes a compelling case for why liberals and socialists should collaborate, and I highly recommend it. Nevertheless, I would like to offer an alternative perspective. I want to focus on a line from Chris's article in which he states, "If you follow the principles of liberalism to their logical conclusion, you arrive at socialism." I disagree. Socialism aims to establish a society where private property has been abolished, and the working class owns the means of production. In contrast, liberalism ...
Residents recently contacted us to advise that part of a tree had fallen in Loganlee Terrace. We raised this with the council forestry team who advised : "A forestry officer has now gone to assess the tree and has written out the risk assessment for the removal to be done. It is now with the arborist to be done and he should get to it in the very near future."
So where was I.... Oh yes. #killallmen LOL Firstly you'll all be glad to know I found an alternative to my throw rocks at boys top ( £24 on redbubble) but i'm not sure my hate boys top (£24 on Etsy if you're interested) is any better for the topic.Influencers like Andrew Tate are the symptom not the cause.Boys are falling behind girls in every stage of education, from nursery to university. Boys are twice as likely to be expelled from school. 96% of prisoners are men. Suicide is now the biggest killer of men under 50. Young men earn ...
My MP is boasting on Twitter and BlueSky that thousands of people in Swansea will have more money in their pockets because the state pension and National Living Wage are going up, but you get the impression that he isn't that convinced himself. As the Guardian says, millions of households are facing a raft of price increases across a range of bills - from energy and water to car tax and the TV licence - that took effect yesterday. The paper says that with so many costs rising at once - prompting some to label this month "awful April" - ...