If you were to go into Swansea City Centre today, you would find that a large part of it is fenced off while building work carries on there. This is Castle Square, an open space in front of the city's historic castle that is undergoing its second transformation after a major revamp in the 1990s saw it mostly concreted over. The square itself has evolved from a medieval Norman settlement to a bustling Victorian commercial hub, and finally into a central civic space. After being flattened during the 1941 Blitz, the site was transformed into public gardens as illustrated above, ...
From YouTube: The first documentary produced by the BBC Film Unit in Northern Ireland looks at the problems the railways are facing in NI. Can anything be done to arrest the decline of the permanent way in the face of rising competition from road traffic? Indeed, should anything be done?Something was done: they were largely closed down, particularly in Nationalist areas.
From St Mawr by D.H. Lawrence, published in 1925: They came at last, trotting in file along a narrow track between heather, along the saddle of the hill, to where the knot of pale granite suddenly cropped out. It was one of those places where the spirit of aboriginal England still lingers, the old savage England, whose last blood still flows in a few Englishmen, Welshmen, Cornishmen. The rocks, whitish with weather of all the ages, jutted against the blue August sky, heavy with age-moulded roundnesses. Lewis stayed below with the horses, the party scrambled rather awkwardly, in their riding ...
Soon after the Second World War ended, a German Jewish survivor, a brilliant philosophy student, sat down to explain to herself and the world how Hitler and Stalin had turned organised madness into an engine of government and destruction. Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism came out in 1951. Much of her analysis is dated or specific to the German or Russian peoples. But some is chillingly relevant. How relevant is this to Trump's MAGA movement, to Farage and Reform? "Denial of the very possibility of a common mankind...total denial of the whole concept of human rights - stigmatised as ...
I filmed this on Sunday at the Plant Up Whickham event to strip the flowerbeds ready for replanting.
On Sunday I had an early start. I was up before 6am as we had a team of sheep shearers arriving at our farm at 6.30am to shear our sheep. We were finished by 9am at which point I headed to Church Green in Whickham to help strip out the flowerbeds and remove the garden waste. When I arrived, I found most of the stripping had been done. So I loaded up my pickup with sacks of garden waste and
One principal authority by-election took place this week in Westmorland & Furness - a Conservatives defence in Hawcoat and Newbarns. Westmorland & Furness Council, Hawcoat & Newbarns This week's by-election was triggered by the resignation of the former Conservative councillor. In 2022, at the inaugural election of the new Westmorland and Furness Council, the Liberal Democrats took control of the unitary thanks to sweeping gains wins several wards in Tim Farron's constituency. However, this ward is in the industrial seaport town of Barrow-in-Furness - an electorally challenging area for us. At the last election, all three of our candidates finished ...
It's the Chase Park fair in Whickham tomorrow. We will have some of our goats there tohelp raise funds for the park. So pop in and have a goat day. 12pm to 4pm.
One of Reform's first decisions on taking control of Gateshead Council was to ban the flying of the Pride flag. This was expected. Reform council groups are known for the robotic way they take their instructions from their party HQ. Most other ruling Reform groups banned the flag. We weren't however, going to accept this lying down. If we can't have the flag flying outside the Civic Centre,
Gateshead now has a Reform administration. With 38 out of 66 seats, they are sitting on a majority of 10 in the council chamber. That may change on 9th July when a by-election is held in High Fell following the resignation of Reform Councillor Danielle Cavanagh. She managed 11 days as a councillor before throwing in the towel and sparking a by-election costing anywhere between £16K and £25K. At
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Thinking of standing for election or re-election next year? Helpful questions to consider
This May's council elections extended, yet again, the run of net gains for the Liberal Democrats, this time to eight rounds in a row and also saw a welcome boost in candidate numbers. But when it comes to counting councillor or council candidate numbers, we still have some way to go to being one of the top two parties. So we need more people than usual to think about standing next time, and also more people than usual to encourage others to think about standing too. Of course, saying yes to standing isn't the right answer for everyone. There's a ...
Tom Williams reports from Southampton: "The demonstration descended into rioting as protesters clashed with police. Out-of-towners, including Tommy Robinson and Laurence Fox, merged with locals outside Southampton police station to form a crowd of several hundred. They marched to Belmont Road, where Nowak was killed. Riot police prevented them reaching Digwa's family home." "I had expected to meet a former MP with the usual recollections and political anecdotes. What I encountered instead was something rarer: a political thinker who remained genuinely concerned with ideas, and who was determined to dispel the myths that had accumulated around Liberal history like barnacles ...
Fair votes are essential, but they are only the first pillar of constitutional renewal. The second pillar is federalism: the redistribution of power away from Westminster and towards the nations and regions where people actually experience the consequences of government decisions. The United Kingdom is one of the most centralised democracies in the developed world. Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and London possess varying degrees of devolution, yet most of England remains governed through Westminster departments, Whitehall ministries, arm's-length agencies, and overlapping administrative bodies. Decisions affecting transport, housing, infrastructure, skills, economic development, and public services are often taken hundreds of miles ...
There has been some press attention to Endometriosis recently. To me it looks like a splicing/acetylation type of disease (which requires that sort of intervention to resolve). I have put some prompts into an AI (chatGPT) to produce a more detailed argument with citations and here is the response: Could Endometriosis Result from Aberrant Splicing Caused by Reduced Nuclear Acetylation?
Only the two principal authority council by-elections this week: Hawcoat & Newbarns (Westmorland & Furness) Council By-Election Result: [IMG: ➡] RFM: 48.4% (New) [IMG: 🌹] LAB: 24.5% (-9.8) [IMG: 🌳] CON: 19.0% (-21.5) [IMG: 🌍] GRN: 5.1% (New) [IMG: 🔶] LDM: 2.9% (-2.7)No Ind (-19.6) as previous.Reform GAIN from Conservative.Changes w/ 2022. — Election Maps UK (@electionmaps.uk) 2026-06-05T01:06:35.067Z For what all this means for the running total of council by-election results since the last May elections, see my council by-elections scorecard here. These by-election results round-ups cover principal authority by-elections as it's only those for which comprehensive results are available. ...
The Times reports that government borrowing was £60 billion higher than the Office for Budget Responsibility predicted in recent forecasts, as the spending watchdog also admitted to underestimating the hit to growth from Rachel Reeves's payroll tax raid. The paper says that in its latest evaluation report on the accuracy of its economic forecasts, the OBR admitted to understating the scale of annual government borrowing by more than £60 billion in its March 2023 and March 2024 budget projections. The OBR said that persistently higher than expected inflation and interest rates, both of which pushed up debt interest and welfare ...