Lord Harborough's Curve: photo by John Sutton Many railway enthusiasts will know the story of the Battle of Saxby and Lord Harborough's Curve, told here by the Leicestershire Museum Collections site:In mid-November 1844, railway surveyors were making their way slowly through the Leicestershire countryside. George Stephenson had sketched out his preferred route for the Syston & Peterborough Railway and now they were taking the levels. Four miles east of Melton, near the village of Saxby, they reached the estate of Lord Harborough, whose ancestral home of Stapleford Hall stood nearby. His Lordship hated the very idea of railways and had ...
On the 9th April 1917, Easter Monday, the poet Edward Thomas was killed in the Battle of Arras. His family were Welsh, and his father Philip was an active Liberal and attendee of the National Eisteddfod in 1906. He was a friend of David Lloyd George long before Lloyd George became President of the Board of Trade. In 1936 David Lloyd George, prime minister Stanley Baldwin, and poet laureate John Masefield signed an appeal to create a memorial to Thomas, and on 2nd October 1937 it was unveiled on the Shoulder of Mutton hill in Hampshire. 'Adlestrop' is probably Edward ...
The Liberal Democrats have a habit of arguing through books. The Orange Book, the Little Yellow Book, the Green Book; each tried to say something important about the future of our party. But taken together, they still leave one tradition unnamed: liberal social democracy. These books aren't just publications, but attempts to define what kind of party we are. The Orange Book laid out a deliberate statement of intent in 2004. It was a serious effort to restate one kind of liberalism and carve out a path that distinguished us from the Conservative and Labour Parties at the time. The ...
Food prices have become one of the biggest pressures on family budgets in Britain. Yet behind the rising cost of the weekly shop lies a deeper problem: a food system that is failing households, farmers and the economy alike. In the past decade, we have experienced the highest food price inflation in 40 years. UK production of some of our most nourishing foods, such as beans, fruit and vegetables, is stalling as they no longer offer a viable livelihood for farmers. Domestic fruit and vegetable production has dropped by 16% since 2015, and we see the largest trade deficits for ...
Samira Shackle meets victims of successive governments that have sought to reduce immigration while insisting universities recruit more overseas students: "Each year, about 400,000 international students are granted study visas to the UK. A significant proportion do so with the help of education agents: middlemen paid by universities to find foreign students. In 2023, UK universities spent a total of £500m on education agents - but there is very little oversight of how these agents operate." "In places like Kootenai County, where white Christian Republicans hold a supermajority, local politics is mutating into something undeniably extreme. North Idaho offers a ...
Last week, the party announced an emergency transport package: 10p off fuel duty, £1 bus fares, a 10% rail cut, lower VAT on public EV charging. And the reaction from members has been... pretty muted. I think that tells us something. There's a shared instinct here that the package doesn't quite land, and it's worth working out why. It's not that responding to a crisis is wrong. People are paying more to get around because of a war they didn't start, and a responsible opposition should have something to say about that. The question is whether what we're saying is ...
My computer has been malfunctioning for the past two weeks: hence a dearth of comments on the several dire problems facing the world The Space flight. There has been a rather pathetic attempt by the BBC to generate excitement about this project. I know it is very clever but it was successfully done fifty years ago, when technology was much less advanced, and flights to and from the International Space Station have become routine since. So why be thrilled with this one, even if it is a little bit further and we get new pictures of the other side of ...
Nation Cymru reports that a prominent Reform Wales figure has announced she will leave the party citing "serious concerns" over parachuted Senedd election candidates and allegations of racism. The news site says that former UKIP Assembly Member for South Wales West Caroline Jones told followers on Facebook on Tuesday (April 7) that she had quit Reform UK 24 hours ago but had not received any acknowledgment from senior party officials: In a statement to Facebook she wrote: "It has been over 24 hours since I have formally submitted my resignation from the Reform UK party. "After more than 13 years ...
Cole-Hamilton takes on judo champ and pledges to restore Highland services Cole-Hamilton: Time to beg UK Government and European operators for vessels for Dunkirk-style effort to tackle ferry crisis Greene: Scottish Tory economy plans show they are the 'nasty party' again Cole-Hamilton takes on judo champ and pledges to restore Highland services Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton has today tried his hand at judo alongside former Commonwealth medallist, British champion and Highland councillor Connie Ramsay, as he set out his party's pledge to restore services to Highland communities. In September 2025, Connie Ramsay won a Highland Council by-election for ...
Today I bagged another Edward VII postbox. Having stalked and photographed the three examples in Leicestershire (on the Saffron Lane Estate and in Earl Shilton and Hugglescote) a couple of years ago, I was looking for more worlds to conquer. Then I read online that there was a box in Stamford. And here it is. You'll find it on Ryhall Road, not far from Greyfriars Gatehouse.
If you'd been reliant on Radio One and Radio Luxembourg for your music in 1974, this single would have sounded like something from another planet to you too.
Trump's war on Iran is impacting more than just the price of oil. It is also impacting fertiliser shipments, which, combined with the UK government decision to tax fertiliser (being introduced in January 2027) will cause food prices in the UK and around the world to increase – hence why the government needs to seriously start looking at food security. Although both are incredibly important, the increase in the cost of oil and food resulting from Trump-Netanyahu's attack on Iran and the Iranian retaliation is well known. What is perhaps less covered is its impact on the export of helium. ...
So, we can breathe again. For a few days at least. But it's more likely than not that we will be back up at the top of this hill again in a fortnight. And if Trump's behaviour over the tariffs is repeated, he'll up the ante with even more offensive language and we'll go from deadline to deadline. To see the leader of the free world openly threatening genocide ("A civilisation will die tonight") and war crimes attacking civilian infrastructure was horrifying. The bit that made me gulp was when the White House denied that he was planning to use ...
Wed 8th
07:30
Cole-Hamilton: I want to fix delayed discharge, gain four new Highland and Island seats and send the...
Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton has used a visit to Wick to set out how his party can win four additional constituency seats in the Highlands and Islands from the SNP and to launch his party's plans to tackle delayed discharge. Mr Cole-Hamilton was in Wick to meet Margaret MacGill who is just home after being stuck in hospital for a year when she didn't need or want to be there – a case he repeatedly raised at First Minister's Questions. Margaret was first admitted to Raigmore Hospital in November 2024 with a rare spinal condition, before moving to ...
The Independent reports that one of Sir Keir Starmer's top allies has paved the way for another fight with MPs over benefits cuts, calling for "further reform" to Britain's welfare bill. The paper says that in a move that risks a repeat of last year's chaotic U-turn, which sparked questions over the prime minister's authority, education secretary Bridget Phillipson said there "needs to be further reform to the social security system for people to get back into work": Last year, Sir Keir attempted to impose welfare reforms that would have saved around £5bn per year, but he was forced to ...