A film made by the Penge Rotary Club in 1964. It provides a useful corrective to the view, widespread on Bluesky, that we all lived in shoeboxes and ate gravel until about 20 years ago, while showing us why the Sixties had to happen. The former canal mentioned is the Croydon Canal; note too the children playing cricket without being organised by adults and an unexpected appearance by the Crystal Palace dinosaurs. As to the palace itself, my father remember being woken as a small boy in Horsham, West Sussex, in 1936 to see the glow on the northern horizon ...
I last visited Ellesmere canal basin getting on for 30 years ago, when I recall it being quite derelict. I was there again this summer and found it changed. But not as changed as it might have been. There was a new supermarket, a derelict canal warehouse with a top ghost sign (someone told me there had been plans to convert it into a restaurant but they had fallen through) and lots of empty space. If you want to know why it hasn't been more comprehensively redeveloped, and a BBC News feature from 2004 is enlightening: For 15 years there ...
If we believe in giving everyone the platform to flourish and live their unique version of a best life, then enabling music, and musicians, to thrive in our local areas is an unmissable part of that platform. Does a day go by when you don't listen to music? On your phone? In a movie? In a bar or coffee shop? In your place of worship? We use music to celebrate milestones, commemorate lost loved ones, pump ourselves up, and to find ourselves when we're lost. But the dedicated geniuses who make all that possible are seeing their income streams disappear ...
This week Andy Burnham told the Labour conference in Liverpool that Brexit has done 'more harm than good'. In a broadcast interview the next day he said that an in-out referendum on membership of the European Union (EU) in Labour's next manifesto is 'possible', as The Times reports. For Labour that is a dramatic shift. For Liberal Democrats it is something more familiar as here we see a Prime Minister arriving, a decade late, at an argument we have been making since at least the summer of 2016. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. In Brighton in September ...
I am a Liberal Democrat because I believe in freedom, fairness, compassion and giving people the power to shape their lives. Those values remain deeply important to me. Yet, after our recent conference in Brighton, I wanted to hear a clearer, more ambitious account of how we would put those values into practice. Tax cuts have their place, but people also need decent housing, reliable public services and security when illness or old age makes them vulnerable. Andy Burnham's speech raised questions that deserve serious consideration. Welcoming a worthwhile proposal from another party does not weaken our liberal principles. We ...
Cathy Mongaghan says Essex County Council's Operation Vanguard shows what can happen when a party built on amplifying fear and division takes control of the institutions needed to turn its political story into public policy: "Reform warned people that asylum seekers made their communities unsafe. Reform won power in Essex. Reform then spent council money putting private security on the streets in response to the presence of asylum seekers. The fear came first. The policy followed." James Murray asks what true pragmatism look like in an age of climate crisis: "How is the rational choice the one that drives up ...
Fifty years ago, I was starting at City University. It was my second attempt: I had spent an unhappy term at Southampton several years earlier, and as part of my plan to enjoy university more, I decided to join a society at the Freshers' Fair. I wasn't a Tory and definitely not a socialist, but I liked the Liberal Party's views on apartheid and gay rights (not that I had ever consciously met a gay person). I joined the Liberal Society and went along to a meeting, where I remember being very impressed by a postgrad, David Heath, who later ...
On the 29th September 2026, our Chair Professor Russell Deacon visited the US National Winston Churchill Museum and was given a tour around by the director Timothy Riley. Museum Director Timothy Riley and Professor Deacon Prof Deacon was shown a lot of the material concerning Churchill as a Liberal and the original extract of the famous "Iron Curtain Fulton Speech" Churchill made that mentions Churchill's "close friend Mr Lloyd George": Extract of Lloyd George's Fulton Speech As well as establishing links with the Lloyd George Society, Professor Deacon was also able to provide links to the Museum to the Liberal ...
Over the last ten years I have posted a number of times on the inequity of the antiquated leasehold system. which is exploiting over five million households in England and Wales. Like the now phased-out, feudal system of Rentcharges, leasehold tenure is long past its sell-by date. However, my conclusion to this post on 25 February 2019 sort of sums up where we are at, when I wrote: Preventing the development of new leasehold properties is the next big housing reform. Will any government be brave enough to actually do it. The Guardian, in an editorial, presses the case even ...
The first test innings I can remember is Colin Milburn hitting the Australians all round Lord's in 1968. And here it is, with John Arlott adding his comments. The innings in question took place on the second morning of a rain-ruined match, and Milburn was the top scorer in England's first innings with 83. England then skittled Australia in their first innings (David Brown 5-42) and made them follow on, but didn't have time to force a win. The full scorecard is on cricinfo.
The anti-racism charity, Show Racism the Red Card, appeared to have a poor start to October when it was announced that Gateshead and Sunderland Councils, both run by Reform, were withrewing support for the charity. Coming in to defend the charity however is Lib Dem led Newcastle Council. The Leader, Cllr Colin Ferguson, has announced that the Tyne Bridge and Newcastle Civic Centre will both be
I can't begin to imagine what went on in their chamber, but the judges have awarded Headline of the Day to the Daily Record.
The Liberal Democrat History Group are pleased to announce that the latest issue of the Journal of Liberal History (issue 132, Autumn 2026) has just been published. The Journal is published quarterly and can be purchased here or you can take out an annual subscription here. The Journal was first published in 1993 as a newsletter. It has come a long way since then and is read by people from all walks of life and all over the world. As a peer-reviewed journal, the highest rigours of accuracy are maintained but we have made sure the content is as accessible ...
A tale of two conference speeches: Ed Davey declared the Lib Dems to be the party of low taxes, and outlined £17bn of tax cuts to Income Tax and Fuel Duty, paid for by making a better deal with the EU, whilst Andy Burnham proposed a National Care Service – with an estimated cost of £18bn according to the Health Foundation. Burnham proposed funding this by adjusting the Triple Lock – although he didn't explain it that well in the speech. The new approach will tackle the "ratchet" effect – where inflation is high one year, wages grow high in ...
Embed from Getty ImagesIan Anderson of Jethro Tull has given Louder a guided tour of the band's many albums. When it gets to 1978 and Heavy Horses, he says: You have to remember, this was at the time punk's final embers were burning out and you had bands like The Police and The Stranglers, who were, collectively speaking, a bunch of old hippies. The brave new world of punk rock had perhaps become commercialised at that point. But bands like those two used punk as a means to get their foot in the door, just as I did with the ...
Lawrence Hogben (1916-2015) was of the meteorologists who produced the vital weather forecasts before the D-Day landings in Normandy in 1944. This, of course, is the process dramatised in this year's film Pressure. In 1994, Hogben wrote about those days for the London Review of Books: "Everything on the Normandy beachhead will hang on your weather," said the D-Day planners, assuming that we meteorologists had total control of the elements. "Just name us five fine, calm days and we'll go." A hundred years of weather records suggested there was no hope of their getting this. They limited their demand to ...
On Thursday, Labour's new vape tax came into effect. Vaping Products Duty charges £2.20 per 10ml of vape liquid. Because VAT is charged on top of the duty, the real cost at the till is £2.64. In practice, an average £3.00 bottle of 10ml liquid will now cost £5.64, an 88% price hike. VPZ, the UK's largest vape retailer, surveyed 2,640 of its customers ahead of the tax coming into force and found that 63% say it will be harder for them to stay off cigarettes and tobacco, 21% say they may return to smoking, and 34% say they will ...
For those of us who have been officers of Local Parties, Associated Organisations or any of the other myriad bodies across the Party who hold elections, this is the time of year when things change, and the cycle of persuading people to hold the positions that keep the show on the road begins anew. But as someone who hasn't been perhaps as active as in years past, I can now be a bit more relaxed. People don't necessarily ask me to be things, they ask me to run their elections instead. And that reminds me that the Party relies on ...
Has the Green Party's bubble burst? The Mirror reports that things are not looking so rosy for Zach Polanski and the Green Party after their favourable bump in the polls has largely subsided, and Polanski's own ratings are not where he'd like them to be. They add that the Holborn and St Pancras by-election on Thursday, triggered by Keir Starmer's unexpected resignation as an MP, could well prove to be reckning for the Green Party leader if he doesn't perform as well as expected. And now a vote at their party conference looks like it has added to their troubles. ...