From The Morecambe Fringe Festival Podcast: In this episode writer and filmmaker Iain Sinclair catches up with Sci-Fi author and Hawkwind collaborator Michael Moorcock in an exclusive Morecambe Fringe Podcast interview. Click on the image above to listen to it.
Filmed on Sunday 8th November as the Remembrance parade arrives at the Whickham war memorial.
Yesterday's Joy of Six included a post by Lucy Siegle about the Guardian's long and close involvement with Russell Brand in . In it Siegle, a former Guardian journalist herself, referred to a letter she had written to the newspaper. As she expected, that letter has not been published, so she has included it in a new post on her blog: The Guardian must examine its own role in enabling Russell Brand Your editorial on Russell Brand's conviction (The Guardian view on Russell Brand: his conviction sends a powerful message, Friday 6th November) rightly challenges the media culture that enabled ...
On Sunday we held the Remembrance Sunday parade in Whickham. I've made a number of videos of the event. This is the first - the parade forms up ready to head to the War Memorial.
Over on The Atlantic, Nick Clegg has written an excoriating critique of Silicon Valley's cosying up to Donald Trump after his 2024 re-election: Over the past week, following MAGA's significant losses in the midterms, I have been asked the same questions again and again: How could Silicon Valley have gotten it so wrong? Why did tech leaders not anticipate the consequences of joining themselves at the hip to MAGA straight after Donald Trump won reelection in 2024?" What follows is not a critique of the individual tech leaders themselves—some were more restrained than others—nor is it a personal commentary on ...
Ben Maguire MP was interviewed on LBC by our old friend Iain Dale. Iain summed up the interview saying: "You've done very well – you've got "North Cornwall" in five times. Do you get media training to do that?" – To which Ben replied: "It's only because it's the best constituency that I have to keep banging on about it". * Newspasty only contains skirt steak, potato, turnip, onion, salt and pepper.
Charlotte Cane, the Liberal Democrat MP for Ely and East Cambridgeshire, has been elected chair of the all-party parliamentary group for sustainable flood and drought management, reports the Ely Standard. And it's no wonder that she takes an interest in such matters. As Cambridgeshire Live once described, the freezing winter of 1946/7 was followed by something worse: Swollen by torrential rain, the onset of a rapid thaw, and unusually high spring tides, all the major rivers burst their banks, inundating farmland, roads and homes. A vast area of land was swamped, half of it prime arable land desperately needed to ...
The Liberal Democrats have set Andy Burnham a deadline of the end of the year to publish a full plan to fix Britain's broken water industry - or explain to Parliament why his new Environment Secretary has made so little progress since taking office. The Liberal Democrats are calling on the Prime Minister to publish a full plan for the water industry by 31st December. If no plan is forthcoming, Burnham must come to Parliament and explain why Environment Secretary Angela Eagle has made so little progress in more than 100 days in post. This comes as regulators confirmed water ...
The Guardian reports that Shabana Mahmood's ICE-style raid agency has been accused of engaging in "fishing expeditions" after figures disclosed that almost two-thirds of enforcement visits result in no arrests and nearly three-quarters are conducted without a warrant. The paper says that the home secretary has hailed the expanded use of immigration enforcement teams, and claimed they will help to secure the UK's borders by removing a key incentive for irregular migration. She has sent these teams to targeted establishments associated with informal "black market" work such as nail bars, car washes, barbers, takeaways, construction sites and warehouses, as well ...
The latest edition of the email newsletter for my podcast, Political Fictions, is out and you can also read it in full below. But if you'd like to get future editions emailed direct to you as soon as they are published, sign up now: Get the books As well as covering some books in the podcast, we also mention others in the newsletter's bonus content. You can browse all the books mentioned and get them for yourself via my Bookshop.org page (affiliate link). Bonus content: tactical voting in Celebrity Traitors, when the Downing Street door was green and more Welcome ...
The prospect of another hung parliament is higher than it has been for years. For Liberal Democrats that raises a familiar question: how do we maximise our influence without repeating the electoral damage of 2010-15? Full coalition is one answer. It is not the only one. I want to set out a competing model: the Reserved Time Confidence Agreement. How it works Under a Reserved Time Confidence Agreement a larger party forms a single-party government. A smaller party (or parties) agrees to support that government on all confidence motions and on supply. In return it receives two things: 1. Thirty ...
I first blogged about this book a few years ago after having relocated my own copy. It is still the stand out best book title on my shelves, or yours: [IMG: The Art of Faking Exhibition Poultry by George Scott] Yes, this is real. The Art Of Faking Exhibition Poultry, which I discovered courtesy of my niche book collection, is appositely dedicated to "All poultry judges and exhibitors in the interests of the poultry fancy". Much as I have a soft spot for the title used by another Mark Pack, this one is the winner in the best book title ...
Lucy Siegle is not impressed by the Guardian's attempt to play down its long and close involvement with Russell Brand: "My favourite evidence suggesting a deeper relationship ... is the stuff on its own website including photographic evidence of young Russell perched next to former editor Alan Rushbridger at Guardian conference. This is framed as one of Alan Rushbridger's highlights on leaving in 2015." "As I started to step outside of the MAGA media bubble, I started to gradually realise that so much of what I believed turned out to be false. I spent a lot of nights in solitude ...
Everyone makes mistakes, says Matthew Lawrenson. Most are discovered fairly quickly and put right. But sometimes, they drag on for years and years with nobody bothering to correct them, despite all the evidence being available to do so. Glenda Collins was a 1960s female singer with an ill-starred career. A contemporary of fellow London Jewish vocalist Helen Shapiro (though her recording career started a few months earlier), she released three singles on Decca in 1960-61 which flopped. Released from her contract, she had to find alternative arrangements. Luckily, independent producer Joe Meek was on the lookout for new talent and ...
The Independent reports that new details have emerged of how a close Brexiteer ally of Nigel Farage is using private investigators to snoop on his business rivals as well as journalists. They say that the recent Reform UK candidate Arron Banks, who is setting up a pro-Brexit campaign with Mr Farage, has hired a company called Precision Risk and Intelligence (PRI) to spy on two companies he is currently locked in a seven-year dispute with. They add that tactics include using private investigators to snoop into the lives and business of his targets, including creating a whistleblowing cooperation against insurance ...