Theresa May has answered barely a quarter of questions put to her - making her the most evasive Tory PM in 40 years.
Boffins at the University of York studied the way Mrs May dealt with broadcast interviews and compared it with the responses of David Cameron, John Major and Margaret Thatcher.
They found that in the course of two interviews after she became Prime Minister in 2016 and four during the course of the 2017 general election, Mrs May only answered 27 per cent of the questions put to her.
In contrast, Mr Cameron answered 34 per cent of questions in the 2015 general election, while both Mr Major in the 1992 election and Margaret Thatcher in 1987 answered 39 per cent of questions they were asked.Nice use of 'boffins' there.
Based on the evidence in the pleadings, I would now suggest that young Charles began his life of drudgery at the age of 11, and not at the age of 12, in September 1823, and that he was at Hungerford Stairs from September 1823 to January 1824, about four months, and then the move to Chandos Street took place, and he was taken out by his father in September 1824. So that makes the year that he guessed that he was there for.
In keeping with her varied professional career, Chamberlain has a range of interests she wants to push from the backbenches. As well as a passion for veterans’ resettlement, she is a keen supporter of equal access to sports based on social background. ...
“How many of our Olympians went to private school?” she asks, “How many talented children have we missed because they don’t get the opportunities for sports?”
However, if she became prime minister, the first “really mundane” thing Chamberlain would do is invest in “a machine that deals with and eradicates potholes for good”.Wendy comes over well in this piece, but I'd like our MPs to leave potholes to councillors and concentrate on social justice,
Our Federal Board has decided that we will not have a leadership election until May 2021, so that we can focus on dealing with the coronavirus crisis.
We know that coronavirus will have many implications for our society, public services, economy and day-to-day lives.
It will also have important implications for how we operate as a political party. In particular, even when current lockdown restrictions are relaxed, we still be living in a world where for months, if not years, to come it is possible lockdowns will have to be reintroduced at short notice.We certainly have to look at the implications of the coronavirus for Lib Dem structures and campaigning, but the website makes it sound as though we are in government.
One of the highlights of the canal holidays we had when I was a little boy was Midland Counties Ice Cream. In Hertfordshire it was all Walls or Lyons Maid, but further north they had a different company with different lollies.So I blogged back in 2010. Sadly, the Midland Counties television commercial in that post, with its canalside scenes, is gone from YouTube.
Like a Neapolitan ice cream block, these early TV ads for the frozen delights of Midland Counties are stacked together in a medley of flavours. Back to back the individual distinctions of any single advert melt away, revealing the clichés in phrases and framing behind them.
The pause at the end of each advert, known as the “TV hold”, would have been edited out for broadcast. Left intact it marks an awkward pause in which the often flimsy set-up of the ad threatens to collapse around it.You can read more about Midland Counties ice cream on the J. Lyons & Co. site.
Ex-Eastbourne MP Stephen Lloyd, who is stranded in New Zealand due to the coronavirus outbreak, is leading the call for all holidaymakers there to be repatriated.
Mr Lloyd and his partner Cherine arrived in Auckland at the beginning of March on the first stop of a holiday in New Zealand and Australia.
They toured the North Island and headed to the South Island staying with friends and family but were then told their route home via Sydney in Australia on April 2 would have to be brought forward.
But then Australia closed its borders and when Singapore closed as a transfer airport, the couple said they realised they were stranded in New Zealand.
"This week, we’ve seen far more of Boris Johnson than we ever thought was possible. With No 10 now home to a live, daily broadcast, Johnson’s Achilles heel (one of many), has truly been exposed - his need to be adored. The result is pandemonium for the rest of us." Charlotte Moore on Boris Johnson's approach to coronavirus - at least before this evening.
Fourteen-year-old John Adams lives alone with his mother, who works as a cleaning lady for a living. It's holiday time now. John shares his free time between two activities, helping Mr. Wilson, an old antique dealer who is also his mother's employer, to put his books in order and strolling along the pond on the banks of which stands a charming old mill.
Now, Mrs Adams has shown John a casket containing a parchment indicating that a treasure has been buried at the mill. The boy has a dream : finding the treasure and buying his deserving mother a cottage. To this end he will be helped by Merrilyn (16), Hilary (14) and Harry( 10), the children of the new owners of an estate by the pond.
On the other hand his plans will be thwarted by Mr Wilson, who will show his true colours : greed and spitefulness...The Bumper Box will set you back £29.99, but you could try offering four sheets of toilet paper or a paracetamol tablet.
The Lib Dem amendment would order the Health Secretary to produce a "comprehensive" report every three months if the Coronavirus Bill passes, spelling out "how the Government will guarantee provisions for social care while this Act is in force".
The first one would have to come within just ten days of the emergency law being passed, and would require MPs to be updated on funding available to support social care providers - as well as Government plans to keep standards at "as high a level as possible".
A second amendment demands that the Government guarantees social care providers will have the cash required to meet local needs - with the Lib Dems warning that the system is "already overstretched".It quotes are new health spokesperson Munira Wilson:
"Ministers need to prepare for the worst if staffing levels in the social care sector are badly hit, but also commit to doing everything possible to maintain current standards. Lower standards should not become the new norm in an already overstretched social care system."
I can’t be the only one who remains grateful to the Lib Dems for offering a safe political harbour from Corbynism and Brexit. I also applaud how they stuck to their Remain principles, without trying to work both sides. If nothing else, this helped dislodge the mud that’s stuck to them since the 2010 Tory coalition. While there’s much to be done, people feel they can trust the Lib Dems again.
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| Photo: Harry Arnold |
This morning's Times revealed that Matthew Taylor, the Lib Dem MP for Truro, who was adopted as a baby, has traced his birth mother. It turns out that she is the granddaughter of Sir Percy Harris, who was a prominent Liberal MP.
Sir Percy was first elected to the Commons for Harborough at a 1916 by-election. There was an official truce between the parties, but he had to overcome strong opposition from Thomas Gibson Bowles, an Independent candidate backed by Lord Northcliffe and the Daily Mail.
Like Charles Masterman, Harris was identified with the social reform wing of the Liberal Party but remained loyal to Asquith because he did not trust Lloyd George and his machinations with the Tories. The result was the he failed to receive the Coupon in Harborough in 1918 and the seat was lost to the Tories for the first time since 1891.
Sir Percy returned to the House as MP for Bethnal Green South West in 1922 and was to hold the seat until 1945, by which time he was the last Liberal MP left in London. When the Liberals ran Tower Hamlets in the 1980s canvassers reported meeting old people who still voted Liberal "because of Sir Percy".Later in that post I wrote that
Families do have an amazing way of rolling back the years. In a second Times article on the story, Matthew writes of his birth mother:When this story broke, Matthews's grandfather Sir Jack Harris was still alive at the age of 101. The reports said he had recently published his memoirs, so I ordered a copy in the hope it would contain some recollections of Harborough politics almost a century before.
She has visited us twice and when I was Liberal shadow chancellor she sat in the Commons for the first time since she watched her grandfather speak as a little girl, to see my response to the budget.
My father was given the seat of Market Harborough by the party, where he was ... totally unknown. He managed to win this seat because there was a big Liberal swing when the Asquith government was elected in 1908 (sic). However, in a swing back in the next election he lost his seat.As regular readers of this blog will know, the truth is that Harborough had been Liberal since 1891, largely because of the efforts of the mighty Paddy Logan.
My father wished to pursue his political career by standing for parliament for Bethnal Green, which he already represented on the London County Council, but party HQ thought otherwise. They sent down a man called Masterman, who was unknown to the electorate, to stand for the seat. He promptly lost it to the Conservatives.In fact Masterman won the by-election, but had to fight another in the seat when he was promoted to the cabinet and lost that one.
A number of angry Radicals walked out of the meeting, formed a Labour association, and proceeded to adopt a candidate.For more about Charles Masterman's career, see an article of mine in Liberator.
As well as members of the band, we had roped in Archy Kirkwood, the Lib Dem MP for Roxburgh and Berwickshire, on guitar, and Chris Berry, our Eastbourne candidate, on keyboards.
Archy was a competent rhythm guitarist and had been in a Scottish band in the 1960s, half of which went on to be the Average White Band, though not Archy's half.This morning I sent the link to this post to Alwyn, and of course he knows more than I do.
This very basic campaign film, shot in the amateur 9.5mm format, was made to promote Ralph Assheton, the Conservative MP for Rushcliffe in Nottinghamshire from 1934 to 1945. Predominantly using still photographs and captions, the film follows Assheton's victory in a by-election in July 1934, through to his maiden speech to the House the following year. An ominous mention of German re-armament and warnings given to Mussolini in Italy underline an uncertain future.
Ralph Assheton (1901-1984) later held the seats of the City of London and Blackburn West before his elevation to the Lords as Baron Clitheroe in 1955.The result in the by-election (held on 26 July 1934) was:
Most foreign commentators were amazed that children of that age should be tried in an adult Crown Court. They questioned whether such young children could really understand the complexities of a lengthy criminal prosecution and trial; whether they should have appeared in the full glare of media coverage; whether they understood all the issues and the language of the trial; whether they could give sensible instructions to their lawyers; and whether their decision not to give evidence was simply because they were frightened of speaking in such a setting.
Even though some changes have been made to court processes involving children since then, it remains true that exposing such young children to a criminal trial is no way to achieve justice.The scene from Responsible Child above - click on the image to go to a video on Twitter - conveys well the absurdity of pretending that a traumatised child can participate meaningfully in his own trial.
A 30 year-old with the mental age of a 10 year-old child would probably be regarded as unfit to plead, so why do we see a child of 10 as capable of participating in the criminal justice process?I suspect he and the writer of Responsible Child had spoken to the same experts.
Layla Moran, the Liberal Democrat MP competing to become the party’s next leader, has castigated its tactics at the last election, saying a pledge to revoke Brexit lost it the trust of voters, while Jo Swinson’s talk of becoming prime minister was not seen as credible.
Moran said the Lib Dem’s national image was “broken” and the party had to reconnect with voters and examine what it stood for after Brexit, or else risk “bumping along with 10% support and 10 or 11 MPs for a number of years”.Hasn't Layla been saying this for some time now? Still, it's politics and Lib Dem politics at that.
The Great Central Railway - Nottingham is a bit of a mystery to those of us in Leicestershire. Rather like the Eastern Roman Empire.But it took more than that to put me off. I walked from the centre of East Leake to Rushcliffe Halt and caught a train.
When I told Barbara Jacobs (now a successful author) that I was off to the University of York for another interview, she told me that she had met a member of the Philosophy department there at a party while Mark was doing his PhD. He was called Roland Hall and was a very nice man.
I arrived at York to find that, sure enough, my interview was with Roland Hall. I was filled with a sense of confidence and wellbeing.The irony is that Barbara, almost the first time I met her, asked me: "How many famous people do you know?"
In the 80s, while living in Fletching, East Sussex, he became interested in the Liberal party after receiving a call from a Liberal agent asking if he could do something about Conservative popularity in a Liberal desert.
He turned things around politically, and over the next few years he was elected as an East Sussex county councillor. Hearing the announcement at the election count of his victory, dethroning a long-term Conservative, was one of the great moments of his life.
