The judges grumbled about Gloucestershire Live not being able to make its mind up about what to call the meal in question, but that didn't stop them awarding the site our Headline of the Day Award.
This story - it has a happy ending - reminds me of an old Liberal Revue joke:
First Carp: I survived 'Nam.
Second Carp; Vietnam?
First Carp: Nope, Chelten 'Nam.
Caron Lindsay reports on Lib Dem Voice:
Ed Davey heads out on the road today. He’s doing a 25 stop tour of Blue Wall seats ahead of the local elections and starts in the Lib Dem stronghold of Three Rivers. The Council has been in Lib Dem hands for decades, but the parliamentary seats have so far eluded us.
His tour will take in Dominic Raab’s constituency of Esher and Walton, John Redwood’s seat in Wokingham, and other ultra marginal Blue Wall seats from Cheltenham to Cheadle.
First the Battledown ward of Cheltenham Borough Council:
Battledown (Cheltenham) council by-election result:
— Britain Elects (@BritainElects) February 9, 2023
LDEM: 52.0% (+12.9)
CON: 36.1% (-10.1)
GRN: 9.3% (+0.7)
LAB: 2.6% (-3.5)
Votes cast: 1,685
Liberal Democrat GAIN from Conservative.
If the Lib Dems doing well in Cheltenham does not sound so surprising, a look at Andrew Teale's preview of yesterday's by-elections reveals that Battledown is a ward the Tories have held at least since 2002. This is seriously good news for us.
And then there is the Masham and Fountains ward of North Yorkshire council:
Local government is undergoing reorganisation in North Yorkshire, so there's only last May's result to compare yesterday with, but Andrew Tealedescribes this as "normally a safely Conservative area," so this is another worrying result for them.Masham and Fountains (North Yorkshire) council by-election result:
— Britain Elects (@BritainElects) February 9, 2023
LDEM: 62.7% (+37.3)
CON: 37.3% (-7.0)
No Ind (-30.3) as prev.
Votes cast: 2,150
Liberal Democrat GAIN from Conservative.
In 2019, the incumbent Tory MP, the former solicitor general Alex Chalk, held off the Liberal Democrats by just 981 votes, and one local Conservative conceded they expect to lose the seat by 5,000-plus votes next time.
And that's not all:
Another Tory activist said that while the 500 or so local party members who will help choose the next PM are receptive to talk of tax cuts, culture wars and curbs on immigration, most voters feel differently.
"My guess is Truss is ahead here, though only slightly," they said. "But I think we’re in big trouble whoever takes over. It’s all feeling very 1997 - death by a thousand cuts."
Nor is that all:
David Bartlett, a 49-year-old banker who describes himself as “a massive swing voter – I’ve voted Labour, Lib Dem, Tory and Green” – says he has now turned permanently from the Conservatives. He said: “I was so appalled by Boris Johnson I’ve even stepped back from following the leadership contest.”
I have, you may not be surprised to hear, used the best quotes for us. And you might say that if we can't gain Cheltenham next time then we aren't going to gain many seats at all. Still, this is good news.
What worries me more is the state of Labour, because they are going to have to make substantial gains at the next election if the Tories are to be defeated.
In 1997 Labour had a popular leader, was confident and had the skeleton of an impressive cabinet in place and .
None of this is true of Labour today and, unimpressive as I find Liz Truss, we cannot rely on the Conservatives continuing to sabotage their own chances for another two years.
Yesterday's Conservative leadership hustings took place in the plum Liberal Democrat target seat of Cheltenham.
During it, Liz Truss pledged she would ensure the Lib Dems did not take the constituency back. (We held it from 1992 to 2010.)
She may have trouble keeping her promise, because she appears to think the town is in Derbyshire. Just watch the video.
Incidentally, she could have saved herself time and embarrassment by dropping that prefabricated answer.
Because it became clear that her honest reponse to any question about what she would do to give immediate help to people hit with colossal fuel bills is "Nothing."
One of this blog's established roles is engendering irrational optimism in its Liberal Democrat readers.
So I was naturally drawn to a piece of research by Luke Jeffrey that suggests some Conservative seats in the South of England may be vulnerable to the Lib Dems.
Jeffrey looks at this month's local election results in 82 Tory seats across Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire, Hampshire, Surrey, West Sussex, East Sussex, Kent, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire.
He finds that the Lib Dems outpolled the Tories in seven of them: Winchester, Eastleigh, Eastbourne, Chippenham, Cheltenham, Watford, and South Cambridgeshire.
Across these 82 seats, the Lib Dems obtained 24.1 per cent of the vote, up 4.2 per cent on the 2019 general election.
There are, of course, lots of caveats to be entered, and Jeffrey enters all of them, but we must take our hope where we can get it.
The idea of a Blue Wall that may crumble will appeal to the media and a Lib Dem victory in Chesham and Amersham will give that idea more credibility.
And that will gives the Tory government a headache as it is faced with defending its gains in the Red Wall while keeping its traditional voters in the Blue Wall happy.
Particularly as there is nothing in Boris Johnson's journalistic or political career to suggest that be believes in levelling up anything.
"The Liberal Democrats control the three local councils of Three Rivers, Watford and now St Albans. The Liberal Democrats hold 60 per cent of all council seats within the constituency."Sally, who is a member of Dacorum Borough Council, stood in Hemel Hempstead constituency at the 2017 election. She was later on the shortlist for Cheltenham, a Lib Dem seat until 2010.
an impenetrable, physical, deep, powerful, beautiful ha-ha. It will keep out invaders and, incidentally, keep in domestic staff.He also met the Wise Woman of Wing:
Incidentally, while we were out in the garden it started to spit, but when I suggested we go indoors she replied: "I’ll do my scrying in the rain."March
Lord Bonkers tells me he "caught two fellows with snow on their boots going through the Shuttleworths" at a remote rural committee room during the Ripon by-election of 1973.In the same month, in an attempt at intimidation, cabinet ministers took to sitting in on House of Lords' debates on Brexit:
I wasn’t having that so I stared right back. When that didn’t work I went through my full gamut of faces: the lovesick Frisian; the angry walrus; Roy Jenkins on the lavatory ...
I took a party of Liberal Democrat peers (you may have noticed we are not exactly short of them) off to the tearoom for a spot of training in Hard Stares and pulling the aforementioned faces (though the Jenkins is not one for novices).
I am proud to announce that, after I had left for home, one of my pupils made a junior minister cry.The old boy also reported that Jeremy Corbyn is a deep-cover agent:
Years ago a drunken Tory confessed to me that his party has talent spotters at prep schools. What they look for goodness only knows – a winning way with the ablative plural, perhaps, or particularly clean knees ...
Such deep-cover agents are not unusual – I expect my readers could name a few themselves – but to the best of my knowledge Jeremy Corbyn is the first Conservative to lead the Labour Party.Having observed Corbyn's support for Brexit since then, I am forced to conclude he is right.
Bathing, running barefoot across the sand, burying Matron... I had a high old time of it.He also reported a successful 'Question Time' at the village hall:
There was our own Vince ‘High-Voltage’ Cable; the Wise Woman of Wing; the High Queen of the Elves of Rockingham Forest; and the Professor of Hard Sums from the University of Rutland at Belvoir.
I was prevailed upon to join the panel myself and, best of all, there was not a member of the Dimbleby family in sight.In his traditional foreword to the Liberator songbook, he discussed the perils of making music beside the sea:
How well I recall an early Aldeburgh Festival! Halfway through the concert, the hall was inundated by the North Sea because of an unusually high tide.
Having looked about myself in the way I have just recommended to you, I was able to snatch up a passing double bass and paddle my way to safety – accompanied by Benjamin Britten on the piano.November
Will it prove a tour too far for Anderson and Broad, who have justly been acclaimed as the Hinge and Bracket of English pace bowling? Why has no place been found for the Blessed Liam Plunkett when one of the Overton-Window twins from Somerset has been included?
Should Mason Crane be on the ship at all? In my day a boy of that age who bowled a googly would have been sent straight to the Headmaster, just as surely as if he had used a semicolon in an English composition.December
A Cheltenham councillor was the victim of a “brazen” bike theft on Cheltenham’s Promenade in the latest instance of county politicians falling victim to cycle theives.
Councillor Max Wilkinson (Lib Dems, Park Ward) locked his bright orange Mango bike in the rack by the war memorial at 5.50pm yesterday, before a licensing committee meeting in the Municipal Offices.
When Mr Wilkinson, the Lib Dems’ prospective parliamentary candidate for Cheltenham, went to pick up his bicycle at about 6.40pm, it was gone and the lock was on the floor, cut through.
It is not the first time a Cheltenham politician’s bike has been targeted, with Alex Chalk MP having his stolen while campaigning in June 2016.
While Gloucester MP Richard Graham, in tweeting his sympathy to Mr Wilkinson, said: "Last week had to carry my legless bike back to [Parliament]..hope another cyclist enjoying my front wheel."
Mr Graham also previously had his bike stolen in Gloucester.Max Wilkinson is the newly selected Lib Dem prosepective parliamentary candidate for Cheltenham, and Lord Bonkers has suggested to me that this is an attempt to sabotage his campaign.
Gloucestershire Live says a hustings will be held on 25 November, followed by a vote of local members.
After the jollity of the first evening, the Battlebus departed from its base in Glastonbury, which we made our HQ for the six days or so. We travelled across the South West of England from Torbay in the south to Cheltenham in the north of the region, visiting five constituencies along the way.
The days were long: 7.25 start, and arriving back at the hotel past midnight, sleep was short. I even dreamt about doorstep conversations (that’s conversations on the doorstep not with them). The work was tough with a lot of walking, and one had to stay switched on, because we knew how important these conversations were.
Along with other activists I am still recovering, and turned to lozenges to sooth the throat after having numerous conversations a day. The miles of walking with heavy satchels full of leaflets took its toll on our wallets too, because the bill for sticky plasters and remedies for back pain was totting up.
Regardless of the toil, the relationships that were formed during those six days or so between the activists on the battle bus were intense. Spending 18 hours a day with each other for six days and for some 24 hours, because we shared a twin room back at the hotel, we formed strong long lasting friendships.And who paid for these larks?
Following the fantastic success of our campaign days in the past year, Roadtrip2015 is delighted to invite you to join us in the final weeks of the General Election campaign, for this once in a lifetime opportunity, as we take Battlebus2015 all over the country for our brilliant candidates, hoping to hold current seats and win new ones!
We will be running two buses for ten action packed days where we will based in Tamworth and Taunton/Glastonbury, travelling from here to seats all over the country. You can join us for the full ten days, or the first or last 5 days ...
We ask for a payment of just £50 (£25 for students) which will be small contribution towards the hotel costs. We will meet ALL the remaining hotel costs and ALL the food costs and provide FREE transport to the Battlebus2015 hotel from London.
A Mirror investigation today reveals how 24 Tory MPs failed to declare thousands of pounds spent on their election campaigns in marginal seats.
None of the MPs we name below declared the party's controversial RoadTrip battlebuses in local budgets, with Tory HQ picking up the tab instead.
If the estimated £2,000 cost of the bus had been included locally, some of the MPs could have breached strict spending limits.
Five Tory RoadTrip battlebuses crossed the country to help handpicked candidates in the final stages of last year’s election campaign, with head office picking up the tab.
The total cost of this campaign has never been published, but the Mirror has found invoices indicating it was more than £2,000 a day, including pay and expenses for volunteers and promotion costs.It is striking that 9 of the 24 seats the Mirror has identified were held by the Liberal Democrats:
“George Grimes Watson was a great thinker, an English don and a life-long liberal.
“He stood for Parliament in 1959 in Cheltenham, unsuccessfully, and then became a Fellow at St John’s College Cambridge, where he became a noted scholar in literature, literary criticism and liberal political thought, including being a key member of the unservile state group, rethinking liberalism and welfare.
“His 1959 campaign literature shows how little has changed, with one section saying 'Liberals made them get rid of identity-cards – but the State Still has far too much power in our lives’, ‘The Home Secretary thinks the police ought to tap private phone-calls’ and 'We need the European Common Market – Tory policy closes the door of Europe in our faces.'
“He was a deep thinker and a great liberal, and is much missed.”As Julian's tribute was posted today, I fear I may not be the only person to have missed George Watson's death.
"I think you should all be very careful with a generation of politicians who play fast and loose with the ancient liberties of this country, which our forefathers fought for.
"The time of greatest shame in my Parliamentary career was when Parliament discussed whether people could be detained for 90 days.
"The idea that in Britain you can lock somebody up for 90 days without charging them is absolutely extraordinary.
"I remember not long ago on June 6 - the 70th anniversary of D-Day - where politicians were trumpeting what we fought for in World War Two, it was also the day that it was announced there would be a secret court in Britain."Read the full report in, of course, the Shropshire Star.
A survey carried out by research company Ipsos MORI showed that, of all the political parties, 25 per cent of Lib Dems quizzed over whether they believed life would be found on Mars this year said yes.
It compared to 18 per cent of Labour voters and 16 per cent of Conservatives.And the report turns up a couple of local Lib Dems to exemplify these findings:
Cheltenham Mayor Colin Hay (LD, Oakley) said the results of the survey showed backers of his party were possibly more open-minded than their counterparts.
"I'm not sure what the survey proves really, but I suppose you could say that perhaps Lib Dem voters are a bit more open-minded than your average voter," he said.
"I don't think it shows they are gullible – perhaps just that they are prepared to believe there is something out there."
However, Mr Hay said he did not believe Cheltenham was under threat of an alien invasion any time soon.And:
Fellow Lib Dem councillor Charles Stewart (All Saints) said was a firm believer in extra-terrestrial life.
He urged the people of Cheltenham to keep an open mind over whether there was something out there.
"I believe in aliens," he said.
"There is so much we don't know about I'm of the view that you can't rule anything out until the proof is there in front of you.
"Perhaps this shows we Lib Dems are more likely to reserve judgement until we have the full facts."
Asked whether he thought an alien landing was more likely than the Liberal Democrats winning a majority in Government, Mr Stewart remained diplomatic.
"I'd better not say," he added. "They are both probably some way off."
