Liberal England

Liberal Democrat Blog of the Year 2014

"Well written, funny and wistful" - Paul Linford; "He is indeed the Lib Dem blogfather" - Stephen Tall
"Jonathan Calder holds his end up well in the competitive world of the blogosphere" - New Statesman
"A prominent Liberal Democrat blogger" - BBC Radio 4 Today; "One of my favourite blogs" - Stumbling
and Mumbling; "Charming and younger than I expected" - Wartime Housewife

Wednesday, September 23, 2026

Ken Farnes: The forgotten England fast bowler who died in WWII

I remember Trevor Bailey talking about Ken Farnes, but I don't think I've ever seen film of him before today. Farnes stood 6 feet, f...

Local campaigner wants to see the River Teme given rights

A Shropshire campaigner says the River Teme should be granted legal rights because it has become "unwell". Inspired by the way the...

Lord Bonkers Diary: "Burnham is hiding In The North"

I am surprised to see Lord B. inviting a Labour peer to lunch at the Hall. Time was, he would have hunted him with hounds over the hills of ...

Tuesday, September 22, 2026

A podcast on Christopher Hill's The World Turned Upside Down

Let's travel far from Brighton and the Liberal Democrats's autumn conference to an hour-long discussion of Christopher Hill's Th...

Councillor defies council to install hedgehog sign

BBC News wins our Headline of the Day Award. The councillor is Christian Vassie, a Liberal Democrat member of City of York Council, and the...

The Joy of Six 1580

"Later he announced that the party are now in favour of cutting fuel duty by 10p, a policy that has not been agreed by conference and o...

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Very much against buttocks

I tried telling the old boy that the Port of Dover has its own police force, whose relations with the Kent force has at times been opaque, b...

Monday, September 21, 2026

The ruins of Derwent church emerge from Ladybower Reservoir

As is traditional in a dry summer, Our History Underfoot has been to Ladybower Reservoir to see what remains of Derwent village have been re...

Lord Bonkers' Diary: You’re unlikely to be there when you get there

Were Freddie and Fiona burnt alive in a giant wicker rabbit on the village green at Beltane or not? It looks as though the Sisters know more...

GUEST POST Reform and Labour are losing councillors fast

We’ve all enjoyed the regular resignations, defections and disgrace of Reform UK councillors, but the party actually gained councillors from...

Sunday, September 20, 2026

Violet Bonham Carter and Mary Stocks remember the struggle for women's suffrage

I thought I had finished blogging for today, but this video is too good not to share with you tonight. It's a BBC2 discussion from 1968 ...

The Joy of Six 1579

Dawn Butler lays bare the abuse that a Black female MP faces: "Followers of my social media know how bad it can be. I have a regular “...

UK luxury business backed by David Cameron in £500K collapse

Embed from Getty Images The Oxford Mail wins our Headline of the Day Award. Far be it from me to criticise the judges, but is this such a ...

Lord Bonkers' Diary: They don’t shout “Get in the hole!”

I used to wonder why the Liberal Party had never talked about Wallace Lawler, Read the comments on this post and you will see why. I haven...

The Polly Bolton Band: The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I wrote this in 2008 about a memory that was already more than a dozen years old: Much Wenlock is not just the spiritual home of the Olympi...

Saturday, September 19, 2026

Sammy Going South, Suez and the end of the British Empire

Written for Terence Towles Canote's 13th Annual Rule, Britannia Blogathon . We British have a habit of turning military debacles into vi...

Shock as 16 tonnes of soil mistakenly dropped in Shrewsbury

The Shropshire Star , and not for the first time, wins our Headline of the Day Award. There's more about the scheme to improve the Abbey...

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Fifty Shades of Earl Grey

This should keep the literary types among you happy, though I doubt that Ofsted will be so pleased. Wednesday History is all the rage on the...

Friday, September 18, 2026

The Joy of Six 1578

"In the days that followed RNLI crew members found pictures of themselves strewn across social media. Online posts described the search...

Why Liberals must take power away from the media billionaires

In a guest post for Liberal England, Donnachadh McCarthy argues that its time for another Reform Act - one that would remove the power of t...

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Meeting Count Binface in Westminster

I don't know if Nick Clegg does have a Dutch uncle, but there must be every chance. Tuesday Who should I meet in Westminster but Count B...

Thursday, September 17, 2026

Whatever happened to Connie Converse?

Connie Converse provided my music choice on Sunday. YouTube being YouTube, there are any number of videos about her disappearance in 1974 a...

Council to help people 'correctly identify' potholes

BBC News wins our Headline of the Day Award for this tale from Yorkshire, where a Sheffield City Council reports claims there is "conf...

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Wah-wah brass and boings on the timpani

The new issue of Liberator has dropped. Download it free of charge from the magazine's website. And that, whether we like it or not, me...

Elvis Costello: The Other Side of Summer

Elvis on the beach, and we're not talking Blue Hawaii here.

Wednesday, September 16, 2026

The foxes who visited London Zoo with deadly intent

Remarkable stuff from Robert Hanks in the London Review of Books for 21 October 2010: On 18 March last year a fox, or foxes, found their w...

Coyote vs. Acme: "A warm and witty and weirdly moving film"

I went into Leicester yesterday to see Coyote vs. Acme – or "Coyote and Acme" as the lawyers are no doubt calling it. As to my ver...

The Joy of Six 1577

Sam Bright says the government's indecision on how to meet the threat of Nigel Farage has cost us all: "Labour has been dismally s...

Tuesday, September 15, 2026

The man in a coracle who retrieved the ball from the Severn for Shrewsbury Town

Shrewsbury Town's old ground at Gay Meadow stood beside the Severn, so loose shots could end up in the river. This Nationwide report fro...

Work, play and creativity: Another column for the JCPCP

This is another of the quarterly 'Sighcology' columns I contribute to the Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychothe...

GUEST POST Like a challenging computer game? Try the Government Digital Service

Mark Valentine tried hard to prove his identity, and the Government Digital Service tried hard to prevent him. The other day I had to do bu...

Monday, September 14, 2026

Mother Damnable and the curse of Camden Town tube station

Jago Hazzard takes us to Camden Town station and its curse: the most complicated junction on the London Underground. Blame the witch Mother ...

Write a guest post for Liberal England

I love publishing guest posts here on Liberal England. Have you thought of writing one yourself? It could be on where the Liberal Democrats ...

The Joy of Six 1576

Anna Sabine , Liberal Democrat MP for Frome and East Somerset, has discovered what happens when a politician loses her voice: "There’s ...

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