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

Friday, May 16, 2025

London's lost underground lines - with a note on the wine cellar of the National Liberal Club

Jago Hazzard is our guide to a collection of lost lines, repurposed lines and abandoned oddments, some of them 50 miles out of London and de...

That Reform UK programme for Leicestershire: Bus cuts and a consultants' bonanza

Reform UK won 25 of the 55 seats on Leicestershire County Council on 1 May and has now formed a minority administration. What will they do w...

Lord Bonkers 30 years ago: I watched Sir Edward Heath being hunted through the lobbies by a full pack of beagles

Lord Bonkers mentioned the other day that my rent falls due on Lady Day. I took this as a subtle reminder that it's a long time since I ...

Thursday, May 15, 2025

The Joy of Six 1359

"Adults are going hungrier to keep children better fed. The most vulnerable – infants, pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers and others...

Wednesday, May 14, 2025

William Wallace: Reading Biggles in Westminster Abbey

Liberal Democrat Voice has a thoughtful post by William Wallace - Lord Wallace of Saltaire - on the relation between Liberalism and religio...

Reform council leader thinks circumcision causes transgenderism

The new Reform UK leader of Lincolnshire County Council has suggested there's a link between circumcision and transgenderism in children...

Nick Cohen's podcast: Don't back any horses tipped by Nick Tyrone

Embed from Getty Images Nick Cohen's latest podcast dropped two days ago. His guest, billed as an expert on the Conservative Party, was ...

Fleetwood Mac: Dust My Broom

Scintillating slide guitar from Jeremy Spencer.

Tuesday, May 13, 2025

Thought for the Day: “We know that at night-time someone goes by amongst the trees, but we never speak of it”

I first came across this saying in Visionary and Dreamer , David Cecil's study of the artists Samuel Palmer and Edward Burne-Jones. If I...

"Come back, Shane!" are not the last words spoken in the film

I've come across another Mandela effect online, this one involving the classic Western, Shane. Some people - and I'm one of them - a...

New Leicestershire Reform councillor was sacked as a police officer last year

BBC News reports, nay reveals , that a newly elected Reform member of Leicestershire County Council was dismissed from Leicestershire Police...

Monday, May 12, 2025

Alistair Carmichael: Labour is falling into the same trap the Tories did on immigration

The senior Liberal Democrat MP Alistair Carmichael has given a measured and Liberal response to today's intervention on immigration by K...

Three men held over suitcases stuffed with hermit crabs

Thanks to a nomination from a Liberal England reader, BBC News wins our Headline of the Day Award. The judges were relieved to find that th...

To celebrate St Pancras Day: The Beatles at Old St Pancras and a 1983 Steve Winwood interview

Today is St Pancras Day. To celebrate it, here's another showing for this video recreating the Beatles' visit to Old St Pancras chur...

Sunday, May 11, 2025

The Joy of Six 1358

"Quite apart from winning Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Shropshire outright, the Lib Dems are set to lead Gloucestershire, Wiltshire ...

Lib Dems watch Reform: Reform watches the Lib Dems

Embed from Getty Images The Liberal Democrats have set up an internal "Reform watch" to monitor Nigel Farage’s party in local gove...

Arthur Brown: Give Him a Flower

Before Arthur Brown released Fire , he released a single called Devil's Grip on Me. And this was on the B-side. Give Him a Flower is a m...

Saturday, May 10, 2025

I love Harborough in the springtime

I think it was the daily walks under Covid Lockdown that did it, but in recent years I've come over all Fotherington-Tomas about flowers...

More good news from Shropshire: Plan to pollute the Onny dropped

Severn Trent Water has dropped plans to pipe treated sewage from Bishop's Castle to the River Onny. The BBC News Shropshire pages repor...

Nick Tyrone comes out for Reform UK

"That I’m flirting with voting Reform might surprise you," writes Nick Tyrone at the start of his latest piece for the Spectator....

Friday, May 09, 2025

Gerrard Winstanley would love this: The councillor for Weybridge & St. George’s has joined the Lib Dems

One of the key sites of political radicalism during the English Civil War is now represented by a Liberal Democrat. As Mark Pack reports: C...

Market Harborough cattle market and retail market in 1992

This video makes it look a long time ago - it was a long time ago - but one of the major decisions Harborough District Council took while I ...

The Joy of Six 1357

Gary Younge says the heroism of soldiers from India, Africa and the Caribbean is often airbrushed out of the history of the second world wa...

Thursday, May 08, 2025

Canals in crisis? A stretch of the Erewash Canal without water

Is the shortage of funds for canal maintenance starting to show? As the commentary on this video says, there have already been a number of ...

Bargain Hunt expert charged with terror offences

Well that woke the judges up! Thanks to BBC News , we have our Headline of the Day.

The West of England has a Lib Dem deputy mayor

Kevin Guy, the Liberal Democrat leader of Bath and North East Somerset Council, will serve as deputy mayor of the West of England for the ne...

Wednesday, May 07, 2025

Quicksilver and Quince: Two cats who shared a bank account

This clip from 1973 is lovely. Two cats who share a bank account and use it to make donations to good causes. If you wanted a picture of Bri...

Joni Mitchell: The Last Time I Saw Richard

This is the best song about disillusionment that I know: And he told me all romantics meet the same fate some day Cynical and drunk and bori...

The Joy of Six 1356

"From where I’m sitting, it seems inevitable that Farage will suffer the same fate as Johnson. They are beneficiaries of false advertis...

View web version

Powered by Blogger.