Why Britain should be wary of Andy Burnham's Devolution RevolutionAndy Burnham's political appeal is easy to understand. At a time when Westminster appears remote, ineffective and disconnected from much of England, his call for devolution speaks directly to a widespread belief that power is too concentrated in London. Burnham's argument addresses a genuine problem. Britain is one of the most centralised democracies in the developed world. Decisions affecting communities hundreds of miles from Westminster are routinely made by ministers and civil servants with little understanding of local circumstances. The frustration this creates is entirely justified. Yet supporters of constitutional reform should be careful not to confuse devolution with democracy. ... (more) |
The Joy of Six 1540"I am speaking out today because many more asylum-seeking children are at risk due to plans to withdraw support and forcibly remove children whose families have failed asylum claims." The children's commissioner Rachel de Souza says no child should be made destitute to enforce harmful immigration rules. Zoe Grunewald finds that Brexit has made worse the very problems it was promised it would solve: "What comes in the next decade depends entirely on whether Britain's mainstream politicians can finally do what it has spent the previous decade refusing to: tell the truth about what Brexit did, who bears the cost, ... (more) |
Are we doing enough to insure against climate change?Whatever the naysayers claim about the 1976 heatwave, the recent extreme hot weather is of a different scale to the one-off event I remember as a teenager. For a start the temperatures are higher, but also what we are experiencing now is not an exception, it is part of a trend stretching over a number of years and likely to continue in the future. This is not a question of people just getting on with it. People and animals hae died as a result of the heat, while there is a clear knock-on effect for day-to-day life, with schools closing ... (more) |
Don't mention the Isle of Wight Separatists' 1950s terror campaignIf it weren't for Lord Bonkers, I should have taken this as a charming portrait of an English backwater 70 years ago. In reality, 1956 saw the height of the Isle of Wight Separatists' terror campaign and the film was made in an attempt to assure potential visitors that all was well there despite the headlines. Nowhere in this film do we see the internment camps for suspected Separatist sympathisers, the occupying British Army or the desperate poverty caused by the collapse of the island's major industry of producing tourist souvenirs that incorporate several different colours of sand. Yet is ... (more) |
Fergus McClelland was the last illegal major British child actorBefore Section 37 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1963 was enacted it was illegal for a child under 13 to appear in a film made in Britain. As I pointed out in an earlier post, this law was widely ignored. And I could have added Mandy Miller to the examples given there. She was six when she made a brief appearance in The Man in the White Suit and seven when she played the title role in Mandy. The director of both those Ealing films was Alexander Mackendrick, and he was still breaking the law when he shot ... (more) |
Labour and the Liberals in 1924 and todayMalcolm Petrie reviewed two books on the first Labour government for the London Review of Books a couple of years ago. The books were The Men of 1924: Britain's First Labour Government by Peter Clark and The Wild Men: The Remarkable Story of Britain's First Labour Government by David Torrance. In the course of his article, Petrie cast light on the relation between Labour and the Liberals - in 1924 and even, to an extent, today: Rather than seeking to implement a distinctive socialist programme, then, the Labour cabinet had two main ambitions in 1924. The first was to cement ... (more) |
Alistair Carmichael challenges "bizarre" Europcar policy on ShetlandA lionness defening her cubs would bave nothing on Alistair Carmichael in defence of the island communities he represents. Alistair's constituents from Shetland had booked a car hire in Glasgow. Europcar insisted they present their passports, which they hadn't thought to bring given that they come from Shetland, clearly part of the UK. They were told that this was because they were from a "British island". They were later told that this is defined as "one who, at the time of rental, is not resident in the United Kingdom or Northern Ireland. Included in this definition are residents of the ... (more) |
"Build, baby, build" but don't lower our ambitions on affordabilityOne of the first decisions taken by Southwark's new Liberal Democrat-Green Joint Administration has been to back the legal challenge against the Mayor of London and MHCLG's decision to reduce affordable housing requirements from 35% to 20%. For me, as Southwark's new Deputy Leader responsible for Strategic Planning, this was a straightforward decision. Housing has always been one of the defining Liberal Democrat issues in our borough. For years we have challenged Labour's failure to build enough genuinely affordable homes, called for stronger affordable housing requirements, and argued that local people deserve to be able to afford to live in ... (more) |
Family: Scene Through the Eye of a LensThis one ticks a lot of Liberal England boxes. Family grew out of a band called The Farinas that was formed at Leicester School of Art in 1962. By 1966 they had moved to London, and the following year they recorded Scene Through the Eye of a Lens, their first single. The track's producer was the American Jimmy Miller, who had previously worked with the Spencer Davis Group and was now working with Steve Winwood's new band Traffic. Which is why you will find three members of Traffic - Dave Mason, Jim Capaldi and Chris Wood - contributing extra percussion ... (more) |
Twenty-six years of evidence on drugs. Twenty-six years of cowardice.This week, a cross-party committee of the Oireachtas, the Irish parliament, recommended that Ireland decriminalise the possession of all drugs for personal use, agreeing with a verdict Ireland's Citizens' Assembly on Drug Use had reached two years earlier. It's a recommendation, not yet a law, and the Irish government's reaction was cautious rather than celebratory. Even so, it puts Ireland a step ahead of where Britain has managed to get on a question that, on the evidence, Britain's own institutions settled a generation ago. Twenty-six years ago, to be precise. In 2000, the Police Foundation's independent inquiry into the Misuse ... (more) |