How reliable is public consultation in the age of AI?Testing out policy changes with stakeholders and the public is always a challenge. It can be time-consuming and expensive, not only does it have to be done, but if councils and national governments want to avoid legal challenges, then it is compulsory. In many ways the dawn of an online society has made this process much easier, though there is the unresolved issue of the technically-challenged and those who do not have access to computers to contend with, something that nobody appears to have got to grips with yet. However, just how reliable is this sort of consultation? The Mirror ... (more) |
On romanticising nationalised railways...I am currently reading Ghost stations: essays and branchlines by Patrick McLoughlin. I am enjoying the book and why would I not? I am most interested in ghosts, stations, ghost stations, essays and branchlines. The author has an engaging tone and interesting back story with the author being an Oxford academic but having his roots in post-industrial Belgium. Even though not yet halfway through, I would not hesitate to recommend it. Yet early on I started bristling at a point that I find typical of this genre of book, literary non-fiction about place and landscape. That is a tendency to ... (more) |
Ed Davey on the Budget: British people need real change and fastYou can watch Ed Davey's response to the Budget statement here. The full text is below. He wants to see more radical action to encourage growth and the most important thing is try to repair the damage brought about by Brexit. His main message is that we need some jam today and can't wait another 5-10 years for it. Here is his response in full: It is always a pleasure to follow the Chair of the Treasury Committee, the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier). I am glad she committed to looking at the devil in ... (more) |
Vince Cable writes: A budget of small thingsThe Chancellor hasn't crashed the economy by reckless unfunded commitments. Perhaps we should be grateful for small mercies (of which Liz Truss's new book helpfully reminds us). Nor were there any damaging measures like Rachel Reeves' big hike in employers' national insurance contributions. There were lots of small, uncontroversial reliefs for consumers and business which are being paid for by raiding the banks (as I previewed in my last Substack article: The Endless Search for Painless Taxes). But as Kemi Badenoch asked, in her rather effective reply to the Budget, 'Is that It?' Much of the budget had been trailed ... (more) |
Farewell to another legend... John Shipley retires...It is occasionally odd to think that, as I've been married to Ros for more than eighteen years now - a fact which astonishes me as much now as it did when I saw her walk up the aisle towards me on that April afternoon - I've been an observer of the Parliamentary Party in the Lords for just as long. In the early years, especially whilst I was still working in London, I would regularly meet Ros after work and attend social events hosted by her colleagues - birthday parties or Christmas gatherings - and so I met some ... (more) |
How George Santos bet on himself and lostEmbed from Getty ImagesHere's the opening of Geoff Mann's essay on prediction markets in the current London Review of Books: In​ the days leading up to Donald Trump's State of the Union address in February, the prediction market Kalshi set up a trade, a wager in all but name, on the Yes/No proposition that the disgraced Republican ex-congressman George Santos would attend. The larger the number of people who bet 'Yes' (or, in the language the prediction markets prefer, bought 'Yes' contracts), the more the value of the bet would rise; if they bet 'No', it would fall. Santos saw ... (more) |
A night at the AGMIn truth, I haven't really engaged with my current Local Party - Ipswich - as much as I perhaps have done in the past. I've attended the odd meeting, delivered leaflets when asked and vaguely offered my services as required. So far, so good, especially as my services haven't been required. But I do take an interest and, when I received an invitation to the Local Party Annual General Meeting, I checked my diary and concluded that I might turn up, if only to see what was happening. Ipswich Liberal Democrats do remind me of many of the Local Parties ... (more) |
David Chadwick launches bid to be Welsh Lib Dem LeaderFollowing Jane Dodds saying that she will not seek re-nomination as Welsh Lib Dem Leader, the only other person eligible to stand under the current constitution is David Chadwick MP. He has now formally thrown his hat into the ring. He will be confirmed in post and will set out his vision and strategy then. David was elected in 2024 and is the Wales spokesperson in Ed Davey's Shadow Cabinet. He said: Wales is a country with enormous potential. We have talented young people, innovative businesses and communities with the ambition to achieve great things. But too often, that ambition ... (more) |
Joe Jackson: Breaking Us in TwoBreaking Us in Two comes from Jackson's 1982 album Night and Day. The railway in the video is the Keighley and Worth Valley. And the station is Oakworth, which was the station in Lionel Jeffries' film of The Railway Children. (more) |
The Joy of Six 1598"The world's solar power is crossing a threshold. A decade ago, it barely registered on a global scale, providing just 1 per cent of the world's power. In 2026, it will almost certainly increase to 10 per cent of power, and overtake nuclear, a mainstay of electricity since the late 1970s."Jocelyn Timperley on the reasons for solar's success and where it may go from here. David Gauke asks: "What were they thinking of? All those British right-of-centre politicians who had wholeheartedly backed the Ukrainians in their brave resistance to Russian aggression, who then declared their support for Donald Trump's candidacy ... (more) |