Thursday, October 01, 2020

A slightly stunned parish councillor makes it to the big league?

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Two weeks ago, I was merely the Chair of a small, albeit perfectly formed, Parish Council of a small village in a backwater of mid-Suffolk. ...
2 comments:
Tuesday, September 29, 2020

It looks like the Government might have a fight on the hands over their planning proposals

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I live in a pretty conservative part of the country - Conservative administrations are the norm rather than the exception - and local Conser...
Sunday, September 27, 2020

It could be a long, dark winter...

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I have, I suspect, been quite lucky in terms of how the pandemic has affected me since March. Without the prospect of losing my job and, tha...
Saturday, September 26, 2020

Does a policy of meaningful federalism offer a credible option to the nations?

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I don’t oppose Scottish independence, assuming that that’s what the Scottish people want. And, given that the options available to them were...
Friday, September 25, 2020

Going back to the office? That’ll be a “no” then...

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Three weeks ago, word came out that “us slackers working for the Government should return to the office and get some work done” - I paraphra...

Ros in the Lords: Agriculture Bill, Committee Stage (3)

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As the Committee Stage of the Agriculture Bill progressed, Ros's past experience as a local councillor and as Chair of an EU select comm...
Thursday, September 24, 2020

Ros in the Lords: Environmental Protection (Plastic Straws, Cotton Buds and Stirrers) (England) Regulations 2020

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Sometimes, the most unexpected pieces of Parliamentary business attract a lot of comment from Peers, and this might be one of them. That sai...
Wednesday, September 23, 2020

Ros in the Lords: Agriculture Bill - Committee Stage (2)

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Ros has been keen to play her part in the Liberal Democrat response to the Agriculture Bill, so it wasn't a surprise to see her contribu...
Tuesday, September 22, 2020

Creeting St Peter: a plucky community faces a District Council over Gateway 14

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One of the things that makes me most nervous about being the Chair of a Parish Council is managing expectation. Because, in truth, we don’t ...
Monday, September 21, 2020

SALC: catching up on my reading...

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So, having unexpectedly gotten myself elected to be Vice-Chair of my Branch of the Suffolk Association of Local Councils, I am also a member...
Sunday, September 20, 2020

The monkeys stand for honesty, giraffes are insincere...

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At least, so sang Simon and Garfunkel. It’s hard to tell how sincere a giraffe is - how could you possibly tell? - but they are rather charm...

Are Liberal Democrats too busy talking to themselves to reach out to the electorate?

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I have to admit that I drafted this a month ago for Liberal Democrat Voice, but decided not to publish it at the time - I wasn’t sure that I...
3 comments:
Saturday, September 19, 2020

A sunny September stroll on a Saturday in Suffolk

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One thing that has made the restrictions of the pandemic more tolerable is that, here in Suffolk, there’s plenty of space, and not so many p...

Getting to the County town, even if it isn’t necessarily where you want to go...

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A fellow Liberal Democrat colleague from the north-east of the County has made the point that, if you want to go to the County town by bus, ...
Friday, September 18, 2020

That’s a nice County Council you’ve got there... pity if something happened to it...

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It’s been a decade since the demise of the last attempt to restructure local government in Suffolk, when some of the dying breath of the Lab...
3 comments:
Thursday, September 17, 2020

A newly elected Vice-Chair emerges blinking into the world....

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Ever since I became a Parish Councillor, one of my responsibilities was what you might call external liaison, i.e. attending meetings of bod...
Wednesday, September 16, 2020

The Kind Hearts and Coronets route to a place on a Federal Committee?...

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Readers may recall that my campaigns for election to the Federal International Relations Committee and the Party’s delegation to the ALDE Pa...
Tuesday, September 15, 2020

A Suffolk Circle via the Stour Valley

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I had set aside today for some internal Liberal Democrat stuff but, for reasons beyond my control, it was cancelled. What to do instead on w...
Monday, September 14, 2020

So, I went into the office...

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It’s been six months since I received the fateful message that we would be working from home for a while. And, until Friday, I hadn’t been b...
2 comments:
Sunday, September 13, 2020

There is apparently an acceptable level of law breaking...

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So, apparently, suggests... the Lord Chancellor? You are kidding me, right? It seems not. What that means is one of four things; He actually...