Purdah – a term previously used to describe the period leading up to an election, commencing on the date the Notice of Election is published and ending at the close of the poll on election day. Was ever anyone more aptly-named than Edwina Currie (yes, yes. I know she calls herself Currie Jones these days […]
The post-Brexit transition period continues to hurt businesses across our region, with many losing orders and/or moving operations elsewhere to reduce the friction, costing our region future jobs and growth. In this new interview, we talk to Mark Lord of Aztec Oils, a specialist lubricant oil company based in Bolsover, Derbyshire, founded in 1995. It […]
Lamport Hall in Northamptonshire is a pretty typical, privately run stately home. It’s got painted ceilings and Neapolitan cabinets. It’s got extensive gardens and a classical frontage. It’s even got a baronet credited with introducing the garden gnome into Britain. What’s not to love? What it also seems to have is huge amounts of chutzpah. […]
Staffordshire in the West Midlands has a population of over 1.1 million, contains extremes of wealth, inner-city poverty and everything in between and is spread over historical market towns, rolling farmland, and post-industrial cities. Divided into twelve parliamentary constituencies, in the 2019 general election 40% of the Staffordshire electorate voted Conservative and all twelve constituencies […]
The story of Carl Husted, Darren Henry MP’s constituency manager and harasser. “Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed; everything else is public relations.” I pull up the slide on the screen, and with this quote (much misattributed to George Orwell) conclude my presentation. A dozen teenagers, returning to the classroom for […]
Today, the Chinese government has announced sanctions against a number of UK individuals and organisations – including MP for Harbrough, Neil O’Brien who leads the China Research Group and advises the Prime Minister on policy. These sanctions are a tit-for-tat response to similar sanctions brought against a number of Chinese officials four days ago by […]
Northamptonshire is not somewhere you would expect to make world wide news. Yet in 2018 the New York Times (more used to doing an exposé on Donald Trump’s finances than reporting on English local government) reported the headline ‘As Austerity Helps Bankrupt an English County, Even Conservatives Mutiny’. The legendary incompetence of the Conservative run […]
Since 2008, Brian Clough’s statue has been a popular spot for demonstrators and tourists. It stands proudly in Nottingham’s city centre just off the Old Market Square. It became the first Speakers’ Corner in the UK after an Act of Parliament in 1872 paved the way for the original in London’s Hyde Park. The site […]
To celebrate this international women’s day, we wanted to identify an eminent woman from the Midlands. Given the current Covid-19 pandemic, we could pick none better than Dr Janet Lane-Claypon, a pioneer of epidemiology. She was born in Boston, Lincolnshire in 1877 and studied at the London School of Medicine for Women. She was the […]
Andrew Bridgen MP has suggested to David Frost, the new minister for negotiating the post-Brexit Trade and Co-operation Agreement with the EU, that we retaliate against the French rejection of British shellfish exports by banning the import of Perrier water from France. He is either being frivolous with ministerial time or laughably serious. Oh Andrew […]
Mansfield today is waking up to the stunning news that their headline-hunting MP, Ben Bradley, has been appointed to the Women and Equalities Committee in the House of Commons.
When I arrived in the UK in November 2019, I was delighted that finally after 18 months of a hard and dangerous journey, I arrived to my dream land looking for human rights, freedom, justice and freedom of speech.
In Derby, a property that houses asylum seekers and run by Serco – yes, that Serco – is in such appalling condition that the city council is arranging an urgent inspection. According to the Guardian, photos show missing ceilings, an unusable shower full of rubble and with cracked or missing tiles, rusted pipes and walls […]
In my East Midlands, progressively-inclined corner of the internet, I come across daily complaints by members of the public that their Tory MP has blocked them on social media.
Since 2001, Lord Anthony Bamford and his family (who run the manufacturing company JCB) have put almost £14 million into the British political system. This included funding the Eurosceptic leadership campaigns of Iain Duncan Smith (2001), David Davis (2005), and Boris Johnson (2019) along with putting £1.3 million behind pro-Brexit groups before the 2016 referendum. […]
Some of you may already know of Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians. More, I suspect, will not. She wasn’t somebody we learnt about at school, unlike Boudicca or Joan of Arc. I confess that I know of her mainly through ‘The Last Kingdom’ – the BBC/Netflix adaptation of Bernard Cornwell’s novels. But Æthelflæd should be […]
You will have noticed, no doubt, the furore about the possibility of a new coal mine in Cumbria. This would be built (dug?) on a brownfield site to mine for coal under the Irish Sea to produce coking coal for steel-making, 85% of which would be exported. Domestically, our need for coking coal is likely […]
SureScreen offered the tests to the government nearly a year ago but they were ignored. Addressing the government’s response to their approach, David Campbell, one of the directors, said, “We’ve done our best to engage with the government. There’s been tentative interest but unfortunately we haven’t had any good dialogue.”
Leicestershire and Rutland European Movement has conducted research into the impacts of Brexit in the local area. The findings reveal some hard truths about the future for small businesses in the region.
Levels in Rutland have doubled over the past week whilst Corby currently has the highest number of cases of any area in England. Of the 15 areas in England where cases are currently rising, 7 of them are in our region – Corby, Kettering, Boston, Rutland, East Lindsey, North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire.
‘We are in the same storm, but not the same boat.’ The pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated inequalities in health. People living in the most deprived areas of the UK are more than twice as likely to die from contracting Covid-19, than people living in the least deprived areas. However, what we see now with […]