Jones should end the cult of the captain that has bedevilled too many England teams in too many sports; it is a relic of the public school/officer class/born-to-lead era and the sooner it goes the better. Appoint on a game-by-game or tournament-by-tournament basis and that will avoid trouble later on.
lord bonkers is a pie— Jonathan Calder (@lordbonkers) January 10, 2016During the 1966 general election campaign one of Davidson's main policy points was the establishment of a development authority for the North East of Scotland (on the lines of the Highlands and Islands Development Board) and he was a strong advocate on behalf of small farmers and of improving communications in remote areas like the Highlands by improving road links to the major cities. He also campaigned for better air and sea links with Scandinavia.
Davidson was Liberal spokesman on foreign affairs and defence issues in Parliament, a particularly important brief given the ongoing war in Vietnam and the arguments over Britain's role East of Suez.
In February 1967, he took a leading role in the opposition to the government's plans to raise fees for foreign students at British universities and introduced a Bill to give the people of Scotland and Wales referendums on devolution. This was as part of the Liberal strategy to draw the sting of the increasing popularity of the Scottish National Party and re-establish the Liberal position on 'home rule all round' with the Scottish electorate.He chose not to defend his seat at the 1970 general election. Laura Grimond fought it for the Liberals but lost to the Conservative Colonel Colin 'Mad Mitch' Mitchell.*
My view is that the role of the media has become a crutch for the left, a convenient deflection from our own failure to convince and persuade. We fail to get traction, not because we have failed to communicate an inspiring alternative, but because the evil old media has brainwashed the public.
This is clearly patronising, reducing sentient human beings to sheep or robots, lacking agency and programmed by media oligarchs. It is a defeatist attitude, too, because if millions of people can simply be instructed what to think by powerful forces in society, then we will never win any battle. It stops us from being critical of our own failures and seeking to address them.Thanks to a tweet from John Rentoul.
The images and stories from besieged Madaya in Syria are truly shocking.
According to reports, in the past month alone 31 civilians have died in Madaya as a result of starvation or attempted escape, while the UN estimates that 400,000 remain besieged across the country.
We find it astonishing that so little has been done by the international community to break these sieges when life-saving medical and food aid are often only minutes away,And they conclude:
We urge you to push the UN, in particular the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, to be far bolder in its aid delivery and stop asking unnecessary permission from the Syrian government.
In the case that the UN continues to be denied access to these besieged areas by the Assad regime, the UK should strongly consider airdropping aid to those communities at risk of starvation. In some of these areas, the RAF is already flying anti-ISIS missions, and if necessary this is something we should press our European partners to support.
Like the airdrops by the US in 2014 to the Yazidis in Iraq, and the leadership shown by the last Conservative Government to save lives with similar action in Northern Iraq, there are immediate steps we can take to stop more vulnerable people dying needlessly of hunger. We cannot sit by and watch this happen.Read the full letter.
