Author Archives: Cambridge Town Owl

Me to Dotty McLeod on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire this morning. Above – a screengrab from the spoof ad from Juice Media in Australia on the shambles that was Boris Johnson’s administration. Watch the video here. Are things even worse now?!?! It’s never straight forward to try and give a non-party-political assessment of the political andContinue reading ““24 hours is a very long time in politics and this week will feel like an eternity””

Following on from the debate by councillors If you don’t know who Florence is, have a read about the Mother of Modern Cambridge. Above – Cllr Mrs Keynes (1915), from the Palmer Clark Archive in the Cambridgeshire Collection, colourised by Nick Harris, print commissioned by Antony Carpen. I managed to get to The Guildhall atContinue reading “Revamp Cambridge’s Guildhall in time for Florence Ada Keynes’ mayoral centenary 1932-2032”

On the decline of local government – and why opposition parties need to come up with radical policies that can reverse this decline knowing that HM Treasury will try to block anything they suggest. You can read Unlock Democracy’s report Forty years of decline here. As Cllr Sam Davies MBE (Ind – Queen Edith’s onContinue reading ““40 years of hurt…never stopped us dreaming!””

On the day she sacked her Chancellor who over the past few weeks she told the world she was in lock-step with, the PM’s public speeches have been so dry and wooden that they might constitute a fire hazard under health and safety! Have a listen to Beth Rigby above – who interviewed the PrimeContinue reading “The Prime Minister achieved the impossible in her press conference. She made things worse.”

In the early 1920s we had three general elections in three years. Is something similar looming after a disastrous performance by the Prime Minister at PMQs today? (See also Held in Contempt by Hannah White) In GCSE history in the 1990s we learnt more about interwar Germany than we did about interwar UK. So IContinue reading “So this is what the early 1920s in UK politics must have been like!”

…might have been the headline if the guildhall was at risk of being sold off, but the recommendation to councillors was to keep hold of it while relinquishing other buildings in the face of further central government cuts For those of you wondering where the Cambridge Town Owl actually came from, have a look atContinue reading ““Cambridge Town Owl saves Guildhall!””

Anglian Water made the announcement today – what will happen to the earth that will need to be excavated to make way for the huge volumes of water? Could a light rail line be constructed that can then be converted into a passenger line? Above – an indication of where the reservoir will be locatedContinue reading “Chatteris to be the site of the Fenland Reservoir”

Over 30 people turned up to discuss how to hold the University of Cambridge and its colleges accountable for the decisions they take as corporate institutions It was mainly students at this gathering at the back room of St Andrew’s Street Baptist Church, plus a handful of us not-so-young town people, who went to thisContinue reading “Meeting the Cambridge Land Justice Campaign – Oct 2022”

I promised staff caring for me last December that I’d follow up housing and transport issues. It took me a while to figure out the structures (amongst other things) but I managed to table some Qs to their annual meeting. When I was in hospital in December 2021, it was in the middle of theContinue reading “Asking Addenbrooke’s Hospital / CUH about housing and transport plans”

Who is this made-up anti-growth coalition? And will the divide-and-rule strategy backfire? “Vested interests dressed up as think tanks?” Yup. The response from her opponents has been something like this: Above – “Tarantino’s new star” by North & South, 1997 And not just ‘the usual suspects’. This from the Institute for Government’s Dr Hannah White.Continue reading “Greenpeace gatecrash Liz Truss’s party conference speech”