Chris Whiteside's Blog

Former minister Tom Harris did an interesting piece following by an online Q and A on why he resigned from the Labour party which you can read at the Telegraph site here . The reasons can be summarised in the title of the article: " I have resigned from Labour because the war is over, and the moderates have lost ."

Throughout the 20th Century and the early years of this one, the UK and many other countries experienced steady improvements in life expectancy at birth. This has been attributed to better nutrition, healthier habits among the population such as reduced smoking rates and improvements in treating infectious illnesses and conditions like heart disease. But sine 2011 the progress has slowed, here and abroad, and ONS figures released today suggest that the slowdown is more pronounced in the UK than many similar countries. Life expectancy is still going up, but not nearly as fast as it was. The ONS's analysis found the slowdown in life-expectancy improvement in the UK was most pronounced in women, dropping by 90% from 12.9 weeks per year from 2006 to 2011 to 1.2 weeks from 2011 to 2012 - the biggest reduction in all of the countries it analysed. For men, this was down 76% from 17.3 to 4.2 weeks. That part of the slowdown which is common among all rich countries may simply ind...

Both Anti-Semitism and prejudice against Muslims are on the rise. I don't believe any major party can afford to be complacent about either of them. There is a temptation for some people on each side of politics to brush aside suggestions of one or other problem with "Whataboutery" e.g. instead of investigating whether there is really a problem you just say "whatabout" and point to a real or imagined problem on the other side of the political spectrum. There can be a very fine line between the actions of a brave and honest person who is calling for or taking action about a genuine injustice and someone who is making a bad situation worse with inflammatory or exaggerated claims which will drag in innocent people as well as the guilty. And some of the issues involved are incredibly difficult and emotive. For example, we have a real problem of terrorism by Islamist extremists who claim to be acting in the name of Islam. However, blaming all Muslims for such ac...

Emphasising her wish to move away from the religious tyranny in which most religious viewpoints in her era had participated and from which all had suffered, Queen Elizabeth the First promised " I have no desire to make windows into men's souls ." Alas, many who call themselves liberals do not share that view today. The political hostility that has been aimed at some politicians in various different parts of the political spectrum, not for their political beliefs but for their actual or supposed religious ones is a matter of concern. To be clear, if a politician who holds a particular religious view also says that if elected to a position of power which enables them to do so they will use the law to impose that religious view by law on everyone else, that is absolutely a matter for legitimate political debate. In a democracy how you propose to use the authority you are asking the electorate to give you is something which you can and should be asked ...

Barry David Elliott, a.k.a. Barry Chuckle, died today at the age of 73 after a period of ill health. The news will disappoint the millions of fans of the "Chuckle Brothers," Barry and his brother Paul. What was to be their last project, a 12 - part series called "Chuckle Time" is currently airing on Channel 5 and is due to run until September. Barry and Paul have appeared in a great many TV and stage performances, particularly but not only for children, and given many people a vast amount of pleasure. Rest in Peace.

There is an extremely perceptive article in the FT from the paper's outgoing American chief leader writer, Robert Armstrong, who is about to return to the states after spending five years here while doing the job. It's called " Why stubbornness is the secret to Britishness " and in the article Armstrong argues that the defining element which links all the diverse British tribes - from the ERG to Momentum, from the arch-remainers to the SNP, from UKIP to the trade unions - is that "The residents of these islands do not like being told what to do. They are stubborn, intractable and uppity.The British political classes, along with their opposite numbers in Brussels, have been re-learning this simple point, from Leavers and Remainers alike, since the June 2016 referendum.  "Once I grasped it, not just Brexit but the whole heaving complexity of British culture, from its ways of talking to its manners to its humour and politics, became just a little bit ...

"One of the lessons of history is that Newton’s Third Law applies to politics as well. For every political philosophy there is an opposite force, for every type of leader there is a nemesis." This is the idea which forms the basis of an interesting article by former Labour party member Jack Wylde, "The Third Law of Politics," which you can read here . This is not an endorsement in the sense that I don't agree with everything in the article but I found it thought provoking so decided to share the link.

A former minister, Tom Harris, has resigned from the Labour party, saying that ' It's just not the place for me any more .' There has been a steady drip of Labour resignations in the past year but in my humble opinion this is one of the most significant ones, as Tom Harris, a member of the far from large group of Labour MPs for whom I have much respect, was both one of the more talented and one of the more open minded parliamentarians of his generation. Mr Harris served as MP for Glasgow Cathcart and then Glasgow South between 2001 and 2015 and as a transport minister under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown from 2006 to 2008, before being swept out of parliament in the 2015 SNP surge. He was exactly the sort of person Labour needed to start making inroads again in Scotland and in the political centre. He told the Scottish Sunday Herald it was a “personal decision” and he did not plan to join another party. He added, “ It felt a wee bit like a bereavement, I felt a bit em...

We had a great campaigning and survey canvass in Millom today. For all who were out campaigning today, here is a piece of music to relax to.

Confirmation bias, to which almost all human beings are prone, is the tendency to find reasons not to accept evidence or apparent evidence which goes against your pre-existing opinions (or what you desperately want to believe) while uncritically accepting evidence which supports the evidence you want to believe. It is what makes changing people's minds by argument so difficult. Comments are allowed on this post - put up specifically to allow anyone who wants to make a constructive comment on the issues raised by today's "Quote of the day."

Although Bill Murray has a point in this amusing quote ... Being serious, I don't think that's the best way to express the argument. I would rather suggest that it completely impossible to win an argument with anyone, smart in other respects or stupid, who has such a strong case of confirmation bias that they are completely incapable of taking on board evidence which supports a view that they don't want to believe. Contrary to my normal practice, I am not allowing comments on this thread because if I did some twit would use the comment facility to accuse other people of being stupid, thereby proving that he or she is the stupid one and adding nothing to the argument. But I will put up another post on which I do allow comments, about confirmation bias.

The Sun Newspaper comes in for a lot of flak. Some of it is justified. But they do sometimes get it right, and I was pleased to see their editorial yesterday about Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (who calls himself Tommy Robinson). Their political editor was sharing this on social media so I presume they don't mind people re-publishing it.

"In the UK, a constitutional expert is a historian who has given their phone number to a journalist."   ( Professor Vernon Bogdanor , quoted by W Elliot Bulmer on twitter)

The Hosepipe ban in the North West which had been due to start on Sunday 5th August 2018 has been cancelled by United Utilities because the rain over the past week has sufficiently refilled the reservoirs. The United Utilities statement continues as follows: "The slightly cooler temperatures and recent rainfall have eased the demand for water and together with our customers’ water saving efforts means we do not need to introduce any restrictions at this time. "Dr Martin Padley, our Water Services Director, said: “We would like to thank all of our customers who have helped in recent weeks by saving water wherever they can around the home and in the garden.  “Our leakage teams are working 24 hours a day to find and repair as many leaks as possible and we have been moving water around our network. We have also been making operational interventions such as installation of new pumping stations, pumping between reservoirs, bringing ground water sources into use and p...

Carolyn Fairbairn, Director General of the CBI, has warned the EU that both sides, not just Britain, need to compromise to avoid damage of the two sides fail to agree a sensible basis for trade after Brexit. Speaking to Italian daily Corriere della Sera , she warned EU negotiators they should consider " the impact a Brexit no deal would have on European economies ". Ms Fairbairn suggested that the scenario where the UK leaves the Brussels bloc without an agreement could affect 1.2million jobs in Europe. She added that it was time the EU opened its eyes and realised the harm disruption to trade could do would affect both sides of the Channel. She said: "People always talk about the port of Dover collapsing, but the same thing would happen at Calais in France where almost the entire traffic is towards the UK. "Same goes for Dutch and German ports." She also said that some of the more alarmist claims about shortages of food and medicine in the event of a...

Highways England advises road users to expect more worse-than-normal delays on the A595 between Whitehaven and Egremont as work continues in the Bigrigg area with temporary traffic signals in place. This will apply from 8am to 4.30pm today. There are also roadworks and traffic signals on the A595 in Whitehaven so the road is likely to be seriously disrupted all day for a good distance North of Sellafield.

Following the discovery of an archive of Monty Python material the Evening Standard cartoonist has this take …

Mrs Glenda Leake - just "Glenda" to everyone in Whitehaven who knew her, which is most of the town - died on 27th July after a series of illnesses. Until fairly recently Glenda used to be a regular sight around Whitehaven on her bicycle and she did a range of odd jobs from windows to cleaning for a large segment of the local populace. She and her husband Harold, who survives her, did an excellent job turning the land around their house which they leased from Copeland BC and had previously been an absolute eyesore into a beautiful garden. (For obvious reasons I'm not going to give the location here.) In the face of what were often very challenging circumstances she worked extremely hard to make the best of herself. Glenda was one of the bravest and most hard-working people I ever met and an embodiment of what is meant by the expression "the salt of the earth." Rest in Peace.

"I miss … the old Britain. A country where political discourse was measured and proportionate, petty even. Where every public debate didn’t devolve into existential panic and belligerent name calling. What I miss, in today’s febrile Britain, is the stiff upper lip." ( Ben Judah , in an article on The Atlantic site which you can read here .)

The Court of Appeal has quashed one of two Contempt of Court convictions against which Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who uses the name Tommy Robinson, was appealing and ordered his release on bail pending a fresh trial. He has subsequently been released from prison. The Appeal Court upheld Yaxley-Lennon's original conviction for contempt of court, for which he was given a three-month prison sentence suspended for 18 months, in respect of a trial at Canterbury Crown Court in 2017. However, the court also found that Yaxley-Lennon's second conviction for contempt of court in respect of a trial at Leeds Crown Court earlier this year, when his suspended sentence was activated and he was given a further ten-month sentence because the Leeds judge ruled that he had effectively repeated the offence, was based on a "fundamentally flawed" process and they quashed it. At the Court of Appeal, Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett and his colleagues ruled there had been technical flaws ...

A few days ago the chairman of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, Sir Michael Rawlins, spoke in a "personal capacity" to the Pharmaceutical Journal and his interview included the following: “ We make no insulin in the UK. We import every drop of it. You can’t transport insulin around ordinarily because it must be temperature-controlled. And there are 3.5 million people [with diabetes, some of whom] rely on insulin, not least the Prime Minister. ” This was repeated on social media by the head of operations at Channel 4, doubtless in good faith - if the chairman of the regulatory agency for drugs makes a comment like that even in a personal capacity it's a legitimate news story - and over the weekend a number of people got very heated about it on social media. In fact Sir Michael was exaggerating when he said that Britain imports every drop of insulin - one of the two suppliers which was being quoted by outraged Brexit supporters as manufacturin...

Jeremy Corbyn has now apologised for hosting an event at which the main speaker compared Israel to the Nazis. The event took place on Holocaust Memorial Day 2010 . The Labour leader admitted he had appeared alongside people " whose views I completely reject " as  a backbench MP and apologised for the " concerns and anxiety " caused to the Jewish community.

Of course, anyone who knows the area would normally expect delays on the A595 as it passes through my division (and in many other places) particularly at rush hour and when the Sellafield shifts change. Alas, the delays in my patch will be worse than usual today during the off-peak period between 9.30am, and 3.30am as Highways England are doing road stud installation work between Moor Row and Bigrigg and will have "Stop - Go" boards in operation.