Friday favourite 116

With the bankrupty of Detroit - what used to be the fourth largest city in the USA - here's Martha Reeves and the Vandellas - one of the early Motown acts. Enjoy...

Congratulations Jane Dodds...

... the new Lib Dem PPC for Montgomeryshire. 

Friday favourite 115

I'm not quite sure what Brian Redhead is doing in this clip.  But it adds a degree of randomness to one of the UK's finest punk bands:

Britain's flat tax?

Lib Dem Voice (and other Lib Dem bloggers) have rightly highlighted the Office of National Statistics report that shows income inequality is now lower than at any time since the mid 80s.  And it is partly down to the Lib Dem policy of taking low paid people out of income tax altogether.

But buried in the report (on page 7) is the following table showing the effective rates of tax for each quintile of the population:



What it basically shows is that each section of the population pays about 35% of their income in tax - effectively a flat tax.  Something this blog first discussed more than two years ago.

1969 BR posters at New Malden

Stopped off at New Malden on the way home this evening to do a spot of canvassing in the Beverley by-election.  At the station South West Trains are finally doing some improvement works and have stripped off decades worth of advertising posters to reveal these rather tattered BR Southern Region posters from 1969:

Close up of right hand poster:

 Close up of left hand poster:

Harriet Harman is being economical with the actualité

Harriet Harman apparently told the Andrew Marr show that the problems in their Falkirk branch were a 'one-off' and 'played down suggestions that the problems went wider than Falkirk.'

So why then have the Labour Party taken into 'special measures' (in effect suspension) at least 14 constituency parties? Many of these are also in the process of selecting parliamentary candidates.

The Labour List blog describes the process as a 'Kafkaesque farce'.

The 14 parties are:

• Bethnal Green and Bow
• Poplar and Limehouse
• Brentford & Isleworth
• Ealing Southall
• Falkirk West
• Feltham & Heston
• Oldham East and Saddleworth
• Oldham West and Royton
• Birmingham Hall Green
• Birmingham Hodge Hill
• Birmingham Ladywood
• Birmingham Perry Barr
• Warley
• Slough

Andy Murray's win - a curious political fact

British winners of the men's title at Wimbledon only ever happen when there is a Conservative Prime Minister leading a coalition government...

Friday Favourite 114

In memory of Edinburgh bluesman Stevey Hay who died unexpectedly this week.  Here's he is perfoming with his band 'Shades of Blue' late last year at Edinburgh's Voodoo Rooms.

It was 75 years ago today...

That a steam engine called Mallard reached 126 miles an hour on the East Coast mainline near Grantham, Lincolnshire. The Beeb and others have lots more.  But I stumbled across this film earlier - an attempt to show how fast that really looks using 1930s technology:

Boris bus seen in anger

Seen in the west end last night...