Craig Johnson

Following the local elections last Thursday, a flurry of interviews and hastily thought-up comments hit BBC/Sky/Channel 4/Twitter etc from politicians of parties that had done rather well, and some that had had a tough night. One that caught my eye was quoted in the Huffington Post from an interview on BBC News with Liberal Democrat Home Office Minister Jeremy Browne MP.

The view that UKIP was now a significant player in British politics was echoed by Lib Dem Home Office Minister Jeremy Browne. He told the BBC the UK was now a “four party political system” and suspected people were voting UKIP to rail against the establishment. “There is unease about how politics is done in this country,” he said.

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Some photos from a May Bank Holiday Monday walk in and around Blanchland.

Margaret Thatcher and The Invention of Industrial Pasts

I’m keeping a log of the films I’ve watched this year, so that at the end I can look back on the memorable and not so memorable ones.

Les Miserables (2013);

Paper Clips (2004);

Django Unchained (2012);

Twelve Angry Men (1957);

Lincoln (2012);

We Feed the World (2005);

R: Hit First, Hit Hardest (2010);

The Iron Lady (2011);

Once (2006);

Paris is Burning (1990);

The Artist (2011);

Gentlemen of Fortune (1971);

Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975); 

Monty Python & The Holy Grail (1975);

Amazing Grace (2007);

Good Vibrations (2012);

Boys from the Blackstuff (1982).

New Statesman 100: Tony Blair: Labour must search for answers and not merely aspire to be a repository for people’s anger

newstatesman100:

The centre has not shifted to the left, says Tony Blair. Labour must resist the easy option of tying itself to those forces whose anti-Tory shouts are loudest. Photograph: Getty Images

By Tony Blair

The paradox of the financial crisis is that, despite being widely held to have been…