As Big Ben chimes seven, it’s time to celebrate the day 151 years ago, that the famous bell was drawn on a carriage pulled by 16 horses from Whitechapel Bell Foundry to the Palace of Westminster.
To show that cuts in Westminster are nothing new, the cost of the bell was reduced by recycling the metal from the previous, faulty bell:
George Mears, then the master bellfounder and owner of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, undertook the casting. According to foundry records, Mears originally quoted a price of £2401 for casting the bell, but this was offset to the sum of £1829 by the metal he was able to reclaim from the first bell so that the actual invoice tendered, on 28th May 1858, was in the sum of £572.
If you’d like to know what Big Ben itself has to say today, you can follow it [him?] on Twitter: @big_ben_clock.
2 Must-Read Blog Posts
What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here are two posts that caught my eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:
- David Laws knows the last digit of Pi and Simon Kaye knows it. Read his (and the broadsheets’) review of David’s defence of Government cuts.
- My First Lib-Dem meeting: Boris Pomroy describes his first time – do you still remember yours?
Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.
2 Big Stories
Sir Menzies Campbell to defy party line on tuition fees
Liberal Democrat Sir Menzies Campbell is set to rebel on the party policy of abstaining on tuition fees in England under the new coalition government.
The former party leader – who is also Chancellor of St Andrew’s University – told the Daily Politics he had never voted against the party before, but he could not go back on a pledge he had signed. [BBC]
ID cards scheme to be scrapped within 100 days
The £4.5bn national identity card scheme is to be scrapped within 100 days, the home secretary, Theresa May, announced [Thursday].
The 15,000 identity cards already issued are to be cancelled without any refund of the £30 fee to holders within a month of the legislation reaching the statute book.
Abolishing the cards and associated register will be the first piece of legislation introduced to parliament by the new government. May said the identity documents bill will invalidate all existing cards. [Guardian]
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3 Comments
Are we really going to stand by and allow another 172 peers to be appointed?
I didn’t join the party for this.
Except ID cards won’t be scrapped within 100 days and the bit about “invalidate all existing cards” isn’t true. The identity cards for foreigners remain and with them the whole apparatus.
ID cards for foreigners are utterly unnecessary. They have passports and visas, where visas are required. The cards were only introduced as Labour tried to enlist the support of racists for its ID card system.
The retention of ID cards for foreigners means that the whole mechanism is going to stay. Here’s a link to a story on the Register website which goes into detail. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/27/id_card_contracts/
The coalition’s abject failure to get rid of ID cards is a disgusting betrayal.
I had a good laugh at that Big Ben twitter page. I thought it would be something serious.