Simon Hooper visits Haltemprice and Howden where David Davis has forced a by-election on civil liberties. But how do voters worried about the economy feel at being part of a referendum?

It's not hard finding David Davis. There he is as I drive through Willerby, standing outside his campaign headquarters, taking advantage of a sunny break between the early morning Yorkshire showers to do his first television interview of the day.

A few minutes later, having warmly greeted the day's visiting Conservative bigwigs, former shadow cabinet colleagues George Osborne and Michael Gove, Davis can barely be restrained from his electorate any [...]

The Green candidate in the Haltemprice and Howden by-election accuses David Davis of avoiding debate with his rivals in her final article ahead of Thursday's election

The campaign is definitely accumulating votes fast as we get our message across, and we are all aware that the opportunity cost of talking to voters when weighed against talking to the press, or going to a meeting, or even writing a blog, is seriously weighted in favour of the voters.

Friday night was a good example. My team and I went canvassing in North Newbald – an attractive village [...]

'I have sat with a farmer in my constituency who has been brought to his knees by Bovine TB and I do not mind admitting that I cried for the first time in 20 years'

As chairman of the all party Parliamentary group for dairy farmers I am devastated at the news on Bovine TB announced first by the BBC. Early reports claimed that on Monday 7 July the government would announce, as they did, that they intended to ignore official expert advice to have a limited cull of badgers and would not be issuing licenses for a cull.

Predictions across the country are [...]

Growing old as a member of an eco-village has its perks, writes Findhorn resident Rhiannon Hanfman.

Following on with the theme of the ageing population of Findhorn and (everywhere else, really) I would like to approach it from the perspective of one of 60s generation who is now in her sixties. Since it was we who instigated the cult of youth and coined the phrase ‘don’t trust anyone over thirty’, we can hardly complain if there are those who now feel that there are way too [...]

Priest and academic Giles Fraser hails the progress towards consecrating women as bishops in the Church of England - an end to an unjustifiable discrimination lasting centuries

And about time too. Of course, we won’t have women bishops in the C of E for several years yet. But the momentum of the Synodical process is now decisively in the direction of consecrating women and the whole idea of women free zones for traditionalists has gone down in smoke. Those of us who had fought hard for this, quietly celebrated with a few beers in the student bar [...]

Reverend Father Marcus Hodges, an army chaplain currently stationed in Iraq, gives his take on the the importance of his ministry to those who depend on him for guidance

The all-pervasive fog of desert dust notwithstanding, there is a clear and powerful chaplaincy vision out here in the Iraqi desert. Of course, a vision of ministry, whether on a home unit or away, must in some sense be the same for all who labour in the rich harvest of the Church’s ministry; yet here in Basrah, it is, perhaps, in some senses simply more undiluted, more vital and more [...]

Simon Barnett, diagnosed manic depressive in 1981, writes on direct action, Madpride and this year's Bonkersfest, the annual arts and mental health festival...

I have been a mental health service user since 1981, when I was diagnosed, aged 21, with manic depression - now known as Bipolar Affective Disorder. Naively I thought a diagnosis would lead to a cure, that’s how medicine works right?

Unfortunately that’s not the case for about 40 per cent of people with this condition. The drugs don’t work and we continue to experience extreme mood swings. Until [...]

There is a distinct sense that the Westminster village needs to catch up with life beyond the sushi belt for Labour to get back in touch with voters north of the M62

A 1990s TV show about life in Alaska won a cult audience when it explored the vast gulf between the lives of urbanites from the influential cities of mainstream America and those perched in the far-flung reaches of the country, in the far, icy north.

The UK is not so vast – but sometimes the gap between the north and the deep south can feel just as wide.

Rumblings made [...]

Concerns over food storage are well-founded, but Brown's assessment left some feeing unsatisfied.

Gordon Brown's speech on Britain's food storage habits was a strange political moment. Could this be his version of John Major's Cones Hotline: not a bad idea in itself, but somehow redolent of the man himself. When the Prime Minister becomes a red-faced motorist in a traffic jam it's demeaning of his office. The Steve Bell image of Major with a cone on his head was almost as iconic as [...]

Gordon Brown's personality, the shabby treatment of dear old Sir John and close encounters of the food kind - well at the kitchen table anyway

There was great excitement here last week when we made the front page of the Sun:

ARMY SPOT UFOs OVER SHROPSHIRE

Soldiers report new sightings of craft

WATCH VIDEO

Our excitement lasted only until the next day's Shropshire Star quoted the manager of the Tern Hill Hall Hotel near Market Drayton. Guests there had let off 40 or 50 Chinese wedding lanterns minutes before the soldiers saw their UFOs. He [...]