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Reading West Parliamentary Constituency
Reading West is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2010 by Alok Sharma, a Conservative. He is currently serving in the Cabinet as the President for COP26. Sharma previously served as the Business Secretary, the International Development Secretary, and a minister in the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government and the Department for Work and Pensions. History The Reading West parliamentary constituency was first contested in 1983, when it was won by a member of the Conservative Party, Tony Durant, the sitting MP for the abolished Reading North constituency. He held the seat through two subsequent general elections until he retired at the 1997 election. The constituency was then won by Martin Salter for Labour, as part of the landslide that brought Labour back to power under Tony Blair. Salter held the seat through the 13 years of Labour government until Parliament was dissolved in April 2010, but did not stand in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Berkshire
Berkshire ( ; in the 17th century sometimes spelt phonetically as Barkeshire; abbreviated Berks.) is a historic county in South East England. One of the home counties, Berkshire was recognised by Queen Elizabeth II as the Royal County of Berkshire in 1957 because of the presence of Windsor Castle, and letters patent were issued in 1974. Berkshire is a county of historic origin, a ceremonial county and a non-metropolitan county without a county council. The county town is Reading. The River Thames formed the historic northern boundary, from Buscot in the west to Old Windsor in the east. The historic county, therefore, includes territory that is now administered by the Vale of White Horse and parts of South Oxfordshire in Oxfordshire, but excludes Caversham, Slough and five less populous settlements in the east of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. All the changes mentioned, apart from the change to Caversham, took place in 1974. The towns of Abingdon, Didcot, Far ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Department For Housing, Communities And Local Government
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC), formerly the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), is a department of His Majesty's Government responsible for housing, communities, local government in England and the levelling up policy. It was established in May 2006 and is the successor to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, established in 2001. The department shares its headquarters building, at 2 Marsham Street in London, with the Home Office. It was renamed to add Housing to its title and changed to a ministry in January 2018, and later reverted to a government department in the 2021 reshuffle. There are corresponding departments in the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Executive, responsible for communities and local government in their respective jurisdictions. Ministers The DLUHC's ministers are as follows: The Permanent Secretary is Jeremy Pocklington who took up his post on 30 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reading East (UK Parliament Constituency)
Reading East is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2017 by Matt Rodda, of the Labour Party. The seat is one of two won (held or gained) by a Labour candidate in 2017 from a total of eight covering Berkshire. Rodda's 2017 win was one of 30 net gains of the Labour Party. The seat has been, relative to others, a semi-marginal seat, and major-swing (volatile) seat since 2010. Its winner's majority has not exceeded 12.9% of the vote since the 15.2% majority won in that year. The seat has changed hands once since 2010. Constituency profile The seat contains the University of Reading and most of its students. The Thames Valley Business Park is in another part of the seat, hosting multinational and cutting-edge technology companies in the software and advanced computer science areas. Adjoining the redeveloped heart of town are a handful mid-rise blocks of ex-council flats and serried ranks of former relatively philanthropic biscuit, brick a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reading Railway Station
Reading railway station is a major transport hub in Reading, Berkshire, England. It is on the northern edge of the town centre, near the main retail and commercial areas and the River Thames, from . Reading is the ninth-busiest station in the UK outside London, and the second busiest interchange station outside London, with over 3.8 million passengers changing trains at the station annually. The station is managed by Network Rail and is served by four train operating companies: Great Western Railway, CrossCountry, South Western Railway and the Elizabeth line. History Original station The first Reading station was opened on 30 March 1840 as the temporary western terminus of the original line of the Great Western Railway (GWR). The time taken to travel from London to Reading was reduced to one hour and five minutes, less than a quarter of the time taken by the fastest stagecoach. The line was extended to its intended terminus at Bristol in 1841. As built, Reading stat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of ''The Guardian'' in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of ''The Guardian'' free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for ''The Guardian'' the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK. The editor-in-chief Katharine Viner succeeded Alan Rusbridger in 2015. Since 2018, the paper's main news ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marginal Seat
A marginal seat or swing seat is a constituency held with a small majority in a legislative election, generally one conducted under a single-winner voting system. In Canada, they may be known as target ridings. The opposite is a safe seat. The term ultra-marginal seat refers to a constituency with a majority of single or double digits, usually within a percentage of 2%. Examples of traditionally marginal seats in the United Kingdom include Broxtowe, Watford, Bolton West and Thurrock. In Australia, marginal seats include Lindsay in New South Wales, Braddon in Tasmania, Longman in Queensland and Corangamite in Victoria. In the United States In the United States, examples of congressional districts considered marginal in recent years include Illinois's 10th congressional district, located in the northern suburbs of Chicago, Texas's 23rd congressional district, covering most of Texas' border with Mexico, and New Hampshire's 1st congressional district, which includes much of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bellwether
A bellwether is a leader or an indicator of trends.bellwether " ''Cambridge Dictionary''. Retrieved 2022-01-22. In , the term often applies in a metaphorical sense to characterize a geographic region where political tendencies match in microcosm those of a wider area, such that the result of an in the former region might predict the eventual result in the latter. In |
2010 United Kingdom General Election
The 2010 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 6 May 2010, with 45,597,461 registered voters entitled to vote to elect members to the House of Commons. The election took place in 650 constituencies across the United Kingdom under the first-past-the-post system. The election resulted in a large swing to the Conservative Party similar to that seen in 1979, the last time a Conservative opposition had ousted a Labour government. The Labour Party lost the 66-seat majority it had previously enjoyed, but no party achieved the 326 seats needed for a majority. The Conservatives, led by David Cameron, won the most votes and seats, but still fell 20 seats short. This resulted in a hung parliament where no party was able to command a majority in the House of Commons. This was only the second general election since the Second World War to return a hung parliament, the first being the February 1974 election. For the leaders of all three major political parties, this was t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tony Blair
Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He previously served as Leader of the Opposition from 1994 to 1997, and had served in various shadow cabinet posts from 1987 to 1994. Blair was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007. He is the second longest serving prime minister in modern history after Margaret Thatcher, and is the longest serving Labour politician to have held the office. Blair attended the independent school Fettes College, and studied law at St John's College, Oxford, where he became a barrister. He became involved in Labour politics and was elected to the House of Commons in 1983 for the Sedgefield constituency in County Durham. As a backbencher, Blair supported moving the party to the political centre of British politics. He was appointed to Neil Kinnock's shadow cabinet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a political party in the United Kingdom that has been described as an alliance of social democrats, democratic socialists and trade unionists. The Labour Party sits on the centre-left of the political spectrum. In all general elections since 1922, Labour has been either the governing party or the Official Opposition. There have been six Labour prime ministers and thirteen Labour ministries. The party holds the annual Labour Party Conference, at which party policy is formulated. The party was founded in 1900, having grown out of the trade union movement and socialist parties of the 19th century. It overtook the Liberal Party to become the main opposition to the Conservative Party in the early 1920s, forming two minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in the 1920s and early 1930s. Labour served in the wartime coalition of 1940–1945, after which Clement Attlee's Labour government established the National Health Service and expanded the welfa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Martin Salter
Martin John Salter (born 19 April 1954) is a British Labour Party politician who was the Member of Parliament for Reading West from 1997 to 2010. Early life and career Born to Ray and Naomi Salter in Hampton, Middlesex, he received a grammar school education before attending the University of Sussex, though he left before gaining a degree, saying 'academic life was not for him – "I wanted to do politics, not study it"'. Both his parents were active trade unionists, and grandfather George Baker was sent to Wormwood Scrubs prison in 1917 as a First World War conscientious objector. He cites his politics teacher from the age of 14 for developing his political interest, when he took him to the Politics Society in Kingston to hear Tony Benn speak, saying that his teacher 'spotted something in me, a real interest'. Starting in 1975, Salter began employment in the construction and transport industries, holding various jobs from a labourer to a cargo handler. During this time, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1997 United Kingdom General Election
The 1997 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 1 May 1997. The governing Conservative Party led by Prime Minister John Major was defeated in a landslide by the Labour Party led by Tony Blair, achieving a 179 seat majority. The political backdrop of campaigning focused on public opinion towards a change in government. Blair, as Labour Leader, focused on transforming his party through a more centrist policy platform, entitled 'New Labour', with promises of devolution referendums for Scotland and Wales, fiscal responsibility, and a decision to nominate more female politicians for election through the use of all-women shortlists from which to choose candidates. Major sought to rebuild public trust in the Conservatives following a series of scandals, including the events of Black Wednesday in 1992, through campaigning on the strength of the economic recovery following the early 1990s recession, but faced divisions within the party over the UK's membership of the Eur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
