Service says the move is aimed at encourage the return of borrowers who stopped using the library during the Covid pandemic
Libraries in Peterborough are holding a fine amnesty to try to recover 22,000 missing books.
The service, which runs 10 libraries across the area, will not fine anyone for returning overdue books and will clear accounts of debt.
Continue reading...Watson, 41, evaded detection for over 20 years, changing his account as evidence against him piled up
A 41-year-old man has been sentenced to life with a minimum term of 15 years for the murder of the schoolboy Rikki Neave, who was found strangled in woods near Peterborough almost 28 years ago.
James Watson, of no fixed abode, was convicted in April at the Old Bailey in London of the 1994 murder after a DNA breakthrough in 2016 revealed that, as a 13-year-old, he had been in physical contact with the six-year-old boy on the day of his disappearance.
Continue reading...Labour said to have ‘dug its own grave’ with Corbyn as leader as social change mantra failed to cut through
“I feel excellent,” said David Cliffe as he strode across Peterborough’s Cathedral Square, having contributed to a thumping Conservative majority. “I didn’t want to have a communist regime,” said the 71-year-old retired warehouseman. “The country would have been on its knees.”
Cliffe, who was on his way to book his mother a Christmas holiday in Scarborough, could not stop beaming about Boris Johnson’s Conservative landslide, which he reckoned meant Brexit was all but done.
Continue reading...The Guardian’s Rob Booth is reporting from the constituency of Peterborough to find out what issues people there care about most – and he wants your help
The Guardian will be reporting from Peterborough next week ahead of the General Election, as part of a series of pieces from across the country focused on finding out what matters to the people who live there. For example, the people of Peterborough have seen public spending fall by £262 a year per person since the start of austerity in 2010 – typical of the UK as a whole.
If you live in Peterborough, can you tell us what this has meant? We’d like to understand the big issues facing you and your family and which policies matter to you. How happy are you with the state of housing, work, community relations, policing and health services?
Continue reading...Labour leader says ‘not yet’ to calls for people’s vote, urging Tories to call general election
Jeremy Corbyn has indicated he will not bow to party pressure and move immediately towards demanding a second referendum, after Labour narrowly beat the fledgling Brexit party in the Peterborough byelection.
Corbyn – arriving in the Cambridgeshire city after the party’s candidate Lisa Forbes won by 683 votes, leaving the Tories trailing in third position – called for the “squabbling contenders” within the Conservative party to give the public a general election.
Continue reading...Jeremy Corbyn says the Labour party has ‘come together’ to narrowly hold on to its parliamentary seat in Peterborough, seeing off a challenge from Nigel Farage’s Brexit party to win by fewer than 700 votes
Labour’s Lisa Forbes says result shows ‘the politics of division will never win’
Labour has held on to the marginal seat of Peterborough, overturning predictions that the contest could deliver a first byelection victory for Nigel Farage’s Brexit party.
The victorious Labour candidate, Lisa Forbes, told her supporters after the count early on Friday: “Tonight’s result is significant because it shows that the politics of division will never win.”
Continue reading...A decade ago it was the UK’s fastest growing city, but hit by cuts and buy-to-let, support for Nigel Farage’s party is high
On Thursday, voters in Peterborough will take part in one of the most intriguing parliamentary byelections in recent memory. The constituency saw a knife-edge duel between Labour and the Conservatives at the 2017 general election and at last month’s European poll, 38% of voters in the city backed the Brexit party. A first seat in the House of Commons for Nigel Farage’s party is a distinct possibility. If that happens, it will send tremors through middle England, of which Peterborough is typical in many ways, not just geographically.
Economically, Peterborough performs averagely amid struggles with productivity. Wages are stagnant and it has been reshaped by migration, with foreigners arriving to work in the surrounding farmlands and distribution depots, contributing to a decade as the UK’s fastest growing city between 2001 and 2011.
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