LibDem Blogs - Aggregated!

Today's tragedy around the Indian Ocean is still unfolding. It will be several days, if not weeks, before the true extent of the death and destruction is known. Yet the absence of hard facts has not prevented a torrent of blather on the TV. Parallel to real life events, a tsunami of 'news' swept all other events off our TV screens - but to what effect? Today's coverage has demonstrated the banality and flatulence of our 24-hour TV news channels. "Never mind the quality, feel the width" should be their motto. The first tidal wave of coverage consisted

For those of us who have been around politics for sometime there is something depressingly familiar about the story in today's Sunday Times that Labour are developing policies for their General Election manifesto to give the elderly vouchers or a smart card to pay for non-NHS services such as meals-on-wheels and long-term care. OAPs would be encouraged to spend the vouchers with private companies rather than rely on local authorities. This is because an almost identical process of policy development was on-going in the lead-up to Margaret Thatchers' third term, involving proposals for education and nursery vouchers amongst others.

The British have an odd attitude to motorways. We love using them (they are overcrowded most of the time), yet we make such a hash of building and operating them. I was struck by this on Christmas Eve, when I drove south through the centre of France on the new A75 autoroute (motorway), which cuts through the middle of the Massif Central mountains between Clermont Ferrand and the Mediterranean. I stopped at the 'Volcans d'Auvergne' service station just north of Clermont Ferrand ('volcans' refers to the extinct volcanoes in this region). Among the amenities is a large gift