LibDem Blogs - Aggregated!

Here is my most recent column from Liberal Democrat News. Glorious gaffes Christmas is a time for returning to favourite books. One of mine is Read My Lips, a collection of politicians’ sayings put together a few years ago by Matthew Parris and Phil Mason. At its best it captures personalities in a single quotation. So John Major reveals his grasp of geopolitics while paying tribute to the late President Mitterand: “He made a great contribution to public life, especially in France.” And Lady Olga Maitland shows why her Women and Families for Defence was such

What is Rhodri Morgan rambling on about? In an interview with the Western Mail this morning he has mooted the possibility that he could be removed from office by opposition AMs during 2005. In suggesting that Labour could lose its majority at Cardiff Bay and that the opposition parties could combine to oust him, Rhodri is playing to a groundless rumour so as to keep his own AMs in line. These whisperings have largely been fuelled by the media because it is in their interests to create a bit of controversy, a talking-point, to maintain their audience figures.

So, after four months of muted controversy and a great deal of manufactured outrage on both sides, the controversy over the appointment of the new Chair of the Welsh Language Board reaches a conclusion of sorts. Dame Rennie Fritchie, the Commissioner for Public Appointments, has adjudicated on the row, concluding that there were "administrative difficulties and shortfalls" in the appointment process. To recap, Meri Huws - a Labour Party member and former lover of Economic Development Minister Andrew Davies (as the Western Mail so coyly puts it) - was appointed Chair after going through the appointment process. "Plaid Cymru's

The death toll has risen to 150,000 and it has become more and more impossible to get a grip on the scale of the devastation. There are so many individual stories of heroism and tragedy, so many new developments in which hundreds or thousands of bodies are found, so many different emotional and practical responses that one feels so insignificant and helpless in the face of it all. I found some perspective this morning in a radio discussion of the relief efforts. It was reported that, for example, for relatively small amounts of money fresh water could be provided