LibDem Blogs - Aggregated!

Where the Sikh protesters blazed a trail, other religious bullies have followed. In my postings on the Sikh theatre protest (December 19 and December 22), I warned that we should not allow feelings of 'offence' to justify censorship. I also quoted the 1968 Paris graffiti, "The church complains of persecution when it is not allowed to persecute." Salman Rushdie (who knows a thing or two about religious bullies) warns of the extent of the problem in a letter in today's Guardian. Thanks to Ryan Cullen's blog, I now learn that some Christians are jumping on this oppressive bandwagon,

On New Year's Day Channel 4 broadcast The Comedians' Comedian - a countdown of the top 50 comedians as voted for by more than 300 comedy performers, writers, producers and directors. Like all these "best of" programmes it was introduced by Jimmy Carr, but it was a class above most of them. Paul Ross was nowhere to be seen and there were no D list celebs intoning: "We always watched Magpie. Blue Peter was for posh kids." The winner was Peter Cook, which seems fair enough. You could argue for days about whether he was the funniest, but it

There is a characteristically interesting article from Frank Furedi on the Spiked website looking at the different meanings humanity has ascribed to disasters down the years. His own website has a link to a .pdf of a longer article on the same subject - "Coping with catastrophe" - published in the BBC History magazine last September.

Following the collection of these websites, could everybody please email / ring / fax / post the BBC with requests to screen Jerry Springer the Opera. The last count for the BBC was 15,000 complaints, so lets at least get some positive emails out there, followed by more after it's aired. [edited 22:40]You can contact the BBC via info@bbc.co.uk After the show is aired, you can then contact

The 1960s continue to come in for a lot of stick, being blamed by conservatives (including Tony Blair) for all our society's ills. But just what were 'the sixties' and when did they happen? Philip Larkin had an exact view in his poem Annus Mirabilis: Sexual intercourse began In nineteen sixty-three (which was rather late for me) - Between the end of the "Chatterley" ban And the Beatles' first LP. Other witnesses were less precise. Paul Kantner of the rock band Jefferson Airplane famously said, "If you can remember anything about the Sixties, you weren't really there."

I've just installed Microsoft Anti Spyware Beta, and we'll see how it goes. Whilst I'm here, I'll report on the Google Desktop Search which I installed back in October. Useless, whilst I did pick up some files, it constantly complained about NetLimiter, even though there were no problems, and to get rid of the Alert message, I had to load a Google Help page within IE, neither I really wanted.

I've had the link on my side bar for a while, but I was playing with the Daily Mail-O-Matic today and came up with this headline: "Do the Germans infect the Queen with Aids?" Can't get any more Daily Mail than that.

"For the reasons I have given before, the answer is no" And what reasons would these be pray?

The thing that really attracts me to politics is that every now and again events take a turn for the unexpected and the whole landscape starts to change. Thus the announcement by Welsh Conservative Leader, Nick Bourne, that he is after all in favour of full law-making powers for the Assembly was a welcome surprise. More interestingly it leaves the Wales Labour Party out on a limb. It now appears that three of the four major Welsh Parties want the Assembly to have these powers whilst the so-called party of the left, who we are told over and

After she moaned about the link to the council website, I thought that I would post this picture.

Nice to see Michael Howard has caught up with the rest of us then ...