LibDem Blogs - Archived!

If you want to know more about the unfortunate Thomas Isaac Mardy Jones, then click here for his photograph. You will see that he died in 1970 at the age of 91. I hope the headline that day was not Rail Ticket Man Dies.

Here is my column from today's Liberal Democrat News. The good old days? Now that David Blunkett and his little lad have slipped from the headlines it is time to note two things. The first is that many authorities believe this affair gave rise to the expression “born the wrong side of the blunkett” to denote illegitimacy. The second is a sad historical parallel with one of the less dramatic aspects of Nannygate. You will recall that Blunkett was found to have misused two first class rail tickets assigned to him for his work as an MP.

Borat seems just about to have escaped a lynching. With his tactics becoming more and more high-risk, I guess something like this was inevitable.

From Ian Bell in the Glasgow Herald (10 January): "On Saturday the Daily Telegraph, or some other sane and rational paper, reported triumphantly that the BBC had received 50,000 complaints over the broadcasting of a musical with salt on its tongue. In a country with a population of roughly 59 million, that’s 0.0848% of all available righteous indignation."

http://society.guardian.co.uk/localgovt/news/0,8368,1390688,00.html?gusrc=ticker-103704 What is so interesting is not the Lib Dem victory, although it obviously heartened me, but that the Tories did not stand a candidate. With the recent Westminster bi-election results, their lack of representation in cities like Liverpool and Newcastle, and their failure to even put up a candidate in Hull, it

Still not a word from Charles Kennedy in defence of the right to freedom of expression, in the light of the recent Jerry Springer and Behzti cases. However, today he has announced that the Liberal Democrats would scrap the government's new child trust funds and use the money to cut class sizes. This is a populist gesture unlikely, in itself, to improve the quality of education. A study

The reasons behind Rhodri Morgan's reshuffle grow more and more opaque. At first glance it would seem that the publication of a damning National Audit Office report into the Welsh NHS today and an attempt to blunt its criticisms were the main driving force behind his decision to move Jane Hutt. However, this is denied by all and sundry. The investigation into waiting times reveals failings in almost every aspect of the health service, which have left some patients waiting more than four years for treatment. It found disturbing inadequacies in Welsh Assembly Government health policy to manage and

Was asked to do a pre-record for the Politics show and the subject was female representation in Parliament. The subject had been prompted by the deselection of Sue Catling who was the Conservative candidate for Calder Valley who halved the Labour majority at the last election. I can only guess at the motivation for deselecting her but the press seem to indicate that the local party can't cope