LibDem Blogs - Archived!

To Winchester for the meeting of the Winchester and Eastleigh Healthcare Trust forum's open meeting. Not hugely well attended but very interesting nonetheless although I am not convinced that the Trust has got the hang of this public consultation lark. Quite a lot of issues to pursue so signing off to start drafting letters.

Interesting meeting with licensing chap from Test Valley Borough Council talking about the implications of the new changes. I wasn't heavily involved with the bill but did take up a large number of queries/concerns etc with ministers at the time so it was interesting to learn what the perceived problems were from another angle. The view seemed to be that the law was badly drafted and the

I was not amused. Just missed intended train back to Parkway (12.05) - my fault. 12.35 train announced "this train is not stopping until SouthamptonCentral" Approached poor lady who deals with enquiries who informed me that 12.35 train would not reach Waterloo until 12.40something and the changes had been made so that the train "could make up time" Asked her how I could get to Parkway and

A pre-record for Meridian's Sunday politics show. Subjects were school discipline and electioneering. The school discipline issue is a very interesting one ( as well as an important one) and it seems to me that there is not a qick fix simple solution. I say this as someone who from the day I started school wanted to be a teacher. The ambition remained until I attended a forces boarding school

Oh dear! I spoke too soon in my previous posting. It turns out that three Liberal Democrat members of the Scottish Parliament have now signed the Tory motion in favour of rehabilitating Macbeth. The guilty MSPs are Donald Gorrie, Nora Radcliffe and Jamie Stone. The three of them are probably standing around a cauldron as I write.

There was an article in the Guardian yesterday which epitomises the agonies its readers go through as parents. What should you do if your child uses bad language? The thought that you might tell them not to seems hardly to occur to the author, Pete May. Instead he reserves his approval for Jan Parker and Jan Stimpson who in their book Raising Happy Children, he reports, suggest having a rule that certain rude words can't be used in the house by either children or adults. At all costs, we must refrain from treating children differently from adults. You ...

Readers who have the misfortune not to live in the East Midlands may not be too clear on the whereabouts of the constituency Robert Kilroy-Silk is to fight. This profile from the BBC will help you: Erewash is in south east Derbyshire, and lies inbetween Nottingham and Derby, and is named after the river which flows from north to south through the seat and enters the Trent near Long Eaton. The seat’s main towns are Long Eaton and Ilkeston, and there also several small villages and open countryside in the area. The M1 also cuts down the middle ...

In a wonderful advertisement for devolution, a Tory member of the Scottish parliament has registered a formal complaint to the effect that Shakespeare "misportrayed" Macbeth. Alex Johnstone MSP has tabled a motion, which "regrets that Macbeth is misportrayed when he was a successful Scottish king." Johnstone's attempt to overturn Macbeth's image as a murderous villain is being supported by

One of the joys of the Assembly Plenary meetings is that occasionally we get a glimpse of more cultured times. It is no coincidence that these often originate from the erudite Conservative AM for South Wales Central. Yesterday it was on public art: David Melding: Do you not agree that one of the more regrettable consequences of the reformation is that we lost great visual culture and the glories of public art in so many cathedrals, monasteries and other places of worship and public areas? Today, far too many public places look bleak and drab. They ...

The fall-out from the new Health Minister's meeting with Welsh Labour MPs hit the Assembly yesterday, as he took questions for the first time. The most memorable phrase to come out of this meeting was that spoken by an anonymous Labour MP who declared that Brian Gibbons was less in denial about the state of the Welsh Health Service than his predecessor. This was alluded to by Mike German. Brian showed that he could see the funny side: The Leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrat Group (Michael German): To explore this area where you are no longer ...

I attended a meeting in Parliament yesterday evening organised by the IPPR Digital Manifesto project and the All Party Internet Group on copyright and digital rights management. All the presentations were clear and helpful but two in particular stood out for me. These were from Paula Le Dieu about the ...

Now has a Web Page

In the week Robert-Kilroy Silk launches his Veritas Party (and it is his party), I thought it was time to dust down the old Joke Book in an attempt to find an adequete way to describe this great man. So.... Robert Kilroy-Silk is rushed to hospital one day for an emergency circumcision. When on the operating table the surgeon is forced to stop the procedure. He turns to his colleagues and says

Ever fancied yourself as Kirsty Wark interviewing Tony Blair? The Dead Ringers game Newsfighter enables you to do just that.

At last the Liberal Democrats have climbed down off the fence on the issue of house arrests. One doesn't wish to sound ungrateful but, for maximum political impact, the party should have come out and said this a week ago, when Charles Clarke first mooted these plans. Also, if you want to take a lead on this issue, you need to do it with vim and vigour (rather like Lord Hoffman or Frederick