LibDem Blogs - Archived!

A couple of weeks ago I wrote an enthusiastic post about Matthew Sweet's new book Shepperton Babylon . I have now read it and am just as enthusiastic. Sweet offers a history of British cinema in ten chapters, arguing that the conventional critical wisdom that home-grown films are irredeemably second rate is based on simple ignorance. He sees that history as far more interesting than is generally realised - hence the subtitle of his introduction "Strange England". The first chapter - in many ways the most interesting - looks at the lost history of British silent films. Not only ...

This book review by Peter Hain, published in the Guardian last year, is full of ironies that he is obviously blind to himself. He is writing about the memoirs of the anti-Apartheid activist Hilda Bernstein: We met Hilda for the first time in the 1960s when she called at our Pretoria home seeking help for locally held black detainees. This was the time of the state of emergency declared after the Sharpeville shootings, and by then my parents were regular visitors to black townships, as they were increasingly drawn into the same struggle, being jailed in 1961, followed wherever ...

The Shropshire Star reports: A blundering badger sparked a major rescue operation in Shrewsbury after falling more than 20ft into a 200-year-old ice house on land once owned by Charles Darwin.As every schoolboy used to know, Darwin came up with his theory of evolution after being hit on the head by a falling badger.

I thought the Conservative hopeful had declared that there would be no personal attacks? This is to be welcomed but it is a shame that there was not a similar commitment to being honest and not misrepresenting the Lib Dem policies. No such luck as there has been some very scurrilous literature produced recently. If you have received something from the Tories that you find hard to believe then it

Have just looked at my diary and note that I have not been given a single day off between now and the supposed day of the election - not even my birthday. In some ways this is nothing new because the trick over the past four years has been to try and have Sundays to myself (doesn't work as that's when people invite you to church and sometimes to appear on political programmes etc as well as any

The Labour Councillors responding to the Bordesley Petition have now walked out of the court. This has, however, not stopped the court continuing. The Petitioners have started by identifying the different types of fraudulent votes. The first category they have identified is those votes where the signature of the voter on the Declaration of Identity (DoI) differs from the signature of the

For those wishing to keep track of all the information being released by the Welsh Assembly Government under the Freedom of Information Act there is a webpage here. As yet the Assembly Parliamentary Service do not have a comparable source.

A last minute attempt by the Labour Councillors to have the petition adjourned beyond the election failed at the Bordesley Election Court today. The Commissioner had made it very clear he believes the issues in the petition need to be resolved before the General Election. He maintained this position.

I am sorry that I cannot find an on-line link to this as it illustrates perfectly the hazards one faces in following the party line. I have already blogged on the so-called "noddy file", a Labour campaign guide for their candidates containing template press releases, letters, telephone scripts and other materials. At the time I commented that it was standard fare for most mainstream political parties including the Conservatives. However, the key to success is to use it effectively. One Labour candidate who may require training in how to use such material is Sue Hayman, who is fighting Preseli Pembrokeshire. ...