LibDem Blogs - Archived!

I was in the Press Gallery at Westminster today to see the shambles over house arrest legislation for myself. On the way I passed the Fathers 4 Justice demonstrators (Batman, Robin and Captain America) who had found a perch on the Foreign Office building in Whitehall. My taxidriver said he supported their cause but not their tactics. He said that if everyone just ignore them they would have to stop this sort of stunt. He also pointed out that Robin was wearing a coat over his costume, so he was not as heroic as all that.

I wish I had posted on this early, because I could have then said "told you so". It was pretty obvious that house arrest under order of the Home Secretary, was going to be the concession for the Lords, but it seems pretty silly to tell David Davis this before you debate the bill at the Commons stage.

A large part of my work as a Councillor is trying to sort out problems for individuals. This is the list I have just sent out & I thought this would give you a flavour for the range of my work: Trying to get the Council's mobile youth service near troublesome estate Trying to get a housing transfer for a tenant (very hard to achieve) Giving information for consultation about opening road barrier Voicing protests about closing a road Trying to get more road safety on a dangerous crossing Disputing the cost of lift repairs in council block ...

It seems that the days of the common or garden red telephone box are numbered. British Telecom have announced that they are going to lobby OFCOM to abandon the social obligation imposed on the telecommunications company to keep open 70,000 loss-making phone boxes. I suspect that this has something to do with BT's abortive attempt to close thousands of rural phone boxes last year. In many instances they were foiled because Community and County Councils lodged statutory objections which, under their social obligations, BT were obliged to conform with. Roger Williams MP and Kirsty Williams AM certainly managed to save ...

Today's Cabinet Meeting started the process of bidding for funds for a new central Library for Birmingham. It may surprise people who live in Birmingham that no bidding for funds had occurred so far. This, however, is the case. We have not been specific about the location as keeping our options open at this stage gives a better opportunity to achieve a more positive solution. The option of

Is there no end to the lunacy of the far-right fundamentalist bullies Christian Voice? Today, the BBC reveals that Christian Voice has an alarming catalogue of obsessions. One of its more bizarre targets is the royal wedding. There has been much comment about Charles and Camilla lately, but Christian Voice's leader Stephen Green has come up with a rather novel objection: "We're saying to the

It's not every day that I have a meeting with a Cabinet Minister, and it would be today that signalling problems at Waterloo left me shivering in -5 degrees on Surbiton Station for well over an hour. Missed the pre-meeting but luckily just arrived in time for the main meeting. I was one of three representatives of councils (controlled by each of the three main parties) that had been awarded Excellent ratings, and Paul Boetang had asked to meet us. He wanted to discuss progress towards the integration of children's services (which I blogged about recently), and to ...

The plan last night was to watch all four hours of The 100 Greatest Cartoons on Channel 4. Due to a scheduling malfunction, I found myself watching The Top 100 Ugliest Comedians. For anyone who didn't stay up until midnight, here are the top 5. 5. Justin Lee Collins*Yeah, the guy off Xfm. 4. Paul Tonkinson Used to be on The Sunday Show if you remember that. 3. Rob Deering Pork scratchings, anyone? 2. Simon Donald*Like Simon Pegg but with all the bits of his face in the wrong place. 1. Rob Rouse Irritating member of the Friday ...

"Vivienne likes to be taken to movies and bars.... she has some skimpy outfits for the gym, and is a tease... She can converse on 35,000 topics, from philosophy to movies to sculpture." But would anyone want me on their mobile phone given I think I'm one of these... "Partly to prevent anyone from becoming addicted to Vivienne's charms, the program will limit users to an hour of play time a day." [SHAME! RESIGN!]

Well I've got around to setting-up the Mac Mini server over the weekend, and as usual with a new computer comes the chances to update the software! There's still a few bits and pieces missing (such as the PHP thumbnail photo gallery - I'm working on it), but the main new feature is this WordPress [...]