LibDem Blogs - Archived!

I like the word facetious. It contains all the vowels in alphabetical order. Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Master of the Queen's Music, demonstrates the meaning of the word after being cautioned by the police who found a bird at his house. (As I typed that the full Doctor Who trailer came on the TV in front of me and I got the shivers. Only 8 days to go!)

Last Friday John Patrick, the erstwhile head of Music at Central TV and band leader for the John Patrick Trio/Quartet challenged me to turn up and play at the commuter jazz sessions (organised by Birmingham Jazz in the Foyer at the ICC. For me this is a good location as it is an easy walk from The Council House at the end of the day. Something like this is a bit of a "deep end" challenge. I had never met any of the band apart from John Patrick - who is the pianist. Mike the Saxophonist suggested I'll ...

The Journal turns out to maintain a dignified silence on Ludlow's alleged connection with the Great New Zealand Cricket Sex Scandal, but it does have the headline of the week: Dutch go baa-rmy over Clun sheep

It's Friday, so here is today's House Points column from Liberal Democrat News. Offending offence Forget the Budget. After their heroics resisting the government's over house arrest, the Lords is the place to be this week. Besides, the Commons, at least on the Labour benches, is full of sheep. They don't look like sheep (except Kali Mountford), but they behave like them. Ambition, inertia and the power of the whips mean they rarely give legislation proper scrutiny, however outrageously the government behaves. Which is embarrassing for a committed democrat. These days the Lords is filled with government appointees ...

Inspired by Rome and fractals (although this isn't a proper fractal), I decide to do a classically proportioned figure. Dull geeky discussion of my materialsI now have a lovely selection of pastels - mostly Unisons, a soft pastel hand-made in Derbyshire which I can recommend wholeheartedly for its velvety bloom. I have a few Daler-Rowneys which I found good for detail although a bit grainy and stiff and some Faber Castell polychromous artists pastels which are smooth and light fast and good for fine detail. I've found the Conte crayons (another hard pastel) aren't very robust (they just splinter into ...

Reports in tonights South Wales Evening Post indicate that the Prime Minister does not understand the devolution settlement he imposed on Wales. Could it be too complex for him?Mr. Blair agreed to go head to head with a selected panel of Evening Post readers, however it was not the comfortable experience that he expected. The paper reports that 'Tony Blair lost his assertiveness and appeared rather uncomfortable last night when he was quizzed over wind farms. On several occasions during the Evening Post Question Time session at a Swansea hotel he sought to wash his hands of responsibility, insisting that ...

Those people looking to George Galloway's Party "Respect" to bring some left wing respectability back into politics may be a little disappointed. It seems that when it comes to those pivotal moments of Parliamentary history, when politicians are called upon to stand up and be counted, Respect's sole MP was late. Not only did George Galloway fail to turn up to the close committee stage vote on the Anti Terrorism Act but he also missed the all-night sitting on Thursday night too, deigning only to turn up for the 4.30pm Friday votes. Does not do to miss one's beauty sleep ...

The conviction of the New Years Killers in Leicester is very good news today. This proves to the communities of Birmingham that working through the system is the way to go.Historically many shootings are actually retaliatory shootings. Such gang warfare tends to escalate. Although reported as "turf wars" generally that is not the case. The only solution to a continuing range of tit-for-tat retaliations is to use the police and the judicial process so that justice is done and seen to be done.The following is our statement:The court caseWe wish to thank all thoe witnesses who ...

The universe is big - really, really big (I could go on with a HHGTHG quote, but you get the idea). It is thus unsurprising that there are a lot of things that we don't know about it. this article in the New Scientist lists '13 things that do not make sense' and is certainly [...]