LibDem Blogs - Archived!

...well, not quite, but Bristol was actually hot on Saturday - a first for the year. I walked from Temple Meads to Hotwells carrying a large-ish bag and by the time I got there I was properly sweaty. There were lots of people in shorts and t-shirts, and even some people in the fountains outside [...]

I recently wrote to my MP, Eric Joyce, about the Elect the Lords campaign. I told him I was supporting the campaign, gave him my reasons, and asked him his views and to give his support if he agreed. I also asked him to forward my letter to the Lord Chancellor. Last week I got a reply. Here is the substance of it.I have written on your behalf to The RT Hon,[sic] Lord Falconer of Thornton[sic] QC, as you requested and I will contact you again on receipt of his response.That's it. No comment on the issue at all, not ...

To understand Community Empowerment Networks, you need to understand the CPAGs (Community Plan Action Groups). One third of the Tower Hamlets, the CPAGs constitute the delivery teams of the borough (the Council, Health Service, Police). The Community Empowerment Networks (CENs) role is to provide a voice for the multifaceted Voluntary Sector in this scenario of big hitters. Still confused? You are not alone. It can take many meetings to realise what is going on here ... however transparent the meetings, the structure of the Partnership is so complex that it cannot be transparent. What ...

Ruth Kelly may be assuring everyone that she though of it first, but Jamie Oliver's campaign on school meals has been a remarkable success. His Feed Me Better website is worth a visit.

Ravenscroft Park was the scene of many muggings last summer. Yet potentially it's a beautiful park with through access between estates. I talked to the lady who is writing a feasibility study for work to be done on the park. Hopefully this will result in some work taking place next year. Feasibility studies in March? Smells like unspent budgets to me... Neighbourhood Renewal Funding has not been organised to its full potential, to be polite. Get your act together this year, guys!

The LibDemBlogs site continues to grow It now has 25 regular posters, which has meant that over the last 3 months, the number of days shown on the main page has gone down from 7 to 2. Other features that I might not have mentioned when they were rolled through are:* An RSS feed - http://www.libdemblogs.co.uk/feed/rss.xml * Daily Archives* and some changes to the location of the BlogBox If you have any ideas for more features please leave me a comment. ps, try googling libdem

Liam Fox is in the wars again. What a shame!

Another weekend of action for Woodspring Lib Dems as we made a major effort to get the last of the Clarion newspapers delivered. I feel as though I have visited almost every part of the constituency this weekend with Portishead on Saturday morning, Yatton and Clevedon on Saturday afternoon. This was followed by Clevedon on Sunday morning and Backwell and Clevedon on Sunday afternoon. At the end

I acted as quiz master at our second Lib Dem sausage & mash supper and quiz night in Long Ashton on Friday. We packed out the Jubillee Pavillion for a few hours of challenging questions and much merriment. The questions I had set were obviously a little on the difficult side as the winning team got only 37 out of 70 correct! We raised many hundreds of pounds for our campaign funds and everyone

Vote 2005 is an interesting exercise. It involves an online debating forum with a large number of parliamentary seats identified. It is a better forum than the traditional usenet uk.politics.electoral which has been the online location generally where political activists debate from many places. Usenet, however, has a number of problems which means that it can take a lot of time to review

Sunday 20th March 2005 - Second day this weekend helping out colleagues in key seats across the region, this morning went to Liverpool Garston to help deliver a newspaper for our PPC Paula Keaveney after spending yesterday afternoon in Cheadle doing the same for Patsy Calton MP, both are two of our best prospects for electing more female MP's to Parliament.

Saturday 19th March 2005 - Labour party have been busy again, delivering a constituency report from Eddie O'Hara MP telling us all how wonderful the Government is and claiming yet more credit for everything being rosy here in Knowsley. Wake up and smell the coffee Eddie life is not quite as wonderful in Halewood right now as you may think it is but then if you had more frequent surgeries in the

Friday 18th March 2005 - Visited the area of Okell Drive that we have asked to be cleaned up by Environmental Services. Good progress has been made with the undergrowth trimmed back to help remove the litter and street furniture has been painted to remove graffiti, new litter bins and dog fouling bins have been ordered.

Thursday 17th March 2005 - Plantation Primary School's Talent Show this evening which Sarah was a judge for (The Simon Cowell of Halewood or should that be Sharon Osborne!!??), the children performed briliiantly and were all winners, shame there were not prizes for everyone, but they had all worked hard on their acts and everyone enjoyed themselves.

Last night Jan and I attended the AGM of Stone Twinning Committee at Bibby's Social Club - and what a well attended meeting it was! We're both very keen supporters of the twinning arrangements with Bagnacavallo and admire all the work that has been done by the hard working committee. So it was great to see so many people turn up to support Giuseppe and his team. He presented his annual report against a projected backdrop of a slide show of photographs taken over the last twelve months which was a wonderful reminder of just how much has been achieved ...

On Friday, in the afternoon James and I went out delivering small newspapers with our local promises contained. The papers were very difficult to deliver succesfuly, as they were fragile and needed folding, the folding took time. After the labourious process of folding, we delivered, and we delivered half 3/4 a bundle of papers, which is about 400 papers.James and I calculated that we delivered the literature to the most difficult half of Alderbury, the sparsely populated part. We had gained a great aesthetic feel of success and celebrated after with a hot tub party -wahey. We believe that the ...

Tuesday 15th March 2005 - Attended traning for Chairs and Vice Chairs of School Governing bodies, good to meet other school governors and share experiences/knowledge.

Monday 14th March 2005 - As Regional Chair I attended two meetings this evening with our staff and other North West Region Officers to discuss plans for the widely expected forthcoming General Election, we are in good health and ready for the challenge!

It comes to something when the Guardian runs a story on its front page about the First Minister being mistaken for a tree. I suppose it underlines the fact that Wales is back in the news. The Western Mail, of course, used to run a series of political cartoons in which Rhodri Morgan's then untamed mane was portrayed as a tree growing out of his head. Once the spin doctors got to him and he had his hair cut in preparation for his bid for greater things the cartoonist snipped off the foliage and the future First Minister was henceforth ...