LibDem Blogs - Archived!

A number of blogs on my blogroll (including three by elected LibDems) are nominated in the Guardian's Backbencher Political Weblog Awards. Vote away!

This was going to be a thoughtful consideration of the effect of the new series of Doctor Who (3 days to go!) on fans' views of the 1996 TV movie but Blogger ate that when my internet connection disconnected itself. I'll briefly summarise what I wrote. The basic premise was that the new series has inherited the goodwill directed towards the McGann TV movie. (New series trailer on BBC Four as I type.) I re-watched the TV movie last night and all the benefit of the doubt I had given it in the past melted away. Direction aside ...

Rather scarily this blog has been shortlisted in the Guardian Backbencher's Political Awards. Competition is stiff and includes fellow Liberal Democrats, Sandra Gidley and Lynne Featherstone. Voting ends midnight on Monday 4th April.

Frank Furedi has a new essay on the Spiked website. He argues that: The distinguishing feature of the twenty-first century is that health has become a dominant issue, both in our personal lives and in public life.He suggests four reasons for this dominance: medicalisation - problems we encounter in everyday life are reinterpreted as medical ones; being ill is seen as a normal state, possibly even more normal than being healthy; moral uncertainty - the more ambiguous we feel about what is right and wrong, then the more comfortable we feel using the language of health to make sense ...

The BBC reports: Environmental campaigners have come under fire from the Liberal Democrats for failing to make enough protests in the run up to the general election. "Green groups have become too muted and the government has got away with more than it should have got away with," Lib Dem spokesman Norman Baker said. There aren't many politicians who can attack and flatter pressure groups at the same time. I think this will play well with the Green movement, and the more we can do to wean single-issue activists away from an unthinking allegiance to Labour, the better. ...

I saw a CD-ROM on sale in a gift shop at London City airport today. It was titled: Create and print your own Divorce PapersMaybe I'm being old-fashioned and you might consider this matter-of-fact treatment of divorce as an example of 'empowerment'. I still find it extraordinary that such a thing could be a casual last-minute purchase at an airport, on a par with a modem adaptor, a bottle of

Yesterday I suggested that there were some parallels between the eugenics movement in the early part of the last century and New Labour's enthusiasm for state intervention in the family. This morning Polly Toynbee provided more evidence for this view. Her article is another call for the family to take over the socialisation of children. In effect, she wants them all nationalised. If this sounds extreme, here are a few quotations: A neighbourhood children's centre for all, means families' childcare crisis will soon be over. Everything children need will be there - health visitors, speech therapy, child psychology, parenting ...

The Institute of Ideas and the Soho Theatre are holding a "round table rumble" on "The Right To Be Offensive: Does anything go in the arts?" at the theatre on 30 March. The panel includes the wonderful Nick Cohen and the considerably less wonderful Johann Hari. Full details here.

Nick Barlow strikes gold twice in one week with a link to a site from the Christian Institute recording their views on how each MP voted on a series of difficult "moral" issues. If I pointed out that the Rev Ian Paisley gets top marks and will clearly be going to heaven whereas the Opus Dei-linked Education Secretary, Ruth Kelly did not, then you may have a good idea of how bizarre this whole exercise is.

All my friends know the problems I have had through my life with the 'other' Richard Stevens. From childhood, through infant school and grammar school and through my entire adult life, I have experienced a double life because there have been two Richard Stevens' in North Staffordshire! The parallel lives we have led are quite remarkable- especially when we each had our own legal practices in

Going through confidential documents tonight relating to the city councils proposals regarding the performing arts centre-  mainly looking at how the cost went up so much.  Currently fighting  to get trees cut back in a part of my ward-  my constituents have been asking for the council to chop the trees back for the last five years-  why does the council ignore what my constituents are asking for?    I will post some casework stories on this site at some point-  some are assuming, some are depressing and some will annoy you....  More in a later posting   ...

It really is coming to something when I don't update this blog for a couple of days and I can't remember what I have done. I am sure that I was busy on Monday, but I can't now immediately think what I was up to ... I should have guessed, more meetings. I had a busy day at work followed at 6pm by a Lib Dem North Somerset Council Group meeting at Weston Town Hall. This was primarily to discuss the

There is an interesting story on the BBC site today that talks about the research I mentioned a while ago into whether people fancy people who look like themselves or not. The conclusion was that you don't fancy people who look like you do since they are likely to be your family (and avoiding reproducing [...]

We received a phone message that an elderly family member was in hospital. In a panic we called the house and nobody answered as one expected. After tracing the Barnet hospital from the web, we finally, after continually redialling got through to the reception who confirmed yes, the patient was listed. We were then transferred to A E. They confirmed she had been seen and that she was being

I attended a meeting of the East Yardley Neighbourhood Forum to discuss devolution last night. An interesting point was that some youths decided to try to block the door at the end of the meeting. It was relatively easy to break the blockage, but it is this sort of anti-social behaviour that really irritates people. For all the time the government have spent on new laws the procedures do not

Wednesday 23rd March 2005 - Don't forget Halewood Area Forum next Tuesday March 29th at 6pm at Halewood Comprehnsve

Was I the only one to find this feature in the Guardian disturbing? There has been a huge amount of debate and discussion about the impact of big corporate companies on food markets, often centring on the buying power of McDonalds. Now it seems that the company is to branch out into apples with a corresponding effect on the small apple grower. Gary Younge writes 'McDonald's, the company that built its success on fries and burgers, now buys more apples than any restaurant chain in the US. This also gives it enormous power over growers - which could lead to ...

Courtesy of Nick Barlow, a judge has condemned the postal voting system as "an open invitation to fraud". Richard Mawrey QC, who is sitting as election commissioner hearing allegations of fraud during last year's local elections in Birmingham, stated that "If I come to the conclusion that all the respondents in both cases were entirely innocent, I would not neglect to point out the law as it stands is an open invitation to fraud. I could not come to any other conclusion." I hate to say that we told you so but...

Tonight's debate on stock transfer sent me scurrying to a recent edition of Liberator which explains my stance. David Boyle writes: Giantism is the dog in British politics that doesn't bark: it is critically significant to people's lives, now that they are increasingly the subject of factory schools and hospitals managed by means of targets from Whitehall - giant machines for the throughput of patients where you never see the same doctor twice, giant manufacturies for youth where the size of classes matters but the size of schools apparently doesn't. The Liberal Democrat emphasis on decentralisation is ...