LibDem Blogs - Archived!

A longish day, with few breaks, hence no lunchtime blog. Now I am winding down. I began the day in Marlow with Maurice Oram- a man who is deservedly known as Mr. Marlow. The full delivery of his leaflet is complete, although of course we start all over again with the next one very shortly. In the afternoon I go on up to the smaller settlements- Freith, where I can quite see the concerns of parents at the local Primary school- the traffic at that time of the day is a death trap. Then I get a break for a ...

Consider this dilemma. You are the renowned environmentalist George Monbiot. You have a weekly gig writing a column in the Guardian. The features editor asks this week for 1,000 words on the British general election, a subject about which you apparently know little. Still, the cheque comes in handy. What do you do? Answer: produce the biggest load of bollocks yet written about the election.

Good news from the Scotsman:The Liberal Democrats have emerged as the surprise choice of the "internet generation", according to the UK’s most- visited political website.The results of a questionnaire on the Whoshouldyouvotefor.com site also suggest that Labour and the Conservatives have a long way to go if they are to win the elusive "young vote".Whoshouldyouvotefor.com only launched last Tuesday, but already more than 200,000 people have taken the test that asks their opinions on policy areas. The results, released last night, found that 43 per cent of respondents expressed views most closely aligned with the Liberal Democrats.A lot of people ...

The Foreign Secretary refuses to rule out the use of evidence extracted by torture abroad in our courts. The law lords will be hearing a test case in the autumn. But we could get rid of Jack Straw this May.

There is an interesting report in The Australian. It supports my recent argument that the Tories' much vaunted "dog whistle" strategy is no more than a rerun of William Hague's 2001 core votes campaign. Better than that, it suggests that the strategy is gaining us more votes than the Tories: One senior Tory said: "This is a core vote campaign, along the lines of 2001. It is much more professionally organised, thanks to Lynton Crosby (the Australian strategist running the campaign). But in Australia, Mr Crosby does not have to worry about the threat from a third party. "What ...

List of Parliamentary Candidates for Birmingham City Council Electoral Area for General Election May 5th 2005 Nominations closed at 4pm. Birmingham (Edgbaston) Alden, DeirdreConservativeBeck, PeterGreenDixon, MikeLib DemStuart, GiselaLabourWhite, StephenUKIP Birmingham (Erdington) Ebanks, SharonBNPElvidge, VictoriaConservativeEvans, JerryLib DemHepburn, RannalUKIPSimon, SionLabourWilliams,

So a new pope has been elected. Vatican officials can now get on with the job of clearing the Sistine Chapel of any discarded stakeboards and "Good Morning!" leaflets that were not burnt to make white smoke. I thought they might pick a cardinal from the third world and I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition. Still, if you're going to have a hardliner who wants to crack down on contraception and

I thought it was worth recording here how the Welsh Assembly is once more breaking new ground with its use of the internet to consult formally on policy reviews. As far as I am aware we are the only British Parliamentary body using the web in this way. The Education and Lifelong Learning Committee, which I chair, has set the ball rolling with an on-line consultation in relation to its review of Special Educational Needs and the statementing process. Come and have a look here and if you are interested in this subject or have a contribution to make then ...

Don't know the sample size but... ...we've been getting good canvas returns but even so!

Remember when Martin Bell stood against Neil Hamilton, and all the other candidates stood down? Martin Bell got elected, that's what. Among the inevitable plethora of spurious candidates in Sedgefield (Monster Raving Loonies et al) there stands an independent called Reg Keys, father of a soldier killed in Iraq. Now, what would happen if all the other candidates stood down in favour of Reg...

I don't usually wish I was a lawyer - but I cannot help wondering whether there's a case against Michael Howard under the "Incitement to racial hatred" provisions of the 1986 Public Order Act? Seems to me that he is in danger of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. I was disturbed by last night's BBC report on the potato workers where despite the fact that the farm owner confirmed that he needed immigrant workers to fill all of his positions, "vox pops" in the street still thought that they were "taking our jobs". Particularly upsetting was the Portuguese bar which regularly ...

The Guardian reports this morning that the long predicted panic in Tory ranks as their poll ratings tumble is coming to pass. Mr Howard's attempts to divert reporters' attention onto his plans to crackdown on "yobs" and binge drinking were frustrated, they say, by repeated questions on Tory disunity, the party's dismal poll ratings and the media mogul Rupert Murdoch's opposition to his immigration plans. A trio of opinion polls published today show the Tories trailing Labour by between five and 10 percentage points. The Financial Times/Mori poll is the worse for the Tories, predicting a Labour majority of ...

Oh dear. Michael Howard is a desperate man. There's a limit to the number of voters who are turned on by thinly-disguised racism and Howard has reached it. Now it looks as if Tory immigration policy may actually backfire. Events at this morning's Tory press conference suggest that this particular dog-whistle has made the Tories wobble and sparked internal rows. It gets worse. Rupert Murdoch, of

It looks like the hearing on Thursday is the Full Hearing not the permission stage. That is a good idea taking into account the timing issues. For those who are interested. As far as Judicial Reviews go there are three stages: The "pre-action protocol". This started on 5th April, but was not responded to by the government. The permission stage, where a judge decides whether there is an

The media this morning went big on the Peter Law story. Radio Wales in particular had Peter on to justify his decision to stand against Maggie Jones, the official Labour Candidate. They then followed this with an interview with Welsh Office Minister, Don Touhig. Don was his usual upbeat and bombastic self, confident that Labour will triumph against this renewed threat in Blaenau Gwent. He might have been more convincing however, if he had got his candidate's name right first time. Instead, he started extolling the virtues of Maggie Smith before quickly correcting himself.

I've signed up for a 10 week course (2 hours, one night a week) at Bristol Folk House on 'Painting with Oils (and Acrylics)'. My mum was concerned that my oils would smell too much, it'd give me too much cleaning to do when I got home and I later decided that carrying wet compositions about Bristol could be moderately unpleasant (acrylics are water-based and dry fast). Hence, despite being a terrific material purist (I like the idea of producing dark, moody works that crack after about 30 years), I bought my materials list in primarily student quality acrylics. The ...

This research shows how the current simplistic targeting regime drives people into odd decisions. It is a bit like the old rationing system in some services of "not answering the phone". By delaying diagnosis the time between diagnosis and treatment is reduced. However, we really need to be able to do "triage" and identify who needs very rapid treatment. It is a good rational case as to how

Excitement as I listen to the radio- much better polls for the Liberal Democrats. Meanwhile, the Conservatives are said to be raising dissenting voices about their leader's "bull-at-a-gate" approach to immigration. The truth is that more people are leaving the UK, so it is hard to see how "Britishness" is threatened by the relatively low level of immigration that we have at present. There are problems in the system, but the hue and cry raised by the Tories is utterly disproportionate, and has obviously alienated so many people. When Howard talks of race riots I can't help feeling that, were ...

If you saw the edited highlights of Jeremy Paxman's interview with Charles Kennedy on BBC2's Newsnight on Monday evening, be thankful that you didn't have to endure the whole 30 minutes earlier in the evening on BBC1. (You can watch the interview online by clicking on the link on this page). Kennedy was on the defensive throughout the interview and his basic problem became clear. It isn't