LibDem Blogs - Archived!

I am writing this (thanks to the extra power points I had installed on election day) while watching Victory in Europe in Colour on ITV. It is worth asking how much our view of the 1940s and 1950s as dull, colourless decades owes to the fact that we generally see them only in black and white.

A couple of weeks ago the Newcastle United players Lee Bowyer and Kieron Dyer were sent off for fighting one another. At the press conference after the game their manager Graeme Souness broke off from discussing the affair to complain about the referee's performance. On yesterday's Match of the Day Souness went one better. He blamed the referee for the fact that his players had been fighting. I blame David Mellor.

There's a sentence you don't write every day. But it would be churlish not to praise his speech in Lativa. The BBC reports: President Bush has branded the former Soviet domination of eastern Europe one of "the greatest wrongs of history"... Speaking in Riga, Latvia's capital, Mr Bush praised the Baltic nations of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania - now members of the EU and Nato - for keeping "a long vigil of suffering and hope" during almost 50 years of Soviet occupation. While the end of World War II brought peace to these countries, it also brought "occupation and ...

A letter in yesterday's Guardian shows that the spirit of Brezhnev's Soviet Union is alive and well in the British Labour Party: I cannot help but feel a little bit peeved with my left-leaning friends and acquaintances who voted tactically, or not all, to give Tony Blair the bloody nose he probably deserved. They will benefit from all of the future education, health and social benefits that those of us who worked so hard for the Labour government's return, and voted the same way, will enjoy. Is there not any way in which the benefits could be distributed according to ...

I decided to go for a walk to Cribbs Causeway, the Maaallll on the edge of Bristol. Maaallll being how they pronounce it in the vaguely creepy and dystropic public service announcements that keep ringing out. It kind of sounds like deep south American pronounciation of mall but produced in that intensely reassuring sort of British voice they used to have on government educational adverts in the 1960s. The ones about what to do in the case of nuclear war. In this case, instead of making annoucements like "This is a colleague announcement. Can Mr Jones go to the south ...

I spent much of today at the VE Celebrations in Victoria Square with the brood. The children quite enjoyed the street party as did many other thousands of people who were there. I took out an hour or so to go to the Eid Millad un-Nabi celebrations in South Yardley ward at which I spoke about VE day. It does appear that the government are not really inclined to learn from history.

'There are some deep truths about the human condition that the Conservative Party understand better than anybody...'David 'Two Brains' Willetts a Conservative MP being modest (and he's from a party with much to be modest about) on The World This Weekend Radio 4, Sunday 8 May 2005, two days after a record third electoral defeat. So the Conservatives were right all along, it was just us dumb voters didn't get it. And he's one of the brightest bulbs in the Tory chandelier?

US school battle over evolution.

The good news in London is that we now have 8 Liberal Democrat MPs.Sarah Teather (Brent East)Tom Brake (Carshalton)Lynne Featherstone (Hornsey and Wood Green)Ed Davey (Kingston and Surbiton)Susan Kramer (Richmond Park) Simon Hughes (Southwark and Bermondsey) Paul Burstow (Sutton and Cheam) Vince Cable (Twickenham) We've held on to the 6 seats we won at the last General Election: Twickenham, Kingston and Surbiton, Sutton and Cheam, Carshalton, Southwark and Bermondsey and Richmond Park. So pleased that Susan Kramer succeeded in taking over the Richmond seat following Jenny Tonge's retirement.Delighted that Sarah Teather has won a much deserved full-term in office. A ...

The Observer reports this morning that Labour MP, Margaret Hodge, has called on the Prime Minister to take a 'moral lead' against anti-immigrant prejudice rather than try to outflank the Tories. This is a change in direction that is long overdue. Mrs Hodge is absolutely right when she says that "Anger at the slow pace of change, fuelled by the unprincipled Tory campaign on immigration, has given a new legitimacy to intolerance. It's not simple racism that attracts them to the BNP. It's a more complex pattern of frustration and fear: it's about rundown housing, crime on estates, disorder in ...

Nick Barlow reports that he is the number one result on Google when you search for 'evil liberals'. It seems that I am the number one result in a search for 'Slitheen'. There is something not quite right there!