LibDem Blogs - Archived!

Today I reccomended to our new councillor for Salisbury East, John English, that we remove the traffic lights from several Salisbury roundabouts. I hope he will consider it!

Ken Clarke, who has twice lost the race for the Tory leadership, is considering running again. Some people just don't the message do they? PS. In other news, I'm not going to be on the LDYS Exec next, lost the race (got just 9 votes!). Fiddlesticks. Might run again next year though.

meanwhile, thanks to a North Yorkshire County Council Social Services raid on her benefits, my multiply handicapped foster sister faces life with -£5 pounds a week after all her bills are paid.

One interesting case at today's advice bureau was where someone had gone to work in Bulgaria for just over 3 months. On return they are deemed to be "Not Habitually Resident" in the UK and as such cannot get benefits. Perhaps this is a mechanism used by Tony Blair to increase emigration. This should, however, be an easy case to sort. Another interesting case was a group of Brummies who were

In the Western Mail this morning Kirsty Buchanan tells us:The eminently sensible Alan Johnson has put his foot down on Downing Street's proposed re-branding of the Department of Trade and Industry.This is not just about the unnecessary expense, but also because the proposed new name has already become a titter-fest for the sort of grown men who still find rude words funny.You see the Department of Productivity, Energy and Industry could - at a real stretch - be reduced to the acronym "penis".I have to admit that I had completely missed this rather obscure acronym. I really must get out ...

Stage three of the Blair project it seems is to compensate for a woeful lack of popular support in the Country by shoring up the Labour vote in the House of Lords. The anachronism of a largely hereditary chamber stuffed full of Tory backwoodsmen has now been replaced with a mostly appointed House graced by many of Tony's cronies, Michael's minions and Charlie's chums. All of them are of course politicians and public figures of the highest quality and integrity, but without exception they lack the one qualification that should be required for the job they do. They ...

The Guardian reports that the Queen has chosen Rolf Harris to paint her 80th birthday portrait. Putting aside all the jokes about wobble boards and didgeridoos I actually think this is a good choice. It has certainly outed all the snobs and the luvvies in the art world who spend huge amounts of time telling us what is good for us. I do have one question though. Karen Wright, the editor of Modern Painters, alleges that the decision is "like choosing a cartoon strip character to write about Proust." On what evidence did she make this assessment of the intellectual ...

We may have lost Leicester South and failed to take Harborough, but at least the Liberal Democrats are in charge of Leicester City Council again.We have ousted the minority Labour administration and are having another go at running things with the Tories. More details here.