LibDem Blogs - Archived!

Danny Alexander who is MP for Inverness, Nairn, Something and Other (Badenoch and Strathspey for those who wish to know) also is MP for Loch Ness and hence the Loch Ness Monster (Nessie) is one of his constituents. This cat: is a bit like Nessie. Patches I have only managed to get photos of in a very blurred manner. However, in guarding bottles of booze Patches has stayed still. It remains

If you subscribe to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme's weekly e-newsletter, you will have read this election analysis (issued 10th May), written by political reporter Iain Watson: I over-estimated the Lib Dems' number of seats, though not by much. I thought they would get 65, not 62. But again I didn't expect a major breakthrough. Why? Well, I was going to say far be it for me to tell the party

Just as it was more or less obligatory for someone of my generation to study Lord of the Flies at O level, so D. H. Lawrence was hard to avoid if you took English Literature at A level. Perhaps for that reason, I always think of Lawrence as a writer who appeals most to adolescents. No doubt this is unfair, but I have seldom been tempted to spend much time on Lawrence since leaving school. One thing I disliked about him even as a teenager was his exaggerated rhetoric about industrialisation. Again and again, industrialism and the way ...

William Hague, Eddie O'Hara, John Redwood, John Hemming, Chris Huhne, John Hutton, George Osborne, Dominic Grieve, Sion Simon. Who is the 10th? (Also Viscount Eccles, but he is not an MP) and does it matter? I knew about some, but not all.

There is a very good article in Spiked (4 May) by Frank Furedi on the extent to which the political classes are out of touch with public opinion. Furedi begins by examining the Tory election slogan. From a sociological point of view, the Conservative Party's slogan - 'Are you thinking what we're thinking?' - is the most interesting political statement of the British General Election

I am tempted to repeat my earlier refrain of "What is the Electoral Commission for?" but I appear to have found the answer. They exist so that Labour can ignore them. That certainly appears to be the only possible conclusion from the Government's decision to cherry-pick a comprehensive and largely sensible raft of reforms proposed by the Commission in relation to postal voting. The Guardian reports that the 45 proposals include the introduction of new offences to tackle mispractice, including making a fraudulent application for a postal or proxy vote, and clarification of the law on "undue influence". They ...

Over on the MKNE blog, Edis Bevan has introduced a wonderful device - a Babel Fish translation engine, which enables you to translate instantly his entire blog into several different languages. Once you are in the French version of his blog, clicking on the links takes you to the French versions of other Liberal Democrat blogs. This opens up a fascinating parallel universe. It turns out that my

Just been asked if anybody reads my blog - presume so because some people tell me they do, others email comments (usually loads of encouraging support but some moans and a couple down right nasty) - seem they are all Lib Dems or local people which is fine with me. Funnily I received several emails this week from far flung places. From Mark on holiday in USA (as I mentioned before I seem to be surrounded with Marks') 'Read your blog this morning (it's still conclusively morning here in San Francisco)..........the blog is fascinating'. ...