LibDem Blogs - Archived!

will only become a true crisis if the EU breaks down the extent that they have to crate up trade commissioner Peter Mandelson and send him back.The yards of BBC coverage and acres of newsprint devoted to the French vote definitely suggested it was a matter of some importance. Not in this corner of Yorkshire, it wasn't, to judge by the many people who weren't giving a merde, but were instead eating fish and chips with devotion worthy of a better cause.In olden days matters of great import were far easier to recognise: there'd be a plague of frogs, ...

Last week I attended my first academic conference, the European Conference on Information Systems in Regensburg. I was slightly overawed by the presence of so many eminent people, but had a great time, and networked at all hours. My contribution was as a practitioner on a panel on 'eGovernment, the Citizen and Equity', alongside speakers from Italy, Sweden and the UK. The conference was held in the 1970s-built technical university, which interestingly has a department of theology and philosophy. The new pope lectured there, and rose to become Vice President of the university. ...

Brian Micklethwait at Samizdata is a man who I may disagree with a lot of the time when it comes to political matters, but whose love of sport is definitely something I share. He has written recently about the phenomenon of technology in sports, with the paradox that our adjudication of umpiring decisions and general sporting analysis is often unavailable to the umpire or referee at the time. The use of technology is cricket is increasingly highlighting the deficiency of the umpires. The third umpire, used for close run-out decisions, has greatly improved the quality of decision-making in this regard. ...

The vote in France on the Constitution does raise complex issues. Like many of these debates the issues that determined the vote were probably mainly nothing to do with the constitution itself. Looking at the text it appears to be a bit messy and something generated very much for the convenience of the bureaucracy. The simplistic "pro-European" argument is that "something must be done" - "this

For those who don't visit the About page daily, just a couple of small changes. Posts with longs words are now ignored (the word limit is current 70), most times these are really long URLs or tables which your feed has removed the tags, but not added any spaces. People who don't post anything for 60 days, will find their name being removed from the BlogBox, as nobody likes an out of date link.

I had assumed that the Liberal Democrats' internal dispute about the rights and wrongs of local income tax had been settled, at least for now. Then last Friday I received an e-mail from the ALDC: ALDC in conjunction with the Lib Dem group on the LGA has produced an online questionnaire on Local Income Tax. The main purpose of this survey is to find out from the campaigners, councillors and

Recently, the Liberal Democrats have argued that the case for PR has never been stronger. However, stepping out of party line for a second, is it really such a good idea?1. PR was the system adopted by the Germans some 80 years ago. Not long after, the Nazis took over.2. The idea of a strong MP is a person who loves the constituency in particular, and is a known "champion of the town".I would rather vote for a local representative than for a list. I'm sure many people want to actually vote for the person ...

The Times reports on a study that finds that as many as one in four teenagers from single-parent families are deterred from thoughts of university by the prospect of getting into debt. White working-class boys are worst affected. The study is based on interviews with 2,700 schoolchildren aged 11 to 16 from London to Wales and the West Midlands. It illustrates the challenge the Government faces in widening access and how their own policies are actively working against the most disadvantaged members of our society and reinforcing higher education as a middle class reserve. The overall proportion ...

Last month I wrote about news stories that you do not read any more. I was thinking of plane crashes, Formula One drivers dying and ever younger children swimming the English Channel. Thinking about it, I might have included strikes too. For a while this week it looked as if another of them was making a come back: Japanese soldiers emerging from the jungle not knowing that the Second World War was over. On Friday the BBC reported: Japanese officials are investigating claims that two men living in jungle in the Philippines are Japanese soldiers left behind after World War ...

Tim Worstall's latest round up of the best in British blogs can be found here.

Of course, there are acres (or should that be hectares?) of comment being printed about the French decision on the EU 'Constitution' today, but that does not stop me adding my tuppence ha'penny (trans: 4 Euro cents) worth. The EU started off with a small number of states working towards an ever closer union. France [...]

The French have voted against ratification of the European Constitution, by a margin in line with the final opinion poll predictions ("non" 55%, "oui" 45%, turnout 70%). This vote is evidence of a fundamental problem, not so much with the EU but more with politics in general. The consequences of the French vote will be profound although the immediate effects will be less dramatic than many