LibDem Blogs - Archived!

Went to the Road Block conference in Birmingham. Spent day swimming in a sea of acronyms, but learnt stuff. Will be slightly less ignorant in future. The main message of the day was that we can and do win sometimes and stop roads being built.

An interesting story in this weeks Islington Tibune. Bullet-proof glass has been fitted to expensive designer Holloway flats to stop youths smashing the windows. The type fitted is only one grade down from being bomb-proof. The £800,00 glass-fronted homes in Paradise Passege have been plagued for years by gangs from nearby estates using everything from pebble to bricks as ammunition............... What's with kids and smashing windows. I've got a huge crack in one of my front windows because of stone's thrown by the kids down stairs when they were younger. It brings to ...

The County Council is set to make a decision on whether to turnover one of the westbound lanes on the A690 between the Belmont slip road and the Gilesgate roundabout (see report in the Northern Echo). I'm still to be convinced by the scheme - the bus lane is pretty short but there is potential for increasing delays for commuters as their lanes reduce into one lane, and then later will merge with the bus lane. If traffic does build up as a result, then buses will end up stuck in congestion as much as everyone else. I ...

Following my posting the other day I have made some more discoveries. First, Lassie Comes Home is being remade at the moment, starring Peter O'Toole. (He is not playing the title role but the Duke of Rudling.) It is being shot in Ireland and the Isle of Man, and other cast members include Steve Pemberton from the League of Gentlemen, John Lynch, Jemma Redgrave and Gregor Fisher. The press coverage suggests the script is true to Eric Knight's original story. Second, I have come across a substantial academic analysis of the meaning of the Lassie films and the later American ...

From the Northern Echo: A blooming helpful project by teenagers TEENAGERS are helping to brighten the lives of older people in County Durham. Year 10 and 11 students at Durham Gilesgate Sports College, who are doing their gold Prince's Trust XL Award, received a grant to make wooden planters. They will be filling the boxes with flowers and donating them to older people in the community. With donations of plants and compost from B&Q Gilesgate, they expect to produce 50 planters. Keely Fingleton, from Education in the Community's Mid Durham Projects Club, said: "The young ...

From the latest LDYS mailing: Jo Crotty's Liberal Democrat campaign team have now set up their HQ at Unit 9 on the Wombourne Enterprise Park, Bridgnorth Road, Wombourne, Wolverhampton WV5 0AL. They are now open and ready for action! We need your help now, the first sets of leaflets are ready and waiting for you! Come by car if you can - other than about 5000 homes in Wombourne itself, the rest of the seat can only be easily got at by car as buses and trains need lengthy trips into and out of Wolverhampton. Wombourne is a large ...

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog. I am not entirely clear how they work - or what "trackback" is, to be honest - but let's see how we get on with them. To be given the option of leaving a comment it seems you need to have an individual posting open, rather than the blog as whole. To get an individual posting open, click on the orange # sign at the bottom lefthand corner of each of them. I hope that makes sense. If it doesn't you can leave me a comment - or maybe ...

From the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (see link) Draft proposals for health rationing. Recommendation 6 With respect to age (section 5.1): • however, where age is an indicator of benefit or risk, age discrimination is appropriate. Recommendation 7 When setting priorities there is no case for discrimination on the basis of gender or sexual orientation unless these are

A very noisy police helicopter has been circling above my house for some time. Ian has just got in and tells me that the Royal Family are parked up in a layby nearby - they've obviously arrived early for the Derby. Derby Day used to be on the Wednesday of half term, and caused a lot of excitement locally because the Hook Road is one of the routes through to Epsom from London. During the morning open topped buses would ferry groups in a party-going mood, with helicopters flying frequently overhead. When my children were small we ...

Given that I got up ridiculously early to watch the match this morning, I figure I may as well try to get some mileage out of covering the Lions tour. Unfortunately I was too lazy to roll out of bed for 8:10, and so I missed the first ten minutes of the match. By all accounts, these ten minutes were the best rugby the Lions played all game. It was, however, nice to see the Lions 17-0 up on my arrival. Thereafter, the Bay of Plenty put them under a fair amount of pressure - in particular, the front five ...

I am about to set off for Hay-on-Wye to see the Guardian Hay Festival. According to the Western Mail, Bob Geldof will be there today and will be using his appearance to justify his call for a million protestors to descend on Edinburgh during the G8 summit. Given that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has endorsed this plea I don't see why everybody is looking to St. Bob for an explanation. Nevertheless it will be an event worth seeing.As it happens my day is pretty well planned out anyway. We are starting at 1pm with Helena Kennedy and Sadakat ...

He wanted it to be a very amicable process, he wanted to maintain the image of his party's success in the general election, and most importantly of all, he wanted to ensure that the leadership contest didn't appear to be comparable to a piece of meat thrown into a den of hungry Tory lions. But, unfortunately for the Conservatives, somebody piped up. So, as said above, let the bloodbath begin between the Tories who want to modernise, accept open-minded values, and join Europe; and the traditional Tories who reject Europe, and would rather cut their nads off with a rusty ...