LibDem Blogs - Archived!

Some broadcasters are so bland and inoffensive that it’s offensive. Nick Ross is one such. I remember a magazine article that featured photographs of celebrities as children and invited you to guess who they grew up to become. It was somehow inevitable that the young Nick Ross should look exactly like the older Nick Ross. Two more such creatures are the Dimblebys. The first part of David Dimbleby’s new series A Picture of Britain , which looks at British landscape and its effect on British painting and other arts, was shown on BBC1 this evening. Inevitably the pictures were ...

Nick Cohen is controversial and right in today's Observer: "If you look globally today and want to talk about human rights, for the vast majority of the world's population they don't mean very much. To talk about freedom of expression to a man who can't read the newspaper, to talk about the right to work to someone who has no job; human rights means nothing to them unless it brings some change on these particular issues.' This clunking and faintly sinister statement did not come from a colonial administrator explaining that liberty was all well and good for freeborn ...

The saga continues........Received a hand delivered letter today - it had been posted to the wrong address. There was no name and the house number was wrong on both the envelope and the letter. A puzzled resident came to ask me what the letter was all about - it dawned on me after reading the content that it was all about my now infamous bath. Homes for Islington are apparently going to start something 16th June.Must keep this picture as proof of what I've lived with for over 6 years.The surveyors report and my nagging must have generated some action. ...

Last summer, I did some travelling around Europe, and wrote a series of e-mails to friends and family that seemed to be well-received. I quite liked them, and in the interests of having them recorded in something other than my sent-message folder, I'm going to re-post them here - one a day, to bide the time whilst my blogging may be a little light.

And a Viking saga at that. For those of you who weren´t aware, my brother and I are currently travelling around Europe for a month, using an Interrail pass to go more or less wherever we like. This will be one of a regular series of emails about our adventures - I hope you find them interesting and informative, and if you don't, then feel free to use the delete button. At present we are in Copenhagen, having flown out here to begin our trip. It had inauspicious beginnings when our flight was delayed by half an hour and my ...

In the end I did not go to the Bob Geldof event at the Hay Festival. It was not that I was trying to avoid him but I had tickets for a clashing event. Nevertheless, his Live8 event and the million protestors descending on Edinburgh idea do seem to be entering choppy waters. Geldof's defence of his position in the wake of criticism by DJ Andy Kershaw at the absence of black musicians at events staged to benefit Africans is bizarre. He apparently told The Independent on Sunday that he had to concentrate on names known in G8 ...

The Independent on Sunday reports this morning that Peter Mandelson is pressing for new GM foods and crops to be eaten and planted across Europe, even though governments cannot agree on whether to introduce them. Apparently, the trade commissioner's department wants to speed up the use of GMs, despite widespread public opposition, and is insisting on their being imposed by the Commission on unwilling governments. This news is unwelcome and should be resisted by the British Government. It shows once more how out-of-touch Eurocrats and the Governments who support them are with public opinion across Europe. What it also does ...

According to today's Wales on Sunday the WDA, the government quango responsible for boosting jobs in Wales, has blown almost £150,000 of public money on a six-month blitz entertaining clients.These 'events' took place between November 2004 and April 2005 and were largely put on for businesses and politicians. They included almost £28,000 on a trip to the Hong Kong Sevens to "target Chinese and Australian multipliers and business projects", £9,500 on three visits to America to watch the Miami Dolphins football and Boston Celtics basketball teams, and £15,000 on hospitality for London firms at the Wales v England Six ...

Burlington is the old name for Bridlington, I find, hence possibly the minor title of Earl of Burlington possessed by the House of Cavendish. Which is by the by. Having spent four days isolated over by the German Ocean I have missed most comment of the French Non vote and now the Dutch Nee, but thought Ming the Merciless sorted out the Vulcan quite neatly on the breakfast-time TV this Sunday

Is it just me who finds a plan by the government to stick a black box in every car, so that they know precisely where you have been, more than a little intrusive of civil liberties?

Yesterday, at the Roadblock conference, I was in a workshop with Ann, a Stoke councillor, and Gerald, the CPRE' regional policy officer. Gerald advised Ann that if she wanted to influence the regional assembly to contact him; he is vice chair of the regional assembly transport committee. The exchange made me feel profoundly uneasy. Gerald is an unelected representative of a pressure group. Ann is a democratically elected councillor, yet he has more influence in the region than she has. That is just one of the problems I have with the West Midlands Regional Assembly: There is no West ...

Apart from rationing (see yesterday) which is not being discussed widely, the planned movement from Secondary to Primary Care is also something that has stayed out of the public domain. Much that the government claim that "The Department does not estimate changes in hospital bed numbers." They are well aware that there is a plan to reduce spend in secondary care (and bed numbers) and increase it