LibDem Blogs - Archived!

We do our weekly shop in Leek. We do as much as we can in the small shops and then finish off at Aldi. It costs us £15 less than it would at Tesco's. It takes half an hour longer than the Tesco's run, but the time is spent much more pleasantly.

Had a good laugh when told that the MP's have had to lift their ban on smoking inside the visitors bar in Parliament. The place is usually packed - not dignified for MP's to smoke outside. From Gallery News: COMMONS: Smoking bans updatedThe smoking ban in the MPs visitors bar 'Strangers' has been lifted after a review of restrictions by the House of Commons Commission. The ban was imposed on April 1 but has been unpopular among even non-smoking MPs. Whenever I've had to go to the Palace ...

It appears (and I am asking formal questions to confirm this) that the UK does not include the 8MtC of emissions from International Air Traffic in its approx 35MtC of transport emissions although it does include the single 1MtC of Domestic Traffic. I presume the 8MtC is calculated on the basis of the next hop. The total emissions is about 150-160MtC so this is 5% of the total. No wonder they

I see that New Labour have once more allowed their fear of the electorate to overcome any principles they might have once had regarding devolution. The Western Mail this morning reports that Tony Blair and John Prescott personally vetoed giving the National Assembly the power to make its own laws.Instead, a government White Paper likely to be published next Thursday will propose a "fast track" system under which legislation proposed by the Assembly would be subject to approval by the Secretary of State for Wales and by both Houses of Parliament. While the hope would be that proposed laws would ...

My absence in Scotland has delayed this post by a few days but I felt that it was important to record one of the more touching moments of Wednesday's Plenary. Recent statistics have shown that the most popular A-level subject in Wales is history. This is a reassuring sign that civilisation still flourishes strongly here. As if to underline that fact, Kirsty Williams opened her speech on the merger of Welsh Quangos into the Labour Assembly Government with an historical analogy: On 14 July last year, the First Minister decided to stage his own storming of ...

I've been listening to a lot of podcasts recently; a particular favourite is "Escape Pod", a weekly podcast which aims to revive the genre of the science-fiction short-story. The standard podcast reciever is iPodder, a very feature rich program that is just too bloated for my needs: I want a cross platform downloader that can [...]

At last - Kingston's theatre will finally open next year. Brilliant!! This has been a long, long struggle - starting over 15 years ago - but it is astonishing to see what has been achieved. We have attracted one of the greatest theatre directors of our time, Sir Peter Hall, as artistic director. To have someone of his calibre telling us that this theatre "... is the acting space and auditorium that I have been dreaming of for all my professional life ..." is quite breathtaking. The design of the auditorium is based ...