LibDem Blogs - Archived!

Managed to get in on business questions with this and got a more helpful response than expected from Geoff Hoon. Had already done some work on this but it might be worth taking him up on his offer of help. What is clear is that residents are sick and fed up and the place will need a significant clean up.

It was inevitable when the question on pay differential appeared on the order paper that people would want to comment on the fact that Meg Munn appeared to have been forgotten in the reshuffle (or at least the post for Women and Equality had been forgotten) and ended up agreeing to take on the post for no pay. I had a little line ready prepared but a number of colleagues gently referred to before

So the government don't have a "target" for council tax increases. Instead they have an amount by which it is assumed to increase.

in the 1980s and 90s. 'Free Nelson Mandela' became a slogan for the times, except for some rancid Young Conservatives who wore t-shirts proclaiming 'hang Nelson Mandela'. We didn't support a free South Africa for it to stand idly by while Robert Mugabe forcibly evicts hundreds of thousands of his unfortunate citizens in Operation Drive Out Trash, driving them into a countryside already racked by

I was thinking about what people may wish to do to get copies of my responses to various consultations and the like. Clearly these things will be in the final papers, but it would be silly to post them to the blog as there would be too much text. I have, therefore, established a YahooGroup This group called imaginatively johnhemming has a files section from which you can obtain information.

Today's House Points from Liberal Democrat News. I have used the Duke of Wellington quotation before and, though I do try hard to believe in government action, will no doubt use it again. Keep it simple The good news: if this government does bring in national identity cards it will do it so inefficiently that no one will be able to keep tabs on you. The bad news: you may well be sent a card saying you are Doris Snood from Pontefract and spend the rest of your life trying to prove you are not. If you don’t ...

More on windfarms: Wind-Farm.org

Nicol Stephen yesterday won the election to succeed Jim Wallace as Leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats. He beat fellow MSP Mike Rumbles by 76.6% to 23.4%. I was at the press conference where the result was announced by Malcolm Bruce MP and I watched Nicol’s acceptance speech which was as positive as the campaign had [...]

‘Racist’ remark was sci-fi quote. Of course it was. And I’m a Jedi Knight.

Readers of the Independent may notice that pages 32 and 33 are today taken up by a list of names (and who says journalists are lazy?) of those 1,991 people who qualified for the finals of the paper’s national sudoku championship. I’m amongst them, as, I notice, is Nick. With around two thousand qualifiers and a [...]

I have got an answer about Council Tax. They claim, however, that "The Government do not set a target increase in the amount which local authorities can raise from council tax". The only thing is that the government do have an expected increase figure. Now I need to find out exactly what that is called and put that in.

Did Moses conduct the first referendum? Biblical texts indicate that he almost certainly did not. After all the ten commandments were imposed on his people, they did not have a chance to accept or reject them in a plebiscite. However, according to Rhodri Morgan on Wednesday, the commandments comprise the ideal constitution on which to base a vote. The First Minister was commenting in the Assembly on the outcome of the French Referendum on the European Constitution and the fact that every voter was issued with a copy of the aforesaid document, roughly the size of a telephone directory. No ...

Labour believes a powerful weapon in persuading working-class voters not to back the BNP is to label it as "Nazi" and now a landmark ruling by the Standards Board for England has allowed the description. It should not be a matter for the Standards Board to decide whether or not the BNP can be called Nazis. The reason this is the case is that the Standards Board actually regulate the words that

This is a question I have asked. I tried to get called under the question relating to the Supermarket Code of Conduct, but was not called. "What plans does the Minister have to deal with Monopsonys and Oligopsonys particularly in reference to Supermarkets, disintermediation and the demise of the small shops?" Watch out for lots of references to Oligopsonys.

I am not quite sure what this link will do as it appears that the parliament server uses cookies. Through the EDM Web Server one can find all of the current Early Day Motions. I have "sponsored" 7 which means I have written 7 and proposed them and others have seconded them. I am working on a database of EDMs with comments to enable me to work out which others to support. In the mean time I

I cancelled my subscription to FoE because of my doubts about its policies on windpower and nuclear power. I received an email in response from FoE today which fails to reassure me. If 15% of our energy is to come from wind turbines how much land will that need? The email does not say. It is not as if we have a lot of spare countryside available. The question is whether it is worth sacrificing our countryside to turbines which are intermittent and inefficient. My concern is that FoE are allowing this government to use ...

All has been quiet here lately for the very good reason that I have been catching up on some holiday time after the election. Most recently, I found a hotel called La Quinta Roja in the north of Tenerife in the Canary Islands. On the personal side, I can't recommend the place enough as the [...]