LibDem Blogs - Archived!

I never really said much about my time in Amsterdam, short of reflections on the excellent Dutch resistance museum. I meant to write much more about my time - especially if you go to the right areas, it is a wonderfully picturesque city - but now I'm actually sitting down at the keyboard, I can't. That's because the last part of my trip was totally overshadowed by the news of the first London bombings (how sad that we now order them sequentially). The internet cafe on the Damrak will now be etched in my memory. It is a strange feature ...

Charlie Whitaker at Perfect: On the train this morning; out of town to attend a meeting, then back again. Things seemed fairly normal. It’ll be good to stop thinking about the bombings so much of the time, and if there’s a consensus forming around responsibilities and consequences, I’ll support it.

The list of crazy euphemisms gets longer and longer. Now a primary school teacher want to do away with the concept of failure, and replace it with the concept of "deferred success". What a load of rubbish. “Learning should be lifelong and it should be something that everybody knows they can do and knows they can have a bash at. I’d rather tell kids that they have done jolly well. You can then say, ‘Tomorrow we should try that’, rather than just saying, ‘You have failed’.” Sure, I might agree with the first half of that ...

Got back home feeling so annoyed with all these bombings and the disruption to people's lives. A cup of tea to calm me down - opened the Islington Gazette. Wow! the letters page has one of my contributions. A quick read and noticed they only changed one word. Well that made my day after everything else going pear-shaped. Supposed to attend the G8 meeting at party HQ. It's one of those meetings that I had a pile of papers to print off from an email attachment - took ages to sort it all out. An hour off work - all ...

This is good. Use the arrows to move the Apollo 11 landing site to the centre of the picture and keep it there whilst maximising the magnification.

I am working at home today and listening to the news of more 'incidents' on public transport in London. It is frightening but less so than two weeks ago as, fortunately, there do not seem to be deaths and injuries, just fear and disruption. The news has come out more quickly this time, presumably because [...]

West Lothian Council are moving fast on the possibility of a memorial for James Doohan AKA Scotty something that was only muted this morning. Cllr. Willie Dunn convener of the council’s enterprise and development committee, and fellow poster to the football club's website has said, "It is an intriguing idea which is certainly worth serious consideration. "Linlithgow was the birthplace of Mary

An interesting article in the Guardian this morning reports that C-Change, a Tory pressure group, believes that most of the 31 seats the Tories gained in the May election changed hands because Labour voters switched to the Liberal Democrats, not because they embraced the Conservatives. This has been taken by some as an endorsement of Labour's tactics in the last week of the General Election, when claims by Tony Blair and others that a vote for the Liberal Democrats will let in the Tories, largely stemmed any last minute swing to Charles Kennedy and my party. The problem for Labour's ...

Was describing my concerns re the Westminster kiosk at lunch to be assured by the Chief Whip that I shouldn't be too concerned as Portcullis House could withstand most things - probably including a 747 knocking into it. I don't advise any one to road test this theory. He then casually mentioned that there were more bombs so we have all decamped to a nearby tv monitor. This latest event appears to

Watching Prime Minister's Questions on the TV news yesterday, I was struck by the fact that Tony Blair was flanked by two of Britain's leading young political rebels of the late 1960s. On one side of Blair sat Jack Straw, the first 'political' president of the NUS (National Union of Students), whose name was a byword for student protest in that era. On the other side sat Peter Hain, a prominent

Earlier today through the course of my work in a call centre I had a caller from Criccieth. Of course this is also the home of a certain well know Liberal Prime Minister, David Lloyd George. Of course sadly one of the things he was remembered for for abusing the peerage system for profit. However, before he became PM on 10 August 1911 the Parliament Act came into being. 94 years later the

James Doohan who played Montgomery Scott is Star Trek has died at the age of 85. Now there are calls for West Lothian Council to honour the most famous still to be born son of Linlithgow. Scotty is due to be born in Linlithgow in 2222 (the age is extrapolated by the age of the actors taken from the date they first appeared in the Star Trek Universe). During the series his parents still live in

I managed to get a number of points raised as questions to the Home Secretary before the Speaker interrupted yesterday. This question he ignored: Does he agree that to achieve a calm and peaceful world we need to stand on two legs: security and justice? We cannot have justice without security but, at the same time, we cannot have security without justice. We need to focus on ensuring that justice

My EDM 400 FAMILY TAX CREDIT REPAYMENTS 23.06.2005 Hemming, John That this House notes that there is a substantial problem with the hardship caused by the clawback of overpayments of family tax credit; and calls for no clawback to occur until the weekly amount of clawback is agreed verbally, by email or in writing by the recipient Relates to the biggest problem that people face who are on tax

Today (Thursday) is the 175th anniversary of Belgium. Before you read any further, please rise for the Belgian national anthem. July 21st is Belgium's national day and a public holiday. The country was founded in 1830 when it broke away from the Protestant Netherlands. Belgium's creation was the last act in the round of European boundary changes that followed the defeat of Napoleon. The country