LibDem Blogs - Archived!

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Amid today's celebrations, it is worth sparing a minute to read this article by Jon Agnew. It was written on 21 August 2004: England are a very good team. It is interesting that none of the players, or indeed the coach Duncan Fletcher, would speculate about how they would fare against Australia right now. "It's a long way away", was all they said, wary I am sure of making big statements that could blow up in their faces next summer, but there is no harm in those of us in the media doing it for them. If England can ...

Thanks to Statcounter, I can tell which words people entered into a search engine to find Liberal England. So it's a big hello to two of today's visitors.First, there was someone in Kuwait who went to Yahoo! and typed in "what was the original function for market harborough".I am glad that is what they are talking about in the Gulf. In case he or she drops by again, here is an extract from The Making of the English Landscape: Leicestershire by the great W. G. Hoskins - the man who invented local history as an academic discipline:Market Harborough is a ...

The new-look Guardian reports this morning that people with ginger hair are more sensitive than most. A study released yesterday shows that the presence of a ginger gene means many redheads need extra doses of anaesthetic during surgery because they suffer pain more acutely. Researchers think that the ginger gene, known as MC1R, may cause the temperature-detecting gene to become over-activated, making redheads more sensitive to the cold. It is hoped that this research can be used to develop better pain-relieving drugs and anaesthetics. Anything that we redheads can do to help of course, but could somebody ...

Anyone who has ever seen me in action on delivery runs especially during campign may be shocked to hear that I hit the wall yesterday evening. To be fair there is not a lot of hilly runs in the Livingston constituency but yesterday in heat of the afternoon I took on Kirkliston. Kirkliston has brilliant vistas you can see into Edinburgh, Fife and the Forth Bridges from here. The problem is the

Nobody can under-estimate the achievement of the English Cricket Team in winning the Ashes back after 18 years against the best Test team in the World. Furthermore they did it in style and were clearly the best team in the series. The one thing this last Test confirmed for me was that whoever it was who said that cricket is a game of 15 halves was absolutely right.

by Peter One of the benefits of a Scottish by-election is to remind one what an interesting bunch the SNP are. Their approach to statistics is particularly interesting. Apparently their platform is now based on preaching the benefits of cheap oil. And according to the SNP residents of Livingston pay more for their fuel than the rest of the UK. This may be true - but the SNP don´t seem to have any sensible evidence. Their survey is of just 12 stations "in and around the Livingston constituency" showing an "an average pump price for unleaded of 95.1p and 97.7p ...

The Guardian launched their new mid-sized (Berliner) newspaper today, so being the sucker for advertising that I am, I bought it... ... And I liked it! I used to sporadically read The Guardian, but was put off it when The Independent went tabloid because, well, I don't have arms the width of London Bridge. The new format, however, is actually easier to handle than the "compact newspapers", as the

The South Wales Echo reports that a huge security blunder has meant hundreds of staff at the National Assembly have NOT been checked for links to terrorist groups. Apparently, for five years Government vetting has not not been routinely carried out at here, which means hundreds of civil servants with access to confidential files and documents have not been given security clearance.As we are back next week I expect somebody will be asking questions about this. Obviously we need to get our act together and quickly.

The Western Mail this morning features the £9 billion that British adults spend each year on gadgets they do not use. The list includes bread makers, coffee machines and electric knives as well as sandwich makers, foot spas, toasters and bathroom scales.I certainly associate with some of these items and can add some of my own to the list. The juicer for example, which sounded like a healthy initiative at the time but which takes much longer in the morning to use than just opening a carton and even longer to clean. We are all obsessed with gadgets, personally I ...

I was, perhaps, insufficiently geeky. Cataloguing and classifying may have a certain bibliogeek chic to them, but I have spurned Scott Walker’s demands and chosen the best of both worlds. As I mentioned a few weeks back, I was until last week seconded to work on the systems side of the library. Following a successful application [...]

Via Will Howells and The Current Outlook:

As someone else said somewhere else on some other occasion. (Nelson as the British fleet sailed towards the French and Spanish fleet of Trafalgar in October 1805). The fleet was led into battle by Admiral Collingwood - a Geordie - because the wind favoured his line of ships. Nelson, whose line was lagging admired his deputy's fearless approach in the teeth of French cannon fire: 'He sails as

Sky News tells it like it is.

Most of the American political blogs I've seen have unremittingly partisan rhetoric, which gets rather tedious after a while. You look in vain for a liberal blogger to say "Hey, Bush is right for once", or for a Conservative to write that "The Democrats are making a good point here" What's more , they seem to avoid the nitty-gritty of politics- how to actually win elections. For example, nobody

Matthew Simmons has done a review of the Club of Rome's book "Limits to Growth". This takes me back to the debates of the 1970s about light and deep greens. As a light green I believed then that it is possible to have economic growth without a growth in the consumption of energy and resources. I continue to believe that and can cite evidence. However, I have continued to take the view that we