LibDem Blogs - Archived!

Some predictions from Australia's finest, made before the series began: Jeff Thomson: If you put the players from Australia and England up against each other it is embarrassing. There is no contest between them on an individual or team basis. Glenn McGrath: I think I was saying 3-0 or 4-0 about 12 months ago, thinking there might be a bit of rain around. But with the weather as it is at the moment, I have to say5-0. Terry Alderman: I definitely believe if any of our batsmen get out to Giles in the tests they should ...

A Liberal Democrat-led coalition had an anti-BNP day of action in Scarborough today, and led to the police running the BNP out of town. Politics as normal has been suspended in Scarborough since the general election when a resurgent Lib Dem vote cut the feet from under the hapless Labour incumbent and gave the seat to a Conservative gentleman farmer. Labour has since vanished, the Tories are

Parliament chambers in most countries are traditionally laid out with the members sitting in a horseshoe facing a raised dais where the chair presides. Of course our own House of Commons adopts a much more confrontational layout; indeed the facing seats are arranged to be at least two swords' lengths apart to avoid injury! Local council chambers often use the horseshoe shape as well. This picture is typical. I was speaking at a European conference this week and I asked : Where are the members of the public? The next ...

has asked OPEC to pump more oil. Which, last time I was alert, was a finite resource the burning of which is causing the kind of climate change which powers ever more destructive hurricanes which in turn destroy refineries in the Gulf of Mexico.Thank God we've got a famously clever Chancellor. Just imagine if we'd been cursed with a stupid one, who encouraged ever more self destructive behaviour.Read this evisceration of former health secretary and failed 2005 election campaign coordinator Alan Milburn.

A lot of my fellow Lib Dem bloggers have mentioned that plans for heading off to Blackpool today for conference. I shall not be joining them instead there is more delivering to be done in Livingston. However, if my fellow bloggers read this from one of the free internet portals that are set up at conference can I just ask them to leave having displayed this page. That would be just great.

I am on my way to Blackpool for the Liberal Democrats Conference and using a very slow dial-up connection so blogging will be light for a bit. However, I could not help but notice this in today's Times. There is already suspicion that Wales was used as a guinea pig for Council Tax re-banding. The decision by the Tony Blair to to postpone the revaluation of property bands in England, due in 2007, seems to confirm that this was in fact the case. It appears that ministers have been stung by the political backlash from revaluation in Wales last ...

On the 28th October I will be speaking in a debate at the Durham Union Society in opposition to the motion that "This House would introduce compulsory ID cards".In proposition are Jan Berry, Chairman, Police Federation and Roberta Blackman-Woods, MP for Durham City (Labour). Alongside myself in opposition is to be Guy Mansfield QC, Chairman of the Bar Council.After only being in the House of Commons for a short time, Roberta Blackman-Woods made this speech in favour of ID Cards on the 28th June 2005. In addition, Roberta also serves on the Identity Cards Bill - Standing Committee D. Information ...

I have been dealing with a complex matter relating to Social Care recently. It is quite interesting to compare this to the Sally Clark/Trupti Patel cases. It seems to be that when a child or baby dies or suffers there is a developing principle that the parents are guilty unless they can prove that they are innocent. Most parents, of course, cannot actually prove that they are innocent as this

I welcome the Council's "campaign" for a cleaner, safer Borough. They claim to be listening to the concerns of local people about the state of our streets. How come it's taken them so long to do this? We've been banging on about it for ages! Could it be that there's an election coming, and with the local electorate flexing their muscles the Cabinet is now pulling its finger out?