LibDem Blogs - Archived!

Welcome back - after a long hibernation - to Quaequam Blog! And welcome in particular to this posting on the row over the reform of the licensing laws: Unfortunately, this is one of those issues that demonstrates quite how arse-over-tit British politics is at the moment. The arch-regulators are defending a liberalising initiative while the liberals (both Lib Dem and Tory varieties) are falling over themselves to oppose it.A big Liberal England hello also goes to Hot Ginger and Dynamite.

John Clare, the great nature poet, was born in 1793. Perhaps it should not be so surprising that a photograph of him exists, but it still seems strange.Anyway, that photograph was recently sold for £3600 - thanks to dumbfoundry for the lead.While we are discussing John Clare...I am!I am! yet what I am none cares or knows,My friends forsake me like a memory lost;I am the self-consumer of my woes,They rise and vanish in oblivious host,Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;And yet I am! and live with shadows tostInto the nothingness of scorn and noise,Into the living sea ...

A few years back everything to do with technology had to have an 'e' in front of it. As with all fads, there was then a backlash against this and the 'e' prefix became a bit naff, although it has stuck in some places, such as 'eGovernment' and 'eDemocracy'. We can be grateful to those [...]

In my post on Sunday, I forgot to include a fairly important point: The Left abuses liberalism at is peril. Despite the tendency for socialism to disregard individual liberty, I have no doubt that the majority of left-wingers don’t want to see us end up with a Police State. Yet every time they portray [...]

The volume of trackbacks and comments on my blog has recently increased. It’s not a reaction to my incisive technical commentary, nor is it the league of goths and Stargate SG1 nerds who regularly post in order call me a lamer. The spammers have returned and this time with more sophisticated spambots which are capable of [...]

Matt Turner hailed my return to blogging by saying: Champagne on me. But not after 11 if you lot get your way today, I guess. I presume that by this, he’s referring to the decision by the Lib Dem Parliamentary Party yesterday to “pray” for the government not to introduce the new licensing laws, which have [...]

The excellent Siberian Light blog quotes from Mosnews that blogging was described - if not actually invented - by the Russian Prince Vladimir Odoevsky in 1837 ! Odoevskiy was an intellectual and a science fiction writer who apparently wrote a book called "Year 4338" According to Mosnews: "Odoevsky suggested in future there would be a kind of connection between houses that would allow people to

I am writing this listening to my newest CD acquisition: Georges Delerue's soundtrack for the 1967 film Our Mother's House , which was directed by Jack Clayton and features Dirk Bogarde in a very un Dirk Bogarde role. It is only the second instrumental soundtrack I have bought - the first was Morricone's music from Once Upon a Time in the West. Away from the film Delerue's music is pleasant, but in context I know of no score which so alters the mood of its film. Our Mother's House is a dark story of a family of children who ...

Clue's in the title...I racked up 156km in the day, with over 7 hours in the saddle, on a very enjoyable and pleasant October day. It was so nice that at lunch while sat outside the pub at Belboughton that I thought I was going to get sunburnt!The weather was insanely nice, the only downside was a slightly stiff southerly wind, which was awkward on the highest parts of the ride, but a blessing on the final leg as it quite literally blew us home.

This is how the Health Service Journal covered the aftermath of the total eclipse of the sun that was visible from Cornwall in 1999: Fears of mass retinal damage in the west of England came to nothing. The total eclipse that drew over a quarter of a million people to Cornish shores turned out to be one of the anti-climaxes of a lifetime. "We only had one eye injury," said West Country ambulance service spokesman Darren Gibson, "and that was one of our own personnel who got dropped on by a seagull while he was looking up." (Reprinted in ...

Abolition of the BBC licence fee is a debate which sparks up regularly to my never-ceasing delight. Steve Guy has put the argument in favour of its axeing over on his Political Weblog. I did so in August, via the Apollo Project, here. Go seek... I won't bore readers with another recitation, but there are some points worth emphasising as they seem always to be lost in the horror that greets the

I just enjoyed listening to an Ocean Colour Scene song (it’s called Mechanical Wonder). Damn you, last.fm. Twenty Hail Mary’s and no pudding for me tonight. © Will on No geek is an island, 2005. ¦ Permalink ¦ [...]

by Peter Courtesy of Good Liberal on the LDYS forum, here is a though-provoking piece from Samuel Brittan, which makes a good case against Blair (and inter alia David Davis) A related charge against New Labour is an indifference to the traditions and procedures that underpin British freedom, such as jury trial, habeas corpus and the presumption of innocence. It is not so much that Mr Blair has made a careful case for suspending some of these procedures in an emergency. It is that he shows no feeling whatever for traditional British liberties. In case you think ...

By Peter Here's Paul on an unsung hero of the Middle East.

By Jabez Clegg The FT has news on the US offer to cut farm subsidies. Trade talks obviously work on the basis that they will cut theirs if we cut ours, so this is good news. But there is a lot of work to do. The UK Government stomped around at the Brussels summit in June, arguing for big cuts in subsidy. Sadly when Margaret Beckett went to talk to the European Parliament about her plans, they found that she had none: it had all been just words. In practice it is just possible that the EU has made enough ...

Just shared a lift with Andrew 'Rozza' Rosindell and five of his teenage Tory apparatchicks. So dirty, must make self clean, so dirty....

The shadow Jessica Morden blog complains that the Newport East MP "appears to be as rare as a badger around Ron Davies." Clearly the author of this piece has not seen this morning's Western Mail where Jessica is listed as number 31 in the paper's list of Wales' sexiest women for 2005. Nobody I have spoken to is quite sure why the Western Mail continues with this feature, what its point is, who chooses the top 50 or what criteria they apply. Nevertheless, all publicity is good publicity it seems as far as the lucky 50 are concerned. ...

The BBC is arguing that it needs to increase the license fee ahead of inflation year on year to deliver services for the digital age. Years ago, the BBC argued that the license fee was the only way to fund public service broadcasting. Historically, it had a point. First there was the BBC - and if you wanted to access the service you were asked to pay. Then came ITV - no extra cost to us because it was supported by commercials. A few people would have watched only ITV, but were still compelled to pay for BBC. But the ...

On being elected the Whips ask which committees members are willing to sit on. I said I didn't mind. As a consequence I got the Regulatory Reform Select Committee. Actually this is a very interesting committee. I don't know for certain, but it appears that this is the only select committee that actually scrutinises changes to primary legislation that are not being debated as such. Regulatory

Former Ugandan President Milton Obote dies at the age of 80 in hospital in South Africa. He took Uganda to independence from Britain in 1962, but was overthrown nine years later by the infamous dictator Idi Amin. In another African news report Voters in the West African state of Liberia are queueing to cast their ballots in historic elections to choose a president and parliament. After over 20 years of an on-off war - with 22 presidential candidates all wanting to win let us hope the losers don't cause trouble and ...