LibDem Blogs - Archived!

The closure of the Northern line has made my street even more famous. Last weekend the BBC cameras were in window view from my flat, by the road sign which a has unfortunately been daubed with graffiti and not cleaned (Islington side) whilst across the road the same sign has (Camden side). This was for last Sunday's morning Politics Show where they discussed the crime rate comparison between Camden and Islington following the report that Islington has the highest rate of crime in the country. (Labour vs Lib Dem run councils) BBC news has just shown the tube station on ...

As I write Channel 4 is showing this documentary on flying saucers written by Nick Cook. His case is that the phenomenon has nothing to do with little green men but can be accounted for by occasional sightings of experimental American technology. This developed the work of German scientists during World War II and was later deployed in the Cold War. More than that, the American authorities encouraged people's interest in extraterrestrial visitors as a way of covering defence activities. His argument is convincing, but will come as no surprise to fans of my favourite writer when I was a ...

Virtual Stoa marks the 58th anniversary of the death of Sidney Webb by referring us to the way he and his wife Beatrice explained Stalin's show trials: It must have been foreseen that this whole series of trials, the numerous shootings to which they led, the publicity and popular abuse of the defendants which the Government apparently organised and encouraged, and especially the malignity with which Leon Trotsky, safe in far-off Mexico, was assailed, would produce a set-back in the international appreciation which the Soviet Union was increasingly receiving. The Soviet Government must have had strong grounds for the action, ...

There is an interesting postscript to my posting on the music for Our Mother's House. Here is James Southall reviewing the CD Music from the Films of Steven Spielberg: Finally there's The Colour Purple, which featured one of Georges Delerue's most captivating themes, but unfortunately it was actually his theme from Our Mother's House being shamelessly ripped off by Quincy Jones, who got nominated for an Oscar for his plagiarism.Neil Sinyard, in his book on Jack Clayton, tells the story more generously: If one notices a distinct similarity between Delerue's main theme and that composed by Quincy Jones for Steven ...

More on the remarkable "I never snorted coke, says Ken Clarke" story I mentioned last night. Today's Shropshire Star reports that: Wrekin MP Mark Pritchard admitted this afternoon that he had once tried cannabis but was now a hardliner on drugs policies. He was speaking just hours after persuading Tory leadership heavyweight Ken Clarke to tell a packed meeting of Tory MPs that he had never taken cocaine. It seems the whole exercise has turned into something of an own goal on the part of Pritchard. He is a supporter of David Davis and was presumably seeking to ...

In the end the Welsh Assembly Government got this week's Business Statement through largely unamended at the second attempt by the simple method of bringing it back to the chamber on the Wednesday when the MPs had gone back to Westminster for Prime Minister's Question Time. They will not find it so easy next time. It took Conservative AM, David Melding, to drive home to them the reality of their position and the fact that even though they may have entered the second Assembly with half the seats, they certainly did not have the support of half of the electorate: ...

The announcement yesterday that the Welsh Development Agency brand name is to be scrapped and much of Wales' industrial policy torn up when the quango merges with the Assembly Government met with a predictable reaction in the chamber. Economic Development Minister, Andrew Davies, was grilled on the proposal. Welsh Liberal Democrats Leader, Mike German, in particular was scathing about the proposal in the chamber:Michael German: I suppose that you could say that ‘Welsh Assembly Government’ does not have quite the same ring to it as ‘Welsh Development Agency’. While it is right that you are trying to promote Wales, there ...

I have been busy! I have changed job and am about to move house. I have been to Blackpool for the party conference. I have been traveling to Zagreb amongst other cities, introducing myself in my new firm. This explains the very sparse - i.e. non existent- blogging over the past few weeks. It is not that there has not been much to comment on. The Party conferences threw up interesting issues. Labour were revealed as authoritarian, even to their own members. The Conservatives have continued their naval gazing- and seem set to choose another non entity to lead them ...

Spotted recently on the eastside of Swansea. The lettering on the side reads "New York-Paris-Port Tennant".

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the issue, it does make me laugh that the Countryside Alliance are insisting that only “technical legal reasons” prevented the Law Lords from siding with them. What on Earth do they think courts of law are supposed to deliberate on?!

Tomorrow, I shall be doing something for the first time in over five years. Is it: Release a new chart-topping single Skip and jump, press wild flowers, put on women’s clothing and hang around in bars? Kill a man? None of the above? Yes, it’s d. I’ll be leaving the country, my first time out of Blighty since September 2000 [...]

So farwell then, "Junket" Jerry Wiggin, erstwhile Conservative Member for Weston-super-Mare, who is to sell his charmingly huge West Country home and move nearer his son, "Bungalow" Bill, who is currently Shadow Secretary of State for Wales. Sir Jerry was MP for the Somerset seat from 1969-1997, a rabid right-winger, fan of apartheid, gun nut and scandal monkey. His greatest claims to fame were illegally comandeering private ships during the Falklands War as a Defence Minister (leading to his sacking) and illegally tabling an amendment to the Gas Bill in Seb Coe's name to support his corportate interests (leading to ...

Was Fanta invented by the Nazis? Apparently not. © Will on No geek is an island, 2005. ¦ Permalink ¦ No comment Add to del.icio.us Search for blogs [...]

Went to see Serenity last night. Enjoyed it but wasn’t overwhelmed. Much as when I tried to watch Firefly, the characters didn’t draw me on. That’s all the effort I’m going to make, though, as Chris’s review says pretty much everything I was going to write and probably better and more succinctly. [...]

Whilst sharing the lift with the aforementioned Tories, I was interested to note that they were discussing the island of Reunion. Rozza did not know which Ocean the island lay in.I now realise that they were in fact on the way to table an EDM entitled "Dogs used as shark-bait in French-controlled Reunion". Where could Rozza have got this appalling story from? Why of course, he read it in the 20p soaraway Sun a fortnight ago, the only newspaper which was prepared to carry this curious story of dubious voracity. Still any excuse to have bash at the froggies I ...

Just one of those days yesterday (Wednesday)! As I walk into Portcullis House (one of the office blocks for Parliamentarians and staff) my Head of Office hands me a copy of the Evening Standard. The article was based on an attack by a local Labour councillor. He had taken a line from a training session I gave for women at our Blackpool Conference. What I had basically said was that as these

One of the problems we have locally is that the job of a crossing warden is being undermined by means testing. Although people get paid about £40 per week, after means testing deductions they end up with around a fiver. This has resulted in large numbers of vacancies for crossing wardens in Birmingham - and probably nationally. I will be chasing up the full figures nationally.

Wednesday 12th October 2005 - Following on from the LGA conference on Young People Matter conference I attended yesterday, I was invited to an awards evening on Wednesday by the Halewood Project Youth Trust at Halewood College. It was great to see how many positive activities local young people had been angaged in as part of a series of projects aimed at giving them something positive to achieve,

How old do I look? (Via). I’m currently averaging 30 years old. Probably not a very good photo… Fantasy Health Minister is good fun - and educational (Via.) Tags: links, games © Will on No geek is an island, 2005. ¦ [...]

Tuesday 11th october 2005 - I attended a Local Government Association conference in London today focusing on the Government's plans published in their Green Paper Youth Matters. I find I am very impressed with some of the proposals in the paper and the speech by Children's Minister Beverly Hughes MP convinces me the Government's plans and thinking are on the right track. There are still some

Monday 10th October 2005 - Back to work after a week's break in Cyprus to attend a friend's wedding, I was lucky enough to find time for some diving and thanks to Q Divers (that's there specialiy adapted vehicle and trailer in the picture above) I was able to dive the wreck of a ferry - The Zenobia - that sank off the coast of Larnaca.

Letter to the Guardian:The call by the Government for a clampdown on information about suicide on the internet has all the signs of a typical New Labour panic (11 October). First, there's the exaggerated anonymous quotes from an official. In this case, it's the implication that if you search for "suicide" and "UK" that you find information on what to do with a car exhaust and a hose pipe before you find information about the Samaritans. This isn't the general experience - for example, searching google.co.uk for UK sites on the day the quote was published for "suicide UK" ...

The closure of the Northern line has really put the kibosh on my travel plans for later today. It's so frustrating. A BBC news report says, "Services on the Northern Line, which carries 660,400 people every weekday, have been suspended and may remain closed on Thursday ". An Evening Standard report says, "Key sections of the Tube's busiest line could be shut for up to two months at a time and replacement buses will be offered". Oh boy! High Barnet - Camden section affects where I live. What a headache! ...

I finally got around to reading Simon Titley’s article in the latest Liberator about Lib Dem “Maoists” and “Trotskyists” (his argument is that there are two mindsets within the Lib Dems that are roughly analagous to two Marxist factions: Maoists for whom campaigning has become an end in itself and Trotskyists who seek to cause [...]

Well, that’s three less fags tomorrow. The Northern Line was a nightmare last night, as it has been to a greater or lesser extent all week; I caught the very last train home before they shut the whole line down and even that was touch and go. And what’s being done about it? Well, [...]

I'll be resuming serious blogging soon, but in the meantime I've had a bit of a muck around with the page layout. I keep meaning to do a much more thorough overhaul of the site, but I'm not sure I'd stick with Movable Type if I were going to put that much effort in.