LibDem Blogs - Archived!

The weblog David Blunkett is an Arse has undergone a Dr Who style regeneration and emerged as Into the Machine.

by Alex Sweet Let's hope that Industry Secretary Alan Johnson thought long and hard about this week's decision to scrap plans to move the retirement age to 65 for current public sector workers. It is perhaps the costliest yet most pointless decision ever taken by a New Labour minister on behalf of the ever-suffering taxpayer. Indulge me in some back-of-the-envelope maths: on cautious assumptions, five million current public sector workers earn an average £20,000 salary, and will work say a 15-year stint to accrue a £5,000 pension from those jobs by 60, worth £25,000 over the five years to 65. ...

Worrying news from here in Market Harborough, according to the Leicester Mercury:Stonemasons renovating the tower of a parish church have discovered cowboy builders existed 800 years ago.The shoddy workmanship was uncovered when the team started to repair 10ft cracks at St Dionysius, Market Harborough.Instead of finding a solid wall inside to support the tower, there was rubble and clay.Today, the architect supervising the repairs labelled the medieval stonemasons "jerry-builders".Enjoy one of the finest spires in England while you can.

Some of you have noticed that I have been a little quiet in blogging since the end of the Livingston by election. There are two reasons for this. First obviously is the fact that the by election itself took a fair amount out of me, as it also did the rest of the local party activists. Second however, is that within a week of the by election my fiancée of five years sat me down to say that while

Apologies to those with short attention spans – this blog is rather longer than normal. So take a breath and read on… “The Independent” newspaper recently declared it was a paper of progressive liberalism. It is a bold statement for a paper that is independent. The phrase has a ring to it. Given that liberalism is by definition progressive it also a redundant one. Of course, one can argue

I have written here occasionally, and at greater length in OpenMind magazine, about the number of children being diagnosed with attention problems and prescribed medication. PBS - the American Public Broadcasting Service - has an interview with Peter Breggin, the leading critic of this trend: What medicine and psychiatry have done is to take essentially behavioural problems - problems of conflict between adults and children - and redefine them as medical problems.

Like every other conference rep I got my Federal Party Committee Election papers today. One thing that constantly upsets me is that some candidates don't seem to be able to apply their experience to what they can bring to the post. These are elections where to be fair most of the electorate have a pretty good chance of knowing a number of candidates. In fact a fair few of the electorate propably have no difficulty is putting down enough prefeerences to fill all the potential palces and possibly then some. After all the electorate does tend to largely congregate twice ...

I'm sure anyone of a similae age to mine will be as astounded as I was to discover that you can get Trumpton ringtones! http://www.t-web.co.uk/trumpepg.htm I can still vividly remember excitedly waiting to find out what was in Lord Belborough's mystery crate. Guess which DVDs my little one will be getting for Christmas!

David Cameron 90, David Davis 57 what a surprise. Now it's 6 weeks to wait.I'm just wondering if there wasn't some tactical voting behind the result. The party membership will want their say and I'm sure Cameron recognised the fact. The ultimate decision has to come from the 300,000 members if he is going to be seen to be a credible leader. Davis is certainly a better choice from Cameron's perspective, rather than having to go up against Liam Fox in the final run-off. Good to see that David Davis has not decided to bow out. Not sure how he's ...

Thursday 20th October 2005 - As part of Local Democracy Week I was shadowed by two young people today - Jack and Rachel - both pupils at Halewood College where I am also a Governor. I arranged meetings with various Officers to discuss the Raven Court development, Neighbourhood Management issues and the Government's Green Paper "Youth Matters", all of which gave the young people a good insight

There do appear to be some problems developing in Perry Barr at the moment. We had similar difficulties about 2 years ago. What is critical is that people accept that they need to use the rule of law to resolve problems rather than merely force of numbers or political pressure.

Stephen Coleman, erstwhile (I'm never sure precisely what that means but it feels like the right kind of word to use here) Prof of eDemocracy at the Oxford Internet Institute, wrote a good paper a while back called 'A Tale of Two Houses'. This was the results of research he had carried out into [...]

Tuesday was 'sushi and a show' night. We went to see blue eyes and heels at the Soho Theatre - a theatre which is rapidly becoming one of my favourites. We went to see Stewart Lee there a couple of weeks ago and there's always lots of stuff on. Stewart Lee was on after a [...]

Unfortunately the little bit of text to describe Josh was missing. I put it down to my fondness of backpacks... (not quite one for every day of the week). And also for my attempts to fix things behind the scenes (not always successful).

Busy busy, in preparation for going away this weekend. I’d intended to write a post in response to the New Scientist’s recent issue dedicated to “Reality Wars” but in the meantime I thought I’d simply point people to this exciting new theory on Intelligent Falling.

I was originally sceptical of the idea that David Davis is being done down by a conspiracy of old Oxford friends of David Cameron. (Though see this posting and my latest Lib Dem News column - it's a good story.) But this morning Nick Robinson and the BBC in general were giving extraordinary prominence to the idea that Cameron might do so well this afternoon that the second-placed candidate will not bother going to a ballot of all Tory members. It makes you think.

by Jabez Clegg Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose as the French say. Timothy Garton-Ash has produced a masterly disection of the Blair style, and its aping by David Cameron, in the Guardian today: Very short sentences. Large gaps between each line. I care passionately about this. We must do that. Self-deprecating joke. Guy-on-the-street anecdote. List of past failures. Visions of future success! Sentences without verbs. (You know the sort of thing) His argument is that by aping Blair Cameron gives himself the best shot at power - a transition from one upper middle ...

Half term recess is upon us and I am going to break a golden rule. I will not be posting for at least a seven days. Please come back near the end of next week. I am enjoying myself too much to abandon blogging now.

Nobody could ever accuse the Wales on Sunday of being original. About halfway through yesterday's Plenary Session I received an e-mail from one of their reporters. I reproduce it below:To all Welsh MPs & AMsMy name is Marc Baker and I am a journalist at Wales on Sunday newspaper in Cardiff.I am e-mailing you to ask whether you have, in your lifetime, ever taken Class A, B or C drugs?Could you please state when you took such drugs and of which kind they were. If you are unwilling to answer this question, could you please state why?Marc BakerWales on SundayMy ...

Are the Tories preparing for yet another unconsitutional coup? But, let's be clear either way: the Tory MPs don't trust the members to make the decision and, ironically enough, a majority of the members don't trust themselves either.

I think the time has come for me to confess all. It’s an embarrassing admission, especially for an elected Liberal Democrat, but no matter: I have never taken any illegal drugs. I’ve never passed the dutchie, shot the breeze, or chased the dragon. I’ve never been bombed, caned, fried, gooned, juiced, potted, skunked, toasted or wracked. A promising future political career lies in tatters… But not

...having worked as assistant to a Lib Dem spokesman on NI in the bad old days (of both the Lib Dems and Northern Ireland) it was with some trepidation I got into a taxi at Belfast International. It was July (before The Ashes series started), I was going to work as 1st mate on a sail training boat. English man bossing around the flower of Belfast youth (and a 1st mate has to do some gonzo