LibDem Blogs - Archived!

Many thnaks for the comments left on the "Progressive Liberalism" blog. They are thought provoking and one in partiuclar deserves a response. Bishop Hill posted the following: You correctly note that it is the left that trusts people's good nature the least since they use authoritarian means to enforce "good" behaviour. You do not follow through your logic to its conclusion which would be that

The latest diary of my old friend Lord Bonkers can now be found on his website: I once ventured the thought that the words “Welcome to Blackpool” are the most frightening in the English tongue (defeating “See me in my study after Prayers” and “The next commentator will be Christopher Martin-Jenkins” by a short head). Why not bring the Liberal Democrat Conference to Bonkers Hall? The Ballroom could comfortably house the debates – indeed I flatter myself that my organ is larger than Reginald Dixon’s – and there are any number of rooms for fringe meetings and training sessions ...

Another link for the document I’m blogging on about (pdf). I’ve written a lot about environmental taxation, so I thought I’d save that til last, except to again note my despair that environmental tax policy is considered so marginal by the working group that it doesn’t even warrant its own section. Firstly, VAT. This is [...]

I’ve been asked to plug the new Lib Dem Anti ID Cards. Happy to do so, but this is a blog and so people will forgive me if I make a few comments. Firstly, please can we move away from the idea within the party that petition=campaign. I get so despairing because the Party’s Campaigns Department [...]

The rival to Spark, the student newspaper I've just become Editor of: I thought it was funny anyway (and no, I didn't create it, I just picked it up in the Union building)

Rather unaccountably the Western Mail devotes most of page three of this morning's edition to the decline of high tea and in particular to cakes of the Mr. Kipling variety.It seems everyone from our political leaders downwards are ditching the Cherry Bakewells and Battenberg for a more healthy lifestyle.Yesterday RHM, the company that owns Mr Kipling, conceded that an £8m revamp for the product had failed to produce a rise in sales. To make matters worse, sales of Cadbury cakes, also owned by RHM, were also down. Shares in the company duly fell 7%.Cake industry analysts, including bankers Credit Suisse ...

by Peter It's hard to improve on theguardian's own headline for the latest on the DTI (the tiltle is the link. Staff at the Lib Dem's least favourite government department have apparently been travelling around the world to investigate export opportunities and spending the time on the beach. Members of one political party will not be surprised. The smoking gun here is not so much what happened, but the delay in sorting it out.

This is an interesting article about problems with deforestation in the past. This extract is particularly pertinent: The timber crisis of the late Bronze Age was obviously not the extinction of all trees in the world. It didn't need to be, just as we don't need to run out of oil to face a similar fuel crisis. There was still lumber to be felled; but as Bronze Age kingdoms deforested their

Jonathan Calder has been discussing the government’s new education proposals and I have adding a few helpful comments, leading to this series of questions from Bishop Hill. This has made me realise I’m in danger of being misunderstood, but I thought I’d clarify what my position is here rather than there. First of all, I [...]