LibDem Blogs - Archived!

Took over 45 mins to travel to the Town Hall by bus last night because Arsenal were playing at home. It was tail to tail with traffic along the Holloway road. Wednesday night was Islington's local party AGM - I didn't want to be late but shouldn't have worried as the whole programme stated late anyway. The formal bit over, we all waited for the guest speaker Mark Oaten MP. In his usual style he was brief and straight to the point explaining the Lib Dems objection to the Governments plans to detaining terror suspects for 90 days without charge. ...

It's Thursday evening, and here's a quick round-up of my Council-related activities in the week that almost was.Spent Monday evening trying out a casework management system designed by an anti-blogging fellow councillor, so won't mention his or her name. It's very much at the Beta stage at the moment, and I'm an Epsilon semi-moron in relation to databases, so I guess we're pretty evenly matched. Hoping for greater things in future, certainly greater than the casework system in the Town Hall, to which 'they' still seem to be denying me access.Tuesday evening at the Ladywell Pool Campaign, planning ...

An article by Felicity Lawrence in today's Guardian makes grim reading: Most supermarket ham sold today, including premium ham, is formed or reformed ham. Formed ham is muscle meat from the leg bones. It is chopped and passed under needles which inject it with a solution of water, sugars, preservatives, flavourings and other additives, or put into a giant machine resembling a cement mixer and mixed with a similar solution. The process dissolves an amino acid called myosin so the meat becomes sticky and, when put into moulds, comes out looking like a whole piece of meat. If the ...

Contasting stories. One in The Guardian notes the National Audit Office report on mistakes in NHS hospitals. A story of great importance highlighting where urgent action is needed, without a doubt. More pressure on the 'N.H.S.' and more ammunition for its critics. Meanwhile over in the Toronto Globe and Mail the same day the story is of a report by the Commonweath Foundation on Health Care outcomes in Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, The UK and the USA. The finding that a quarter of UK NHS patients experience errors seems consistent with the UK NAO findings. However 34% of US ...

No, not the title I christened my school magazine with, I am referring to Rome on the BBC last night. Animal sacrifice, torture, murder, posh Romans, historical accuracy, full frontal nudity and shagging: all at 9pm! Continuing in the theme, tonight we have a gladiatorial showdown between basher Davis and snorter Cameron on Question Time. In my view the license fee is far too low, I would willingly pay £400 for mine.

Codeword for the now annual (I think) exercises by British troops at the Drawsko Pomorskie military range in Poland - once one of the largest Warsaw Pact military training grounds and at 400 sq. Km larger than any free-fire range availabe in the UK. Especially appreciated by the armored regiment. I mention this to show that there are a variety of reasons why old military installations in east Europe may be currently used by UK (and US) forces. Not to be confused with the 'Camps' in east Europe' where according to the Washington Post the US is hiding Guantanamo ...

...since the 3rd of November is St Pirmin's feast day, and he is the patron Saint of Monsheim in Germany, poisoning and snakebites. In case bird flu gets nasty, the following are patron saints of plague epidemics: Adrian of Nicomedia, Catald, Colman of Stockerau, Cuthbert, Edmund of East Anglia, Erhard of Regensburg, Francis of Paola, Francis Xavier, George, Genevieve, Gregory the Great,

I am told that the packed press conference with Conservative AM, William Graham, and Lemmy of Motorhead on the subject of drugs did not quite go according to plan this afternoon. My spies reported great excitement amongst the gathered masses, which included the Conservative's Assembly Leader, as William Graham introduced the star guest. Words of wisdom were expected condemning the drug culture and urging young people to abstain from the many substances on offer. Imagine the embarrassment felt by William and his Tory colleagues therefore, when Lemmy told his audience that he believed that heroin should be ...

The Western Mail this morning continues its campaign to resurrect the career of former Secretary of Wales, Ron Davies. They put him on the front page to comment on the resignation of David Blunkett, presumably on the grounds that he is an expert on resigning.Ron accuses the former Works and Pensions Secretary of compromising his radical principles once he got into the Cabinet. This is a charge that could never be laid at the door of Ron Davies of course. Then again, has Ron re-read the Government of Wales Act recently?

A few thoughts from my morning BBC trawl: Does it take a lame duck to know one? In light of my earlier comments it would be churlish of me not to mention the Scottish Green’s stance on air quality. This is the sort of anti-politics nonsense that none of us need. Even the most swivel eyed of [...]

Rebels wring terror concession from Clarke.Did they: (a) grow spines because they suddenly discovered a belief in civil liberties?(b) find themselves happy to kick a leader now on the slide safe in the knowledge he can't damage their political futures?

e-Government is dead; long live Transformational Government.... Yesterday the government published its strategy for government 'enabled by technology'. I was invited to the launch at the Home Office, as one of the few representatives of local government. John Hutton, Minister at the Cabinet Office, was supposed to be addressing us - but the events of the day had transformed him already. Now although I have been eager to criticise the Labour Government for many of its actions, I am always happy to applaud sensible things. For example, I find it very difficult to believe that ...

Having treated Labour MPs as mere lobby fodder for many years it does appear that they are getting a bit restless at the moment. Charles Clarke recognised that the government could actually lose parts of the terrorism bill in the House of Commons and so moved into consensus mode. It is all rather odd actually as it is difficult to work out why the government are doing what they are doing with

David Davis's conference speech nearly killed off his bid to be Conservative leader. Dave Cameron's speech made him a contender where previously he wasn't one. Gordon Brown's conference speech this year was technically very good - the only problem being that giving a Prime Ministerial speech before he is PM made him look presumptuous and over-eager: a bit hubristic. Tony Blair's yearly conference speeches have been runestones, pored over by political divinators. Charles Kennedy forced himself from his sick bed one year to prove his virility and head off a putative challenge. Having done so, he promptly went back to ...

Noam Chomsky has written to the Guardian to critise the account of an interview he gave to Emma Brockes, an extract from which I blogged a couple of days ago. In that interview, Chomksy was tackled on his position and opinion of a revisionist article by Diane Johnstone which claimed that the Srebrenica massacre might not have been on as large a scale as is usually understood. When there was an outcry relating to the article, Chomsky 'lent his name to a letter praising Johnstone's "outstanding work"', to quote Brockes. Brockes then reported that she asked Chomsky if he regretted ...