LibDem Blogs - Archived!

Just back from a long weekend in Berlin where I saw a lot of Tower Hamlets' history at Loraine Leeson's retrospective. I worked with Loraine at my first job in Arts Finance at The Art of Change. A group of her friends came to support her at her first retrospective which traced her collaborative style of work through protests at the closure of the Bethnal Green hospital, through the protests about the London Docklands Development Corporation, to the politics of identity at schools in Tower Hamlets. Current projects use art as a method of consulting young ...

From the BBC's Manchester pages: Earlier in the day Home Office Minister and Salford MP, Hazel Blears, revealed that she appears in kitchen sink classic, A Taste of Honey, shown at the Festival. "They filmed it at the bottom of our road" she recalled "And I was in one scene wearing bunches and a little kilt. My brother sang `The Big Ship Sails On The Ally Ally O'..."A scene in which the young

I might not have gone to the Jewish Museum in Berlin if my friend Margaret had not insisted. This was the most brutalist building I had ever been in, but the architecture was all part of the experience. You could choose whether you went down the path of continuity, the path of holocaust or the path of exile. I chose exile and walked through a maze of concrete blocks, with a sloping floor - it was supposed to be disorienting, but it quickly felt much like my normal experience of life. Unwelcome, fragmented, sometimes I glimpsed ...

Michael Ignatieff gave a speech to the Canadian Liberal Convention in March, titled Liberal Values in the 21st Century. Read it here.His peroration strikes a high-note rarely, if ever, seen in British liberal politics:Generosity, unity, sovereignty, justice. The courage to choose, the will to govern. Those are the beacons of liberal politics.

The irreplaceable Surveillance Camera Players have a new page on their website detailing protests against the spread of CCTV cameras from around the world.

Charles Kennedy often gets a bad press from within and without the Liberal Democrat fold. So let's also give credit where it's fully due. In today's thegrauniad, CK sets out a compelling, and unabashedly liberal, response to the Government's latest attempt to make the law into a Kafka novel. A couple of paragraphs in particular caught my eye: "A crucial division of opinion is opening up between

Being cool is innate rather than acquired. Something Tony had better learn

I promise: I won't make a habit of this... below is a pome what I have writ. I wish to make abundantly clear what will, in any case, become crystal clear. I am not a poet: my best scansion is done by computer, and my meter can be measured in yards. But, once a year*, I indulge my Muse. An Ode-ious Canvasser I. He dusted off the clip-board, Pinned on his rosette, And rehearsed his patter

In days of yore, you would just be told by your line manager if you were doing a good job: a Christmas bonus if you were; a stiff injunction to pull your socks up if you weren’t. Then came appraisals, in which you would dialogue with your boss: “this is a chance for you to feed back on how I’m doing so we can both work together to achieve mutual empowerment”. It’s moved on a stage further now:

and may be out for the series. Anxious wait for injured Vaughan. The patron Saint for injured knees is Saint Roch, who also covers bachelors; Barano, Italy; Castropignano, Italy; cholera; Constantinople; diseased cattle; dogs; epidemics; falsely accused people; invalids; Istanbul; Orsogna, Italy; Patricia, Italy; plague; relief from pestilence; diocese of Tagbilaran, Philippines; skin diseases;

Tim Worstall has asked me to plug his forthcoming book containing the best of British blogging, which comes out in two weeks time. I am happy to do so as I understand that it contains one of my entries. To order the book go here. Oh and while you are at it check this out - a wikipedia for blogs.

This is a big issue in the North West of England and Portugal it seems: NORTH WEST FERRETS WARNED AGAINST TRAVEL TO PORTUGAL! 7 November 2005 A bid by a North West Euro-MP to allow British ferret owners to take theirpets to Portugal has failed. Liberal Democrat MEP Chris Davies was asked to take up the case 2 years ago when it became clear that the new EU pets' passport scheme would apply to ferrets as well as to cats and dogs.Ferret owners here in the North West expressed concern that in Portugal ferrets ...

French Journalist Naima Bouteldja tells us that one of the causes of the riots in France are "identity checks and police harassment". Identity checks? Good job it couldn't happen here. At the moment, that is. As I reported here Jan Berry of the Police Federation believes that the introduction of ID cards could make it 'easier' for people detained by the Police under the Stop and Search powers to establish their identity. And, of course, Police harrassment and race riots are not unheard of in the UK.

Whilst the Western Mail reported this morning that more than one in three children (36%) could not correctly identify the main ingredient of chips as potatoes and 37% failed to identify that cheese was mostly made of milk, the Welsh Conservatives faced their own ignorance barrier. The question posed by the Chair of Newport West Conservatives, was "who is Nick Bourne?".David Fouweather, who is also a City Councillor, called on the Welsh Tory Assembly Leader to offer himself for re-election to that post.Mr Bourne, a former law professor and deputy principal of Swansea Institute, became leader of the Tories' now ...

Did one of my twice-monthly councillor's surgeries on Saturday, at St Swithun's Church on Hither Green Plane.  It coincided with a wedding, which added a bit of background ceremonial to the event.  Main issues raised were problems with the operation of the local CPZ, and overcrowding in Council flats, with children of the different genders being forced to share bedrooms.  And being told by the Council, in a Marie Antionette moment, to sleep in the living room.  Personally, it was bad enough sharing a bedroom with my brother.  Sisters would be really yucky. Interesting article in the Independent on Monday, saying that shopping ...

The phenomenon of the ‘new puritan’ (brilliantly dubbed the neo-Crom) is increasingly well documented and increasingly concerning to me. Start the Week on Radio 4 discussed the issue, and chucked around a couple of opinion poll stats that I found rather disturbing. Apparently ‘the public’ now believe that a pregnant woman seen smoking in public should be cautioned by the Police, and chocolate should be banned from sale in Hospitals. An identifiable cause for this is the insatiable incrementalism caused by lobby groups moving into the vacuum where once there was at least the illusion of meaningful ideological division. Teenagers ...

Prime Minister Tony Blair was "seduced by the glamour of U.S. power" in the build-up to the Iraq war and repeatedly failed to influence U.S. policy, Christopher Meyer a former top diplomat said in comments published on Monday. Blair did not use his position as Washington's most important ally to delay the start of the war to give more time to plan for what to do after the fall of Saddam Hussein, Meyer said. "History's verdict looks likely to be that it was terminally flawed both in conception and execution," he wrote. This will go down in history ...

Gold Horizons were pleasantly surprised to be nominated at Tim Worstall's blog in his round-up of the best of British and Irish blogging.