LibDem Blogs - Archived!

Clicking the link on Tim Worstall’s blog advertising his new book, I was intrigued by the top three books that Amazon suggested people might also be interested in reading: Blog! by David Kline Anti-Totalitarianism by Oliver Kamm The Big Book of Masturbation by Martha Cornog I can understand one suggestion coming up full of old wank, but two? (I know, [...]

Matt refers to a letter in the Evening Standard tonight: Roy Jhuboo, of WC1, tells in a letter how the Police arrested him for photographing around Limehouse under the Terrorism Act. When he asked why, he was told that he “could be a terrorist on a reconnaissance mission planing to launch a rocket at Canary Wharf”. [...]

Fantasy: Last week saw me knocked from the top of the Office league, having been there since the 2nd week of the season. This was largely due to being unlucky in having defenders and keeper letting one goal in, while know one scored!Academic Office in the Intra Mural leagues: The Office is currently running two teams within the 120 teams of the IMS leagues. Both teams are currently unbeaten after (13 games in total). Friday and today were the closest we've come to losing.The Friday game was 1-0 to us, and a hard fought game against a quality student team. ...

The school-bans-conkers stories may have failed to appear this autumn, but here is an early sighting of a Santa-warned-over-abuse-fears one. The Daily Telegraph reports that: Swiss Santa Clauses have been banned from sitting children on their laps because of the risk that they might be accused of paedophilia.At least the story introduces us to the world's most unlikely trade union, The Society of St Nicholases, which "has 100 professional members".

Last weekend saw the biannual West Mids Lib Dem regional conference. Conference was good, although I spent most of it training people in being election agents.The evening was spent celebrating a friends 30th. Simple plan: drinking in Moseley followed by dancing at the Moseley Dance Centre (MDC). Thought I was going to crash and burn early having spent the day at Reg Conf. But managed to keep going until 6am, and after watching the first hour of the test match!

Seen through the bullet-proof windows of the multitude of Foreign Embassies in the country, Azerbaijan is a very simple country. Ruled by a reliable but slightly autocratic President, Azerbaijan’s new oil and gas pipelines provide resources to the west in a stable environment where the population doesn’t suffer from any of the unrest or Islamic [...]

Peter Black has some fun with Chris Bryant, the Labour MP for Rhondda, who is calling on the Welsh Assembly to embrace the choice agenda being advanced by the government in England.Peter's blog is one of the most valuable in the Lib Dem blogosphere, but two things worry me about this posting.First, he slides too easily from talking about choice to talking about privatisation. Chris Bryant must speak for himself, but Liberals, with our long interest in mutualist and cooperative organisations, no there is more to it than that. And, where the state is running things badly, is it really ...

The truth of the situation appears to be coming out of the woodwork. The police were asked for how many days they would like to have pre-charge and they said "up to 90". Blair then picked on this as a totem with which to batter the opposition. The real problem is that it is the wrong question. The right question is what changes should be made to the criminal justice system be that legislation

Thanks to Will Howells for this link which allowed me to calculate my carbon footprint. My house came out at 6 tonnes of CO2 of which most was the 4.35 tonnes for the car. My house came in at only 1.11 tonnes because of all the energy saving and recycling intiatives that I take. Considering the average UK footprint is 10 tonnes, I've done not too badly. If only I was on a high enough wage to

This is really turning into a day of lists. As the Cardiff film festival is on at the moment Wales' top politicians have been invited to list their favourite film. Accordingly, Labour First Minister, Rhodri Morgan, Welsh Tory Leader, Nick Bourne, Welsh Liberal Democrats Leader, Mike German and Presiding Officer, Dafydd Elis-Thomas will be special guests at 8.30pm tonight at Cineworld to explain their choices.Of the four films I have to confess that I have only seen one all the way through. I have only ever caught the end of Nick Bourne's choice of Casablanca on television and really must ...

Campaigning against ID cards Late last month, the Liberal Democrats launched a new website, http://www.libdems.org.uk/noidcards as part of our campaign gagainst Labour's plans for mandatory ID cards. Why not take a look.

The attack by Rhondda MP, Chris Bryant, on the Labour Assembly Government this morning was predictable but unexpected. Mr. Bryant wants the First Minister to adopt more of the "choice" agenda in health and education favoured for England by Prime Minister Tony Blair. He believes that unless this is done then his constituents will suffer from inferior services. The evidence for this view is uncertain to say the least and there are indications that this approach is not favoured by the Welsh electorate, but he is entitled to his point of view.Chris Bryant's pamphlet will make interesting reading, however, ...

A week after I took the assembly at Highfields School on the subject of Votes@16 Charles Kennedy has made a keynote speech in which he also put forward the same arguments and called for the voting age to be reduced to 16.

Extract from a speech by a Government Minister announcing that schools will be allowed to take over failing business: “Business is vital for this country. Businesses employ people, they create wealth and they give government tax revenue. Yet so many businesses fail. This is unacceptable. Without successful businesses, tax revenue would fall and we will be unable to fund core public

I have discovered a TV show being repeated. It features a lead character called Strange who investigates mysteries with a male sidekick and a female friend. It only ran for one series but was well-received and is really rather good. So I’m clearly not talking about risible Saturdatynight BBC serial Strange. Did you see what [...]

From ads in yesterday’s Guardian, I found myself at the carbon footprint estimator. This is obviously part of BP’s promotional campaign designed to make us think that a giant oil company couldn’t possibly be a big polluter. That aside, it’s quite a useful toy. Apparently my household’s carbon footprint is around 7 tonnes of CO2, which [...]

Just a reminder, this time next week I hope to have version 2 of the SportBlog roundup up and running. So, if there's anything you'd like me to take a look at, just let me know. Email submissions to sportblog at googlemail dot com

I notice I’ve been going way over my bandwidth limit, so hurrah for this opportune post from Chris, which directed me to guidance on compressing web pages. Hopefully, I’ll see at least a big drop in my bandwidth usage as a result.

Ministers (Severance Payments) Q: To ask the Prime Minister how many severance payments a resigning Minister is entitled to within any 12 month period. (John Hemming) A: Severance pay is payable in accordance with section 4 of the Ministerial and other Pensions and Salaries Act 1991.(Tony Blair, Prime Minister) Predictive Diallers (Department for Education and Skills) Q: To ask the Secretary of

West Midlands Liberal Democrats Autumn Conference On Saturday we had the West Midlands Liberal Democrats Autumn Conference take place in Stratford upon Avon. It was well attended and people had the opportunity to get involved in policy debates, training and hear speeches from Liberal Democrat MPs. There were also internal elections and I am pleased to say that I elected as Website and IT Officer and to English Council. There were debates on the proposed expansion of Birmingham Airport, about exemptions from the national minimum wage for younger people in employment ...

Welcome news for Islington residents. £130 million is set to completely rebuild or refurbish their all secondary schools over the next few years. Highbury Grove, Holloway and St Aloysius schools have been identified as the first three schools to benefit from the multi-million-pound cash boost. The money is largely is being provided by Building Schools for the Future programme. Islington Council’s Safe and Warm grant scheme has won the Green Apple award from The Green Organisation – an international non-profit environmental group whose annual awards recognise environmental best practice.The award ...

Just in case you thought the opposition parties had finally got bored and started doing something constructive, they’re trying to stop us from going to the pub again: Peers voted by a majority of 33 for a motion calling on the government to think again. This is the biggest rebuke the Lords can use, but will not [...]

This is the sort of thing that annoys me about BBC journalism: According to the Lib Dems, 42% of schoolchildren who took part in a mock general election organised by the Hansard Society in 2,000 schools this year voted for the party. Actually, it isn’t according to the Lib Dems, it’s according to the Hansard Society. [...]