LibDem Blogs - Archived!

Editor’s Statement on the Student Media A week on... Firstly, Spark will be printing this week (and is now available online). This statement will outline the events which caused the Spark account to be frozen and what has happened since. I expect that some members of the Executive will disagree with some of this statement, and their comments are welcome. Last week's issue of Spark contained an

The former Labour leader of Bridgend Council tries to jump start a debate on the size and effectiveness of Welsh Unitary Authorities today. He argues that the last round of local government reorganisation in the mid-90s created unitary authorities that were mostly far too small to be efficient."If the number was reduced from 22 to less than 10, it would be possible to make huge savings in administration. Currently we have 22 chief executives paid £110,000, 22 directors of education paid £90,000 and so on. We also have far too many councillors. With a smaller number of local authorities, it ...

What was interesting about today was that the 7 day rolling average of extracts from storage which includes last weeks outy/inny now predicts a number of days less than 100 for breaching the safety monitors. The feeling I have is that people believed the National Grid's Winter Outlook 2005's prediction of 303 from Beach 42 from the interconnector and 13 from Grain. The fact is that Beach and

"But then, what have you in common with the child of five whose photograph your mother keeps on the mantelpiece? Nothing, except that you happen to be the same person." - George Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn To see the images of a young George Best across all the newspapers this morning was a moving experience. Moving because the only George Best I ever saw in my lifetime was the alcoholic Best; the congenial, warm man who couldn't escape from his genius on a football field. The man who appeared on TV most weeks looking world-weary and heavy, ...

No Dave, we haven't been blown up yet. Did a joint CPRE/GAME stall in Stafford two Saturdays ago. A lot of people showed interest and we distributed loads of literature, but it was difficult to compete with the Save the Gorillas stall - they have cuddly soft toy gorillas in a variety of shapes and sizes. In September we (CPRE/GAME) started distributing a Resident's Survey in villages affected by the proposed M6 Expressway or M6 widening. It took longer to distribute them than we thought and we only finished this week. We've had some great replies back. ...

My colleague Ron just received the following email which shows that we are (nearly) getting things right in our ward... Firstly we want to say how much we appreciate receiving Focus which we find extremely informative and useful. However we have received 3 copies in as many weeks at our home !! 2 were received on the same day. Perhaps you would have a word with your distributors to point this

Thursday's withdrawal eased slightly to a net 338, but Friday's nominations (remembering that the day does not finish until 5.59am tomorrow morning) are running at 445 at Rough. One key figure will be Today's demand. Today is a colder day which will have higher demand. The output from Beach and Grain has tipped up to just over 303 (still under the National Grid's forecast).

Eight new street lighting schemes are being installed across Bath and North East Somerset following requests from community groups, members of the public and the Police.Working with the Community Safety and Drugs Partnership, Bath and North East Somerset Council’s Community Safety and Street Lighting Teams assessed and prioritised lighting from an existing list of 70 street lighting requests and eight schemes were chosen for funding. All schemes were assessed against specific community safety criteria addressing factors such as anti-social behaviour, nuisance and disorder.Included in this, is improved lighting for Bedford StreetWork on installing the new lighting is expected to be ...

The Times reports today that the brightest children at 11 are being failed by state schools. Whereas children in the top 5% of the country at private schools are almost certain to get 3 As at A-Level, only a third of state school children have the same achievement. While this is worrying, it is not entirely surprising, given the problems of comprehensive education. Co-blogger Richard was telling me earlier this week that if you look at "value-added" school rankings, where improvement at each level is measured, there isn't a huge difference between different types of schools. There are two things ...

by Peter Jonathan Calder has been praising the practice of oppostition through agreement. So here's some. Ruth Kelly, responding to Ken Boston, chief executive of the QCA, in response to its review of GCSE and A-level coursework, wrote: I expect QCA to review the position of coursework in GCSEs on a subject-by-subject basis with an expectation that coursework should: · only be used where it is the most valid way of assessing subject-specific skills, and is not the favoured approach where its primary purpose is to assess knowledge and skills which can equally well be assessed in other ways;· ...

Sitting in the Assembly chamber on Wednesday it was hard to imagine Wales moving closer to the arctic circle than it is already. It has been cold but not that cold. Waking up this morning to several inches of snow the comparison that was made by Plaid Cymru AM Dai Lloyd between Wales and Greenland seemed more apt. Dai though was talking about systems of government and the way that they are financed, not the weather: David Lloyd: Denmark, as you know, provides funding for Greenland on a needs-based formula, which is reassessed every three years. However, Wales ...

by Peter Watching the flaming citroens and renaults on the television, who didn´t wonder if le gasngsta rap was responsible? Seeing another shope go up in flames, who coudl resist the thought that NTM (Nique ta mère, as they were in the bad old days) wasn´t behind it. Thanks then to Dominique de Villepin for clearing this one up. Apparently rap is not the reason why.

...or so it seems. The snow has arrived in East Central Scotland, with a vengence. The snow started just after 9 o'clock so I was already sat at my desk and hasn't let up yet. At times I have been unable to see Edinburgh City by pass through the snow, which is a bit disconcerting as it is less than 50 metres from my office window. Now if only I can find my way back to those faux fur coats in the

Today's House Points column from Liberal Democrat News. "You'll get letters," said the editor. Teasing Tony A Tory leader has finally worked out how to discomfort Tony Blair at prime minister’s questions. You agree with him. For eight long years the Conservatives tried to persuade us that, deep down, Blair is a dangerous Bolshevik. Remember those Demon Eyes posters? They did not work for a simple reason. He isn’t. Michael Gove gave the correct Tory estimation of Tony Blair when he was just a Times commentator. He wrote: “I can't fight my feelings any more: I love Tony ...

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