LibDem Blogs - Archived!

The wedding anniversary dinner party was perfect. We had another great night. The dinner brought together our best man, my bridesmaid/schoolfriend, my friend from Uni, my Lib Dem friend (an ex-colleague from when we both worked for David Rendel) and two of my current colleagues (one of whom is also Robin's ex-colleague and good friend) and one of their sisters who was down from Manchester. Sounds complicated but it was a great night and everyone seemed to get on really well. The food was also gorgeous. I chose the restaurant because I had my best ever quattro formaggi there in ...

Tonight's carol service in Parliament Square, held to protest against new legal restrictions on peaceful demonstrations in a wide area of Westminster, passed off without any arrests. Thanks to the BBC Traffic Jam Cam, you can see some pictures of it on Parliament Protest.

As might be clear from a couple of earlier posts I see that the principal challenge for those who would describe their politics as progressive is in coming to terms with – and countering – the emergent doctrine of neoconservatism. My previous post here touched on (but did not develop to any great degree) the domestic (British) implications of neoconservatism. An eye will have to be kept on the development of Conservative Party domestic and social policy. In the meantime, however, a central concern is to avoid the Manichean drift in foreign policy between pro-active interventionist neoconservatives on the one ...

The BBC dramatisation of John Buchan's Greenmantle is to be broadcast on Radio 4 over Christmas. This is the production that was quietly pulled from the schedules after the London bombings in July. As I argued at the time, Greenmantle has much to teach us about relations with Islam.

Good new for Leicestershire. As the BBC reports: Pork pie-makers in the Melton Mowbray region have been told they can apply to Europe for the same sort of exclusivity enjoyed by Champagne. A High Court judge has turned down a challenge by Leeds-based Northern Foods aiming to stop the move. What is so special about a Melton Mowbray pork pie? Andrew Chancellor, writing in Waitrose Food Illustrated, explains: Many of the offending companies who produce the imitations describe their pies as 'cured', which is precisely what the pork in a real Melton Mowbray pie is not. ...

My post yesterday about the Guardian/ICM poll has attracted considerable debate, particularly from Peter and Tabman. Rather than comment there, I thought I’d continue the debate on a new post. First of all, there is a big difference between playing for vote share and playing for seats. Playing for seats, which is what the party has [...]

Devil's Kitchen has a wonderful rant against cyclists. My thoughts exactly, except probably a bit more moderate.

Today has seen the first Gay Civil Partnerships take place in England, Northern Ireland had theirs two days ago and Scotland yesterday, the most high profile is of course Elton John's (although my invitation appears to have been lost in the post). I was going to let the 'Big Day' pass without comment but the local Wolverhampton newspaper the Express and Star's comment piece has irritated me so much I have to write something.

All good stories are, in some way, dark. There is a reason that the saccharine sentimentality of Disney is so despised - because it portrays everything as relentlessly happy, when we know that if it bore any relation to reality, there would be at least a sombre hint to the story. So it is with the story of Christmas. The basic narrative, of course, is one of gerat joy. Despite having to deal with a large amount of adversity in travelling from Nazareth to Bethlehem; despite being unable to find a comfortable bed for the night; they are still able ...

Clearing up my emails, phone calls, paperwork etc. - and trying to make sure Christmas happens. I ran to Highgate Village this morning to the local bookshop - always a very good choice of books despite being tiny. Suddenly the police arrived, put handcuffs on another browser - a young man - and marched him out. One of the policemen came back in the shop to say they had nicked the chap. The staff

The Times yesterday carried an article on the new Assembly building or Senedd, as it is to be known. I have just spent twenty minutes familiarising myself with the new technology in the Chamber and will shortly be going on a tour with the House Committee. I am told that the artwork is 'unique'. I will be taking a camera, so expect some examples to appear here.

... Because they've introduced Blogger Web Comments for Firefox. The box appears in the bottom right of your browser It shows Blog Search results for the page you are looking at. For example, when looking at this page I can see that Stephen Sharkey, Cool Nina and Lynne Babi are commenting on the page via their blogs. For those wishing to avoid work by reading the thoughts of the terminally

Follow this link and listen to the song London Underground. CONTAINS VERY STRONG ANGLO SAXON LANGUAGE AND SHOULD NOT BE LISTENED TO AT WORK UNLESS YOU WANT SACKING ON THE SPOT, NOR PLAYED IN THE HEARING OF RELATIVES OF A FRAIL DISPOSITION. Unless you're in the will and want to inherit, in which case bang the volume up.

Have had 24hrs of enforced internet isolation. I've just about got over the cold sweats, although they were sypmtoms of my cold, and the need to stay in bed most of yesterday.It appears that in Wanadoo "testing" my line for 30mins yesterday, they have knocked out my adsl router (a netgear dg834, a model which appears to have a history of flakey connections, but until yesterday it had been running near faultlessly, with no firmware updates applied at all).The test was apparently to see what speed my phone line could operate at, although it still seems to be 2Mb, so ...

by Peter The former Labour peer Lord Haskins has a piece in the FT on the CAP, arguing that the Single Farm Payment provides a route for re-nationalisation. I´d like to think so, but I think this is rather optimistic.

by Peter Within the Liberalism2010 group, we have been talking about the sort of booklist Lib Dems should be working through these days. We can probably take a few classics for granted: Mill on Liberty and on Representative Government; Locke's Second Treatise; Milton's Areopagetica (heavy going though, in my view). Some newer items might include: Ted Halstead and Michael Lind, The Radical Centre; F.G. Bailey, Strategems and Spoils: A Social Anthropology of Politics; Alison Wolf, Does Education Matter?; In order to follow the history of polciy discussion in the Liberal Democrats, one might ...