LibDem Blogs - Archived!

We are all waiting for the bewitching hour to welcome in the new year but hang on a sec...Us mere mortals have been informed that because the Earth is apparently slowing down a 'leap second' will be added to the end of today - so the New Year's Eve countdown will end 00.00.01.Scientists are delaying the start of 2006 by the first "leap second" in seven years, a timing tweak meant to make up for changes in the Earth's rotation. Apparently this adjustment is necessary periodically to keep our clocks in sync with solar time used by astronomers.The U.S. Naval ...

The Times yesterday reported that child smokers are to be given nicotine patches free on the NHS. Meanwhile the NHS will continue funding pumping the stomachs of 15 and 16 year olds who go out and get pissed when their parents aren't watching. And then the NHS will be spending millions on rehabilitating drug addicts, sometimes by giving them needles to help wean them off their habit. Diabetics, meanwhile, are forced to live with second-class treatment - there is no funding for those who wish to use insulin pumps within the NHS. This in itself is not surprising. For years, ...

Hope everyone has a good evening and a corking 2006! Only an hour and a half to start looking vaguely like a 'new romantic'...

As part of studing energy issues (for more info see my gas blog I have been looking at the weather forecasts. It is quite interesting how much reasonably reliable information is available on the web. Sites such as Net Weather provide this information as well as referencing other sites such as Wetter Zentrale which is in German. Forecasters generally start with numerical models of the weather.

2005 was a bit of a year - and then some. As I look back over the year - I am thrilled with what we have been able to achieve. No - not just the General Election (clearly a stunning victory turning a Labour majority of 10,514 into a LibDem one of 2,395) but the causes and campaigns I and my LibDem colleagues have championed together with local residents. That's what has made the difference in

Just doing the end-of-year email inbox clearout (now down to only 50 needing replies and falling…) and picked up one that I had saved to blog. This is just a link to some photos from OpenTech this year taken by Matt Lock on a very fine old camera. There, now that’s done another mail moves [...]

by Peter Below are a selection of our postings from 2005. I think all contributers (Phil Grant, Chrisco, Alex Sweet, James Chard, Paul Lloyd, Stephen Tall, Tabman and myself) are represented. Use the comments to request more from them and fewer from me! 1. Repairing the Liberal Schism 2. The Stupid Question 3. The Supergeek speaks out 4. Heritage and Urban Liberals 5. Axe the Tax! 6. Food for thought from Blue2win... 7. Impossible things before breakfast 8. An ethical dilemma 9. Blackpool blues 10. Mr Duff's complaint 11. Why was Blair doing it? 12. Utopia 13. Dystopia._________________

Hidden away near the bottom of the side column of page 4 of yesterdays Scottish Edition of The Times I found the following. The Conservatives have outpolled all parties in local by-elections in Scotland over the past 2 years, they claimed. The party produced figures showing that since May 2003 it had polled 10,683 votes in local by-elections, compared with Labour's 10,219, the SNP's 9833 and hte

There is an ongoing debate in the Liberal Democrats about whether the party is centre-left, centre-right or centre. And is that a soft centre or nutty? Actually, I made the last bit up but the way the debate is conducted at times is so surreal that nothing would surprise me. The party should spend more time developing liberal policies and less time over this argument. This blog has added to

Interestingly, every move the boy Cameron has made in the last few weeks has been about capturing Liberal Democrat voters. His pitch has been come over to us, we are liberal and we can defeat Labour. He has yet to make any move on Labour’s territory. In private he has said he is the heir to Tony Blair and in public he has said he supports New Labour’s reform in education. Cameron is using

What a couple of weeks it has been for the Tory party. We have seen a commitment to redistribute wealth to the poorest, a commitment to the environment, the setting up of a commission on world poverty with none other than Sir Bob Geldof on board and in the last couple of days the boy Cameron announcing he will make a speech to the Soil Association and then quoting Gandhi in his new year’s

Well, everyone is doing it, so here's what I think are my top posts of 2005: The Dilemma of Gladys HammondThe Lion's First Roar - And the Lion Roars Again.Jug Ears to Marry HorseKennedy targets 'desperate' PrescottMonster Raving Looney InterviewMake Byers HistoryPassport ControlNo Shit SherlockSpark gets frozenPicture Jokes: Man Made of Leather Returns to WorkCheap ShotAdvanced MathsLooks a bit

In yesterday's Guardian the ever-dependable Polly Toynbee told us that everything is fine. She was reacting to the slew of books (like "Is it me, or is everything shit?") suggesting the opposite. Walking my feet off in the Liberal Democrat interest in the sunny run up to the last general election, it was hard to find people with too much to grouse about. Everything is not shit: I didn't meet

I haven't worked out how to do links from this Blackberry, if it is possible at all, so I may update this entry when I get home. However, NUT Cymru chief, Gethin Lewis, is absolutely righy when he says in the Western Mail this morning that there is too much jargon and civil service speak in Welsh education. The first thing I did when I became chair of the Assembly's Education and Lifelong Learning Committee was to have a glossary of acronyms drawn up. It is almost as if those running education are trying to create an aura of mystique ...

I'm taking advantage of a rare quiet moment to make this entry. The past few days have been a blur of parties, with members of my family appearing and disappearing in a flurry of hugs and kind words. Having recovered from my hangover, I was functional by the time of the wedding, where I was honoured by a request from the groom (Sean, my second cousin) to give one of the readings, an excerpt from

See, I told you so, didn't I.

Kathleen Parker writes an ill-tempered rant against most of blogdom:There's something frankly creepy about the explosion we now call the Blogosphere--the big-bang "electroniverse" where recently wired squatters set up new camps each day. As I write, the number of blogs (Web logs) and bloggers (those who blog) is estimated in the tens of millions worldwide.Although I've been a blog fan since the beginning, and have written favorably about the value added to journalism and public knowledge thanks to the new "citizen journalist," I'm also wary of power untempered by restraint and accountability.There we go - the usual complaint of the ...