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The News of the World reports: LIB DEM MP QUITS OVER RENT BOY SCANDAL Mark Oaten tonight resigned as the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman after he was confronted by the News of the World over an affair with a rent boy. In a statement the 41-year-old father of two apologised for the “embarrassment” he had caused to his family and party. News of the World managing editor Stuart Kuttner said that Mr Oaten’s announcement came after he was confronted with details of the affair with the 23-year-old rent boy by the paper’s reporters. The two most ...

by Peter I don't think I have ever linked to the News of the World before, and if it is all the same to you, I hope not to have to do so again. But here it is. It really is astounding that Mark Oaten should have stood for the leadership knowing that any story like this might break. He has done the right thing in standing down immediately. I do not believe this is the end of his career - this is his private life, after all. But he must need a break from the frontline for a ...

Coming homie this evening from a volleyball tournament I could not believe my ears regarding hte lastest news in what must be the worst week of Mark Oaten's life. First there was the leaks of emails from his office. Then he faced the realisation that he did not have suffiicent support with the parliamentary party and now these lastest allegations. I wouldn't wish that sort of week on anyone. I

I didn’t want him to be leader, and I was hoping he wouldn’t remain our shadow home secretary once the new leader was elected, but I wouldn’t wish this story about Mark Oaten on anyone. While there were always rumours about Charles’s drinking, this has taken every LibDem I spoke to this evening completely by surprise. [...]

So I sat down about 20 minutes ago to write about how I thought it had been a good week for the Liberal Democrats. We had held a county council by-election in Cambridgeshire, and the three remaining candidates for the leadership had all impressed me in different ways. I had listened on my car radio to Ming doing a decent job at PMQs . We had also heard about Ming apparently turning down a cabinet

What a hellish end to a hellish week for Mark Oaten. The rent-boy allegations in tomorrow's News of the World will be immensely painful to him, and those who know him; and it's right that he should have stepped down immediately so that he can get his life back in some order. The Liberal Democrats are a proudly tolerant party, and an individual's private life - however messy - is strictly their own concern. But I am left scratching my head in utter bewilderment that he could have considered ...

BBC NEWS | Politics | Oaten resigns over rent boy claim My theory on the latest Oatengate. The News of the World had been either been sitting on this for a while perhaps for some years waiting for Oaten's political value to increase, or they dug the dirt during the past few weeks on the off chance that he may win the leadership. Either way when Mark withdrew this week the story became a ripe pear about to go past its sell by date. They had to publish this weekend before Mark Oaten slides out of the front ...

Just a thought for anyone reading this in the Lib Dems who's temporarily lost their site in the current problems Prater Raines is having: I can offer hosting for almost 100 sites, with all the works - a control panel, database, PHP/MySQL, all that...

Seriously, you couldn't make it up... The means of removing Kennedy was compared to Tory removals of their leaders but surely this an emulation too far? I suppose it could be worse...

Saturday 21st January 2006 - I had to go to London today for the first meeting of the Lib Dems English Council Executive (ECE) of the new year and needless to say much of the general chit chat between the "official" business centred on the Leadership contest. People appeared to be generally guarded about who they were backing, not surprising given the number of senior Party officers present, but

Mark Oaten is stepping down over allegations to be made in tommorow's News of the Screws that he has had a two year fling with a rent boy. I can't imagine how horrid this must be for his family. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/4635916.stm

With several people now successfully using my Amazon Sidebar links (those I am reading/watching/listening... on the righthand side), I'm going to offer them to the wider public. Click the link, follow the instructions. Being crap at explaining anything, please leave feedback in the comments. Tip: if you want to give referral sales to me use artesea-21 as your tag, theliberaldemocr for the LibDems

The link is to a treasury web page with various PFI reports on it. Mott MacDonald researched "optimism bias". I think that it is not entirely fair to call it "optimism bias". Generally people don't know all the details of a large project when they start it. However, Mott MacDonald found that there were various reasons why projects both traditional and PFI/PPP ended up having an "optimism

Internet, money and the threat to the liberal state In the Lib Dems' Meeting the Challenge process I've been struck by how little we make of the challenge of the "super-connected" world. Yet some commentators - such as "The Future of Money: Creating New Wealth, Work and a Wiser World" (Bernard Lietaer) - believe that the combination of demographic change, environmental change, globalization and the internet is about to plunge us into an epochal change of the immensity of the invention of printing, steam power and air travel. That in a few years ...

Thank you to the increasing number of bloggers who’ve said that they are backing Ming. Dave Smithson appears to have been fastest off the mark backing Ming on his blog on January 9. Dave Radcliffe has also had a rather fine “Backing Menzies Campbell for Leader” button on his site since the earliest days of the campaign. MatGB [...]

As you may have noticed, the Huhne campaign website has been down for a couple of days. It turns out that all the party sites hosted by Prater Raines are having this problem. While it is solved there is a basic temporary site for Chris Huhne. For more news see the blog written by Huhne supporter Richard Huzzey.

Three themes entwined for me this week – Liberalism, the Leadership contest and Databases. Thinking about databases may help think more clearly about the two Big Ls in this list. I want to suggest a metaphor. New Labour is the political movement of database culture. Liberals can aspire to something richer. But we have to think about this. Databases of course came up in the Kelly Uproar on List 99 and sex offenders in schools. It is quite right to be concerned about the slowness in setting up the new database on offenders, as Ming rightly stressed in the House ...

The Sydney Opera House When the Wales Millennium Centre was opened it was hailed as Wales' answer to the Sydney Opera House. Certainly, although it looks like a mollusc from the outside, the interior is fantastic and well worth a visit. The Mollusc The important thing is to ensure that we keep our new landmark building in a state of good repair. In Swansea, where I am a Councillor, we have had more than enough experience of the cost of failing to do so. For want of a million pounds of maintenance less than ten years ...

As many online Lib Dems have noticed, the Prater Raines websites used by most constituency parties are all down at the moment. The technical problem also effects Chris Huhne's campaign website, sadly! There's a temporary site up at www.christowin.org, with the bare essentials. Hopefully everything will be back up by the end of the weekend!

Some really interesting coverage of Chris's campaign in the mainstream media today: An interview in the Telegraph, which reads nicely. Only odd feature is the Telegraph's online advertising, which sticks an advert for BP in the middle of a quote on climate change! Now, if only it had been a Toyota Prius advert instead... Former Hartlepool candidate Jodie Dunn is writing for the Guardian's Newsblog, and tips Chris: PoliticalBetting.com has an article speculating that the 200-1 bet the author placed on Huhne is looking very, very good. That list of supporters is impressive and increasing (check ...

by Peter Another week has gone by in the leadership contest - time to take stock once more. Mark Oaten: last week I had Mark Oaten in fourth place - and pointed to his limited support among MPs. Since then, of course, he has had to drop out of the contest. This is a little sad, as he has ideas worth debating. But if you have not got support from your parliamentary colleagues, standing for election as leader is not sustainable. Mark probably felt that he might become our Tony Blair. My feeling is that - in the nicest ...

On Thursday "The Insider" (a laughable conceit of sniping from behind anonymity mostly at people trying their best to do some good in local politics) in the Oxford Mail complained that a Green councillor had not updated his blog for a few months, describing a blog as a "self important forum to tell people what you have been up to". Until I got into this I was extremely skeptical myself about it. And I did think blogging was a bit of onanistic self-promotion that probably nobody would ever read. Of course the Insiders gives the lie to that ...

In this morning’s Guardian, Nick Clegg sets out why he believes Ming Campbell is the right leader for the Liberal Democrats. We’ve also posted a copy of his article on this site.