LibDem Blogs - Archived!

There seems to have be a burst of bloggers declaring themselves for Ming of late. I thought I would try and run through the names 1 Stephen Tall posted eight reasons for voting for Ming (I'll be setting questions on this later). Here is a taster: He has the authority and experience to unify the Party which no other candidate can match. 2 Steve Travis announced that he was supporting Ming just a few days ago, writing Ming is most in touch with the issues that matter to the electorate. This is the way we will build the further electoral ...

Went to Scottish bloggers blogmeet in Edinburgh. Met people. Drank alcohol. Took photos. Came home. Good time had. Thanks to Gordon for organising. Tomorrow: back to Edinburgh for the leadership hustings. Tags: blogmeet, scottish+bloggers, edinburgh

Went to the cinema yesterday for to see the fillum Aeon Flux. I enjoyed it, but it did demonstrate the gulf between being enjoyable and being particularly good. It was shot in Europe which probably explains the many Brits in the cast: Jonny Lee Miller, Oscar nominee Sophie Okenedo (off of Scream of the Shalka), Pete [...]

...consider the following. Many Liberal Democrat members are likely to have voted by now. The polls have been confusing with one in The Sunday Times claiming Simon Hughes was ahead while another predicted Chris Huhne will become leader. The Sunday Times poll surveyed voters who were current Lib Dem voters and not party members. In one way this is a positive result for Simon, knowing existing

Following on from the disgraceful revelations last week that blatantly made up dinosaur Spinosaurus has stolen T-Rex’s crown, here’s a heartwarming story to even things up a bit.

Shirley Williams has sent me an e-mail: Dear Jonathan I am writing to you to let you know why I am supporting Ming Campbell to become leader of our Party. Liberal Democrats can celebrate the commitment, talent and hard work of our MPs and peers. These qualities will take us much further given time and experience. Ming Campbell is the leader we need to guide us through the challenging years ahead. Years in which security and liberty need to be carefully balanced... Enough already. If liberals accept that there is a simple trade-off between security and liberty - ...

Simon has been continuing his tour of the country, and you have been sending your photos in - many thanks.  We have just added photographs from Canterbury and Milton Keynes to the gallery - go and have a look!

As liberty staggers around the floor staring at her assassins, her eyes will take in David Blunkett, Charles Clarke, George W. Bush and Tony Blair. The fatal wound was thrust in her back last weekend. No doubt she uttered “Et Tu Gordon” as the Chancellor of the Exchequer declared for Identity Cards. It has taken centuries to develop and defend legal liberty in Britain. Barons went to war to

I was stopped in the street the other day and accused of supporting Chris Huhne in the Lib Dem leadership contest. This was due to the Google ads supporting Chris Huhne which occasionally appear at the top of this blog. Should make it clear that these ads are chosen by Google, not by me. So I disclaim any ads supporting the Chris Huhne campaign, Satan, the People's Republic of China or any other evil causes apparently promoted by Google. OTOH, perhaps this is no time to be making enemies.

I seem to have been surrounded by jubilant Estonians this week. After Kristina Smigun manged to bring home two olympic gold medals, Andrus Veerpalu has added a third. It puts Estonia sixth on the medal table at this point, behind Germany, the US, Russia, Austria and France, but ahead of Norway and Canada, Switzerland and Sweden. Since the population of Estonia is only 1.3 million, the per capita medal ratio is astounding and puts the country firmly at the top of the table. No wonder my friends are wreathed in smiles.

There may be a long post to come about this issue later (shorter version: I’m all for it) but for now, those of you haven’t seen this series of posts at Great Britain, Not Little England (1, 2, 3) then you should go and read them now. It is New Labour that is the enemy, it [...]

Busy with lots of things this week, so apologies if you’ve been missing my posts (hope springs eternal and all that). Anyway, in the last few days, it looks like Our Chris has received two pointed attacks, one from the Institute of Hard Sums and one from the infamous Michael Crick. I’ll deal with the [...]

Posted by Chris. This picture, lifted from the Simon Hughes campaign website, is not very clear and looks more like an oil painting, but it illustrates exactly what my idea of a splendid Council Chamber is. The photograph was taken of Simon addressing the Leeds Leadership Hustings on 4th February, in the Grand Council Chamber at Leeds Civic Hall. Lit from outside by floodlamps shining through the windows, which gives a warm daylight feel to the room, this elegant building, with its two guilded owls on the exterior and Roman columns at the entrance, was opened in ...

Another week-end spent writing essays :( This one on Student centred vs. Teacher centred Learning. Joy and rapture. Work is coming along, I'll be being trained Monday through Thursday, have college on Wednesday and I training a client on Friday. I think I'm suffering teaching overload. I starting to feel I'm on top of my brief and really starting to produce the goods for the company. Politics is ticking over at the moment due to the new job and problems with setting up the Wireless Network at home. Life is Good.Especially compared to the alternative.

For a couple of years now the mainstream media and international institutions have been off and on highlighting the plight of white farmers and the 700,000 suburban Harrare citizens evicted from their homes by the nasty dictator Robert Mugabe. Amnesty International even penned a polite letter to President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria as chair of the African Union asking the Union to speak out

Last week, reminds The DrugSpot: Anniversary of the Opium Exclusion Act, was an anniversary (though not quite centenary yet) of the start of one of the most destructive and baseless wars the world has seen - the "War on Drugs". I recommend anyone with a vague interest in it to go read the blog article. It highlights how prohibition was, by turns, a muddled policy led by a few evangelical

…hang on, let me check. Damn. * On a jollier note, I have woken up with my hearing juuuust about right again, and only a bit of a cough and a sniffle. So I have bumped all the moping public self-flagellation posts re my hearing off the home page to here as I am now faintly embarrassed by [...]

...I think. There was nothing at all in the Michael Crick revelations. But there is something bleakly amusing in watching a poltician who does not know if he is a multi-millionaire or not - whatever their party. Perhaps Huhne is a blank canvass to himself.

For those who joined the Conservatives because they thought they were the natural home of homophobic misongynists, Stephen Crabb MP has some bad news for you. He wants to stop the selection process for Conservative Welsh Assembly list candidates so that they can find more women. If only he could replace all the members as well, he might be getting somewhere close to a real liberal party.

Ahem. In recent days I have made it pretty clear that I don't want to see the election for the leader of the Liberal Democrats won by Chris Huhne. From this, readers may have drawn the conclusion that I want to him to lose. Nothing could...

Scientific proof that when I told my second supervisor that my preferred method of problem-solving was "go home and wait for the answer to come to me", I had a point. It sounds a recipe for procrastination but it does work. I was watching Austin Stevens in Peru last night and was somewhat amused and perplexed by his unconventional way of passing a herd of llama down a narrow alley: the llama

I am really not impressd with the BBC and Michael Crick over tonights Newsnight. The piece on Chris Huhne was a chaep hatchett job unworthy of a public service broadcaster. Apart from a bit of cheap sneering about his student days the only "shock" revelation was a handfully of slightly controversal articles in a campaign tabloid. As it would appear to have already been investigated and the complainant is a former Tory MEP you have to ask wether this is worthy of BBC 2's flagship news programme. Or is it a case of having commissioned a hatchet job not letting ...