LibDem Blogs - Archived!

My farewell letter to Spark in its original form will not be published as it constitutes "harrassment" of Dave Lewis. I won't say anything more, as it could be bullying.

On average, it takes over 4 years for a victim of domestic violence to report what is happening to her (and 79% are female). By which time this "coercive pattern of control" has escalataed from verbal abuse, to emotional bullying, to physical violence, with damaging psychological effects on children in the same home. I attended a scrutiny panel on Thursday about domestic violence and what the...

Yesterday it was Shirley Williams. Today it is David Steel. Writing of Menzies Campbell, Steel says: His bad luck was not to enter the Commons earlier than he did in 1987. Had he done so, he would probably have been leader instead of Charles Kennedy and possibly even Paddy Ashdown.It's hard to resist the thought that it was all our bad luck that Ming did not enter the Commons in 1974. Then he might have been leader instead of David Steel

Tim Worstall's weekly selection of the best in British blogging is in place.

Three Lib Dem bloggers included in this weeks roundup (hope I've not missed anybody out). Great moral booster to see one of my own postings listed again. Tim writes, SuzBlog does some direct reporting from the campaign trail in the Lib Dem Leadership race. This is something I hope we’ll see more of, bloggers reporting rather than, like most of us most of the time, interpreting Liberal England on who was the best Miss Marple? Militant Moderate is angry ...

Now according to David Steel in his email today Ming Campbell was unfortunate not to reach the Commons until 1987. If he had got there earlier he would have already been leader instead of Charles Kennedy, or even Paddy Ashdown. While I'm flattered to have had emails from Shirley Williams, Paddy Ashdown and David Steel in the last 4 days I have to ask two questions 1. how on earth does David know this? 2. what difference does it make now? We could all have Counterfactual fun predicting the result of the 1989 (or was it 88) and 1999 leadership ...

The start of the Scottish Hustings in the Liberal Democrat leadership contest at Dynamic Earth, Edinburgh got off to a delayed start this afternoon. This was not due to any of the candidates turning up late all of them were presnet in the hall in plenty of time, no the reason was that approx 530 Scottish members turned up, out of a membership of 4200 what about 1/8th of all members. In deed an

ID cards. Laws against insulting or offending religious viewpoints. Detention for 28 days without trial. Orders which can make legal acts into criminal offences. Abolition of various long-standing elements of the constitution, with no real replacements and no increase in democratic accountability. Terrible, isn't it? And yet, all of these things pale into insignificance next to the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill. This bill gives ministers the power to introduce or amend legislation without parliamentary approval. Yes, that's right. This includes the introduction of new criminal offences and modification of the definitions of ...

The idea of organised anti-New Labour tactical voting has come up. Oh dear. James Graham is spot on. When somebody tells you that the enemy is X, they are asking two things: First that you define yourself by what you are against. Second to turn your back on all your other enemies. Does an anti-New Labour alliance include the Conservatives and Old Labour? Yeah, right. New Labour is just a name

Well the past few days have certainly been days of, well if not wine and roses, then certainly beer and blogging. However, I have a busy week ahead. I will be away for a couple of days, then attending the London Junto on Wednesday. On Thursday I shall be attending a reception to mark the 88th anniversary of the declaration of Estonian Independence. All at a time, when most inconveniently, I actually have to hit some deadlines to prove I am still employed. It also means that I will be unable to get to the duel of -well not death, ...

John Hemming has decided to back Sir Menzies Campbell. John had written earlier in the week that he was still to decided on who to back and was going to decide after the West Midlands hustings. Below are his reason as posted under his blog entitled "Hemming endorses Campbell"

Until now, I haven't publicly declared support for a particular candidate. Partly this is because of the fact that I'm not too interested in the leadership election itself. This may seem odd, but I find the jockeying for position dull and the focus on personality to be a distraction. I'm not a liberal because of admiration for specific individuals, I'm a liberal because of my admiration for specific principles. Finally, I'd rather be training my fire on our enemies than pointing out the weaknesses of those on our own side. So I've held off making this ...

MatGB has written a number of provocative posts about the need to develop a “coalition of the willing” to fight the “New Labour project” (hat tip: Nick Barlow). I’m afraid I’m not convinced by all this at all, and so I thought I’d spell out why. To start with, one of the best bits of [...]

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat leadership challenger, today said Tony Blair should immediately "denounce the detention camps at Guantanamo Bay".

Martin Tod, the techno-wizard behind the excellent Ming Campbell website, wisely rejected my suggestion he should nick-name those of us who are blogging for Ming 'Blingers'. (It would have chimed so nicely with Ming's site's gold colour-theme too.) I suspect he thought it might have conflicted somewhat with Ming's "gravitas" (TM). However, Peter over at the splendidly prolific Pigeon-Post has

In the week when the US Vice-President shot the face off a fellow quail-hunter, it is all-too-tempting to view American politics as, well, a little strange. Certainly Dick Cheney’s hard-core, scatter-gun approach knocks into a cocked-hat John Prescott’s girly-man ‘Two Jabs’ in the 2001 election campaign. It suits our perception of a violent American ‘Wild West’ way of life which contrasts with

Have you seen the story today in the Observer today from Ned Temko and Svetlana Graudt? "Frontrunners take Lib Dem battle to a photo-finish Observer survey shows Hughes a distant third" Statistically it isn't worth a bag of beans. They have simply asked Lib Dem constituency chairs . And not even all the chairs, just the 63 with Lib Dem MPs. And they only got 46 replies: HUGHES - 8 HUHNE -

The West Midlands Hustings for Lib Dem Leader were yesterday. I would be happy if any of the three candidates won. However, in a finally balanced decision I have decided to endorse Ming Campbell. There were two particular parts of his speech which were clearly distinct from the other two candidates. Firstly, he made it clear that we should be a campaigning party raising issues from a local to

A bit more on Folk Brittania, this time the political element. The first episode had a lot about Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd and their attempts to take folk music and use it for their own political ends, in the ways Communists have done all over the world. Thankfully this didn't work, but it leaves a very nasty taste in the mouth. Undoubtedly much folk music (and music in general) is political,

Being a big music fan, including of folk music (especially English) having been brought up with it, I was interested in BBC4's series Folk Brittania. My general feeling is it was a very limited view of folk music in Britain. It showed disdain for EFDSS (which whilst it has its faults is also a great organisation) and ignored the dance scene and the longer running festival circuit at the expense of

"We've got a black member who hasn't come today, he's blacker than you." That was a comment made to a friend of mine at a regional training event yesterday. He was the only black face amongst a bunch of activists, around 70% male 30% women and 85% over 50(fraid that included me)! Thankfully it wasn't enough to put him off (although this was the first event he had been to outside our local party) but it crystalized for me why it is so important we take the issue of diversity in our party much more seriously. ...

A couple of weeks ago I critiqued Jeremy Hargreaves’ take on what the Lib Dems’ narrative should be. But it isn’t good enough simply to criticise; far too few people are taking part in this crucial debate and so I thought it was time to try and work out some tentative ideas of my [...]

The skeleton bob must be the scariest form of transport on the planet. Hurtling headfirst down an ice slide at 70mph on a tin tray, with your nose two inches above the ground, must produce the biggest adrenaline rush ever. I speak as someone who finds the Mystic East ride at Chessington World of Adventures too challenging. And talking about winter sports, is the double luge the only...

The Observer carries more news of how the Conservative Party is drifting towards open revolt over David Cameron's opportunistic plans to run to centre ground and rebrand them as liberal. They report that a wealthy Tory donor is to cancel a pledge of £250,000 amid growing unrest on the right of the party. The protest by the unnamed industrialist was revealed to The Observer last night by one of a number of party backers with whom he discussed his move. The colleague said it reflected 'concern and unhappiness' over Cameron's policy shifts in a number of areas, including ...

I’m sorry to keep going on about this, but have we seen the last gasp of The Liberal magazine? Since my last post on the subject it has emerged that Ben Ramm has got into further problems for publishing a Mohammed cartoon on its website, which is now dead. Visitors to Chris Huhne’s website will [...]

Jonathan Calder and Nick Barlow both quote Benjamin Franklin today. He is one of my historical heroes . Of all the statesmen and scientists that I've ever heard of, he's one of the ones I'd like brought forward in a time machine and elected onto our local council. If you are interested in the great man, my favourite search engine Clusty has a special Ben Franklin portal "a comprehensive, one-stop site that includes carefully curated educational resources, Franklin's own writings and proverbs, and tens of thousands of websites scattered throughout cyberspace. Befitting this founding father's ...

Peter at Pigeon Post has a roundup of bloggers' endorsements for Ming Campbell, including mine and many others.

This week we finished distributing the survey and I've done some canvassing. People in Werrington are very nice; I haven't met one hostile person so far. The only local paper to report on the campaign so far has been The Moorlands Advertiser under the headline BNP Vote Hope. Why not Lib-Dem Vote Hope? None of the other local papers have mentioned the by-election, even to give a list of candidates, which I find quite surprising. I'm very disappointed to hear that the quarry at Captain's Barn Farm, Caverswall, is to go ahead. Mr Prescott has approved it ...

Over at Liberal England, Jonathan tells us of an email he’s recently received from Shirley Williams, explaining that one of the reasons he should vote for Ming Campbell is because we are approaching “Years in which security and liberty need to be carefully balanced”. As another grand old man of liberalism once said: Those who would give [...]

This morning's Wales on Sunday reports that Marks and Spencers' has tried to rename the traditional Welsh cake. They have been discovered marketing this Welsh delight as 'Currant Drop Scones'. When tackled by BBC Wales programme 'X-Ray' a spokesperson said: "Previously, this product was only available in Wales, Scotland and the South West - we wanted to offer this delicious product to our customers throughout the UK and have therefore used the more recognisable name of 'Currant Drop Scone'." A former National Chef of Wales is quoted in the paper as explaining that the two products are very ...

As Andy Murray knocks out Andy Roddick 7-5, 7-5 to go into the final in San Jose, it is a cheerful start to the day. Also, perhaps, not inappropriate to reflect on the role of Scots in the modern United Kingdom, and one Scot in particular: Ming Campbell. The election for the leadership of the Liberal Democrats has come down to the wire, between Chris Huhne and Sir Menzies Campbell. It is time to justify my choice of leader. I say this, because this has been a very real contest and has shown some very real divisions. There has also ...

Sorry, l couildn't resist that. But somehow the morbid side of me needs to welcome H5N1 to our shores. Well, it's arrived in France, so it'll be here soon. BIrds gotta fly, viruses gotta mutate, humans gonna die.

I'm don't think it's actually true, but anything which massages my ego so much by claiming Bloggers4Chris generated Huhne's initial momentum deserves a link.