LibDem Blogs - Archived!

I don’t think any of the candidates would wish to be judged solely on their performance tonight - I was left with the sense that they were all knackered after running around the country, and looked and sounded it. This wasn’t helped by the chairing being very poor. There were two things that livened the event [...]

First the GSM Awards, and now this in today’s Times: Rivals cowed by the Ming’s web mastery Ah, if only it were true…

Eve Myles, who played Gwyneth in The Unquiet Dead, seems to have been cast as Gwen, the female lead in Doctor Who spin-off series Torchwood. The story briefly appeared at the BBC site, but the whole thing is on Torchwood.TV. Tags: torchwood, eve+myles

OK, so I know my way around eBay (mainly buying software, though I did once sell 4000 breeze blocks), but what is going on here? Expires Saturday evening.

The good news is that Labour's Election petition in Aston against the Lib Dem by-election victors was "struck out" at 10am today. What this means is that the Judges decided that even if Labour could prove the allegations that they had made that this would not have resulted in them winning an election petition. The fact is that Labour's petition was merely a copy of the one I wrote without the

When it was announced on the radio this morning that builders working on Wembley Stadium are thought to have won thousands of pounds by betting against the venue being ready in time for the FA Cup I thought I had misheard. However, apparently it is true. Although London's loss is Cardiff's gain surely there must be questions asked as to why exactly work has fallen behind schedule on Wembley once again and whether these particular bets are valid or even ethical.

This is what hard-core fans of the real Miss Marple will want. A box set of all 12 BBC adaptations starring Joan Hickson.

The other day I pointed readers to a posting about Belarus on Cicero's Songs. Now Liberal Democrat Youth and Students has launched a national campaign "to raise the profile of the last dictatorship in Europe". Well, you know what they mean. So please visit United 4 Belarus. (Thanks to Forceful and Moderate.)

{Shozu} is a great app for your camera phone for Flickr users meaning you don't need to connect your phone to a PC first (although watch out for GPRS costs!)

David Irving, holocaust denier and general idiot, gets three years in the slammer under Austria's holocaust denial law. While I find it hard to feel sympathy for a man who travelled to Austria knowing that he was a wanted criminal there, he doesn't deserve this. This isn't a legal point. There is no doubt that he violated the Austrian law. And there is essentially no doubt that this Austrian

West Lothain Council is to look into one of the suggestions made by members of the public following the disappearnace and murder of Rory Blackhall in August last year. The idea is that if a pupil fails to turn up to scholl without prearrangement or at the prearranged time a text message will be sent to the parent or guadian to alert them to this and prompt them to respond either that the child is

Still off work. Woke up spluttering after a half-hour nap so fired up LibDem Blogs in my phone and found an interesting post on Tristan’s blog pointing to this article from The Times: I received an e-mail from a lady in the Trading Standards department of a large northern town. They had encountered businesses which were [...]

It is reported that Neil Kinnock wants to scrap the speed limit in miles and set it in kilometres instead. About time! One mile, er that would be eight furlongs, or 80 chains or three hundred and twenty poles, or one Thousand Seven Hundred and sixty yards. A yard is of course three feet or 36 inches. So naturally it makes perfect sense to drive on the motorway at 560 furlongs an hour. Of course, I was actually taught (some of) this stuff, but the metric system is a load more logical, and it is what we use for virtually ...

The United 4 Belarus campaign launched today. Belarus is Europe's last dictatorship and has Presidential elections on 19th March. The aim of the campaign is to raise awareness and promote liberal democracy in Belarus. You can find out how to get involved here. It's a Lib Dem campaign (actually, a Lib Dem Youth and Students campaign) but should be of interest to anyone, of any political

The Times is carrying this story of Trading Standards confiscating some CDs being sold with Firefox on. The most startling issue this brings up is the way they presume guilt and they don't even bother to check the software license. There have always been many different licenses for software. Some software even comes without license (public domain) and you may do what you like with it, other

First point: Fukuyama's Guardian column is a cut-down version of this extended New York Times piece, which explains why it is above the Guardian's usual standards. The whole thing is well worth reading, along with some of the US blogospheric reaction - since this is a British blog I will give special note to Brit-in-America Andrew Sullivan (Fukuyama posts about 1 page down) and Yank-over-here Greg

As you may know I am a member of the ELDR (European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party) Council, elected by the Liberal Democrat Federal Conference Representatives for the last two years. ELDR has launched a debate on the future of the European Union.

One of the things that instantly attracted me to Chris Huhne's leadership bid was that from that first hustings meeting at the LSE, he had clearly got global warming right at the top of his agenda - where it belongs. Now there has to be a debate about how we tackle the problem. Chris has proposed greater taxation for burning fossil fuels, but with the proceeds being used to help the less well off. The logic is brilliantly simple, although admittedly there are detail questions about how you avoid coming down too hard on those who have no choice but ...

Sweating over the ballot paper, which goes in as soon as I have some feedback on the final hustings… This is an education for many of us I suspect as we have to try to make up our minds on the basis of the kind of information a voter gets in a national election instead of being part of a pre-focussed team. Even those of us on a strong commitment for first preference may have to sweat over the second… Small things may swing votes yet I suspect. I found myself in momentary confusion a few days ago over a ...

Good news. Camerons honeymoon is over. At least that is the way it seems if you read the article in todays Guardian. The best quote in the article was as follows: "Lord Tebbit, former party chairman, compared Mr Cameron's "purge" of Thatcherism to the actions of Pol Pot." Even more amusingly Robin Harris a speech writer for Thatcher is quoted as saying "There are good reasons why every Tory

Given the revelations about Simon Hughes and Mark Oaten, I can’t help but think it is unfortunate that the Tories’ new wholesale adoption of Lib Dem campaign techniques is called the “Big Swingers” strategy. The mind boggles what Tory candidates are being advised to do in Grant Shapps’ new handbook, but one suspects it involves car [...]

The Times today reports how a third of Conservative Party candidates so far selected are women, as part of a strategy which heavily borrows from Liberal Democrat campaign techniques: Seven of the 19 hopefuls selected to fight the most winnable seats for the Tories are women and most of them just missed out on Westminster [...]

Devolution without democracy Why is Labour so scared of giving control to local authorities, asks Sarah Teather. [via Society Guardian]

...unlike many Lib Dem bloggers, but I am in the Radio Times. Do I get half a point, your Lordship? ;-)

Simon Jenkins on Miliband's sham localism.

Research by the Liberal Democrats has revealed that the Government has spent £32m preparing for ID cards before they have even become law. This is despite the fact that the ID Cards Bill is still being scrutinised by Parliament where it has been opposed by Labour rebels, Tories and Liberal Democrats. In other news the Government is currently piloting the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill through Parliament. As David Howarth MP writes this hides an astonishing proposal. 'It gives ministers power to alter any law passed by Parliament. The only limitations are that new crimes cannot be created if ...

I found Francis Fukuyama's comments in yesterday Grauniad about neoconservatism a step above the usual Grauniad dross, esp. since he's apparently associated with the neoconservative movement* ^. He argues that the neo-conservative movement was about benign idealistic inteventionism, he fears the neo-conservatives have lost the plot and the backlash against them will drive the US back to

Why are people googling ‘Niles crazy’ ? And why are they finding me when they do? Who was it who googled ‘Chris Huhne Myers Briggs’?  They wouldn’t have found anything useful here either, but I’d go for ISTP.  I’d have Simon as ENFJ and Ming as INTJ. Erm,  Peter Snow applies.  Just a bit of fun. (INTP, for the [...]