LibDem Blogs - Archived!

Some while ago Jonathan Calder nominated me for this 7/7 challenge thing. Never one to rush things, I have had seven weeks to mull it all over, so now here goes: 7 THINGS TO DO BEFORE I DIE 1. Finish my Phd2. Learn to speak Italian3. Watch Scotland beat the All Blacks at rugby4. Start driving again5. Learn to appreciate classical music6. Publish a book7. See a Liberal Democrat MP elected for Watford 7 THINGS I CANNOT DO 1. DIY2. Read an entire article by Polly Toynbee without cursing3. Proofread my own writing4. Stand Cliff Richard5. Assertiveness6. Support England ...

During March and April the libraries in Birmingham are running a competition in which you can win one of 12 ipod nanos. All you have to do is borrow a book, CD or DVD from 20 March to 15 April 2006, and enter your name into a free prize draw. Further details can be found on the City Council website here. The local libraries serving most of the Selly Oak Ward are the Selly Oak Library on

I note that there has been a certain amount of discussion on this subject of late, in the light of revelations about Labour being funded by some decidedly dodgy-looking loans. Political party funding has always been a controversial subject; this isn't new, and election campaigns have always been expensive exercises. I'm not going to write an essay on the history of electoral campaigning and the funding thereof, but suffice it to say that money has always been spent in quantity on elections, and that the concept of funding parties through membership subscriptions and jumble sales was never anything to ...

Garston C of E school is not going to close! There's a recommendation to keep it open for at least another year while we look for a long term solution. Good news - breathing space is really important for everyone who has campaigned so hard. Nice to know too that behind the scenes work does pay off (even if you can't publicise everything you do). Oddly despite all their reported concern, we can't find any trace of objections from any key labour people.

To a meeting in Speke about the threat to the Catholic youth service. Frank and Danny, the other two speke councillors , and I met a small group organised by one of the local head teachers.Set up a small group to see what we can do to preserve the service and to look at its future. Frank has actually made a lot of calls already, including to a couple of significant people in the Catholic church. On to the neighbourhood committee to make our opposition to any loss in this area crystal clear. I think the young people ...

Sorry, but I can't resist this recommendation. The Darbyshires' farewell to the Liberal Democrats and riposte to their moment of fame in the New Statesman, 'Hitting back', is quite brilliant. The laughter left my ribcage aching and it is the funniest thing I've read and the longest piece of sustained personal vituperation since the late Auberon Waugh used to write in Private Eye. It surely must be a shoo-in for Tim Worstall's Best of British Blogging 2006 when it is published. The only trouble is that after this, the rest of us who have any pretensions to using humour on ...

Police and Justice Bill committee in the morning. Bill committee all afternoon. I tried to get some oversight (i.e. safeguards) into the latest extension of the surveillance society. The Bill would mean air flight passenger lists being given to the police even with no crime committed - but Hazel was stony ground as per usual. Ms Blears rarely gives an inch - and even when we score - the Government

Visited two of the local LibDem's members with the longest continuous membership of the party. Having had an exchange of e-mails with a BBC producer about a radio show he's doing on Churchill's time as Liberal MP for Dundee (1908 to 1922) he'd asked if any of our longer serving members could be of help. Pretty obvious we have no members that actually lived through that period, but some born in

The budget had some interesting ideas but did not go far enough on environmental issues as far as I am concerned. £20m on promoting and incentivising the greater use of low-energy light bulbs, better insulation and improved central heating and an extra 250,000 subsidised home insulation packages over the next two years. Ok I guess but more could be done in this area surely. And the sooner these

...but these people are no rats but the representatives of over 1.3 million predominantly public sector workers. Next Tuesday, much of UNISON's membership will strike in protest at proposed changes to the Local Government Pensions Scheme. UNISON Labour Link is the part of the organisation that gives money to the Labour party and organises campaigns to UNISON members to persuade them to vote Labour. It's not full of trots or entryists, but the more loyal Labour followers (you have to opt into it). So, whilst unions have said this sort of thing in the past, and have ...

Nick Robinson has big shoes to fill. His immediate predecessors in the role of BBC Chief Political Correspondent – John Cole, John Sergeant, even the New Labourish Andrew Marr – all had a certain gravity and authority that repetitious phrasing (“If only, if only” and “Can he? Can he?”) haven’t quite matched as yet. Still, he had it partly right on his Newsblog when he wrote: So much for "No Punch and Judy!" Coming face-to-face with Gordon Brown for the first time, David Cameron leant across across the Despatch Box, shouted rather than spoke and pointed his finger. This is ...

by Peter It would be over-the-top and old-fashioned to accuse a Labour Chancellor of sounding like a soviet commissar, so I will quote Martin Wolf rather than make up anything of my own. Here he is: as I tried to stay awake during his Budget speech, I understood what it was like to listen to a Soviet commissar delivering a discourse on prospects for the tractor sector. This was the speech of a man with a plan for every cranny of British life – for children, childcare, skills, education, science, the environment, enterprise, economic development and even Olympic athletes ...

The big subject of debate today continues to be yesterday's voting on the Government of Wales Bill motion. Despite there being 29 Labour members and 29 from the opposition, the Government managed to lose three key votes and were forced to vote down their own motion because it had been amended. The reaction of their Assembly Members to this was a series of points of order in which they blamed the electronic voting system for their own inability to press the right button at the right time. I have heard all sorts of conspiracy theories including the preposterous suggestion that ...

A couple of weeks ago I highlighted the tendency on the left towards double standards over political violence, citing Northern Ireland as an example. So all violence is bad but protestant violence against catholics is regarded as sectarian and driven by bigotry; catholic violence against protestants is political and driven by oppression. It is disappointing to see Tony Blair fall into this trap. One of the positive things Blair has done is move the Labour party away from its previous rather obvious pro-Green and anti-Orange bias on Northern Ireland questions. He should know better.

Try as I might, I just can't get excited by all the controversty about the loans and peerages row besetting the Labour party. In general, the British political system is pretty free of corruption. Even in the areas where it is part of folklore that bribes take place, it seems to be myth rather than reality. From time to time I see TV dramas where the plot involves councillors being bribed to pass planning applications. Yet in 10 or more years as a member of a planning committee, the most I have ever experienced is a polite letter from applicants ...

I have just returned from a couple of days in Switzerland, and as always, I am struck by the efficiency of the Swiss infrastructure. I caught a train, punctual to the minute, from Zurich to Geneva. The trains link with the major airports and all major towns. In Geneva I read of the new infrastructure projects to improve transport in the major cities and across country. The budgets are transparent and agreed amongst the various cantons. Given the very mountainous terrain of much of the country, it is even more impressive to see how easy it is to get around. ...

Tonight’s Question Time features David Laws MP for the Liberal Democrats. There – I saw you flinch. When that shameless stirrer Ken Clarke last week spun that some Lib Dems were really Tories, most Lib Dems will have laughed at the accusation about Ming, been bewildered by the mention of Nick Clegg, known from Vince Cable’s record that it’s untrue… And thought that, with David, Ken probably has a point. Rubbish. A partisan Tory's trying to split us for a laugh, but David’s undoubtedly a Liberal, if an idiosyncratic one – and I’ll examine The Orange Book to prove it. ...

They'd look like this.

The implementation of the new Dental Contract is causing considerable chaos. Because of an error in the leaflet about the charges being paid for dentures the whole batch of leaflets about the new system have had to be withdrawn and reprinted. The Dentists Computer system is also not currently available which means that PCTs will encounter a cashflow problem as they will be unable to clawback

Swansea Futures takes the initiative and starts telling people about Wales' best kept secret: far from being "industrial" Swansea has far more to offer. This includes The natural environment, the sea, Gower, the crescent bay and the city's waterside location; The culture (poetry, theatre, art galleries) heritage (castles, ancient buildings and landscapes) and sport (top class rugby, soccer, swimming, etc); The quality of life and the work-life balance; The strength of the university and its links with the business community in particular, and SA1, A new part of Swansea's growing waterfront which will feature 2,000 ...

Sorry for the distruption in service. I've been doing research in Kew, and the National Archives filter blogger.com as inappropriate material in their internet cafe. The National Archives, that aside, is a really great place. Not only does it contain the nation's historical treasures, but it offers the only place in Britain where you can entertain yourself by watching a queue of middle-aged men in tweed suffer nervous breakdowns as they try to operate the swipe-card entrance barriers. Cries of "I've already swiped the bloody thing thrice" are silenced by the automatic alaram declaring 'level one security breach'.

The link is to Chapter A of yesterday's Budget. This includes raising £50 million next year (£100m, £150m subsequent years) from removing the exemption from income tax of loan of a computer. If you take your laptop home then one presumes that is loan of a computer if you use it for private activity. It appears then that the HMRC will have to monitor how many private emails you send or how much

Interesting article in this morning's Western Mail suggesting that a coalition of the opposition parties might be led into Government by Dafydd Elis-Thomas after next May's elections. Whoever wrote this piece is obviously a big fan: Another of Plaid's great assets - Dafydd Elis-Thomas - is essentially marginalised, partly because of his role as the Assembly's Presiding Officer. But his exclusion goes beyond that: he currently has little influence over the direction Plaid is taking, and is regarded almost with contempt by leading figures in the party. Instead of taking advantage of the statesmanlike skills of Elis-Thomas, a ...

The Independent on women’s international day (8th March) made depressing reading but it was reassuring to see women’s exploitation, discrimination and poverty taken seriously, from the front page to the editorial. The Guardian, instead, simply couldn’t be bothered with the issue, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that today’s Kate Taylor’s article makes the comment page. Taylor argues … I’m

For the umptenth time Gordon Brown hasn't raised duty on Spirits, but raised them on Beer and Wine. Do spirits have special properties that don't get yobs drunk on a Saturday night? Surely it can't be that Gordon is keeping the distilleries happy, what about all the other types of spirits?

A number of self-styled ‘economic Liberals’ claim that the Liberal Democrats should return to ‘pure’, ‘free market’, ‘small-state’ Nineteenth Century Liberalism, and that if Mill or Gladstone were to hear Liberal Democrats advocating income tax rises (say) they would spin in their graves and take their votes elsewhere. I’m not an historian, nor especially well-read in history, but I have sufficient awareness of my own perspective to be careful of claiming that similar-sounding policies from the period would have had the same effect, or have been advanced with the same aims in mind. Economics and a Sense of History ...

Another smoking-related incident, which I omitted to mention in my previous post. On the way in to Haymarket station, I was handed a card advertising a “smoking cessation” service. This card apparently entitles me to £20 off my first session, which made me wonder how expensive a session must be if they can afford to [...]

No, this is not another Plenary report though we could have a discussion about which AM would play the soup dragon and the iron chicken if you wish. The BBC have published a poll of the top 20 children's programmes and top of the pile is Rainbow. The Magic Roundabout is at number two whilst Mr. Benn shares third spot with Playschool. All-in-all a remarkably conservative ranking. It is a great disappointment that Bagpuss, The Wombles and the Clangers are trailing in fifth and sixth places respectively. And why the low placing awarded to Roobarb and Custard and ...

So now we know where the Tories stand on freedom of speech. They originally opposed the "glorification" offence (presumably on principle) but have now decided to abstain. The glorification offence stands thanks to the failure of the Tories to stand by their principles and support the amendment proposed by Lib Dem Peer Lord Goodhart. Lord Goodhart was quoted back in January (when the Lords threw

Government decides there isn't a snowball's chance in Hades of passing Mental Health Bill. Since they haven't passed the Legislative and Reform Bill yet (bummer!), government decides to rebrand the bill as the more innocous 'amendments to existing legislation'. Grauniad acquires double life in the form of Comment is Free. I've noticed that the writers in this section seem to make relatively

Riots broke out today on a small, dustbin-lid-covered planet at the news that Rainbow has been voted the favourite series for very young children. A Clanger spokessock claimed, “Woo oo oooh. Ooo hoo ioooooh!” In a separate statement, Zippy said: “Exterminate!”

I’m not a fan of golf, normally, but it becomes a whole lot more interesting when played in Africa by a Yeti using a flamingo as the club.

I have mostly been stuffing envelopes.  Members’ newsletter.  Absolutely has to go out NOW because it includes details of Regional Conference on Saturday, and unless I get these envelopes in the post tonight, it will be too late by the time people receive it.  Luckily, in Nottingham, I have discovered from previous mailshots, that putting [...]