LibDem Blogs - Archived!

V for Vendetta Finally got to see V for Vendetta on Friday. I didn’t have my hopes up and made sure I read Peter Bradshaw’s one-star review to deliberately dampen my spirits. The great thing about Peter Bradshaw is that he has absolutely no taste and you can guarantee him to give a bad [...]

Will Howells writes about Anthony Ainley and the Ainley family's (rather tenuous) links with the Asquiths. He also says that Ainley played The Master in Doctor Who during the 1980s. No doubt he did. But the real Master - the original one who flourished in the late 1960s* when I was just of an age to hide behind the sofa - was Roger Delgado. * Actually in the early 1970s - see Will's comment below.

A couple of weeks ago I argued in Liberal Democrat News that there was something sinister about the government's rush to associate itself with British sporting success: It's good to praise people when they have done well. But somewhere behind all these congratulations is the belief that all achievements by British people are really government achievements. And that is downright sinister.Tony Blair was at it again in Melbourne today. Praising Scotland's success in the Commonwealth Games, he said: "Scotland has done superbly well with 11 gold medals and sixth place in the medal table. "I think people worked ...

The allegations so far about Funding and Government are perhaps not as extreme as that which implied that as a consequence of a Million Pound loan the government oddly decided not to ban adverts for smoking at Formula One Races. The Bernie Ecclestone Million Pound Loan involved a payment which achieved lobbying access and as a consequence a change in the law. If people are getting planning

A few weeks ago I received this email From: Admin Support <> To: Ryan Cullen Sent: 13 Mar 2006 09:08 Subject: National Lottery Subscription We have some exciting news about your National Lottery Subscription. Please click http://www.national-lottery.co.uk/player/subs/viewSummary.do and enter your username and password to view the details of your Subscription online now. Kind regards, National Lottery Subscriptions Team Now I didn't click the link, I'm not that stupid. I get lottery spam at least once a day. So I went to the proper National Lottery website www.national-lottery.co.uk and logged in the usual way. And what did ...

I've been away for the weekend and have returned to discover, to my fascination, that Leah Darbyshire has now posted around 7 times about me since Friday afternoon including photographs. She hasn't really explained why exactly she's acquired this sudden fixation but makes two specific claims: a) That I said they were 'losers with no sense of humour' b) That I said I couldn't believe she had an

Now, I understand the arguments in favour of a smoking ban on public and employee health ground but over at Freedom and Whisky in Only following orders David Farrar highlights that the smoking ban is also an erosion of private property rights. You know by now that I can get Land Value Tax into almost any discussion! And here is an apt one for those that tell me that real estate is absolute property and therefore not something the state should tax. Yet in the smoking ban the government of Scotland (and the rest of ...

Via Tim Worstall’s Britblog roundup (like Monsanto’s only more deadly), I’m directed to this video by Leonard Nimoy. Saw a clip of it a few years ago, but not this much of it in one sitting. I think I need to lie down now… It got me wondering if William Shatner ever recorded a [...]

No Leah, I didn’t find this funny. Feel free to call me a loser, but your latest obsession with Vivienne Raper is quite irrational. You state that: We Darbyshires are not nasty. We’re always lovely to people we like. But if you hurt us, as many in the Party have done, then you can expect to [...]

If there is one thing that is certain, it is that Cameron's Tories are going to find it more and more difficult to pin sleaze allegations on Tony Blair's government when they are caught in exactly the same mire; A new analysis shows for the first time the impact of an operation by three big Conservative donors to bankroll critical seats in the run-up to polling day, revealing it raised up to 10 times as much in donations as Labour in some places - producing large swings to oust sitting MPs. And while most recipients declared ...

My cousin Kim, not previously noted for her political views, has started her own blog recently. In recent weeks, she's started posting some interesting stuff from perspectives that I can't really represent. Here are her views on the issue of the dress code in Luton and Islam... I'm not sure that I would be quite so forthright but I can't help but agree with her.

On Tuesday North Staffordshire GAME held a meeting at Tittensor. My CPRE colleague John Russell had organised the meeting with great aplomb and flair. I made transparancies of two horrendous junctions planned for the M6 Expressway, one near Tittensor, and the other at Hanchurch. John got two overhead projectors and screens so we could show them simultaneously. It was very effective. Over 100 people attended the meeting, I was interviewed by Radio Signal and Radio Stoke and we got a good write up in the Sentinel. I've passed the OU course on Climate Change that I did ...

As Thailand heads towards elections on 2nd April the crisis continues unabated as opponents continue to call for the resignation of the Prime Minister. It looks increasingly as if their boycott of the election will lead to further trouble post 2nd April and an unwillingness to accept the result

It's always funny whenever the Conservatives lose elections but still try and pretend they won them.

A challenge to the Lib Dem blogosphere: does anyone know where recordings of "The Land" being sung (well*) can be found? The I-Tunes music store, which normally contains even the most obscure items, is silent. To everyone else, the party anthem, in full: Sound the call for freedom boys, and sound it far and wide,March along to victory, for God is on our side,While the voice of nature thunders o'er the rising tide:"God gave the land to the people." The land, the land,'Twas God who made the land,The land, the land,The ground on which we stand,Why should we ...

…according to very senior Liberal Democrat sources, the Chancellor Gordon Brown and the new LibDem leader, Sir Menzies Campbell, have been holding informal discussions about how to ensure that “progressive forces in British politics” can work together in future. I’m told that the Chancellor has also approached senior Liberal Democrats like Vince Cable and David [...]