LibDem Blogs - Archived!

Following on from recent events, I've been doing more research on my Conservative opponent in Village ward. She's really fascinating but someone, somewhere, really doesn't like her. Now I'm not a great expert on the occult, or on 'phenomena' but, if you were to believe all, or any, of the things you find if you 'google' Robin Crookshank Hilton, you might be somewhat puzzled. Frankly, my only

No geek is an island » Blog Archive » Wikimeme Ok Ok, I’ll do the Wikimeme - but who’s going to be first to enter the Blair Pool? 6 March 3 Events 1957 - Israel withdraws its troops from the Sinai Peninsula 1984 - Twelve-month-long strike in British coal industry begins 1987 - The British ferry M/S Herald of Free Enterprise [...]

I don't normally do memes but this one appeals to the historian in me. Found via Will and Ryan: Go to Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/). Type in your birth date (but not year). List three events that happened on your birthday. List two important birthdays and one interesting death. Post this in your journal. Birth date: 30 January Events: 1649 - King Charles I of England is beheaded. 1826 - The Menai Suspension Bridge connecting the Isle of Anglesey to the north West coast of Wales was opened. The bridge was not the first suspension ...

An interesting meme via Will and Ryan Cullen: Go to Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/). Type in your birth date (but not year). List three events that happened on your birthday. List two important birthdays and one interesting death. Post this in your journal. Birth date: January 16 Events: 1605 - The first edition of El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha (Book One of Don Quixote)

An interesting meme via Will: Go to Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/). Type in your birth date (but not year). List three events that happened on your birthday. List two important birthdays and one interesting death. Post this in your journal. Birth date: February 13th Events: 1960 - Nuclear testing: France tests its first atomic bomb. 1996 - Pop group Take That announce that they are splitting up. 2000 - The last original "Peanuts" comic strip appears in newspapers one day after Charles M. Schulz dies. Births: 1938 - Oliver Reed, English actor (d. 1999) 1944 - Jerry Springer, ...

An interesting meme via Doctorvee: Go to Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/). Type in your birth date (but not year). List three events that happened on your birthday. List two important birthdays and one interesting death. Post this in your journal. Birth date: May 20 Events: 1873 - Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive a US patent for blue jeans with copper [...]

Today's House Points column from Liberal Democrat News. When I wrote it earlier this week I treated the subject with some levity. Since then things have become more serious. Chris Black on Moonlight Over Essex reports the following crime: The Labour Party has been left without election candidates in five Southend Council wards after a freak theft. Nomination papers for next month's elections were stolen from the back seat of a car minutes before they were to be submitted... The papers were stolen from the back seat of a car belonging to Southend West constituency secretary Ron ...

I must confess a certain degree of irritation at the bluster with which the ignorant will try to put forward half baked ideas as though they were gospel truth. The media are often guilty of this: often, when I have been close to a subject that was being reported in the press or on television, I have heard statements that were misleading, partial or just plain wrong. As a result I have learned to read or listen to even our more distinguished commentators with one ear cocked for misrepresentation and inaccuracy. The pity of it is that on quite a ...

The local SHA are talking about 95% signup rather than the 90% nationally. It remains, however, that many are signing up "in dispute" rather than accepting the contract. The situation continues. In the mean time the PbR tariff is turning out to have hidden traps. I have been looking at what happened with the Czech Republic's reforms. It looks that we may end up with a form of "melt down" with

The BBC’s main article about the Da Vinci Code court ruling is headed: “Code unbroken; Author Dan Brown’s reputation stays intact after court victory” - damning with faint praise, surely?

I’m a little confused. Why does UKIP’s strategy for proving that the “racist” bit in the insult “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists” is wrong involve demonstrating that the other two bits are absolutely spot on? UKIP said it would also be parking a Saracen armoured car outside the Conservative spring conference in Manchester on Saturday, [...]

You can access Spring's A3 Focus at http://www.simonwright.org.uk/resources/index/ which is currently being distributed across Fakenham.

(And if you don’t understand, here’s a clue. 8 days to go!) Tags: carrot+juice

I happened to stumble, some time ago, upon the online presence of nonsense author ”Sir” Laurence Gardner. I am not being sarcy in placing his Knighthood in inverted commas, he simply doesn’t have one, which I feel requires some sort of visual indicator. He is very cosy with, and has written extensively upon, Michael Lafosse. Mike is a nutty Belgian who reckons he’s the King of Scotland. Google around for a while and you can get lost in their world of zany made up Orders and Councils, it’s all rather funny. I’m generally supremely indifferent on the issue of Monarchy, ...

Earn the respect of your peers by correctly predicting when Blair will go! Simply add your prediction to the comment thread of this post. The closest prediction will be the Blair Pool Guru! Rules: 1. You should choose a full date - ie Day/Month/Year 2. You are predicting the day when Blair ceases to be Prime Minister - [...]

As alluded to earlier, I was in London at the weekend. Long train journey down and a long train journey back. Delivered hundreds and hundreds of leaflets, visited Blackheath (right) and had a great time at a quiz night run by Lewisham LibDems. The weather was “changeable” - sunny one minute, spitting with rain the next. [...]

Yesterday David Miliband blogged about Business Improvement Districts. Being very proud of the one we have in Kingston, I tried to post a comment on his blog. It read: The first successful BID in the UK was in Kingston upon Thames. You can read all about it on their website on www.kingstonfirst.co.uk. It grew out of a well-established partnership between the Liberal Democrat run...

The new millennium is only five years old but already we're getting what some people call millennial behaviour - the feeling that there's a bad moon on the rise. 9/11, the war on terror and climate change have made for a diet of bad new stories, and in the affluent northern hemisphere we have a lot to lose. Hardly suprising that Jared Diamond's latest book 'Collapse: how societies choose to fail

The rally in Bangkok today was celebrating Thaksin Shinawatras resignation but was also protesting and demanding his full removal from the national political scene. He remains leader of his party in parliament and the protestors are worried that he will continue to pull the strings. Remember however, that his party won 57% of the vote and according to the latest report some 87% of Thais now want

The total number of sheep in Wales must be something like 5.5 million. There are certainly more of them that there are people, although unlike the people they tend to be concentrated in the more rural areas for obvious reasons. With so many to choose from then, why embark on a project that will create two hundred life-size models of sheep to stand on a hillside alongside a real flock? Even as a community arts project it does seem a bit excessive, though I am sure it is very worthwhile!

One of the most frequent requests I get on this weblog is to write more on the fascinating subject of false killer whales. “When are you going to give us more insight into the marvellous world of cetaceans and taxonomy, James?” people ask, or simply “more false killer whale stories now, fat boy!” The truth [...]

One of the fun things about reading the early edition of the Guardian online, is that when you click on “comment” you get a list of headlines, but with no indication of who wrote what. So you can play a guessing game. Anyone care to guess, for instance, who wrote an article with [...]

by Jabez Clegg Oh dear. It seems that David Cameron isn't very popular with the readership of the influential Tory blog Conservative Home. Most of the advice on what he should say in a speech in Manchester* tomorrow is less than complimentary. My personal favourite: "I come here to Manchester today with an apology and a big announcement. I stood for the leadership last year wildly overestimating my capabilities as a politician. Over the course of my short leadership I have felt out of my depth and this has begun to show through. I am sorry to ...