LibDem Blogs - Archived!

Dave's excuse for having his ministerial car follow him to work, whilst he rides his bike, is that he has too many files to carry. Francis Maude, when this was mentioned on "Any Questions", stated that if anyone could solve this problem Dave would give up this practice. I think I've found the answer.

Well it looks like the press will be having a wild weekend after the revelation that five of the foreign prisioners released without being considered for deportation went on to reoffend with more serious crimes. This game of catch us if you can cannot be allowed to go on Charles Clarke we are not satisfied with you and the way you have handled this debacle. You try too hard to appear to have our

Okay, maybe love is a tad too strong! But my credit card company contacted me today saying they would refund the £20 late payment charge imposed in April 2006. You see, it is worth while writing to the banking world if you feel you have been treated badly.

I prefer to stand in Elections than to predict them and wide of the mark as I was in suggesting a Lib Dem win for last night, the result does throw up some interesting indicators about the current political landscape, as well as reasons to be cheerful for us Lib Dems. There follows an interpretation [...]

Over at Pigeon Post, Peter Pigeon has been reviewing "Mind the Gap" by Ferdinand Mount. He detects some of the thrust of Mount's argument, relating to radical proposals to develop land, in recent pronouncements by Cameron: And, before you ask, yes I am quite sure that Mount is the source of this idea. (He is also the source of the "there is such a thing as society, it is just not the same thing as the state," soundbite). Mount's grandfather in the photograph described above is also Cameron's great-grandfather. The uncle (from whom Mount inherited his baronetcy) is Cameron's ...

This news is not going to play well with environmentally-aware voters. Apparently, whilst David Cameron is cycling from his home to Westminster a chauffeur-driven Lexus is following behind with his shoes and papers. Perhaps Labour need to amend their Dave the Chameleon website.

There is an apocryphal story about a pupil at Eton beginning an essay on poverty thus: "The mother was poor, the father was poor, the butler was poor ... " 'Dave' Cameron lives up to this tradition, it would seem, with the emergence of news that he has his chauffeur bring his shoes and briefcase to work in his (otherwise empty) car, whilst he cycles in front.

Middlesbrough FC, an unfashionable northern English football team comes back from a three goal deficit (for the second time in a fortnight) with some superb play, a last-minute winner and gets into the UEFA cup final. Yes, that's right, an English club in a European cup final. Worth front page in today's Sport Guardian (once published in the north) you'd have thought? No. You had to plough

Tory controlled Scarborough Borough Council has the dubious honour of getting into Private Eye's Rotten Boroughs column four times. No council elections this year, but two byelections slated for May 11th, and if you're in the area on Saturday and fancy some delivering, seaside air and to help liberate a rotten borough contact us through scarboroughandwhitbylibdems.org.uk. The Labour candidate is using a suspicious amount of orange on their leaflet, pretending to be anything but Tony Blair's Labour and local 6th formers have been out delivering anti-BNP literature. The youth of today, eh?

At the last General Election (and before) one Tory theme that caught the attention of people in my part of the UK was opposition to regional assemblies. The Tories did a good job of getting this idea talked about and of linking it with plans to build new houses. Because Liberal Democrats liked the idea of regional bodies, we were charged with wanting to build in people's backyards. This cost us some votes, and helped the Tories get their vote out. So David Cameron's "bananas" piece in the Independent on Sunday broke new ground. It is another flip-flop. ...

Well the bidding has began and Sky have half the packages, but this stupid rule from the EU is going to be the worst outcome for the fans.Domestic channels won't be able to afford more than one match, and if NTL gets the final package then those with Sky won't be able to see these games.Instead of Sky pumping millions into the sport for exclusive rights, they'll now offer less.The only possible winners in this will be Sentana Sports who'll might get a few more viewers if they win the final package.

Islington Gazette this week has an interesting election review of the status of play in Islington. The Lib Dems are likely to hold on to the borough (would love to see a full slate) but it's been suggested that there could be a few surprises come May 4. The never ending debate about why and how people vote for a candidate - personality or the party they represent. Party stalwarts like to believe the driving force is the party but the reality is that people often vote for familar faces especially if a candidate is well-known and more importantly ...

Travel broadens the mind, so they say. So I am off to the bosom of my family in Aberdeenshire for a family wedding. Can't say I am being very green as far as travel is concerned: Last week Warsaw, this week Aberdeen, next week Japan- via the UAE-, then Zagreb, Tirana, Warsaw again and then the Viljandi Folk festival in Estonia. Lots of CO2 emissions, must remember to buy the carbon bank equivalent to off-set. I wonder, did David Cameron plant a forest for his emissions on his trip to Norway- hmm hmm- possibly not a good idea to dwell ...

This morning's House Points from Liberal Democrat News. It was rewritten in haste in my lunch hour on Wednesday. You so nearly got something tedious about agricultural subsidies. The full quotation from John Prescott's speech can be found on Iain Dale's blog. I didn't have room for the whole thing, but do read it yourself. Carnival relations This is a “By the time you read this…” week. Except that if Charles Clarke gets his way, by the time you read this nothing will have happened. Never mind that 1023 foreign prisoners have been released without being considered for ...

OK Moray as I heard so many times last night, especially from the Tory and Labour spokesmen (sadly there was not a single woman on the entire programme apart from the two candidates of that gender), this is an SNP heartland seat. Welcome to Ewing country. Turnout for a by-election was surpassingly on a par with the 2003 turnout for the same seat which is extraordinary especially as this is the

…after leaving the (very interesting) Lord Ashdown / CentreForum Nation Building event at the Liberal Club. ME: “Very interesting. Though I think a number of the Lib Dems in the audience were less than comfortable with some of the things he had to say about troop numbers” HIM: “Lib Dems? I hope someone was there taking the [...]

The Liberal Democrats have an online petition calling for Charles Clarke to resign. I've signed it, and this is why: There are clear signs that the Home Office and its various sub-departments are not performing as they should. They're either not performing their basic duties, or not communicating with each other. This is due either to mismanagement, under-resourcing or systemic problems. And yet, under Charles Clarke, the Home Office has been very, very busy. Just this year, we've had the ID Cards Act, Racial and Religious Hatred Act, a new Terrorism Act and a new Immigration, ...

I have a really busy schedule today so I thought I would take a few minutes early on to write about some of the quirks of travelling in Malta. Anybody who has been here can testify to the fact that many of the roads have seen better days. I took a service bus into Valletta yesterday and really had my eyes opened. The buses here are old style single deckers, possibly dating back to the 1960s. The drivers completely dominate the road. As a result we travelled at great speed through narrow terraced chicane-style streets, bouncing over potholes, cutting ...

It's environment week at Oxford Brookes University. On Wednesday evening I took an evening off from campaigning to attend a lecture/discussion led by Bill Dunster, architect of BedZED, Professor (and Lib Dem City Councillor here in Oxford) Sue Roaf, and others entitled "Designs on the Planet". It was a debate about how we're all facing an energy crisis in the not too distant future and how we need to build our homes, workplaces and communities to survive only on the energy we can generate ourselves as a nation from sustainable resources - something around 10% of the copious energy ...

45.7% Turnout Mev Brown NHSFirst 493 1.8% +1.8% Linda Gorn LIB DEM 5310 19.4% +7% Sandy Keith LAB 2696 9.8% -9 Richard Lochhead SNP 12653 46.1% +4 Mary Scanlon tory 6368 22.8% n/c

SNP: Richard Lochead - 12,653 Con: Mary Scanlon - 6,268 Lib Dem: Linda Gorn - 5,310 Labour: Sandy Keith - 2,696 NHS1: Mev Brown - 493 Post match analysis to follow tomorrow.  (Interesting that £100,000 only buys the tories an extra 196 votes) 

Labour hacks are normally quick to attack the Lib Dems for seeing only another by-election opportunity when an MP dies. In Peter Law’s case though, it is Labour that have been seriously quick off the mark. It gets worse. Now Labour are accused by his widow of offering Law a peerage to not stand. The [...]

The Deputy Leader of the Scottish Conservative Party Murdo Fraser has just attempted to describe Mary Scanlon's Moray campaign as being positive and honest. So positive that she was not willing to come out as a Tory, so honest that she used false endorsements and attempted to appear as Winnie Ewing's adopted daughter. I want to know what dictionary Annabelle Goldie is handing out to her