LibDem Blogs - Archived!

A little food for thought from chapter 5 of On Liberty : Were the duty of enforcing universal education once admitted, there would be an end to the difficulties about what the State should teach, and how it should teach, which now convert the subject into a mere battle-field for sects and parties, causing the time and labour which should have been spent in educating, to be wasted in quarrelling about education. If the government would make up its mind to require for every child a good education, it might save itself the trouble of providing one. It ...

The Court of Appeal have ruled that Brian Haw must dismantle his one-man, five-year protest outside the House of Commons and leave poor Tony Blair alone. Mr. Haw is understood to be reluctant to leave voluntarily. No doubt Government Ministers will be celebrating the removal of the makeshift shelter and the display of anti-war banners, placards and flags that Mr. Haw has erected opposite the House of Commons. The significance of this judgement however, goes beyond an improved urban environment. It signals a final victory for the Government in its effort to undermine freedom of speech ...

And so, what happened to me in Village ward? http://www.southwark.gov.uk/Uploads/File_20983.pdf I suppose that I should be disappointed to finish behind the Greens but, given that they live in the ward and I don't, I can't really complain. I'll have to give some serious thought as to what I do next time, especially given our success in East Dulwich. If I want to be elected, I'm going to have to

From The Times this morning: For years the tinny jingle of Greensleeves that announced the arrival of the ice-cream van has been an indelible memory of childhood, but that sound may soon be removed from suburban streets. Health lobbyists have decided that ice-creams are too much of a danger to children's health. MPs and health officials are planning a series of measures across the country that are already forcing Mr Whippy and his helpers into meltdown. The sad thing is that Liberal Democrat MPs and councillors are probably queuing up to support these measures.

What a night. What a game. The players did Leeds proud. They fought for every ball and every square inch. Slowly they earned the right to play and then two goals in five minutes secured the right to play at Cardiff on 21st May. Sadly two players were sent off and will miss the final - particularly sad as Cresswells dismissal came just minutes before the end for a second yellow after kicking the ball away. We're Leeds - and we're proud of it! We're LEEDS - and we're proud of it! We're Leeds - and ...

I heard Any Questions? on Friday and was rather disconcerted to find that Geoff Hoon is a humorous and likeable man. Which makes it harder to smile at his recent humiliation by Tony Blair. I did forecast it a couple of years ago, though I assumed that he would be forced to resign rather than be demoted. Here is House Points from 6 February 2004: We all know what a hoon is: a subordinate kept so he can resign if his boss runs into trouble. Leon Brittan was Mrs Thatcher’s hoon at the time of the Westland affair. Norman ...

I’ve now had chance to do a little bit of number crunching on last week’s election results in Oxford. Here comes the science… In Oxford East, there will be 19 city wards at the next general election (the two central, mainly student, wards come in owing to boundary changes). Here are the scores on the doors, with figures for 2004 in brackets: Labour = 35.1% (33.3%) + 1.8% Lib Dem = 28.0% (26.3%)

My spies tell me that the dissent within Labour’s ranks has grown exponentially since the local elections. Labour MPs are now whispering and posturing and in some cases openly saying that Blair should go. You may think that this is nothing new, but the tectonic plates have shifted and the number of loyalists is dwindling. [...]

As someone who works in the industry I'm again saddened by the announced lose of NTL call centre jobs which the media announced today. However, the fact that worker found out from the media not their employers and that this appears to be another cost cutting measure whith the jobs being outsourced to India make painful reading. Unlike many people who complain about certain companied outsourcing

DEMOLITION of the northern block of Roseberry Square will allow work to commence on the new district shopping centre that is set to replace the unsightly, vandalism plagued, 1960’s facility. Following long, drawn out, negotiations with existing leaseholders, an agreement was signed on 7th April 2006, between the Council and Bellway & Persimmon, who in turn entered into a sub-agreement with Stirling Capital on the same day. Stirling Capital are the developers for the commercial elements of the project. Bellway & Persimmon are the developers for the residential element. Stirling Capital have appointed York House Construction as ...

Is here.

Broadly speaking, I sat out this year’s local elections. I did a tiny bit of campaigning in Lewisham (where we won a council seat), but generally speaking I’ve been busy and stressed at work and a little disaffected, with the Lib Dems and politics generally but my local party (Barnet) specifically. Let’s start with Barnet. [...]

UKIP were the only British group in the European Parliament to vote against the enlargement to the EU to include Eastern European states. UKIP’s argument for this was that ‘a flood of migrants’ would come here seeking work which would be bad for our economy. Knapman boasts about how he likes to buy British. So who [...]

The political air has been filled with the braying of Tory triumphalists since last Thursday, and to be fair it is probably their best result for years, even decades. The rush to bury the Lib Dems is, however, somewhat premature. The mixed results that the Lib Dems have had mask the fact that while in some areas, like Islington and Winchester (OK, a local factor there, we all know) , in several other places, like Brent, we did unexpectedly well, and ultimately the party has ended up gaining councils. Also the way in which the Tories are so keen to ...

Alex Salmond today paraphrased scripture in his efforts to stick it to Labour following Cathy Jamieson’s refusal to state that Blair remained an electoral asset. “The cock crowed for Cathy not three times, but four and still she denied her leader.” In truth this rhetoric for once holds water as Labour party apparatchiks and candidates [...]

There is an interesting contrast in the Welsh papers today that I thought was worthy of comment. In one article in the Western Mail the Archbishop of Wales has joined criticism of "Jerry Springer:The Opera", saying that it is time to "call a halt" on such "gratuitously offensive" material. In another article in the South Wales Evening Post, another Church group is protesting against the film of the Da Vinci Code. The difference is that whereas the Archbishop and many of his flock are calling for JS:TO to be banned, the group in Swansea just want to have ...

{Lincolnshire Echo} Me in the Echo

These days I try my hardest not to respond to Tory Dennis Paul's petty little slanging matches. I have much more positive ways of spending my time, like doing the student newspaper or campaigning for better disabled services on the university campus. However, this time he's seemingly so lost for things to bitch about, he's twisted my words in an article I wrote nearly six months ago. I'm not going to cover the fact that he has quite clearly breached Union copyright by reproducing the paper in part on his own web server. The Union are dealing ...

Michael Lyons has just published his latest report on local government. It makes heartening reading for those of us who are not just in favour of the rhetoric of localism but the substance as well. Read it and champion it before Tony Blair and Gordon Brown catches sight of it and attempt to [...]

(This article is by John) Often, during the course of an election campaign, strange things happen which make no sense at the time; it is only afterwards that one can start to see what was going on. Perhaps this is the case, in the local elections, with two very odd moves on the part of the Labour Party: their incredible “Chameleon” party political broadcasts and the extraordinary outburst of Margaret Hodge directed against the BNP. So who is it that the Labour Party sees as the real threat? In the General Election last year, the Tories hardly ...

Liberal Democrat Councillors Irene Curr and Josie Crawford do love to be beside the seaside - even more so now that their favourite seafront shelters have been given a facelift. Sadly, vandals had wrecked havoc on the three Esplanade shelters, smashing windows, breaking panels and daubing the structures with graffiti. Now thanks to funding from both the Council's Redcar Area Environment Committee and the Council's highways partner, Alfred McAlpine, the shelters are gleaming again. Councillor Curr, the Committee's chair and, along with Councillor Crawford a Coatham ward councillor, said: "I think they look lovely. They looked really unloved with ...

An impressive performance: I suspect few politicians could do as well under such pressure and after a wretched fortnight. He did look like he'd taken both barrels from Homer Simpson's makeup shotgun point blank (not set to 'whore' though). He also seems to have invented a new psychological condition: aparanoia. They are truly out to get him and he just doesn't see it.

The Constitutional Court has decided to annul the election results from the 2nd April and has determined that a new general election will be held. Quite where this leaves things is uncertain. A new general election will need to be held (date not clear yet) and it is by no means certain that the opposition parties will take part in this one either. Nor is it certain that Thaksin Shinawatra will not be involved given his popularity in the rural areas which adds so much to the support for his party Thai Rak Thai. If the ...

This is The Business (so to speak). ...things went exactly according to Cameron’s plan. His message chimes with eco-conscious Londoners and the Tories have now become the top party in the capital. Now for the bad news. The message Cameron is broadcasting was only picked up on a certain metropolitan frequency, places like Hammersmith & Fulham which they won in the general election anyway. Newcastle, Manchester, Gateshead remain bastions where the Tories are utterly unrepresented. The risk is that the Cameronian message has the same reach as London’s Capital FM: you can’t get it up north. Worth ...

You know in the Attenborough natural history programmes when the camera lingers on a wildebeeste in the herd, then cuts to the hyaena pack. The commentary changes tone. You know it's doomed no matter hard your buttocks clench on the sofa, willing it to survive. The chase, the first hyaena grabs it's hindquarters then the pack are on it, it struggles even while their bloody muzzles ripping into

The big political news today is the decision by former Welsh Secretary, Ron Davies, to stage yet another comeback. Ron is likely to contest the Caerphilly seat on behalf of Forward Wales at the Assembly elections next year. It transpires that Ron is the policy director for Forward Wales. John Marek is its leader. Nobody is sure if it actually has any other members. Nevertheless, they have big ideas and aim to hold the balance of power in a hung Assembly. These ambitions are clearly larger than the 1.88% of the vote that they got across Wales ...

Ming's comments on voting and reform of the House of Lords are a reminder of just how little Blair has achieved in his period in No 10 (rapidly drawing to a close, it seems). I am not too impressed witht the Power Commission's findings though. I thought the comment on their launch that politicians had to take the package as a whole rather than cherrypick the best bit was (let's say it) arrogant, and unjustified.

Newbury Liberal Democrat Paul Walter has produced a brilliant summary and analysis of the local elections results which I will reproduce here. Part 1 below looks at the Conservatives and Part 2 (which I will post tomorrow) looks at the Liberal Democrats. The Conservatives Their national share of the vote was only two percentage points more than that achieved when Michael Howard led the party in 2004, which was followed one year later by the Conservatives losing the general election with 158 seats less than Labour. The BBC’s Nick Robinson, himself a former Conservative, has said that there is ...