LibDem Blogs - Archived!

Today’s Lords Hansard will be a powerful and compelling, if sober, read. The Lords had a passionate but reasonable debate on the issue of euthenasia. It split all of the parties. For the Liberal Democrats, the LD leader in the Lords voted against the bill, the health spokesperson voted in favour. The chief whip voted [...]

even when you're facing death because God told them. Well he also told George Bush to invade Iraq. I find working out which voice to listen to really tough sometimes.

'The agreement provides for a democratically elected Assembly in Northern Ireland, which is inclusive in its membership, capable of executing executive and legislative authority, and subject to safeguards to protect the rights and interests of all sides of the community.' So starts Strand One of the Good Friday Agreement establishing a Northern Irish Assembly. If I was still in one of my previous

Today's House Points from Liberal Democrat News, which somehow turned out less critical of Gorgeous George than it was intended to be. The text message should certainly have read "PETE 2 WIN". And in a show of editorial caution the words "drink-sodden" were omitted before "former Trotskyist popinjay" in the published version. I say: so sue me, Hitch. Cat o'nine tales George Galloway was back in the House on Monday. Not the house – you did not see ‘DENNIS IS FIT – PETE TO WIN’ scrolling across the screen – but the House. He had an adjournment debate ...

Granted its not letting dusky axe-wielding maniacs loose, but it's another bad decision, a brain drainette. Two of the women behind the science website Inkycircus ("life in the girl nerd world") have left the country because they can't get work visas short of a lottery win or dubious marriage. Read here, and fume. They've been trying to set up a science magazine aimed at women and in passing have launched one of the most readable popular science blogs around. The three of them are journalists, and it shows in the quality of their writing: it's witty, ...

Chris Davies has clarified his position on Israel/Palestine and is still revelling in false comparisons and hateful language. In a letter to the Guardian he wrote: Concern about Palestine has claimed another Liberal Democrat scalp (Lib Dem leader in Europe resigns following anti-Israel remark, May 5). Jenny Tonge lost her position a year or two ago for understanding the despair that motivates suicide bombers. Now my incautious words have cost me my job. The first lesson to be learned is simple: do not send emails when blind fury has overtaken anger. The second is harder. Do not visit Palestine. Do ...

There was a time, dear reader, when politicians aspired to an agreement between parities on how to reform Britain's pension system. But now the limit of ambition seems to be to reach some sort of agreement within the Labour cabinet. The Blair Brown agreement (as reported by the BBC) is perhaps not surprising. A deal on pensions has been agreed between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown following months of wrangling, the prime minister has confirmed. Under the agreement, the link between the state pension and earnings will be restored - probably in 2012. 2012 is midway between ...

is getting louder and his slide in the polls is discussed at Politicalbetting, where many of the comments also conduct a pre-mortem on Ming's leadership. Paddy Ashdown appeared on Radio 5 Live's Simon Mayo show on Thursday. He was an immaculately loyal former leader and swatted away the usual 'who should the Lib Dems do deals with in the event of a hung Parliament' with aplomb. He also reminded the world that during his early months as leader Thatcher wiped the floor with him at PMQs until he found his feet.

Good grief, does my party never learn? This article in today's Telegraph is yet another example of the behind-the-scenes briefing that undermines those of us who are fighting day-in, day-out for the Liberal Democrat principles and policies in our own community. It is precisely the sort of damaging tittle-tattle that led to the toppling of Charles Kennedy, except that this time the tittle-tattlers now appear to be running the party. The paper reports: Last week's local election results were a disappointment, with the party gaining two seats overall. One MP said the party was "hitting the panic ...

(This article is -mostly- by John) It might seem a counterintuitive thing to say, but the local elections were nothing like as good for the Tories as their supporters would like to think. The first reactions from young Tory posters on PBC were of euphoria and triumphalism. Not much surprise there – they are all very young. So let us reflect a moment, with a bit of hindsight. The conditions were extraordinary. The Labour Party, day after day, was being given free publicity for its ineptitude and depravity. Civil war was imminent (and still is), and shortly afterwards ...

Interesting letter in the Western Mail this morning from Dr W Roscoe Howells, the former Director of Scientific Services, at the Welsh Water Authority. On the proposed Severn Barrage he writes: In the early 1980s, I participated in discussions on the likely effects on the environment of a tidal barrage in the Severn estuary. The group concerned comprised representatives of various statutory bodies, including a representative of the then Welsh Office. We identified a number of problems which could arise. They included significant changes in water quality and sediments up and down stream of the barrage as ...

At 9:15 in the morning 14 years ago today the progress of the Labour Party was uncertain. The reforming leader who had only been chosen by the party less than 2 years earlier John Smith died when he suffered two serious heart attacks, the first in his Barbican flat the second on the way to St. Bartholomew’s. He was only 55 at the time. Unlike many of the Cabinet that eventually took power again

Comic book silliness - and there are over eighty of them! (Via David.)

Unless of course anyone knows different. I don't think any single football match anywhere in the world is as lucrative to the winners as the Championship playoff final. Kevin Blackwell described it as a £40m game bit I calculate that it could be worth over £47m to Leeds The figures are made up as follows : Share of Sky Revenue £9,000,000 Overseas TV revenue £6,500,000 Live matches £1,750,000 (say 5 at £350,000 each) Central Sponsorship £500,000 Locally negotiated sponsorship £2,000,000 Gate Receipts £9,660,000 (say a 12,000 increase to 35,000 at £35/person say 19 league games + 4 ...

Councillor Wayne Casey's letter (Lib Dems to blame for party's troubles) in today's Independent in response to Richard Denton-White (Lib Dems fail to woo Labour's lost voters) should be required reading for ALL Lib Dem activists.

Interesting article in the Guardian yesterday about an attempt to map the Isle of Wight’s roads in one weekend for OpenStreetMap.org, a website that helps create maps free for anyone to use for any purpose. If Ordnance Survey and other national agencies will not make their data freely available, then OpenStreetMap, developed over the past two [...]

I was catching on my emails and discovered an interesting statement by Michael Connarty, MP for Linlithgow and Falkirk East, regarding the Government's plans to scrap Post Office card accounts. In the House of Commons on Tuesday he called on David Cairns, Under Secretary of State for Scotland, to meet with colleagues at the Department of Trade and Industry to discuss withdrawing the proposal to

I am grateful to Jonathan Calder on Liberal England for drawing my attention to this BBC news item on ID cards and CCTV: Sharper CCTV images are needed so shots of suspected criminals can be matched to the proposed identity card database, a Home Office minister has said. Baroness Scotland told the Lords poor quality CCTV currently runs the risk of innocent people being wrongly arrested. "Digital pictures... will enable us, particularly when ID cards come in, to identify those who are responsible for very serious crime," she added. The ...

As predicted, the expansion of ID Card and national database powers has begun. Jonathan Calder reports on plans to use the database to form the electoral roll, thus disenfranchising and barring from local office those who refuse to comply.

Got tickets for the Roscoe lecture next week by Lech Walesa - former polish president and founder of Solidarity. A great achievement by the lecture organisers getting him to come. The Roscoe lectures - run by the foundation for citizenship at John Moores - are a great idea - high profile people, or people with really interesting things to say giving public lectures in Liverpool. I have been to several and often they are packed with loads of people asking questions. We've had the NATO sec gen, the UN sec gen, the Dalai Lama, senior ...

Julian Ware-Lane, who stood for parliament in Rayleigh last year for the Labour Party, has written a very honest letter to the Essex Enquirer newspaper. In case you can’t read the text, he says: “Political parties depend on donations , and I have often been asked and regularly respond positively. This time, however , I am having serious doubts. Will my ten pound donation be used for more

... But isn't it nice to share. Unless you're a woman who wants to pose on the front of FHM since the American Decency Association would prefer you didn't. The question is: since I see a partially nude* female twenty-something everyday, are mirrors promoting indecency? *and I'd like to think (as one does in flights of delusional optimism) nubile, tempting and an corrupting influence on the

The USSU Liberal Democrat Society won the Best Political Society 2006 at the USSU awards last night. This is the first time the award was not given to the Conservative Society, and reflects the growing strength of liberalism at this university. Photos to come soon.

Do you realise that Weavers Ward is the only ward in Tower Hamlets where one party held on unchanged? We must have been doing something right. East India and Lansbury Ward still retained its Lib/Lab/Lab split, albeit with different Labour Councillors, but everywhere else there was a shift in the parties elected for each ward. In a positive light, that means that every vote did...

Conservatives held Ramshill Ward but spectacularly lost Stepney to Jonathan Dixon of the Green Party. Lib Dem perfomance: last in Ramshill, third out of six in Stepney. Congrats to the new Green councillor: he has worked this ward for years (more than a decade) and they fought this by-election hard.