LibDem Blogs - Archived!

Here in Bath and NE Somerset we are spending £26M on 3 new elderly peoples homes - all with extra care facility. The Extra Care part of the Bath home was officially opened today even though it was completed a few months ago. The 51 residents are really pleased. The new home complete with a new learning difficulty centre in Bath is being constructed. The new honme in Midsomer Norton is about to...

Just got back from doing The Issue programme on Resonance FM alongside Alex Runswick/One Perfect Rose, Nick Edwards/Londonist and presenter Mark Hanson. If you missed it, which you probably did as I didn’t exactly flag it up in advance, you didn’t hear my launch of Hands Off Our Future, my latest project. Have a look [...]

Who needs party loyalty when you've got the Conservatives and their shield of justice. I hear David Cameron's about to drown in his own smug two-goodiness. David Cameron ... And completely unrelated and just for the geeks, Pure Pwange, possibly the most successful internet TV show to date. It's left me giggling for the past 24 hours.

I see that according to an ICM poll in thegrauniad the Tories' policies are, apparently, more trusted than Labour's on health, education, and law and order. Perhaps this has something to do with Mr Cameron's detailed policy platform as exemplified by the Tories' website? 'Send us your thoughts' will only work for so long - at some point, Dave will have to give us the beef.

A week ago I expressed a doubt that BBC2's superb adaptation of The Line of Beauty would be able to summon up the atmosphere of my favourite scene - when a coked-up Nick Guest dares to ask Mrs Thatcher to dance. I'm delighted to say my scepticism was misplaced: Nick and Mrs T. rocked, along with the rest of the show. If you missed it, you can catch some snippets here.

Congratulations to the cunning folks at NO2ID for alerting us all to a loop-hole in NuLabour’s proposed Identity Cards Act - if you renew your passport before 31st May you will avoid being entered on the National Identity Database for 10 years. (And well done, too, to Lib Dem MPs Nick Clegg, Lynne Featherstone, Mark Hunter, Roger Williams and Simon Hughes for taking their passports to Passport

Last year I contributed a chapter on "Histories of abuse" to the book Making and Breaking Children's Lives . This was edited by Craig Newnes and Nick Radcliffe and published by PCCS Books of Ross-on-Wye. There is a review of the book by Paul Jefferis in the June issue of The Psychologist . He begins: This book offers a challenging and stimulating perspectives on contemporary issues relevant to children's well-being and to child psychology. Calder's historical analysis of public awareness of child abuse, for example, identifies a form of collective amnesia on the subject and warns against complacency ...

As previously mentioned, Pink Dog has been to the States and Canada… that looks like an economy class seat she got with my party membership sub. I’m reassured.

If you already subscribe to Liberator magazine, you should by now have received the latest issue. Highlights include: Lib Dem MEP Graham Watson says "Bring back ideology"; Parties must appeal to people's interests, argues Simon Titley; Stewart Rayment on the London council elections; All the regular features including Commentary, Radical Bulletin and Lord Bonkers' Diary. Liberator has been published regularly since 1970 and is widely recognised as the leading journal for thought and comment among British Liberals. It has been the only outlet for political thought that has stayed open for business throughout the lifetime of ...

renew for freedom - MAY 2006 - renew your passport I have just submitted my application to renew my passport using the Passport Service Website. It took me 10 minutes to complete. This is part of a campaign to send a clear message to the Government that we do not wish to be part of the most intrusive ID card schemes in the 'free' world. By renewing now, this means I do not need to be part of this scheme until 2016 by which time it will probably have gone the way of many recent government initiatives and either ...

I can see a bit of a pattern emerging. On Monday the European Media Forum (EMF - led ultimately by Graham Mather, former Conservative MEP) attacked the BBC for having far too much money for their own good, causing a "badly bruised" commercial radio sector. Then on Tuesday, George Osbourne follows his boss David Cameron in attacking the BBC, saying they are "stifling the growth of innovative new

There are not often politicians who you can assess as thoroughly dignified and decent, just by looking at them and hearing them speak a few words. Lloyd Bentsen, who has died aged 85, was part of that small group. Just looking at him, he looked like he was perhaps carved out of the granite from Mount Rushmore. The Democrats called on him as a Vice-Presidential candidate, to give their ticket some

I have hugely enjoyed reading John Reid laying into the Home Office. Remarkable. One could get carried away with this tough Scot talking about the immigration department as "averse to a culture of personal responsibility" and "led by officials that are incapable of producing facts or figures that remain accurate for even a short period of time". All great fun. A sort of blood sport, in fact. Those

UEFA have fined Ranger's Football Club have been £13,300 for the behaviour of their fans against Villa Real during their Champions League run. This works out to be about 25 pence per fan who attended each match at Ibrox last season. I hear that UEFA have said it could not tackle sectarianism because it was a particularly Scottish social problem. Well this must be news to the various factions on

With apologies to the Proclaimers, and a few days too late... but I liked the line, and don't see why I shouldn't use it, just because I'm in Mumbai! I somehow managed to get virtually everything done before I left for Luxembourg and, despite a few alarms, I reached my hotel safely on Saturday evening whilst my luggage enjoyed Saturday night in Frankfurt. Not a great start... Luxembourg was

Trouble is brewing, as always, at Stormont. This time it appears that the DUP aren't quite sure where they stand. On 13 May the DUP's Peter Robinson said: "The secretary of state suggested [a committee] in terms that are satisfactory to us. "We believe that yes, it is necessary for the assembly to look at the issues which are an obstacle to devolution and how they can be removed... if parties

The City Council is rearranging the committees it has which means there'll be one to specialise in Green issues and heritage. In other words we can get a lot more focus into this area, which up to now was lumped inwith regeneration when it came to scrutiny meetings . The committees the council has can be very powerful if run in the right way. The Lib Dems had offered the Labour party the chairmanship of the new green committee (and the one focusing on leisure, culture and 2008 stuff) but they've turned us down. Because of ...

Encouraging news from London - it sems that the new Home Sectetary, Dr John Reid, is not too enamoured with the plans to merge the various police forces. Charles Clarke had been pressing ahead with plans to merge Merseyside and Cheshire, and various other police forces with each other - but there had been alot of resistance. Merseyside police authority had disagreed as had many other organisations that represent people who actually live here. Certainly my feeling is that people want more local control not less and running things from further away probably isn't the best way ...

I listen to about half an hour of Today as I’m getting ready each morning. Occasionally, as yesterday morning, I end up shouting at the radio. In this case, it followed a report on whether or not Nottingham is the crime capital of the UK. After some discussion about the statistics and where towns figured in [...]

Richard and I listened to the new Pet Shop Boys album Fundamental last night. It’s good, as many reviews have said. A lot of the songs have a very ‘big’ sound often previously associated with the Pet Shop Boys, as many reviews have also said. What I wasn’t expecting is just how political it is, nor how serendipitously timed; released two days after Doctor Who showed us a world of terrifying Cyber-conformity, while the targets of the final song are New Labour and their ID cards and register, it might have been written as a soundtrack for the Cybermen. ...

A liberal goes a long way posts about the new political division between cosmopolitans and chauvinists. And quotes a blog post by David Aaronvitch that makes a similar distinction but uses different terms (progressives -v- reactionaries). David's article echoes the text of a speech he made to the Oxford Alternative Careers Fair. I've certainly thought about this sort of distinction but termed the

Strange goings on at the Forward Wales party website. In the chamber yesterday Carl Sargeant pointed out that an on-line poll on this site was asking readers to vote on whether things have got better under Labour. He produced a print-out which showed an overwhelming majority had voted 'yes' - 83% to 17%. The party's sole representative in the chamber, John Marek smiled sheepishly. This morning the party's fortune had reversed. Now 75% of those voting consider that things have not got any better since 1997. How bizarre!

The Western Mail today reports that the Plaid Cymru selection meeting for South Wales West was attended by 89 members. Sixty two of them voted to re-select Dr. Dai Lloyd, 14 voted for Bethan Jenkins. As Plaid Cymru operate a rule that all regional lists shall be headed up by a women then Bethan Jenkins will be placed above Dai Lloyd on the ballot paper. Dai is now faced with an uphill struggle to retain his seat in the face of declining support for the nationalists. All very worthy I am sure but poor Dai cannot be too ...

LDN didn’t print my letter last week, but the letters they did publish went some way to redress the “Davies love fest” of the week before. For the record though, I thought I’d publish what I wrote here: Since you published Chris Davies’ self-righteous non-apology last week and apparently received many other letters supporting him, allow me [...]

I'm currently comming towards the end of a 3 month contract with a drugs charity based at a treatment centre. And I'm absolutely knackered. My own view is its very, very difficult to have a full time job and be a Councillor in Leeds (and be any use at either) However what is fatal is have no time during office hours. Some things just absolutely require in person, office hours attention. With a full working week and a 2 hour commute the cracks are begining to show. The advantage of "temping" is you can be flexible about work and ...