11:14 pm
In football hell, all games are 0-0 draws between Ukraine and Switzerland commentated on by Mick McCarthy. That Clive Tyldesley wasn’t sitting beside him in the commentary box tonight is the only indication we have that we’re not all damned to watching passes that made Ray Wilkins look ambitious for all eternity.
10:59 pm
First, the Guardian diary, picked up on the fact that Tory PPC Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones is not the only black farmer in the country, as claimed. Now, G2 has actually visited the other black farmer in England. He is David Mwanaka. In today's supplement there is a wonderful photograph of him with his family, plus a detailed interview and article by Laura Smith. Joy all round! And to think all this
10:42 pm
Supporting a Bill of Rights for the UK has long been Liberal Democrat policy, so we have to be a little careful when wading into a debate with the Tories on their new support for the idea, however the position adopted does seem muddled. As things stand the Tories have no specific ideas as to what the Bill would look like, only that they in principle want a British Bill that the European Courts would need to take into consideration when judging Rights cases. This Bill would replace the current Human Rights Act - an Act in itself that ...
10:17 pm
I think I will start a little file collecting together lawyers' comments about Cameron's "Bill of Rights" idea (calling it a 'plan' or a 'proposal' is somewhat over-egging it). If we put aside the thunderous criticism from Lords Falconer, Goldsmith and Carlile plus Sir Menzies Campbell, due to their current or past party affiliations, we are still left with some pretty strong condemnation from
10:17 pm
Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery is commemorating the 90th anniversary of the end of the Battle of the Somme with an exhibition in Gallery 20 by Black Country artist, Robert Perry: Remembering the Somme: Paintings of the Battlefields, which runs until 27 August. The Battle of the Somme is most remembered for its first day, 1 July 1916, on which the British and Commonwealth forces suffered 57,000
10:10 pm
It's now possible to donate towards the cost of LibDemBlogs. I've also added my search engine (well a Google API script) to the site, so you can try and find those old posts or just search for random words. A small bug is that searching for LibDem Bloggers doesn't really work as their names appear on almost every page.
8:03 pm
After listening to the end of Italy vs Australia on the way home I stayed tuned to Radio 5 while I got in some shopping on the way home. When who should they bring on to join the condemnation of Chameleon Dave's UK Bill of rights but his old tutor from Oxford, Professor Vernon Bogdanor. Now it may have been a number of years since the Tory leader faced this particular Oxford Don in a tutorial but
6:38 pm
There is a heavily spun report on EU finances in the FT in which Flash Gordon appears to be fighting a one-man battle to save the UK rebate. Gordon Brown, UK chancellor of the exchequer, is fighting with Britain’s 24 European partners over the implementation of a deal on the EU’s €862bn seven-year budget brokered by the the prime minister Tony Blair in December. Although Mr Brown was consulted throughout the bruising negotiations in Brussels at the end of the British EU presidency, his officials claimed he was dismayed by the outcome. Now he is fighting a rearguard action to ...
6:23 pm
This morning on the Today Programme David Cameron repeatedly referred to his new policy to introduce a "Bill of Right and Responsibilities". To be fair to Dave, I have fair idea of what a Bill of Rights is. I'm not sure (no-one seems sure) how it will differ from the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into British Law in the Human Rights Act, nor how a Bill of Rights would relate to the supranational authority of the ECHR. These are practical and theoretical issues that may well - alongside constitutional implications - punt Dave's latest wheeze into ...
5:28 pm
“Is it possible to staple someone to death?”
4:24 pm
This news should be met with a muted hurrah. The money will be spent on educating a new generation of young cyclists in safe road use and on some new cycle lanes. Cyclists by and large do not kill themselves: car and lorry drivers are mostly responsible for cyclists killed and seriously injured, usually at junctions and roundabouts (and official figures bear this out, so don't bother with the
2:28 pm
I usually claim that I don't know that 6am exists on a Saturday, but I was up at crack of dawn to get down to Bromley to help at the by-election. We spent most of the day delivering in Chislehurst, and I spent my time in an area where the average house price was probably close to £1m. I was half expecting the dogs to be sent out to chase away the Focus deliverer, or to be mown down in some freak lawn tractor accident. In the time it took me to do that one round, my two colleagues had ...
1:52 pm
The inconsistencies and hypocricies of The Infant David's rants on Human rights are beautifully skewered by Richard Allen in this post and I agree with every word. Just to add two points. We need to campaign and campaign now to 'Save British Rights', taking up the challenge of Infant Dave's europhobia manipulations. Slap an Union Flag campaign button on our websites if need be. And what is with the proposed Cameron Bill of Rights based on the US Bill (which is based on the English Bill of Rights of 1688 anyway)? The major change that came with our incorporation ...
1:18 pm
You can just see the headlines can't you! This story refers to the TORY CANDIDATE ACCUSED OF BREAKING BY-ELECTION LAW story posted earlier. Story as carried by recessmonkey.com: A correspondent sends Recess Monkey this excerpt from ‘The Conservative Agents Election Manual’ “This subject is fully dealt with in ‘Parkers Conduct of Parliamentary Elections’, and every Agent should be well aware of the rules regarding votes thrown away and the method of giving notice of disqualification. “For the purpose of these notes it is sufficient to warn ...
1:00 pm
Ladies and gentlemen, David “Dave” Cameron. Thank you, it’s lovely to be here. Now, I’d like to you about my cunning plan to sort out the Human Rights Act. You may recall that we Conservatives previously suggested we’d scrap the Human Rights Act. This, it turned out, would be problematic as we back the European Convention on [...]
12:50 pm
We all know politicians are prone to saying one thing in public and doing another in private (many people use such behaviour to identify politicians in the first place), but it doesn't always work the way you might expect. Case...
12:40 pm
Prime Minister's Questions in the last couple of weeks has been dominated by law and order so Channel Four have a timely report comparing the main parties voting records on these issues. In the vote on the Criminal Justice Act at its third reading on 20 May 2003 Labour voted for and the Liberal Democrats and the Tories voted against. But what were the reasons. It introduced a range of measures including indeterminate sentences for anyone committing a serious sexual or violent offence, and an early removal scheme to allow foreign nationals to be deported at the halfway point ...
12:36 pm
Channel 4's "Fact Check" makes interesting reading. Its verdict on Labour's attempt to paint us as soft on crime: The Lib Dems ... have voted against key legislation around law and order in the recent past but ... their 'no' vote is a vote for tougher policy, rather than showing them up to be soft on crime. This is one area that Labour still think they have the upper hand. Yet recent events have shown otherwise. If I was an inner city Labour MP, I'd be getting concerned ...
11:57 am
The Daily Telegraph's lead story today is one long plug for tomorrow's "Children: Over Surveilled, Under Protected" conference at the London School of Economics: Dr Eileen Munro, of the LSE, said that if a child caused concern by failing to make progress towards state targets, detailed information would be gathered. That would include subjective judgments such as "Is the parent providing a positive role model?", as well as sensitive information such as a parent's mental health. "They include consuming five portions of fruit and veg a day, which I am baffled how they will measure," she said. "The country ...
11:10 am
Via Adam Teladia, a pledge that: "I will form part of a human chain around the Westminster no protest zone but only if 6,000 other people will join in".If you want to sign up to this pledge, mounted in protest to the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act, which bans the right of protest within a zone around the Westminister, click here. PS. Yes, I know what daisy chaining is.
11:02 am
The Torygraph have this morning are carrying the news about Bob 'Three Jobs' Neill's difficulties regarding the acualite on his nomination form for the Bromley a Chiselhurst by-Election. If the Tory press is printed this Mr Neill must be wondering what where his friends are.
10:26 am
Okay I may be a late with this but it seems the Conservative Candidate for the Bromley by-election - Bob Neill - may not actually be able to stand! This latest problem follows on from FIFA's legal department asking the Conservatives not to break copyright and remove a number of posters.
10:15 am
As reported here on Friday and as originally broken by Recess Monkey, The Daily Telegraph is now reporting the story about Bob Neill's ineligibility as a by-election candidate in Bromley and Chislehurst. The by-election campaign for a safe Conservative seat was thrown into confusion last night after claims that the Tories' candidate was ineligible to stand. Bob Neill, the Tory hopeful for Bromley and Chislehurst, confirmed that he was a £5,000-a-year member of the north-east London strategic health authority. Under the House of Commons' Disqualification Act 1975, membership of a such an authority is one of dozens of posts that ...
10:10 am
Went to the Wireless festival in Hyde Park on Sunday. Missed Depeche Mode, but saw a really excellent band called Good Books and the Hassidic reggae rapper Matisyahu. He was slated by the Morley on Newsnight Review a while back, but I thought he was pretty good. My friend, who is himself Jewish, and I were slightly surprised to find ourselves surrounded by a group of extremely excited skull-cap wearing Jewish teens who were going chicken oriental over the man. When the rapper hauled one of the kids over the barrier to dance with him on stage, the guy was ...
9:08 am
I like the new look of Lib Dem Blogs. And I find the adverts interesting. A long standing item has been Lambeth Labour Party advertising the local election results from Lambeth. This is probably an example of Labour humour. I presume that if we all click on it a small sum of money would pass from Lambeth Labour to Lib Dem Blogs. This would be Lib Dem humour.
8:55 am
More good news: after a bit of pressure from myself and Cllr. Suzanne Williams, Network Rail's contractors have upgraded the temporary traffic lights at Hyde Lane railway bridge from a two-way to a three-way arrangement, which means that people coming from Church Road can join Hyde Lane without taking their lives in their hands.
8:51 am
I was going to post on the latest example of Labour's candidates in the Blaenau Gwent by-elections campaigning against their own government and, in this case the last Labour manifesto. Labour candidate Owen Smith, has said that if there were a vote in the House of Commons tomorrow to replace Trident, he would vote against it. However, this is getting a bit boring now so I will let you all draw your own conclusions.
8:42 am
Tell me I have missed something here. Tory leader, David Cameron, wants to devise a "British bill of rights" to replace the Human Rights Act. At the same time he says that the UK will remain a signatory to the European convention on human rights, allowing citizens to continue to challenge British law in the European court in Strasbourg. So we are going to have two conventions on human rights, most probably saying roughly the same thing and cases that would currently be dealt with in the British courts will now be determined in Brussels? How does that make things ...
8:34 am
Source: Daily Telegraph, 26.06.06, Brenda Carlin, Political Correspondent The by-election campaign for a safe Conservative seat was thrown into confusion last night after claims that the Tories' candidate was ineligible to stand. Bob Neill, the Tory hopeful for Bromley and Chislehurst, confirmed that he was a £5,000-a-year member of the north-east London strategic health authority. Under the House of Commons' Disqualification Act 1975, membership of such an authority is one of dozens of posts that MPs are not allowed to hold. But Mr Neill said the disqualification provisions were not relevant because the health authority was due ...
8:25 am
Today's Western Mail reports that an "anti-English" stunt prompted by England football supporters displaying the Cross of St George in Wales has been condemned as "absolutely crazy." The outcry developed after "anti-colonisation movement" Cymuned paraded a mock St George through the Gwynedd town of Abersoch to protest their view that because of the proliferation of St. George flags that Wales is starting to look more like England all the time. Clwyd West Conservative MP David Jones that English visitors would be at best confused, at worst insulted by Cymuned's stunt. Labour AM Leighton Andrews said, "Silly stunts like ...
8:22 am
If, and it’s an increasingly big if, the Conservatives were to win the Bromley & Chislehurst by-election on Thursday, the front page of today’s Telegraph reports that they may face a legal challenge from UKIP relating to Bob Neill’s false declaration that he held no office disqualifying him from being an MP at the time of [...]
3:14 am
Since being elected 6 years ago I have tried to do regular foot patrols of the ward. I take a note book and pen and just walk sometimes at random, sometimes in a planned area. I pick up case work, see how Council services are doing and am generally nosey. It helps (if that is the most appropriate phrase) if you have a ward as dirty as mine and with as much planning infringement. Bumping into so many residents is the up side. Tonights "patrol" was slightly different in that I went upto Headingley "Town Centre" just ...
2:47 am
The population of Leeds 6 continues to decline with Students and House sharers clearing out for the summer on a daily basis. Everything seems quieter. The shops are begining to close an hour early, its possible to get to the bar in local pubs, streets are developing that erie feel as more and more houses are empty. The quiet is my favourite bit. The 24 hour aspect of a large student population can be very stimulating but with some streets 90% multi occupancy it can also be overwhelming at times. Walking between the park and my friends house tonight on ...
Sunday 25th June 2006,
Saturday 24th June 2006,
Friday 23rd June 2006,
Thursday 22nd June 2006,
Wednesday 21st June 2006,
Tuesday 20th June 2006
