9:50 pm
{Bromley Times frontpage} Rob Fenwick has the graphics. But spare a thought for Bob Neill, the controversial conservative candidate. He didn't think he was doing any real harm. He probably didn't think anyone would notice. But someone did. It took a while for this story to make its way from the blogs to the newspapers. And then the local paper, only distributed on a Thursday, had to choose for its headline the news that no voter in a by-election wants to hear (I sympathise with these people): it might all happen again. VOTERS ...
8:59 pm
Surbiton Boys' Preparatory School occupies a large Victorian house in Avenue Elmers. It is part of the Surbiton High family of independent schools. Yesterday the Prep School held their prizegiving in Surbiton Assembly Rooms and it was good to see the whole school, with teachers and parents all together in one hall. Each class sang to us and the Year 6 leavers gave us a well-rehearsed...
8:23 pm
This is the cover of the Bromley Times, which will be posted through letterboxes tomorrow, polling day, morning. The paper reports that “Voters could be set for another by-election if Conservative Bob Neill is elected today” and that “legal challenges may force the contest to be repeated this autumn” The paper says he is “open to possible [...]
7:12 pm
In news that is likely to raise the ire of the Daily Mail, a judge has ruled that Control Orders are illegal, citing incompatibility with Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights (click here for Article 5). I haven't read the judge's decision yet, and nor am I a legal scholar of any kind, but it seems self-evident that Control Orders violate one or both of these clauses: 3. Everyone arrested or detained in accordance with the provisions of paragraph 1(c) of this article shall be brought promptly before a judge or other officer authorized by law to ...
5:04 pm
Potentially really bad news this morning. Ian Rankin (author of the Inspector Rebus novels) said he might have to kill Rebus off! I suppose every author gets to the point where a long running character has to end.. but it can't be Rebus's time yet. There's at least one more to come.. a novel published this october and set agains the background of the G8 in Scotland. but I do hope Rebus survives for quite a few more stories.
5:01 pm
Writing away with my headphones on this afternoon, John Parr’s St Elmo’s Fire from the film of the same name arrived at my ears through one of the internet based radio stations I sometimes listen to at work. The film is a brat pack depiction of young graduates in 1980s Washington DC. It took me back to when I watched the movie with my housemates in the final year of my degree. I wondered whether by the end of the year I too would be a coke addict, hugging my knees and rocking back and forth in a room containing ...
4:20 pm
CANCELLATION Your ticket has been submitted to our Cancellations department. Your account cancellation request will be dealt within 48 hours, and we shall reply to you, to confirm when this has been done. Listed below are details of this ticket, and you should keep a note of the TICKET ID as confirmation of cancellation. Ticket ID - 52772 ————————– Dataflame [...]
3:58 pm
Can we recommend this discussion forum for Liberals and the liberal diaspora wherever you are?
3:33 pm
I notice that a great deal of work is being done to make the London Underground accessible to wheelchair users. All very laudable, you might think. The only problem is that the design of most of the Underground makes it essentially impossible to provide step free access from Street to Platform at almost all of the deep line stations. The cost of providing such access is essentially the same cost as building a complete a complete new Underground system. This is a sum of money that is about equal to the total annual GDP of the UK- One Trillion Pounds, ...
3:15 pm
Ed Vaizey is angry at the Lib Dems for their dreadful unprincipled campaigns. Regular readers of this blog will know that I can be a bit ambivalent about Lib Dem campaign techniques myself sometimes, but one thing I won’t do is accept lectures from Labour and the Tories. Andy Mayer has been taking Labour to task over [...]
2:56 pm
Prisons Q:To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what progress the Department has made in relation to the trading activities of OM Energy Ltd.; what support the Government have provided for the company and its associated companies; and if he will make a statement. (John Hemming) A:The most recent published data on (a) length of sentence and (b) category of offence, is for the prison
2:50 pm
There is the usual excellent article from Martin Wolf in today's FT. Sadly most of it is behind the firewall - but the crux of his argument is that economic development - as we have known it over the last century has essentially been about increasing energy use. Between 1900 and 2000 energy use increased eighteen fold, and gross global product and purchasing power parity nineteen-fold. The prospects are for a continued rise in energy use - on some predictions five-fold over the course of the next century. So the world economy is going to hit energy constaints in the ...
2:36 pm
Alex Salmond, the Leader of the SNP today used the opportunity of Prime Minister's Question Time to call for the repeal of the Act of Settlement. I have previously called for the repeal and wrote the original motion that the Liberal Democrats have passed calling for repeal. Blair of course did not promise to repeal the Act but batting the question away.
2:13 pm
Guido apparently has a friendly bet going with our own John Hemming MP on the outcome of the Bromley by-election. Hemming apparently has a "three-figure" sum on a Ben Abbotts victory at startlingly short odds of 3/1. (That ought to drive down the odds on Betfair!) Incidentally, Labour have drifted out to 200/1. It looks like Labour have given up and their voters are switching to us - it looks
1:33 pm
No more blogging for a week - I'm off to re-charge my batteries west of the Tamar in good Lib Dem territory. But I shall have my ear glued to the radio late Thursday night for news from the electoral BB of Blaenau and Bromley.
1:29 pm
Buckingham Palace is quite canny about the way it releases its royal spending figures. The BBC reports today: The Queen and the Royal Family cost the UK taxpayer £37.4m in the last financial year, her financial public accounts reveal. The cost, equivalent to 62p per person in the UK, rose 4.2% over the previous year, accountants [...]
1:24 pm
The luminous Simon Hoggart clearly struck home last week when he chided David Cameron for his old-school comedy references: He declared that the prime minister was wobbling over the new EU constitution, which his own representative on the committee had said was "dead, deceased and no more". "The government is starting to sound like a Monty Python sketch - so it is time to say, 'now for something
1:18 pm
According to thegrauniad, Margaret Becket was more than a little taken aback by Tony Blair's decision to promote the former Tribune and CND supporter, and one-time left-wing firebrand, to the lofty position of Foreign Secretary: 'Fuck, I'm stunned,' new foreign secretary told Blair Just imagine what the rest of us thought, Margaret.
12:12 pm
Ed Vaizey complains about Lib Dem election tactics in today's Guardian: What, you may ask, is on the front page? Naturally, you would think, the main policies upon which the Lib Dems are campaigning, locally and nationally. No. Instead, a straightforward and highly personal attack on the excellent Conservative candidate, Bob Neill. The nature of the attack is pretty crude. Now, we know for a fact that the Conservatives would never stooop this low. Crude personal attacks are most certainly not for them. For example in their Cheadle by-election literature their leaflet was not headlined "We don't ...
11:52 am
Today in Parliament is now available as a Podcast
11:37 am
Brian Gibbon's faux pas last week, in which he opposed a public enquiry into the ambulance service and then accidentally voted for it, seems to be catching. In yesterday's Plenary we had a long and involved debate on nine separate items of legislation, each requiring two votes, together with a series of amendments. The subject was the licensing of houses in multiple occupation, a cause that did not entirely attract the sympathy and support of the Tories. They tabled an amendment effectively dissing the whole notion and earned suitable retorts from other parties about Rachmanism etc. Their amendment was ...
11:09 am
A Senior Welsh doctor has accused companies who bombard children with junk food adverts of participating in "one of the worst forms of profit making": Jon Osborne's comments come as doctors have backed calls for a blanket ban on all advertising of unhealthy foods and drinks to children. The move, supported by an overwhelming number of delegates at the BMA's annual meeting in Belfast yesterday, goes considerably further than the 9pm watershed for junk food adverts proposed by the Food Standards Agency earlier this month. Doctors backed the blanket ban, describing it as a vital weapon in ...
10:29 am
It has long been assumed that Gordon Brown would succeed Tony Blair without opposition (from within Labour anyway). Comments a few months ago by certain cabinet ministers indicated that there might be a challenge, and Mr Blair himself has seemed...
10:09 am
Why has this never been on Have I Got News For You? Perhaps it was, in the golden era of “Catalogues today”. And why do they send it to me? See “Formerly Catalogues today” on Flickr.com
9:09 am
The latest critic of Gordon Brown's decision to seek out a replacement for Trident comes from the Moderator of the Church of Scotland. The Right Rev Alan McDonald says that he doubts that Mr Brown's father, the late Rev Dr John Brown, whose name Gordon invoked on the eve of Veteren's Day in his address at St Bryce Kirk, would have agreed. The Moderator said that as for the actual view of Rev
9:02 am
One of the committees that I am on is the Joint Committee to consider the Draft Legal Services Bill. This bill creates a legal services board which has the power to stop barristers and solicitors working on behalf of their clients. The members of the LSB are appointed by the Secretary of State. The minister responsible is Bridget Prentice who said: "If it is the tyranny of the consumer, I would
8:51 am
The fallout from the failed elections continues. The Constitutional Court now has to rule on whether or not these two parties should be forcibly disbanded for violating elections laws. It seems unlikely that this will happen but even if it did I cannot see how it would work in practical terms. The same groupings would probably reform even if under another name. Meanwhile no date has yet been set for the rerun.
8:19 am
{Supermarket} There has recently been a very interesting debate in the Lib Dem blogosphere about the role of supermarkets. At the risk of over-simplifying, the debate is between those who see supermarkets as broadly a force for good and those who see them as broadly a force for ill. Neither side is absolute; nobody wants to see supermarkets violating rights and nor does anyone believe that they should be somehow abolished. Stephen Tall started the ball rolling with this post. In his judgement, "[Supermarkets] are a creation of society’s aspirations to have ...
2:03 am
My apologies for the lengthy gap between posts but, ironically, the hardest place to find an internet cafe is the United States... After Las Vegas, I headed to Washington for the 59th Annual Convention of Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), where I served as a member of their Foreign and Military Policy Commission (I'm foreign and like things that go bang...). Now, I'll be the first to admit
1:35 am
I was utterly disgusted to read your article in last week’s edition of the Surrey Advertiser regarding the gay man from Burpham who is leaving the Guildford area at the hands of terrorising bigots. I have worked closely with the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans (LGBT) community at the University of Surrey, and incidents such as this are very rarely encountered. I am sure local residents will join me in expressing their disappointment that in a modern society, unjustified intolerance is still rife. One important point that this person has highlighted is that the problem is not being investigated ...
12:36 am
Ken Clarke was, of course, the putative Tory leader the Lib Dems really feared; and he proved exactly why again today:Former Conservative Chancellor Ken Clarke has said David Cameron's plans for a British Bill of Rights are "xenophobic and legal nonsense". Mr Clarke said the Tory leader would find it difficult to find lawyers who would agree with his plan to replace the Human Rights Act with the new Bill. ... He said he was not saying Mr Cameron hated foreigners. But he argued: "His remarks were anti-foreigner." ...The Human Rights Act has come under fire in some newspapers, who ...
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