I've been Regional Secretary for nearly two years now and it has been, to some extent, a little frustrating. I've enjoyed the role, especially the people I've met across London. I even flatter myself that, in some small way, I've helped some people to achieve their goals, be they political or organisational. But if there has been a weakness, it has been in my responsibility for communication with
Yesterday, I went to Bruce Castle to help launch Black History Month. Black History Month takes place in October each year and in Haringey offers the most incredible selection of events for local people to see, join in, visit. If you go to Haringey Council's website - there is a program there of all the local events. There is a massive range - and it is an opportunity not only for members of the
You have to admit that PC Basha is a wonderful name for a policeman. Beyond that I cannot find much encouraging about the extraordinary prominence his request to be excused duty outside the Israeli Embassy received today. I understand why the Sun put it on its front page. The paper wanted to show people that you cannot trust Muslims. Even when they join the police force they are not really like us and cannot be trusted. But why did the BBC make it the lead story on the morning news and the subject of the main interview on the Today ...
A {Being lobbied by local Friends of the Earth supporters as part of their Big Ask campaign} few days ago I was lobbied by members of the local Friends of the Earth group about climate change. This is a BIG issue as up and down the land we try and get the Government to put the Climate Change Bill into the Queen's Speech. The lobby group had brought with hundreds of postcards all individually filled by members of the public lobbying MPs (in this case me) to put pressure on the Government to do so. (You can read more ...
Why are the Tories talking only in platitudes?
I really don’t like watching Question Time at all But I have been challenged by Mr Stephen Tall To follow in his footsteps and liveblog Question Time And as it’s still Poetry Day, to do the thing in rhyme At first I refused him, for I need to rest my eyes But his silver tongue insisted, so I made a [...]
Excerpt: Rendezvous on Champs-Elysees Leave Paris in the morning on T.E.E.
Yesterday I met the Leader of Camden Council, Keith Moffat, in Highgate Village to make him see for himself how destructive Camden's proposals to stand buses outside the restaurants on South Grove would be. If Transport for London will consider the Highgate Society's plan to move the whole caboodle - this might turn into a golden opportunity to sort the village out. Fortunately, Keith saw
Ben Aaronovitch was one of the exciting young writers of the late ’80s whose ideas shook up and reinvigorated Doctor Who. To Lib Dems reading: yes, he is the brother of journalist David Aaronovitch, but don’t hold that against him. He scripted two Who stories for TV, the first of which started broadcasting eighteen years ago today. Goodness, that makes me feel old; it still seems like the beginning of something new. Right from the start, you can see favourite themes like racism versus cultural diversity, though for me he really took off in print rather than on the screen. ...
I know socialists love a conspiracy theory. Here's one to consider. The Socialist Worker faction of the SSP was (and is) deeply opposed to Scottish Independence. They went along with it for tactical reasons, because they calculated correctly that the SSP would take more votes away from the SNP than from anyone else. Earlier this year, the SSP announced they would be taking the admirably
The Council press office has been in touch: "Would you be agreeable to send me about 120ish words (sorry, know that's not much) to educate people about blogging and why you do it etc please?" Here's my answer: The reason I blog is quite simple: I have stuff I want to say, and which I hope some folk may want to read. My blog is my space to write about whatever’s delighted or annoyed me that day,
Full marks to Mr Straw for stating what to me seems bloomin' obvious: Jack Straw, the ex-foreign secretary, has angered Muslim groups by suggesting women who wear veils can make relations between communities more difficult. The Blackburn MP says the veil is a "visible statement of separation and of difference" and he asks women visiting his surgery to consider removing it. and a slightly
Yesterday morning, James Barber, Jonathan Mitchell and I were able to show the Council’s new Chief Executive, Annie Shepperd around East Dulwich. We started at the train station -noting that 10 years into a Labour Government we still don’t have a station with disabled access - and cycled our way through the area finishing off at the [...]
I am a bit of a bitter Everton fan, but you have to admit this verbal gem from Wayne Rooney takes the biscuit... Wayne Rooney has said that he would never dive because “football doesn’t need it.” "I'd never dive. I'd like to think of myself as an honest player,” the Manchester United youngster told FourFourTwo magazine.Really?
Jack Straw has beautifully illustrated that fundamental Labour inability to respect individuality. If he finds it difficult to communicate with women who are wearing a veil, then I would suggest it is he who has the problem. Where would you draw the line? One could argue that wearing a Celtic shirt in certain parts of Glasgow is "a visible statement of separation and of difference." I've been the only Lib Dem wearing a rosette at a count surrounded by Labour people. Maybe Jack would say I should just have conformed and joined Labour so I was the same as everybody! ...
At last Steed and Emma return to BBC4 – tonight at 7.10, or tomorrow at 11.30. It’s an unusually science-fiction-styled episode, as they face off against a carnivorous alien plant that’s growing to giant size, and controlling the minds of the local horticulturalists to accomplish this fiendish design. If you think it sounds like the later Doctor Who story The Seeds of Doom ripped it off shamelessly, you won’t be far wrong. It’s not stunning but not bad, with Athene Seyler’s batty plant expert particularly worth the money and Steed winning extra-special beastliness points for how he beats the plant… ...
Many residents and local businesses have been asking when the road disruption in Sinderins area is likely to end (ie when Scottish Gas Networks complete the gas main works) - got a response from the City Council this afternoon, which is good news in that things should be back to normal early next week - to quote:- "SGN are coming to the end of this project. The excavations remaining open will be backfilled and reinstated over the next few days and by Monday night the site should be clear. "The work has gone on longer than expected ...
Conscientious ObjectorEdna St Vincent Millay I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death. I hear him leading his horse out of the stall;I hear the clatter on the barn-floor.He is in haste; he has business in Cuba,business in the Balkans,many calls to make this morning.But I will not hold the bridlewhile he clinches the girth.And he may mount by himself:I will not give him a leg up. Though he flick my shoulders with his whip,I will not tell him which way the fox ran.With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him wherethe ...
As a member of The National Trust, I recently received my magazine and with it the voting papers for its internal elections and Annual General Meeting. I suspect the majority of members simply throw these away. I used to, until I realised how many issues on which they were voting were areas where [...]
Just a quick chance for some smugness. Having read this from Iain Dale at the Tory party conference: The security vetting has stretched to day three. Over 2,000 people have had the conference ruined by a security procedure that amounts to little more than window dressing - no terrorist applies for a pass and this from [...]
The fallout from an impromptu striptease carried out by a young woman in a cattle shed during the Royal Welsh Show continues to reverberate in the Welsh press. The woman in question was an employee of a large cattle breeder. She performed her act during a party held to celebrate winning a valuable contract. I understand that she no longer works for the company in question. As a result of her actions there was a disciplinary hearing against her employer to see if he should remain a member of the Welsh Black Society. All in all the whole incident was ...
News reaches me that the Seychelles National Party (SNP) attacked for wanted to establish a private radio station. This has resulted in hospitalisation with of its leader Wavel Ramkalawan and other senior members of the SNP.
I went to a very interesting, and at times moving, screening at the local cinema of a film produced by the Coucnil's 'Play Team' today. The film was about cultural diversity in York and showed just how diverse a city we are becoming. I guess York is traditionally seen, and traditionally sees itself, as being without the diversity of many other nearby cities like Leeds, Sheffield and Bradford, but...
If you’re at all familiar with Doctor Who, you’ll know that the Doctor has had quite a few travelling companions over the years. Those I’ve been most drawn to tend to be the intelligent, mature, strong women: schoolteacher Barbara Wright, scientist Dr Liz Shaw, archaeologist Professor Bernice Summerfield… Now the latest novel featuring Professor Summerfield is just out, and it has quite a weight of expectations on it. Genius Loci not only relaunches Benny’s fictional career, but is the first Whoish novel for nine years by Ben Aaronovitch, who writes the most gorgeous prose of any Doctor Who author going. ...
(If you haven't read part 1 read it first.) It happened to Lord Lundy then, As happens to so many men: Towards the age of twenty-six, They shoved him into politics; In which profession he commanded The Income that his rank demanded In turn as Secretary for India, the Colonies, and War. But very soon his friends began To doubt is he were quite the man: Thus if a member rose to say (As
I don't really do poetry. So this is from a novel: Michael went to the village for a walk. That was the kind of thing a chap like him did, holiday stroll to the village, hands in pock ets, casual, professional, on a whim, did. He sat outside a church and got a shock. It sounded more strenuous than a gym did! People were clearly fucking in that church. It was the sound of Michael in the lurch. It
It being National Poetry day and me not being as poetcally gifted as some people I have decided to post one of my favourate poems, which I'm keen on becasue it's a little about politics and I have a habit of going on holiday to the island of Lundy. Lord Lundy (Who was too Freely Moved to Tears, and thereby ruined his Political Career)By Hillaire Belloc Lord Lundy from his earliest years Was far too freely moved to Tears. For instance if his Mother said, "Lundy! It's time to go to Bed!" He bellowed like a Little Turk. ...
the sun's effect on climate. One of the latest theories to raise its head is that we'll dodge the global warming bullet for the moment because the sun's cyclical activity has peaked and is due to go into decline. Therefore, goes the talk, the earth won't warm up as feared. Right? Wro-hong says Real Climate, and concludes: "In summary, although solar forcing is real, the implications of that
Found out that Iain Dale is saying that basically all the majors parties produce the same ammount of carbon emmsions from the surveys carried out at conference. Now considering a number of LIbs Dems have already carried out an environemntal survey they possibly did not need to at conference. My results from last november were actually over three times better than Mr Dale's result. Also the
Ok technically speaking that should be the other way around in that the story about the police officer refusing to guard the Israeli embassy was from today and this story on Spicy Cauldron about firefighters refusing to hand out leaflets at Gay Pride in Glasgow was from August. Thanks to one of my readers for pointing out the story on Spicy Cauldron and its connection with the police officer story. Is this becoming a trend in society? Where people are happy to take the money for doing the job but then want to pick and choose which bits of it ...
Carrying on the theme for poetry in this National Poetry Day annother little verse in honour of Elish Angiolini. There was a top lawyer from Glasgow Who Jack has now let all the world know Is his choise to install As the top Scottish lawyer of all An' she's a lassie an' isnae a beau.
My favourite poem or poet varies from day to day, though Keats, Hardy and especially Eliot are always amongst the front runners. Sometimes Burns, sometimes Derek Walcott or Ted Hughes. However, in honour of the perennial Estonian theme of this blog, I thought I would post the translation of a work by the Estonian poet, Jaan Kaplinski, whose work I have always enjoyed, but who not be so well known to readers here. THE EAST-WEST BORDER is always wanderingsometimes eastward, sometimes west,and we do not know exactly where it is just now: in Gaugamela, in the Urals,or maybe in ourselves,so ...
According to The Sun, a police officer has been allowed to opt-out of dipomatic protection duties: PC Alexander Omar Basha told chiefs he was unable to carry out duties at the London embassy — a top terror target — due to moral grounds after Israeli bombings in Lebanon. The BBC report that the grounds for opting out were in fact relating to welfare: the Association of Muslim Police Officers said it was a "welfare issue" - the officer had Middle Eastern relatives and felt unsafe on that duty. Both grounds are invalid. PC Basha's job was to provide protection for ...
Well, that’s roughly how long I’ve got to go, though I’m not going to sit in this internet cafe for another hour before posting just to make the title accurate. It’s perhaps a sign of being in a touristy area that you start to find internet access in the strangest places, and here I am in [...]
Despite what I said yesterday, I am afraid my choice still involves death. But at least it is a lighter (though still poignant) take on the subject. I first came across this poem almost 30 years ago when I had a Saturday job in a secondhand bookshop and have always remembered it with affection. The Postilion Has Been Struck By Lightning He was the best postilionI ever had. That summer in EuropeCame and wentIn striding thunder-rain.His tasselled shoulders bore upMore bad days than he could countTill he entered his last storm in the mountains. You to whom a ...
Cicero's Songs reports that it is Vaclav Havel's 70th birthday.
A Sonnet on William Shakespeare by the Home Secretary Macbeth the Thane had a vision of a thing He asked: “Is this a dagger I see before me?” Instead of murdering his way to be king He should comply with our knife amnesty Romeo and Juliet on each other were quite keen He took his own life drinking poison from a [...]
Environmentalists are against it, but are they right?
It's now 72 hours without my having had a cigarette. Decided to go for Hypnotherapy again . It does work, least on me but it was the weight gain that forced me back on the fags after the last treatment. I have a real phobia about being really over-weight. I'm no slim-Jane but I feel comfortable with the way I am at the moment. Being fat is psychologically more scary that any sickness I could possibly get from smoking. Why do I want to give up smoking. I don't actually know because if truth were told I enjoy it. ...
Loath as I am to link to an article in the Telegraph, this one is too good to miss. Winchester's refuse collection is contracted out to Serco, who are supposed to collect from 7.00 am. They've been getting earlier and earlier in this patch and waking lots of people up in the process. Last Friday an Oliver's Battery resident took matters into his own hands. He used his car to trap the lorry in a 
As today is National Poetry time All my posts will be written in rhyme Or at least semi-rhyming with a variable meter, With one proper poem being posted up here later. The Knock Knock! Knock! Knock! on the front door of my flat I woke up with a start thinking “Who the hell is that?” Outside it was dark so I had [...]
I've grown up drinking large quantities of tea. I absolutely love tea. My favourite teas are keemun, prince of wales (which is very difficult to find in Britain!), china black and in the afternoon, when I feel I want something light and soothing, I choose jasmine or earl grey. For years I've been hearing from all sources how bad this habit was. It's dehydrating, it's diaphoretic, it makes you
It is probably due to lack of policy debates that the gaffes stood out more at Conservative Party Conference than normal, or it may have just been George Osbourne being very offensive and of course Boris Johnson that got all the media attention because of what they said.
Today in National Poetry Day so in honour of Dave Cameron's impersonation of Lord of the Rings star Sméagol/Gollum what better schizophrenic identity is more topical to sum up in poetry today. So here is a poetic take on chameleon Dave's words yesterday. Read my lips and hear my voice It's just a lot of vacant noice I'll tell you who we want to be But the route is shrouded in mystery. Are we
I don't know who was responsible for the decision to allow a Muslim police officer to refuse to guard the Israeli embassy in London but you cannot run a police force like this. As I see it the officer is refusing to carry out the duties which he is being paid to do. I understand that he feels that was put in a moral dilemma but if we allow this to slide then where will this leave the police force? It will leave forces up and down the country in a position where they cannot rely on officers to do ...
Now an interesting one on micro-chipped wheely Bins. This is one of those doorstep issues that will help frame public understanding on much bigger themes so we need to get it right because if it balls up it will reduce credibility on wider issues. The point of polluter pays charging, and the justification for the wider Green tax policy, is that economic pricing will lead to changes in behaviour as people take on board the information provided by the pricing. Now this change of behaviour through market information can be what us desired - a shift from waste channelled into ...
Today is Vaclav Havel's seventieth birthday. During the 1980s I was an active supporter of the dissident movements in Central and Eastern Europe. Over the years I met with Hungarians from FIDESZ- while they were still libertarian and not conservative, and with Poles from Solidarnosc. Already in those days the opposition was semi legal, although both Poland and Hungary saw many people arrested, imprisoned and otherwise denied their civil rights. Though other places, like Romania or Albania were more brutally governed, there was nonetheless a particular horror about the "Czechoslovak Socialist Republic". The crushing of the Prague Spring led to ...
I've got a piece on Liberal Review this morning about my experience trying out webcasting: I've been a webcast guinea pig! I was one of a trio of people who tried out doing a daily video diary / webcast / online film / call it what you will from the Liberal Democrat conference in Brighton this year. The other two were our leader, Sir Menzies Campbell, and my friend Duncan Brack - who chairs the conference committee. We were also joined on various days by a few "special guests", such as Paddy Ashdown who did one broadcast himself ...
Today is National Poetry Day, so I offer you a poem by Christopher Reid from 'Pea Soup' (OUP, 1982) Fête ChampêtreThis bourgeois clematis-bower might be a wallpaper by Vuillard - pink stars jotted down on a dense scribble of green -or some high, abrupt stage-flat, hands have heaved out to signify the end of the garden. The annual rusticationof out...
I am in transit to Copenhagen as part of fact-finding tour by the Education Lifelong Learning and Skills Committee into Special Educational Needs. We are conducting phase three of our review looking at transition from school to adulthood and believe that there are some important lessons we can learn from how it is done out there. Blogging may be light for a few days. As it is National Poetry Day however, it would be remiss of me not to post some suitable text. As I am on my way to Denmark I have chosen Hamlet's soliloquy from Act Three Scene ...
Reports that a Muslim officer responsible for guarding the Israeli Embassy was able to request a change of duties is a cause for grave concern. Despite the officer’s denial that he was objecting to continuing his duties on political or religious grounds that suspicion will remain in the minds of many. This makes the decision by Met [...]
All The President's Lies Debunking the Bush cover-up.
Lynne Featherstone MP shares her experience of webcasting at the 2006 Lib Dem conference
They say I’m a liar A criminal A thief With no respect for anyone, or anything. Listen… I don’t go looking for trouble. Trouble comes looking for me. …It’s an advert. Robin Hood begins on Saturday evening on BBC1, and I’m expecting great things of it. The to-camera monologue is from a trailer I saw the other night, made in the charismatic ‘Do you want to come with me?’ Doctor Who style, and it looks great; now Will’s announced that it’s National Poetry Day today with the theme of ‘Identity’ and, well, this is close enough, isn’t it? ...
I had just got in from dinner with Chris Huhne tonight, and settled down to write about it, and one of those college rites of passage teen angst films came on called "The Rules of Attraction". I have never seen it, and still haven't really, because just as they got to a bit about a frat brother, or whatever it is they call them, being so drunk he had all his friends worried he might have taken something else, or that he might not make it through the night because he wouldn't wake up, a girl from the flat ...
Sorry I've been quiet for a few days. I blame Praguetory for introducing me to "Second Life" one of the online virtual world social site type things (actually from what I can see a "MOO" for those of you who may remember Xerox Parc in the early nineties but with fancy graphics). Anyway, today I sat in on a seminar led by Chris Huhne here at Brookes on the subject of "Politicians and Conservation: can politics deliver on climate change?". And I heard nearly the same talk again at a fund raising dinner for our European campaigns in ...
I'm sure I'm not the first to review Byron York's The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy on a blog but I wanted to add my take on the book. The book is subtitled "The Untold Story of the Democrats' Desperate Fight to Reclaim Power". It discusses the various strands that came together using the internet amongst other media to try to oust Bush from the White House. Sadly, a miracle that never happened. The book plots the development of MoveOn, America Coming Together and the role of Michael Moore's films (particularly Farenheit 9/11) as well as Soros' money and ...
Well, another Tory conference is over but it seems that despite "Dave's" best efforts the party at large still remains pretty much unreconstituted. They still want lots of cheap flights and to hell with the environment. They still want tax cuts at the expense of public services. The NIMBYs on Bromley Borough Council will be massively out of step with what "Dave" has had to say on affordable housing for young people. Colin Smith must have been baying with rage. They seem to think that they can repeat New Labour again 12 years later and that people are going ...
I watched Mr Cameron's speech today, fully intending to analyse it calmly, rationally and maturely. But I just can't bring myself to. Truth is: I loathed it. Every single fatuous, banale, jejune, trite, tedious, reductive moment of it. Never before have I heard nothing of substance said in quite such a risibly flimsy, flabby, saccharine way. It was neither funny nor serious. Just a damp, limp, | < | October 2006 | > | ||||
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