Craig Murray has posted a fascinating long article on Russia, with particular reference to the murder of Alexander Litvinenko. Certainly worth a read. Another article on his site begins well by arguing that "Blair is no democrat". Unfortunately it then descends into attacks upon Nicol Stephen and Menzies Campbell. So I certainly shan't be providing a link to it.
After all the furore about the Endemol TV show giving away a kidney in Holland, all those who poured scorn and showed indignation have been made to look somewhat foolish after it was revealed tonight that the premise of the show was a hoax, The show was in fact meant to highlight the massive shortage of organ donors in the Netherlands. All three contestants who appeared on the show do, however, need transplants and their plight is what Endemol and "The Big Donor Show" wanted to raise. Perhaps it was slightly in bad taste, but if lives ...
The modern 24 hour rolling news world really doesn’t get more exicting than this. (Oh ok, the story is about the able-bodied Conservative MP who thinks it is ok for him to park his car for several days in a parking bay reserved for Blue Badge holders).
I normally avoid watching Newsnight but I was more or less required to watch it last night as Richard wanted to sit through it - and frankly there was a distinct absence of anything else vaguely worth watching. Sarah Teather put in one of her best performances and she certainly earned her right to be the party's representative on future editions of the programme.. But Caroline Spelman was all
Sunday: Yo ho ho and disguised as a PIRATE HAT, I sneaked into the cinema on top of Daddy Alex's head in order to see PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN AT WORLD'S END! Some people have said that this movie is TOO LONG and TOO BORING, but my fluffy bottom has PLENTY of PADDING so I do not mind sitting on Daddy's head for three hours. And a jolly good thing too! People with less fluff in their heads (or bottoms!) than me might be a bit bored, but I thought this was ENORMOUS FUN! If you ...
Asks the question how the "Rights of Englishmen" after being defended so passionately for so long, are being so frighteningly quickly removed and looks accross the pond for suggestions for what can be done to reverse the trend.
There is nothing guaranteed to make me more furious than someone, who is obviously not disabled, parking in a disabled parking bay. My fury is usually heightened by the miscreant usuall being someone in a Ferrari or other such poncy vehicle. So I should have been around when Anthony Steen, MP for Totnes, parked in a disabled bay in a Westminster car park. He worsened his sin by complaining
The GLA candidate list has been causing a stink on Lib Dem Voice. On the plus side, and this needs stating because it is a genuine achievement, the list has a good gender balance with 2 of the top 3 candidates women and a good proportion of women further down the list. Indeed, [...]
As an Officer of the Regional Executive and a member of the Regional Candidates Committee, I find myself near the centre of a firestorm of angst and despair that has broken out over our selection of the London-wide list. The rows that took place over the Rules, the campaign phase and the actions of the Returning Officer were bad enough, but the list that emerged at the end of the process is now
Well done to the Lib Dems for highlighting in a thorough report the utter incompetence of Ruth Kelly in her 12 months as Communities Secretary. The only problem is, we knew it already. The problem with going for Ruth Kelly is, to put it simply, that she is bloody useless, everyone knows it, voters, opposition MP's, even the Labour Party, yet somehow she keeps her job. Attacking her is going for an easy target. The other thing that comes to mind is how similar a track record she has to Harriet Harman. Harriet Harman was, in Blair's first ... 
Following on from my posting of yesterday, there seems to have been a crisis-summit at Tory HQ. No longer in their news section do they have the plagiarised article I mentioned. Which leaves them with nothing to say about the defections or the Witney Wonder's bold visit into enemy territory, that is, Oxford. What have they got to hide? Two final thoughts. First, it's encouraging to know that my blog can appeal beyond the happy band of brothers and sisters who are true Liberal Democrats and is apparently monitored by the Tories. Second, I wonder whether the royalties ...
Well - what to make of the results of the party's selection of our GLA (London Assembly) list candidates for next year? This time round I wasn't standing (I finished third and top in the selections for 2000 and 2004, but stood down from the GLA when I became an MP), so it's been interesting to see the process from the outside. I'm glad that the overall list is so well balanced in terms of men
I'm backing Amnesty's irrepressible.info campaign for online freedom of speech. You can too! By putting a tiny bit of code on your site, you can display a fragment of information that someone, somewhere wants to censor. It's a nice way to protest against the online censorship of (say) the Chinese government and the fact that big technology companies are quite happy to comply with repressive laws in repressive countries. But if it really takes off, something like this could mean that information cannot be censored, because a network of sites and blogs across the world would all be repeating ...
The blog has been a little light on content for the past few weeks (to say the least). There has been a reason for this, which I can now discuss a bit more openly. Before May 3rd, I was the sole Lib Dem councillor on Ashfield District Council, which has been Labour controlled since its inception over 30 years ago, it covers most of Geoff Hoon's seat, in case you were wondering. We had a very good set of results on May 3rd, taking an additional 9 seats and becoming, at the time, the largest group on ...
The BBC has the politest version of the story. The Mirror is at the other end of the spectrum and The Telegraph somewhere in between. One curiosity - according to the story Anthony Steen (Conservative MP for Totnes) says he was “rushing” to Westminster but the date of the incident seems to be for a day [...]
The 'Heirs to Blair' theme of current Conservative thinking is further reinforced today. Former News of the World editor, Andy Coulson is going to try to do for the Conservatives what Alastair Campbell did for New Labour. Michael Howard is well known to be angry at Cameron's grammar schools policy. What will he think therefore of this move? In case you didn't catch it, the Newsnight confrontation between Howard and Alastair Campbell is still available for viewing on the BBC2 website (click forward 57 minutes for the good stuff).The most interesting take on all this in today's papers comes ...
The words are Gordon Brown’s: “You have accused us of being a bunch of control freaks. Well in a way that’s what we have to be because we don’t have an identifiable aim which is ideologically based: because there’s no core idea to hold the party together in tough times we have to use discipline instead.” Source: [...]
Just back from seeing council housing residents and owners at a local flat development that’s been sadly neglected over the years. I felt sorry for the housing officers with us - they are apologising for jobs that have not been done for years and years - how they have the patience to go on working when so little gets done and they have to go back and face residents, I don't know. Off to enjoy
Duncan Borrowman has the top 11 selected for the London Assembly list elections next year: 1 Mike Tuffrey 2 Dee Doocey 3 Caroline Pidgeon 4 Jeremy Ambache 5 Geoff Pope 6 Ben Abbotts 7 Stephen Knight 8 Shas Sheehan 9 Duncan Borrowman 10 Monica Whyte 11 Merlene Emerson UPDATE: The summary and full results are now available.
The weather is gorgeous outside today - a sobering reminder of global climate change, but on the other hand, a cheery introduction to two days that will see lots of leafleting! Tonight I may be forced to watch another England friendly- never a wise move, but it is Brazil, and it is at Late Wembley, so I may make an exception. Let's hope that the new stadium gives the game some atmosphere, not
Well done to Newington Councillor Caroline Pidgeon who came third in the Liberal Democrat London GLA list selection, defeating at least one incumbent, after a great campaign across all 32 Boroughs in London. Given we currently have 5 GLA list members it would take a very unusual result in London for Caroline not to be one of our elected representatives come May 2008, where she will join Lambeth hero Mike Tuffrey who came top.
Spreading "interesting" versions about why they killed Litvinenko- the English word, I believe, is "lies" Beating Up British Diplomat in Siberia (Oh! You naughty children) Threats against BP-TNK- the "environmental investigation" was a nicely Stalinist touch for anyone who has actually visited Magnitogorsk Sending Nashi thugs to break the windows of the British Ambassador's Residence (again) Illegal overflights of Scotland- We did not lock on with weapons radar- though next time, we may actually fire Launching an internet war against Estonia from the Kremlin servers- then implausibly denying it was anything to do with Russia Illegal overflights of Lithuania Illegal ...
Well it is not everyday someone can say they are in the national press. Well I suppose if your name is David Beckham or Tony Blair or then you may well be able to say it. I was having another lazy day in bed, the joys of being on a holiday, when I received a text message from the school's bursar saying that we were on page 25 of the Daily Mirror on top of being on the front page of the local
I note that the media has been fairly neutral towards Rhodri Morgan's new cabinet. They could have branded it the 'magnificent seven' or the 'seven samurai' but they didnt because neither description would have been appropriate. They could equally have used the sobriquet 'seven dwarfs' but this gathering is a long way from being as politically lightweight as such a description would imply. In fact the overriding feeling that this reshuffle engenders is one of anti-climax, a mood underscored by the choice of Deputy Ministers. For all the changes in portfolios and the claims of a new ...
When Tony Blair announced his resignation, everyone seemed to want to give their assessment of what the Blair years had been like for Britain – giving history’s first judgement of the legacy into which he’s put so much effort. Many sought to measure his achievements in numbers: numbers of teachers under Blair, the change in waiting [...] 
I thought the House wasn't sitting this week and then I read in my local paper that one of my next door neighbour MPs, Anthony Steen "was rushing to London to represent constituents at Westminster and...
There are a surprising number of Lib Dems on Facebook - now including me!
I often seem to find myself leaping out of bed as I watch BBC1's Question Time. Something gets me going and I have to write down an exact quote for a morning blog. Caroline Spelman was holding forth last night about Blair's world tour. Fair enough. In the context of Iraq and the recent kidnappings she said that Blair should be at home dealing with those emergencies. She then caused by
There is a fascinating article on Comment is Free from Naomi Klein. It describes how the insurgency-caused oil failure in Iraq has shifted demand to Canada and the use of "tar sands" through sophisticated methods. It's all complete madness, of course.
I was sceptical when I heard that George Bush was proposing a radical new initiative to tackle climate change. Having read his proposals I'm even more sceptical. America is suggesting a series of initiatives which will benefit American companies with no real commitment from the US to cleaning up it's act. It's a sham proposal, designed to do two things. First, Dubbya hopes it will derail the chances of progress at the G8 summit next week, and second he hopes it will take some of the pressure off him during the rest of his presidency. Sorry George, but you're wrong ...
Back in the Middle Ages there was a terrible practice called “Serfdom” or “Villeinage” whereby peasant farmers were forced to work one or even two days a week on somebody else’s land, and were only allowed to work their own land on the remaining four days. Thus was their labour taxed to pay for the public goods that their political masters thought vital to the wellbeing of society: cathedrals, castles and wars with the French. By comparison, our far more civilised society has found a way of taxing the labour of the common man far more subtly, by taking ...
This morning papers look fairly bleak for David Cameron after his humiliating U turn on Grammar schools: The Daily Mail is withering: The policy shift is particularly embarrassing for Mr Cameron as he has faced down his critics in the bitter grammar row by arguing: "I don't follow my party, I lead them." In a panel, the Mail compares what Cameron said last week: "A pledge to build more
In a sense we have a judge here who is not really defending what has been going on as he recognises that it has not been good. Others still defend the actions of the Family Courts (including the Court of Appeal). Quoting from the article "It is perfectly usual in this court to be removing the fourth, fifth and sixth children from such parents," the judge says. "It's not unheard of for it to be
A little piece in a well researched blog on house prices around the world I keep an eye on: Fighting over their castles: read more
You didn't have me down as some happy clappy evangelical did you? No, you'd be quite right. So this is just a little celebration of "Tax Freedom Day". "Hallelujah" was the cry of the Hebrews' slaves when, in the year of the Jubilee, those who had had to sell themselves into servitude or give away their lands to keep themselves afloat were freed and their lands returned to the common wealth for redistribution. read more
Global warming continues to rise up the political agenda. Recently there has been some negative publicity about carbon offsetting based on the assumption that people are merely paying their way out of trouble. My view is that if people are not modifying their life style and simply taxing themselves they are at least thinking about the issue and admitting to the problems they cause each time they...
It's a sad state of affairs that one in ten men are, according to a survey, put off volunteering to work with children for fear of being labelled a paedophile. I remember well in 2001 listening to Talk Sport when Mike Dicken, a daytime presenter said to a caller "I am suspicious of why any man would be a Primary School teacher - There's something very odd about that !". When someone else phoned in, a primary school teacher who was male, Mike Dicken implied that he was a paedophile, then cut the man off before he could ...
Tonight was the count (electronic, no less) for the Lib Dem list of candidates for the GLA elections next year. Wasn't at the count, as had a meeting of Overview & Scrutiny - where we decided that I will be chairing a review of the Council's Neighbourhood Management function... I'll talk more about that another time... Also had a leadership group meeting after that, so busy night. But the good news is that Monica (whose campaign I was managing) got selected for the list, in 10th place out of the 22 candidates. The candidates standing for us ... | < | June 2007 | > | ||||
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
| 1 | 2 | |||||
| 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
| 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 |
| 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 |
| 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
