The policeman who pioneered the “softly-softly” approach to cannabis use is being lined up as the Liberal Democrat candidate for London Mayor. Brian Paddick, 49, has held talks with the party about standing against Labour’s Ken Livingstone and the Tories’ Boris Johnson. Full story here, which echoes an earlier story in Pink News. Brian Paddick is currently [...]
Will Woodward speculates in the Guardian today that Gordon Brown will call a general election next Spring. If so, this could well coincide with the London Mayoral and GLA elections. I have to say, I am not surprised. I’ve long found the idea of an October 2007 election unconvincing. GB is too cautious to cut and run so soon. And he will want to know that his ‘bounce’ is not an overnight phenomenon. However, the thing that really bugs me is the way that the body politic in Britain — including the mainstream media — just accepts that it is OK for the ...
Having raved about the BBC’s Summer of British Film and then previewed some of the thrillers this week, I suppose I am duty bound to look at some of next week’s romances. And to do so in good time, as they start tomorrow. And what a wonderful selection it is! There are wonderful films like "I Know Where I’m Going" , Whistle Down the Wind and dear old Brief Encounter. More enjoyment from The Red Shoes and Gregory’s Girl, and two interesting films that I have not seen before: The Leather Boys and The Pumpkin Eater. And more besides. You ...
Some of you might have heard of the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, a certain Chinese encyclopedia which describes animals in unusual categories. The authors of this encyclopedia are planning to bring out a Politics Edition of the Encylopedia. Have a look at the classification below and see which politicians you think should be in which groups. 1. those that belong to the Emperor, 2. embalmed ones, 3. those that are trained, 4. suckling pigs, 5. mermaids, 6. fabulous ones, 7. stray dogs, 8. those included in the present classification, 9. those that tremble as if they were mad, 10. ...
The BBC are reporting that Foot and Mouth has returned to the UK. A farm in Surrey has cattle showing symptoms. Let's hope that the lessons of 2001 have been learnt and that we won't face the same crisis as last time. The BBC are doing a "Don't Panic". Might put the mockers on a cut and run General Election for Brown in September/October. Meanwhile amongst some Lib Dem activists there appears to have been a serious recent outbreak of Foot in Mouth disease deflecting the heat off the Tory leader....
In order to better keep my political and professional interests apart and to talk in more depth about personal development and training issues I've decided to start a separate blog called "West End of Folkestone". I hope a few of my political friends will be interested in what I put there and I look forward to comments and feedback (although "Trolls" - they know who they are - will not be welcome).
Microsoft, benevolent ruler of all that is technology, announced yesterday that its next version of Works* (9, for those keeping score at home) will be available for some consumers as a pre-installed, advert-packed freebie on new PCs... which is effectively what it is now anyway, except for the adverts bit. Why do I find this interesting? Aside from it following in the slip-stream of Google Docs
This is a most ridiculous situation. How can this be fair a 15 point deduction when they already had 10 deducted last season? Obviously the Football League have acted in a petulant response to the fact that Leeds went into administration just before the end of last season to avoid the 10 point reduction being added at the start of this season. They have found a way round it to get back at Mr Bates. I am glad to learn that Leeds are to appeal. Leeds supporters must wage the biggest and loudest protest ever against this absolutely outrageous action. ...
Well, finally some real progress..... We are pleased to announce that the board of the Football League Ltd have agreed to transfer the share in the Football League to Leeds United 2007 Ltd. The Football League have transferred the share in 'exceptional circumstances' and have imposed a 15-point penalty for the start of the 2007/08 season. The club have appealed against this sanction. The timescale for the appeal is not yet known. The club has received an amount of criticism from supporters for not keeping them up to date with developments during what has been a very difficult time for ...
My final Liberal Democrat News column unti the autumn. Unpleasant customs The Commons broke up for the summer last Thursday. Almost the last business was the the adjournment debate -- a sort of parliamentary bring-and-buy sale where a few MPs turn up to ride their hobby-horses or bring up a constituency matter and impress their local paper. Even so, there was at least one point of interest. Keith Vaz raised the case of one of his Leicester East constituents, Abder Razak Filali-Tomouh. He had made a weekend trip to the Continent and come back with lots of tobacco. But he ... 
Click below to play this TV clip:
Lib Dem Regional Team Leader and Shadow Minister for the West Midlands John Hemming MP and West Worcestershire’s Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Candidate, Richard Burt visited the county yesterday to look at the problems caused by the floods. "It is clear," said John Hemming, "that there are problems beyond those immediately of water damage. A lot needs to be done in helping businesses,
The UK government’s pusillanimous approach to the European constitution (or Reform treaty?) is annoying both pro- and anti-Europeans. Pro-Europeans are mystified by the timidity, when not antipathy, in embracing the liberal democratic values enshrined in the charter of fundamental rights, which are already part of British law and tradition. Anti-Europeans regard the absence of ratification through a referendum as an affront to British democratic sovereignty. A treaty is generally a document that requires specific legal knowledge. Parliament ought to be given the opportunity to ratify clause by clause any treaty, but a referendum on the new treaty would be like ...
We caught the bus from Penmaenmawr to Caernarfon this morning. I spent most of the journey writing emails to officers back in Gateshead about an application for an office license in Sunniside. It took about an hour to get here. The first thing that struck us on arrival was that it was much colder than we expected. Since we were in shorts and short sleeve shirts, we were better dressed for a
Wrestling over what to cook for tea as well as what to wear as a 40 something to a Fund Raiser Rock concert for our local Duke of Edinburgh's Award group :) whilst :( much esteemed colleague has had pre-op pokes & tests before much needed operation and nasty follow-up treatment so, tonight - I'll be screaming, jumping up and down with the teens and other middle-aged revellers and appreciate 
One of the issues I'm pondering over the summer is what to make of Prime Minister's Question Time. To me - yes, it's great theatre and even fun at time but - it's utterly crap as a way of holding the Prime Minister or Government to account - and I doubt the baying mob moment where everyone (except polite Lib Dems of course!) is cheering or booing does much for the reputation of politics. After all - what would you think of someone who behaved in a work meeting the way the boorish heckling backbenchers do at PMQs? So - ...
Posted by Chris: When our three year old grandson, Daniel, asked to come with me this morning when I set out to deliver Focus and Fiona Hall MEP's Annual Report I readily agreed. Carrying Fiona's glossy leaflet along with Focus is heavy work and by putting the carrier bag on the push chair solves that problem. What I didn't expect was Daniel's willingness to help. We went on our delivery round with Daniel holding some of the leaflets in his lap and handing me one of each when we got to a garden gate. He was happy as Larry singing ...
Our daughter Kelly gets married tomorrow so life has been a bit hectic lately, with all the Yorkshire Day events to organise as well, not to mention the delivery of Focus and the Post Office campaign. We are looking forward to tomorrow. Her fiance, Ashley, is a nice lad and we are sure they are going to be happy. It will also be nice to see family members together again, most are travelling from Harrogate, Whitby and Durham.
Some time ago significant numbers of former Labour members came across to the Lib Dems from the Labour party, in both Birmingham and Derby if memory serves me correctly. Similarly a number of leading figures in the Ealing and Southall Labour party moved from that party to the Tories, with another coming to the Lib Dems. Am I alone in viewing with suspicion the bulk transference of party allegiance ? Historically, and well beyond the Asian communities of this country, we've seen diverse communities vote [ or join] in overwhelming numbers for a particular party. In Scotland the so-called 'Catholic' ...
Let's be clear I put Ming in third place out of three in the Lib Dem leadership contest. Ming comes across [to me] as personally wooden and politically unconvincing [other than on foreign affairs]. Can I see Ming engaging with and inspiring voters on say, a Rochdale council estate or in central Torquay, to hold seats we have, let alone increase our representation at Westminster ? I am doubtful. If I, as an activist am unenthused, then this bodes ill for connecting with the wider public. BUT, being a party leader is akin to being a football manager. It is ...
My Facebook page says it is being maintained, and I can't get in! If you look at my profile it is completely screwed up at the moment. I am hoping normal service will return.
A tribute to Bergman from the American director, in the form of an interview with Time magazine. He is more generous than Bergman on Antonioni.
I am a bit busy to be blogging today. I could spend a few minutes thinking of a part of my day to recall to you. But nothing momentous has happened, so I would be boring both you and me. Instead, I will leave it at this, excpet to say that I made enquiries with the Council about what to do if the people next door to you leave their house, it ends up empty, and the blue/brown/green bins are all
From The Telegraph: Grassroots Tories fear election defeat For the first time since Mr Cameron took over as Tory leader, a majority of Conservative activists believe that he will not be the next Prime Minister, according to the survey.
{bins.jpg} Wycombe District Council has been rolling out a fortnightly collection system for some time now. It has been controversial, to say the least, with one national newspaper branding us ‘The Town Where Only The Rats are Happy’. Oddly enough, whilst our scheme is being introduced by a Tory council, in other areas the Tories have campaigned against fortnightly collection! We would like to know what you think. We would be grateful if you would take a short survey, which will only take five minutes. Take the fortnightly waste collection survey
We have eight days to go until the new season kicks off and the Football League are still refusing to release the golden share to Leeds. According to the BBC the Football League wants them to reconstitute a Company Voluntary Agreement before they will hand the share back. Surely if they went into administration and a CVA was constituted and they are now out of administration (at least according to KPMG) then reconstituting the CVA menas they are back in administration. Perhaps this is the cunning plan of the Football League so that they can dock a further 10 points! ...
Mock the Week did download - quite quickly after an initial pause - and runs fine. Here it is below with iPlayer running on the Mac Desktop using the VMWare Unity mode - a nice feature that exposes applications running in the Windows virtual machine as part of the general Mac interface. {iPlayer on Mac Desktop}
The has been a lot of coverage this week on TV about advertisers losing control of where their ads are placed on the internet. Earlier this week Panorama asked why a number of UK companies like Virgin, O2, various banks and other high street names were allowing their adverts to be placed alongside images of appalling violence on websites such as YouTube. Now it appears that Vodafone and First Direct have been caught out too. Ads placed on Facebook by Vodafone and First Direct have now been pulled after these companies were informed that their adverts were appearing on group ...
So, I appear to have iPlayer up and running on my Mac, though the download of Mock the Week I requested has not yet appeared in glorious technicolor for me to be certain it works. How’s this done? Courtesy of the most excellent VMWare Fusion (declaration of interest: I work for a company that recently invested in VMWare, but I was using the software before anyway) which I have setup so that I can run any Windows-only apps I need in my job. I was surprised to hit another error when downloading the iPlayer software that said it was Internet ...
Congratulations {Photo of a phone} to Channel 4 for - as far as I can see - carrying out a serious investigation into allegations of misdeeds and rips offs amongst its various phone-in contests - and deciding to pretty much scrap the lot as a result. And where they're not being scrapped (how could Big Brother be Big Brother without the voting!) making them only cost-neutral or revenues to charity. This follows the BBC suspending a whole range of items too. But where does this leave ICSTIS - the regulator who is meant to be keeping things under control and ...
A House of Commons Committee has criticised British Airways for the pathetic way it has marketed and promoted a carbon offset scheme on the same day as an all party group of MP's has claimed that Britain's own carbon reduction targets are not adequate and do not meet the criteria needed to ensure Britain is playing any significant part in helping the environment. In the same way as British Airways have told the press that they are the first airline to introduce a carbon offset scheme, and no doubt they include this in marketing material, letters to shareholders and in ...
A good day for Chris Huhne, Lib Dem shadow secretary of state for the environment. First, for earning acres of positive coverage for the new Lib Dem proposals to ‘get serious about rail’ by doubling investment - see here (The Guardian), here (Daily Express), here (BBC Online) and here (ePolitix). And, secondly, for besting his [...]
No, it’s not a Liberal Democrat leaflet, gently delivered at 5am by a tip-toeing activist, keen not to rouse a council house Doberman. Rather, it’s the brilliant Good Morning Britain, Aztec Camera’s most political single, from way back in 1990. Who is that joining child-faced Roddy Frame in the video? Perhaps a rather haggard uncle, of the variety that always has a rolly hanging out of its mouth? No, it’s Mick Jones from the Clash! Speaking of Glasgwegian post-punk bands of the nineteen eighties, there’s an interesting piece in today’s Independent about Edwyn Collins, and his recovery from appalling illness.It's ...
Last week the Liberal Democrats launched "Freedom from Poverty, Opportunity for All" the new policy paper on tackling poverty. The Paper will be debated at the Federal Conference at Brighton.
The Guardian today reports that Lib Dem MP Paul Rowen is demanding an inquiry into the £200,000 cost of policing Labour’s special leadership conference in Manchester in June, at which Gordon Brown was formally anointed as Tony Blair’s successor. Paul is quoted saying: “Here in Greater Manchester, our force is facing a funding crisis, just like [...]
Today's Echo carries two pro-elected mayor letters, including one from the husband of one of our Conservative Councillors, who signs himself as part of the "Mayor for Darlington Group". I wonder if anyone will send in a letter arguing against the points made by these writers? In our "Say No To Tesco" campaign, every piece of pro-Tesco publicity or comment was immediately countered by someone
You may remember the TK Maxx scandal earlier this year, when customer details were stolen and used fraudulently. There is still no law in this country to force companies in this situation to warn their customers. Now there is a petition to government to put this right.
The Freethink blog is going across the pond today, and in the process, going rather meta: blogging about american blogs. American political blogs are larger and more influential than in the UK, and are more integrated into the political process. The reasons are clear. When the Daily Kos, one of the most influential left-wing blogs, gets more than half a million hits per day from committed democratic voters, and does much to set the political agenda, the benefits for politicians in engaging with that forum are clear. Every democratic presidential candidate is currently at the blog's YearlyKos convention with the exception of Sen. Joe Biden will be there (and ...
The link is to one of the stolen generation cases from Australia. What needs to happen in England (and Wales) is for the wrongful adoptions to stop. There is no sense the courts continuing down this blind alley merely because stopping causes problems.
Just received this from Cowley Street: 'There will be thousands of false matches in the national identity database, according to a University of Cambridge academic speaking on Radio 4. Professor John Daugman told File on 4 that every new person in a thousand will give false matches in the database once there are six million people - one tenth of the population - in the system. You can read the
Barely is the ink dry on the One Wales document and Plaid Cymru is already casting around for new partners, this time to form an electoral pact to take on Labour in the local Council elections. Adam Price is quite right of course, different levels of government require different approaches and Labour cannot assume a non-aggression agreement at Council or UK Government level just because they share power with Plaid in Cardiff Bay. Plaid Cymru should remember that this cuts both ways. Although I accept that there is a need for coalitions to deliver a programme for government in certain ...
As regular readers of this blog know, I am passionately committed, almost to the point of obsession, about accountability and democracy, for example in local health services. So why do I find myself opposed to a referendum on the European Reform Treaty? It seems rather a counter-intuitive, anti-democratic and an unpopular view to take so I think it needs a bit of explanation. Referendums are clearly initially very appealing. It seems quite simple: if you believe in democracy, then you should be prepared to ask the public anything and everything, and get them to make the decision. This seems fine ...
I have been advised by the City Council that, in order to undertake patching of the roadway, Riverside Avenue will be closed to traffic between the Swallow roundabout and the junction with Apollo Way at the Technology Park only from 7pm each evening until 1am the following morning on Monday 6th August for a maximum of three working days. The alternative route is through the Technology Park and Myrekirk Road and any queries can be answered by the Road Network Team on 433168.
Before the Bush-Brown summit, I warned of potential cring-making arrangements in the choreography of the press conferences, or even a potential "Bomber Jacket" moment. The Colgate moment, from the first Bush-Blair summit, was repeated in some way. Apparently toothpaste was mentioned by Bush, according to the Norfolk Blogger. I missed it. But now it is clear that the bomber jacket moment did
The BBC reports what appear to be well thought-through proposals from within the party to tax internal UK flights (except 'lifeline' routes such as to and from islands) and freight transport, then use that money on a time-limited basis to improve the rail infrastructure.
Apparently British businesses are losing £50 million a year because people are skipping off early on Friday afternoons. Perish the thought! Something tells me this might be a bit of a false calculation. Just say for example, if someone goes off an hour early on Friday afternoon to go to a dental appointment. So these boffins have calculated that this loses their company £X. Did they also bring
Thursday's Telegraph asks the question, off the back of some polling data suggesting Scottish support for the Lib Dems has tanked since the SNP got in and we refused to prop them up. Or at least, that's what they want it to suggest. Bother to read through the article, and you find the following admission: At this juncture it might be wise to enter a major caveat. The above figures were culled
Compare this, from the official Leeds United site: SHARE TRANSFER UPDATE The club feel that significant progress is being made in relation to the transfer of the share in what is a very complex set of circumstances. We hope the matter reaches a positive conclusion as quick as possible to allow Leeds United to finalise our preparations, all be it in a short space of time, for the forthcoming season. With this: Breaking: More angst for Leeds United LEEDS United's move out of administration has been blocked a second time by the Football League. Officials from KPMG and United met ...
I joined facebook back in December 2006 which is much later a lot of people I know and when I first joined I was not too sure about the whole thing.
Saturday: It is the end and, as Mr Dr Who once said, it has been prepared for. The last line, apparently ready and written since the beginning, although slightly switched around, was worth the wait. Golly, but Daddy Richard has taken AGES to read this book – everyone else has finished it YONKS ago. Daddy Alex and I read it in about a DAY. Just because Daddy Richard has a JOB to go to, I mean what sort of an excuse is THAT?! Anyway, now that he is finally finished, I am allowed to tell you all about it. On ... | < | August 2007 | > | ||||
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