Still undecided as to who should be the next leader of the Liberal Democrats? If your answer to that is 'Yes' you may find it helpful to listen to this weeks edition of Radio 4’s Any Questions. Nick Clegg was on the panel. I think he did rather well, but I would say that wouldn't I, I'm a Cleggite! Let me know what you think! 
The hustings was in the very impressive neo-Gothic Manchester Town Hall, and the event was well-attended; not quite overflowing, but there was a large and enthusiastic audience who had turned out on a very rainy Manchester morning. I sat near the back of the hall, but was able to hear every word of the proceedings and took the opportunity of making notes as the two candidates spoke; I'll try to use these notes to recollect the key points raised as accurately as possible. At this stage in the contest, both candidates will have given the same or similar speech to ...
I came away from the St Albans hustings reassured and impressed by Nick Clegg, so that I can now vote for him with enthusiasm and confidence. Unsurprisingly, what clinched it for me was the replies the candidates gave to my own question. This ran something like as follows: Some Liberal Democrats appear to regard the idea of choice in public services as a stalking horse for neo-Thatcherism. Do we really have to choose between more power for local councils or more power for individuals or can we support both. The question reflects my own frustration about the party’s internal debate ...
As if the HMRC blunder wasn’t bad enough, we now have the stunning story of a passport blunder closer to home. A security guard working just one mile from Bearwood was sent someone else’s passport and driving licence. It is clear to me that the Government does not have an adequate grip on data management and data security. How a National Identity Register and all its associated databases can still be on the table is beyond me. I have written to John Spellar MP tonight asking him to call for an immediate and permanent trashing of the Identity Cards Act ...
Sometimes the cleverest people can also in their own way be the stupidest. I suppose that it the lesson to be learned from the childish and idiotic decision of the members of the Oxford Union, to invite the author and holocaust denier David Irving and BNP leader Nick Griffin to speak in a Union debate. Let’s be clear from the start, this is not a question of free speech. Griffin and Irving are entitled to express their views within the laws of the land. The point is whether an organisation such as the Oxford Union should be giving them a ...
On Sunday, I attended a public meeting called by those who are campaigning against the new planned boys Academy in East Dulwich. Those who are against the school who spoke broadly fall into four categories; those who are against academies on principle; those who like the old Victorian building on the chosen site and want it retained; those who believe the school [...]
On Thursday Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne took part in a webcast hustings, run in conjunction with the University of Westminster. They spent 45 minutes answering questions emailed in by party members from around the country.
Growing up in the 80s and being a half-decent chess player (that's not false modesty, I really was just half-decent), the name of Garry Kasparov was always familiar to me. For years he was famous as the greatest chessmaster in the world, and although history may remember him as the first chess champion to lose to a computer ('Big Blue' in 1997), this says more about the tremendous strides made by computer technology than it does about his undoubted talent. More recently, he has become well-known as an opposition politician in Russia, a critic of the Putin regime. He has ...
Today I attended the hustings for party leadership at Manchester Town Hall, which was a feat given that last night was my leaving do from work, and I arrived home at approximately 3am. The feat was made doubly impressive (or risky, depending on your viewpoint) because I had been asked by the BBC to be part of a three-person team to interview Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne in private before the official hustings. Chronic tiredness and interviewing senior politicians don’t tend to mix. Thankfully Nick and Chris were both very engaging and it was a fantastic opportunity to hear at ...
The first experience I had of Nick Clegg was at a Local Government conference in Birmingham. He was invited to chair a question time session in front of councillors and activists. We'd invited speakers and hoped they would speak and fire up the audience. During the session, one punter shouted out that she thought Nick should throw his own opinions into the debate. So Nick took the plunge. He charmed the audience without a script. He laid on the table why he belived in civil liberties and in protecting the environment. Why he wanted to make Britain fairer for all. ...
I'm back to that floating voter panic again - I have no idea who is going to get my vote tonight. This is not about the Liberal Democrat leadership, where my unreserved support goes to Nick Clegg, but for Strictly Come Dancing tonight. In my view the person who should be leaving is John Barnes. Nothing personal, but his ballroom isn't going to get any better and there isn't much in the way of Latin dances to come for him. His samba wasn't that great and I think that, entertaining though he has been, now is the time for him ...
Is it just me or could our own Paul Holmes be mistaken for Gordon Brown in the picture at the top of page 3 of this week's Lib Dem News? Paul is one of my favourite people not just in the Party but in the world. We may occasionally disagree about things and are in fact on different sides of the current leadership contest. That doesn't matter, though - he and his family have always been the most supportive friends and he has a brilliant and wicked sense of humour. He's a leftie like me and I can usually trust ...
You have to look very closely at LabourHome to see any comments about 25M, Northern Rock and Qinetiq. We would be all over the subjects on here if it was our party. Seems they are in denial - one suspects that they are in some sort of paralytic shock.
A second quick post: This race is very, very close. It really could go either way. If you’re a Clegg supporter, now is the time to be talking to your offline Lib Dem friends about the Leadership contest! In addition: Fill in your vote and send it off. Don’t assume that it’s in the bag. I certainly take nothing for granted and, quite frankly this is a nail biting wait for me. I’m still trying to mentally prepare myself for the worst - I need to remember how important it is for the UK that we have a strong party ...
A fantastic idea but can i add to it?Let’s target the parties’ resources better at actually capacity building of skills. My idea,that I’m putting to others who have some sort of sway on these matters,is to devise a kind of NVQ with credits for the following subjects: PagePlus 11 EARS Leaflet writing Telephone Canvassing There’d be beginners, intermediate and advanced levels [...]
The Radio 4 version of Question Time is available from the BBC website and, frankly, I strongly suggest that people listen to it. Clegg was fortunate enough to get a spot on it on his own, as part of a ‘normal’ programme rather than as a double act. A commentator on my previous post suggested that Nick had been poor on it… I think this is quite a disingenuous interpretation. What I heard was Nick getting the most enthusiastic applause of any of the panel, not just once but over and over again. This sort of thing make me proud ...
The saga of the Oxford Union's Free Speech Forum has taken a new twist, after students voted that the controversial debate should go ahead as planned next Monday. The student debating society at Oxford University had invited Nick Griffin (British National Party) and David Irving (Holocaust denier) to speak on the motion "This House believes that even extremists should be entitled to free speech." Plenty of people around the country believe that the answer is "no", and have tried to get the forum shut down. Their efforts were defeated in yesterday's vote. My views on this aren't a secret: I ...
I'm almost envious. But did it all end happily? What am I on about? Well, see here.
As the GLA candidate for London North East, I've been speaking to party members in Islington, Hackney and Waltham Forest- the 3 boroughs in the constituency. Today, I spoke to a young person, who is 'definitely voting for Nick', explaining that he is not like other MPs or politicians, in that he's like 'a really normal bloke who speaks like one, in a language that I can understand' He went on- 'I'm finding politics exciting again' He also said, in common with many others, that he thought Chris Huhne had 'done us no favours' in the now infamous slanging match. ...
I was sad to learn of the death earlier this week of Peggie Preston, veteran peace campaigner, at the age of 84. We first met in the Quaker Meeting in Saigon in the summer of 1969, when I was a teenage reporter covering the Vietnam War, and she was staying out at Phu Mi, working [...] 
Regular readers may remember that I wrote about a young Ugandan girl, Janipher Maseko, who had been separated from her breastfeeding baby and one year old daughter and threatened with removal to Uganda without her children. Mercifully she was eventually allowed to stay in the country pending the outcome of her application to be allowed to stay on human rights grounds. Today she tells her story in the Guardian here The way in which Janipher has been treated makes me so angry and ashamed to be British. Unfortunately, women in her situation are still being treated in the same inhumane ...
The linked story is one where a child died because of failures from his mother. I cannot tell from the story whether or not it fits my thesis. However, what it does demonstrate is that Childrens Social Services are normally aware of the families where children die from abuse or neglect. The system of references, therefore, is not failing. Indeed the increase in references is making the system
Jonathan Calder may have started something by drawing our attention to this item on the BBC website giving us Marc Riley's top ten worst pop lyrics. Jonathan wishes space could have been found for the opening couplet from "The Bad Old Days" by Co-Co. My personal preference would be for Bobby Vee's 'Stayin' in' which started thus: I punched my buddy in the nose after lunch Now I'm in trouble 'cause the dean saw the punch He was tellin' things that were not true about her So I let him have it in the cafeteria It goes a bit downhill ...
Interesting to read about facebook's invasion of privacy. I think every site you visit holds a huge amount of very personal information about your tastes. When recently logging in to Amazon which I have used extensively since the age of 20 (7 years) I clicked a link to 'my store'. Here I found a list of every book I could possibly want to buy from 'The Blair Effect' by Seldon to 'cocaine nights' by JG Ballard with quite a few 'sims' games thrown in for good measure, the suggestions thought up after looking at what you have bought before. Of ...
Over two years ago I joined the NO2ID campaign. Today I finally got to meet the National Coordinator Phil Booth and other members from the West Midlands. The regional meeting was an attempt to stimulate some local groups. Although the region has many members, there is relatively little activity compared to the rest of the country. Firstly the turnout was much better than I had expected. Perhaps people’s attention was focused by the HMRC blunder this week, but whatever, it’s clear the anti-ID movement is gathering pace. Several new local groups were formed, including Birmingham Central, Solihull and one for ...
William Huskisson, who died after falling under a train at the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester railway in September 1830, is generally held to be the world's first rail casualty. Simon Garfield has written a book about the incident. But a note buried in today's Guardian Corrections and Clarifications column suggests Huskisson may not deserve this sad accolade: The Egglescliffe parish register records the death, in 1827, of "a female, name unknown", thought to be a blind beggar woman, and notes she was "killed by the steam machine on the railway".
The results are out now from our selection of LD candidates for the next Euro Election. Our announcement was delayed because of a recount - there was a very close result between number 3 and number 4 on the list so it needed checking. Anyway, the re count took place - and the result is that the first four on our list of eight are Chris Davies Saj Karim Helen Foster Grime Sue McGuire Congratulations to Richard Marbrow, who chaired Chris Davies' re selection campaign.
I have updated my diary for yesterday's anniversary of Doctor Who with a PS about the sad news of the passing of Ms Verity Lambert.
This is a vindication of the strategy of getting involved with current and high profile news stories. It is, ultimately, what’s been the difference. Vince Cable has been doing an excellent job and clearly having two excellent candidates for Leader hasn’t hurt us. Recommendations for the new Leader to keep the momentum: Involve Vince Cable in writing questions for PMQ’s Rapid rebuttal unit. Rapid rebuttal unit (worth mentioning twice) Media Grid Huhne to be actively involved with developing strategy and tactics for dealing with journalists (Update: This needs clarifying: What I mean is whether or not he becomes leader) In ...
Apparently, thousands of Facebook users are protesting against the social networking site's decision to publish their online shopping habits without their permission. One Facebook group - Stop Invading my Privacy - is growing at the rate of 1,000 members every few minutes. They are upset that Facebook are not respecting their privacy by telling their online friends what they have bought from suppliers – that way spoiling potential Christmas surprises! If this is true it looks like no surprises for Steve Webb this Christmas! Call me old fashioned, but whatever happened to people going into town, going into a shop ... 
I am feeling terribly lazy today. Lots to say and no energy to say it........ I am sure I will perk up later though, so be warned!
Saturday: Mr Jonny makes the case for Freedom of Speech applying to people we would rather not hear. But I want to go further. Free Speech is not, and cannot, JUST be about the right to say things that other people find objectionable; it must ALSO include our right to HEAR what is said, so that we can REBUT it. When something is PARTICULARLY POISONOUS, it is more important than ever that it BE rebutted. But how can you make a COUNTER ARGUMENT if you pretend that it doesn’t exist? Worse, how will anyone even THINK of a counter argument ...
{Lynne Featherstone and Jo Fazier} Smokin' Joe and me are the best of friends! Last night Haringey Police and Community Boxing Club had a black tie dinner to raise funds for the club. Smokin' Joe (Frazier) - World Heavyweight Champion and one of the few to knock Ali down -was the big event. Introduced before the dinner - he was somewhat flirtatious as was his manager. At my age - this is now to be enjoyed! It was a fantastic evening - and I hope it raised a lot of money for the club, as this is one of Haringey's ...
Gains from the Tories in local council by-elections, over 20 per cent again in the national opinion polls, and our acting leader, Vince Cable, hitting all the right buttons on the issues of the day.&n...
I was absolutely shocked to hear on the radio about a court case that went before the family courts yesterday which involved the fate of a baby boy, born of a one night stand relationship. A woman had a fling with a work colleague, became pregnant, concealed the pregnancy from the father (so he knows nothing of the child), and has now put the child up for adoption. The issue before the court was should she be allowed to do this without the father having a say, or for that matter even being told that he is a father. The ...
Firstly, may I thank Paul aka Liberal Burblings for the following comments in response to my earlier blog: "It's a blog - I say what I feel like. You don't have to read it - and anyone else is entitled to say what they feel like also - chill out! I have already voted for Chris - this isn't about backing horses - I am not a career politician or any kind of politician." I agree with you 100% Paul - we can all say what we like. I was merely saying that I would like you to stop being ...
The BBC website has a list of the 10 worst pop lyrics of all time, as voted for by listeners to BBC6 Music's Marc Riley Show. I was sorry that space could not be found for the opening couplet from "The Bad Old Days" by Co-Co, which was Britain's Eurovision entry in 1978: Remember me? I was tossed and turnin' like a ship without a sea.
Thanks to the wonders of the internet, you can here in full my interview (along with Dizzy Thinks - aka Phil Hendren) with Radio 4's PM program before it is even broadcast! It's up on their website. I do like the what they are trying with their Saturday show (called iPM) - doing things like making available the draft running order for the show (and showing how it changes over time) and also putting on their website the full interviews which then get edited down for the actual show. It gives the rest of us a better sense of how ...
Australia: Only place in the world I like seeing Labour beating Liberals.
I rarely find time to actually sit down and do nothing. Aka do nothing days. But today is one of them, and I'm loving it. I'm happy my summer wont be spoilt by football, I'm happy I'm going to Brussels on Tuesday for a nice trip to see the EU and the European Commission and I'm happy that I'm going to New York the following week after NUS decides to change for the better. Yes life is sweet, I'm even starting to play world of warcraft again (yes I know it is sad!) But tomorrow is back to London, however ...
Howard makes his concession speech Joy and triples all round! With the headline "Labor party wins big in Australia" Associated Press have just reported that Howard has addressed the nation thus: "My fellow Australians, a few moments ago I telephoned Kevin Rudd and I congratulated him and the Australian Labor Party on a very emphatic victory," Howard said in Sydney in a nationally televised
I am beginning to suspect Liberal Burblings thinks he has backed the wrong horse in the leadership race and Chris Huhne is going to lose the leadership contest. His postings are becoming more and more desperate. If he’s not posting an excited report about a YouTube video from Ms Smith of Little Bodgit, in which she says she thinks Chris is great blah blah blah, and how she is going to vote for him blah, blah, blah, it's a tabloid newspaper (Daily Mirror) saying “The front runner for the Lib Dem leadership was said to be fading yesterday as voting ...
Pope Benedict has today appointed 24 new Cardinals, increasing the number of Conclave electors for his eventual successor by a fifth in one swoop (after appointing another 15 new Cardinals last year). Catholics round the world rejoiced at this one man, one vote election’s swing from extremely conservative to unbelievably conservative. ‘I’m not running the risk of them electing another wet liberal like me,’ said Pope Benedict (formerly ‘Cardinal Rottweiler’).
You have to admire the Green Party, it appears they will let just about anyone join them. Not that they are opportunists or anything. In Germany, the part of the Green Party the British Greens look to as an example, they have a prison branch of the Green Party which is nnow led by a cannibal ! From The Scotsman newspaper : "THE world's most infamous cannibal has become a vegetarian. Armin Meiwes - he killed, filleted, froze and ate a man he met in an internet chatroom in Germany - is also the recently elected leader of an environmentalist ...
This has been a really challenging decision to make. I had the huge advantage of being able to meet and interview both Chris Huhne and Nick Clegg, and if anything that has made it even more difficult to choose between them. The interviews threw up aspects of each, both in terms of policy and personality, that had not emerged in the public arena. Both are personable and warm, both are...
The Duncan Borrowman forecast: Clegg - visibility poor with patches of fog, 6, rising slowly. Huhne - visibility good but high pressure band on the way, 8, falling slowly. An unforgivingly heavy piece for Saturday morning while all sensible people are still in bed trying to summon the will to live. Jock Coats has recently been floating [...]
Nicol Stephen MSP, Leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, last night issued an e-mail to party members across Scotland. I replicate part of this below : Dear members, At the end of a busy week, I thought I would e mail to record my congratulations to the LibDem team in Dundee for achieving a big growth in our share of the vote in Dundee Council's Lochee by-election yesterday. It showed, once again that, where we work, we gain new votes for our party. Well done to our great, young candidate Chris Hall and to Cllr Fraser Macpherson and the Dundee ...
There's an excellent interview with Chris Huhne in the Times today. Having interviewed Chris myself with the bloggers' panel, their description of him seems absolutely spot on: ...interviewing Mr Huhne is like circling an intense, watchful cat that seems perfectly friendly but is probably quite dangerous. The article talks about Huhne's experience in business and journalism: Mr Huhne, you see
The Mirror reports: The front runner for the Lib Dem leadership was said to be fading yesterday as voting started.Nick Clegg suffered a crisis of confidence after a shaky week....And makes this remark: Clegg has said he found the past few weeks "neither fruitful nor enjoyable".
The Times interview with Nick Clegg concludes with: Mr Clegg has benefited from the edit he gets in print. His vagueness is maybe due to puppyish enthusiasm but it gives the unfortunate impression that he doesn’t have a clear point. There's more here, mostly focussing on internal ructions during the contest. Interestingly, both candidates were asked by the reporters to write the introduction
I'm running a poll on my blog asking the question 'should the Lib Dem Party be concerned with the issue of poverty?' So far not many people have bothered to vote (you're very apathetic) but of those who have, the last time I looked, 77% voted yes, with 23% choosing the 'yes but it will lose us votes' option. I am intending to write a full blog entry on the results of this poll and what they mean on sunday so if you haven't already voted please let me know your view!
It's been a busy week - Not only doing residents surveys for the three Thatcham Town Council by-elections coming up on January 10th, but also phone canvassing for the leadership election on behalf of Chris Huhne. The typical sort of comments I am getting for the latter were summed up by one man who said: "I expected to be impressed by Nick Clegg but as the campaign wore on I wasn't as much as I
Well I hope so. The fiasco over the way the government has lost data about millions of people pretty much shows we shouldn't trust them with another set of personal data. And the Times has published an opinion poll this week which shows the majority of people oppose ID cards. Hopefully the government will wake up and realise they have lost this argument and just decide not to go ahead. But in case that is just wishful thinking, we need to carry on campaigning against the cards and argue against them every time we get the chance.
Just off to a strategy day for the Youth Communications Network - the people who produce Youth Live magazine. It'll be a group of people including the young people who write and edit the magazine, members of the management committee (including me), volunteers and a few other "stakeholders". We've got a couple of people from the Merseyside Youth Association coming to facilitate. We've come such a long way since we started.. and now the magazine is pretty much established it's a good time to look at where we are going in the long term and what else we could be ...
politicalbetting asks the question are the Liberal Democrats on 21% or 23% in the latest Guardian ICM poll? No doubt somebody will be along in due course to offer a clarification. Still, it is a nice dilemma to be in after such a diffident few months. One is almost tempted to request an extension of the leadership contest and, by default, the continuation of Vince Cable's outstanding performance as our Acting Leader. Labour, on the other hand must be wishing it were all over. As Tomos Livingstone points out in today's Western Mail, Gordon Brown, faced with headlines over Northern ...
Referring to this post on his Radio Wales programme, 'Called to Order' last night, Patrick Hannan, told us that it is possible to be both stupid and grown-up. Well, yes!
Match ticket: KC50 (about one pound, fifty pence)Beer: KC25 (about 75 pence)Match programme: freeScarf: KC300 (about nine pounds) Rather strange economy, this. Instead of being a stupid tourist and buying a scarf, I could have had another twelve beers. The hilarious price of the beer in itself meant that I was obliged to have four. The Strahov Stadion is also a strange one; it is, frankly, a rubbish little thing next to what looks like a derelict stadium from Stalinist times. I am informed that the 'derelict' thing is actually the construction of what will be a sparkling new stadium ...
Sometimes I struggle to explain why I am a liberal and what it is all about. That might sound crazy, but the conversation almost always either gets lost in blue-skies philosophical maxims ("the greatest amount of individual freedom possible that does not constrain the freedom of others"), or else becomes bogged down in specifics (school choice; welfare reform). I guess the fact that I'm usually in a pub does not help, but the simple explanation has always failed me. Thanks to Rob Knight (who takes his lead from The Devil - read into that what you will!) I am remineded ... | < | November 2007 | > | ||||
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