Apparently recent comments on the governments proposal for massive housing developments in South Glos and elsewhere in the region are not being updated on the ministry website. We do no better than quote Hansard for Steve Webb's speech to the House of Commons in this week's housing debate: 'One of my constituents, Ron Morton, who chairs the Shortwood green belt campaign, rang the Government office for the south-west and asked, "Why are there no more comments since 25 September?" He was told that the official consultation website is not currently being updated with participant submissions, because "Gary is on holiday." ...
A delicious moment on Newsnight this evening when the excellent Emily Maitlis (thank God Paxman had the night off so we had some sensible questioning) asked venerable Tory peer and ex-Chancellor Lord Lawson about the government's rescue package and the long term prospects for economic policy. She asked if everything George Osborne had promised would now have to be reviewed. Lawson answered "I'm not sure he has promised anything." Quite.
In this clip, recorded today at a venue not in, adjacent to or, indeed, anywhere near a prison, he says: "Across this country, this is the agenda I have set before my fellow prisoners" Hello? Nurse, he's out of bed again.
We have just got 46 out of 50 in the pub quiz. Not quite good enough to win. We were 2nd. The winning team had 47 points. And we could have done with the money. One of our team works for an Icelandic bank and has been told today he no longer has a job as his company has gone into administration.---Sent via BlackBerry
Islington Friends of the Earth have alerted me that Fiji Water may be coming to Islington. Fiji Water is perhaps the most extreme example of the fad for getting our H20 in a bottle and as far from home as possible - in Fiji's case 10,000 miles away. Their website claims they are reducing packaging [...]
Well it had to happen eventually. That Karl Marx, eh? What a character! Working class according to Marx, means anyone who depends on a wage for survival. By this standard, most of us are working class. This would include CEOs of banks. Remarkable really. Then there's the beugeois (on general principle I'm not going to remember/look up how to spell that correctly), who are the Capitalist pigs. These are the enemy. These would be shareholders and anyone else that owns land or a business and can just sit on their arse doing nothing but watch the money role in. Finally ...
During the House of Commons debate on the massive housing developments proposed for South Gloucestershire, Communities Minister Iain Wright described the principle that brown field (previously used) land should be built on before green belt as "rigid and old-fashioned", and said that what was needed was flexibility. Speaking to the BBC outside Downing Street, Steve Webb MP said: "Every MP who was at the debate was shocked by what the Minister said. He said that the green belt was fair game. "We cannot tell developers to go to the brown field and developed areas first. They can go to the ...
It was a night hob nobbing with the best of them. First there were the bloggers; Linda Jack and Jonathon Fryer who has beaten me by posting about the event before I have had a chance to clear up. Then there were the candidates; already mentioned two and Henley by-election candidate Stephen Kearney and our very own Councillor Ann Haigh. Most importantly there were our members who campaign
My zone 1-6 Oyster card took me to Debden this evening, where Epping Forest Liberal Democrats hosted a pizza and politics addressed by Lembit Opik, MP, who is on the party presidential campaign trail, but also being motivational — or inspirational, as he put it. He had Stephen Kearney, our candidate in the recent Henley [...]
Like a number of authorities, Cornwall Council has invested some money in Landsbanki, the Icelandic Bank that has either gone bust or gone into receivership depending on who you listen to. It now appears that as 'informed investors' local authorities will not have their deposits guaranteed in the same way that individuals will. So Cornwall is set to possibly lose £5 million and other counciles the same or more. Should Cornwall and other authorities be putting money into banks like Landsbanki? Well, they should certainly be putting their money somewhere. They get huge amounts of council tax money and government ...
I wasn't especially surprised to read this little titbit of gossip on Andrew Reeves' blog. So the Tories are basically going to work with the Nats to try to ensure Labour lose Glenrothes. Given their de facto coalition in Holyrood and Alex Salmond's recent hagiographic admiration of Margaret Thatcher, it's not that much of a revelation that they are working together. I'm just amused that they are not even bothering to hide it. I agree with Andrew that the only way to send the Labour Party a message on November 6th is to vote for Harry Wills. Remember what happened ...
The weekly bout in the Commons between party leaders resumed today when the Prime Minister faced sober questions from both Cameron and Clegg on the economy. And in such extraordinary times as these, how could the focus be on anything else? Iain Dale scored the results very highly for Clegg, marking Cameron at 6, Brown [...]
I suspect most will not remember Boz Scaggs, 'Hollywood' is a great memory from the seventies - see more at : www.bozscaggs.com/
I'm just coming up for air for the first time in two days. Much of yesterday was spent chairing a seminar on the future of social housing with a panel of experts from the field, and an audience of practitioners from local government, housing associations and community development groups. The seminar was planned early in the summer as a response to the new Housing and Regeneration Bill, the Hills Report into social housing and the Cave review of housing regulation but was overtaken by events in the form of the banking crisis. There's a definite sense of moving into uncharted ...
A Labour MP quits for bus services. A Labour MP has quit her role as a ministerial aide, to have the "freedom to concentrate on beefing up the powers of local councils to take control of bus services and ensuring that a coastal path is established around the UK." You can read the news release HERE. Earlier this year Conservative MP David Davis stood down as MP and triggered a silly By Election with no serious candidate over the 42 Days scrapping through the Commons and now this Labour MP has stepped down from her role for bus services and ...
An interesting post by James Graham points out three Guardian articles which touch on issues of class. The first is about the evils of right-to-buy, where James correctly points out that the lack of a land value tax is the real problem (although neither James nor the Guardian's John Harris talks about the artificial shortage of housing generated by restrictive planning laws, which affects all
Are the Muslim youth of Britain more Radical and Extreme compared to their parents, or grandparents. That's what a lot of people think, so I thought I would in this Post put the Argument to you and you can decide and leave a comment with your verdict. They is no doubt that people who are born and bred in Britain are more likely to be traditional compared to maybe someone from an older generation. The Parents of most Asian youth in this country, walk around wearing English clothes and trying to fit into society like a normal white person. But ...
Ups and downs this week, the PC I use got infected with a virus over the weekend, and I can't shift it, and now our home internet is down, Virgin say it might take 48 hours to fix. Which is great timing, as I need to book tickets to London and arrange somewhere to stay. For tomorrow night! I'll be texting/ringing a couple people later, my usual willing victim has just moved[1], but if anyone in London can offer me a sofa (or even better, a spare bed or summat) tomorrow night and Friday night, I'd be much appreciative. See, ...
PMQs this week came from a lifeboat just off the coast of Iceland. Doug Elghorn (Reykjavik North) asked the Prime Minister just what on earth was going on? Gordon Brown, dressed as an old sea dog, a pipe clenched between his teeth and a cable knit sweater beneath a blue, roughly crafted jacket, responded that since 1997 the economy had grown under his stewardship at the fastest rate since the 19th century and that the current crisis was clearly different. He assured the 'House' that his government was looking into the situation and that the Chancellor would be making a ...
A month ago I wrote a posting bemoaning people's growing inability to read maps. The subject also featured in a Calder's Comfort Farm at the time, where I wrote: England is a palimpsest of Medieval churches, abandoned mineral railways, ruinous Gothic institutions and follies built by mad aristocrats. But you won't find them on your satnav.While writing about maps I had at the back of my mind a book that was in the library at Fields End Primary School in Hemel Hempstead in the late 1960s. (Don't look for it; it's not there anymore. The school, I mean.) That book ...
...sort of. The BBC have launched Sideloading in which you can now download programmes from the iPlayer in a lower res format to copy across to your phone or video playing handheld device. The current restrictions are that your mobile must play DRM Windows Media files and that the downloads take place on a Windows PC. This looks like another great bit of progress for the iPlayer project, just need to get myself a new phone which will play the files now.
There have been a few posts about the sort of environmental education that school pupils get now and the sort that we had when we were at school. Quite a few of them really rang true from my days at school. Steph Ashley really struck a chord with her comment about her campaigns against CFCs and [...]
Peter Black made an important speech concerning the Devolution of Wales today in the Siambr. The large circular debating theatre which is the heart of the Senedd. The speech which is delivered in an aphoristic style made easier for the speech is a call for the people of Wales to embrace the concept of devolution. The speech may be considered to be the strongest counter as yet to David Davies 'No' campaign. David Davies is a Welsh Tory M.P. who is against the Welsh Assembly government having devolved or de-centralised powers. He is in effect against the notion of the ...
I've mentioned Palin's links to the Alaskan Independence Party before. This very effective video pulls together some pretty damning evidence about her connection with the movement:
A few bloggers have been reminiscing about their school days and green credentials. Anything beyond a decade ago seems to be a bit hazy these days, but I do remember I was hardly ever at secondary school. When I was there, however, I do remember a physics teacher who once made me stand up in class for not wearing the right school jumper or my tie. I found out many things about that man from my former classmates in my late teens at college, none of them particularly pleasant. However his teaching was very good and I remember being put ...
A quick post that started out as a comment on Charlotte's blog and got too unwieldy: According to the Beeb report, the rescue package looks like this: Banks must recapitalise to the tune of £25bn by a combination of Treasury loans and looking under the cushions £25bn further will be available in exchange for preference shares. £100bn will be [...]
As a hiker myself I do appreciate the value of a coastal footpath around the UK. But is this really something to quit your government job over? Well as it's Angela Smith, Labour MP for Sheffield Hillsborough, (80 miles to the nearest seaside town, or 48 if I'm generous and do it as the distance [...]
As many of you know, I like a good bit of trash - I watch more reality tv than is good for me and I have been known to spend my hard earned cash, even during the credit crunch, on rubbish magazines which do not increase my intellectual ability. And you can tell, too - my mental arithmetic when adding up prices at the school book fair both today and yesterday was shockingly bad. My mornings are usually spent waking up to Good Morning Scotland, then watching BBC Breakfast, especially when the utterly wonderful won't hear a word against Bill ...
A few years ago, not long after I was first elected to the City Council, along with parents and pupils of Park Place Primary School, I campaigned for a light-controlled crossing across Old Hawkhill, to assist pupils and other pedestrians. The campaign was successful and a crossing was provided at the Temple Lane junction. The Parent Council at Park Place Primary School has raised its concerns that some pupils are crossing Hawkhill at the junction with Old Hawkhill (further west than the crossing) and have asked if an assessment of traffic flow and the number of pupils crossing the road ...
Ok this post pretty much directly arose from a posting over on Liberal Eye which obviously thinks the bail-outs purchase of preference shares is some kind of masterstroke. Apparently they have; "the huge merit of giving taxpayers a big stake in any bank rescued, a big say over policy (including executive remuneration) and the very real possibility of a profit in due course when the govt eventually unwinds its position." Unfortunately, for the hapless taxpayer who has just lashed £2,000 per head on these 'gems', this is pretty much totally wrong. The conditions on the executive pay are placed by ...
Charlotte and Steph have been telling us about the greenness of their school education. Now when I was at school, while I would bore my fellow students and any teachers who would listen, senseless, with the wisdom of EF Schumacher, I certainly never got any encouragement in return. My physics teachers were pro-nuclear of course, although one also signed me up to Amnesty International. It never
I have today launched a Campaign called "Politics is cool". The Whole aim of this Campaign is to give young people a insight to what Politics is and to hopefully influence, young people into getting involved with Politics. The Campaign uses Bebo as the Host for the Group and I urge all Bebo users to become members of the Campaign and to start promoting the Campaign to others. The Campaign Can be Visited at www.bebo.com/piccampaign
But does using $692bn of tax-payer's money to prop up failed businesses strike you as.... well... You know what I'm goign to say. So I won't say it. Instead I refer the honourable lady and/or gentleman to plank 5 of the Communist Manifesto: "Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly." The biggest 8 banks and building societies have been ordered to raise £25bn in capital. Should they find this tricky, the Government will give them our money, in return for preference shares. They stress that ...
The organisational revolution in US politics engineered by the Obama campaign is quietly changing the way politics work over there. Inside the Obama campaign, almost without anyone noticing, an insurgent generation of organizers has built the Progressive movement a brand new and potentially durable people's organization, in a dozen states, rooted at the neighborhood level. The "New Organizers" have succeeded in building what many netroots-oriented campaigners have been dreaming about for a decade...The architects and builders of the Obama field campaign .... have undogmatically mixed timeless traditions and discipline of good organizing with new technologies of decentralization and self-organization....Win or ...
No, not a recipe...anyone who watched Marco Pierre White's face as he tasted squirrel on the Great British Menu will know why 'tree rat in a basket' never features on pub menus... but what happens at this time of year when the squirrels, in a desperate bid to bury a winter's worth of nuts in my flowerbeds and pots, take up swearing at anything and everything that ventures into what they consider their territory. It occurred to me that I haven't resurrected the word game on this new blog and tracasserie is too good a word to let slip by ...
The banking and finance sector has just experienced the financial equivalent of the blue screen of death familiar to users of older versions of Windows. What Gordon Brown has done is the financial equivalent of a reboot involving part-nationalizing the major banks. To give credit where it is due, this is undoubtedly the right approach. This is a relief; as recently as last week Brown was talking only of liquidity issues (meaning roughly that banks had too much of their assets tied up in long-term loans etc leaving them short of ready cash for day to day operations) even as ...
The Assembly has been busier than usual this week as we once more enter new territory, what is known as a Standing Order 25 Committee to consider a petition by Pembrokeshire County Council against a Welsh Assembly Government scheme to build a three lane highway out west. I am not completely familiar with the issues but I believe that the Council want a dual carriageway instead. What this means is that a special committee of Assembly Members has been established to consider the submissions from both parties, the Council and the Government. The members are sitting in a quasi-judicial capacity ...
When the economic climate faces uncertainty, the conservative investor looks to precious metals like gold and silver as a safe haven. This is an entirely justified strategy. The Romans said that an ounce of gold would buy a man a fine suit of clothes. Considering that an ounce of gold right now will set you back over £500 - it's easy to see that it has easily kept its intrinsic value. It is unsurprising that gold and silver dealers are currently seeing unprecedented demand from private investors. After all, a share in a company can literally become worthless overnight - ...
Last week I wrote that the Leader of the Council had opted out of attending an Overview and Scrutiny panel on Job Evaluation / Equal Pay, in favour of going to a swanky dinner in Manchester. I was angry about this, but confident that at the very least the meeting could be rescheduled so that employees could get some reassurance over a process which could see many of them lose thousands in salary. Today the Leader has once again left me feeling extremely angry and disappointed, failing to agree a date for the revised meeting, and again depriving staff of ...
Government are currently in the process of setting up a register of all children in the country that will be able to track children, they are calling it Contact Point, I call it an Identity register. It will contain their name, address, date of birth and gender. It will also store any information of any contact, not details, that they have with any agency. The data from...
The trouble is, the news is just too good for me to blog about respectably at the moment. In fact, the really terrible consequence of the global economic meltdown (have you started saying that as one word, too? "Glerbleconmicmeldow"?) is the dreadful impact on our objectivity as bloggers. Witness, for example, James Graham's further descent into North [...]
Liberal Democrat Leader, Nick Clegg has called for all political parties to support the Government's banking rescue package on what he described as a "day of reckoning for the British economy". Speaking shortly after Alistair Darling announced the £50bn package, Mr Clegg described a "fundamental shift in the way we view banks" and called for the obligations banks have...
From the Thirteenth Report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights of the House of Commons and House of Lords:- We reaffirm our earlier conclusions that: *we have not seen any evidence which demonstrates that the level of threat from terrorism is growing; we call on Government to provide Parliament with the relevant evidence; *we fail to see how the Government can plausibly claim that there is a pressing need to extend further the maximum period of pre-charge detention when the existing power to detain beyond 14 days is so rarely used and had not been used for well over ...
Barely a day goes by without some chump jumping up and saying we need to define the British (or English, Scottish or Welsh) values: those elements of our national life and character that bind us together as a nation and set us apart from the dastardly foreigners. Decades ago, the wonderful Flanders and Swan had a stab with their song, declaring The English the English the English are best I wouldn't give tuppence for all of the rest Concise and to the point, I think you'll agree. And yet people have immense problems figuring out what these British (or English...) ...
Steph Ashley's been talking about the sort of pro-Green education she got during primary school. I had... a different experience. I don't remember when, exactly, but our family moved from the suburbs of Blackpool to the leafy and middle class world of East Sussex. Of course, the down side to this was being considered 'Scottish' (and then many years later after leaving the leafy and middle class world of East Sussex and returning to the violent and working class world of Blackpool's suburbs being considered 'posh'). Anyway, the lovely primary school 'down south' taught me that fossil fuels were going ...
Some religious bod on Thought for the Day on this morning Today programme said we should pay attention to the "pastoral needs" City types who have been affected by the recent financial crisis. If his argument was that they have families to feed too and they can be hurt like anyone then I could see that but what he said was that "whilst there were some rogue traders like rogue plumbers and rogue car-salesmen" there were many people of "integrity and faith who work for the public good" because they manage money markets and give to charity!!! Give me a ...
Iain Dale the Conservative Political Commentator has scored PMQ as following: Gordon Brown 7 David Cameron 6 Nick Clegg 8 Now that is something you don't see every day, Iain Dale a Tory from the heart, thinking Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown did better then Cameron. He is also quiet critical of Cameron in the post that you can read HERE.
Putting aside the two elections for presidents at the moment that I have commented on ad nauseum. There is one other election in the offing. Federal Conference reps are about to get to vote for the various party committee members for 2009/10. According to the Federal website ballot papers go in the post today. So watch for those letter boxes going flippy flappy. Internet/email/Facebook/cix/
Well, turns out that some enterprising company has gone ahead and made tobacco-less cigarettes, manufacting the things in China. It calls them 'electronic cigarettes'. It is a battery powered device that vaporises the contents of cartidges when the user inhales, giving them the hit of Nicotine and then water vapour is exhaled. There's even a special 'lady smoker' that promises users to help feel 'feminine again' while smoking. Wow. They make some bold claims, such as reducing the cost of smoking by up to 90%, and of course lacking tobacco it should be safer than ordinary smoking. (It is unclear ...
Having just become a Facebook friend of Captain Beany, otherwise known as the very orange charity fundraiser and perennial election candidate, Barry Kirk from Port Talbot, it would be remiss not to mention this little spat in the pages of the today's Western Mail: Selfridges, based in a vast art-deco headquarters which is the largest building in London's Oxford Street, has just begun selling a luxury chocolate range named Credit Crunch. But Captain Beany, who operates from his flat on Port Talbot's Sandfields housing estate, claims he got there first and the upmarket department store has infringed his trademark. Beany, ...
I will be making a speech in Plenary later on today calling on a cross-party 'Yes!' campaign to be established in preparation for a future referendum to give the Welsh Assembly full law-making powers within the confines set by the Government of Wales Act 2006. The full speech can be read here.
Quite a lot has been said elsewhere from a number of viewpoints about the sad void left where Kezia's Soapbox once stood, not least by the woman herself c/o SNP Tactical Voting. However, as Doctor Vee pointed out she was the port of call for most of us in the Scottish Blogosphere for that Labour viewpoint on matters, as he pointed out Scottish Tory Boy, The Two Doctors or myself for the Conservative, Green or Lib Dem take on things respectively*. However, with the exception of the widescale CyberNats, some of whom are PPCs or PSPCs I don't think, and ...
A. One. They stand perfectly still, hold the lightbulb in the socket and wait for the earth to revolve around them.* So the world turns and yet another long-held Lib Dem policy edges its way further towards the mainstream... Yesterday the cross-parliamentary Committee for Climate Change made a recommendation to the squeaky new Minister for Energy and [...]
The various media outlets are trying their very best to educate their audiences on the nuances of the credit crunch but it remains a pretty difficult area to comprehend for the average Joe or Josephine - in whose number I count myself. Robert Peston on the BBC website is doing very well in simplifying matters to make them almost intelligible and he hit upon one aspect of the whole government bailout which I find confusing. If the government - i.e. you and me - is going to lend banks up to £50bn to safeguard and improve their 'liquidity' and it ...
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As seen on BBC News today, an obscure word from the English language: Gove - to stare stupidly Yup, that sounds about right.
Bet you don't like that do you? Well, first of all I'm lobbying for Vince Cable to push the government into adopting our idea for all public sector managers on more than £100,000 a year to have to re-apply for their jobs to apply to you and your colleagues. Secondly, if it's now us who are paying you, we want better service. No more call centres in remote corners of the globe, but here providing jobs to replace those that your stupidity and speculation has cost us. Staff working at lunchtimes would be a good idea? Perhaps you and your ...
My thoughts are: With the, albeit hilarious, `that one` phrase, Obama saying that healthcare is a right and his Iraq put-down to McSame means that the swing states that are `leaning Obama` will become `solid Obama`. That will leave Obama free to spend more time in VA, NC and MO. As they say in the State LMAO! [...]
The Liberal Democrats Account system (LDA) allows party members to create one username and password which then work across a range of different party sites - including the members only site, the OurCampaign online petition tool, Flock Together (scroll down on the front page to the section just underneath the map and postcode search box), [...]
Liberal Democrat Leader, Nick Clegg has announced changes to his shadow cabinet team to reflect the new Government structure.
Wed 8th
13:03
Labour MP - bad times under the Tories were due to the Tory government, bad times under Labour are n...
Labour MP for Blaydon, David (call me "Dave") Anderson made an intervention in the opposition day debate on unemployment yesterday. In it, he claimed that the bad times under the last Tory government "was the direct result of Government policy, whereas what is happening today is outside the Government's control." I'm not sure whether Mr Anderson is being hypocritical, admitting his own
The business of politics is going to go through hard times, particularly for Labour and the Conservatives. Make no mistake there's a stitch-up going on between the the TOPS (two old parties) to innoculate their past mistakes. For Labour it's not so difficult as they are in power - their narrative is `Let's do the things [...]
Lib Dem Shadow Chancellor Vince Cable visited at the weekend and instead of looking at all the problems, I took him to see some local success stories.Among them a new brewery that goes from strength t...
It won't surprise anybody reading this to know that I personally do not 'wholeheartedly support' the government on this deal. So, it will be equally unsurprising that Nick Clegg's comments to that effect dismayed me; as did the fact that David Cameron seemed to be asking more probing questions about the particulars of the deal. Cameron did raise the question of what we are getting for our money, what specific restrictions will be placed on executive pay and such forth. Clegg however did not ask any such questions of the kind and in that sense it was an ineffective performance. ...
On a morning when the Chancellor of the Exchequer unveils another expensive brilliant wheeze and the markets crash down still further - must be a day with a 'y' in it - I'm still simmering about the spin swallowed whole from a couple of days ago. Remember every news outlet's breathless awe about "the first meeting of the National Economic Council," as if this was some brand new but august body that knew what it was talking about and would magically engender solutions, rather than just rebranding the same bunch of clueless Labour ministers who got us into this mess? ...
I respectively give the floor over to John McDonnell, his comments as reported on Politics Home are totally correct in pointing out how weak the bail-out is and why it shouldn't be supported; "I think this is a really poor deal. We should have been more forthright. We should have been speedier and more direct, we should have nationalised to stabilise. He's already nationalised two of them. It is drastic, but drastic measures are needed to give reassurance. This isn't a partial nationalisation...we're not getting anything in return by way of control or even of renumeration. It's virtually unenforcable if ...
You tell me in the new poll on this blog!
Courtesy of the Telegraph, the footsie 100 fell below 4250 this morning. When Labour took office it stood at 4445.
The Poll that the Lancashire Telegraph did about who to vote if a General Election was called now has closed today and I only found out about it today. A note for next time to keep visiting the Lancashire Telegraph Website, time and time again! Any way the Results are very interesting, something that will shock many Liberal Democrats and Conservatives. It will Shock us Lib Dems as the results show that we have a very, very good chance of winning more seats in East Lancashire then anywhere else in the Country. It will Shock the Conservatives and especially our ...
Via lonemagpie comes the terrible news that: Your result for The Doctor Who Companion Test...</p>Adric innerbrat: what happens when a biologist learns to knit? You get awesome knitted dissected rats and frogs! Chicken Yoghurt compares the response of the government to bankers and doley-scum. This is the best post I have read all week.
I tend to think that the UK proposals with Tier 1 capital for the banks are better than the USA proposals which involve the government buying "toxic" debt. Although some of the "toxic" debt may indeed be quite sweet and undervalued what the USA proposals do is to reward the shareholders. What the UK proposals do is to underpin the banks so that the government gets its money back, but the
Not what you want to see when you walk into a job interview. Who'd work for them eh?
Bath MP Don Foster yesterday spoke in the Westminster Hall debate on the South West Regional Spatial Strategy, and called for a proper test to make sure that all brownfield sites were developed before areas in the green belt. Speaking in the debate, Don said, "[There is an] urgent need to have a sequential test so that we stick to the rule of developing brownfield, derelict...
Wed 8th
10:02
LDV members' survey (1): reshuffle reaction, and time to bring back Charles, Ming and Paddy!
On Monday night, Lib Dem Voice e-mailed party members signed up to our Forum asking a number of questions about the current state of British politics, including the reshuffle. On Tuesday morning Nick Clegg decided to spike our guns by announcing a mini-reshuffle of the Lib Dem shadow cabinet. The survey's still live for those [...]
I first took interest in a US election campaign when Hubert Humphrey took on Richard Nixon. That was 1968 when I was nine. I was interested in that election because of the shape of Hubert Humphrey's head (left). He looked a bit like a funny cartoon charcter. I have particularly watched in great frustration as Gore, then Kerry, failed to "win" the Presidency (the former case being highly
7.30am (or thereabouts): Chancellor Alistair Darling announces a £50 billion rescue package for the banking industry. 9.13am: Stock markets look like this: (as seen on BBC News) Now that's injecting confidence into the banking system.
It's probably a little mean of me to dust off the yellow blowtorch that is the Media Moron Watch for this piece from politics.co.uk. It's by no means a hatchet job - interviews with Clegg never are because it's generally obvious, as here, that the journalist likes him. And he takes on board Clegg's main [...]
I have in the last couple of days had a number of posts being written against me and my blog. I have found them inappropriate, but I have been Liberal about the whole scenario and have actually continued reading these Posts and taking Positive Comments on board and laughing at negative ones. On a Post that you can read HERE. Julian Harris makes a Comment that I thought would inform the rest of the readers on the Blog sphere, but obviously it didn't leading to about 4 Posts being written against my blog. The Comment by Julian is: We may ...
Alistair Darling spent the night on a deal involving a few tens of billions of taxpayers' pounds to save the banking system, the economy and the world (they'll be using this as the plot for series four of Heroes - wonder which superpower Alistair will get). Will it work? Is it the best thing to do? Don't ask me - try someone who knows more than me about economics. Mind you, I'll eat my chequebook if, as Mr Darling is claiming, the taxpayer's going to get all the money back in three years with a bit extra on the top. ...
Polls, Polls and many more Polls. Now the Lancashire Telegreph have done a Poll for who to vote if a General Election was called now. And I think Everyone from Lancashire should Vote. You Can take part in the Poll HERE. P.S If you have a blog, please add a Link to this Poll on your Blog! Update: This Poll is now Closed
We have a new bird table in our front garden in London. Richard decided to buy a new one yesterday. He hangs feeders from a tree but that tree has now died and we are due to chop it down.So when I left to go to work this morning, there was a great big, overfed grey squirrel sitting on the bird table munching its way through all the bird food. Greedy bastard! Well, at least they aren't eating all
Can you remember this Post that I did. Well the Conservatives really had a banter over that. At Conference they made Body Size Cut Outs of Miliband holding the Banana. I didn't know they had done this until I visited the BBC's website only to see this picture below and the Caption under it. A Quote from the BBC Website as the Caption under the image: "The Conservatives picked up on the photo of David Miliband holding a banana"
111 Labour MP's are calling for a full smacking Ban. They want to make it illegal for Parents to use force against Children. The 111 MP's are mostly Labour MP's and the Campaign is lead by Labour MP Kevin Barron. The Problem that these MP's aren't looking at is that sometimes Children need a little force to make them do things in life. And a Parent rather give a Child a little smack in their youth to discipline them, instead of them getting that Smack and many more on the Playground at School or when they have grown up they ...
{rh-at-east-anton.jpg} Local residents have been asking for an update on works at East Anton. Today a letter from me and county councillor Robin Hughes will be delivered to all homes in the area. The text of the letter is as follows "As part of our commitment to keep you informed we will be issuing regular newsletters on the progress of the development and how it affects you. At present the developers have outline planning permission only which means they cannot yet start building houses but can start on the infrastructure of the area. House building on the southern end of ...
Rolling a hard 6 is my way of saying that something is a massive gamble. The government and taxpayers will have to pray for a hard 6 after the statement this morning. It is to be welcomed that according to the Treasury statement; {Check Spelling} "In reaching agreement on capital investment the Government will need to take into account dividend policies and executive compensation practices and will require a full commitment to support lending to small businesses and home buyers." However, there should be full transparency in these deals and the terms and conditions should be a matter of public ...
Duncan Borrowman and Mark Valladares have both written thoughtful pieces on how to avoid situations where the relationship between PPC and local party breaks down. Mark calls for more support for candidates. Duncan goes further by outlining some of the situations, including bullying and harrassment by small groups within local parties, that leads to selected candidates quitting. There are two sides to this - prevention and cure. Local Parties sometimes have way too high expectations of the amount of tme a PPC can give to them - and will accept no less than 24/7. Perhaps the selection preparation should include ...
Writing in The Times about England's unsuccesful attempts to pair Lampard and Gerrard in midfield, Martin Samuel repeats an old story: As double acts go, these two have been about as popular with audiences as Mike and Bernie Winters at the Glasgow Empire (Mike's opening patter died a death and when Bernie then appeared with his famously huge grin from behind the curtain, a voice in the front row cursed: "Och, Christ, there's two of them.")
In 2007 a man proud of his knowledge of the banking sector said this: "Scotland is not flourishing. We have the lowest long-term growth in the EU and that is because we do not have the financial flexibility to give Scotland a competitive edge. Ireland, Norway and Iceland - our three neighbours and all in the top six wealthiest in the world - are no more talented or entrepreneurial, they have no advantage in terms of skills, geography or people. They do have the ability to choose their own direction and work to their strengths - an option denied Scotland ...
To be honest, I've struggled with the first two rounds of debate season. I tried to watch both on iPlayer but found myself rapidly not caring about either. Maybe that's a function of my having made my mind up long before even the primaries, but it didn't feel right to be disinterested in it. And so I promised myself to watch at least one of the debates live, which is why I'm in front of News 24
I was one of the first wave of kids to be educated on environmental issues from primary school age in the UK. In the late eighties, I pestered my mum into spending what was a fortune out of her budget at the time on a catalytic converter for her car. I designed posters to stop people from using sprays that contained CFCs. I was the captain of my primary school's Environmental Quiz Team, and got to travel to other schools to take part in panel quizzes at assemblies and kick ass with my impressive knowledge of biodiversity and green issues. ...
Thank you to the 169 people who responded to the Flock Together survey - both the bits where we asked you to rank new ideas - and the bits where we asked you for your own ideas. Both parts of the survey have thrown up some very helpful ideas - saying what's important - what's not important - what needs fixing - and what doesn't Starting with the 'quantitative' ideas, five ideas popped to the top (one of which we've already done) Full integration into the main party website FT events now appear on the main party website. I'd love ...
Today is a rather bitter-sweet day in many ways. I won't pretend that I am not disappointed with a letter I received from the Council this morning. I dispute some of the statements made within it. My motivation was to protect my personal business interests and there are other interested parties involved as well. The ruling sets an unfortunately precedent as does the subsequent conduct of persons unnamed. Allowing "open season" on members of the local business community will not encourage future investment in the area. As a professional trainer who undertakes a lot of face-to-face communication in the UK ...
In the debate tonight I hope he plays it cool and and smart - show up that smirking snake-eyed McSame for who he is. Meanwhile out in cult lands Sarah has been rousing the Republicans who were going to vote Republican anyway - you know things are looking bad when someone like her has to go [...]
54) Catherine Harper, Intersex (Oxford: Berg 2007, ISBN 9781845201838). I originally ordered this when I was researching the legal position regarding surgery on intersex children as part of my Master's, but publication was delayed till after my deadline, so I have only now got round to reading it. Harper is a somewhat surprising author on this subject, being an expert in architecture and design and apparently not herself intersex, but she explains that she has been interested in the subject since childhood, when she noticed that an intersex individual in her neighbourhood was being badly treated. The book interweaves an ...
The BBC reports that Alastair Darling is to unveil a rescue package for the banking sector.... Simple question; one which I would have posed in terms of $700bn for what if i had happened to be American. £50bn of rescue package and what is the taxpayer getting in return?? Obviously it is hard to comment without concrete details but it is my view that the government should not be supported on this unless, at a bare minimum, the money comes with stringent regulatory strings attached. Also, some of this money should go towards guaranteeing savings; if it doesn't then their ...
