Taking a break from canvassing, writing and delivering leaflets in our North Road ward by-election, I went with some colleagues from Darlington Lib Dems on a short jaunt along the A67 to Yarm, for a "hot fork buffet" with Lembit Opik. Readers who are not part of the Lib Dems will not be aware that we are in the midst of a Presidential election campaign. Lembit is one of the candidates,
Last week's reference to my Labour colleagues on Cardiff Council gave me cause to consider my reticence to this point towards blogging on council matters. At one level, this blog was never going to become a repository for ward news because that sort of thing was never its purpose when it started two years and one major city ago and it still isn't. Sooner or later I'm sure there will be a Llandaff
An article in our regional newspaper, the Evening Chronicle, caught my attention recently. "Residents browned off over their missing bins" claimed the headline. The story was about a street of houses in Lib Dem run Newcastle which had not received recycling bins for garden waste. It turns out that these houses had gardens that were far too small to qualify for the garden waste bins. (The garden
Roy Hattersley is on; I hope you've all got brollies! And Baroness Warsi... Oh dear. Reactions edited in as they happen... Immigration Question 10.40: quelle surprise; Warsi is talking testicles, and Roy Hattersley is talking sense... 10.43: go audience member! And yay Alex Salmond for agreeing with her. It'd be nice to see a bit more defence of the principle of migration, though. 10.45: editor of the FT making sense, too, and pointing out that most of the recent migrants are leaving now because of the economy. 10.47: AWESOME interruption from the audience to the council leader! Go speccy guy! ...
{Green glass bottle} My latest column for the Highgate Handbook and Muswell Hill Flyer is about recycling: Here's a question - why do we still need bottle banks when we have doorstep recycling? A relevant question as Haringey Council is on the brink of scrapping them. Doorstop recycling is great idea in principle. It responds to the reality of any time poor Londoner; there aren't enough hours in the day to do everything let along make it to the bottle bank. Green boxes are an easy and convenient method that lots of Councils have chosen to increase the amount of ...
Tristan Mills has a somewhat contentious post up attacking public-sector and pseudo public-sector employees as parasites. While I don't agree entirely with his taxonomy (I wouldn't call people providing front-line public services or line-managing people who do parasites) he has a good point. People who receive a salary from the government without providing a useful service in exchange (most
You can never tire of a bit of silly slapstick. Watch this video (below) of a South African Parliamentarian on a politics program. I laughed, a lot. Very immature, but amusing, nonetheless.
The 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi — a distinguished lawyer and Secretary-General of the Human Rights Centre in Iran — was due to give a series of lectures in Malaysia during the first week of November, on the theme of 'Bridges: Dialogues towards a Culture of Peace', under the auspices of the [...]
'Wit and Wisdom' thinks he knows what libertarianism means (and calls many liberals libertarians) in an amazing display which lacks wit or wisdom: This is our vision. Society is expensive: let's abolish it. Truly only something an authoritarian could say. The libertarian (and liberal) vision is one of allowing society to flourish. The state prevents this, it does [...]
Are you tuning in tonight for BBC1's flagship political discussion show (10.35 pm, and online)? If so, you'll have the pleasure of seeing Jo Swinson, Ed Davey's deputy at foreign affairs and Lib Dem MP for East Dunbartonshire, whose talents many of you would like to see put to full use in the party's shadow [...]
Femme-de-R's investigation of the first Liberal Democrat presidential candidate to be beaten by Lembit Opik inspired me to do some sleuthing of my own. Bedford Newhall Capital turns out to be a brass plate company. Its registered office address is c/o a firm of professional company administrators. It doesn't say what its principal business is in its Companies House filings. And it hasn't
I have been asked by Liberator magazine to write an article about the defecting of Sajjad Karim MEP and how it has effected the ethnic minority vote. If you would like to give me some pointers about him defecting and its effects leave them as a comment.
I am heading home to Gateshead a day earlier than usual. I am being interviewed tomorrow afternoon by the BBC for Panorama. The interview is about coal mining, or more specifically, opencast mining.There was an application three years ago for an opencast scheme in my ward. I led the campaign against on the Gateshead side of the border (Derwentside was affected as well). We won the battle at
From David Ottewell's blog for the Manchester Evening News: "Mr Woolas has taken up more positions on immigration than someone in training with the Kama Sutra."
Earlier this month, in discussing a Shropshire Star article which described how the government had extended the period during which farmers can use heavy machinery on waterlogged soil to save crops from rotting in the field, I asked: But why do farmers need government dispensation before they can use machinery in this way? Perhaps it is bad for the land to do it. But farmland has owners, so why can't we assume that they will not damage their asset unless they have good reason, such as saving a crop?This question has now been raised in the Lords. Yesterday's Hansard records ...
It seems a very opportune time to dredge up this old classic. IMHO it represents the apotheosis of Alice Cooper. It beats the dreaded "Schools Out" by a country mile.
With everything that has been going on around the world, namely banks been propped up by governments and governments folding, it is easy to wonder what tomorrow will bring. (hang ,on just got to stop myself breaking out into " the sun will come out tomorrow"........ there..... deep breath!). Apparently Super Gord, no doubt with pants on outside his suit, has said the dreaded "R" word today and shops have confirmed we are spending less (I know, who would have thought it!). So that's it then we are in for a tough time. Of course it's all relative, I may ...
Sarah Palin has been one of the political phenomena of 2008. On the one hand, she energised the Republican base, for a time. Someone had to do it. On the other, liberals - my side of politics - initially did not know how to respond to the youthful "hockey mom" with kooky views about global warming and much else. Some of the commentaries, from both sides of the Atlantic, were simply embarrassing. What the voters think matters more. Today, syndicated columnist Froma Harrop explains the impact that Sarah Palin has had on her. Ms Harrop is an "independent" -- that's ...
Exciting news about my local museum from the Harborough Mail: Work to revamp Harborough Museum to allow it to display one of the most significant Iron Age finds in Britain is to start next week (Oct 27).The South East Leicestershire Treasure - a haul of more than 5,000 silver and gold coins and a silver-plated Roman helmet found in a field near Harborough seven years ago - is due to go on display in the museum from spring 2009 in a £934,000 project.The museum will close on Monday to allow the improvement work to go ahead in preparation for its ...
{Landale Close North} {Landale Close South} Several more tree preservation orders have been served on trees and woodland in Enham Alamein. This is the next stage of a survey of all of the trees in the village which I requested in April of last year. The first series of TPOs covered the memorial trees on Newbury Road. This latest series is in two parts. The first covers trees along Newbury Road in front of the factory, in and around Landale Close and around Dunhills Lane and Greenfields. The second order covers hedges and trees around the playing fields on Knightsbridge ...
Given the comments to this morning's entry, I thought a poll was in order: View Poll: Comedy Gold? I think there is a certain reluctance among the male of the species to admit that cocks are inherently amusing in a way that vaginas aren't. Vaginas don't try to escape from your underwear and have a look about to see what's going on. Penises, on the other hand, love to jump out at every opportunity. Yet, when one does this in front of you and you (quite naturally) burst into giggles, one tends to be greeted with (in a baffled, slightly ...
The latest game in the World Championship, a Slav with Anand playing White, ended in a draw after 36 moves. At one time Kramnik looked worse, but he held on easily enough. You can find the annotated game at Chessdom. The match score now stands at 5-2 to Anand. There will be 12 games in total.
Commenting on the Law Lords' ruling against allowing the Chagos Islanders to return home, Liberal Democrat Shadow Foreign Secretary, Edward Davey said: "This is a devastating verdict for both the Chagos Islanders and Britain's reputation around the world. "Removing the Chagossians in the 1960s was a scandalous decision. Yet this Government has continued to mistreat these people in the face of opposition from the UN. "Regardless of the legal arguments, the Government has a moral responsibility to allow these people to at last return home. "They must also come clean about the rendition activity that has taken place on these ...
Tories attempt to delay vote on key resolution - Watson Members of the European Parliament were expected to secure a resolution today demanding that body scanners which reveal passengers' naked bodies at security check points must not get an EU go-ahead without a full public debate on the implications for privacy and human rights. Graham Watson MEP Liberal Democrat for the South West and Gibraltar said: "Travellers need to know exactly what the images display, their right to opt for an alternative search, and how they can have confidence that intrusive and sensitive images will not be misused. Although claims ...
Thu 23rd
18:28
Huhne refers Osborne to Electoral Commission; Baker refers Osborne to Parliamentary Standards Commis...
It's been a busy day for two of the Lib Dems' most tenacious shadow cabinet members today, with both Chris Huhne and Norman Baker urging investigations into Tory shadow chancellor George Osborne's donation discussions with Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska. Chris Huhne wrote to the Chairman of the Electoral Commission, George Sam Younger*, asking him to [...]
This caught my eye over on Guido Fawkes blog; "A Guido co-conspirator who is a Conservative District Councillor has just been contacted by the Times about whether they think that Osborne should "go". The Times hack said they were phoning round the Tory 'grass roots'. The journalist then said that; Most of the Conservatives I have spoken to have said that Osborne should leave by the weekend. What do you think?' Nothing leading in that line of questioning at all." So, will he stay or will he go??
It has been a busy 24 hours made worse by the problems I am having uploading the video from Tuesday's To blog or not to blog event. The file is too big and I need to find a way to break it up into smaller videos but have not had the time to do this as yet. Once I have overcome this technical issue I will post on that debate. In the meantime it is only fair to point out that blogging will be light to non-existent until the beginning of next month. Do not fear (or rejoice too soon), ...
One of the party's policy emails dropped into my inbox today - this one looking at the credit crunch and how it's affecting people on what Obama and McCain would call "Main Street, not Wall Street". It sets out four actions to help people out: 1. Cutting taxes for struggling families so you've got more money in your pocket. The Liberal Democrats will cut taxes for people on low and middle incomes, raising them for the richest so the tax cuts are affordable. 2. Lowering energy bills so you can afford to keep warm this winter. As wholesale fuel prices ...
Watching a video today about party funding with a focus on the Conservatives and Lord Ashcroft with little remarks from me calling out "scum" every time Cameron appeared, and someone appeared in the video that made me laugh out load. It was Norman lamb the MP that was given the best sort of opposition when the Conservatives put up against him their pride and joy and best political commentator Iain Dale. I sometimes just look at this page and think, What a mistake the silly Conservatives made putting Iain up as a Candidate! We all learn from mistakes and maybe ...
Was watching a documentary all about earthship houses while ironing, haven't finished it yet (ran out of t-shirts) but was beguiled by their gorgeously uplifting optimistic guilt-free greeness, quirky build and beautiful bottleglass walls. Was looking up something else and came upon the concept of solar ponds where water saturated with salt absorbs and retains heat for longer and now my mind is thinking of those walls full of empty glasss bottles and wondering if there isn't a way to fill them with a saturated salt solution to increase solar absorption... perhaps it only works on a large scale. There ...
Folk singer Sandy Denny, followed by a host of others over the years, accurately summed up my general mood when she sang "Who knows where the time goes?" In answer to her question, all I can do is shrug my shoulders, because I really have no idea. Today has entirely passed me by in a blaze of meetings and emails. I had a very odd conversation with a Council officer at lunchtime about a road he was very concerned about. I had to tell him that I'd never heard of it and that it wasn't in my ward, nor had ...
Elwyn Tinklenberg can't really have thought he would have much hope of unseating the incumbent Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann in her Minnesota district - until she went on MSNBC last Friday and called for investigations to root out the anti-American members of Congress. For anti American, you can pretty much substitute the word Liberal. I didn't believe it until I heard it for myself Since Friday, the money has been flowing into Tinklenberg's campaign coffers. $1.3 million will buy a lot of air time in 2 weeks so it looks like Ms Bachmann's jacket is on a very shooglie peg. ...
As loads of you know the Overground North London Line has been undergoing some changes to the track - improvements to cope with heavier freight as well as wider enhancements to the line. This has led to the line being closed for weeks now - but the end is in sight. I wanted to share this picture - which I suspect will be quite a rare one in years to come - it's taken from the foot of South Hill Park / Parliament Hill over the fence by the peace garden in Hampstead and shows the sleeper concrete blocks stacked ...
Commenting on today's admission by the Government that some police forces have been under-reporting violent crimes, Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Huhne said: "The failure to tackle serious violence is an alarming blemish on the otherwise encouraging fall in overall crime." "These figures show that police forces have been understating the seriousness of some of the most...
Mrs Brown was on a secret Campaign trail in Glenrothes according to the Times and Brown has asked all Labour members to come down on the 6th of November to help out. Labour is giving this seat all it can as they think they can truly take this seat. With all the other by-elections since May 2008 being lost at a parliamentary level by the Labour party they think they can win this one as they have pulled of the big banking bail out deal! But can they actually win it?
Commenting ahead of the release of UK GDP figures tomorrow, which are expected to show the first quarter of negative growth for 16 years, Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor, Vince Cable said: "It is highly likely that for the first time in 16 years we will see that the British economy is shrinking." "Millions of people are already feeling the effect of the credit crunch on the real...
A great line up on the panel of Question time tonight, with Baroness Warsi representing the Conservatives. According to a letter that I once come across Warsi was invited to a Conservative event in Pendle (my former borough of residence) after the May 2008 local election. She wouldn't have come to Pendle if she had to meet the silent Cllr, thank God he is a Labour Cllr!
A Post that I wrote yesterday morning (which has been lost) was used to pose a question yesterday evening on Sky News according to Stephen Glenn. Just shows how Powerful I am in the world of Political Commentary or doesn't it.
A man doing his share of housework or childcare will be entirely unremarkable and men who do this will not be considered particularly 'wonderful' and they won't be considered as 'helping' their partner....they will just be being a normal human being doing the stuff that they're responsible for. I will not be considered 'lucky' for living with a man who does his own share (and, gosh, even more 'amazing', doesn't wait for me to ask him to). Women will no longer talk about trying to 'get' men to 'help' with the kids. Men who go part time or even give ...
The Group of people who Gordon Brown has called terrorists, no not Al-Qaeeda but the Icelandic people have made a website to tell Brown and Darling that they aren't terrorists. So why has our Government frozen all their assets which lead to the savings of Lancashire County Council getting held up in their country? Damn out silly Labour Government!
Last night the SNP raised a motion in the House of Commons opposed to the HBOS take over by Lloyds TSB. Only on Sunday their leader, the First Minister, MSP for Gordon, MP for Banff and Buchan was calling for a rethink on the scenario. He said there were "highly legitimate" questions to the raised. He went so far as to say: "With so much at stake and so much public money involved, I think we have theright to ask, is this in the public interest of Scotland?"Well last night the SNP had their chance vote over some of those ...
With all the other posts lost in the cyber crash to this blog and me sick and tired with the silent Cllr Asjad Mahmood representing my ward in Pendle Council I have made some changes to this blog and life. This is a sort of clean slate for me and this blog! From now on this blog will not hold any Pendle related posts unless they have connections with the Parliamentary seat of Pendle and for scandals from Pendle visit the blog of a anonymous Pendle Blogger Pendle Truth I have also left home and become a "Poli-hippy" as my ...
I wrote this post for Eurodefense UK - www.eurodefense.co.uk Few reforms are needed more urgently in Europe today than the forging of a coherent and, as far as possible, single EU foreign policy and yet few reforms are less likely to see the light of day in the current political climate. The blame for this must [...]
After a sterling effort by a truly inspiring number of helpers we managed to deliver just under 4,000 leaflets in 24 hours. I have a feeling that several of us will be sitting with our feet soaking this evening and mental note to self to wear walking boots next time I go out! The only scars I bear are on my knuckles - we live in an area of well insulated letter boxes and anyone who has ever done a leaflet drop will know what an assault course for the hands they can be! My heartfelt thanks to everyone for ...
The problem of a disinterested electorate has been a longstanding and somewhat irritating problem for the big three political parties for the last few years. It's not actually a new phenomenon - the voting percent began to fall in 1992 when John Major was given a mandate to allow the Tories to govern for five more years. The voting percent fell again in 1997, then 2001, then 2005. That, in short, means this problem of an increasingly apathetic public has been with us for at the very least 16 years. It's also not as if it's ignored by the mainstream ...
A tweet arrived earlier in the week from the official UKParliament twitter account with a link to this wonderful clip about Big Ben and the world-famous iconic clock at one end of the Houses of Parliament. It's just one of a series of official Youtube tours of the Palace of Westminster, so if [...]
I heat my house through Scottish Gas, they also cover my electricity. Three months ago they reappraised my monthly gas direct debit downwards by 50%. However, yesterday I received a letter telling me they were increasing my direct debit upwards by 66% a month. So now I will be paying £5 more than I was two quarters ago. My account is also currently in credit. Paying by direct debit, the little information leaflet enclosed with the bill, eases your worries over your fuel bills. "We reassess your bills to spread your payments evenly through the year" says a little graph. ...
After spending $150,000 on her wardrobe, did no-one think to check whether she was wearing a "Vote Democrat" scarf?
Lambeth Council has given planning permission for a 35 storey tower block (and a lower 6 storey block) at 143 to 161 Wandsworth Road. This is the old office block opposite Sainsbury's at Nine Elms, on the junction of Wandsworth Road and Wyvil Road. Whatever your views on the plans, it will dominate the local landscape, and as local councillors we were especially worried about the impact it can have on the neighbouring Wyvil Estate. Liberal Democrat Councillors also wanted the Council to finalise its longer term vision for the area - in consultation with local people - before agreeing ...
Welcome back to my blog, I have had some sort of technical problem that has lead to the blog being destroyed and all the posts have been lost in the process. I will soon get it back and running like before!
Thu 23rd
14:20
George Osborne and the Aluminium Oligarch - why its a non-story and why it should matter
So poor old Gideon is in a spot of hot water of an alleged request for dodgy donations. What a familiar tale. To improve matters further, his old fellow room smashing mate Nat Rothschild has turned against him. What a great little tabloid scandal. Except, everyone is treating this like its a real political scandal. Not a UK registered voter, via a company, £50,000 (sharp intake of breath)... the shock, the horror. But... This is a total NON-STORY. Oleg Deripaska made his money by stealing Russia's natural resources and, ahem, "aggressive competitive strategies" (the list of people he's had killed ...
I wouldn't normally bother with the vomitings of Mad Mel Phillips, but this one has been noticed for her quite touching explanation of the current financial turmoil. Touching, that is, in an everything-is-about-my-pet-hates kinda way. She writes: I see this financial breakdown, moreover, as being not merely a moral crisis but the monetary expression of the broader degradation of our values - the
I've pulled together a trio of excellent posts/articles to recommend to you. Now, I don't always agree with Polly Toynbee but she's spot on here with her assertion that the delay on debating the various abortion amendments on the HFE Bill had more to do with keeping the DUP sweet than anything that the House of Lords could have done! And a very interesting post (and comments) from Laurie Penney on Liberal Conspiracy. The current Labour's crusade against sex workers is based on some very dodgy evidence. Links from the excellent commenter Susan Hammond - I started reading a very ...
Mister Stephen is rather excited about the route for the Tour de France 2009 which has been revealed today. As he likes both F1 and le Tour he is quite excited of the prospect that le Grand Départ is in Monaco and seeing as this will need a spectacular back drop for the finish, it may well finish on or near parts of the Grand Prix circuit in Monte Carlo. The cyclists, who may or may not include Mister Yellow Wristband, then will cycle along the Mediterranean coast. Before leaving Barcelona to head into the Pyrenees. They will then head ...
The mystery deepens - a quick scout about Google, LinkedIn and Facebook reveals he works in financial services and may be some sort of investment banker or hedgie. His Facebook profile says he attended Royal Holloway in 2000 and is currently at Bedford NewHall Capital. Googling this doesn't turn up anything useful except that the company is registered to 92A Forest Road, London, E17 7JQ (
For the second time in two weeks, many eyes turn to Alaska for the outcome of an ethics case. This time it involves US Senator Ted Stevens, previously famous for repeatedly describing the internet as "TOOBS". The jury is out in the court case involving Stevens. As Votemaster notes: If he "is found guilty of having accepting lavish gifts and then concealing them on his Senate disclosure forms,
Watching old Trek stars fight is like watching my parents beat each other up. I think it is fair to say that, snub or no snub, it is William Shatner who comes out the worse from this video:
Alex Salmond has 3 paid jobs - MSP for Gordon, MP for Banff and Buchan and First Minister of Scotland. A formidable workload, wouldn't you think? Despite that, the Glenrothes by-election seems to be one of his top priorities at the moment - he has been there 6 times so far. Who is running the country while he's out there putting his political interests first? LibDig This!
On current figures production is Jun 86.51 Jul 87.80 Aug 86.78. September is expected to drop about 1mbd. Estimated global demand is Q3 86.51 Q4 88.03. Q4 has heating demand in the northern hemisphere. We can see that production has been greater than demand for almost a year now, but looks like going back into an excess of demand over production. If OPEC manage to contract supply a bit then
An application has been received for the erection of detached rear garage and provision of new vehicle access at 144 The Hollow. The application was first registered on 15th October 2008 and has a decision date of 10th December 2008. The application number is 08/03845/FUL and you can view the application by following the link on the application number. Any...
A highly enjoyable centenary event took place at Blackness Library yesterday afternoon (here's me pictured right complete with centenary sash!) There was a really good turnout for the library's 100th birthday. Earlier that day, I had four site visits with the Council's road safety officer regarding traffic and pedestrian crossing issues across the West End. Later on, we had another planning meeting for the West End Christmas Week - plans are taking good shape - more on this nearer to Christmas Week, which this year runs from 22nd to 29th November.
The Lib Dem presidential manifestos tell me that Ros Scott was Group Leader on Suffolk County Council and a non-Executive Director of Anglia TV, and that Lembit was Global HR Training Manager for P&G. Chandila Fernando's manifesto says he has industry experience in banking, catering, etc., works in business development and has 'been involved in a variety of political, community and commercial
Apparently Launceston Rugby Football Club (I do their press and photography on a voluntary basis) are being sued by New Zealand! It all stems from the use of the words 'All Blacks'. LRFC have been known as the Cornish All Blacks since they were formed in 1948. In those days of austerity, finding complete matching sets of rugby kit was very difficult and expensive. The players of the newly formed club therefore sought to produce matching kit from whatever was available. Some players took other kits and dyed them to a uniform colour and black was the easiest to match. ...
For months now, families across the country have felt the pinch as fuel and food prices have spiralled out of control. They have watched as financial institutions hit the rocks and have seen the great lengths the Governments has been prepared to go to in order to bail them out. As they read of the billions of [...]
The American Declaration of Independence opens with a famous bare-faced lie: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. The "truths" were anything but self-evident. If they had been, there'd have been no need to mention them. (I'm far from convinced that any of them at all are true). But why was it so important that the lie was included? And how it can give us a little more clarity in the current ...
You will be aware that I'm an election junkie - stats I love'em! The best election map website in my view is here The best thing about it is if you click on 04 it shows you the counties in each state and the percentages for Bush/Kerry. If you click on 06 congressional races it shows you [...]
Charlotte Gore is in full swing again; bemoaning the fact that there is no party which will defend 'classic liberalism'. One wonders if she thinks that David Lloyd George was a 'classical liberal' or she thinks he was a horrible 'red'. James Graham wrote an excellent piece in The Guardian flagging-up the so-called 'Peoples Budget' of 1909 and saying it should be a model for Nick Clegg in 2009. The budget of 1909 is interesting because it was this budget that essentially established the principle that taxation can and should be used to fund social welfare. It was also redistributive ...
Trivial as it may seem the clothes-horse` saga for Sarah Palin has legs! The problem is not in the fact that she's dressed herself to the nines - it's about how this clicks with the Republican message. In a sense it seems a multi-layered issue - at once trivial and serious. 1. As the McCain campaign has [...]
For Will: the blogging discussion on the Today programme, which is hilarious in its illumination of John Humphries as a technophobic dinosaur, bless him. burkesworks? I saw this and thought of you. Ten Very Good reasons to grow a beard. I am almost tempted to try... Can this be true? Are they finally going to make proper sex education compulsory? I am astounded that there are people who think that kids should not be taught about contraception till they are at least 13 though. I had lost my virginity by then, and I wasn't the first in my class either. ...
"Budding lawyers seeking advice and support in their efforts to join the legal profession will be helped by a Government initiative launched today by Justice Minister Lord Bach." - Ministry of Justice Then they have to stump up £15k per annum fees and live in London working more than full time hours studying. According to the Sutton Trust, 81% of current judges have an Oxbridge degree.
Andy points to an interesting AdBusters article about morality in virtual worlds that asks, among other things, why many people intuitively seem to make more allowances for killing in virtual worlds than they do for rape or prostitution in those same worlds. That does seem odd, given the prevalence of cultural memes in which real-life rape is trivialised, and I don't have an answer for it at the moment. Thoughts? I was also struck by the way the Adbusters article characterises religious morality. What is presented is actually for the most part characteristically Christian morality, with its emphasis on thoughts ...
Evidence of the too much gravy train...
Baroness Ros Scott is winning the poll for next Liberal Democrat President at www.colin-ross.org.uk
I voted against the programme motion on the basis that it was curtailing debate wrongly. I voted for a number of amendments, but against one that simply messed up the wording. I then voted against the Third Reading. The general reasoning was that the GMC continue to refuse to investigate unethical research. Hence we need as tight as possible criminal controls on research until the regulatory
Now that I am reunited with a decent network connection, I can quote more fully exactly what Nick Clegg was thinking at 10.04pm on Monday (see below). Why, you might ask, was some journo oik phoning up the Cleggster to ask him what he was thinking at such a precise time? Well, apparently it is the precise moment of the day when we are at our most creative (as opposed to 6.25am when, apparently (
The new edition of Liberator magazine includes a questionnaire of all three candidates for the Liberal Democrat presidency. We asked the following six questions: Q.1 - What relevant experience will you bring to the presidency? Q.2 - The presidency has three functions that do not necessarily sit well together - representing the party to the leadership, acting as [...]
While millions of Americans are struggling with the economic downturn and wondering if their jobs will survive, Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin has been splashing the cash on clothes at the expense of the Republican National Committee and a Republican consultant. We have known her for some 55 days now and in that time $150,000 has been spent on clothes for her campaign appearances. Apparently she hasn't worn the same outfit twice. I'm sure hockey moms all across America will feel that the carefully crafted "I'm Just Like You" image will be wearing a bit thin. Anyway, she has ...
Here's one thing about the Icelandic deposits disaster that caught my attention last week - and it illustrates the whole, sorry approach to the release of information by the Labour council. It's the following extract from a statement issued by the Council (but only after sustained pressure from Lib Dem leader Robert Gorrie) which attempts to set out where the money went: "The total amount of money which the Council has invested in Icelandic banks is £37 million. This money is spread across three banks: . Landsbanki in which the Council has £15.2 million Glitnir Bank in which the Council ...
I work at an engineering consultancy where the above question would get people agitated. My environmental colleagues would harrumph,"sustainability is sustainable by definition - you nincompoop!" But is that true? I'm not so sure... a Back to basics "Its not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self interest." Adam Smith 1776 Now, I happen to think that Adam Smith had a point. Unless 'sustainability' activity is embedded in the very core of a business so that it becomes indistinguishable from 'business as usual' ...
Three weeks ago I posted a video of Ramsay MacDonald. So here is his colleague in the National government, Stanley Baldwin, also appealing for support at the 1931 general election. Note how much more at home Baldwin is with the new medium of film. Note too that he grows several inches when mentioning "the Empire".
Warning, this post contains a picture of a dead chicken. An odd couple of days, one that left me quite demoralised (after an initial burst of enthusiasm), but now I'm feeling... unbroken. Determined. Focused. Time for another dose of what I like doing best, assuming there's not another power cut while I'm writing: The cause of classical liberalism, or whatever you call it, has no mainstream political party to stick up for it and we, as in the Liberal Democrats, appear to be doing the political equivilant of George Lucas's efforts to make the 'Special Editions' of his movies the ...
"I've shaken the hand of God," was the ironic shout of one Glenrothes supporter yesterday. As The Ego that is the First Minister appeared temporarily to be uplifted to deity. For later Edward Houston explained his acclamation of meeting divinity by saying to waiting journalists: "I won't be voting for the SNP - everything they say is a promise but it will never happen." For yesterday was the day that both Salmond and Brown, that's Sarah not Gordon, hit the campaign trail in the Kingdom of Fife. Sarah was shepherded into a very heavily pebble-dashed, Labour supporting street in Cardenden ...
When you see the boys on Top Gear going on about the acceleration of the latest cars as 0-60 in whatever few seconds RAF pilot Andy Green — who already has taken a car to 763mph — is now planning to go over one thousand miles per hour. In a car!. Rocket-assisted, the Typhoon-Eurofighter jet engine powered 'Blodhound' aims to shatter the current record in 2011.
A week or so ago Mike Killingworth challenged us on Liberal Conspiracy to show what "Lovable Banking" might look like in response to the daily emerging news that we've been shafted regularly by the banking system since, oh, at least 1695. Some of you will know that I have long taken an interest in things like local currencies and mutual finance and perhaps also that I've been looking into the use of the Limited Liability Partnership structure as a way of building multi-stakeholder less toxic alternatives to purist shareholder capitalism. Well a couple of weeks ago I was contacted out ...
It seems slightly odd to me that I have only ever written once about Higher Education policy, given that I am a governor of my university, and hear about it all the time in meetings. But it has become a big issue at the moment in the Lib Dems, and seems to have been one of the major discussion areas at the Liberal Youth conference over the weekend, so I thought it might be time for me to jot down a few thoughts. One thing that seems clear, and I believe this is common currency in university board-rooms across the ...
I don't normally get to see the Daily Politics, but I'm on a week off at the moment and saw today's after PMQs. There was Yvette Cooper being grilled by Brillo who was asking whether Britons' status as the most personally indebted population in the G7 was anything to do with our current travails. She kept avoiding the point, as usual, insisting that it was an American thing from which we had got infected. For your benefit, Yvette, you lying cow, here's what Eddie George said just eighteen months ago: "In the environment of global economic weakness at the beginning ...
Just so readers of this blog don't think we forget about campaigns begun earlier in the year, I thought I'd remind the Labour-run Council that we are still campaigning for a number of roads in Redlands to be resurfaced as a matter of urgency. There's also still time to sign our petition on the subject. Road Resurfacing in Redlands Ward "When in the Council's programme of works are the following roads in Redlands ward likely to be resurfaced: Blenheim Road, Carnarvon Road, De Beauvoir Road, Donnington Gardens, Hatherley Road, Hexham Road and Malvern Court?"REPLY by Councillor Page (Lead Councillor for ...
