Via: Jacob Berlow
There have been two developments in the case of Baby P - or Peter, to give him the dignity he was denied in life. Both involve excessive secrecy. Lynne Featherstone has now read the Serious Case Review. You may recall that Ed Balls was at first unwilling to release it even to directly interested MPs and tried to hide behind the Information Commissioner. Having read the report, Lynne writes: What I can say is that having read the document I am even more of the opinion that it would be in the public interest for it to be published - ...
Speaker Lenthall, 1642 "May it please your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as this House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here; and humbly beg your Majesty's pardon that I cannot give any other answer than this to what your Majesty is pleased to demand of me".Speaker Martin, 2008 "Help yourself, his office is down the corridor."People used to behave that, true to his earlier working life, Michael Martin used to behave more like a shop steward for MPs than a Speaker. They won't be saying that ...
Quoting from The Times, see links The official said Stephenson should have told Sir David Normington, the Home Office permanent secretary who called in police, that leaks of nonclassified information were not a matter for a police inquiry. Normington will chair the panel that will interview and vet applicants for the job of Met commissioner. The deadline for applications is tomorrow. Dreadful.
A must read post over at the NOTW Politics blog, Even read the small print! Just read the post and let me tell you its worth reading. I only have one thing to say about the post which is that the small print is probably the most interesting part of the post! And you can read it below: The News of the World can also reveal Galley—the man suspected of being a top Tory mole—tried to work for the party before becoming a civil servant. The 26-year-old applied to for a post with former Shadow Home Secretary David Davis after ...
I've spent the last couple of days in Dumfries with the "day job" - including the now infamous annual Chinese Karaoke night - as you can see (below), my photographic skills were at their absolute best on Thursday evening! Before leaving on Thursday, I was delighted to attend the Friends of Magdalen Green's visit to meet the Lord Provost to promote their super charity calendar. You can read the "Evening Telegraph" report of the event by clicking on the headline above and there's more detail about the calendar at http://www.magdalengreen.btik.com/p_Photo_Competition.ikml Tomorrow is St Andrew's Day and the various event on ...
It has been reported that the terrorists in the Mumbai attacks used Blackberry's to surf the web and check out websites like the BBC to see footage from the news channel. The reports also say the terrorists were from Bradford and Leeds! Terrorists with Blackberry's is a worrying sign that they probably visited blogs like Mumbai Help so they could get the latest from the uncensored media meaning that they could have via the Blackberry's read any article on the Internet! To read the news article follow the link.
Oh, so it's not OK for the police to investigate a potential breach of the Official Secrets Act allegedly involving Damian Green, but it was OK for the Tories to lock up Sarah Tisdall, try to lock up Clive Ponting and pursue Spycatcher author Peter Wright across the world in his dotage, was it? Fascinating. And I don't remember David Cameron raising any objection to Ruth Turner being arrested
I blame my parents. They brought me up wrong. They allowed me to have a dream and to go for it and they did not stand in my way. As a consequence my sense to be trained, to learn from it and to encourage other to be trained and grow has grown. It is easy for me to say this sitting in a Birmingham hotel room on a Lib Dem training weekend, but earlier this week I had the pleasure of receiving
Well, I read the full Serious Case Review into the death of Baby P at the end of the week. I was given sight of this document following the ho ha when Ed Balls appeared to use the Information Commissioner for cover, saying others could not be allowed sight of the review - and then the Information Commissioner went public clearly not happy with being used in this way. Net result - several MPs, myself included, were allowed to see the report. Access was given on 'privy council terms' - political speak for promising to keep the contents confidential, so ...
As regular readers of this blog will be able to testify, whenever I say nice things about the other parties, it always comes back to bite me in the bum. So it was that I backed Caroline Spelman and Ray Lewis, shortly before it became clear their actions were indefensible. And last weekend I wrote a favourable review of plans to cut VAT, responding to reports that the Labour Government were planning to do precisely that. I still say that cutting VAT now and short term unfunded tax cuts in general, makes a certain amount of sense right now. They ...
I have linked to part of the proceedings of the Employment Bill. The relevant section follows. The attitude of the Labour Party is that they don't need to legislate to prevent vindictive acts because they are nice people and wouldn't do that sort of thing. Sadly, however, although some people are nice and would hold themselves back - others are vindictive and as such systems need checks and
I seem to be surrounded by references to the Civil War at the moment. I had a look at some of the key documents the other day. This afternoon's rather lovely Saturday Play on Radio 4 was about the flight of the future Charles II to France. Then there is this about the the arrest of Damian Green from Michael White on the Guardian's Politics Blog: "Michael Howard, who clearly gave up history for
The case of Damien Green's arrest is particularly egregrious involving as it does the abuse of parliamentary privilege. Parliamentary Privilege exists to protect those people that MPs serve - the citizens as a whole. In the mean time, however, it is clear to me that this is in fact the tip of various tyrannical acts The Sally Murrer Case is another over the top prosecutoin relating to
Read Nick Clegg's Telegraph article here. The only thing to add is that there a popular saying "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". Well, it's broken now. And it's time for action to fix it.
So, what to make of the incarceration of Damo Green? We, not to disagree with a word of what Nick Clegg has to say, I find myself siding with Justin McKeating at the same time. It IS very worrying, but I find it difficult sympathising with the plight of a party which - when in power - introduced a law which meant that the sound of the members of a certain political party's voices could not be legally broadcast and who - if they ever do get back into power - would scrap the Human Rights Act (replacing it, at ...
Alex Wilcox has and excellent post on this; meanwhile over on Peter Black's blog Matthew H makes similar points. No doubt I will be now accused of 'swallowing Labour propaganda whole' but I feel our response to the Damien Green affair has been one-sided; not particularly balanced and thus has fallen into the trap of being populist tub-thumping which will invariably be drowned out by David Cameron's much larger drums. Reading Nick Clegg's article in the Daily Telegraph it is slightly shocking that he says; "Even if these [anti-terror] laws were not invoked this time" when it is quite clear ...
"When did it become a crime to hold the Government to account?" Throwing a spotlight on information the Government would rather keep hidden is an essential part of our democracy. And when dealing with an administration legendary for its secrecy, you increasingly have to rely on whistle-blowers to see the full picture. Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has written at length...
If shop windows are anything to go by, those behind this politically-motivated masterpiece that caught my eye in Muswell Hill today certainly deserve to beat the credit crunch. I hope the brooding presence of Gordon doesn't put off too many punters....
Iain Dale has written an excellent article about if bloggers in the United Kingdom can make money out of blogging or not? I have to say he has hit the nail on the head with his comments but they are not all that I agree with. He talks highly of the top dogs e.g. Guido, himself and Political betting just being some of them and I agree they will be able to make money and quit the day jobs. Message space is a tool for bloggers so they can earn some revenue, but guess who can only get the deal ...
My parent's have bought the Independent from Day 1 (back in 1986 when I was 11) and have had it daily ever since. They were absolutely the right Alliance-voting, sick with Murdoch (I think we had The Times before) demographic who felt totally in sync with the new paper's philosophy. They have stuck with it through thick and (increasingly) thin. Since I left home (15 years ago) I haven't really got a daily newspaper but I have read recently in Private Eye how it's been going downhill and become celeb-obsessed under the editorship of Roger Alton (formerly of The Observer ...
Another email drops into the inbox of The Voice from A Liberal Democrat Organiser Who Wishes To Remain Anonymous: "Another submission for you good chaps. I thought I'd actually try to be vaguely useful this time." You can read the first post by Lib Dem Riso Monkey's diary here; and the second post here. "We need to think about implementing our e-campaign," said one of our leading activists rather breathlessly. "It's very important to capture the youth vote with a comprehensive online presence." It's another Campaign Committee, and we've got to the stage where people are repeating phrases they've heard ...
Together with two social workers I have written an article about how the decisionmaking system in social work needs to change. This does not directly refer to the Family Court although if the family court was not as much of a procedural mess then we could not have got the initial decisionmaking system wrong as cases would have bounced at the family court level. Initially the article was
... or several, about the rule of law and Damian Green and Ian Blair and various other matters. Selflessly picking through his great long post to give you the meat, I offer the following poll: View Poll: What's that coming over the hill?
Some progress to reporton Highbury Corner. Consultation on options for Highbury Corner started a year ago. We've been kept waiting a long time for the results but now they're out. They show majority backing for the option of closing off one arm of the roundabout, creating new pedestrian space joining the island up to [...]
Writing in the Daily Telegraph today, Nick Clegg said: When opposition politicians heard about Damian Green's arrest, many of us asked ourselves the same question: "When did it become a crime to hold the Government to account?" We already operate in a system where Parliament is effectively neutered, little more than a rubber stamp for legislation that ministers have already decided... One of the weapons MPs do still have in their armoury is to play the Government at its own game. By releasing information of our own we can highlight matters of public interest that ministers would rather people didn't ...
A sterling performance on Any Questions from the Twinkle-toed Messiah. I don't know if I'm going to listen to Any Answers, though. It always depresses me with it's cabal of Fail-reading nutbags. In other news: I have been organised! Mat and I are now registered for both Spring and Autumn conference. If you do it before December 10th you get it for cheap, you see. Spring conference, we have cadged a bed from someone who lives near the conference (we love you, nannyo!) but we'll need to find somewhere to stay in Bournemouth next September that won't cost a bomb... ...
I mentioned previously that we, the Cressington Councillors, were pressing for a public meeting which would include planning officers. This was so that people could ask questions about the process and get other information. We now have a provisional date - 15th December. This just has to be confirmed but its worth people who are interested putting this in their diaries now. The start time should be around 6 30 as we have pointed out that anyone commuting back from work may struggle to make an earlier time. When all the details are confirmed I will post again.
From the Hemel Hempstead Gazette: Carol singing brownies have been banned from a Hemel Hempstead shopping centre because they are considered a health and safety risk.Little girls from the West Herts guides have sung for pensioners at a special late night Christmas shopping event in Marlowes for more than a decade.But the centre's managers decided they would not be invited to this year's event because they would obstruct fire escape routes.Apart from marking another step in the decline and fall of Western civilisation, this story caught my attention because it quotes the Guides' division commissioner, Gill Oxtoby. When I attended ...
From this week, the Home Office has announced, compulsory ID cards will be issued to foreign nationals including students and those granted a visa because they are married to a British Citizen. Liberal Democrat MP for Cambridge David Howarth has pointed out the ID card scheme's implications for the University city: I am worried about the effect of this move on the economy of Cambridge, which relies on a stream of highly-qualified scientists, engineers and academics from all over the world. Treating highly-qualified people as potential criminals rather than as welcome guests is not going to put us at the ...
It's tempting to think of people working at the end of the phone as doing a simple task. The traditional lady sitting in front a telephone exchange is perhaps indelible in our minds. But it is worth thinking of the awesome job done by some people at the end of a phone. I helped with some fund raising activities a few years back for the Friends of the Samaritans. As a result I got to know a
Since the BBC launched the iPlayer for the N96 I knew it wouldn't be too long until it would be available for other phones. However I can't wait, so spent today looking for methods in getting my X1 to stream the shows. I managed to extract the RTSP stream of Buzzcocks and successfully got that working on my phone. My next step was to find a way that didn't involve me using my PC opening a collection of random XML files in order, to then email a link to my phone. Several hours of coding and I managed to strip ...
Some days, you're spoilt for choice on where to put the boot in. When Labour lickspittle Ian Blair sobs about Boris Johnson, who do you hate more? When a senior Tory (well, Damian Green, anyway) is arrested under Tory laws, do you laugh, or condemn a police state? Well, there's an easy way for Liberals to work out the rights and wrongs here. It's the centuries-old founding Liberal principle of the Rule of Law. Police should enforce the law, not the Government's whim; and we should defend the rights of evil shits just as assiduously as we do 'nice people'. ...
The New Humanists' God Trumps appears to be becoming a bit of a mini-phenomenon. Catholic Herald editor Damian Thompson has claimed it is Islamophobic because it pointedly refuses to make any Muslim jokes (the satirical point being made is rather lost of Mr Thompson). Personally I found the feature quite amusing, but a couple of things irked me about it (both of which are common to a lot of what comes out of humanist stables). First of all, the anti-Catholic sentiment was a little over the top. The simple fact is, most Catholics don't follow every word the Pope utters ...
A diary piece in yesterday's Guardian: An old man wanders up to the White House on a sunny day in January. "I would like to go in and meet with President Bush," he says to a marine. "Sir, Mr Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here," the officer tells him. "OK," says the [...]
This week Liberal Democrat Voice is running a series of articles from Tim Leunig about the economy - how we got here and what we should do next. So far the series has covered bank bailouts, bank lending, fiscal policy, interest rates and tax policy. Today's final part looks to the long term future. Getting the long term picture right In its panic and determination to "do something now" government must not forget its role in securing the long-term underpinnings of the economy. There are three areas in which Britain has serious problems. Our education system fails individual citizens and ...
I've managed to resist actually watching it (you know me and my detestment of TV shows with adverts in) but I have been looking at the website, and have added the Facebook "support your favourite celeb" app too. I think the Facebook app is unnecessarily cruel, making me choose just one. I want to support George AND Brian, dammit! At least by doing it this way I can completely avoid Timmy Mallet... But can anyone who has actually been watching the show, rather than selected highlights from the website, fill me in on how George and Brian are doing in ...
Full article avalible here... "The Prime Minister must now do three things: he must clearly dissociate himself from the police operation altogether; he must clarify urgently what Home Office civil servants told ministers, and when; and he must instantly end his habit of leaking Whitehall information to secure favourable headlines for his own Government, while ministers now stand idly by as an opposition MP is arrested for seeking to bring Whitehall information to light in the first place. Our political system is already in deep trouble: sinking public confidence in MPs, feeble parliamentary scrutiny, a rigid culture of Whitehall secrecy, ...
With everyone paying greater attention to Government budgets as the Chancellor attempts to stimulate demand and confidence in the economy, I came across an amazing sum of taxpayer's money that in my v...
Gordon Prentice is the Labour MP for Pendle and since I live in the constituency I have some problems with getting information about what he really gets up to. Recently in Pendle we have had a leaflet from him giving us a brief of what he has been doing over the last couple of months but it is 16 years to late. To combat the problem of giving constituents information about what he is getting up to as our MP I ask him to start a blog. Politico Designs offers a free service to MP's who want a blog and ...
Do the Conservatives oppose a third runway at Heathrow, or not? Iain Dale has this: There is growing disquiet among Tory MPs, and the Shadow Cabinet, about Theresa Villiers witchhunt against BAA. The Shadow Transport Secretary issued a press release yesterday headlined PROMISES FROM BAA CAN'T BE TRUSTED. The release went on to accuse BAA of breaking all its promises on a third runway. [Iain quotes from Villiers' press release] "BAA are right to admit that they have lost the trust of Parliamentarians and local communities over the third runway. However today's letter is just the next in a long ...
Former Counsel General Winston Roddick has joined the ranks of those who are warning that the present constitutional settlement is unsustainable. Delivering the ninth annual lecture of the Centre for Welsh Legal Affairs at Aberystwyth University, Mr. Roddick said tensions between the two seats of government were likely to worsen before they improved. Winston Roddick questioned whether the next devolution settlement should comprise full legislative responsibility, devolution of the civil service, police service and the administration of justice. "My concerns are that as there is very little experience of the administration of justice within the Assembly Government or amongst the ...
Over the last week, Lib Dem Voice has invited the members of our private forum (open to all Lib Dem members) inviting them to take part in a survey, conducted via Liberty Research, asking a number of questions about the party and the current state of British politics. Many thanks to the 210+ of you who completed it; we're publishing the results this week on LDV. A couple of weeks ago, LDV featured the results of one of PoliticsHome's PH100 surveys of 'experts and insiders', which asked the following question: "The Lib Dems have set the agenda on tax cuts, ...
As thousands of workers await news of their fate the Guardian has details on what is going on with Woolworths and the reality of Labour Britain in the middle of a depression: The collapse of Woolworths is causing havoc across the retail sector in the run-up to Christmas, with suppliers fearing they will not get paid and other retailers facing stock shortages amid uncertainty about the future of the group's distribution operations. The news comes as administrators Deloitte prepare to spend the weekend sifting through more than 200 expressions of interest in the bust business. They are understood to range ...
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has told Sky News that he had no prior knowledge of the arrest of Conservative MP Damian Green. For a Government not noted for minding its own business, it is odd that the Prime Minister, Home Secretary and other ministers were all unaware of the arrest until after it had taken place. Especially so, since we learn that Mayor of London Boris Johnson, Conservative Leader David Cameron and the Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin all knew that the arrest was about to happen. Here's the video from Sky: The BBC also reports here. ...
An article resulting from a project I was involved in has recently been accepted by the Journal of Hazardous Materials , and will be available online through Elsevier's ScienceDirect shortly. The article, entitled Pharmaceutical residues in wastewater treatment works effluents and their impact on receiving river water focuses on the removal of pharmaceutical compounds at each stage of sewage treatment, and the final emissions of pharmaceuticals into the receiving river water. The implications of pharmaceutical pollution in the environment is not fully understood, but there are several examples of obvious negative effects. Diclofenac has been identified as causing a catastrophic ...
... is fantastic, and I urge you all to go and listen to it RIGHT NOW. I am very cheered by Mitch's pointing out of the fact that on a wet, cold, windy Yorkshire Tuesday, Huddersfield Town can pull in more punters than the entire membership of the BNP. Piratey people will be very pleased by it also, I feel. Another thing which is incredibly cool is this (small: hat-tip gominokouhai): * totally wants a Pizza of Rassilon now * Because I know Mitch will dig it, I'll be tagging him on Facebook. View Poll: Snacking
Twisted religion and black comedy suffuse a stunning year, transforming body horror into battles for the mind and rich colours into darkness as writer Robert Holmes and producer Philip Hinchcliffe (masters of kiddie-scaring) reach their peak, while Terrance Dicks' new The Making of Doctor Who inspires every guidebook written since. From The Brain of Morbius' funny fascist Frankenstein to The Hand of Fear's crawling eeriness, all the stories are marvellous, and the greatest of them all begets not just Time Lord mythology but even The Matrix movies... The Deadly Assassin "I am the creator here, Doctor. This is my world." ...
