It's the usual story. The Press are scenting blood having ensured there's a pile of stories to drip feed out as and when they choose. Last week it was Jackie this week it's: GEOFF HOON! Something caught my eye as I think `who's next?` Ah - there you go: Last year, Prime Minister Gordon Brown received £17,073 in controversial [...]
The decision by a handful of NATO member to increase troop numbers in Afghanistan for a "limited period" falls well short of the necessary increase that is needed in troop numbers and serves to highlight that most of our so called European allies are as spineless as ever. I'd love to write more but it is very late and I have had a very VERY sore back (which explain my lack of blogging) in recent days.
Well, finally got off my fat backside and went back to the gym today, thank goodness. I did 20 minutes on the bike and a few leg weight machines. Am back there at 10am tomorrow for a meeting with Siobhan Mathers as we are both members, so we kill 2 birds with one stone. So, Stephen Gilbert the challenge is on my friend.....
A couple of days ago I railed against the idea of the licence fee payers stumping up the £150,000 fine for the Ross/Brand affair which the BBC has been asked to pay Ofcom.I am delighted to see that several MPs, including our own Don Foster, LibDem Shadow Culture, Media and Sport Secretary, have called for Jonathan Ross to pay the fine. Foster has said:This money should come out of Jonathan Ross's
The Jury Team have launched a sort of graphic video attacking Jacqui Smith's expenses record.It is accompanied, in part, by this script:We think that it is disgusting that a politician should seek to maximise the cash they can claim, whilst voting to keep that information private.We think it is wrong for politicians to feather their nests at our expense, protected by the hierarchies of the
Jury Team is the new political organisation that is letting anyone put themselves forward for selection as a European Parliament candidate on their behalf and is letting the public vote on who should actually stand. Its launch got extensive mainstream media coverage, including from the BBC, Mail, Telegraph, Sky, Guardian and Sunday Times. Moreover, almost all of the coverage was very friendly, e.g. not pointing out the myriad of similar ventures in the past which have failed nor asking why their website goes out of its way to encourage anonymous donations. With that favourable background and now only 20 days ...
Has anyone else noticed the remarkable resemblance between Her Majesty the Queen and the late Barbara Cartland?Weren't they allegedly related?
Dr David L. Caldwell, a Wirral Liberal Councillor along with the late Niel Thomas elected in 1974, has died in a Sheffield nursing home on the 7th March aged 94. The funeral took place on the 16th March at St John's Anglican Church, Totley. Donations to Shelter c/o G & M Lunt Tel.: 0114 274 5508. [...]
The link is to a law lord attacking the European Court. The problem is that on many things like Hearsay evidence and Mental Capacity the European Court is plainly right.Our judges may be happy to have an unreliable system of justice that is a machine for miscarriages of justice, but if the courts were not secret this would not be tolerated by the nation.Hence the battles to keep secret how bad
I was intrigued to hear that one of the outcomes of this weeks G20 meeting was that all those Tax Havens are now to be named and shamed. More interesting to note is that the Liberal Democrats have been calling for this for some time. Moreover, the Liberal Democrats went a stage further than this well before the G20 Summit and challenged the Government over this issue in the House of Lords on 30 March 2009. Click here for more.
Just seen my friends house get reposes ed,and put on the market for £75,000. Don't you think this government would help . Now he sits in a dingy one bedroom flat with his belongings. When i read dickens in School never thought i would see it come into a modern day reality. [...]
So we've all seen these new police posters, looking rather aggressive at the bus stops. As a driver I can't read the small print which I'm guessing goes in to some kind of nice neighbourhood policing bit, so instead I'm left to believe that the police are getting tougher. This was confirmed when I saw these new posters around: {We're gonna beat the evidence out of you} {Your personal DNA our evidence forever} {Guilty until proven innocent}
Following the publication of the latest unemployment figures Salford residents claiming unemployment benefit has risen by 55% over the past 12 months. Sadly Cllr Merry seems to be doing very little to help. Unless you can help build Media city, or play in a orchestra, I think i will rename him Cllr Nero the man who [...]
I have been contacted by a newly started European Election Pollster called Euro Poll who wants to use this blog to publish their results on the Internet. As they are new in the world of polling many major News outlets will not regard their poll results as being valuable but I think they do need a helping hand because they are new so I shall help them! The Pollster has a panel of experts who they will poll to get the results, and I shall publish the results on the blog. I have asked them to give me the results ...
This picture if after the Lib Dems won Cloverhill, rumour has it that Councillor Tory George Askew and Andrew Tory Stephenson PPC stormed out of the count before the results of the second count were announced. Yet the re-count was called by Cllr George Askew!
Daniel1979 Blog reproduces the answers given to its questions by Michael Clayton who is running in the Jury Team primary election to find its Euro candidates for the South West. When asked why he decided to try to stand for the Jury Team instead of an existing political party, Clayton replies: This is the first time I have come across a movement that gives ordinary people the chance to make a difference; to bring some ordinary thinking to the political arena.I disagree. We badly need some exceptional thinking in the political arena.
A blog post by Recess Monkey shows us that Dan Hannan the Tory MEP who gave the Prime Minister a grilling has said that the NHS is a 60 year mistake. Mr Hannan made the following comment: "We've lived through this mistake; we've lived through this mistake for 60 years now... the reality is it hasn't worked. It's made people iller. We spend a lot of money and we get very bad results, you look at survival rates for cancer or for heart disease we are well down on all the leagues. We have very few Doctors. We disincentivise people ...
In the past few weeks litter bins have reappeared at Market Harborough railway station. They were taken away after some late outrage in the IRA's bombing campaign. True, two children were murdered by a bomb left in a litter bin at Warrington, but it has always seemed unlikely to me that terrorists would identify Market Harborough railway station as a key target in their war against the British state. And even more unlikely that, having made their bomb and travelled there, they would return defeated when they found no litter bin to leave it in. In the mean time passengers ...
Jury Team is a political vehicle to get independent candidates elected to the UK and European parliaments. It's been kicked off in the last few weeks by Sir Paul Judge, a millionaire Tory donor. The general idea is free-thinking, committed independent MPs and MEPs good, party drones ripping off the taxpayer bad. James Graham is one of the few people to have written seriously about Jury Team and it's worth reading what he's said here and here. Jury Team has eleven policy proposals, all around reforming the democratic system. As James notes, electoral reform is notable by its absence but ...
Any Liberal Democrats based in Salford who see this man Leg It, Sorry Tom only Joking hope you like the picture,they always say no your Enemy, and i suppose political adversary counts. How you keeping mate good to put a face to the Jibes.
Food Up,Petrol up. Prescriptions up. Heating up,water up, interest on borrowing up, sod it every things on the way up apart from our wages.
I bought a couple of excellent books today that I would heartily recommend for all manner of reasons. Firstly anyone who has been watching Gardeners' World will have already fallen in love with Carol Klein's earthy and organic approach to growing you own fruit and veg long before she had the spin off series Grow Your Own Veg and Grow Your Own Fruit. Both of which come with their own books the veg one I got this morning along with its companion Cook Your Own Veg. The purchase of both these books together may well have flagged up some warning ...
Who would think todays society we have people sleeping in the streets? I wonder if Barack and George shared any thoughts on the issue, don't think so do you.
I needed a way of keeping my important files safe. Since I'm far too lazy to do regular backups I decided to get a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device - it's basically a box which sits on the home network and does nothing but store data. In theory such a device can be very reliable because it only has to do one thing very well. Furthermore since most of the volume of the device is dedicated to storage, you can store a great deal more than you might be able to within your PC. After much investigation I decided to ...
There's a short, but very arresting article tucked away in Professional Social Work magazine on the baby P tragedy this week. It' an opinion piece written by Sue Ross, who has a top social services job for East Lothian Council in Scotland. It's a bit fiddly to find on line, but if you follow this link and flip to page 8, it's there in the 1st of April edition, headed up "The can Sharon Shoesmith had to carry." Sue Ross says that she "listened very hard, and with increasing discomfort" to Sharon Shoesmith's recent interview with Radio 4, where fundamentally, ...
Continuing from the first post, I now tackle the other bit of the comment. I call this an ultrafisk because it's like fisking except you respond to one sentence with a diatribe. The second bit of Tom James' comment was: I don't see why just because someone is poor and/or lazy and/or stupid they should have a bad [...]
Its not always that I agree with the Conservatives on ideas but this one is definitely one that I do agree with. A Conservative Councillor has proposed an idea to which he has created a petition that you can sign and see at the Number 10 website by following the link. The Councillor has proposed that after the Olympics the apartments for the Athletes should be given to MP's to live in, scrapping the second home allowance and saving the tax payer millions of pounds. According to the blog post on Conservative Home that brings this idea to our attention ...
The ubiquity of overcooked, tasteless chicken served at political fundraising events is such that it has warranted the invention of a phrase that must surely strike fear into the hearts of even our most sociable Elected Members: The Rubber Chicken Circuit. It was probably inevitable that chicken would become the meat of choice to serve at such events because of its almost universal popularity and the fact that it is now one of the cheapest meats available. But I always wonder how this has become the case at Liberal Democrat events, given that we are the only party to recognise ...
I'm responding here to a comment left by Tom James who said: Actually I'd say that is exactly what the business of government is. That is, taking money away from people with money and giving it to people with less or no money. I don't see why just because someone is poor and/or lazy and/or stupid they should have a [...]
Last year I blogged about the controversial road safety record of Conservative London Assembly Member Brian Coleman, he also of the exorbitant expense claims. One of the issues I highlighted was Partingdale Lane which had been closed to traffic on safety grounds: He insisted on opening the road, had to think again after the courts ruled against the policy (with the judge directly criticising Brian Coleman's behaviour), then saw £250,000 spent on safety measures, even after all that the road sees regular accidents though Brian Coleman claimed that residents had faked a car accident. Oooh, conspiracy. And a big bill. ...
Typing still difficult, so here's the text of the press release: As the recession deepens Haringey Council has rejected an opportunity for millions of pounds of funding for local residents it emerged this week. Local campaigners and Liberal Democrats expressed astonishment when they learned that Haringey's Labour-run Council failed to organise applications for extra government money under the Sustainable Communities Act - instead opting for a "wait and see" approach. Following enquiries from Councillor Nigel Scott, Alexandra ward, who proposed a unanimously supported motion to Council on the subject in January 2009, calling for an opt-in, Cllr Matt Cooke (Labour ...
Here are my answers on the blog Mars Hill.
Nobody can be in any doubt now that MP expenses need a complete root and branch reform.The summary of MPs' expense claims for 2007-08 published this week brought another round of criticism - most, but...
"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies" ... well not quite a new planet, as we all knew a bit about Vince Cable's explorations of the 'Realms of Gold' and 'Many Goodly States and Kingdoms'. Or even a Browned-Out Kingdom. First impression of 'The Storm' is that it is a throwback to an honoured British institution, the Penguin Specials. These were books commissioned on matters of immediate controversy in the 1930's and 1940's giving a serious analysis and readable guide to matters of live and desperate public concern. So intelligent citizens could make up their own minds on ...
Someone who I was talking to a while ago said that they were awaiting the following scandal to take place: An MP was to be brought into light for living in London all week and even staying their at Recess and renting his Constituency home out to Students at the local University. The MP would claim money for having his main home which would be London and his second home in the Constituency where he would have a room to which he would stay himself and give the rest on rent! When is this Scandal going to take place because ...
A BBC chin-wag with Bob Geldof was a predictable part of the G20 coverage, and culminated perhaps equally predictably, with 'Sir Bob' confessing that he'd been knocking back gin. He then peevishly crushed a plastic up and chucked it on the ground. Sounds like my kind of evening. Nonetheless, some of his sentiments, if not so predictable, were especially pertinent. On the importance of trade, he said: Look, probably the great unsung triumph so far of the twenty-first century was the lifting of 400 million Chinese people out of extreme poverty—through trade." Furthermore, he urged governments to stop erecting barriers ...
Sat 4th
14:27
Is Graiseley a straight race between the Liberal Democrats and Wolverhampton Conservatives?
I doubt it, but this morning I was part of the Liberal Democrat team on Lea Road and who should also be out campaigning but Wolverhampton South West Parliamentary candidate Paul Uppal and a team of Wolverhampton Conservatives.
Sat 4th
14:26Is Graiseley a straight race between the Liberal Democrats and Wolverhampton Conservatives?
I doubt it, but this morning I was part of the Liberal Democrat team on Lea Road and who should also be out campaigning but Wolverhampton South West Parliamentary candidate Paul Uppal and a team of Wovlerhampton Conservatives.
Lancashire Labour MP David Borrow has been brought out my a Lancashire newspaper and Iain Dale the blogger to be someone who has been having Coffee Mornings on the cost of the taxpayer. The MP has been entertaining constituents with the Communication Allowance and this just mounts to the evidence that expenses need to be reformed. First of all let me make my opinion clear, I am someone who supports Coffee Mornings and events hosted by MP's as they show the MP cares about Constituents and it gives them the time to socialise with the MP and bring their concerns ...
What is it about being horrendously overpaid that can bring out the worst in people? We've already seen bankers bring the global economy to its knees and now we have F1's Lewis Hamilton and Scottish footballers Barry Ferguson and Allan McGregor hitting the headlines for being complete and utter prats. You would think Hamilton would have been satisfied with fourth place after a dismal start in a, frankly, rubbish car. Instead, he and McLaren senior manager Dave Ryan feed a complete cock and bull story to the Stewards to try to wrest 3rd place from Toyota's Jarno Trulli. Trouble is ...
There seem to be a lot of applications for setting up mobile phone masts at present, some in Keighley. Some Keighley town councillors have become aware of applications for masts in their own wards. On comparing notes they have found other aplications for masts in Keighley. It seems as though there is no overall pattern being openly declared, but lots of individual applications, all from the same company, some for small pieces of land right next to housing. I wonder what's going on.
(from Boing Boing) The mainstream media are avoiding reporting what actually happened in London at the G20 protests as much as they possibly can. Most of them have withdraw from their websites, without explanation, the stories about the protestors hurling bottles and bricks at the police as they tried to help Ian Tomlinson. Only the Metro, so far as I am aware, has actually admitted that this might not have been true, though. Here is a video by two of the people who were actually there when Mr Tomlinson collapsed: Please spread that around. I have just heard Hazel Blears ...
This week I was asked to complete a survey on behalf of a university student on the subject of personal responsibility for global warming. I found myself writing that I believe that all schools should teach all pupils to cook and that all students ...
Perhaps all councillors and MPs should be thinking of ways to save council tax payers money. I don't mean by cutting services to the community but by how they personally, or as a group, could cut down on the amount of cash being paid out on their own ...
Sat 4th
12:59
My proposal for us to pay for our own food failed. (But here's another way of saving council tax pay...
Well, we've had the Keighley Town Council meeting when my proposal that councillors should pay for their own food at full town council meetings was discussed and voted on. Only two other councillors voted with me, David and Lionel. Lost ...
Us Liberal Democrats are used to changing to ensure we keep abreast of current campaign techniques. Unlike the Labour Party and the Conservatives we are not bank rolled by trade unions or huge businesses?So when there was a chance to advertise on a new website covering news from the district, I jumped at the idea. It has prove an effective way of increasing flow to our website and in engaging
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 almost 200 of you who completed it; we're publishing the results on LDV over the next few days. We asked: The Chief Medical Officer has proposed fixing a minimum price for alcohol sales in Britain. This measure is opposed by the Tories and Labour, but supported by Lib ...
I totally missed checking th result of Wednesday's Quins against Worcester match. I will let the Quins website report do the talking:Ten Try Triumph for Quins It has been 6 years since Quins have topped the Guinness Premiership table, but tonight the London team entertained a home crowd to a 10 try rout of Worcester Warriors. A young Worcester team were blown away by a Quins side who are maturing
Today's Evening Post (Saturday, April 04, 2009) carries a report on a meeting between Steve Webb, First, villagers at Iron Acton and local councillors (click link for full story) including Yate and Frampton Cotterell. Hope for some services, provided that South Glos can be persuaded to subsidise. At the meeting First's commercial director Simon Cursio was told how axing of the X27 on May 10 would affect local people. Students told how they would be unable to get to college and others said that older people without their own transport might have to move house. South Gloucestershire Council has put ...
If the objective of my old blog was to "destroy socialism" I'm now in a new phase of my political life. I have a much less ambitious challenge now: I want the Lib Dems to be fully supportive of Free Trade and to be against Social Engineering. How's that sound? So if you're wondering what my 'agenda' is, [...]
Well the results in and it's a bit disappointing. We came fourth in the end but it was really close and considering where we started 8 weeks ago we achieved a great result. Tories - 1785 BNP - 1502 Labour - 1476 Lib Dem - 1468 Green - 137 Everyones vote went down apart from the Lib Dems which leaped up. We ran a really good campaign and given a couple more weeks would have had no problem winning the ward, but thats life! It's good to compare it to the result in May: Tories - 2386 Labour - 2083 ...
It was with huge shock that I learnt that this titan of Northern politics died this week. A great asset to the Stockport group she was a commanding presence in the Council chamber in her role as Exec member for Social Services. As a motivator she was brilliant mediator and organiser - trying to work things out [...]
On Thursday, I had a quick meeting with the Welsh Education Minister to demand an explanation as to why Swansea was at the bottom of her list for handing out capital grants to repair local schools. I am concerned that out of £114 million handed out to Councils just over a week ago, Swansea only received £2.8 million, of which £1.1 million is new money in 2009-10. This was despite submitting a list of fully-worked up bids, the vast majority of which met the Minister's strict criteria for funding. It is bizarre, in my view that despite Swansea being one ...
When the Jury Team launched I had a hunch they would be worth keeping an eye on. In the last few days, they have launched an ad attacking Jacqui Smith over her expenses and the claims that were made. Forget who is right or wrong for a moment and take a look at the ad. Sadly, I can't work out how to embed it so you will need to click on the link here. It is a spoof of the Mastercard ad. It is very simply done, makes it point and I would imagine not very expensive to produce. If ...
There will be a public consultation meeting on the planning application from Tesco for a superstore and houses near the Tolworth roundabout. Everyone welcome! The meeting will be held on Thursday 23rd April at 7pm in Tolworth Girls' School. More details about the Save Tolworth, Stop Tesco campaign on http://www.everylittlehurts.co.uk/.
The East-West border is always wandering, sometimes eastward, sometimes west, and we do not know exactly where it is just now: in Gaugamela, in the Urals, or maybe in ourselves, so that one ear, one eye, one nostril, one hand, one foot, one lung and one testicle or one ovary is on the one, another on the other side. Only the heart only the heart is always on one side: if we are looking northward, in the West; if we are looking southward, in the East; and the mouth doesn't know on behalf of which or both it has to ...
I'm really not a big one for conspiracy theories. Given the choice, I'll go for cock-up nine times out of ten. But an advertising campaign has got me wondering just what's going on. It's this "Report anything or anyone looking a bit funny or suspicious" campaign, for which you can find some nice spoofs here. Even if the worst-case terrorism scenario being sold to us by the security services is true, it's still complete bollocks. We're told there could be up to 3,000 people actively planning terrorist attacks in the UK. In reality, most of those will be sad cases ...
I've only just caught up with the news that my Lib Dem colleagues in Camden have comfortably held Belsize ward in a by-election on Thursday. Another in a string of great results. Belsize used to be the ward of the Tory leader in Camden, and was gained by the Lib Dems at the last local elections. I know the area well, as one of my best friends lived there for years. Natural Lib Dem territory I'd say, and the result bodes well for the general election.
The New York Times headline neatly wraps up three stories about the at times grim, and in the photoshopping case verging on farcical, struggle for women's rights across much of the Middle East: On Friday, The Associated Press reported that Israeli newspapers "aimed at ultra-Orthodox Jewish readers" digitally manipulated a photograph of the new Israeli government, to remove two female cabinet ministers, Limor Livnat and Sofa Landver... The Pakistani newspaper Dawn reports on Friday that Pakistan's prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, is "taking serious notice of the public flogging of a girl in Swat" [footage of which was broadcast by ...
From Headingley Today: A councillor elected as a Liberal Democrat, who defected to Labour and then sat as an Independent has rejoined the Lib Dems. Councillor Kabeer Hussain who represents Hyde Park and Woodhouse, has been welcomed back by the Liberal Democrats.
Daily collection of links and thoughts that weren't worth a whole post. 12:20 We lost #skircoat by 188 votes, turnout 39%, close but no cigar, both Independents got over 200 votes, BNP and Labour same is.gd/qugE # 00:01 Eating fresh baked cinnamon biscuits. They are yummy #Microblogging using LoudTwitter and Twitter. matgb_twitter is there if you're mad enough. Hopefully I've fixed the recursion problem, and if you'd rather this was cut, then editing your LJ code to do so is easy.
Betsan Powys highlights further unease at the sell-out by Plaid Cymru Assembly Members over their treatment of Welsh students.She tells us that Heledd Fychan, one of the party's prospective parliamentary candidates has criticised the leadership in Barn magazine on the decision to reintroduce top-up fees:"How can the party leader justify taking such a decision and taking it without discussing the
Good news for lovers of the Shropshire hills. The Shropshire Hills Shuttle buses start running again today and they will run at weekends and on Bank Holiday Mondays until 27 September. They are a great way of exploring the hills and help to keep cars of the narrow roads. Hat tip to Mike Ashton on Flickr. I have shamelessly stolen his picture of the bus on the road from Bridges up to the Stiperstones ridge.
I found out this week that whacky plans by Haringey to flog some council land on the Archway Road for housing are on hold for now, as the deal to sell the site has fallen through. The plans for the sale of 505 Archway Road are the responsibility of Finance Labour cabinet member Charles Adje, of multiple calamity fame (see earlier posts). The site, in the middle of the Wellington gyratory at the top of the Archway Road, is currently home to the car wash next to the petrol station. Charles Adje, in what was no doubt another piece of ...
Tories narrowly retain Skircoat from lib dems by only 118 votes. Kerbside candidate takes 238 votes. # $1 trillion and the ftse drops. # Nearly home time. Mum and dad are visiting this weekend. Playing out tomorrow night when they babysit hurrah! # Wondering what to do with a full two days with no work and very little [...]
