The YouGov poll for The Daily Telegraph found 22% of voters would seriously consider voting BNP in a local, general or European election. It's interesting reading some of the reactions to the now massive and widespread media coverage concerning Griffin's arguments that he was bullied and ganged up on by the mainstream. Mostly its all "oh its just an after-show poll bump" .. well, doesn't that sound familiar! The ways the media are now referring and analyzing the BNP suggest they are now taking them seriously as a credible political force in the country, and that will rub off on ...
Yesterday's Hartlepool Mail finally printed the story of our Fairtrade Fortnight award. It doesn't matter that it's late of course - the important thing is to keep the Fairtrade message in the public eye.To that end I've just spent an hour working on our Partnership website as another little item in the campaign armoury. Also it made for a nice break from sorting out what is allowed to go back
I spent most of the day at a seminar, just over the street for the European Commision's Berlaymont Building, celebrating 30 years of existence of the Quaker Council for European Affairs (QCEA). In the early 1970s, soon after Britain joined the then European Community, a number of us Quakers living in Brussels — most working ...
Cross-posted from the Mandate Blog: It is a truth universally acknowledged that politicians need the media and the media need politicians. But in the last few years, new social media has changed the way politics is discussed and thought about. Political blogging, Facebook and YouTube have all changed the way politics is practiced and presented. Sometimes, as Gordon Brown's now infamous appearance on YouTube proved, this hasn't always been a good thing. But while MPs and the political classes have taken an unexpected lead in blogging, most business bosses are only now just catching up. A few, including one of ...
Gavin Allen, producer of Question Time, has been responding to some of the claims about this week's show. He makes some interesting points, and makes it unequivocally clear that the format of the show was not changed. I am not sure that anyone really thought the format had changed, just that the programme wasn't usual- ...
I should be helping to review the papers on GMR tomorrow at 12 noon. I've not actually read tomorrow's papers yet, so have absolutely no idea what I'll be saying. Witty suggestions welcomed.
I must say I thoroughly enjoyed "Let's kick the cr*p out of Nick Griffin" night on the BBC. Wonderful fun! I was rather concerned that Griffin would be comfortably subsumed within the normal format of Question Time with blah-blah-blah about the Mail strike and bleat-bleat-bleat about Afghanistan. I also braced myself for him to be politely applauded by the audience for his reasonableness. But we must never under-estimate the BBC. The audience were without doubt the stars of the show. As soon as I heard their first reaction I thought "Crikey the BBC have really stacked that audience!" Audience selection ...
For some reason I've only just noticed Sara Bedford's autumnal stew recipe from, appropriately, the first of the month. It is bubbling away as I write and smelling fabulous, so I thought, while we all wait for the The Thick Of It to start (heavens! I haven't been this excited since Wednesday when the next ...
Thanks to TheBookGuide I discovered a recently opened secondhand bookshop in Northampton yesterday. Northampton Bookshop can be found just out of the town centre in St Michael's Road, which is now largely a cavern between disused factories. Visit the website to see why the Beatles were in the building in November 1963.
We had a great constituency meeting today at which we discussed the situation about the closure of the Dunston Brewery. We resolved to make representations to take action on the moving of production of Newcastle Brown Ale to Yorkshire.
The other day I likened David Cameron to Flashman, the bully from Thomas Hughes's Tom Brown's Schooldays. This has led me to discover three interesting facts about Hughes. Fact 1 A commenter on that post mentioned Rugby, Tennessee, the colony founded by Hughes. Following that link, we learn: British author and social reformer Thomas Hughes, famous for his classic, TOM BROWN'S SCHOOLDAYS, dedicated the Rugby Colony amid great fanfare on October 5, 1880. He envisioned his new community as a place where those who wished could build a strong agricultural community through cooperative enterprise, while maintaining a cultured, Christian lifestyle, ...
Lindsay Writes: This morning's operation to repair Eric's broken left femur went very well. When I visited him this afternoon, he was sitting up in bed looking very cheerful (see photo) and relaxed. He was in no pain at all, not from his leg nor from the rib which he broke over three weeks ago. Physiotherapists will be getting him out of bed tomorrow, sitting in a chair.
By my reckoning, the net export gap WILL improve if we crunch the UK's consumption (i.e tax and cut benefits till everyone below the 9th percentile feels like s__T). But it won't be enough, and the early indications are that net exports are not responding ENOUGH.
Here's a very illuminating article in the London Review of Books. It's been written by a postman of five years standing. He demolishes the constant refrain from Mail managers and Mandelson that "figures are down": Mail is delivered to the offices in grey boxes. These are a standard size, big enough to carry a few hundred letters. The mail is sorted from these boxes, put into pigeon-holes representing the separate walks, and from there carried over to the frames. This is what is called 'internal sorting' and it is the job of the full-timers, who come into work early to ...
The pedestrian walkway between Bankmill Road and Rosefield Place is well used by local residents but a number of them have recently complained to me about its maintenance (or lack of it as the photo below indicates!) I have contacted the City Council on residents' behalf seeking clarification about maintenance arrangements and have also asked for the pathway to be tidied.
Just four months into Somerset being ruled by a Tory administration, and all is not well, as the local paper reports: A BRIDGWATER county councillor has defected to the LibDems just four months after being elected as a Conservative – slamming the new Tory administration as 'disastrous'. Cllr Stephen Gill narrowly fought off Labour leader Pat Parker to gain the Bridgwater South seat in June, but has now crossed over party lines to join the side he helped to oust from County Hall. Explaining his decision to the Mercury, Cllr Gill said the amount of money spent to find a ...
My contribution to the Lib Dem Voice "Introduction to blogging" series has been posted today. The topic that I was asked to contribute on is "Where to get ideas for blogposts". The series will eventually be compiled into an e-book which will also comprise comments contributed so if you have any thoughts on this topic please pop along and add them to the LDV thread.
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of speaking with residents from Rose Lodge in Seafield Road. The residents recently had a meeting and concerns were raised about the state of the pavements in Seafield Road, particularly given that some of the residents have mobility difficulties. As the photos (right and below) indicate, the pavements are in poor condition in places - the photo (right) in particular shows how the south footpath (opposite 52-60) has been badly damaged by vehicles mounting the pavement due to the narrowness of the roadway. I have raised the residents' concerns with the City Council's City Development ...
This lunchtime I joined Save the Longfield Suite campaigners and spent two hours collecting signatures for the petition outside M&S in Prestwich. I think I managed to fill over 5 pages of signatures and the response was terrific, with people eager to sign and pledge their support for retaining the Longfield Suite with it's large sprung dancefloor. The campaign is going from strength to strength and clearly campaigners are resolved to keep fighting until Bury Conservatives recognise the community value of the civic suites current facilities and back down over these plans. DON'T FORGET THE NEXT PUBLIC MEETING: Thursday November ...
There is an election approaching and, as ever, the British electorate will make a binary decision when it arrives at the ballot box. But what decision will it be? This is something of a lateral thinking test, and the wrong answers include several schools: the Marxist 'people vs. elite' and the Old School Tie 'posh anarchy vs. taxation'. Both views are simplistic and dated, but will inevitably dominate the debate. Those taking a more modern approach will face a different choice - one between progression and decay. This is more difficult to qualify, but the nature of the main parties ...
I am a fan of all things digital, and while studying at university I learned all about Nuclear Physics; so I'm not scared. I'm not that bothered about Nuclear Power stations as something evil or dangerous; they are neither. No, the reasons that the Lib Dems are anti-nuclear are numerous, well informed, and accurate:
How would you feel if your favourite sporting event was suddenly removed from the calendar? Each year we have certain set iconic sporting events that we're aware of even if we absolutely hate the sports involved. How would you feel if the World Tennis Association decided not to hold a Grand Slam at Wimbledon anymore, or if the FA decided not to bother with the FA Cup, or if the Grand National was cancelled, or if Test Matches no longer happened in England any more. The guy who holds the commercial rights to Formula One, the infamous Bernie Ecclestone, decided ...
The planting session at Garston Park went well this morning. We (that is the Friends of Garston Park plus some extra local residents) planted the rest of the crocus bulbs. Yesterday a group of children from Garston C of E School helped with the first session. Our next meeting of the Friends Group is 20th November at 6 30 at Long Lane Church. Details of all our activities will also be on www.fogp.blogspot.com.
Most of the time with a strike, you can point to a specific "sticking point" between the employers and employees, which causes the strike and which, when resolved, leads to the end of the strike. You know the sort of thing. Management propose a pay rise of 0.5%, the unions demand 8% and then they both sit down and agree on 3.73% tapered over 5 years backdated to last January 1st with productivity gains agreed. Well, OK, what is the "sticking point" in the Royal Mail dispute? Any thoughts? I have just listened to Billy Hayes, leader of the Communication ...
Like Quote of the Day, but a whole paragraph, and just one per week. This is from Charlie Brooker, the man who writes down what us liberals think, much more eloquently, persuasively, and naturally than I, or many others, can: Skin is rubbish. What is skin anyway? Just a stretchy bag for keeping yourself in. A badly ...
Excellent post over at The Enemies of Reason about the utter twaddle being spouted by the right wing tabloids about the BBC's decision to allow Griffin on Question Time. Hat Tip: Mark Reckons
A friend has sent me this link on youtube, and I'd urge everyone to watch. I laughed till I cried. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QAvkFS_cgk
Sat 24th
13:30
Labour's Dawn Butler's "strange" complaint: BBC should have invited me on before BNP's Griffin
Poor Dawn Butler, the Labour MP for Brent South, whose plight – on expenses, her voting record and media outbursts – Lib Dem Voice has covered before. Now she is making the news for lambasting the BBC for inviting BNP leader Nick Griffin onto Question Time. What's wrong with that, you say, no more than Peter Hain did? Ah, but Dawn's complaint is not so much that Mr Griffin appeared, as that she didn't. Here's an excerpt from the rather extraordinary letter, written , I mean, by Brent's Labour council group leader Ann John, and 19 of her colleagues: The ...
On Thursday without warning the Co-operative issued the following press release. The Co-operative Group has announced the closure of its convenience store and Post Office in Athol Court, Andover. The store will close on Saturday, 21 November, while the Post Office will remain open until 16 January, 2010. The closure of the store will mean the loss of two full time and ten part time jobs, while one full time job will be lost with the closure of the Post Office, however, every effort will be made to relocate staff to other Co-operative stores in the area. A Co-operative Group ...
I don't often do blog posts that basically just link to a single other post but Anton Vowl's post on "The Enemies of Reason" today entitled "Hmm... remember this?" is absolutely superb and deserves to be linked to widely. He contrasts the "outrage" expressed on the front pages of today's tabloids regarding Nick Griffin (largely directed at the BBC for letting him on) with many previous front pages of each of them showing headlines that could pretty much have been BNP press releases. His conclusion is: It's all very well people blaming Labour, or the BBC, or whoever, for the ...
Yesterday I went to the 2nd birthday celebrations for the Askalot community shop in Atholl Court. As usual the shop was filled with local residents. This facility has been a resounding success due to the hard work put in by organisers and also the commitment of local people to the shop. Congratulations to Marianne, Petra, Christine, Chris and everyone else who made the day a success. What a pity this celebration was marred by the bad news about the Co-op next door. See above.
There's no prize at stake - just the opportunity to prove you're wittier than any other LDV reader ... [IMG: nick-griffin] Here's BNP leader Nick Griffin, whose controversial appearance on the BBC's Question Time has dominated the headlines this week, getting splattered by an egg missile – what do you think he might be saying/thinking? The winner of last week's Bedford mayoral sensation caption competition (according to The Voice's judging panel of one) - Ruth Bright, with a highly commended placing to Andy H.
Lindsay writes: Eric had the operation to put a pin in his left leg early this morning. He is now back on the ward and the ward nurse tells me he is pain free. I'll be visiting him shortly.
I appreciate that neither the Government nor the main Opposition Party are going to want to be seen supporting a Liberal Democrats Opposition day debate or motion, however, the two topics that Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats chose have only highlighted the sheer hypocricy on the other benches. Back in 2001 when I worked for Vince Cable as his Parliamentary Researcher the Equitable Life story broke and Vince's inbox and intray just filled and filled up with heartbreaking correspondence from people who had lost everything. Every time Vince got up and spoke in a debate or in one of ...
Due to a slight mix-up in terms of train bookings, I had been scheduled to head back to Suffolk last night whilst Ros went to Winchester. However, the equivalent of impulse buying kicked in and, as a result, I found myself on a South West Trains service to the capital of Wessex. Luckily, our hosts were able to accommodate me, and we sat down to dinner at the Royal Hotel at 7.30. Or not, as the case may be. Whilst the schedule had been agreed in advance, the message hadn't necessarily got through to the kitchen so, for a change, ...
Okay, I've bowed to popular opinion – the Hazel Blears-inspired title for our occasional video round-ups, YouTube 'cos we want to, is no more. Instead you're getting the drably named LDVideo. BUT just because you've made me drop my punning motif doesn't mean the videos that follow are anything less than scintillating. First up, we have Cassettboy's Nick Griffin / BBC Question Time mash-up which was being re-tweeted like nobody's business yesterday. Childish but fun: Earlier this week, Nick Clegg pitched up on Absolute Radio to be interviewed by Christian O'Connell – here's a little bit of what happened: And ...
Sad to say, the campaign to fight yet another off-licence opening in Westbourne Road has been unsuccessful, after the appeal by Mr Kilic against Islington's award of a licence failed this week. Cllr James Kempton and I were among those who gave witness statements in support of the residents' objections. In my witness statement, I ...
Leaving football aside until after today's match and skipping over the less pleasant things (like Owen's emergency appendectomy*), theatre has as usual been accounting for a lot of what free time I have left after work and council. I've been to lots of plays over the last six months, way too many to mention. Easily the worst was Punk Rock at the Lyric which had some inexplicably good reviews but was utter garbage. There have been one or two other stinkers as well, but all in all have seen some excellent theatre - just to mention a few: Eight at ...
Stockport has lots of events as part of the UK's first inter-faith week. Find full details on the website. Events include Cricket and football training at Cheadle Muslim Association Free celebration event at the Hat Works, Weds 18th Nov, 5-9pm (including free refreshments. Open days and events across Stocport.
[IMG: Rob Brown - Public Relations and the Social Web: book cover] Rob Brown's guide to how the Web 2.0 world is changing public relations is a straight-forward summary of the main trends, the main issues and the main tools. It fills a niche between inspiring, hectoring books on the one hand and detailed books about one particular tool or issue on the other. Instead, it acts as a general introduction for the uninformed. That makes the decision to publish a traditional book sensible. It is a medium the suits the audience likely to be interested in its contents. Those ...
I wouldn't want to favour one newspaper as compared to another, so having quoted the Northern Echo yesterday I thought you might be interested in an article in today's Journal about the Consett Green Spaces Group's application for village green status for the fields. You can read it here and decide which side of the argument you are on. If you want to back the Green Spaces Group you can become a fan on their Facebook site.
Welcome to part three of our "Introduction to blogging" guide for Liberal Democrat bloggers or would-be bloggers. It's appearing each Saturday between now and Christmas, with all the posts available via this page. The series will then be revised and collated into an e-book, so please do post up your comments as the series progresses. Today it's the turn of Mark Thompson (the one with the blog rather than the one with TV empire) addressing one of the problems that befalls many would be bloggers: how do you keep on coming up with ideas for new posts? [IMG: Young woman, ...
In my last post I went into some detail as to why the American liberal activist site Daily Kos has been such a success. It was a combination of good fortune, good timing, beneficial political environment and something that hadn't previously been possible without power of the Internet to bring people together. Many people have wondered ...
There are rumours around David Milliband will become the European Union's first Foreign Minister.
So, a privileged member of the Royal Family (and no I am in no way a Republican) is defending the bonuses for bankers by calling them minute in the scheme of things! Minute - since when was £105,000 minute? Come on HRH, get with the programme, that would take the average person 10 years to accrue if they didn't spend their salary on anything else, but because you work for somewhere like Goldman Sachs you get £105,000+ on top just because...well if you are one of the 31,000 people working at Goldman Sachs, that is the average bonus payment due ...
I said my last post on this pamphlet was the penultimate one. I was wrong. Because this one is about the "The Social Crisis" and I have just discovered there is another crisis after that. I suppose the social crisis counts a milder, Liberal Democrat version of David Cameron's broken Britain. It seems to consist in the lack of social mobility in modern Britain, which Nick characterises as a lack of "fairness". "Fairness" always seems such a playground word, even if it does go down well with the focus groups. Nick says the concept "pierces right to the heart of ...
I have attended a few events organised by Editorial Intelligence in the last few months. They are a company that works to aggregate the interesting comment from the mainstream media and blogs amongst many other things. I recently spoke at a breakfast event organised by them (which I blogged about here and here) and afterwards I took the opportunity to grab a quick interview with Julia Hobsbawm, the founder and Chief Executive of the company to find out a bit more about what they do which I have embedded below:
In my years in politics I have occasionally had a bad media experience where either I have completely messed up or as happened on at least one occasion, the interviewer ambushed me with a set of questions on a different subject to that which I had been summoned to talk about. Obviously, such experiences are disconcerting but you move on. It is all part of the job and there is no point making a fuss. I have absolutely no sympathy therefore for Nick Griiffin who has now decided that his appearance on Question Time on Thursday was unfair. He is ...
Almost 10,000 people could die every year because of their drinking. Research from the University of the West of England shows that 90,800 people could die avoidable deaths from alcohol-related causes in the next decade if we continue to drink at ...
Sat 24th
00:12
Kirsty Williams gives her 'Fresh Start' Speech to Conference in Wrexham 2009 (in three parts)
"Nick Griffin was bullied. David Dimbleby was a disgrace. Members of the public have been persuaded by BNP policies". These were some of the views expressed on Radio 5 immediately after Question Time. The majority view was that Nick Griffin came off badly in the debate. He gave confused answers and his bigotry was exposed. Other criticisms of the programme were that too much time was taken up with the BNP but compare this with criticisms that their policies were not discussed. I was interested to hear a little more on policy on the radio. The BNP councillor is a ...
