Good to see the progress with the dropped kerbing programme on Perth Road, with the work starting earlier this week at the Union Place junction. The original intention had been to ensure full dropped kerbing on Perth Road on the north side between Duncan of Jordanstone and Sinderins but the good news is that the south side will now see improvements too. To quote an update from the City Council to me today : "Dropped kerb access will be available on both footways between Sinderins and West Marketgait once the contract is complete either by the end of March or ...
I was out and about delivering leaflets in Winlaton today on a lovely clear sunny day. But today is World Book Day and I wanted to speak up for the humble book. People are predicting that electronic reader will do for the book like the MP3 did for the record and CD. But I think there is something inherently satisfying about a book and that's why the role of the Library for people who can't afford books is so important. On world book day, I am currently reading two books! Not at the same time of course. One book I ...
Tonight, the public launch meeting for the Dundee West Transition Group took place at Dundee West Church. It was a great turnout of over 50, with much enthusiasm from all concerned. I spoke on the subject of home insulation and will be working closely with the home insulation sub-group in promoting home insulation across the West End. Read more about the Dundee West Transition Town Group at http://transtowndundeewest.blogspot.com/.
Divers have confirmed that the Leven river bed under the bridge has been eroded following the heavy rainfall of the past few weeks. As a result it seems that the bridge has moved slightly, not enough to cause collapse but enough to damage the road surface and to need a remedy sooner rather than later. As a result the bridge will be closed for at least 8 weeks. Meetings are being arranged to
For reasons that are too complicated and uninteresting to go into now, I have a connection with the Royal Academy of Engineering, and tonight I went to the launch of their "Making Things Better" campaign, which aims to move engineering to the centre of society, for the benefit of all. Engineering hasn't exactly been trendy for ...
News that the John Radcliffe Hospital has cancelled all children's surgery following four recent deaths is a serious concern to everyone in the area but it must be seen in the context of a properly functioning system. It is a tragic fact that some patients will not survive visits to hospital and it is always worse when children are involved. News that the JR has decided to investigate these recent deaths confirms to me that our hospital is taking this matter very seriously. As a parent of young children - one of whom entered this world at the JR - ...
Brilliant - no meetings today so time to catch up on a zillion e-mails that arrived yesterday and tidy up. Rather boring to write about so a bit about last night's meeting. Not surprisingly the issue of the Leven Bridge came up again in the context of the school for Ingleby Barwick pupils who are having to be bussed out of the town each day normally and now have a long detour. John...
Simon Moores Thanet's rising Tory talent, in a world of the mediocre, was at a loss to understand my last posting, as much as I was with his comment of mystification. "Tony You have lost this 'Tory Boy' completely!" Thanet Times reported "Internet delay on council debates" referring to Thanet council's apparently aborted webcasts, as I mentioned at the top of my last post "I've no time or inclination to construct my usual verbose postings" Moores usual omnipotent style assumed that naturally I would have read either his or Michael Child's weblog, "The meeting was broadcast and you can find ...
For once all three political parties are in agreement over something. According to the latest news Leeds United's owners have been declared fit and proper by the Football League but they are to be allowed to remain anonymous. Another victory for Uncle Ken and a complete and utter farce particularly given the situation when Leeds went in and ...
What has slowly been dragged out of the Conservative Party over the last day is that senior figures such as William Hague and David Cameron were kept in the dark over the exact facts of Lord Ashcroft's financial affairs for many years. Despite seeking reassurances and the like – and answering questions about it in public – none of them actually got to the bottom of the matter. Leaving aside the rights and wrongs of the Ashcroft affair itself for a moment (many of which amount to the simple question, "Is something being legal enough to make it acceptable?"), what ...
Latest news on the long running saga of the pot holes at the junction of Stroud Green Road and Morris Place: the source of the leaking water still hasn't been located. For a while Thames Water thought it was someone else's water causing the problem, but with the mystery still unresolved (and hence the leak not fixed, and hence the potholes not repaired) Thames Water is rejoining the hunt.
On Tuesday I paid a visit to the Acute Stroke Unit at Darlington Memorial Hospital. With its long-term future still in doubt, due to the need to meet Government targets of 24/7 acute stroke care across the country, which may lead Health Trusts to seek a concentration of services in regional centres, it was really good to be able to talk to the consultant and ward sister responsible for providing
No election count for me to go to this week so I will be back in the host's chair for the #bbcqt Live Chat on this blog starting at 10:30pm. Thanks again to @El_Cuervo for standing in last week. Coming from Canary Wharf, the panel are Transport Secretary Lord Adonis, London Mayor Boris Johnson, the Liberal Democrat peer Shirley Williams, the broadcaster Carol Vorderman and novelist Will Self. Could be quite a good edition. Adonis particularly usually talks good sense and it's always good fun to see Will Self sneeringly cutting people down to size. Also, I hope one of ...
From Liberal Democrat Voice comes news that 25 Lib Dem PPCs have signed a letter asking the party's parliamentarians to reconsider their position on the Digital Economy Bill. Heresy Corner gives a respectful hearing to Damian Green's speech on civil liberties to the ResPublica think-tank. "If the BBC were to restructure itself according to public service broadcasting principles it would abolish BBC3 (£115m a year for a pile of crap), privatize Radio 1 and possibly Radio 2 , and stop paying huge salaries for "talent" - though the fact that Anne Robinson gets £3m a year suggests this word is ...
... to only about 3 times' the UK's. Though that is not the angle taken in this excellent story (hattip Marginal Revolution) which marvels at it falling near to the level of some extraordinary city in Nebraska , Omaha. Los Angeles, a city of some 4 million inhabitants, is enjoying a blindingly good few years for ...
I know the paper copy of PEP! 1 has not yet come out (due to EBKAC problems at my end – it will be out within a couple of weeks), but plans are well underway for PEP! issue two. A short list of what's been proposed for the issue – bear in mind that *NONE* ...
Gateshead Council today and we had another discussion about the constitutional amendment to move us from the system in which the leader and cabinet are appointed every year by full council to one in which the leader is appointed only once and this person appoints the cabinet and remains in office until such time as his/her constituents turf him/her out as a councillor. This is a system that is
Early OR tonight due to the #bbcqt live chat later.Mark Wadsworth thinks he knows what is going to happen house prices next based on the post 1989 trends.Anna Coote from the NEF writing on Left Foot Forward suggests we need a 21 hour working week. Hey, I could use the extra free time for blogging...Hopi Sen reveals how close he is to being selected to fight a seat for Labour.Michael Chappell writing on AULD thinks the fact that the NHS blood donation service has a blanket ban on accepting blood from homosexual men is idiotic.Stephen Glenn has some further ripostes ...
Thu 4th
19:52
25 Lib Dem PPCs sign letter asking Lib Dem Parliamentarians to think again on Digital Economy Bill
The Digital Economy Bill has become one of the most heavily debated topics on this site. Posts related to it often generate a large number of comments, but today's have done far more than that. A bit of background first for anyone new to the story or catching up on it. The Digital Economy Bill has generated a lot of controversy for its proposals to do with copyright and illegal filesharing, with Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group urging the party to oppose it in a guest post. Some of those issues I took up in an interview with ...
The 'pupil premium' – the Lib Dem proposal to invest an extra £2.5bn in schools which could be used to cut class sizes, offer one-on-one tuition and provide catch-up classes – is a policy which Nick Clegg has passionately advocated for over seven years. It is now one of the party's four key policies emphasising fairness – in this case, A fair start for every child – for the coming general election. This week, the Institute for Fiscal Studies – the independent financial research institute often quoted by the party to validate its economic policies – published an analysis of ...
The Harborough Mail reports that the Audit Commission is to launch an investigation into the Tory-run district council's waste collection contract. Last November it emerged that the council has allowed the waste disposal company Focsa to open a depot on the edge of Great Bowden without planning permission. By coincidence or not, the Tory group leader, who represented the ward affected, resigned at the same time. The Liberal Democrats won the subsequent by-election with a crunching majority. Now comes news that Harborough District Council has been breaking its own rules by allowing Focsa to operate without a signed contract and ...
The BBC itself reports: Cornwall MP Julia Goldsworthy says the BBC should consider scrapping Radio 1. The Lib Dem communities spokeswoman was responding in a BBC3 debate, First Time Voters' Question Time, about the BBC's strategic review... But Ms Goldsworthy said: "They should be looking at other areas where there is already competition in the market, like Radio 1." You can read the full report here. UPDATE: See comments thread below for a different interpretation of her remarks.
Today, a book is published called 'Why Vote Liberal Democrat'. It makes a compelling case for supporting our party in the General Election. And it's a great read for anyone interested in politics - long-standing Party members and floating voters alike. You can buy a copy of "Why Vote Lib Dem" here for just £6.99. The book contains chapters from a whole range of people, all arguing that a Liberal Democrat government is what our country desperately needs. Contributors include: Actor, and hopefully soon to be Oscar winner, Colin Firth. Colin says of the Liberal Democrats; "whenever I look for ...
It's "Fairtrade Fortnight" - apparently... Don't get me wrong. The people behind the "Fairtrade" brand (which is a brand just like Coca Cola. It is a brand. Full stop.) have good intentions. But what they believe in is bad economics. They are ultimately out-of-touch and misinformed and rely on woolly rhetoric and guilt-inducing marketing. I think this facebook group says it best: Fairtrade is a cartel that favours farmers in relatively wealthy countries (eg Mexico), who can afford to sign on to the Fairtrade brand, at the expense of those in the poorest countries, who cannot. Fairtrade incentivises the growing ...
The Tory lead over Labour has shrunk to just two points in sixty marginal seats a survey by Channel Four News shows: The Conservative party has seen its lead cut to just two points in 60 key marginal seats, in an exclusive Channel 4 News/YouGov poll released today which shows we could be heading for a hung parliament. The poll shows the gap between the two main parties has narrowed to its closest since shortly after Gordon Brown became prime minster in the autumn of 2007. 39 per cent of voters said they would vote Conservative and 37 per cent ...
Very interesting finding from the latest marginals poll by Channel 4/YouGov today. They asked the question: "Who would make the best Chancellor after the election" The answers were: Vince Cable: 27%Alistair Darling: 17%George Osborne: 15% This is pretty damning stuff for the Tories and ties in with what I have been saying for a while. Osborne is a liability for them. It's great to see Vince getting the recognition he deserves. It is so difficult for spokespeople in any portfolio to get recognition for the third party so his achievement here is even more incredible.
There's a new book out called Why Vote Lib Dem. Among the essays is one written by Oscar nominated actor Colin Firth and another by former Roxy Music star Brian Eno. Other celebs said to be Lib Dem supporters are Daniel Radcliffe, Kate Winslet and Andrew Motion. But hey, we can't compete with the Tories who have just revealed Robert Mugabe as a supporter!
Manor House Library staff are to host a great opportunity to regularly meet other Spanish speakers and to celebrate Latin America. Should Spanish be your second language, this is also a chance to socialise and hone your language skills. The group will watch a movie or have a chat about a short-story by a Latin American author. Copies of the short stories will be provided in advance. These are free evenings and will be held fortnightly on Thursdays, between 5 and 7 pm. The first session will be on Thurday 15th April. More info on 020 8852 0357
I attended the council meeting yesterday (3rd March 2010) where the budget was approved with a few amendments. Before going into the meeting I meet the Look In protesters outside, they wrote some very good songs, the lyrics of which I will post on here some other time. Terry Pearce, chairman of Bracknell Senior Citizen's Forum handed in the petition to keep the Look In Cafe open, he was also allowed to make a 3 minute speech. I noted the following points from Terry Pearce speech. 1. He compared the 60k to the councillor allowances. 2. He complained that the ...
Liberal Democrat councillor Chris Abbott is asking Redcar & Cleveland Council to contact the RSPB to see if red kites can be released into the wild here. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds recently launched a successful scheme of this kind in the Leeds area and in other parts of the country. Chris, who represents the Newcomen ward of Redcar, said:"I believe that the hills around Redcar and Guisborough would be an ideal breeding ground for these beautiful birds. "If successful a scheme of this kind would help to boost tourism in our area. "It is not so ...
I've just been listening to the interview I did a week or so ago for Raw Radio the award winning student radio station at the University of Warwick. They recorded a News Special exploring the issues at stake in forthcoming general election. Questions included Student Fees, the Iraq War, the economy and who is Jedward!
We debate the Goldstone report on Israel's assault against Gaza in my European Liberal Democrat Group. A proposal from me that we should formally welcome the call by EU foreign ministers for the immediate lifting of the continuing siege of Gaza is accepted. But my German colleagues are adamant that we should not include a reference to the fact that Israel has ignored the call and we should now consider what action to take. So it is alright to express words but not alright to try and give those words meaning, or to do anything that might inconvenience Israel? It ...
I know I keep blogging about hung parliaments but it's the polls wot made me do it. For example there is one just out from Channel 4 that shows that in 60 of the marginals that Cameron will need to win, the Tory lead has slipped from 7 points to just 2 now. If that is right then Cameron cannot win a majority. Timothy Garton Ash has a good piece in the Guardian today entitled "Don't be afraid of a hung parliament". In it he argues that we should not be intimidated by an unholy alliance of currency traders and ...
Following my post about Rob and Stephen below, I've been told by a couple more councillors that they often get mistaken for colleagues. This one I can sort of see: This one I can't:
At this morning's meeting of Sefton's Cabinet agreed to lease the ground floor of the Southport Visiter's Tulketh Street offices while work is underway on the £15 million Southport Cultural Centre project. The town centre site is only 300 yards from the present Library. The decision has been warmly welcomed by Southport MP John Pugh who campaigned strongly against the original decision last November of Labour and Conservative councillors not to provide any temporary library. Local Liberal Democrats organised a 7000-strong petition and persuaded Southport resident Jean Alexander (former Coronation Street star 'Hilda Ogden') to speak to a Council meeting ...
http://www.redcross.org.uk/standard.asp?id=89386.
I see that Iain Dale is talking about the Conservatives doing stuff about ethnicity balance since the year nought AD (After David). He says that the Conservatives have selected five Black and Ethnic Minority (BME) Candidates in safe seats, and that they will have at least 11 BME Tory MPs or as many as 16. He asks what are the Lib Dems doing about it? Well in month 1 AD I posted this about our Reflecting Britain Campaign. So whoops on point one we've been working at it since the years BC (Before Cameron and Clegg). He also is using ...
Whenever I see criticism from Conservatives over our apparent failure to adopt and select BME candidates, I always check for irony. And now that Iain Dale has decided to highlight this issue, it is a rare pleasure to respond. I am intrigued by the notion that Conservatives have taken positive action rather than positive discrimination. What Iain quite cynically fails to mention is the process by which shortlisting takes place for Conservative PPC selections. A selection committee is appointed and meets in conclave with a member of the Party's Candidates Committee, one of whose members is Eric Pickles. It can ...
The Tories' apparent commitment to a Pupil Premium is totally meaningless unless extra money is put in. Without this money, many schools will see their budgets cut. This will be even more devastating at a time when public spending will be squeezed, especially as the Tories are already targeting the Education budget for cuts. It is nonsense to give "freedoms" to some schools, but deny them to others. The Tories' plans to simply rely on the market, without any accountability or local oversight will fail and will have little impact in the vast majority of schools. Worse still, both the ...
A bit of confusion at Strategic Planning it would seem. Someone misidentified Tory Stephen Rushworth for my Lib Dem colleague Rob Nolan. Surely not!
For the entire year before my 15th birthday I was flooded with Blood Donation campaigns. All the posters and leaflets emphasised that giving blood saves lives and that, without dedicated donors, the blood supply would dry up. Of course I decided that I wanted to give blood at the earliest opportunity, that being my 16th ...
Plans are under way to make Piccadilly Circus more pedestrian friendly. As someone who used to work at the foot of Shaftesbury Avenue (see picture) I look forward to the changes. Mind you judging by the foot and road traffic, plus the location of the shadows I cannot speculate what day of the week at about 1 o'clock this is meant to be, far too quiet. The idea is to ease congestion in the area ahead of the Olympics (876 days away) not only is the Marathon course nearby. But on the 6th and 7th of August the Triathlon is ...
There are some sound theoretical reasons why less government consumption can lead to higher growth, particularly in the long run. But not always and everywhere. Neither for the opposite. Pragmatism needs to rule
There have been some occasions recently when the Tories seem to have gone a bit media shy. Michael Gove recently refused to debate directly with Ed Balls on TV about schools policy and insisted on being questioned separately. I must say I found this very odd. It is exactly the sort of thing that if Balls had done to Gove, the Tory bloggers and tweeters would have been up in arms about and insisting it would have been because Gove would have wiped the floor with him. Then today on the "World At One" on Radio 4, the Conservatives declined ...
It seems that one Tory Council has decided to stop honouring local soldiers who die in combat. Barnet in North London has decided that if families want the names of their deceased soldier relatives added to local war memorials then they will have to pay for the privilege, including the process of validating. My personal view is that local authorities should be immensely proud of local soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines. They honour us with their service and we should honour them if the worst happens. I have previously called on the Council to formally pay our respects in Council ...
UKIP have expelled the West Mildands MEP Nikki Sinclaire for standing up to UKIP's alliance with the (ultra) right-wing Northern League of Italy.
Cornwall Council's Strategic Planning Committee has given the go ahead to the proposal from Sita to build a new refuse transfer station and household waste recycling centre at Bangors Lane on the Pennygillam Industrial Estate in Launceston. As I have blogged before, this meeting was held in County Hall despite the Bangors Lane application being the only one on the agenda. As a result, there were only a handful of local residents present despite the application being of great interest locally. I have asked why such meetings do not automatically happen in the areas they affect. At the meeting, I ...
BBC News is reporting that Lord Ashcroft's company, Bearwood Corporate Services Ltd, has been cleared in its donations to the Conservatives. An investigation was under way as it was claimed that Bearwood was not trading in the UK at the time and was therefore not legally able to make the donations. Unlike some, I'm more than happy to accept the Commission's findings in cases such as these. The questions about why Lord Ashcroft and the Conservatives misled people about their tax status remain, of course.
If you watch First Minister's Questions, you've probably noticed a recent pattern. I guess that would be in between the attempts to remove your own kneecaps with a fork. Let's face it, you have to be pretty bored and sadomasochistic to voluntarily watch FMQs these days. It's now television only for those who've found that self-mutilation 'gets a bit samey after a while'. The pattern, is that Labour members seem to have no actual interest in talking about anything that is actually occurring within Wales at the moment. The person leading this new tactic of avoidance appears to be the ...
An unusual twist in today's Independent in which a Liberal Democrat candidate is accused of seeking to buy a seat with his own money. Chris Nicholson, who is standing for the Liberal Democrats in Streatham, South London is a wealthy businessman who has given the party £300,000 over the last three years, nearly all of which has apparently been spent in the seat he hopes to represent after the next election. Mr. Nicholson is not a non-dom. He pays UK taxes on all of his earnings. All of this has upset the Labour MP, Keith Hill, who has claimed that ...
Apparently there's a story in the paper about cllr. O'Neill pulling out of the General Election campaign. I'm told that he says he's received a load of hate mail, which has forced him out. It's an interesting accusation, and one that he apparently hasn't been willing to back up with any evidence. I'll have to ...
The TV series Flash Forward was due to return to TV screens today in the US, for the second part of its first season. However, this has now been delayed by a fortnight, adding to the general sense of problems besetting the show and making it even less likely that the show can continue to have the dates on which events happen in the episodes roughly match up with the dates on which they are screened. However, in better news James Callis (of Battlestar Galactica) is joining the cast and, despite the show's problems and falling popularity in the US, ...
Commenting on the recent Office for National Statistics migration figures, Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Huhne said: "Public confidence and trust in the migration system has been shattered by decades of mismanagement. "The abolition of exit checks by Conservative and Labour Governments means that we can only guess at the numbers coming in and out. "People over-staying on short-term visas are probably the biggest source of illegal immigration and we still cannot say whether they are leaving when they are meant to do so. "Exit checks must be reintroduced immediately."
Liberal Democrat Shadow Business Secretary, John Thurso, commented on last week's figures from the Office for National Statistics, showing that investment by British businesses was 24.1% lower at the end of 2009 than at the start, the worst decline since records began: "This dramatic slump in business investment bodes ill for economic recovery. "Banks are failing to meet their lending commitments, starving businesses of capital needed for investment. "The Government needs to get a grip and make sure the banks' lending agreements are more concrete and better policed so that recovery doesn't peter out."
At last Council meeting held this Monday 1st march Cllr Alan Hall, who is leader of the Labour group at Council, did a serious bit of grand-standing against Liberal Democrat disclosure of Councillor's expenses. His high sounding speech explained to all mortals that the £1300 taxi bill of Councillor Sylvia Scott was thoroughly justified by the ...
Last night was a good night for Westminster Liberal Democrats. We had a fantastic presence at the conference, which was well rewarded by our winning the runners-up prize of £400 (not quite Ashcroft millions but it all helps), to be spent on a campaign to win Euro voters in the council elections. Congratulations to Sonia and Ben who put ...
Actor Colin Firth, former Director of Public Prosecutions Sir Ken Macdonald QC and musician Brian Eno have all contributed to a book entitled 'Why Vote Liberal Democrat'. The book, which goes on sale on today, covers topics as varied as fair taxes, gay rights, looking after our armed forces, political reform and the fight against climate change. Other contributors include Gurkha veteran Madan Kumar Gurung, political reform campaigner Pam Giddy and Duwayne Brooks, Stephen Lawrence's best friend who was with him on the night he died. Commenting Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg said: "There are hundreds of reasons to vote ...
Tory-run Barnet Council is the home of 'easy council', the idea that council tax payers pay extra to get the standard of service they should already be getting by default, and has come up with a new money saving idea! In a report published last month Barnet Council has decided that it will not be responsible for the update of the borough's war memorials to include the names of service men and women who gave their lives since the memorial was built. Any proposed additions must be paid for by those who want the names added and there must be ...
For anyone who has ever tried to leave Aberystwyth, or indeed Ceredigion by train will probably have encountered the terrible problems with the train services out of the county. Unfortunately, due to the frequency of trains, the lack of extra capacity for peak times and the tight changeover times in other stations further down the ...
Iain Dale has a post today entitled: "Why Don't the LibDems Select BME Candidates in Winnable Seats?". He makes the argument that the Conservatives have BME candidates in a number of winnable seats and estimates they will have between 11 and 16 BME MPs after the next election. He suggests there will be none on the Lib Dem benches. In the comments, a number of people have taken him to task about his assumptions. LibCync points out that Operation Black Vote has identified 3 potentially winnable seats for the Lib Dems with BME candidates. He also points out that Nick ...
Last night on Newsnight, Dame Shirley Williams made a comment during a section on the death of Michael Foot which bears further scrutiny: "The Left needs to go back to first principles." This could be interpreted in a variety of ways, but what's relevant here is that this comment has been repeated by a variety of ...
According to past polls over 50% of the electorate would vote Lib Dem if they thought we'd win. If there isn't going to be a majority party anyway, they might as well vote for the folk they'd really like to win - it isn't going to let the party they hate in. Poll after poll is forecasting that neither Conservative nor Labour will get an overall majority in this year's General Election. This means that there is no need to vote against the party you don't want. You can safely vote for the party you do want. For half of ...
The amendment to do with web blocking and copyright from Tim Clement-Jones and Tim Razzall in the House of Lords has generated much discussion online. Yesterday we ran a piece from Lord Clement-Jones explaining his reasoning: There are websites which consistently infringe copyright, many of them based outside the UK in countries such as Russia and beyond the jurisdiction of the UK courts. Many of these websites refuse to stop supplying access to illegal content. It is a result of this situation that the Liberal Democrats have tabled an amendment in the Lords which has the support of the Conservatives ...
Commenting on today's Defence Committee report, Liberal Democrat Shadow Defence Secretary, Nick Harvey said: "This report shows the shambolic state of the UK's defence equipment programme. "It is exasperating to learn how pervasive the culture of denial and deception among MoD officials is when it comes to acknowledging the £21 billion funding gap in defence procurement. "The British taxpayer deserves to know the exact amount of debt he or she is expected to carry. No MoD official should be allowed to withhold or distort this knowledge. "Only by enforcing regular independent reviews as well as routine MoD presentations to the ...
Kensington & Chelsea Council's response to a massive petition regarding the future of Portobello Market is a weak attempt to pass the buck for their own failings. The public have seen through it. Lib Dem Councillor Carol Caruana receiving the petitionsfrom antiques trader Christopher Hickey Question of the Day: Even if new planning laws were magically passed tomorrow, would this Council use them properly to protect Portobello Market? Let's examine the evidence. The Council is panicking. They can see that the public are angry about what is happening to Portobello Market, and they just don't know how to deal with ...
Good news: the Conservative MP for Mid-Sussex has more than halved the number of outside jobs he does in addition to being an MP. Bad news: he's still doing three, paying over £350,000 per year in total. (Back in December 2005, he had seven outside jobs, but payment for them did not have to be disclosed.) Certainly can't be said the jobs are badly paid. They bring in for him over £220,000 which, allowing for tax, means a gross pay of over £350,000 (as his MP salary will have taken up tax allowances and put him in in the top ...
I have linked to Munby's judgment in respect of the anonymity of expert witnesses. This was not challenged by the court of appeal.
Sigh, I know pointing out cheap party-political falsehoods in Iain Dale's postings could be very time-consuming but I'll make an quick exception for this one, Why Don't the LibDems Select BME Candidates in Winable Seats? Iain claims that after the election that we will have no BME MPs. Wait, what's this? My all-of-three-seconds spent at google turns up this, Operation Black Vote saying that the LibDems are on track to have between 1-3 BME MPs after the election. He then finished his post with a flourish: "Nick Clegg has been leader of the LibDems for two years now. Is it ...
Some people like regularly visiting a site to see if there's new stories of interest. Some people like subscribing to its news feed (RSS) and checking that way. But if you prefer email, you can instead sign up to get a daily early morning email with a summary of the previous day's posts from Lib Dem Voice, complete with convenient links to click on if any take your fancy and you want to take a read. Just go to our email sign up page to start getting these emails. You can also sign up for a special once-a-week email, bringing ...
Last night was the last Full Council before the May elections. The minutes will be published at www.liverpool.gov.uk in the councillors, meetings and agendas section. Here's my take on it though The last one before an election is always a bit fraught, and last night was no exception. There were however some really nice moments as well as the shouting! The Lord Mayor made a point of name checking the Councillors who are standing down. Three of them made short speeches and I was really struck in particular by what Paul Clark (County ward) said about his time on the ...
For anyone interested in politics - local and national - the Daily Post and Echo have launched a new website. It's called Liverpool Party Central. The idea is that politicans from different parties post comments or articles and anyone reading the site can make their own comments too. It's not written by the Post and Echo journalists. It's written by members of the different political parties (including me). It hasn't been widely publicised yet but I expect it will be shortly and so there'll be a lot more views. If you want to have a look you can find the ...
I blogged a few days ago asking if any of the Conservative candidates in Cornwall had received donations from Lord Ashcroft - the Tory donor who as apparently avoided paying more than £127 million in tax since he was made a peer by William Hague. This morning I received my first answer. Sian Flynn, the Surrey exile who is now Tory Candidate for North Cornwall, has replied saying that although she has not received any direct donations from Lord Ashcroft or his company... "Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) offers financial support to candidates in marginal seats from a central fund, drawn ...
A Government commissioned report has found that young people are being forced from rural areas because of a shortage of jobs and homes. The government's rural advocate Stuart Burgess said "deep concerns" over work, training, housing, transport and social exclusion existed across rural England. This will hardly come as news to people in North Cornwall where the average house price is more than 16 times average wages. But nevertheless, the report is a welcome summation of the problems we face. What is decidedly less welcome is the Government's response: A Downing Street spokesman said rural communities played "an important part ...
[IMG: BBC website screenshot] The BBC's website regularly feature in the lists of the ten most popular websites in the UK - and are usually the only ones in the top ten from a British organisation. So the BBC's plans to refocus and shrink its web presence are likely to be widely felt. The 79 page strategy document ranges over all of the BBC's operations but specially on the web it proposes cutting BBC Online's budget by 25% by 2013. It says: There will be more prominence for audiovisual content, BBC original journalism, and expertise and analysis from correspondents and ...
Allow me a brief diversion from low-minded politics to consider a development in society that is really intriguing me. The internet, to people like me (and I pity them), is one of life's essentials. I say that without any hint of sarcasm, even though my definition of "essential" doesn't match the dictionary. Even to people less ...
I originally stood for election in Belsize because of my concern about climate change. That concern has grown over the years as the science has become clearer. A few mistakes in the scientific literature and a cold winter don't change the underlying facts. The world is heating up and our weather system is becoming more chaotic because we're burning fossil fuels at a tremendous rate. It's a hard message to sell when the evidence isn't in front of peoples' eyes, and when the government and media are conveying such muddled messages, but we risk nothing less than making ourselves and ...
A flurry of emails and Twitter messages have reached me about the latest Lords amendment to the Digital Economy Bill. The amendment, tabled by two LibDem peers with Tory support, would allow the High Court to issue injunctions to ISPs to block sites for copyright infringement. I am not an instinctive pirate. I spent a ...
Mark Hunter has been leading the "Save the Cheque" campaign, aiming to persuade the banks not to dump cheques in a few years time - millions are still sent every day and they're used far more than electronic banking. Part of that campaign was a petition on the Number 10 website, to which we've now had a Government response. The closure of Cheque and Credit Clearing is a commercial decision and one that the Payments Council, an independent body that sets the strategy for UK payment systems, will take. The Government, however, recognises that certain groups still value cheques as ...
Recently, I questioned whether Manchester can save £2.8M in fostering costs and on Tuesday, we recieved a report on the matter. I remain far from convinced. The Council are making creditable steps to reduce the costs. They hope to put more children with foster parents and fewer in care homes. I think that would result in more children in environments that would enable them to grow, allow them to achieve. It won't be the case that care homes are always bad and foster parents are always good, but, if the worst came to the worst, I would want my children ...
Good morning and welcome to Thursday's Daily View. There's a huge chunk of exciting things that happened today in history, so it's an auspicious day to welcome a baby Cullen. Our technical editor Ryan has been tweeting progress, and as I write this there's a lot of pushing going on. Best wishes from all at LDV to the Cullen family – I'm sure LDV Towers will soon get used to night feeds. I'm dusting off my copy of Gina Ford as I type. [IMG: Male swans from Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake] So, today in history: the US Congress met for ...
Welsh Liberal Democrat Local Government spokesperson, Peter Black sets out his vision for devolving power in a groundbreaking article over at Wales Home.
I got to hear PMQs on the radio yesterday as I was travelling to go on a PE course at lunchtime. What struck me was how much the listener missed because of the patronising and self indulgent commentary of the BBC presenter talking over the top of it. Rather than hearing the debate we got a constant interruption from a BBC man who explained that "Asking a question there about Lord Ashcroft" and "Jack Dromey is blah, blah blah" or "By William he means William Hague when he was Conservative Leader" or sometimes just waffle that could be said quickly ...
As the son of a west bank Derry/Londonderry (Stroke) City born and raised father, who father, and father's father and his father before him were all born in the city I'm proud of the culture of that city. There are the poets Seamus Heaney and Seamus Deane, authors Joyce Cary, Jennifer Johnshon and Nell McCaferty, playwright Brian Friel, artist Willie Doherty. Musicians Dana, the Undertones, Damian McGinty and Keith Harkin of Celtic Thunder and yes even Girls Aloud's Nadine Coyle. There was also the restoration dramatist Geroge Farquhar and the hymn writer of There is a Green Hill Far Away ...
London Liberal Democrats rallied for success in the forthcoming general and local elections at our Spring Conference this evening. As I stated in my Chair's remarks from the platform, we would hope to move into double figures for the number of London MPs we will have after the election, as well as gaining control of ...
Oh dear! Two Lib Dem peers, Tim Clement-Jones and Tim Razzall, have caused an almighty ruccus across the internet over an amendment they have tabled to the Digital Economy Bill that could, according to various opinions, end up seeing ISPs effectively told to block access to major "user contributed" web services, such as YouTube or FlickR if a copyright holder accuses those sites of hosting "substantial" amounts of copyrighted material. There's lots more to it, in particular that their amendment is itself almost certainly far better than what was originally in the bill giving the Secretary of State god-like powers ...
Thu 4th
00:30
A long term perspective is important for economic issues such as the strength of sterling
As I was travelling up from London tonight I read a great article by Anthony Hilton, the Evening Standard's City commentator, regarding sterling's decline, but how it wasn't a cause for concern. In fact he rather celebrates it. He identified 3 reasons why there is such noise and media coverage for the short term decline in ...
Just thought I'd mention this. Listen to this (below) rendition of "Over there", a World War 1 American recruitment song and then listen (further below), if you need to (and I don't – it's permanently stuck in my head nowadays) the "Go Compare" song. Wikipedia notes: ('Over There') was..used (with altered lyrics) in a 2009 advertising campaign for insurance website Go Compare. The chorus of the song was used in a 2009 campaign for the U.S. men's national soccer team leading into the 2010 FIFA World Cup Finals held in South Africa. ...obviously it's out of copyright then....
I saw this poster yesterday and it gave me another opportunity to combine my photography and politics blogs. The poster told me that one person was voting Conservative because of their plans to help families. I am not sure whether this is the case or not. It is advertising after all. I don't know if the Tories had to find a 'genuine' voter but this one looks just right for a poster campaign. I don't think much airbrushing was needed and she has been amended much less than David Cameron was in his poster. I wasn't convinced that this voter ...
