late for coffee morning in Catchgate usually highlight of week then endless well till 3.39 rain so visited some captive voters in care homes got just one hour's street work in...only 6 and a bit weeks left watch this space
This story, which reports on tomorrow night's Dispatches - "Politicians for Hire" - on Channel 4, has just gone up on the News of the World Politics blog. Twenty senior MPs and peers were offered payments of up to £35,000 a year for helping a fake firm forge lucrative links with the government. Six of them demanded between £3,000 and £5,000 A DAY to sit on a make-believe advisory board. And several are said to have exaggerated their influence in the hope of cashing in. Ex-Transport Secretary Stephen Byers even claimed he was like a "cab for hire" to the ...
I've done a fair bit of canvassing in the past week. And I always like to talk and stroke cats when I'm canvassing.But maybe I'm overdoing it. I mean, last night I dreamed that our cat Felix actually was Gordon Brown. And he jumped into a pond and I had to rescue the poor animal.
Admittedly the connection of this blog with the World Cup in 2018 is a bit tenuous, but yesterday my colleague John Coburn (who's also standing for the council in Bayswater) and I met with Michele, Dave, Donald and Joy at the Baptist Church in Porchester Road and headed along to the Brunel Estate to watch ...
Charlotte Gore comes out of semi-retirement to give us a glimpse of Gordon Brown's wedding vows.Millennium Dome's Daddy has a letter to Labour.Mr Eugenides has some breaking news about racist sharks in South Africa.Max Chambers writing on CiF says that mandatory testing for drugs in prison is actually exacerbating the problem. Two bonuses tonight for Saturday: An article from Science News that explains how virtually nobody understands the significance of statisitical significance. 50 incredibly weird facts about the human body care of The Nurse Nut.
Here's a video of Tavish Scott MSP, along with John Barnett, Liberal Democrat candidate for Dundee West, during Tavish's recent visit to Dundee. You can read other recent Tavish videos - including his visits to Edinburgh and Aberdeen - at http://www.scotlibdems.org.uk/videos.
The Straight Choice is an online collection of election literature from across the country, aiming "to create a live visualization of the flood of party political leaflets as they are delivered across the country during an election campaign". Whilst the origins of the name may grate with those Lib Dems who don't wholly accept Peter Tatchell's account of the 1983 Bermondsey by-election, the idea is an excellent one from the people who brought you sites like They Work for You, Public Whip, Planning Alerts and What do they know? (the last allowing you to search and submit Freedom of Information ...
First, from Johann Hari. I assume this can't be from the Tax Justice Network, because they are professionals, and know the difference between a stock and a flow. Surely. Johann wrote a wonderful passionate polemic against revolting tax avoiders. I really enjoyed the piece. But this bespeaks a lack of understanding of the difference ...
Taken directly from comments on my post 'Lord oh Lord – nobody wants me' was this little gem this evening: "The comments about Mr Lord are entirely justified. If anyone can be bothered to subtly question a few senior members in Guildford Conservatives or from parts of south Woking they'll soon hear a lot of negative ...
Cooked some beetroot in a little bit of water - just enough to cover the thin slices - then once it was done took the remaining water, added a bit of cider vinegar and some muscovado sugar, reduced it to a syrup, and poured it over my lamb, that i'd fried in mustard oil. Ate the lamb with the beetroot, and some cabbage that had been briefly fried with a little turmeric, ginger, and some curry leaves.As a bonus, the beetroot will turn my pee red tomorrow, without the burning sensations that are the traditional accompaniment to such colourful micturations ...
How can so many governments be so short-sighted? Over the past few months a campaign has gathered pace in Brussels to persuade the EU collectively to back calls for an international trade ban on bluefin tuna. In case anyone doesn't know this is the most valuable fish in the world. It's prized as the key to a good sushi, with a single fish exchanging for tens of thousands of euros. And because it's so valuable it's been exploited to....well, to death. The weak management controls on the Mediterranean fishery have been largely ignored, with even the mafia getting involved in ...
The humour of Ms Gore.
Well, as a way of making sure I post at least once a week, this series is doing its job so far – even if I haven't had time to post in between lists. This week's list of celebrities and other persons of note who have cropped up in my family history research. Some of them are distant relatives by marriages (and have been mentioned on this blog before); the others are direct relations. Tony Benn – Not news to long time readers of this blog as it's been mentioned before but the Howellses and the Benns are joined by ...
Last April, I speculated that rationalism was more to blame for the financial crisis than the operation of the market. In an article in the Financial Times, John Kay discusses his new book Obliquity. He argues that the problems that led to the financial crisis and the mistakes of the Iraq War all relied on people believing they knew more than they did. These belief stem from a faith in rational behaviour models, not I should point out the idea that being rational is somehow bad. What rational behaviour models fail to cope with is that what seems rational to ...
Greenspan fretting about the problem of endless government surpluses. Richard Portes wants to ban naked CDSs Ryan Avent's latest China Surplus piece
I spent a couple of hours this lunchtime with a lively group of Bengali youngsters from Tower Hamlets in Chrisp Street Market in my constituency of Poplar & Limehouse, collecting signatures for a petition that will be delivered to Gordon Brown, urging that more is done to ensure that people in developing countries have access to clean ...
I meant to write something about this programme that appeared on BBC2 on Thursday night yesterday, but better late than never... The premise of the programme was how politicians can become more connected to their electorates, in an age where apathy is rising, and more and more people are tuning out. In the end, the programme was ...
Sarah's story: I am desperately worried that there is a possibility Whittington A&E could close. As the mother of one-and-a-half-year old twin boys, I suspect I will be needing to use it. I have visited A&E twice in the last two years, once due to possible miscarriage and once due to illness of one of my babies. Both times I was treated well. Since I don't own a car, on these occasions I tried to get a taxi, but none were available for 30 mins and so I travelled to A&E by bus getting there door-to-door in 20 mins. If ...
Is there politics in the Eurovision - of course. Do we enjoy the faux kitsch culture that Eurovision provides - of course. Is England on a train wreck collison with its act this time around - of course once more!!! I have been a fan of Eurovision my whole life. Eyes will roll at this. But yes this is something that as 'europeans' brings us together. During these times of financial crisis, environmental insecurity and energy collapse I think we need a little fun. Lets face it, we need anything to bring a little fire when everyone in europe is ...
Here I am (in the red top) at our recent Spring Conference in Birmingham with some of the other Liberal Democrat prospective MPs for the East of England, and MEP Andrew Duff.
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg will take part in a special Politics Show debate this Sunday, meeting undecided voters and trying to win them over for the Lib Dems. Wonders the BBC website: Will they be won over or continue to waver? And once he has answered the questions that the people want to ask, will they prove to be the answers they want to hear? Watch Nick on the Politics Show at noon, Sunday 21st March, BBC ONE.
Sat 20th
15:47
The scandal is that we've never had a government elected by a majority of those who voted!
I was in Brussels last weekend, celebrating the 20th birthday of an environmental organisation I helped to set up in 1990. Chatting with the various people from a couple of dozen different countries, one thing became very clear - almost all of them come from countries where more than one party is currently in government. Contrast that with the situation in this country where some sections of society are getting hysterical about the prospect that we could on 7 May have a hung Parliament. What is normal in most other countries appears to be a recipe for national disaster here. ...
Not only have the Tories announced that almost anyone with the time & inclination will be able to open new publicly funded schools in competition with those already in existence but now Stockton's hard won funding for new and refurbished secondary schools is being threatened. According to an article by leading ToryNick Gibb in the respectable Times Education Supplement only those schemes that
I adjudicated at the Warwick School World Record Bouncathon this afternoon. This attempt by the boys to break the world record of bouncing on a bouncy castle which currently stands at 26 Hours. At the same time they hope to raise over £1000 for the NSPCC The team of eight boys will be bouncing through the night. I wish them the best of luck with the rest of their marathon.
Saturday One can always tell when a general election is approaching: on Saturdays a long queue of prospective candidates trails past my lodge gates, around St Asquith's churchyard with its stately yews (and, indeed, stately ewes) and up the long drive to the Bonkers Home for Well-Behaved Orphans. You see, every candidate needs a fetching family photograph for his election address, but not every candidate has children of his own and, even if he does, then they may not be quite what his agent requires. For this reason the Home has long derived a useful income from making the prettier ...
Bryony Gordon has a standard sleb based opinion piece in The Telegraph today where she sounds off about how much she irrationally hates Hugh Grant despite never having met him. So far so barely worth linking to. However she makes this statement in the article: I have a theory that almost everybody loathes one person in the public eye with such passion that the mere mention of their name is enough to make you combust with rage. This person has to be someone famous, someone you have never met before, someone who can pop up on the television for 30 ...
Howard's cartoon from yesterday's Liberal Democrat News.
Young, dynamic, handsome, outsider, a winner ... Nick Clegg? Imperial Commander? Both, of course. Imperial Commander wins Cheltenham Gold Cup
I enjoyed a long meeting yesterday with a lovely 'old-fashioned' Conservative, a chairman of a local health trust. He was extolling the virtues of competition and how it has transformed the state sector, reaffirming his belief that capitalism has crushed communism and that competition is the only way to deliver a good service to "customers". If a key indicator of something in the market place is customer satisfaction, then the fall-off in customer participation since the 1950s, when 80% of the voting population voted, to 2005 when only 60% voted, is very stark. Something has gone wrong. Clearly, It does ...
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the BA strike, the most extraordinary thing for me has been the stratospheric level of Tory hypocrisy over the issue of funding. Never mind stone-throwing, Tory preaching on this particular topic is about as sensible as firing up one's private jet in a glass house.
It is now our job, as local campaigners and activists, across the country to take the bold, radical message that was laid out at conference to the streets wherever we find ourselves.
Happy New Year to all those who celebrate New Year according to the Persian tradition, including Nader and family. I hope you all have a great day and that the occasion will be a spur to greater freedom for the Iranian peopel and to talks and better ...
Proper post later, probably, but for now I'd just like everyone to go and vote in the Pop World Cup for Germany's track -Daisy Door and the Peter Thomas Sound Orchestra - "Oh, Oh, Ooh, Ei Ei Ei, Wo Immer Es Auch Sei" . Partly this is because I'm Germany's manager, partly because I ...
@EricPickles tweeted this, this morning which made me smile rather a lot for a Saturday morning. Filed under: General Rantings Tagged: British Airways, doing sweet BA, Eric Pickles, Gordon Brown, unite union
By way of introduction, a sample of what Kitty Ussher (Labour MP for Burnley) had done: Kitty Ussher used allowances for £20,000 house make-over The records reveal that Miss Ussher, the MP for Burnley, contacted the Commons fees office within 12 months of being elected, with a detailed programme of work for the property she had already lived in for five years. Kitty Ussher sacked from government over her claims Move comes in the face of evidence that Treasury minister 'flipped' her homes to avoid paying capital gains tax. So, when interviewed by Channel 4, what did she say? Q. ...
Or so John Sheehan, a former Nato commander and senior US officersaid yesterday at a hearing into the Srebenica masscre in the Netherlands. He pompously claimed that one of the reasons for the masszcre in the first place was that morale was so low in the Dutch military due to the incluson of gay soldiers ...
One thing that is very clear to me from speaking with fellow residents is that they respect how the Liberal Democrats campaign all year round at not just at election time. Maybe this is one the reasons why we have 11 Councillors in the constituency and the Conservatives only 2. Some parties believe that local people are only worth listening to when they are after their vote, but this has never been the Liberal Democrat way. A quick look through the Luton Lib Dem archives show we have been campaigning against Margaret Moran's expenses since October 2006 and that Nick ...
Ed Milliband is the Labour parliamentarian responsible for drafting the party's manifesto and has announced that he has some strong plans to take the country forward in their quest for an unprecedented 4th term. Some of the proposals made me chuckle this morning. I really don't think that the British People will be fooled. It's ...
I note the hat tip from LibCync and I have sent a complaint myself to the BBC. It was the Lib Dems' Vince Cable who first thought of the policy and is indeed ALREADY Lib Dem policy. Why was no mention made of this in the article? I recently made another similar complaint about an article ...
The week began with a visit to the dentist, who managed to glue a tooth that had fallen out, back into the root. She wasn't optimistic about its probable remaining lifespan. In the afternoon, my question about asylum support cuts, see I don't know whether to be reassured or not by Alan West's non-committal answer, that the question of whether the amounts paid were essential to meet essential living needs was something that could be looked at. Tuesday morning, my old friend Ayman Ahwal called in to see me at Flodden Road. He spends a good deal of time ...
Friday saw the first of our candidates' debates, hosted by the Federation of Small Businesses. It was also the first time I had met my main fellow candidates for the constituency. I was slightly apprehensive about this debate, as I would have preferred a format where they asked each of us questions individually, but in the end I quite enjoyed it and was sorry to see it brought to a close when there was still so much to say. I had prepared by examining our policies (and those of the others) on all matters relating to small business - and ...
Yesterday's Guardian reports on an open letter from a group of senior public figures who have called on the government to abandon its plan to push through the controversial digital economy bill before the election, amid claims that the move could "sidestep" the democratic process. They are concerned that the short time left will mean that the bill will end up in the Parliamentary wash-up after Parliament is prorogued, leaving highly contentious clauses unchallenged and unamended: The plans, which first became public last autumn, have caused controversy at almost every turn. As well as the three strikes rule and measures ...
Friday I am sure that you can guess just how THRILLED Daddy Richard would be to receive a really POSITIVE and HEART-WARMING message from the General Secretary of the Hard Labour Party. Unfortunately, that's NOT what arrived in the post this week. Instead, and before the General Election campaign has even started, Hard Labour are already so PANICKED about the Liberal Democrats that they are using NEGATIVE CAMPAIGNING and DISTORTION to attack us! So, once we'd peeled Daddy off the ceiling, we persuaded him to write a THANK YOU note, and maybe ask one or two little questions for clarification... ...
The Guardian leader column notes that yesterday's Cheltenham Gold Cup, billed as a two horse race, was won by a promising outsider when the two favourites both faltered; and wonders if the same might happen on May 6th. Imperial Commander was always a true, in-form, thoroughbred contender...Can Nick Clegg be the two-legged equivalent of Imperial Commander? In a good year anything is possible - even under first past the post.
So, I hear on the Radio 4 news at 9am that David Cameron has announces that he wants to introduce a levy on the banks and apparently Labour would support a similar scheme but only with international agreement. Hmm, I'm sure we've been calling for something similar for a long time. Then at 10am, we not only get the same headline but also a snippet of a speech by Dave saying how the taxpayers should get something back for bailing out the banks. No that sounds really familiar, almost word for word one might say. And here is the BBC's ...
A few of you have asked what I said at my talk earlier in the week. Here are some of the themes. Women make up 60% of all graduates in Europe and the US this year. In January 2010, for the first time, there were more women in employment in the US than men. Women have become the majority of the workforce. Yet, only 12% of FTSE 100 directorships are held by women. This is clearly not because there are no women working that can rise to be leaders or because women are not bright enough to do the job. ...
Lib Dem MPs Richard Younger-Ross, John Barrett, Sandra Gidley and Paul Holmes have been ordered to apologise and repay a total £16,500 in the latest twist of the long-running expenses saga. The four were among a larger number of MPs who were paid a lump sum in return for paying higher rent at the Dolphin Square apartments near to parliament. The MPs personally received the lump sum, whilst the taxpayer paid the higher rent. Two of the MPs have been ordered to repay half the lump sum they received, the other two to repay a quarter. Overall, Lib Dem MPs ...
Okay a quick blog before I go off canvassing today. The extended consultation period for plans to close A&E and Maternity services ends on 22nd March 2010. I am very concerned that the last figures I have for people taking part in the consultation totals just over 2000. This is not even broken down to boroughs but this is the last chance we, the residents will get to have our say and to try and stop the downgrading of services. Realistically, the best chance you have of getting your say is now online. To take part in the consultation, go ...
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AS residents of Blyton become increasingly concerned at the lack of action on speeding, councillor Lesley Rollings has spoken up in their support. 'We are particularly worried about the impact on young children attending the CofE school,' she said. 'Something must be done and parents and teachers' views must be taken seriously as this is an accident waiting to happen. She is talking to the county
At the Liberal Democrat conference last weekend, I moved the motion on our new youth policy paper, Free to be Young. Here's my speech: When Nick Clegg gave me the Youth portfolio - we agreed that Liberal Democrats would be relentlessly pro-youth - not anti-youth! Young people often get a raw deal. When they work hard and pass their exams - all they hear is that they only did well because tests are getting easier these days. And although young people are more likely to be a victim of crime than any other group in society - politicians - Labour ...
Former Scottish Conservative leader David McLetchie took a few taxis he shouldn't have charged to the taxpayer which was clearly wrong, and he lost his job. This woman broke the law, stupidly, but not hugely, and she lost her job. This man was party to 2 child victims of sex abuse by a colleague in the same organisation being asked to sign an oath of silence about what had happened to them and he thinks he should keep his job. He seems to think that the fact that he was young and folllowing Bishop's Orders is an excuse. There are ...
What should children be taught? Of course, all good Liberals are against a national curriculum, but what do you want your children to gain from their education? What should your local Swedish-style free school teach? Thanks to the reader who alerted me to this. As he puts it: ...get beyond Richard Curtis to hear some more interesting opinions.
The new extremism in 21st century Britain, edited by Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin considers both far-right and Islamic extremism, their causes and possible responses. It is unusual for a study to look at both these forms of extremism, and as the books editors explain that is not just a publishing phenomena; academics and experts predominantly focus on one or the other with as a result relatively little opportunity to learn from comparing and contrasting different extremist movements. [IMG: The new extremism in 21st century Britain - book cover] The book also has a dual approach in another respect: looking ...
The survey on this website which asked whether you were a web spider or not produced a startling result. 96% of respondents don't know. There's no doubt that most of the respondents who didn't know should have done since they clearly were web spiders. What's happened to date seems to suggest that web spiders prefer the third option on these surveys, so the new survey asks a simple yes/no question. Are those who oppose the Belle Vue site for Consett's Academy just a "vociferous minority"? With any luck the question will defeat the pesky arachnids. It's actually also a very ...
The latest "House of Comments" podcast with myself and Stuart Sharpe of the Sharpe's Opinion political blog is now live. The website for the podcasts is here and the eighteenth episode which we recorded on Thursday 18th March is available to download via this page here (raw mp3 file here if you prefer). You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes here. Or you can listen to it right now here: The format is to invite political bloggers on each week to discuss a few of the stories that are making waves in the blogosphere. This week we were joined ...
Stockport Council will be showing its support for Earth Hour by switching off the Town Hall's exterior lights for one hour. Earth Hour 2010 will be held on Saturday 27th March, between 8.30pm and 9.30pm. It has been organised by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) who are asking households and businesses all over the world to turn off all non-essential lights and appliances during this hour to raise awareness of climate change. In support of this, Stockport Council will be turning off the external spotlights on the Town Hall and is also asking its employees and residents to take part ...
Doesn't often happen: Labour activists who accused their local MP of incompetence have voted to deselect her. Anne Moffat, who represents East Lothian, has been in a bitter dispute with party members. She said she had suffered intimidation and persecution. Local members decided she should not be the party's candidate in the general election at a meeting in Haddington.
Oh dear Plans for a new Jonathan Ross chatshow on Channel 4 have reportedly been put on hold. The deal was believed to have been worth £10m and would have seen Ross present 20 chatshows a year for Channel 4. However, the broadcaster has shelved the project because of the imminent arrival of a new chief executive, reports Media Guardian. The site claims that the station's new boss David Abraham feels that signing Ross would be a retrograde step for the channel. A spokesperson for Channel 4 said: "We continue to talk to Jonathan about working together." Jonathan Ross will ...
Lib Dem Voice launched our new website – How Liberal / Authoritarian is your MP? – at the party's spring conference last weekend. LDV has identified 10 key votes from the 2005-10 Parliament – ranging from ID cards and freedom of speech to freedom of information and trial without jury – in order to rank all MPs according to how liberal or authoritarian their record is. All MPs are marked out of 100: the higher their score the more authoritarian they are. The lower their score the more liberal is their voting record. Over two-thirds of Lib Dem MPs recorded ...
We saw this on Wednesday evening. I am one of those people who likes almost everything Tim Burton makes, but I was apprehensive about this one because I didn't particularly regard his style of direction as compatible with the whimsy of Lewis Carroll. Anthony Smith's cracking review also contributed to my slight sense of queasiness about what I was letting myself in for. All the usual Burtonisms were there. Crazily stylised cinematography. Danny Elfman soundtrack. Johnny Depp. Helena Bonham-Carter. But it was far more than that, as most of his films are (despite those who say the schtick is getting ...
Pretty much the first thing I ever blogged about was the curious comparison between the dying years of the Major government and the end of the Blair era; between a government working hard to find new ways to screw you with your pants on and one working hard to find its butt with both hands. In an odd combination of deja vu and whatever the exact opposite of nostalgia is, the evidence is building that Labour's new generation are similarly lacking in competence. Because what we find in The Grauniad (which, let's be clear, I wouldn't touch with a barge ...
This note has been sent to residents this week: As part of our ongoing maintenance programme, Hertfordshire Highways will be undertaking carriageway Microasphalt works in your road. This treatment is applied in a double layer directly on top of the existing surface. The Microasphalt cannot be trafficked, on foot or by vehicle for up to 2 hours after the application. Once applied, the carriageway will be water tight preventing frost damage and will improve the overall running surface. Unfortunately, the preparation works completed in January are defective due to material failure and require remedial action prior to the main surfacing ...
Today's post looks at how Welsh MPs (who are standing for re-election) voted in relation to post offices. The following MPs voted AGAINST keeping the Post Office Card Account, which would have done a great deal to help struggling post offices remain a viable business and a key public service (all Labour): Aberavon - Hywel Francis Alyn and Deeside – Mark Tami Bridgend – Madeleine Moon Caerphilly - Wayne David Cardiff North - Julie Morgan Cardiff South and Penarth - Alun Michael Cardiff West - Kevin Brennan Carmarthen West and South Pembs – Nick Ainger Clwyd South - Martyn Jones ...
Last year, for Comic Relief, the Lib Dem group on the County Council were all pictured wearing red noses and we had a whip round to support this very good cause. This year, the County Council's call centre in St Ives got 160(ish) of us together to man the phone lines until from 19:00 Friday evening until 02:00 this morning taking donations as part of a nationwide team of call centres. I can only express my extreme thanks and admiration to all those who worked so hard to raise over £100,000. Some (including myself) took donation calls, some kept us ...
News that St. Peters school on Normanby Road, South Bank, will definitely close has been greeted with dismay by local Liberal Democrat prospective MP Ian Swales. Ian Swales said: "The St Peters school closure is a devastating blow to the local community in South Bank. I was at the public meeting on 23 February and was very moved by the passion shown by pupils, former pupils, teachers, parents and others over the future of the school. So many people attended that the oriignal venue at Eston Learning Centre was far too small. The adjudicator seemed to be listening but in ...
I have written about Morecambe Town Council in previous blogs. It is dominated by a party of 'independents' who all happen to vote the same way. They were elected in June last year when party politicians were not doing well and my problem with the council then (and now) is firstly that there is no effective opposition and secondly that this party is based on putting Morecambe first. However when the debates only concern Morecambe it is hard to know which way they are going to vote. I couldn't find a preamble to their constitution, and for that matter I ...
The Tory from Tunbridge Wells who is standing for the Tyneside constituency of Blaydon, where I live, is battling from a distant 3rd place under the banner "Blaydon Born and Bred". After so many years away from our area it is always enjoyable to see those who have abandoned the North East return for at least a momentary stay back on the patch. Whether or not this Tory candidate stays around after
