Are the Falklands worth fighting over? The size of the Falkland Islands' population is about 60% of Stansted Mountfichet and the economy is dependent on sheep and squid. Yet the overseas territory famously defended by Margaret Thatcher in 1982 is set to decide the UK's relationship with some of the world's most important emerging economies. The mere mention of the Falklands evokes a strong sense of nationalist pride among the British, particularly when President Cristina Kirchner calls our beloved Prime Minister David Cameron "mediocre, bordering on stupid." But the Malvinas also evoke feelings of strong resentment among Argentinians who are ...
Bloggers have been writing up their impressions of the SLF Conference on 18th June. Here is a selection of them. Please add any that have been overlooked in the comments below. Brian Robson: Vince on Northern Rock : "It would ... Continue reading →
There is a lot of debate these days about the size of the State. Small State conservatives are nothing new but Liberal Vision boldly argue for a small State as a way to ensure that the individual has more freedom. It is assumed by those who believe people should control their lives that a small State is better than a large one. Assumed by those, that is, who accept some form of State apparatus. There are others who believe we would be better off without a State. So does size matter? If you believe, like George Orwell, that the argument ...
Confession : I don't have a great deal of faith in the Government's regional policy. £1.4bn of Regional Growth Fund money does not, in my view, a regional policy make. It's less than half what the three northern Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) alone were spending before they were abolished. So when the person you're interviewing has already admitted the changes he's overseen have been "Maoist and chaotic", it's got to be on your list of questions, hasn't it? In fact Vince had already laid the ground for my question, when in his speech to the conference earlier, he noted the ...
[IMG: Plans for Linden House in Stansted Mountfichet] The owners of Linden House plan a high-class hotel, but some residents fear a public nuisance from late-night drinking Today I received examples of the letters of support for Linden House's licence application and it seems that the owners have conducted a very intensive lobbying exercise to prove local demand for the hotel. Over half of the 85 letters of support are almost identical. Those writing in support say the owners have refurbished two neglected buildings and look forward to the a new high-class establishment in the village. It's hard to disagree ...
Liberal Democrats have named their new front line team on Cambridgeshire County Council for the next year. Group Leader, Councillor Kilian Bourke, who officially took over from Cllr Fiona Whelan on Friday (June 17) is supported by Cllr Lucy Nethsingha, who takes over as Deputy Leader from Cllr Peter Downes. Cllr Graham Wilson has been elected Group Chairman, Cllr Michael Williamson, Group Secretary and Cllr Peter Downes, Group Treasurer. Cllr Susan van de Ven will lead the Transport portfolio for the next year; Cllr Kevin Wilkins has been elected spokesman for Planning, Enterprise and Environment and Cllr Sarah Whitebread will ...
Last month, I attempted, at the City Council's Development Management Committee, to stop ugly BT Openreach 'utility' boxes being placed at three sites in Conservation Areas in the West End. Tonight, at this month's committee, I moved refusal of two more of these unsightly boxes being placed near Blackness Primary School and in Taylor's Lane. The residents in Taylor's Lane near to the site of one of these boxes are very unhappy about this being placed adjacent to their homes, but unfortunately I lost the vote 16-8. I again make the point that BT Openreach should provide appropriate and sympathetically ...
Cambridge City Council has rejected revised plans for the city's Lion Yard toilets because they do not give the public what they want. Leader, Sian Reid said that the proposals are still driven by maximising ground floor retail space and not providing good city centre public toilets. "We are listening to the public and as such, we are refusing these plans," she said. "It is time the developer started listening to the public as well. "These proposals will not solve the problems we are facing. Residents clearly want ground floor toilets but these plans are driven by maximising ground floor ...
There aren't many things that would tempt me to stand on a drizzly platform at Durham Station before 7am on a Saturday morning, but the Social Liberal Forum's conference is one of them. The fact I had an extra spring in my step was because I knew I was going to get to interview Vince Cable alongside some fellow Lib Dem Bloggers. I'd given a bit of thought to what I wanted to ask Vince, and was determined to have a bit of a regional slant to my questions – hence my decision to raise Northern Rock. As Lib Dem ...
I'm genuinely fascinated by the lack of tolerance in society towards those with red hair. It is generally a behaviour that is no better than playground bullying, and as it starts this early, is likely to give all good redheads a complex from a vulnerable age. Comedy makes light of it, even I found Catherine Tate's Ginger Safe House amusing to an extent. But it is, to some, gallows humour, where one laughs in a self depreciating manner to avoid an onslaught of cruel remarks. I genuinely enjoyed Dan Wright's pseudo-documentary entitled "F*ck Off I'm Ginger" for BBC Three, a ...
Further to yesterday's fantastic Big Sunday on Magdalen Green, there was an excellent report in today's Courier - and isn't this video rather good ...!
Harrow council has been a bit creative and had this fake shop front produced (I wonder how much it cost?) in an attempt to regenerate their high-street. How long before our high-streets are full of these fake shops (not long if you read the details on the company that do these fake shop fronts http://www.shopjacket.co.uk/news/ ). Nice though it is, it's one better than filling shop windows full of local council paraphernalia. Of course plenty have complained that our high-streets all look the same. Well here is the solution, if you can't help independent shop makers setup with reduced rates ...
The debate about Britain's economic policy rumbles on, with a speech by the Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls last week. In previous posts I have dismissed the claim made by some that the government's cuts are unnecessary, and most commentators, including Mr Balls, seem to accept this, even if they don't say so explicitly. But there is a furious debate about how quickly the cuts should be implemented: 5 years as the government plans, or 8 years as Labour suggests, apparently including Mr Balls, though in the past he has been suggested longer. An impressive array of economists seem to support ...
It's been a while since I did my last blog, due to me finishing my second-year exams at Lancaster University. Before I move on to discuss what's been happening in Lancaster locally, I would like to thank Ryan Cullen for highlighting this blog in his list of new Liberal Democrat bloggers on Liberal Democrat Voice. Thanks Ryan. Over the past weeks the new executive of Lancaster City Council has been sworn into office. Lancaster has a long history of strange and relatively rare executives being formed between numerous political parties compared to many other local councils. This is because ...
The Guardianista have been reduced to little more than a shouty Labour rag in recents month, but today they have truly excelled. They have commissioned a poll from ICM which, unfortunately for them, shows Ed Miliband is now more unpopular than Nick Clegg. Clegg is on -20, Miliband on -21. David Cameron is more popular than both, ...
Spotted the rather extravagant claim in the Kent on Sunday, that a film which you and I apparently invested in, is a boost to the economy. Kent Council bunged a £20,000 "investment" into the movie "Age of Heroes", alright it's a trivial amount, but according to the article, this investment has in return resulted in an inward investment of £42,800 according to "officials". I have to say "Age of Heroes" as far as I can recall, never made it as far as the local cinema, still presumably some speciality suppliers of DVD's will be stocking this classic. If nothing else ...
I'm not an expert on the Church of England's internal politics. But I am passionate about LGBT rights. And, too often, the CofE has paid scant regards for the rights of LGBT people - not to mention its confused stance on women. I was intrigued to read the headline on the BBC website "Church clears way for gay bishops". At first glance it appeared that the Church was making an overdue but welcome intervention to eradicate the instituional discrimination it has for so long been synonymous with. Unfortunately not. Like the Church of Scotland's attempts to get to grips with ...
Gore Vidal said that one should never turn down an invitation to have sex or appear on television. A couple of years ago, I overlooked an email inviting me to take part in The Big Questions, a TV show that blends Question Time with Kilroy and is (to a greater or lesser extent) intended to be a religious-affairs programme. It's on BBC1 at 10 o'clock on Sunday mornings and so will be unfamiliar to those of you who tend to spend that hour in bed, in church, jogging, in the pub or listening to The Archers (or perhaps doing more ...
Back in 2008 the Lib Dem autumn conference was held in Bournemouth. One of the members of the media attending was the Daily Mail's Quentin Letts. At the time he wrote this charming article about the conference. The most remarkable thing about it is the tone of the language used. For starters, it was headlined: In their trainspotter voices the LibDem activists discuss what to do in power. And have a read of this extract: "Opinion pollsters suggest that their share of the vote has shrivelled and that they are seen as the most Left-wing of the main parties. Many ...
During the recent Irish financial problems, I have often tuned into RTE's Radio 2. Brian Lenihan, the Finance Minister in the last Irish government, was a regular fixture on the programme, explaining the latest spasm of the Irish economy. I didn't realise that during the whole of the last two years, while he was the "main man" of the Irish economy during its historic problems, he knew he was suffering from terminal pancreatic cancer. He has indeed now sadly passed away. It takes a special type of toughness to manage the Irish economy while it went through the most damnably ...
On Wednesday morning I met with representatives of the Retail Motor Industry to discuss my ongoing work on clamping down on car clocking, which is the practice of reducing the mileage on a vehicle's odometer to make it appear as ... Continue reading →
It's 2pm and, having safely made it through the morning of the Social Liberal Forum conference, I'm waiting with some other bloggers in part of the rabbit warren that is City University for Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne. The interview was meant to start at 1.30pm, but working on a combination of Lib Dem ...
This weekend's Financial Times magazine featured (registration required) a lengthy interview with Liberal Democrat MP for Yeovil, David Laws, by the paper's political editor, George Parker. David is extremely open about his personal life in the interview, talking about the effect of what he calls the "triple bashing" he underwent (having his previously-much-guarded personal life exposed by The Daily Telegraph during the course of an expenses story for which he later received a Commons suspension, as well as losing his newly-found Cabinet career). Here's a sample: Laws looks back on the 44 years before May 28 2010 as if it ...
Hertfordshire Lib Dems have welcomed the announcement last week by the Coalition Government of measures to reduce the bureaucracy for councils wanting to implement 20mph schemes. Lib Dem Transport Minister Norman Baker has said that if councils and local communities want to put in place 20 mph schemes on residential roads or use common-sense measures such as variable speed limits outside schools, then they should be able to do so without spending time and money satisfying unnecessary Whitehall diktats. The key changes in the process: – Many of the current restrictions and obstacles to rolling out 20mph zones are being ...
To watch the programme click here.
...or, why Bono shouldn't pay up. This week, U2 will be headlining at the Glastonbury festival. As expected, rock music purists are debating whether U2 is just too pop; whether this might be another symptom in the festival's dumbing-down (Snoop Dogg, Beyonce and Jay-Z being among recent headlining artists). But the musical discussion has been ...
There were eleven principal local council by-elections held on Thursday 16th June 2011. The Lib Dems lost two seats to Labour and one to Plaid. The Tories held two seats and lost one to Labour and one to the Greens. Labour held four seats. An independent took a seat off Plaid. There were no parish or town council by-election results reported to ALDC. As we approached the Crewe and Nantwich parliamentary by-election in 2008 we focussed our not insubstantial attention on making sure we made some gains in the constituency. Two out of three seats in Crewe South was the ...
The UK's Royal Society of Medicine have reported that Adverse Drug Reactions have risen by 77% in the decade 1999-2008 resulting in 557,978 hospital admissions during that period. That' s a lot of ill health caused while attempting to help people with medicines. So how can drug companies more quickly ascertain such potential side effects earlier? Currently it's believed that only 1 in 10 drug side effects get reported . Historically the system has relied upon doctors but more recently since 2005 patients have been able to report such side effects via the Yellow Card system. But it's a well ...
Many of you will have seen the article in the Stratford Herald this week about Shipston Town Council (STC)investigating the possibility of buying the Police Station from Warwickshire Police when they move out and put the building up for sale. The plans are at an early stage. STC is looking at the potential costs to local residents, and ways of raising money – such as renting out Clark House. It is also keen to find out if any community organisations would like to use the Police Station with us. The police have already indicated that they would be keen to ...
How many 13 year-olds have uploaded a video of themselves singing on YouTube? More than one or two I'd imagine. However just how many of them have uploaded a video of them singing on to YouTube and had over 160 million people view that video? I think the answer to that question might just be one – Rebecca Black. When her video Friday hit YouTube it quickly became the biggest Social Media phenomenon that I can remember. It may have been the biggest of all time. Facebook and Twitter both went into meltdown and if you had made it through ...
I was very sad hear of the death of Brian Haw yesterday. I've blogged previously that I think the way in which the establishment treated Brian and the other Parliament Square protestors was very badly thought through, and often quite wrong. But whatever you thought of Brian's beliefs, you surely cannot deny or do anything but admire the sincerity with which he held them, nor the dedication of Brian to his cause. We should all be grateful that there are people in the world with the passion of Brian Haw. There is a good obituary piece about Brian in The ...
Pensions are again in the news. This time concerning the public sector. For a number of years now, private sector pension schemes have been closed or have changed from defined benefits into simple money purchase schemes. Why is this happening and what can we do? In 1900, average life expectancy was just 50 years of age. Few people lived long enough to retire. By the 1950s, average life spans had reached 70. The state pension was introduced at age 65 giving 5 years of retirement after 50 years of work. Since then life expectancy has risen to 80, yet we ...
The decision by Jan Powell, Cornwall Councillor for Liskeard North, to leave the Conservatives and join the Liberal Democrats is, of course, hugely welcome for myself and my colleagues. Jan's decision was prompted by the behaviour of Conservative Council Leader Alec Robertson which Jan has described in the following terms: "The Leader of the Council has become remote from rank and file members of all parties and has marginalised councillors from the democratic process. The choices he makes always seem to be those most damaging to Cornwall and are not the choices I campaigned on, notwithstanding the tight financial restraints ...
As Harold Wilson said, a lie can be halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on...One such lie would appear to be a silly story about a Jerusalem rabbinical court having sentenced a dog to death by stoning. It has apparently been all over Twitter. Which, given how seriously some people take cruelty to animals, is not as funny as it sounds, as it generates hatred of religious people among dog-lovers. There's enough bad news that's actually true without adding false stories to the pile. It turns out that, as you can read here, it's very ...
Mon 20th
14:50
I am nominating the person to light the Olympic flame at London 2012 but I am not holding my breath ...
The recent announcement of the design of the Olympic Torch had me thinking who will be used to the light the flame at the Opening Ceremony in London 2012. Convention has it that the host country's leading sports personality carries the torch on its final leg to light the flame in the stadium. However, ...
The speech from Bashar Al-Assad was long awaited. How would he address the crisis in his country? In the end he has bottled it. By failing to recognize that the protesters have legitimate grievances and by making a speech insisting that the unrest in Syria is all the fault of shadowy foreign conspiracies, he may well have condemned himself to death. If he will not enter into a dialogue with the majority in his country, then sooner or later he will be overthrown. A small part of me suspects that the clique that surrounds the Baathist regime in Damascus has ...
TweetWhen Mary Reid over at the Social Liberal Forum offered me a chance to do a blogger interview with a Lib Dem MP, I didn't need to be asked twice! What followed was an interview with Vince which really did provide food for thought, below is the results of 35 minutes and several question with Vince in the basement of City University, London. just a note to say that writing about every question asked, would simply make this blog unreadable although in due course I will release the transcript of the interviews. Being called early to meet Vince, I found ...
Even to me, a foreigner, here in Manila the significance of President "Noynoy" Aquino's government having made today a national holiday to mark the 150th anniversary of José Rizal's birth is obvious. Rizal was a man of many talents and republican convictions who opposed colonial rule until executed by Spanish firing squad in 1896. The current President's father Benigno ("Ninoy") Aquino was the Liberal Party leader who returned from exile in 1983 to oppose US-backed dictator Ferdinand Marcos, only to be assassinated as he arrived at Manila airport. I suspect that for ordinary Filipinos both murdered men have hero status ...
As part of the Social Liberal Forum conference last weekend, I took part in a blogger interview with Vince Cable and took the chance to ask him about his attitude towards equalities issues. My reason for asking is that I've always viewed Vince as a firm liberal on such matters (perhaps in part because of his own personal history) but there have been plenty of murmurings that his department are rather keen on abolishing regulations in this field. His answer was very firm, saying he and the party is "completely committed to the equalities agenda and must remain so". He ...
Cornwall Council has been forced into a bit of a re-think over its plans to dump responsibility for roadside grit bins on town and parish councils. Just four parishes agreed to take over responsibility. After the cold 2009/10 winter, last summer Cornwall Council decided to look again at its policy on road salting and grit bins. They slightly extended the network of roads which will be salted but decided to pull out of responsibility for grit bins within 12 months. They wrote to all town and parish councils asking them whether they wanted to take over responsibility. Unfortunately, there was ...
Lib Dem councillor (and erstwhile blogger) Jonathan Wallace is to spend two weeks living off the diet allowed to British civilians during the Second World War. He told the Newcastle-based Evening Chronicle: "I want to hear from as many people as possible about how they coped during the ration period. "I also want to hear how they made their meagre rations more interesting, and I would like them to send me recipes as I'm planning to go on a ration book diet to see what it was like for myself. "I would love to try some of the recipes people ...
Vince was on good form yesterday. He was determined to stay on message and not discuss a Plan B, instead he shared with us some thoughts on what could be added to plan A, A++ as he called it. Others have reported on Vince's speech so I will not dwell on it here, suffice to say it was good to hear that land tax and robust banking reform were firmly in his sights. One other key element on which he put great emphasis was 're-balancing the economy'. This is usually understood to be moving away from the financial sector being ...
I'm very pleased to say that I've just got a piece published over on UberPolitics. In it I discuss the reasons why Labour might have lost their Scottish heartlands and what the impact might be if that is the case. So please do go and read it. But the other reason I'm writing this post is to tell you about UberPolitics. It's a new online political magazine/blog. The key difference between it and all the other political magazines and blogs on the web is that UberPolitics doesn't have an agenda. It doesn't come from a particular editorial viewpoint. Instead, it ...
Ok, so when the oppotunity arises to point, we Liberal Democrats cant help ourselves and this was too good an opportunity for me to pass up.
I had been thinking about putting a post together on where the party can go from here and how the party should approach the 2015 General Election and then I came across this on Lib Dem Voice, and decided to use this to emphasise my argument. People – generalisation intended – have criticised Liberal Democrat ...
Partly for my own convenience and partly in case other people find it useful, I've put together a list on Twitter of the Liberal Democrat London Assembly members and candidates who are on Twitter themselves. You can find and follow the list at http://twitter.com/list/markpack/london-assembly (If you spot anyone I've missed or think there's a better account to use for anyone I've included, please do let me know.)
Jonathan Calder is a naughty, naughty man. Following this weekend's Social Liberal Forum Conference, he has asked – nay, demanded! – that the Social Liberals actually set out what makes them different from Social Democrats. This would perhaps be an innocent question if the rest of his post did not refer to his encounters with ...
Just when I think we can't sink any lower in terms of entertainment we drop another level. So a former Big Brother contestant had a fling with a married Premier League footballer. We don't give a damn. It dominated the media landscape for a couple of weeks but is now already yesterday's chip paper. However the lady in question isn't ready to give up just yet and plans to turn her seedy affair into big money but how is she planning to this? Is it be on another reality TV show? I know that I'm a Celebrity... would love to ...
The newly formed Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) has identified Launceston as a potential site for a new Enterprise Zone (EZ). Enterprise Zones are areas of land which are targeted for new jobs and businesses by Government and local authorities. Last week, Adam Paynter, Sasha Gillard-Loft and I (* see below) met with the new Chair of the Local Enterprise Partnership Chris Pomfret and with Cornwall Council's Head of Economic Development Dr Sandra Rothwell to make the case for Launceston. We were delighted to get such a positive reception as we made the case for more well paid jobs and better ...
Just a quick one, I see Thanet Labour are having a whinge about who should run the NHS, I would like to point out that despite Labour's ancient history on setting up the NHS, in recent times things have not been so good during their time in office an 7 billion pound project was set up to handle patient information in 2002 by Labour, which the Daily Mail recently reported " National Audit Office concludes that the £2.7 billion so far spent creating a database of medical records had not been "value for money".It said it had no confidence that ...
This week saw the start of the Edinburgh International Film Festival. The highlight for me so far has been the documentary Bobby Fischer against the World. I was trying to describe the histrionics of World Chess during the Cold War to some one the other day. When I got to the coded yoghurts of the Karpov v Korchnoi struggle I started to wonder if it all had really happened! The documentary itself was excellent. It really caught the mood of the time and was a warts and all portrayal of a flawed, disturbed genius. The treatment of the Fischer v ...
Having won a significant victory on reforms to the NHS, the new battleground for the Liberal Democrats appears to be the environment. According to the Guardian, Chris Huhne used the Social Liberal Conference at the weekend to attack his Conservative colleagues in government as "rightwing ideologues" and "deregulation zealots" for placing environmental regulations on a list of red tape to be considered for scrapping: In comments made at the weekend to a conference of social democrats in his party, Huhne made it clear he is opposed to environmental protection laws such as the Climate Change Act, the Wildlife and Countryside ...
In 1970 a person reaching 60 could expect to live a further 18 years. Last year, they could expect to live another 28 years. Advances in healthcare, living standards and technology mean that people in the UK are living longer and life expectancy is rapidly increasing. This is something we should celebrate, but it is also something for which we must plan. We cannot expect people to work until they drop but the longer people spend in retirement, the more strain this puts on public services and, in particular, on the Government's ability to pay people a decent pension. Last ...
I often seem to be a bit behind the times with news stories and catch up a bit later which makes my blogs a few days behind, but still here goes. One story that did make me fairly angry was Conservative MP Philip Davies saying that people with learning difficulties should be allowed to work for less than the minimum wage to get a' foot on the ladder'. This I feel is just simply wrong. I am usually against most market interventions by the Government, however I agree with the concept of the minimum wage. This is set as the ...
Over on the BBC News site, BBC political correspondent Norman Smith has written a piece looking at how the Liberal Democrats will continue to exert their influence in a more public way within the coalition after the combined effect of the AV referendum, the local election results and the success of the party's push to re-think the NHS reforms. As Norman says: From the top to the bottom of the party, there is a hankering for clear yellow lines running through government policy. However, where those lines should be drawn to best reassert the Lib Dems' independence, is much harder ...
Chris Huhne's speech at the Social Liberal Forum conference on Saturday makes the main headline in the Guardian today. Sadly I missed the actual speech because I was busy on some of the admin of the conference. I'm slightly irritated by the reference in the article to "a conference of social democrats" - although there is considerable overlap between Liberal Democrats who might describe themselves as either 'social liberals' or 'social democrats', the terms do not mean the same thing. You can read an interesting discussion about the distinctions between the two on the Liberal England blog. (Incidently, there was ...
The Government Equalities Office (GEO) released their second "e-bulletin" on Friday. It's worth a look, even if just for the new survey – if you can't read the PDF, here's a direct link. Their first one received over 1,200 responses which is quite an achievement – historically an excellent response would have been 800-900! It seems that the Trans community is more engaged than it was a decade ago, which is good news in terms of getting the support needed for positive change. Unsurprisingly, even though this was a TG rather than more narrow TS survey, the first time round ...
The best review I have seen of A Good Man Goes To War (tags: doctorwho) On Batgirl This. I'd love to see Oracle, Steph Batgirl and Black Bat working together :) (tags: comics) The ghettoisation of pink: how it has cornered the little-girl market | Society | The Observer This article reminded me very much of the "girls aren't allowed to like football" saga with Holly. (tags: feminism gender children marketing)
[This is the text accompanying my presentation to the Social Liberal Forum Conference: "Liberalism, Equality and the State", City University, 18/06/11. Not all of it was delivered on the day, because of the way the session panned out and because there's too much of it. My thanks to my co-contributors Mark Pack, Simon Hebditch and ...
The SLF conference was a major success. Yes, it was "full" - David Hall-Mathews careful not to refer to the event as "sold out". Yes, lots of people debated and tweeted like crazy on subjects ranging from NHS reforms to the history of the American fridge. But it wasn't the numbers or amount of talking we did which was the most important. It was the fact that there is still a groundswell of progressives alive and well in the Liberal Democrats. In fact, since entering government with the Conservative party, and with a recent "win" (yet to see how it ...
Solution Focused Politics celebrates its 1 year anniversary this week and below are the 10 most read posts in that time: Self-esteem is killing our country, time to end policies which promote it 1 Year of Praise for Nick Clegg: His strengths and achievements in 1 year of being Deputy PM Opinion polls which show ...
The Payments Council, representing the banks, had a pretty rough ride when they appeared before Parliament's Treasury Select Committee. The Treasury has written to MPs on the Committee saying that they might consider blocking plans to abolish cheques in 2018 if suitable alternatives are not found. David Ward MP however suspects that the banks may just reduce the level of service - like they've scrapped cheque guarantee cards - until they can quietly stop cheques completely by 2018. More on this story here Sign the Save Our Cheque petition here
I woke up this morning to be regaled by the Tories latest bonkers idea on mayors. I say Tory because although this is in the coalition agreement it did not come from the Lib Dem side any more than the ... Continue reading →
Thanks everyone who helped make this post top of this weeks Lib Dem Voice Golden Dozen. Though I have to confess that the success of this particular post makes me rather nervous that perhaps my stewardship of the blog is heading rather more in the direction of Kelvin Mackenzie than Harold Evans. So do have a look at the other 11 rather more worthy entries to the dozen. Especially no. 12. That's much more like it...
For a Wee Country Norn Iron is renowned for punching above our weight when it comes to sport. We've been to three world cups. Two men from here have run three World Snooker titles and more than our fair share of Olympic gold medalists (especially in boxing). However, as somebody said over the weekend for two men from Northern Ireland to win back to back US Open golf titles must surely have been up there at lottery odds. That is except one 22-year-old from Holywood when told about that quote said, " Well, I though I had a pretty good ...
The police have returned the paperwork related to David Laws's expenses – which suggests that they have not found anything in it worthy of legal action. Asked by me at the weekend what his favourite moment had been since last year's election, Vince Cable said it was getting drive an Aston Martin DB9 at 150mph. He swiftly added that this was on a racetrack rather than a road... On a more substantive issue – he was also hopeful that a mutual buyer could be found for Northern Rock, pointing to the publicity about two mutuals in particular having expressed a ...
In the face of the growing crisis in Athens, it would be as well to remember that this is as much a crisis of Germany as it is of Greece. If Greece is to be rescued, the German taxpayer will be forced to find the money. Yet if Greece is not rescued, it is the German banks that are first in line to take the losses, and again it will be the German taxpayer that will have to pick up the bill. Meanwhile, if Greece is left to its fate, then Germany will have to carry the opprobrium for breaking ...
Much as I loved the Northampton Corporation transport offices, I was really in St James Road to visit Books Written By, an independent bookshop stocking both new and secondhand titles. Other Northampton secondhand bookshops are available.
The death of Yelena Bonner at 88 is a reminder of the extraordinary courage that those who opposed the Soviet system needed to show in order to survive. Dr. Bonner- she was a paediatrician- formed part of a remarkable pairing with Andrei Sakharov, the father of the Soviet Hydrogen bomb, but above all the man who became the conscience of the Russian people. Sakharov was in many ways the Mandela who never was. He become the voice of moral integrity in the Soviet society which had very little of any integrity. His harassment by the Soviet authorities became a cause ...
broadcast and publication anniversaries 20 June 1964: broadcast of "Strangers in Space", first episode of the story we now call The Sensorites. The Tardis lands on a spaceship whose crew have been incapacitated by the mysterious Sensorites. 20 June 1970: broadcast of seventh episode of Inferno, ending Season 7 of Old Who; last regular appearance of Caroline John as Liz Shaw. The Doctor and Liz prevent the drill from breaking through the crust; Stahlman is completely transformed into a Primord and is restrained. 20 June 1991: publication of Timewyrm: Genesys by Terrance Dicks, first in the run of New Adventures ...
I was away on a walking (or, rather, paddling) holiday in Wales last week so missed a visit by Danny Alexander Chief Secretary to the Treasury,and Tim Farron, Party President, to Bradford for a "question, answer and comment session" with Liberal Democrat members However, my friend John Cole (the काले in the title)took the opportunity to state: "I think the budget policy is wrong-headed: David Blanchflower says it is "abysmal" and ask " Why are we supporting a 1920s Treasury View policy and not a Keynesian one? John followed up Alexander's response with the following letter: Baildon June 17th Dear ...
Jonathan Calder demands that the Social Liberal Forum answers the following question: "What is the difference between a social liberal and a social democrat?" Personally, I don't think we should do any such thing. It is certainly up to us to say what we mean by social liberalism, which is why we launched the SLF with David Howarth's chapter from Reinventing the State on that very topic. But Jonathan's question is a trap, akin to "when did you last beat your wife?" There is a presupposition in the question which we are under no requirement to accept. Defining ourselves in ...
Note: I got into a bit of a state preparing for my speech at the Social Liberal Forum Conference on Saturday, staying up the previous night writing and angsting about it: for some reason I found the prospect of sharing a platform with Neal Lawson, Will Hutton and Simon Hughes (who ended up replaced by Evan Harris at the last minute) quite intimidating. In the end, I would have been better off just writing half a dozen notes, having a good night's sleep and winging it. I never got round to doing the final section because I went massively over ...
TweetOn the 18th June I attended the Social Liberal Forum event in London, there will be a few blogs emerging about the event, including interviews with Dr Evan Harris, and Vince Cable, as well as a review of the politics on show and the future of the Social Liberal Forum, but I intend to start you with this a more personal account of the day. After a morning of the world seemingly working against us, be it broken alarm clocks (Please no jokes about Clegg at this point), or nearly missing the train, myself, Spidey (Lisa Harding) and Chris Mills ...
Today I learnt how to drive a steam train! Well, I started to, anyway. I'll be volunteering at least one Sunday each month during the summer months, and should be fully trained and allowed to drive solo after about 18 months. I did get to drive the train today, and there's a video, but I've not been sent it yet. Here's the head driver cooking our lunch in the firebox :)
