This is a blog post from Friday, 25 July 2008 that I published on my old Process Guy blog. In it I write about how attempting to change the direction of an organisation like the Liberal Democrats is not and easy or speedy task. A point that, on more than one issue, is very relevant again today. On the 26th May 1995 Bill Gates issued a memo to Microsoft executives. This memo, which has become famous as the "Internet Tidal Wave" memo, set out how this hugely successful company had made a major mistake. This mistake was the failure to ...
(Before I start, a quick apology to any visually impaired people reading this. I posted all this before, with alt tags for the images, including one with a little extra bit about the use of the handkerchief in the minstrel show, but WordPress ate it. I've reposted this, but don't have time to retag the ...
Welcome to Broxtowe Enews, brought to you by the Liberal Democrats and edited by David Watts, the leader of the Lib-Dems on Broxtowe Borough Council. It's been a really busy week this week, and the high spot was visiting Buckingham Palace on Wednesday for a Royal Garden Party. I would never describe myself as a rampant royalist, but the building and the occasion really did take my breath away. We went with a couple of very long serving members of staff from the council, and I think that it is important that we do take the opportunity to recognise the ...
Somehow Johann Hari the great journalist has passed me by. (Feel free to post links in the comments below if I have been missing a treat.) He has always seemed to me more of an academic essayist than a journalist. A good example are his slightly irritating appearances on The Review Show, where new film or novel has to be compared with three others to make sense of it. So it was no great surprise to me that he should turn out to be more at home copying passages out of his interviewees books than taking notes of what they ...
Nothing to do with Carla Lane, thank God, this week's video is a sort of companion piece to The Monks. Both are sixties bands I discovered through Youtube and both were successes in Germany but not at home. You might think that an all-girl Merseybeat band would get a small but honourable mention when pop history is written, but The Liverbirds seem to have been forgotten. A description of them that is all over the web - I have no idea where it orginates but Old Melodies is a good example - says: They were startling to look at in ...
What a day! Perfect weather, great organisation for the festival, lots of stalls and, most importantly, thousands of people flocking in and enjoying themselves. It was great to see so many people there, and to support good causes like the Together Trust and St Ann's Hospice. Thanks to everyone who dropped by the Lib Dem stand. As a start, here are a few photos from the day.
On Saturday, a letter was published from my good colleagues John Leech MP, Louise Bloom, David Boyle and I in the Guardian highlighting Clause 78 of the Finance Bill. As I've said before, the clause introduces, against both the Liberal Democrat and Conservative manifestos and also the Coalition Agreement, a subsidy to the nuclear industry, as part of what appears to be a ham-fisted attempt to bring into place the otherwise sensible concept of the carbon floor price. As much has been admitted by Treasury Minister Justine Greening. As we said in the letter:- ' We were proud that our ...
A really good novel of a young black man who is expelled for bizarre reasons from his university in the American South, moves to New York and finds himself embroiled in Harlem's community politics as an organiser - getting to grips with how his society and even his supposed comrades and allies are traumatised and damaged by systematic repression. I couldn't help but speculate that President Obama must have read it; I felt that there were some reflections of it in his own autobiography, though of course he is constrained by the facts to separate his experience of New York ...
There's a lot of very prominent graffiti on the rail buildings at the north end of the Tay Rail Bridge, adjacent to Riverside Approach/Riverside Drive. The photo (right) is of part of the south side of the buildings; the graffiti on the north side is large, unsightly and there's rather a lot of it. At my request, the City Council's graffiti team contacted Network Rail some weeks ago asking that this mess be removed. Network Rail logged the request but the graffiti is still there. I have been in touch with Network Rail and am assured that their Community Relations ...
A lovely Sunday in the West End! Here's a photo taken earlier in West Park Road :
Letter from consultant haematologist Dr P at King's to my GP: Diagnosis: MALT Lymphoma Progressive thromhocytosis ?cause 1 reviewed Eric in the clinic today. I explained to him that his platelet count has been elevated over the past number of years, but has significantly increased at his last visit. We will therefore repeat a full blood count today and, indeed, also check a JAK2 to try and exclude a myeloproliferative disorder. If the platelet count has not reduced and the JAK2 screen is negative, I think it appropriate that we carry out a bone marrow aspirate and trephine and cytogenetics ...
I wrote a pretty hard criticism of Johann Hari earlier this week and his 'mea culpa', such as it was, didn't make me feel very different about the whole incident. But I have been troubled by the fact that most of the criticism of Hari has come from the right, led notably by Guido Fawkes, while much of the defence of Hari has come from the left and been frankly peurile - here's a good example of the nonsense being written from the usually sensible Peter Preston. And all this has made me wonder if perhaps this wasn't just turning ...
This afternoon I walked to Great Bowden and a household sale organised by Wartime Housewife, a fellow member of the Market Harborough school of blogging. She turns out to be just as sensible and pleasant in real life as on the screen, taking the power cut that had affected the village in her stride. I came away with a homemade cake, a John Major novelty alarm clock and a copy of Uncle by the Revd J.P. Martin. What more could you ask for? Also present was "The Father of My Children" who often features on the Wartime Housewife blog. He ...
A leaked memo from Communities & Local Government exposed in today's Observer has already generated considerable comment. The memo, written by a senior civil servant at the start of the year, sets out perfectly clearly not only that the Government's welfare reforms ran the risk of making an additional 40,000 households homeless and reduce the ...
Just a few photos of Woodcote Road now that the integrated transport improvements have been completed
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 228th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere ... Featuring the seven most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (26 June-2 July 2011), together with a hand-picked quintet, normally courtesy of LibDig, you might otherwise have missed. Don't forget: you can sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox — just click here — ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging. As ever, let's start with the most popular post, and work our way down: 1. Disaster in ...
Finishing touches As the work to improve or town centre drew to a close on 30 June a few last minute finishing touches like installing the skirts on the bus shelters and placing the arbour resin around the tree pits in Beddington Gardens were being completed. We hope that you will agree that the town centre looks much nicer as a result and hope that you will encourage your friends and relations to come and shop. The work has been completed on time and on budget and we would like to thank the residents, traders and other volunteers who have ...
I'm not going to start on the last seven days, with a great deal having happened, and rather a lot to prepare for the coming week. Tomorrow I have to speak on the plight of British Overseas Citizens of Malaysian origin at the Chinese Church on Shaftesbury Avenue - nobody can tell me exactly where except that its equally distant from Leicester Square and Tottenham Court Road tube stations. That's at 13.00. Then at 17.00 I'm chairing a meeting of the Jumma Peoples' Network UK on Committee Room 4, followed by William Wallace's birthday party at 18.30. Tuesday from 11.00 ...
In this week's edition of the BBC's The Record Europe, UK MEPs Sir Graham Watson and Nigel Farage clashed over the European Commission's proposal to introduce a tax on financial transactions (FTT) to raise money to finance the EU budget.Once previously ruled out by the European Commission, South West MEP Sir Graham noted "there many of us were sceptical of the idea [of an FTT] when it was first
Wow! This is fun. They do it around July 4th each year apparently.
Nick Clegg had a visit to Birmingham on Wednesday, and members had the chance to question him in a private location. He invited the "vitriol" of people, as well as hopefully some positive questions, as he accepted, as leader, he has to take the flak. He gave some interesting responses to questions ranging from the interventions in Libya, education policy and what people should do to help hold and increase support for the party. It was this last point that struck a chord with me, because Nick espoused a view that I've held for months - we cannot allow our ...
Much of interest re:- Syria, Egypt, Israel/Palestine and the wider Middle East in the latest newsletter of LDEG, the association for UK Liberal Democrats interested in European politics. On Syria, a call for tougher sanctions from Guy Verhofstadt, the former Belgian Prime Minister who leads the Liberals in the European Parliament. On Egypt, news that five liberal parties are to be integrated into the Democratic Front Party, as part of a new liberal coalition - vital in terms of creating an alternative to the Muslim Brotherhood and its new Freedom and Justice Party. And it's great to see the Lib ...
And heres why. He doesn't have the game for it. While we can be in doubt that his game has improved vastly, he simply doesn't have the shots in his armour that other players, like Nadal, Djokovic and Federer (despite ...
This year's Acocks Green Carnival was blessed with sunny warm weather and a good turnout from local residents. My role this year was to judge the procession (which had a superheros theme), awarding prizes for both the walking groups and the floats. The picture above is a photo of the winners of the walking group first prize; the 24th Scouts and Beavers. The Carnival takes a huge amount of work to organise and run on the day, and my thanks go to all those involved in helping to make such a successful day this year.
Last year's Liberal Democrat manifesto promised that "We will establish an independent commission, with cross-party support, to develop proposals for long-term care of the elderly." The new Government took swift action on this manifesto call, setting up an independent commission chaired by Andrew Dilnot in July last year. This week, the Commission on the Funding of Care and Support will present its recommendations on how social care funding can be reformed to ensure a sustainable and affordable care system for the future. Age UK's recent report, Care in Crisis, highlighted the serious issues plaguing our care system. At present, of ...
I believed in David Haye. I believed his hype. I believed that it wasn't just trash talk to sell a fight. I believed that he'd really go for it and try and knock Wladimir Klitschko out. Instead what we were served up with on Saturday night was a pathetic limp performance from a man who had said so much but delivered so little. Had I spent £14.95 on the fight then I'd have been pissed off (I didn't – I watched for free on Al-Jeezera 3) but had I spent serious money to follow Haye to Hamburg then I'd be ...
Well - I hadn't realised just how long it is since I blogged! However, this is such an important issue that I have torn myself away from a beautiful white sandy beach in order to mount a last minute attempt to garner support from our MPs for an amendment to tomorrow's Finance Bill - the text of my email below :- Dear All I am sure you will remember the emergency banking motion that was passed at conference, in particular calling for: F) Measures to tackle financial exclusion for individuals and small business, with a Basic Banking Guarantee; a public ...
1/ Lib Dem News Online. We don't get very good press. Infact, unless it's bad news, we don't really get press - in the popular sense of the man-in-the-street level of news. The political debate is effectively UK: Coalition (but really Tory) deficit reduction versus Labour no-cuts rhetoric. And in Scotland: SNP fighting for Scotland (against English Tories) versus Labour historic but jaded and toothless. OK, just putting Lib Dem News, online, isn't going to change that on its own, however I have always believed that you use greater force against itself and so taking every opportunity to publicise it ...
Go back to 1176 and you will find that the first ever Welsh Eisteddfod was held in Cardigan Castle under the auspices of the Lord Rhys. It is quite apt then that one of the biggest of the modern Eisteddfods in the west Wales region is Cardigan's Gwyl Fawr Aberteifi which has a long and proud 59 year tradition which helps make it so. Heavenly Singing Last night I had a very enjoyable time at the final evening of Gwyl Fawr Aberteifi 2011 where I could endulge myself in my love of Welsh music and in particular, Welsh choral music. ...
These two blogposts have caught my attention this week from the e-world. The World is Watching takes an interest, and albeit controversial, take on the Johann Hari plagiarism scandal. After the collapse of the court case in New York and ... Continue reading →
This morning's Observer revelations that even Eric Pickles thinks that the proposed £500 cap on welfare benefits is set at the wrong level must cause the Prime Minister to pause and reflect. The paper says that the Communities Secretary put in a letter his view that the cap will increase the burden on taxpayers, because thousands of families will be unable to pay their rent and will have to seek local government help: Written by Nico Heslop, Pickles's private secretary, at the clear instigation of the minister, the letter lays bare fears of mass homelessness "disproportionately impacting on families". It ...
From the preview of today's team time trial stage in the Tour de France on the official website: Some of the Anglo-Saxon teams make a point of focusing on the team time trial as these tests underline the homogeneity and intrinsic value of the group as a whole. You don't get that sort of psycho-sociological-nationalistic analysis on the Premiership website, do you? This is shaping up to be an interesting Tour – the format, with no prologue time trial, makes the first week quite open and then loads up some very interesting tests for the riders in the last week. ...
Today we are still in the Vendée and the team will only travel a further 23km. However, they will be travelling that 23km from Les Essarts and back again together because today it is the turn of the team time trail TTT. A longer TTT may give a benefit to teams such as HTC-Highroad, Sky who have plenty of former track stars who took part in the team pursuit. For HTC a 23km TTT may well be a warm up for further stages where they hope to deliver Mark Cavendish to the front of the field just a few hundred ...
We have asked for the Graffiti on the JCR building at Noad's Corner to be cleared
A quick tour of Kingsway showed that the potholes are still there. Lots now reported to the council.We are looking at ways of raising the profile of this issue
Three new gaping holes in Great Ormond Street Hospital's defense of their managerial operation have opened up in the last couple of days. Andrew Gilligan writing in the Sunday Telegraph today uncovers more material and more witnesses that demonstrate GOSH's failure to deal with patient safety issues when warned by top consultants with the management turning on those who dare raise such issues. You can read his article here. This follows exactly what happened to my constituent, Kim Holt, a consultant paediatrician working for GOSH at St Ann's before Baby Peter's death – who warned that the situation was dangerous ...
When DSK was arrested I was walking in the Isle of Wight with a group of French friends. Without exception they all (even two who said they preferred Sarkozy to DSK - so much from French rationality) agreed that he had probably been set up. There was even a suggestion in one of the papers that a UMP apparatchik had reported the incident before it had actually happened. Speculation that DSK may now run as socialist candidate for the French Presidency is surely premature. After all, the charges still stand and he has yet to be tried and may yet ...
This piece on Open Democracy asks some fascinating question about the JJRT and suggests that they should carry out their own inquiry. Anyone know if it happened?
There will be a meeting at County Hall to consider changes to care of stroke patients in County Durham on Friday July 8th at 10.00 a.m. It's a meeting of the Joint Scrutiny Committee and members of the press and public are welcome to attend. They may also speak at the chair's discretion. If you have personal experience or knowledge in this field your input would be very valuable and it would be great if you could go. If you can't get there but have points you would like made for you, please get in touch with me. In issues ...
