[IMG: Clegg Speech 19] [IMG: Creative Commons License] photo credit: Liberal Democrats I remember at one LibDem conference in the 90s, day-dreaming about how wonderful it would be if Paddy, as leader, had a police protection unit following him around. Of course, now we do indeed have the men with bulges in their inside upper jacket pockets following around Nick Clegg. I met a couple the other day. Very nice chaps they are, too. "We're take care of this door, sir" one said as I went to close a door at the side of the hall where Nick was speaking. ...
[IMG: Rick Santorum] [IMG: Creative Commons License] photo credit: Gage Skidmore What Google problem? – you may well ask. To which, the only polite answer is: "He just has one, OK?". Political Wire takes up the story: Santorum Reached Out to Google Rick Santorum told Poltico he contacted Google about his "Google problem" but says the search company isn't interested in fixing it. Said Santorum: "I suspect if something was up there like that about Joe Biden, they'd get rid of it. If you're a responsible business, you don't let things like that happen in your business that have an ...
Maverick Tory MP Peter Bone who has been doing the rounds of Lib Dem conference. Former England manager, now managing Leicester City, Sven Goran Erickson
This lunchtime I was one of the speakers for an IPPR fringe meeting at Liberal Democrat conference, and in my opening remarks repeated a previously blogged observation about how the Liberal Democrats could learn something from John Prescott about how to be in power but anti-establishment and how to be in power but mobilise public opinion to assist campaigns. However, making such an observation in a room with several Labour members and journalists means the comparison got a few legs this time both on social media and in an extensive write-up by the BBC: Many Lib Dems joined politics to ...
The picture on this post was taken a few minutes before kick off at this evening's Arsenal game against Shrewsbury Town. It did fill a little more, but this was the emptiest the stadium has been. The board need to ... Continue reading →
One abiding set of values that all Liberal Democrats share is a respect for our environment, natural systems and sustainability. With this conference's backing, we will hold course to be the greenest government ever. No more, no less. But are we still on course? Well, I can hardly pick up a Tory paper these days without a whinge about energy and climate change policies. It's been nip and tuck between Vince and me in recent months to win an unpopularity poll - that's on Conservativehome among Tory activists. So as we assert Lib Dem values within government, we must be ...
Well, I never thought I'd be scrounging around reading text from a picture of the Daily Mail front page. But it seems an interesting story in tomorrow's edition here: Ministers at war over spending Ministers are locked in battle over a Liberal Democrat plan to splash out £5 billion to boost the economy. ...the dramatic plan to turn on the spending taps, backed by Energy Secretary Chris Huhne, provoked a furious behind-the-scenes row last night. Treasury sources flatly denied that Chancellor George Osborne was preparing to change tack to encourage growth.
Brompton Road station on the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway (as it was then called) opened on 15 December 1906. Situated between Knightsbridge and South Kensington, it was convenient for the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Brompton Oratory, as well as the shops of the Brompton Road But traffic levels were disappointing, and within a few years a practice arose of running some trains through the station without stopping to speed up the service. As the Brompton Road website (to which I am indebted for this whole account) says: This practice also obtained at several other stations on ...
If you are in Birmingham for the LD conference be sure to drop into the museum. Apart from a good collection of pre-raphaelite dreadfulness it has an excellent collection of British art including some interesting late C20 work. There is ... Continue reading →
Many people in Ealing are sad when they see the old Cinema in Ealing just as an eyesore with the Council fighting with the owner of the land who had planning permission to build a new cinema. Very recently there was some good news. CEO Justin Ribbons of, Empire, in August, has had meetings with local activists to press home and discuss the need for action on this issue to get Empire to build the cinema they promised. It seems now that Justin Ribbons "remains cautiously positive", given the progress made resolving the outstanding planning amendments. There are apparently no ...
A year ago, sitting in my hotel bedroom on Fifth Avenue, I wrote: Far away across the grey eternity of the North Atlantic, my fellow Liberal Democrats are preparing to enjoy this evening's Glee Club. As ever, we at Liberator have produced a new songbook for the occasion, complete with an introduction from Rutland's most popular fictional peer. You can find last year's introduction and links to Lord B's earlier essays in this genre elsewhere on this blog.This year I have to write "over the Warwickshire border", but otherwise all that holds true this evening too. Bonkers HallRutlandTelephone: Rutland 7 ...
A good, spooky Who story, one that you could easily imagine being an episode from the current series - indeed, it has a number of plot similarities with The Girl Who Waited which I suppose is coincidental. The actual plot, concerning a mysterious woodland in which people vanish without trace every sixty years, is allowed unusual primacy over the regular characters, with most of the viewpoints coming from inhabitants of the village near the woods. Very nice characterisation of the Doctor. I must say that in general this year's crop of Who novels have felt more assured than last year's. ...
An unexpectedly exciting afternoon at Liberal Democrat Conference has just seen a major policy paper - after more than two years' development, the sort usually nodded through - nearly thrown out altogether. And what a shame it was only "nearly". After decades of debating whether the heart of the Liberal Democrats' philosophy is freedom, fairness, or sustainability, the Policy Committee tried suddenly to bounce the party into saying it's "Wellbeing". Yes, you're right - that is complete bollocks. And I'm hugely proud of Richard, who today made his first ever full Conference speech, standing up for Liberalism against incoherent mush. ...
[IMG: cheap at half the cost] Now what I'm thinking, is this, much of the money we pay in Tax subsidies, affluent West Kent, now if Paul Carter (Conservative Leader of Kent council and the Pfizer Taskforce supremo) could, if he actually gave a toss for this area, investigate the sell off of all those palatial offices in Maidstone and West Kent and relocation to the Pfizer site or even a partial relocation so that local East Kent money stayed here and helped boost the economy. A bit of a tall order, particularly given the poor performance of Conservative county ...
I've just come out of the Lib Dem Conference debate on Community Politics. Like most of the speakers, I'm pleased it was debated and support the motion, but am wary of the idea that passing the motion in and of itself has actually achieved anything. We've actually been somewhere similar in the recent past. When Ed Davey became the Chair of the Campaigns and Communications Committee (the committee which oversees the party's electoral strategy), he made a big thing about the need to rediscover community politics to coincide with the 35th anniversary of the Community Politics strategy motion passed by ...
Fellow liberals. I'd like to start with an apology. To all those hard working Lib Dem councillors who lost their seats in May and the campaigners who didn't win - I apologise for letting you down. For all those campaigners for political reform - from all parties and none - who lost out in the AV referendum - I apologise for letting you down. And most importantly to the millions of people who voted for our party last year in the hope of something different and better - I apologise for letting you down. It is clear that many people ...
[IMG: Plenary: Rt Hon Baroness Shirley Williams] [IMG: Creative Commons License] photo credit: NHS Confederation - Great stuff from our Shirley Williams today – both in the conference chamber and on the media. Hurrah for our Shirl! – say I. On Total Politics, Caroline Crampton writes: ...it seems that the party has pinned its hopes of achieving further changes to the Bill on Williams and her colleagues in the Lords. And they won't disappoint, Williams insisted. She described how angry she was that the Commons only had three days to debate the Bill, and promised that the "relatively easy passage" ...
How easy is PHP to pick up? Bearing in mind that I've been WordPress-wrangling since about 2005 and recognise the basic functions a lot of the time, and am quite prepared to swot and Google for help when I need it. (I've been tipped off about a job which pays between £200-£300 per week after tax to hack about with PHP and do [documented] stuff with Windows servers, working from home. And, well, fuck yeah.) [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
Each year, Total Politics produces a list of the top political bloggers in the UK. This is broken down into various categories, including lists by party and by sector. In their list of the top blogging councillors, Cornwall provides no fewer than 6 of the top 30. Congratulations to Jude Robinson (number 27), Stephen Richardson (16), Jeremy Rowe (14), Dick Cole (13) and Andrew Wallis (6). I came in at number 7. It's interesting to note the spread of writers. There are two Lib Dems, two MK, one Labour and one Indie. Although there are a couple of Conservative councillors ...
Last night I went to the fringe meeting at the Liberal Democrat Conference in Birmingham organised by the Love Luton Campaign, the campaign behind Luton's bid to get city status for the town. Conference attendees got the chance to hear about Luton's diversity (or as the organisers had it "DiverCity") and to be entertained by a steel band, carnival dancers, and an asian dance performance. The event was hosted by Lord Qurban Hussain and we had a speech of appreciation from Andrew Stunell MP the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at Communities and Local Government department. I thought that Andrew ...
Details of this planning application can be found by following this link: The case officer is Chris Werren - please email comments and objections to him at chris.werren@lewisham.gov.uk, and don't forget to copy us in.
From PoliticsHome: I've got my hands on a copy of the 2011 Liberator Song Book that accompanies the event and I see there's one new song. Set to the tune of My Guy, it's called He's Our Nick. It kinda reflects the mood of this conference: gallows humour combined with dogged loyalty."Kinda"? And I resent the implication that a fresh edition of the Liberator Songbook would only have one new song.Lord Bonkers' foreword to the new Songbook will appear on this blog later this evening.
When ASDA on Reddish Lane opened up as "ASDA Denton" I immediately wrote to their Chief Executive in Leeds pointing out their error. At Conference today, I had a chance to speak with their Head of Publicity who recognised my name from the letter and was able to confirm that ASDA should be changing the name to Gorton very soon. I am delighted that ASDA have agreed with myself and the local residents who raised the issue and I wish them every success with their future as ASDA Gorton.
The public's attitude towards gloomy politicians is a curious one: only too happy to mock politicians who only talk up the positive but also frequently going off politicians who talk up the negatives. It happens across all parties, as we saw in the last Parliament where both Alistair Darling and George Osborne tried talking gloomily about the country's economic difficulties and, far from being met by public support for their frankness, saw widespread criticism and slipping poll ratings. Journalists may love knocking politicians for not having been gloomier during the 2010 general election, but all the nearly all the signs ...
"I'm free!" I recently quoted a neat skewering of a certain sort of socialist written by the great cricket and music journalist Neville Cardus: I lost sympathy with Socialists the more I met them. Their creed or system was obviously not to be a means to an end but an end in itself; I could not discover what manner of rich, imaginative life they were planning for the world after poverty had been abolished. More and more Socialism, apparently.Much the same holds true of modern libertarians. It is hard to discover what manner of rich, imaginative life they envisage for ...
The current state of play with Britain's nuclear weapons is one of flux. As a party, the Liberal Democrats official policy is to look at the requirements of nuclear deterrence and examine the current cost of Trident and the Successor submarine project with are to replace the Vanguard boats, comparing these with other nuclear alternatives. Such alternatives could be submarine-launched Cruise missiles for example. One will notice that not on the agenda is the option for a non-nuclear-armed United Kingdom. If we LibDems are to have a distinctive message on Trident for the 2015 General Elections, surely it would be ...
Had great fun on Sunday night doing The Westminster Hour with Linda Jack and presenter Carolyn Quinn (one of the very best political interviewers in my experience). The shock revelation of the show will not have been noticed by listeners: Carolyn is not perfect. She finished the show 1 second too early. You can listen to the show via the iPlayer here.
Further to my recent item about the Total Politics 2011 Blog Awards, I was delighted to learn today that I have topped the poll in the "Top Councillor Blog" category and I can only repeat my thanks to all who voted for me this year. In addition to some excellent Liberal Democrat councillors' blogs, there was strong competition from excellent councillor bloggers from other parties including Rupert Reed (Green), Steve Tierney (Conservative) and long-standing councillor blogger Luke Akehurst (Labour). And great to see my long-standing friend from Angus Council, Cllr David May, entering the Top 35 Councillor Blogs for the ...
Watching all the jazzy Liberal Democrat conference coverage over the past few days, I have been feeling rather jealous as I sit at home applying to every education support job under the sun. Vince Cable and Tim Farron both gave stunning speeches that expressed the most pressing problems in our party. Yet, as I take ...
I was called by a colleague I know through my day-job last week: 'What is the Lib Dem position on charitable giving?' she asked. Beyond a bland 'We're in favour of it,' I found myself a bit stuck for an answer. Initially I put it down to my ignorance, and decided I should do some research, call a few people up, and find out something a bit more helpful, a bit more substantive. But coincidentally that day I happened to read this article — How can charities exert an influence on Lib Dem policies? — in Third Sector. And it ...
Yesterday afternoon, I attended the latest meeting of the Balgay Stakeholders' Group, which brings together local councillors, council parks/environment department staff and community representatives - in particular Friends of Balgay - to discuss issues related to Balgay Park and its surrounds. Matters discussed yesterday included : * Tree pruning work recently undertaken. * Impending work to improve the lighting in the park - from the Scott Street entrance right along to the entrance at Glamis Road - this includes new lighting columns but also repair of a major fault at the Scott Street side. This impending work is really good ...
Yesterday, I met with with a group of residents and a road safety officer from Dundee City Council in Thomson Street to discuss road safety concerns residents have raised regarding this extremely narrow road. Concerns discussed included inappropriate use of the road by some large vehicles such as HGVs, the need for residents to sometimes reverse in the street when meeting on-coming traffic and whether or not a one-way operation of the road may help that, and the possible use of "Twenty's Plenty" in the street to emphasise its very residential nature and narrowness. The City Council will now give ...
Blogging has been light, as I've started a new job and have no time to put my head into the Internet, but having been pointed to a fascinating debate by Left Outside on the relationship between economics and 'evidence', I just can't resist. Let me summarise what's been going on. An anthropologist named David Graeber ...
I had a pleasant breakfast with tnh, pnh and Abi over at Pendrift's the other day, and our hostess mentioned that she had seen what she described as a 'granddaddy Dalek' in the Royal Military Museum, ten minutes' walk from my office. I popped over at lunchtime to look at it myself, and it's clear that it's one of Davros's earlier designs - the Mark One, Two or Three, perhaps. In fact it's a German artillery piece from the 1890s, set on rails (not sure if that's for transport or to deal with recoil). There is just space inside for ...
Norman Lamb, Lib Dem MP for North Norfolk and political advisor to Nick Clegg, writes over at The Guardian about his view of how the party is delivering in government. First he defines the audience he is addressing: open-minded progressives: For some on the left, the mere act of working with the Conservatives is a sin. We'll never convince those people driven by hatred of the other tribe. But for progressives willing to examine the facts rationally, it is time to reassess the case. After all, 13 years of Labour government ultimately disappointed. Norman then identifies two specific policy areas ...
The reconfiguration of the health service that was attempted in 2006-2007 had dire consequences for the Labour Party. They lost many seats in West and North Wales and shortly after the Assembly elections the One Wales Government abandoned the plans and announced a moratorium on hospital closures. What are we to make therefore of today's announcement by the Health Minister that changes to the health service will be assessed by an independent body. Plans by local health boards to "modernise" services will be reviewed by a new National Clinical Forum. This is a clear signal that many of the closures ...
The most enjoyable part of Monday for me was away from the conference itself. An old friend and colleague, Simon Foster, is now a Politics Lecturer at Birmingham Metropolitan College, and he had asked me to go and speak to his A2 Politics group about Liberalism. This term the group are learning about the main political ideologies, so the arrival of the Liberal Democrat conference in the city has enabled many of his students to get some hands on experience of a political party. Not being in any way academic myself, I was a little unsure of where to start. ...
Another poem, discovered through Kitty's blog yesterday. Learning to love differently is hard, love with the hands wide open, love with the doors banging on their hinges, the cupboard unlocked, the wind roaring and whimpering in the rooms rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds that thwack like rubber bands in an open palm. It hurts to love wide open stretching the muscles that feel as if they are made of wet plaster, then of blunt knives, then of sharp knives. It hurts to thwart the reflexes of grab, of clutch; to love and let go again and again. It ...
See Mark Pack's round-up here.
Why Paddy, Lynne, Vince and Tim are so resilient Those of us who got involved in the party around the time of merger will have had a lot of sympathy with Paddy's recollection of the period we registered as an asterix in the opinion polls. I joined the Liberal Party in 1987 and became active as the parties were merging and remember keeping track of opinion polls in which we bumped along at 4% or so, competing with the continuing SDP and the Greens. As Paddy pointed out there was one month when the pollsters couldn't find even enough supporters ...
Tim Farron is probably the Parliamentary Party's best funny speech maker (though I'd pay good money to see him head-to-head in a laugh off with Alistair Carmichael), so it's not a surprise that Tim's speech to Liberal Democrat conference caught the headlines mostly for his humour and his stress-testing of political marriage analogies to destruction. Yet there was a significant section about how Liberal Democrat ministers act and his own role: There are 18 Liberal Democrats who don't have the luxuries that I do. They can't just sound off if they don't like government policy or trot through the no ...
In the period 18th August 2011 to 9th September 2011 there were no planning applications decided by officers about applications relating to Bidston & St. James ward. However item 4 on tonight's Planning Committee agenda along with Appendix 1, Appendix 2 and the updated conditions reasons on the proposed Wirral International Trade Centre does relate ...
In Victoria Gardens A number of confused and bemused residents have contacted me in recent weeks, asking why a number of lighting lamp posts in the town have been cut in half. At the time of these happenings a few weeks ago, even I didn't have an answer. But on enquiring with the Council, it soon transpired that there was of course a reason. As it happens, the Council had sent me a letter which crossed in the post and which explained that on evaluating the street lighting across the county, many needed to be removed for safety reasons and ...
A quick round-up of recent planning application decisions affecting Bidston & St. James ward. The decisions below have been made by planning officers at Wirral Council. The first batch are from 28th July 2011 to 17th August 2011. Application Number: APP/11/00674 Ward: Bidston & St. James ward Decision Date: 4th August 2011 Case Officer: ...
Tue 20th
11:27
The Independent View: Sorry ActionAid - it's time to put people in charge of their own development
This is a response article to 'The Independent View: Centre Forum is wrong about aid – UK aid makes a difference' by Centre Forum's Pauline Dixon and Paul Marshall Failure to allocate international aid more effectively on a rising budget will lead to a rapid decline in public support for it. This is what the CentreForum paper 'International aid and educating the poorest' seeks to address, and this is why ActionAid's concerns about our paper, set out last week on Lib Dem Voice, are misplaced. We are not opposed to international aid (ActionAid comes close to implying we are). Nor ...
I've just got back from Liberal Democrat conference down in Birmingham. Not particulary wanting my personal details to be held by the police I skirted around the fringe. Saturday I spent my time largely promoting Phoenix Campaigns by handing out letters to delegates. I was also quite keen to see Connect the new database Liberal Democrats will be using. The system offers a number of privacy improvements, as individuals will not be able to download large chunks of data on memory sticks as often happens now with the existing EARS system. I was a little disappointed to see the system ...
This post might be better known as "things that interested me at the Lib Dem conference". A Review Of Drug Laws An excellent, sensible proposal was put to conference suggesting that a panel be formed to review our current drug laws and propose new ways forward. This might mean the liberalisation of drug laws among other things. As someone who doesn't do drugs and who, as a child, lived through the experience of a drugs raid, you'd think I wouldn't be sympathetic towards liberalisation. But I believe, based on my feelings and on the evidence I've seen, that the current ...
Do news presenters,commentators and other general pundits ask George Osborne & other senior Tories if they now agree it was wrong to support Cecil Parkinson's deregulation of financial services? Of course not. Do they ask Ed Balls if he thinks it was a mistake for Gordon Brown to sell large chunks of our gold reserves at a price one sixth of its present price? Of course not. So why do they go on asking Nick Clegg whether he is glad the LibDems failed in their policy of joining the Euro? Is it just trying to discredit the LibDems by any ...
Yesterday, I touched on the context within which small parish councils operate. Here's an example of the sort of issue that can arise... I blog, both here and at 'The Creeting St Peter Journal', a local blog for local people', you might say. The Chairman of our Parish Council, a former army officer (I believe), is somewhat suspicious of anything that he doesn't 'get', uncomfortable with the idea of my reporting from Parish Council, and is a mite autocratic. Perhaps autocratic is a bit harsh, but he's a bit more used to command and control than I am. Rosemary, our ...
I don't know if you watched Newsnight last night. I did, but not on TV. It's a strange experience to hear Jeremy Paxman rehearsing his introductory lines in front of the Camera. "Can you trust a Lib Dem? That's the question" ....... Pause, "Can you trust a Lib Dem? That's the question" ....... and in the meantime some jokey exchanges with the audience most of whom had been selected after a telephone interview to find out where they stood on various issues. (Not me – I just got the answerphone and a text saying I was welcome to come!) As ...
Top marks to the ingenious folk at The Good Agency for this legacy advertising campaign pointing out why you may want to hire them to deliver your next legacy advertising campaign. (Hat-tip to Adrian Salmon for highlighting it to me.) The point is a good one: anyone can come up with some marketing schtick about the importance of leaving a gift in your will. And they make that point cleverly through their 'Legacy proposition generator' — 7 simple questions that can help you create entirely bland, generic, cliched sloganeering almost certainly guaranteed to fail. Here's what mine looked like. Now ...
[IMG: Diana, Cllr Jenks and me outside the customer services centre] Over the summer I've had a number of complaints from residents about long queues at Haringey Council's 'customer services' centre in Wood Green, where Stroud Green residents go to get parking permits and deal with the Council over benefits and council tax issues. So last week I made an unannounced visit to the centre to survey residents about their experiences. I was joined by local Stroud Green resident Diana Buckley, who contacted me after she queued for three hours for parking permits, and fellow councillor Jim Jenks. Whilst conducting ...
'Less anger, but less clarity' is how UK Polling Report's Anthony Wells characterises the latest YouGov polling looking at the public's attitudes to the Lib Dems. It's interesting to read through the full data, available here, especially as the responses are directly comparable with a year ago, before the Lib Dems' U-turn on tuition fees sent the party spiralling downwards in the polls. The bad news Nick Clegg's popularity has taken a hit: from a net positive of +8% a year ago, to a net negative of -29% today. Worth noting, however, that this is primarily due to Nick's toxicity ...
OK, this is a cheat of a post and very lazy. But my piece on the New Statesman about what Nick had to say about 'The Head and the Heart' in our meet the bloggers session is now up. Would welcome it if some Lib Dems could comment! Do feel free to be as straight as you like - everyone else is! Cheers
I've only spoken to Conference once before, but yesterday I broke silence again. We were faced with a policy paper called "Facing the Future" and you should be able to work out what I made of it from the text of my speech. If you want to watch it on iplayer click here and go to 2hrs 42.08 minutes in. Conference, I once heard a woman say of her husband, "he ticks all the boxes." It was the beginning of the end. It's not enough to tick all the boxes. That's why I'm asking you to reject this policy paper. ...
Tue 20th
10:18
Norfolk County Council admits it doesn't have enough expertise for incinerator planning application
Recently there have been a number of calls for the King's Lynn incinerator planning application to be called in. The arguments for this are quite simple; how can Norfolk County Council impartially judge whether the incinerator should go ahead, when ... Continue reading →
On Wednesday last week, as I listened to The Weekly Yah-boo Prime Minister's Question Time, I was struck by the Prime Minster's statement that "You can't borrow your way out of a debt crisis". That sounds like good advice, so why is it that George Osborne and Danny Alexander intend to borrow over half a trillion pounds over the five years of this parliament, thus increasing the already-staggering national debt by approximatley two thirds? I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but somebody needs to start listening to David Cameron!
We provincial folk have always shown less deference towards the metropolitan persons who rush around being important. and grand Now this is a sweeping generalisation and regrettably some people who want nothing more than is sit in presence of someone they believe is important. The ones that have been annoying me this week are the lobbyists who turn up to fringe meeting and dominate the question time to the exclusion of party members- who often have knowledge and perspectives we consequently miss out on. We listen whilst one vested interest debates with another vested interest. Personally I would welcome it ...
The Public Accounts Committee's findings that Labour wasted at least £469 million trying to centralise England's fire service control, is a stark warning to the SNP government in Edinburgh. According to the beeb report the plan was 'flawed from the outset', 'a comprehensive failure' and failed to achieve any of its objectives. It is in the very nature of these vanity centralisation projects - which are always justified on the grounds of greater efficiency - that they end in abject failure. This is because it is the nature of centralisation to drive out local accountability and reduce competition to a ...
Monday night's Channel 4′s coverage of the Liberal Democrat conference ended with Michael Crick interviewing Ann Treneman and Michael White about the general feel amongst Lib Dems. Among the usual sniping from a reactionary sketch-writer and the doyen of the urban intellectual elite came a lament that the Liberal Democrat conference did not feel like a Liberal Democrat conference. People were too on message, they moaned; there was not enough rebellion; nor enough eccentricity. Michael White in particular bemoaned the absence of beards and sandals. Lib Dem conference, they felt, had become boring. Too right. We are not in the ...
Labour run Southwark Council have decided to hold a public bonfire event in Dulwich Park. Sadly they don't feel they want to call it a firework display but have come up with a more politically correct name for the event – "The Colour Thief". They plan to spend £55,000 on this event Friday 4 November. They've confirmed to me they expect 2,000 attendees which works out at £25 a head! To others they've said 3,000 – 5,0000. They've said to the Friends of Dulwich Park that they have no choice it will happen whether they like it or not. At ...
The political scene is Scotland seems as close to a dead end as can be found. The corpse of Socialist cronyism still retains some vestigial loyalty in the West of Scotland, but the populist behemoth of Separatism now strides across the political landscape in the shape of our pudgy "Father of the Nation" Alex Salmond. Meanwhile the crisis that faces Scotland is not just an economic or even a political one: it is a moral one. The creation of a class of dependents has elevated political patronage to the primary source of economic activity north of the border. Far from ...
Imagine my delight when I woke up to this email from the OU today: Dear Tim Personal Identifier: ******** You will have received a message about an updated version of the Examination Arrangements booklet for October Examinations. As the module you are studying does not conclude with an examination please ignore the message sent to you regarding the Examination Arrangements booklet. It was sent to you in error. I am sorry for any confusion this may have caused you. M Bell Senior Manager, Examination Operations Please do not reply directly to this message as this mailbox is not monitored. We ...
Follow this link to see me asking Cleggy a question in the Q&A yesterday, and him starting to answer and then sprinting off down a tangent about interns, which really WASN'T what I asked about at all. For the linkophobes, my question was:How do you propose we push for more diversity in Westminster, not just in terms of gender and sexuality and race, but also in terms of wealth and class? And I was supposed to get a supplementary question and didn't. I guess this is what I get for slagging FCC off so much... ;) Apparently the beeb also ...
This piece originally appeared on 20th September on the Huffington Post UK: Coming to Liberal Democrat conference has changed over the years. It used to be the case that you were ignored. You'd spend your days earnestly debating policy motions and amendments then read precisely zilch about it in the next day's papers. Then came the Coalition, and suddenly we got lots of attention. Sadly, as at March's spring conference in Sheffield, the attention took the form of an angry mob yelling at us through megaphones on the other side of a ring of steel. Being here at this year's ...
Tue 20th
08:05The Independent View: Lib Dems should look beyond the tax system to help low-to-middle income famili...
The Liberal Democrat conference has seen the party reiterate its commitment to using increases in the income tax personal allowance to raise the incomes of low-to-middle income families. Senior party figures have used conference to stress their long-term ambition to work towards an allowance of £12,500, roughly equivalent to the earnings of a full-time worker on the minimum wage. This would be a significant tax cut that the Institute for Public Policy Research estimates would cost around £24 billion if implemented today. The Liberal Democrats argue that raising the allowance demonstrates 'fairness' by removing many low wage workers from income ...
The next North Area Committee will be held on Thursday 22nd September in the Large Hall at the Manor on Arbury Road. As always, proceedings start at 6.30pm with the Planning Applications, of which there are 3: 11/0727/FUL Cambridge Guest House, 201 Milton Road 09/0731/FUL 107 Darwin Drive 11/0776/FUL Rear of 43-59 Elizabeth Way Also starting at 6.30, there will be a Photograph Exhibition 'Living in Horth Area', and a City Council Customer Service Centre 'Drop-in' Session (until 7.30). The main meeting starts at 7.30 (or following the conclusion of the Planning Applications), and will include the regular item on Policing ...
Somehow several years have passed since I read the first two books in this series, so a lot more time has passed for me than for the characters. But it is relatively self-contained; our newlywed heroes, Fawn and Dag, travel down river and further explore the nature of the powers shared by Dag and his people, while also delving a bit further into human nature and the relationships between two groups of people who have been brought up to regard each other with deep suspicion. Satisfying but relatively undemanding.
This is Glasgow's Ewan Hoyle's compelling speech proposing a new, evidence based drugs policy. If implemented this will save lives and free up money spent on pointless prosecutions to spend on real help for people. This motion passed, after a high quality debate, with just a handful of votes against. I'm going to print the whole thing for you to read. The passing of the motion has to be seen as the start of the process, not the end. This needs to be implemented as soon as possible I was incredibly proud of Conference on Sunday and particularly of Ewan. ...
Big Bad Alastair Campbell has been writing for a while about a plan which he says is a Tory scam to take millions off the electoral register. And he's got a point. There are three significant changes being proposed to electoral registration and the sum total of them all would have the effect of seriously damaging the UK's ambition of universal suffrage. Only one of them, however, is something that I would oppose outright. The first change is the equalisation of the number of voters in a constituency. This was agreed as part of the parliamentary voting and constituencies act ...
What happened on Monday in Birmingham at Liberal Democrat conference and what to watch out for today, Tuesday: (To find out more about any of the motions I mention, or indeed the others I've not highlighted, see the full agenda for the Liberal Democrats conference.)
Tue 20th
07:10LDVideo at Conference | Clegg & Cable on the economy; Andrew Neil's take on the conference; and ...
At Birmingham and so missing out on how the Lib Dem conference is being reported? Not at Birmingham and so missing out on seeing Lib Dem MPs and government ministers up close and personal? We hope these videos will help re-connect you... Clegg welcomes Jaguar jobs boost; Cable warns of economic equivalent of war (Available on the BBC website here.) Andrew Neil's Liberal Democrat conference report (Available on the BBC website here.) The power of Lib Dem conference representatives (Available on the BBC website here.)
I have today called on the City Council to look urgently about ways of filling the gaps caused by the loss of the 4S school bus. The school bus was axed by National Express Dundee at the start of the new term, leaving pupils with no direct bus from the West End to the school and in many cases a long walk of over 40 minutes to get to school. I have spoken again to National Express Dundee at the end of last week and - despite earlier hopes - it is now clear that the bus company is not ...
The media narrative of the Liberal Democrats at conference setting themselves up against the "evil" Tories is not one that I find particularly inspiring, even if it makes for tub thumping speeches and generates a bit more coverage for the party. In fact it is a distraction. Vince Cable is wasted as the anti Tory shibboleth, when it is his economics prowess that is now most needed in order to analyse the growth implosion outside the conference hall. Yesterday's downgrade of Italy looks to me like the beginning of the end of the financial system as we have known it ...
The last four days have been the worst of my life. I lost someone so precious to me that I dont know how I will function going forwards. Mickey was the centre of my universe and living here without him ...
On the recommendation of Lois McMaster Bujold, I got hold of the autobiography of Davy Crockett, and was stunned by this account of one of his uncles: By the Creeks, my grandfather and grandmother Crockett were both murdered, in their own house, and on the very spot of ground where Rogersville, in Hawkins county, now stands. At the same time, the Indians wounded Joseph Crockett, a brother to my father, by a ball, which broke his arm; and took James a prisoner, who was still a younger brother than Joseph, and who, from natural defects, was less able to make ...
Well this week Total Politics finish announcing their Blog awards for 2011. Scottish blogging amongst the LibDems has come out of it looking remarkably healthy. I counted 19 Scottish LibDem blogs with a variety of styles in the top 100. There is no doubt it has been a really tough year to be a Scottish Libdem. If we are to weather the current storm we need to rejuvenate intellectually. Never mind anyone else, a crucial part of this is that we need to start with defining who we are and what we believe. Then we need to communicate that. We ...
Once again our esteemed MLAs in the Northern Ireland Assembly have managed to pass a motion with amendments that is ...Continue reading »
And so it has happened again, a new fountain pen has been acquired. Having had a problem with my lovely ...Continue reading »
