It should not be a secret as to how we can win public trust on the European Union. In fact, it should be something we commit to doing so more often. What I am talking about is the not-so-secret way of winning the debate on the EU. The way we do it? Simple, we talk ...
The evening that Gary Lineker announced the 10 nominees I stuck my neck out and made my predictions. 3 Rory McIlroy 2 Alastair Cook 1 Mark Cavendish So I may have got the runners up wrong but at least I was right about the British public for a change. As for what I said about the runners up. I ruled out Darren Clarke making the top three as he wasn't the best golfer on the list, but like in 2006 he was the runner up on a purely emotional vote. I knew that Mo Farah would score highest of the ...
Hills Road Sixth Form College recently applied for planning permission to demolish their existing sports pavilion on Sedley Taylor Road and build a new one. The application was considered at the recent South Area meeting on 7th November. Many residents of Sedley Taylor Road have concerns about parking and access to the existing sports pavilion and playing fields, and fear that the new pavilion could increase these difficulties. There has been a well supported petition, and residents met the College before the application to express their concerns. So parking and traffic were very much in councillors' minds at the meeting, ...
From Why doesn't a triumphant British sportsman make it into the top 95 stories on Sky? via Mark Cavendish has achieved more in four years than English football team in last forty and Mark Cavendish needs to learn to cycle naked to this: Sports Personality of the Year 2011: Mark Cavendish wins BBC award
"And now, Master Harker, now that the Wolves are Running, perhaps you could do something to stop their BiteAs the years go past the 1984 television adaptation of John Masefield's The Box of Delights becomes more and more central to our idea of Christmas. Here is Blue Peter publicising the show as it was about to be screened. Patrick Troughton comes on at 6:58...
From chapter 6 of Rye Royal (1969): But when they reached the castle they saw that it was now surrounded by a high wire fence bearing a notice "Entrance to the Public prohibited" and Dickie said he would like to write a protest article about this sort of happening. "Anyway," he added. "Things and places are hardly ever what they were. I suppose that's another important thing about being a writer. You can help people to remember.There is more about my favourite writer as a child on the Malcolm Saville Society website. The castle mentioned here is Camber Castle.
Twenty five years ago today David Penhaligon was killed on his way to visit Truro postmen before they set off to deliver the Christmas mail. His untimely death robbed the party of one of its great communicators and almost certainly a future leader. David's great skill was to to be able to argue often complex points in a down to earth way while engaging the viewer or listener with his lyrical Cornish tones. And as a result he was often underestimated by opponents and media alike. Finding footage of him is remarkably difficult - but here is a clip from ...
We rattled across a lot of country on tonight's BBC Three Counties Drivetime with Roberto Perrone. My fellow panellists were Tom Shaw, a longstanding Labour councillor in Luton, and Darren Isted, editor of the Comet newspapers in North Herts. The first question was about former Labour minister Lord West's call to send "a submarine to stick it up 'em" in response to the decision by a group of Latin American countries to ban ships flying the Falklands flag from their ports. It is odd how warmongering the modern Labour Party has become ever since Tony Blair got a taste for ...
With less than a week now until Christmas itself, the region's Liberal Democrat MEP Sir Graham Watson has recorded and published two seasonal messages: one wearing his hat as our local liberal MEP...... and the other wearing his new hat as the President of the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party (ELDR).Merry Christmas!
Suddenly a stream of blog posts that would write themselves is under threat. Because it seems the Conservatives are threatening to take the fish from my barrel by declining to nominate Rupert Matthews as the new MEP for the East Midlands when Roger Helmer stands down on the last day of 2011. Or so Mr Matthews reckons. He told the Leicester Mercury: "I sent off the relevant paperwork to the party about three weeks ago. "I should have received confirmation 10 days later but I've had no response. "Phone calls are not being returned, and my e-mails have not been ...
I attended St Edburgha'a carol service last Sunday. Robert Jones has produced some good photographs of the event. The music was good, but I don't think it is available on the net.
Tuesday To Avonmouth Docks to wave off the Jeremy Browne. What with the current economic problems on the mainland of Europe, it has become clear that our relations with China will become increasingly important. To that end, I have arranged for a Jeremy Browne to be presented to Peking Zoo so that the Chinese may enjoy viewing this delightful denizen of our English countryside. Later I call in at a village hostelry and fall into conversation with a fellow whose family has been farming Jeremy Brownes on the Mendips for generations. He is not sanguine about my plans, informing me ...
The Shropshire Star wins for its: Telford tyre-burst driver in pothole cash wait This headline makes good use of the Unit Headline Language identified by Michael Frayn in his novel The Tin Men. (it is worth reading the late Christopher Hitchens on this too.) The judges also liked the same newspaper's Call to turn Wem signal box into tearoom for its evocation of Shropshire life.
A prequel to this year's Torchwood: Miracle Day series, which fairly leapt off the online shelves at me when I realised it was by James Goss, whose contributions to the off-screen Whoniverse have been pretty impressive, and that two of the readers - the main two, it turns out, the other four getting only a chapter or so each - are Kai "Rhys Williams" Owen, who did such a good job of Goss's Ghost Train, and Clare Corbett, who likewise did well sharing The Hounds of Artemis and carrying Dead of Winter on her own. I was not disappointed. Although ...
Thu 22nd
18:29
Emergency repair work on Victoria Street at Alma Road/Beaconsfield Road junction, St Albans
Note from the county council On Friday 23 December, four-way temporary traffic lights will be in place at the Victoria Street/Alma Road/Beaconsfield Road junction from 9.30am until works complete, at approximately 3.30pm. The lights are necessary so that Hertfordshire Highways can make emergency temporary repairs to subsidence in the road. Initial temporary repairs and sweeping of debris is being carried out tonight (Wednesday 21 December) and permanent repairs will be made in the new year. We apologise for any disruption caused at this busy time of year but this is unavoidable as it would put road users at risk if ...
Woody Allen once made a film about a prison chain gang, shackled together at the legs to work in the fields, who decide to make a run for it. At first the going is easy and the gang make good progress. Then hard times strike. Somebody raises the alarm and gives chase. A panicking gang member (let's call him Prisoner Farage) yells "Split up!" In seconds, they are all flat on their faces. EU finance is generally considered complex and difficult to understand. Fundamentally, it isn't. Quite simply, in the globalised economic race between sovereign nations, Europe in its wisdom ...
Season of Goodwill or not, spending £1.36 to re-direct a letter to me is a waste of council money. I came home to find this large gusset envelope sent from County Hall with just a single letter in it, a posted letter which just needed to be re-directed at no cost to the council. It's the sort of thing we do without thinking in our homes, but once you get into any large organisation it can happen that the normal ways of judging expenditure go out of the window. I guess that's what happened here. Of course saving the odd ...
Very good news for the team trying to save Camelford Leisure Centre - they have been awarded a £50,000 grant from Sport England. The centre is being dumped by Cornwall Council against the wishes of local residents and the protests of the Liberal Democrats. Despite all the waste, the Conservatives refused to try to find the £62,500 per year it would take to keep the leisure centre operating normally. Faced with the alternative of losing the leisure centre altogether, local people have put together a business plan and sought out various funding streams. The Sport England grant, which will pay ...
One of the things that fits well into a Jonathan Ross special TV show so well is a song from Tim Minchin. A song from Tim will always make you think. His offering for this Christmas was no different. However, Peter Fincham ITV's director of television decided, after the show had been edited and was in ready to air format that Minchin's song wasn't to be included. To read what Tim thinks about the decision himself here. Here is the song in question: Reading the comments in question I find that I am not alone as a Christian who is ...
It's interesting to see the efforts that Falmouth is making to attract shoppers out of peak season. They are planning to offer free parking in two Cornwall Council owned car parks on Wednesdays during February. This initiative has been sparked by the Business Improvement District (BID). In Launceston we will soon be seeing a parking refund offer whereby shoppers can get their parking money back if they shop in local stores. I'm glad that Cornwall Council is now more open to this sort of scheme. The recent report by Mary Portas on the state of the high street picked out ...
The Green movement in Iran after the presidential elections in 2009 was the first of the recent popular backlashes against entrenched corruption in authoritarian regimes. That was followed by the Arab spring, continuing upheaval in Egypt and now a similar movement in Russia and elsewhere. At the time of the electoral protests in Tehran, Iranian staff at the British embassy were being accused by the Iranian authorities of treason and fomenting unrest. There was only muted support for the reform movement in Iran from the international community. Last month we saw the British Embassy in Tehran ransacked and vandalised and ...
John Maynard Keynes talked about life without the means of exchange as "a perigrination in the catacombs with a guttering candle". Now that the European banks are stuffing their money into their reserves and governments are committed to spending as little as possible, that perigrination seems worryingly closer. This is what we can do:
In recently praising Jeremy Browne for arguing that the Liberal Democrats must guard against being pigeonholed as only being interested in issues that do not win much public support, I added a caveat about how his broader vision of what the Liberal Democrats should be for (social mobility – yuk) showed how inconsistent senior Liberal Democrats are being at the moment about what the party should be for. Sorting through snippets of information I have not yet used in a blog post or monthly newsletter, I came across the answer Nick Clegg gave Nick Thornsby when Nick asked Nick what ...
Today's news is that Suarez is set to appeal. Is he saying that he is guilty but the punishment is too harsh (I have heard some commentators take this view) or is he saying that he is innocent? Well his agent is "convinced" that the punishment would be reversed, so that should mean he is innocent. However the agent went on to say that "it seems to us absolutely out of proportion," which suggests that he is guilty but the punishment was too harsh. The appeal will be brought by Liverpool's lawyers who won't let him walk alone and there ...
Twenty three blogs have recently joined my Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator: Andrew McFarland – http://faithandpride.org/ Hannah Claytor – http://hannahclaytor.wordpress.com/ Alisdair Gibbs-Barton – http://gibbs-barton.blogspot.com/ Paul Renwick – http://paulrenwick.wordpress.com/ Gordon Anderson – http://gordonanderson06.blogspot.com/ William Hobhouse – http://williamhobhouse.wordpress.com/ Scots Gazette – http://www.scotsgazette.org/ Jonah Oliver – http://jonaholiver.wordpress.com/ Jen Yockney – http://jenyockney.blogspot.com/ Tomas Forsey – http://liberaltaxi.blogspot.com/ Toby MacDonnell – http://cerebralliberal.blogspot.com/ Matt Gallagher – http://mattgallagher.mycouncillor.org.uk/ Edward Sainsbury – http://voiceofacitizen.wordpress.com/ Maria Pretzler – http://pretzler.net/blog/ Neil Littlewood – http://www.chinolas-place.com/ Richard Giddings – http://libdemninija.wordpress.com/ Morgan Griffith-David – http://spinelessliberal.wordpress.com/ University of Birmingham Lib Dems – http://students.guild.bham.ac.uk/libdem/ Ian Martin – http://overseasliberal.wordpress.com/ Josh Dixon – http://liberalinsight.wordpress.com/ Association of Liberal Democrat Scientists and ...
We had the last meeting of 2011 of Prudhoe Town Council last night. I was glad I went. The meeting was inquorate before I showed up! The town council had it's usual enormous agenda but it was amazing how we whipped through it with the majority of the hot air producers being absent! I thought I would try to keep residents up to date with the major events at the Town Council (PTC) because virtually no members of the press or public ever attend. Last night we had to exclude the press and public to discuss a confidential issue but ...
What would you be like in a crisis? Some people crumple under pressure, others go way beyond the call of duty while trying to help resolve things. Let's take an example. Imagine you're on a train. It's late at night. A fellow passenger takes seriously ill - potentially very dangerously ill, to the extent that an ambulance is called and the train pulls up at a station to await it. Let's embellish this imaginary scenario a bit. Would you be calm? Maybe you'd be the young man who would phone for an ambulance, calmly relaying details and generally being incredibly ...
If I were a cleverer person than I am, I would try to create a joke with a punch line to fit the following set-up: What's the difference between a cut in government spending and an ideological cut in government spending? That I'm not clever enough to create a pithy punch line is of no consequence, as it is no laughing matter. Labour have sometimes tried to trail the line that the coalition's cuts are avoidable, that there are the product of ideology rather than necessity. This line lacked some credence because even as they were saying it, the Labour ...
Thu 22nd
14:42
25 Years on and Cornwall's Liberal Democrats should still remember David Penhaligon today
Truro and St Austell's MP from 1974-1986 remembered today People often ask whether you can remember where you were when JFK died. I don't I was too young. But, for those of us who can remember David Penhaligon the feeling, I suspect, is similar to those people felt when John Kennedy was shot. A feeling ...
In Praise of the Independent: Finding strengths in Nick Clegg. Filed under: Opinion, Politics Tagged: Independent, Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg
The Independent writes Are the Lib Dems and Labour testing out their own Coalition? in which they outline some strengths in Clegg's recent performance which is worth highlighting: Clegg seeks more distinctiveness in the formation of those policies. He could have made the clear and well-argued speech he delivered to Demos earlier this week at any point ...
Due to an unfortunate distribution error I appear to be the only person in receipt of the Liberal Democrat Cabinet team Christmas card. So to put that right:
It's been reported that the French authorities have now launched a criminal investigation into Conservative MP Aidan Burley and fellow guests who attended that notorious Stag Night in Val Thorens with all its Nazi overtones. You'd like to think if he was truly sorry, Aidan Burley would now resign. But I bet he won't. And if the Conservatives were truly sorry - they'd sack him. But I bet they won't. Why not? Because Cannock Chase is...a Tory marginal. Here's the results from the last general election: (The vote share change in 2010 comes from the notional, not actual, 2005 results ...
Following Manchester Labour's extraordinary attack on the pupil premium – describing the policy as a "sham" – news reaches The Voice via Lib Dem councillor Steve Beasant that a Labour cabinet member on North East Lincolnshire Council has joined his Manchester colleagues in their criticism. As Paul Walter reported earlier, Nick Clegg was asked about the comments of Manchester's Labour councillors at Tuesday's Deputy Prime Minister's Questions by Lib Dem MP Duncan Hames. Here's the full exchange: Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD): Wiltshire schools have long felt short-changed by funding allocations for education, so they will welcome the doubling of pupil ...
In many ways the plea by Ed Balls for the Liberal Democrats to abandon the coalition with the Conservatives and form one with Labour instead, is a bit of a fantasy on his part. It is little wonder that the Independent reports that senior Liberal Democrats have regarded it as not a serious suggestion. Simon Hughes, who is the party's deputy leader, is quoted as saying: "Ed Balls is free to say what he likes, but the Labour Party is not a credible party of government and has no credible plan for our country." Tom Brake, adds: "It is the ...
Wednesday: From Star Wars Lego Advent Calendar Day 21: Yee-haa!
Photos from the Royal Visit to the Yate Armadillo Youth Venue and Cafe are now available on the Armadillo website - click on the Cafe icon, then Royal Visit.
If you're wondering when your recycling and rubbish will be collected over Christmas, you can find out on the South Glos website. On the same page you can also find out the opening times for the Sort IT centres and the best way to dispose of your Christmas tree and cards when the time comes. South Glos has also provided details of changes to local bus timetables over Christmas.
So, in the third quarter, the UK economy grew slightly faster than economists were predicting. They predicted 0.5%, it actually grew at 0.6%. So they were out by 20%. Cue lots of quotes from City Economists about how this was entirely predicatable and easily explained - even though they neither predicted it, nor apparently were away of the reasons why this would happen at 09.29 this morning. Here's a typical example I've lifted from the Telegraph. I must get round to writing a longer post at some point about the madness by which the bankers and economists are clearly not ...
Cross-posted from Liberal Democrat Voice Time was when Deputy Prime Minister's Questions was the closest you got to bloodsports in the House of Commons. The DPM would be tethered, red-faced and growling, to the dispatch box, as Labour MPs taunted him and propelled all sorts of bile at him, augmented by the odd tactical nuclear missile rear-launched by the Tory swivel-eyes. We've come a long way in a few months. Now, DPMQs are relatively sedate affairs. The DPM is well in control and there is little mischief from the Labour benches. Well, none that would spoil LibDem MPs' lunches. Indeed, ...
I am a little behind on the gardening front but was a little surprised to see the daffodils and spring bulbs coming through and still my summer lobelia is flowering. I will have to take my laptop to the Dr's as I am still having problems receiving comments.
Just a quick point, I see in this story carried in several papers over the last couple of days, in which Ed Balls is suggesting Liberal Democrats should join Labour and I just wonder what goes on in his tiny brain. Why after more than a year and a half in government as a coalition partner, would any Liberal Democrats wish to join Labour now, if they hadn't already, clearly loyalty and honesty are something Labour has had much difficulty with in the last few years. Labour in the late nineties, started a campaign of cosying up to bankers and ...
Time was when Deputy Prime Minister's Questions was the closest you got to bloodsports in the House of Commons. The DPM would be tethered, red-faced and growling, to the dispatch box, as Labour MPs taunted him and propelled all sorts of bile at him, augmented by the odd tactical nuclear missile rear-launched by the Tory swivel-eyes. We've come a long way in a few months. Now, DPMQs are relatively sedate affairs. The DPM is well in control and there is little mischief from the Labour benches. Well, none that would spoil LibDem MPs' lunches. Indeed, at least four MPs found ...
The Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Rt Hon. Edward "Ed" Balls is a strange man. He, it is said, cries during Antiques Roadshow. Perhaps he should be more upset when he contemplates the political and economic legacy that Labour has bequeathed to the nation. Despite this slightly bizarre tendency towards the lachrymose, his reputation is uncompromising, even brutal. Not just his reputation. His latest journey into folie de grandeur is his invitation to Liberal Democrats- without, of course, their leader, Nick Clegg- to leave the coalition and join with Labour. This would be the same Ed Balls who dismissed ...
The bus stop on Perth Road at the Shelter Shop - just west of Step Row was recently damaged by a vehicle. At my request a new bus stop pole and sign is now in place.
In an interview with the Independent yesterday Ed Balls has made the LibDems a not-so 'big, open and comprehensive' offer, asking them to cross the floor and to join Labour in a coalition. I think it would be much better now and for the future of the country if they did. It would be in the national interest. I don't think they should wait until 2015. I don't think it's possible for Nick Clegg to lead that move. I can't help it – Ed Balls's offer conjures up images of the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf trying ...
I was intrigued to read in today's South Wales Evening Post that Plaid Cymru are blaming changes to the housing benefits system for the continuing rise in homelessness. This is because those changes are still being debated in the House of Lords, where amendments to some of the worse aspects of the reforms have just been passed, and have not yet come into effect. In fact homelessness has been rising for some time and certainly started its upwards trajectory before the last General Election. The main factor behind this rise is the economic situation in Britain and the wider world. ...
Local people around Cambridgeshire can now bid for County Council cash for highways projects which will improve their community - and the time limit has been extended to give people more time prepare their submissions. The County Council has adopted a new approach which gives local communities a real influence over minor highway improvements - and details of how to apply for the cash are now available online. The closing date for bids has now been extended until February 1, 2012. For many years the County Council contributed towards a jointly funded programme with district councils. Typically the authority made ...
It's December which means for those who have them, it's time to get out those chocolate advent calendars! But for those of you who, like me, don't do such things anymore (and indeed for those of you who still do!), I thought I'd give my own unique little twist on this festive time of year with my Musical Advent Calendar countdown of my Top 25 favourite Christmas songs! I'm blogging a song a day, culminating with my favourite on Christmas Eve. So let's continue on our seasonal countdown... Cole's Musical Christmas Advent Calendar - Day 22! Today we have my ...
Lib Dem attempts to freeze councillors' allowances for the next 18 months have been blocked by Conservative Councillors. A proposal put to a meeting of Cambridgeshire County Council by Lib Dem Peter Downes called for there to be no rises before April 2013 at the earliest. But Conservative Councillors, who controversially voted themselves a 25 per cent pay rise last month, voted the Lib Dem proposal down "We need to reassure the public that councillors won't vote themselves a pay rise at a time when services are being cut and staff are being made redundant," said Cllr Downes. Lib Dem ...
Day twenty two of the advent calendar is the day that my Dad would always wake up to some extra cards and presents because it was his birthday. But it has been 5 years since he did so having passed on early in 2007. But my dad loved his big band music so today in a tribute to him that is where this advent calendar shall be visiting.
A break off Christmassy ones for a couple of days - this is my favourite Celine Dion song - Falling into you - from 1996 :
Private Eye is well known as a satirical magazine, equally well known is their detestation of the pudgy former editor of the Daily Mirror, Piers Morgan. Morgan, for all his later appearances on television, is a pretty discount celebrity. He was, after all, heavily implicated in the "City Slickers" scandal at the Mirror. Although he was able to escape gaol at that time, he was not able to prevent his reputation being permanently tarnished. As a result- and rightly- ever since, he has been a figure of ridicule and contempt, at least on the pages of Private Eye. His turn ...
What do we want from a government? Not in terms of the substance of policy but in the way it goes about its business. At a minimum we might reasonably expect competence. And we'd want it to play by the rules. We'd want a government to follow due process and, if its members conclude that process is not fit for purpose, to use agreed procedures to move to a new model of policy making. And we'd look to a government to embrace the values of accountability and transparency in order to rebuild the trust of a disillusioned electorate. Is that ...
This evening those members of the Friends Group who took part in the Action Day on 10 December were honoured as special guests by leading members of Manchester's Muslim Community at a dinner in The Sanam, in Longsight. On behalf of the Action Team I would like to say thank you to our hosts for a fabulous dinner and gracious hospitality. The work in the cemetery is helping to bring many communities together in close working harmony towards our common goal of creating a beautiful facility that we can all be proud of. I, and the Friends of Southern Cemetery ...
Thu 22nd
04:37
December Books 15) Operation Red Dragon, by Thierry Robberecht, Marco Venanzi and Michel Pierret
Last year I read The Aïda Protocol, the second in a series of earnest graphic novels about the work of Liberal MEPs in the European Parliament; Operation Red Dragon is the first of them, published in 2006, in which our hero Elisa Correr busts open illegal arms dealing with the government of a very large Asian country and incidentally liberates her lover from captivity as a result of getting a resolution passed in the plenary session. So there is a certain amount of wishful thinking (and also an awful lot of info-dumping). But I did like the artists' faithfulness to ...
If Uttlesford planners get their way, Stansted is faced with another wave of development larger than the Foresthall Park estate under construction. The plans will encircle Stansted with concrete. In 2001, Stansted's population was just 5,500, but along with current developments the plans put up for "consultation" in January could push the number of homes to twice this number by 2020. Over the past year, the Uttlesford District Council's Local Development Framework working group, comprised of Conservative and Liberal Democrat councillors, has drawn up the plans in private meetings. A secret list of sites was taken from Strategic Housing Land ...
David Franklin Follow @twitter It seems to me, that murmurs in political circles regarding the Scottish desire for independence are on the increase. It's a very tangible situation. Not least with the SNP as a single-party government in Holyrood and some polls showing a strong desire to break away from the UK. (I should point out, that many polls show that the English are more in favour of Scottish independence than the Scots) What then, are the consequences for Liberal Democrats and the composition of Westminster, should Scotland secede from the Union? On first investigation, i'd say bleak at best. ...
