LibDem Blogs - Archived!

I opened a playground on Friday. As part of turning Turin Estate round, the partners working on the project got the funding for a playground for 2 - 10 year olds in the middle of the estate. It had been standing locked for a few months with the kids squeezing under the gate to play on the climbing frame & swings. Given that there were only kids there when I arrived and took the key, my prepared speech was abbreviated & I apologised for the lack of access over the last few months. At last ...

At first I was worried by this news story. David Blunkett and John Prescott running the government? It's the sort of thing that makes you wake up in the middle of the night with a cold sweat. (It says something about Prescott that it is a reassuring thought that Prince Charles, not Prescott, is a heartbeat away from being head of state). However, when the official line is this, then I'm not quite so worried about Blunkett: "I obviously have the experience and the knowledge and I help out in terms of having to take, with John Prescott, the ...

Click to enlarge It's what the box-art will be for the Simpsons series 6-10 DVD collections. Well, I like it.

Village Hampden points out that Britain still recognises the regime of Robert Mugabe ("a sort of mixture of John Prescott and Papa Doc Duvalier") as the legitimate government of Zimbabwe. He writes: This means that, on the definition of terrorism that the Government would like us to accept, if some public-spirited benefactor of mankind were to give Mugabe the lamppost treatment, it would be classified as an act of terrorism, just as the fall of Ceausescu would have been. And under the Tyrant Blair's new anti-terrorism measures ... it will be classed as a terrorist offence to encourage an act ...

Tim Worstall's said some nice things about me on this week's Britblog roundup - go and check it out!

Tim Worstall has posted this week's selection, which includes my thoughts on education from last Sunday. Tim writes: Liberal England lays out what’s wrong with the education system. He doesn’t quite say it but "Whadda we want? Vouchers! When do we want ’em? Now!" so I assume that by the time of the next election he’ll have changed his site name to Tory England.As I reply in the comments on his blog: Whig England maybe, but Tory England my arse.

Let's hope that this doesn't give Charles Clarke any new ideas...

I've spent a lot of this morning traaipsing through the tributes here are some of the best. The BBC has listed his best quotes. The Times has an obituary from his biographer. Scotland on Sunday has an article on the similarities between hill walking and Cooks career. But as a fan of the local football one of the most pertinent was posted by DOV to the club message boards of the MP proudly

Although it is not actually that far to Tipperary, a four hour delay for the plane from Birmingham (which had to go from Edinburgh to Birmingham to Jersey and back before taking us to Shannon) followed by finding that my elder daughter's bag has stayed in Birmingham made it take a lot longer than expected. Still, unusually, there is an ethernet port into the internet in the hotel room something

On further reflection on yesterday's news I remembered that I have seen Robin Cook one more time since Election night. The event was covered in my first entry in this blog. At the Make Poverty History March in Edinburgh while in the muster point before the off. The Liberal Democrat group was lined up beside the group from West Lothian Churches. I spoke to both Bristow Muldoon the MSP and Robin

I finally got the opportunity to look at the new Swansea stadium yesterday when I joined 16,732 other fans for the opening game of the season against Tranmere Rovers. Having grown up watching Tranmere there was a potential conflict for me as to who to support, but I had no doubt that it was Swansea I was going to cheer on as it has been for many years now and I was as delighted as every other Swansea fan that the team succeeded in getting the first three points on the scoreboard with a 1-0 win. ...