LibDem Blogs - Archived!

This is a really sad sign of the times. A local newspaper reportArmed police swoop after 'sword' scare. I purchased one recently from a local hardware shop (quite surprised it was so easy to get hold of) - carried it home carefully wrapped up and have been using it in the front garden where people passing on the main road could clearly see me. From experience it's the easiest and quickest way to clear thick overgrowth or long grass. One of the locals passing stopped to help me with the heavy hacking and a cheeky chap joked could I come ...

Well, that is the mantra - and I write this on the eve of the GCSE results. A week ago we had the A level results and the media response was absolutely and boringly predictable. 1. Lots of pictures of succesful students (predominately female and wearing skimpy tops) 2. Best ever results 3. This must mean that exams are getting easier 4. Predictable outcry from the many students who have worked

Now here is an event to attract people in their thousands. Anoraks of the world of the world unite. Better pack my bags!

For only 99p from Waterstones, it was a good bargain. If I didn't have at least 15 books on my to-read shelf, then I might look into reading other books from Stephen Booth. Derbyshire isn't really a part of the country I know much about, other than I drove through it on the way to Cheadle, so I wasn't sure of the geography, but it did sound nice. 7 / 10

I feel sorry for the 5 Perrier nominees, and especially Jason Manford. The snipit on the BBC website saysA stand-up comic hailed as a successor to Peter Kay is among the nominees for this year's Perrier Comedy Award.Who exactly? Why can't they name him where he is due credit? Only opening the story do we find out what his name is. Personaly I hope Chris Addison wins, but that because he's the

Following my request for information about railway locomotives named after Liberal Party leaders, three more engines have come to light. A fourth Lloyd George has been found - a Great Central 4-6-0 built in 1920. The website tells us, intriguingly, that No. 6167 Lloyd George lost its nameplates on the orders of Sir Frederick Banbury, during August 1923. The nameplates were lost until 1963 when

Only available in the US at the moment, but let's hope this appears on our shores soon too.

I've started an Open University course called 'Modelling the Climate'. The course is built around the climateprediction.net model, which is an experiment to produce a forecast of the climate in the 21st century. Anyone can download a climate model from the website here.It runs as a background process on your computer. The results are sent back via the internet and form part of the larger experiment. What you see on your computer is a little model of Earth with changing weather patterns. You can check up on it and see what the temperatures are like, where the clouds are etc. ...

What was the inspiration for Sir Ian Blair (the Metropolitan Police Comissioner’s) allegedly covered-up shoot to kill policy? I suggest that he is modeling the new London police-force on the characters from this “Police Vs Bad Guyz” playset that I found in Tesco. As you can see, each police officer comes with a selection of machine-guns, [...]