LibDem Blogs - Archived!

The local press have not published much about the parish council election, so I decided I'd better deliver a leaflet. I went out leafleting yesterday and today. I'm exhausted now, but I'm sure the exercise will do me good! Fortunately, friends are helping me tomorrow. Today I was leafleting the roads closest to John Pointon and Sons. This firm renders meat. Their plant produces a horrible smell. Their lorries also smell disgusting, particularly in hot weather. I've felt physically sick after a couple have passed me at a bus stop. I worry that the emissions from their plant might be ...

Federal Computer Week had this to say. MINNEAPOLIS — Mary Reid, an elected representative from Great Britain, showed two photos of rooms where public hearings are held in that country. One picture displayed a typical layout where councilors sit at wide desks facing a central desk and another offered a fisheye view from the chairman's position. "And the question is, 'Where is the public?' " she said. "Well, they're actually sitting up in that gallery behind the green barrier that's really there above the council members. And my question is: What message is this giving to the citizen ...

I haven't taken a Summer holiday this year, but the blog seems to have done, as it's been some time since I updated it. There tend not to be any official Council meetings in Lewisham during August, but the normal casework and community campaigning carries on. Surgeries if anything seem to be slightlier busier than usual, with housing issues predominating. Too many people in my area are in substandard Council accommodation, and seem to have diffculty in getting repairs carried out satisfactorily.Has some small victories, such as getting Beaver Housing to admit that it owns a road ...

The unfolding Hurricane Katrina disaster in the USA's southern states is exerting an unusual hold on audiences throughout the western world. It is because it has brought to life possibly our worst nightmare - the complete breakdown of civil society. Images from New Orleans remind us of things we had previously seen only in post-apocalyptic movies such as the Mad Max series. New Orleans may be an

The Western Mail speculates this morning that the decision by Plaid Cymru to install a woman to head each of their regional lists will deprive the Assembly of a comeback by Dafydd Wigley.More than 30 years after they both entered Parliament, the immediate future of Plaid can still be said to depend on Dafydd Wigley and Dafydd Elis-Thomas. For decades they have been mostly at loggerheads, largely as a result of their differences in style.Yet together they stand head and shoulders above all their party colleagues at the Assembly, both in terms of political experience and popular appeal. If Plaid ...

I spoke to some trainee journalists from the World Service on Friday Night. They have an interesting opportunity to learn about the varied cultures in the world at some depth. The World Service is a very cost effective way of promoting a positive view of Britain about which so much damage has been done by the government in recent years. With all the rows about Al Jazeera it is interesting to

I have recently found an blog called Oklahoma Hippy - with lots of good stuff there. One recent post links to Agape Press - "Reliable News From A Christian Source". Apparently one pastor, Rev. Bill Shanks of New Covenant Fellowship of New Orleans , seems really glad about what's happened to New Orleans: “New Orleans now is abortion free. New Orleans now is Mardi Gras free. New Orleans now is free of Southern Decadence and the sodomites, the witchcraft workers, false religion -- it's free of all of those things now," Shanks says. "God simply, I believe, in His ...

In our working lives, most of us have endured more turgid PowerPoint presentations than we care to remember. But how worse would it have been if PowerPoint had been available in previous eras? Here is President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address modernised - The Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation (via Leading by the Rainbow). And here is the real thing.