LibDem Blogs - Archived!

This election was called by members of the Worthington family. Mike Worthington is a director of Pointon and Sons, purveyors of foul smells and noxious odours to the populace of Cheddleton. Michael Bagnall, the other candidate in the election, services refractors for a living. He has been a sub-contractor for Pointon and Sons. Mike Worthington confirmed this to me today. He and I kept passing each other as I delivered my leaflets and he delivered Michael Bagnall's. I wonder why Mike wants his friend Mike on the parish council. Could it have something to do with Pointon's application to renew ...

Don't get excited just yet. I am writing a short article for Friday's Lib Dem News on party blogs. To avoid filling the paper with www@£%!& and the like, I am going to refer readers here. They will find a version of the article with hyperlinks to all the blogs I mention. (Apologies in advance to all the people I don't have space to namecheck.) I shall post that version later this week. In the mean time, here is a joke: Two prawns talking. "I'm really worried about Mum and Dad. They went to a cocktail party last night ...

by Jabez CleggThere is an old story of a young newly-elected Conservative MP sitting down in the Chamber for the very first time. Gazing across at the Labour and Liberal benches opposite, he muttered to his neighbour, a verteran knight of the shires that it was "good to get a sight of the enemy"."Enemy?" replied his neighbour. "They are not the enemy. They are our opponents. You will find your enemies are all on this side of the House."Was that young man Michael Ancram?

by PeterThe "Paddy was a spy" story has risen again – this time in the Mirror(reported by Nick Barlow and Jonathon Calder).This is a story that has gone around the blocks a few times, perhaps because Ashdown has never denied or confirmed the story. But two explanations have been offered for what Ashdown was doing in Geneva in the 1970s. The other story was that he was in charge of the library at the British Delegation. And few Liberals believed that version…

It could be seen as a symptom of moving more things into the private domain that the public squalor that can come with private affluence also appears as an inability to react in circumstances where only government can sensibly react. The US Government's failure to react to Katrina in part relates to the expectation that the State would handle it, but in part it appears that they did not think it

Tuesday 6th September 2005 - A new web site dedicated to news, views and information for Knowsley residents went live yesterday and is sure to be a winner with local people. I suppose I shoiuld declare an interest here as the Editor very kindly asked me to contribute to the site and I have agreed to write a fortnightly column called "The Opposite View" to air some of my thoughts on topical local

The Strake Jesuit School in Houston has opened its premises to the pupils of its sister school in New Orleans. It was good to hear a positive story coming from the area on the BBC today. The Houston school thought it could absorb an extra 50 students initially but in the end over 300 refugees registered for the new term. So they have decided to run shifts, with the New Orleans students attending from 3pm to 8pm. They are among their friends and familiar teachers. Many of the families connected with the school had opened ...

Welsh Liberal Democrats peer, Richard Livsey, is featured in the Western Mail this morning arguing that the Government's failure to give the Welsh Assembly primary law-making powers will fan the flames of Welsh nationalism. His submission to the Secretary of State for Wales states that:"The proposals in the White Paper do move matters forward, but eventually are likely to result in deadlock and dissent between the National Assembly and Westminster. Ultimately, this will fan the flames of Welsh nationalism."There will never be a better time to reform the Assembly and replace it with a Parliament similar to the Scottish model. ...

What would do if a gaggle of MSPs volunteered to come and visit your campaign office in Livingston? Well we didn't stand up and walk out on them. We sent them out with clipboards in hand to go and talk to the residents of Livingston and the reports back were very good. We hope to see many of them back out in Livingston before 29 September. It's nice to encourage your elected representatives at

The Daily Bile is running a week of particularly challenging sudokus. Yesterday’s involved using the digits 1-9 once only on each diagonal, which was fun, and today’s is an Saturday Independent style super sudoku. Thanks to a rather too obvious web page naming convention… tomorrow’s is two grids joined together; Thursday’s is overlapping grids; and Friday’s [...]

Like my friend Alex, I'm looking forward to the upcoming Firefly movie "Serenity". A quick search on Google reveals that Serenity is also the brand name for Tena's male incontinence products. It's good to share.

A sure fire contender for the No Shit Sherlock Award is Zimbabwe's Acting Information Minister, Chen Chimutengwende, who has claimed that The Interpreter is part of a CIA-sponsered campaign against Zimbabwe. Whilst it's certainly not "CIA-sponsered", it is an attack against Zimbabwe, but then that's what happens when you kill people isn't it Mr Silly. Say this after me Mr Chimutengwende: "Killing

My research team has been rummaging around the Treasury Economic Model. It is an interesting model based upon some Fortran routines which look at about 600 variables based upon quarterly calculations. Variables I am particularly interested in are0411 EOIL - Offshore Oil and Gas Employment0801 TDOIL Total Domestic Demand for oil0802 NSGVA - GVA in North Sea oil & gas extraction0803 XOIL - Exports

Quote of the week from today's Irish Times. Here we have Bertie Ahern setting out his fears for what would happen to the Republic if we saw another Fine Gael/Labour Governement... "People had had enough of them after 2½ years. Imagine if they were around again for five years. Sure we'd be back in the Third World in jig time ."So remember that, celtic cousins, vote Fianna Fáil or you'll be scrabbling around in the muck and gourging yourself on rancid root vegetables before you can say "Michael Flatley's a twat".

Chris Black's posting about ASDA caught my eye. His blog has a clock with a difference. For a bit of fun I couldn't resist posting one on my blog just to see how they work. For those who like gizmos on their website or blogs check out Clock Link . Here's two other examples. Some of the designs give three alternative sizes but if you understand the gist of HTML the sizing can be adjusted manually to make the clocks smaller. I ...