LibDem Blogs - Archived!

How do you get 1000 very young children all singing in a concert? The logistics of transport and supervision on the day, let alone co-ordinating the rehearsals in 21 schools, are pretty complex. Part of the solution is to create four concerts, over two days, dividing the schools up between them. The result was the Infant Music Festival today and tomorrow at the Kings...

Madsen Pirie, president of the free market think tank the Adam Smith Institute, writes today in The Times on the good that the free market can do, and indeed is doing, both here and in the developing world. He could try smiling... just a bit I'm not going to disagree with him that a free market, overall, is a good thing. However, it's not the best at delivering certain services, such as say,

I missed Tony Blair's appearance on BBC Radio Five Live's 6-0-6 phone-in last night. Having read Martin Kelner's account in the Guardian, I am rather glad I did: When Mike in Leamington Spa asked him about footballers' wages, the reply came in a flurry of dropped t's. "They ge' a lo' o' money, bu' I'm no' sure we can do much abow i'."But then the idea of Tony Blair as a football fan has never been convincing.

Ten years ago, during Euro '96, Coca Cola ran an advertising campaign with the slogan: "Eat football, sleep football, drink Coca-Cola". Every time I saw it I wondered a little more grouchily what an American company knew about football. Budweiser have learnt from this. Their campaign with the two newsreaders, like their earlier "You do the football, we'll do the beer", trades on precisely this prejudice. It won't make me drink their product, which is like gnat's piss ( a gnat writes: Isn't that rather unfair?), but I do feel warmer towards them. By contrast, if I hear someone ...

The party website is going high tech with ecampaigning. It's just brilliant - very impressive. The Home page has turned cool with a modern image - there's little nuked men portraying such a powerful message from Ming - Nuclear power = ultimate stealth tax . Really worth a look. What a difference it's made.I've been like a nagging granny for a uniform set of buttons with simple insertion codes to liven up members websites and blogs, instead of having to link sections one by one which is very time consuming and not ...

'Blessington Close' could easily be a TV soap. But it's actually a pleasant little street tucked away in the north of my ward. And to which I was summoned on Sunday because the Council was refusing to empty the blue recycling bin at the end of their road (because it had been used for garden waste, according to one resident). The residents came out en masse to show me the problem (photos on my iWeb site ) E-mailed the Council later that day. Imagine my surprise when I got an e-mail from the Council today ...

Am I the only person who thinks all this focus on the wives and girlfriends of the England team is mad? Who cares what Colleen is wearing? There has been acres of newsprint about this sort of stuff and it drives me mad. If the journalists want to focus on the women.. lets see something about women's sport and a bit more next time the england women's team is playing. .. and a bit less about clothes and makeup.

I'm not much of a conference junkie, but I made an exception and attended an ALG (Association of London Government) event on Saturday at the QEII Centre in Westminster. It was supposed to be for 'new' London councillors, but I got in as 'slightly used'. Almost got given the badge for 'Cllr Sir Simon Milton', but had to hand in back. I guess that's the nearest I'll ever get to a knighthood. Quite useful to go around the stalls and speak to the people touting for Council business. Which is about as close ...

Last Wednesday (14 June) was Full Council day. Began with presentations to councillors who had voluntarily retired from the previous Council or, as the Mayor once put it, had been sacked by the electorate for bad behaviour. I'll miss some of the them more than others, but I tried to be scrupulously fair in the amount of applause I gave each one. Perhaps the biggest change from the previous Council was that the new Deputy Mayor, Heidi Alexander, had a rather more accommodating personal style than the previous incumbent, which I thought was rather an improvement, and ...

In case anyone on www.libdemblogs.co.uk thinks I am ill, I have been merrily burbling away on http://paulwalter.blogspot.com/ about such diverse topics as: The demise of Top of the Pops Tony Blair's jets The Woman presiding bishop appointed in the States The report on the effectiveness of therapy in treating depression Sadly, due to cackhandedness on my part, I was rather greedy in executing a "demerger" of my blog and have ended up tying myself up in photos of litter in Newbury's Station road.

Back from a good meeting with the people at garston Church of England school. Things are looking a lot better than they were about six months ago. There's a suggestion, which was also in the Echo the other day, that there could be a federation of schools in Garston - meaning they could keep their identities, which is obviously important for lots of reasons. What's more it looks like they've got a good open evening planned. Promised to look into a few things for them.

Today, the Lib Dems launched a campaign against nuclear power. This campaign has won backing from, amongst others, the World Wildlife Fund, who have dismissed Tony Blair's arguments in favour of nuclear power as 'spin'. {Blair and Chirac} Analysts of the Blair government will not be surprised at his turn towards nuclear power. Blair's period in office can be defined by three characteristics: 1) Belief in his own, personal, judgement 2) Willingness to put political expediency ahead of principle or long-term planning 3) Centralism It seems clear that Blair has made ...

One of the problems with the British Constitutional system is that we don't have a clear constitutional system. Although a written constitution would help, I do not think it is necessary to go that far. It would, however, help to have some clear understanding as to what are and what are not constitutional pieces of legislation. The Magna Carta started the ball rolling in 1215. Another early

The Labour candidates in Blaenau Gwent must be crying into their beer tonight after it transpired that they have not just upset local farmers but they have offended the sheep as well A press release from the Farmers Union of Wales has been circulated demanding an apology. Headlined 'Election candidates told to apologise for sheep slur', the missive went on to accuse Labour's candidates, John Hopkins and Owen Smith, of releasing campaign material blaming farmers for problems that are caused by vandals: The leaflet, which bears the title "Action on Sheep Nuisance", calls for "action to stop sheep from ...

and shame on me for needing Idiot/Savant at No Right Turn from the other side of the world to remind me of it, especially at a time when the Prime Minister is demolishing civil liberties with enthusiasm worthy of a better cause. Wikipedia article on the Magna Carta here.

Laws should be made by elected representatives not by newspapers Watching Labour politicians taking their orders from the Sun and the News of the World is dispiriting. Worse than that it is dangerous. What sort of democracy are we becoming? Link to News Digest of 20 June 2006 Laws should be enforced by the Police not by vigilantes When a police chief constable has to point out that the policy with which the government is flirting would create crime and disorder (this year in the US five people have been murdered "by people who have accessed the sex offenders register, ...

and the law won, by the look of things!. Is that how you spell faught? fought? fawt? fort….

Redcar Lib Dems are hosting the following Quiz Nights at Redcar Cricket Club all starting 8pm for 8.30pm: 27th June 200625th July 200622nd August 200626th September 200631st October 200628th November 2006

I’ve uploaded a podcast of Ming’s speech on nuclear energy this morning. I’ve actually got the entire press conference recorded from beginning to end including journalist questions. Might it be worth starting up a Lib Dem radio podcast that included that kind of content and/or aggregated any Lib Dem podcasts or other audio [...]

Redcar and Cleveland Council is today welcoming the Government announcement that it is to receive a share of £18.25 million to tackle the housing market collapse in South Bank. The Housing Market Renewal Cash is being divided by Tees Valley Living between the four authorities and a decision on how much will be allocated to South Bank is expected within weeks. The Cabinet Member for Housing and Neighbourhood Renewal, Councillor Chris Abbott, said: “We are pleased to receive confirmation of the funding that will help us start to deliver a new South Bank that people can be proud to live ...

I've been elected onto the Merseyside Fire Authority as a rep from Liverpool. We have six reps from the City Council - four Lib Dems and two Labour, although with the reps from other parts of Merseyside, Labour are actually the biggest party. Anyway - today was the Annual Meeting at the HQ in Bootle. Most of the councillors there have been there for a while. I am the only new one from Liverpool, so there's quite a lot to learn. I decided to do this as there are loads of issues in Speke Garston ...

Earlier this year I watched Derren Brown’s The Heist in which Channel 4’s favourite mentalist brainwashed a bunch of ordinary (albeit somewhat grasping) people to rob a bank using little more than a bunch of images, noises and meditation techniques. I was reminded of this seeing the Nike ad today appearing in various newspapers - a [...]

National Asylum Support Service Q:To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many (a) properties and (b) bed spaces are available for use under National Asylum Support Service contracts, broken down by local authority; how many of these were (i) occupied and (ii) unoccupied at the end of March 2006; and what the mean cost was of each (A) bed space and (B) property as at the end of

Has the Home Secretary gone too far in his attempt to ingratiate himself and his government with the News of the World and the Sun. One senior Police Officer certainly seems to think so. Terry Grange, the Chief Constable of Dyfed-Powys Police, has accused the Home Office of altering its policy on the hoof at the behest of the News of the World: Mr Grange told the BBC's World Tonight programme last night, "The last three years has been a litany of abandonment of any real strategic design in the Home Office in the management of sex offenders ...

In reply to my earlier post on Political Paranoia matgb makes the point: It seems to be an inherent part of the excessively partizan. Some people identify with their party (or other group of choice) first, then take on board the connotations. This is something which really puzzles me. Like matgb I'm a member of the LibDems because as a party they represent my views the best and are the best bet

Ahead of England's final group game this evening against Sweden, I thought I would write a bit about the World Cup so far - both football and non-football.

For the first time in this site's existence, I've had to delete comments for being off-topic. This followed a repeated warning about the off-topic nature of the comments, and a perfectly good opportunity was given for the commenter to change tack and post on-topic instead. The deletion is not due to what was being posted, but rather that it was being posted in the wrong place. I'm afraid that, due to the nature of blogs, comment threads must be limited to the subject at hand; the discussion is impossible to follow any other way. If, at a future ...

Tony Blair is to get two official planes to fly him on official government business. One will apparently only have 70 seats for long haul flights, the onther a smaller 15 seater for short haul. Which means that fuel usage per passenger will be higher than booking the same delegation on a commercial flight. So much for Tony Blair being prepared to fight Climate Change. I hope he is going to offset the fuel emmisions. Can't you just imagine Jim Bowen going up to Prescott and saying "Here's what you could have won"?

The summer period of no news and pointless speculation has come early with an article in today's Western Mail urging possible successors to Rhodri Morgan as First Minister to come out of the woodwork and start their campaigns now. The article is based on comments by my former tutor Professor Peter Stead, for whom I have the utmost respect. Peter is right in arguing that a political vacuum is developing around the First Minister but I think he has allowed his academic interest to overcome political realities in asking for early declarations from contenders for the post. ...

A couple of months ago I posted a link to the trailer for Thank you for Smoking and today I had the joy of seeing it, although only by chance did I discover it had been released here. The film centres on Nick Naylor, a lobbyist for Big Tobacco and his fight to promote smoking to a hostile public. The tale is told with tongue firmly in-cheek and plenty of gimmicky devices used to push the story

The government seem to have forgotten the importance of the idea of the "Rule of Law". The principle is simple. Parliament establishes laws. The courts enforce them. The idea is that individual human beings are treated equally regardless of how well they know Tony and Cherie. One of the most absurd sights recently was a judge being attacked by the government for doing exactly what the

Two exhibitions in London on Modernism are generating some debate. I visited one of these, 'Modernism: Designing a New World' at the V&A, on Saturday. The period covered 1914 - 1939, so wasn't by any means a complete review of what we call 'modernism', and the focus was on architecture and design.

The Mayor is often invited into schools to chat with the children and young people. The younger ones in particular like to see the robes and mace and ask questions like "Why have you got three fish?", "Do you ever go shopping?" and "Do you have to polish the chain?" (though, on second the thoughts, the latter was asked me by a fellow Mayor...). The danger is that the children are...

The Facts: On 6 May 1953 Mr Leo Blair's wife Hazel gave birth to a second son in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was given the name Anthony Charles Lynton Blair. He spent his early childhood in Australia before moving with the family to Durham. But he has his secondary education in the city of his birth at Fettes College, Edinburgh. Yesterday he became another Scot to become all English saying: "I support England very strongly, but if Scotland was playing - not England - but a game against someone else why [take the attitude] that I don't want Scotland ...

I’ve been terrible at blogging recently - it’s amazing how quickly you can get out of the habit. I’ve been attempting to write a piece for Hands Off Our Future only to keep getting side-tracked (this evening my excuse being the need to watch the third part of the excellent Tory! Tory! Tory!). A couple [...]