Much has been made of George Bush allegedly reading Camus' L'Étranger on his hols. I must admit that my frosty opinion of Bush thawed a micronotch when I heard this news. I enjoyably trudged through La Peste in the original French for A level and found it very rewarding. I also read the English translation of L’Étranger. So I got a bit misty-eyed when I read that Bush had allegedly read
According to the BBC the Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has alleged that there was a plot to kill him. Police found a car with bomb making materials near to his house and he alleges that this was part of a plot by Thai military officers to kill him. Apparently a former army officer has been arrested and the PM has sacked the head of Thailand's main counter-insurgency operation. Meanwhile his opponents are suggesting that there was no such plot and that this was an attempt to gain sympathy and to divert attention away from his problems. Thailand goes to ...
Alas, I am back in London after two weeks of quiet contemplation to find remarkably little piled up awaiting my attention (apart, of course, from five cats craving food, water and love). The calling notice for elections to the Regional Executive has arrived, so I have the task of coming up with 100 words to explain why I should be re-elected. Last year, I came up with the following... "Whilst
The government have been saying that the new law about Booster seats will reduce child casualties by 2,000. The link is to "Child Car Seats". That gives deaths in 2004 of passengers at 24. The number seriously injured is 371. About 7,000 are "slightly injured". Now we are told that all children under 135 cm (my children are generally quite large) need to have booster seats. Anyone, whatever
Obesity is in the news again. Again we are hearing the cries of 'something must be done' and people espousing the evils of McDonalds for producing food people like to eat. A liberal response would be it up to the individuals to eat how they like, and exercise how they want. There is no public health issue here, they do not have a communicable disease which will harm others, the harm is done to
The Guardian reports that nearly 40 Muslim members of the Labour party living in Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett's seat have defected to the Liberal Democrats over her support for George Bush in Lebanon.
A busy week, including : * Pleased to welcome former SNP councillor Allan Petrie to Dundee Liberal Democrats - Allan is a very active community representative in the Mid Craigie & Linlathen area and was a valued colleague on Dundee City Council until 2003. Allan is pictured below during the visit of Nicol Stephen MSP, our Scottish Party leader, to Dundee earlier this week. Allan will be a great addition to our party in Dundee East. * Having spoken with Scottish Water, they have cleaned out drains in Roseangle (both at south end and at junction with ...
Friday Last week we were amazed to hear a very funny joke on "The NOW Show" on Radio Four. Remember Mrs Bucket the foreign secretary's preferred holiday? They guessed that the only way to get in touch with her might be one of those emergency messages that are sometimes broadcast after the news with Charlotte Green: "This is an emergency message for Mrs Margaret Bucket of Derby, believed to be
Bizarrely, the map of all the Green Tax Switch meetings on Flock Together suggests that all the meetings to date are in a straight line between Dorking and Hazel Grove. You can see for yourself here.
Pluto demoted to dwarf status
Philip Stephens in today’s Financial Times dissects quite how disastrous has been the Bush administration’s neo-con foreign policy in dealing with the dangers posed by a nuclear-equipped Iran. As he notes, “Iran’s disregard of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) has been well documented by the International Atomic Energy Agency” - but Iran has been tactically adept, both: 1) at building alliances with non-aligned nations by, for example, re-framing the issue as “the sovereign right of all signatories to pursue peaceful nuclear technology”; and 2) exploiting divisions within the international community: “First it was ...
Becoming 40 is traditionally associated with a time when comfortable stability may be thrown out in favour of unsettling change. It's an apt metophor I believe for the state of the party political system over the next few years, which I think will suffer from something of a mid life crisis if Conservative support sticks at around the 40% mark that it recently hit. Of course, in a way all bets are off until the Chancellor finally suceeds the Prime Minister, but I have a feeling, no more than speculation, that the causes of disillusionment with the Labour Party are ...
Earlier in the month I commented on whether or not the local papers in Southwark were biased. The conclusion was no, they're generally just vile to whoever is running the Council, particularly the South London Press. The SLP this month though has aligned itself directly with Labour on the specific issue of "naming and shaming". Rather than reporting the news, they are making the news by running their own campaign against the Council in the same language as Labour and actually 'naming and shaming' four black children with ASBOs. They are entitled to do this. One of the nonsense ...
Jonathan Wallace reports the news of 37 Labour members defecting to the Lib Dems in Margaret Beckett’s Derby South constituency. This seems to be based on a press release from the national party. I have reservations about this sort of thing and fear that the short-term publicity boost is not worth the longer-term problems. We have a little experience of this in Watford. In the first place, single-issue defections are a worry of themselves. How deep is someone’s philosophical commitment to the Liberal Democrats if their reason for defecting is not being converted to a Liberal worldview from a Labour ...
Just in case you haven't seen this, 37 Labour defections over the Middle East to the Lib Dems in the Foreign Secretary's seat. I wonder if the constituency will get a recruitment prize! Lib Dem news release MASS LABOUR DEFECTION TO LIBERAL DEMOCRATS IN MARGARET BECKETT’S CONSTITUENCY Dozens of Labour Party members in Margaret Beckett’s constituency are to defect to the Liberal Democrats today
As part of the Edinburgh Festival’s Festival of Politics, you can watch Ming chat informally to Douglas Fraser, Scottish Political Editor of The Herald, about his life in politics, his vision for the Lib Dems, for Scotland and beyond via the Scottish Parliament website.
I have been mulling over the issue of inheritance tax, following Stephen Byers’ recent call to scrap it. Although his comments have been dismissed by a lot of people on the left as right-wing nonsence, I have a certain sympathy with his criticisms of inheritance tax. Death duties are administratively neat, taking money at the point where it is passed to the legatees. The latter don’t miss what they’ve never had and have done nothing to earn. So far, so good! But one of the motivations for people to work hard and succeed in their chosen careers is to provide ...
A couple of posts ago, I said that if the Liberal Democrats are to be the party of localism, we have to do more than just win the odd local by-election. However, winning council by-elections is nice too, so congratulations to all responsible for the victory in Harrow Weald yesterday by a 200-vote margin, thus regaining a seat lost in the May elections. Harrow Lib Dems have had a torrid time of it over the last few years, from losing control of the council in 1998 to the nominations fiasco and disappointing election results this year. Let’s hope this ...
The next meeting of the Birmingham Transport Users' Forum will be on: Tuesday 5 September 2006 at 6.00pmAt the Church Hall, Perry Hall Methodist Church, Rocky Lane, Birmingham B42 1QF All members of the community are welcome to attend and discuss bus, rail and Metro issues with representatives from the West Midlands Passenger Transport Authority, Centro (currently being rebranded as Network West
I am determined to keep this blog focussed on politics, so I will link the demotion of Pluto to politics, at the end of this piece. Lots of bloggers are coming out wrongly in favour of Pluto's planetary status: John Hemming Peter Black Alex Wilcock Millennium Dome Techonrati.com even carries a link- Pluto demoted: BLOGOSPHERE AGHAST What is going on here? Listen. This is how the solar system
It seems Master Blair has a stomach upset. The BBC reports that he developed it at the end of his holiday in Barbados. "Downing Street says the 22-year-old went to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, near Bridgetown, on Thursday to be treated for a stomach complaint. No 10 sources say Euan has not had surgery and his condition is not serious. He is expected toleave hospital later on Friday." If you want to re-create the ‘Euan Blair experience’ simply drink fifteen pints of lager. (Or Bacadri Breezers, whatever it is the kids go for).
I am directed by Rob Fenwick's site to a video of Ming Campbell in an extended interview at the Edinburgh Politics Festival. I agree with Rob (who has so far been rather critical of Ming) that he puts in a pretty cheering performance, perhaps indicative of an increasingly steady hand and sense of confidence. I actually think there’s decent grounds for optimism at the moment. Ming’s pulling himself together well, appearing most robust in his public performances. He’s got an energetic team around him, polling is looking increasingly rosy (up an impressive 5% in the last poll) and internet campaigning ...
Redcar and Cleveland Council is introducing Designated Public Place Orders from Friday, September 1 to curb alcohol fuelled anti-social behaviour for over 300 streets in nine towns and villages across the Borough. The towns and villages covered are Brotton (22 streets), Marske (30), Redcar (35), Loftus (67), Guisborough (88), Eston (8), Saltburn (30), Normanby (20) and Carlin How (11) as well as a number of parks and playing fields. The Council's Cabinet Member for Community Safety Councillor Joyce Benbow said: "This order is designed to help the good citizens of the Borough enjoy the parks and streets in their free ...
STOP PRESS Armando Iannucci chickens out Last night's Time Trumpet promised to be good - very good, for it was the night of the "Terrorism Awards", the ones the Daily Mail fumed about three weeks ago. Whilst the Awards were still run, he edited out the clip of Tony Blair's assassination. This was still shown Was it just wishful thinking that it would be aired? 
Perhaps as a result of this, there is a new joke in Poland: "Under Communism things were very bad, but at least we had hope- there was a government in exile in London. Now we have the government back in Warsaw- but now it is the people who have gone into exile in London."
I see an interesting story in the Telegraph- The Department for Trade and Industry- DTi- apparently has "doubts" about globalization. This government department should have already been abolished (as the Lib Dems proposed at the last election). This ministry is a giant make work project for civil servants and a bureaucratic job killer for everyone else. The fact that they even contemplate rowing back from free trade suggests that the case of total abolition is now more urgent than ever.
These pictures were taken at the South of England Rally which was held at Bisley earlier this month. We went along on our two Fatboys and had a great time. This bike must I presume belong to someone from 1066 Chapter. More photos to follow.
I suppose the Extradition laws would not allow John Reid the power to extradite the 118 (mainly) US (mainly) youths who have put videos of their Home Made Bombs on the youtube site - even if he wanted to. Click on the link above to get a list of the videos of making a home made bomb currently stored on YouTube. What are the political points:a) That the extradition laws remain unbalancedb) That people wishing to make bombs out of fertiliser (cf the IRA) [or other generally available materials] can do so. It is not possible to completely eradicate ...
It’s the Dewey Decimal Classification number for Pluto, sitting happily in the “Planets of the Solar System” schedule. So there are more implications of Pluto being demoted to dwarf planet. The folks are Dewey Towers have noticed: We’re still looking at what this means for 523.4 Planets of solar system and for 523.48 Trans-Uranian planets in [...] 
It looks like a holiday has done the party leader a world of good. I was very impressed with his performance at the festival of politics in Edinburgh yesterday - the report of the exchange on BBC News Online and in today’s Guardian doesn’t do it justice. The video is worth watching - the interviewer went [...]
One of the difficulties in terms of planning is that planning decisions are "quasi-judicial". This means that it is possible to appeal planning decisions made by local councillors if they are out of line with planning guidance set nationally. The nationally set guidance tends to be quite inflexible and one aspect is Planning Policy Guidance 3 which relates to what is and what is not a brownfield site. The issue of increasing housing intensity by building on gardens is exactly the issue that causes these difficulties. From time to time it may be worth building ...
The Conservatives won yesterday's by-election in Alcester, Stratford On Avon District Council. The seat was previously Liberal Democrat held but our Councillor resigned to undertake voluntary work in Africa.
Poor old Pluto. Now Millennium’s expounded on the subject again, I can add my own gripe against the miserable International Astronomical Union, who yesterday voted to revoke Pluto’s status as a planet. We now only have eight planets in our solar system, though they’ve bottled it slightly and called Pluto and others ‘dwarf planets’, or ‘we’re too craven to stick up for taking away the word completely even though that’s what we mean’. This was, apparently, after the nomenclature ‘pluton’ was found already to mean something geological, which doesn’t inspire confidence in the IAU’s ability to do their homework. ...
Thursday BOBBINS! No sooner do I write a diary explaining why there are now TWELVE planets in the Solar System than POOF! Four of them DISAPPEAR again. (Thank you to Mr Will for pointing this out; and thank you VERY much to the International Astronomical Union for chucking them out in the first place.) This is as bad as DOCTOR WHO! The planets Vulcan, Mondas, Voga and possibly Telos (if that
In a few hours I will be en-route to my summer break in Prague*. As I arrive the 2,500 scientists who are attending the International Astronomical Union General Assembly will be leaving. They will be getting on their planes having turned our known universe upside-down. For as long as I can remember our solar system has had nine planets, now we have eight and four halves. Poor Pluto. I just hope
I am off for another camp. This time it is with my auntie's Cub Pack. I know I don't like camping but I will let you into a little secret. My aunt hires a cabin. Which if you ever have run a Cub Camp (like I have 4 times) it is a very good idea. The cabin enables you to have somewhere for the children to eat and store their clothes, that way you don't have to worry about the weather. It is | < | August 2006 | > | ||||
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