I edit 2 publications which, as standard, contain quotes directly from Ming as Leader. Parliamentary Campaigner goes to Parliamentary Candidates Association members. North East Democrat goes to over 400 members in the North East by email (plus a number of others who for whatever reason have been put on the circulation list). It is a mark of Ming's diligence that he reads all content in his name
it's a sea, it's in the north, it's usually cold, murky, often foggy, often rough. And, possibly all this while a saviour of humanity. It's been responsible for sequestering 20% of the world's carbon dioxide production: yes this little sea (only the Germans could call it an ocean, and they do) has such stable temperature stratification that it manages to trap a fifth of our CO2, which it then
The French parliament has voted to make it an offence to make it a crime to deny that Armenians suffered "genocide" at the hands of the Turks, although this view is unlikely to make it into law. I am instinctively against such moves, even when they concern the Nazi holocaust, because as a Liberal I believe that the truth will out. However, the Turkish government's refusal to recognise this episode in its own history is shameful. People can still be prosecuted for mentioning the fate of the Armenians, and the existence of such laws make it hard to be enthusiastic ...
21 years is a long time. In that time I have experienced 3 Prime ministers, 3 leaders of the Liberal Democrats, attended 4 schools and gone from a sweet 6 year old to, well I let you fill in the gap ... 27 year old. In that time I have met a lot of people. Some I have formed frienships with, some long, some short. Apart from my family there have only been a few constants in my life. One of
General Sir Richard Dannatt, head of the Army, kicks the legs from under Tony Blair’s Foreign Policy in a devastating interview in Friday’s Daily Mail. Without any wriggle room for him or Blair, Dannatt says the presence of British troops in Iraq “exacerbates the security problems”. Equally clearly he says we need to “get ourselves out sometime [...]
The BBC is reporting tonight: The head of the British Army has said the presence of UK armed forces in Iraq "exacerbates the security problems". In an interview in the Daily Mail, Sir Richard Dannatt, Chief of the General Staff, is quoted as saying the British should "get out some time soon". Doug Henderson has been on the news saying that this raises important constitutional questions. No doubt it does. But isn't the important point that what Sir Richard is saying is obviously true?
... that when you decide that you're not enjoying something and will give it up, you start to enjoy it? And that, my friends, was brought home at this evening's meeting of the Dulwich West Norwood Executive Committee. Having said that I was going to stand down as Chair, I found myself actually enjoying myself. By the way, I know that someone was reading that blog entry, as my ex-wife's
Add Maidstone and the Weald to that list, as of yesterday... oh yes, and I may yet be invited to do a reprise of South East Region for the European Parliament selection. That, at least, is on the horizon at the moment... although the horizon seems to be approaching fast...
Living as I do as an ex-pat in the North, most of my information about goings on in the south comes from the view from train windows. And if my experience of station platforms from Winchester to Wolverhampton is anything to go by, there is a least one trend that has bridged the North-South divide.I refer of course to the incessant marketing of universities. In Granadaland we’re very much in peak
Reports suggest that my scepticism that China would step up to the plate on the North Korean issue are proving founded. It seems that China is keen to water down the US resolution to the UN for punitive sanctions against North Korea. They appear to think that the six party talks still have some mileage but I think that those talks are pretty much dead in the water now. Kim Jong-Il has just used them as a talking shop whilst continuing to do what the hell he likes. There appears still to be this idea doing the ...
I have finally made it: I am the subject of an entry in Wikipedia. I suspect thanks are due to Alex Foster. I am a little relieved that Lord Bonkers' entry did not survive. While it existed it was longer than mine. Lord Bonkers writes: Quite right too!
An aeroplane flies into a skyscraper in New York. Not yesterday's crash involving Cory Lidle. Not 9/11. No, it is part of my campaign to prove that nothing is as novel as we think it is. As the Damn Interesting site tells the story: On a Saturday morning in July of 1945, Army Air Corps bomber pilot Lt. Colonel William Smith was trying to fly his B-25 bomber through a steadily increasing fog. He was on his way to Newark airport to pick up his commanding officer when he appeared above New York Municipal airport ...
I popped round to see Vic D’Albert before, to pick up a batch of leaflets to distribute on my day off from work tomorrow. I felt a bit guilty since I am crying off Saturday leafleting to go and buy clothes in Manchester. So I now have 100 to do tomorrow instead. Vic’s kitchen seems to be the epicentre of the Bury South Liberal Democrats. It’s nice to have a cup of tea there, even if it does come
Tonight's BBC2 tribute to Raymond Baxter was superb. It did justice to the extraordinary range and volume of output of one of the twentieth century's foremost broadcasters. The programme amply displayed the vast and colourful range of broadcasts by Baxter. His enthusiasm, gravitas and unflappability were exceptional. His ability to poke fun at himself (e.g appearing in string underwear on the Goodies) completed the picture of a remarkable British gentleman.
The Adam Smith Institute has highlighted my article on the BBC licence fee in their 14th Blog Review: "In an extremely disturbing turn of events we seem to have identified an actual classical liberal within the Lib Dems."(They've clearly not met Jock Coats yet.) 
The BBC report today on the true death toll in Iraq. Not surprisingly, it is mich higher than the UK or US Government's have acknowledged in the past. I've gone in to the arguments before on this blog, and nobody wants to read another critique of the war in Iraq, but how can anyone justify going in to war that leads to the death of 655,000 people. The BBC report is listed here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6045112.stm . This is, for those who don't know, a similar death toll to the total British dead in the whole of World War 2 ...
Obviously we should trust this guy to make the right call on when to bomb North Korea.
Spare a thought for my ward colleague, Cllr Tall. Ever ahead of the game, he was hot off the mark when Webcameroon hit the blogosphere to universal delight (for which, read derision). Stephen constructed a vidcast of deft satire and received for it plaudits from all quarters. Except perhaps that moment when his chest-hair gets rather too free an airing. His take gained a sort of cult following. But now, nigh on a fortnight later, here comes along another elected representative, someone who's never been heard off even (one suspects) in parts of deepest Brum. He produces what can ...
Having watched Sion Simon's spoof video, I am completely at a loss to work out what all the furore is about. Conservative's have attacked it, largely on the basis it seems of what has beeen reported and not what he actually says. In tThe video I have seen of it he never says he is David Cameron. If Conservatives have seen it as being David Cameron, then they should also be able to stretch their imagination enough also to see that it is a joke. Tories always like to claim that things are too "Politically correct", yet at ...
Appalling as the possible Iraqi death toll may be, it is being compounded by the exodus of Iraqi's fleeing that country to the relative safety of elsewhere. It's thought that as many a five million Iraqis left the country during the reign of Saddam Hussein. Now reports suggest that 9,000 Iraqis are leaving every month. Journalists report boarded up shops and houses which people have simply abandoned. This has widespread repercussions. The most important of any resources a country requires to run a functioning economy are it's people. It needs a stock of qualified citizens to simply make the country ...
I hope Sion Simon is a half decent MP. There have been several good spoofs of webcameron including those from Will Howells and Stephen Tall which are spot on. Sion Simon has now tried to get in on the act, somewhat late. For some reason, this one has been picked up by the BBC whereas Will’s and [...]
as they've re-moted their political editor to environment secretary according to this extract from a report on the proposed climate change bill: "Mr Robinson, who interviewed Environment Secretary Nick Robinson, said a proposal, from Friends of the Earth, that ministers should be fined for missing environmental targets, would not be included." Apart from the clanging factual error just read the
Idly flicking through the BBC homepages here and here today I discovered to my horror that at 6'1 tall and weighing in at 14 stone I am in fact over weight. I must admit that I object to this assertion for several reasons. I suspect that many of my colleagues might also fail these criteria, but I don't see many fat people in my place of work. Recently we walked (quickly!) for seven miles carrying rucksacks across some steep broken moorland. It took us an hour and a half - it's not an outstanding physical achievement, but I doubt that ...
A couple more photos of things for the auction: The signed West Brom shirt The four signed Red Bull / Toro Rosso caps - signed by David Coulthard, Neel Jani, Scott Speed and Vitantonio Liuzzi. As before, email me if you want to bid on them and can’t make it to the Woodland Cottage tomorrow.
According to the BBC, the Tories have shrugged off Sion Simon MP's spoof of WebCameron. A still from Sion Simon's parody So would I, it's shit. The voters of Birmingham Erdington must be ashamed they elected someone so patently stupid. Will Howells' attempts however, are genius: Video 1 and Video 2.
Received this quite humourous* email from Dave Lewis (which he couldn't post on my previous entry): "When I spoke to John Redwood in June his response to my questions onvariable fees were: "well we've lost two elections saying we'll oppose them, and the publicdisagreed with us, so perhaps they are not a bad thing after all" Good old principles!" The Vulcan * You know, if you're into politics and stuff.
A new report suggests that the Government is still underestimating the cost of ID cards.
Those two well-known friends of the Lib Dems, The Times and Iain Dale, are once again enjoying making hay from the party’s discomfort at having accepted a £2.4m donation from Michael Brown, who was subsequently convicted of fraud. There’s no new story, and certainly no smoking gun. But that won’t stop ‘em. Read The Times story carefully, and it becomes clear that Mr Brown covered his tracks
Result! Having been so cross with Thames Water over the level of donation offered to MPs (for charity!) for their time in responding to a very very long survey about their services - and putting it on my blog - I arrived in my office to find they had been in touch to say that they heard I was unhappy and are doubling their donation to all MPs. So in total now Water Aid should get £1,000 rather
The last time Northern Ireland qualified for a major football tournament finals was the 1986 World Cup. Which brought to an end legendart Pat Jennings career against the most worthy of opponents Brazil. Who would have thought that in this international week that the best preformers of the home nations would be Northern Ireland with a win last night against Latvia and a good away draw against
The Times reports today: “THE business that gave the largest financial gift to the Liberal Democrats was entirely fraudulent and had never traded, a High Court judge ruled yesterday.” and: “The Electoral Commission, which polices political donations, said last night that it will study the judgment in detail. It has the power to ask the courts to force [...]
So now we know something about the withdrawal strategy from Iraq, 'It ain't gonna happen before 2010. The US Army have announced that new indications show the situation is too unstable to foreseen an end to the 'war' (yes they used the word war) in the next four years, so they are going to have to maintain troop levels at least until them. So Iraq War 2003-2010+? will mean that the US/UK
The Lancet has reported an estimated civilian death toll in Iraq of 650,000. I think the situation in Iraq cuts to the heart of the really big issues. What is a just war? What level of violence can democracies allow themselves to inflict? What is a civilian in a civil war? In my heart of hearts I did wonder whether the Liberal Democrats were doing the right thing when we opposed launching the war. By all accounts, Charles Kennedy stood up in the whips office of the House of Commons and explained why the party was going to vote en ...
At last, the first draft of the next Parliamentary Campaigner is completed. I finished it last night. This is the fastest turn around of a single edition we have achieved - the editorial board only met last Friday to decide on content. It is normally the case that there is amonth between the board meeting and PCA members receiving the final edition in their inboxes. It will of course have to go through the inevitable correction of typos stage and there is bound to be a decision to change the layout to make the bits with heavy ...
The law to get rid of Brian Haw (which hasn't actually achieved its objective) has resulted in a number of consequences. The linked story is about Mark Thomas's 21 demonstrations in a day. This is a good bit of his article: Through earlier protests, I have got to know the man who coordinates the requests quite well. PC Paul McInally now handles most of the Socpa applications. "What can I do for
Mark Thomas writes in today’s Guardian about the 21 licenced protests he carried out in just 5 hours. This is a regular event to highlight the nonsense of Blair’s anti-demonstration laws which were designed solely to remove anti-war protestor Brian Haw and passed under the usual hysterical Blair-ite warnings of impending doom. Regular sole demos are held [...]
I am not going to comment much on the disastrous performance by England last night. The BBC have a report here and the Guardian report can be found here. Suffice to say that Mclaren is now getting the stick that is to be expected for anyone who takes on the England job. He wouldn't have been my choice in the first place but he has to be given a chance at least until the end of the qualifiers. I am more interested in the Northern Ireland result. A report of last nights 1-0 defeat of Latvia can be found here. ...
The Conservative MP for Pembrokeshire complains in this morning's Western Mail that two companies in the County are generating nearly £7m a day in tax, yet the area suffers from second-class services. Stephen Crabb said that the tax bills of the Chevron refinery in Pembroke and the Total site in Milford Haven, provide enough funds through taxes and duty on oil barrels to meet, theoretically, almost half the entire Welsh NHS annual budget. This is an interesting point, however it is worth recording that at least some of those taxes, the companies' business rates, fail to benefit Pembrokeshire ...
York District Hospital today received a 'good' for patient services and 'fair' for use of resources by the Healthcare Commission's annual review- what's not clear, however, is what impact the 200 job losses, 60 bed cuts, and 16 intermediate care bed cuts will have on patient services in the future. Comments made by hospital bosses at the Council's Health Scrutiny Board on Monday suggested that...
About twenty years ago I saw Tranmere Rovers lose at home to Chester. An own goal, lobbed over the goalkeepers head from near the halfway line, was all that separated the two teams. That was the worst own goal I have ever seen until last night. Thank goodness Wales came good at last!
First things first. I go to alot of meetings, some good, some not so good, most pretty informative in one way or another. It's rare, though, for me to come out of a meeting knowing that everyone was fully engaged and comitted to what was being discussed and getting on with doing an excellent job. I came out of one such meeting earlier this week. The meeting was of the Involvement...
I have decided to found the League of Elephant Militant Babies In favour of Truth (Őr Proper Information and Knowledge). I wonder if the ACRONYM is taken? This is because my Daddy Richard and our friend Mr Alan have taken me to see a talk by Romana, along with her husband, my favourite professor of evolutionary biology, Mr Professor Richard Dawkins. Earlier this year I told you about Daddy Richard listening to CDs of Professor Richard and Romana's adventures in their TIME MACHINE. Well, tonight they were doing something very similar, reading passages from Professor Richard's new ...
Until yesterday, the longest serving East Anglian local politician I'd come across was Frederic Chancellor. This chap was elected to the Chemsford Board of Health when he was 27 , became first Mayor of the new Chelmsford Borough in 1888 when he was 63 , stood down in 1917 at the age of 92. But, via Ellee Seymour, I've read in the Eastern Daily Press about Jack Chase, a parish councillor who's 100
I should declare an interest here or perhaps more accurately a lack of interest. I cannot stand eggs. I am not sure if I am technically allergic to them as I am able to eat cakes and biscuits etc quite happily but give me an egg in egg form and I am likely to vomit. However, this article in yesterdays Guardian caught my eye. The age-old problem of how to cook the perfect boiled egg may have been solvedby doing away with the boiling water. A British inventor, Simon Rhymes, has created a machine that uses light bulbs to cook ...
This morning I arrived in Bucharest, Romania, to attend the ELDR Council and Congress. The ELDR Council, which I sit on as one of the eight directly-elected Liberal Democrats, takes place later this morning. The ELDR Congress takes place this afternoon and on Friday.
Just back from an extended council meeting. For those of us who are fortunate enough to languish under the delights of an elected mayor, some might say, a frequently frustrating and verging on pointless exercise (OK I'm in cynical mode!) tonight was brightened by an imaginative timely motion from the Tories against the closure of Bedford Hospital - swiftly matched by a ridiculously facile and disengenuous Labour amendment, countered of course by the ultimate Lib Dem piece d'resistance! Mr Speaker......aka Cllr Andrew McConnell........aka Toryboy to me and my pals.........broke with convention and offered his own views on the threat to ...
The developing wisdom is that NK's nuke didn't go off properly. Read Nuclear Mangos for more, or in brief: the NK bang was too big to have been caused by conventional explosives, too small to be a nuke that went off as intended. The yield was less than a kiloton, and Kim Jong's nuclear programme is too Ill to do that intentionally. So they probably ballsed up building and detonating a 10-tonne
The Times continues its single minded investigation into that donation...Lib Dems' £2.4m was donated by fraudulent firm. Now, don't get me wrong - if it came to it I would pay my share, on the condition that all the "muppets" were fired first of course...but the Times says at one point: If the Electoral Commission forces the party to surrender the gift, each member will become liable for a share of the debt.Whaaat? Since when? I expect the remaining few members of the Labour and Tory parties to resign immediately then to avoid being severally liable ... | < | October 2006 | > | ||||
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