LibDem Blogs - Archived! - Friday 11th May 2007

fort lauderdale

Just popped into a mall in Fort Lauderdale to do a bit of shopping (Chris, Colin and I have run out of clean underwear as we've failed to do laundry on any campsites yet). Despite the entry in the Rough Guide, Fort Lauderdale doesn't have much to offer... The modern art gallery, shaped like a piece of pie, was in the process of shutting down for the summer. Weather good, but occasional haze from forest fires in the north of the state. Spoilt the visit to Kennedy Space Center as we could barely see some of the buildings :( Off ...

Opinion: Ming must stay

Dropping the pilot is precisely the wrong reaction to our local election results. Last week’s results were not fantastic nationally, although Mark Pack has rightly pointed how well we held up in our key seats. That old saying remains true, though: while success has many parents, failure is an orphan. This seems to be [...]

A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Station

If you’re up at midnight, there’s an especially good episode of The Avengers featuring Dad’s Army’s top eccentric John Laurie and a diabolical plot on a train. Tonight on BBC4, it’s the tasteful attack of the funny terrorists! It was on last night, too; with fabulous timing, if you took a break from wall-to-wall TV coverage of a slimy liar re-announcing that he’s really, really, really going to go this time, eventually, you may have caught someone called Blair’s involvement with a plan to sharply abbreviate a Labour Prime Minister’s reign in mid-term (then Hustle, with another load of con-artists). ...

Media Superstardom dawns

Well, not quite, but I did join the likes of Kylie, Britney and Kate Moss on the pages of the Sun (Scottish edition) today. I was asked as a Lib Dem supporter to give my take on Blair going so took the opportunity to lambast him on the war in Iraq and to remind everyone that Gordon Brown paid for it as well as all the other Labour disasters. It was quite surreal - one minute talking to the journalist on my mobile phone and the next a photographer turned up at my house to take a photo. ...

Christian Aid week comes round again

I have now realised that I have been blogging more than a year because one of my first blog postings was about Christian Aid week. 635 postings and just over a year later I got soaked tonight giving out Christian Aid envelopes. Being a retired councillor, I volunteered for more houses to do and was promptly given the longest road in Newbury which is about 8 miles long - fortunately my bit turned

Jonathan Meades: Abroad Again

I caught the first programme in this new series and thoroughly enjoyed it. As the website devoted to it says: We make places. And places make us. We respond to what we have created. But how does this compact between mankind and its greatest artifices work? In Jonathan Meades: Abroad Again this question is addressed in a multitude of ways: visually, comically, rhetorically, obliquely, argumentatively and whilst swimming fully clothed. And also passionately. For these programmes are the expression of an obsessional preoccupation with places and with the properties they reflect: fantasy and necessity, escape and expectation, ...

A Tuscan mountain village (rather than a blancmange)

My House Points column from today's Liberal Democrat News. Making a dull boy Everyone is talking about Tony Blair’s legacy. If you seek his monument, don’t go to Stormont or the Millennium Dome. Go to Peterborough. For something wholly characteristic is taking shape in its damp fields. When it opens in September, the Thomas Deacon city academy will be the most expensive state school in Britain. Replacing three existing schools, it will have 2200 pupils and cost £46.4m. It is being designed by Norman Foster. In the shape of a blancmange. Showing a typically New Labour ...

Cowley Street: Is there a grammarian in the house?

Lovers of the apostrophe will be saddened by the heading of a press release on the Lib Dem website: Brown should take responsibility for Labours failure's - CampbellI think the Education Secretary must take a share of the blame too.

Chairman of Electoral Commission pulls out of Iain Dale interview - Draw your own conclusions from this

Iain Dale mentioned some time ago that he was going to be interviewing Sam Young, Chairman of the Electoral Commission on his show on 18 Doughty Street. Now, all of a sudden, he has pulled out of the interview. . The question has to be asked, why do this right now ? Could it be the debacle over the Scottish elections ? Might it be the farcical way in which local election counts have been carried out in some districts using less than transparent electronic methods of counting ? Whatever his reasons are, it ...

Was Gordon Brown's autocue problem a positive sign for him ?

Gordon brown has promised more substance and less presentation if he becomes Labour Leader, and surely the autocue problems today highlight this clearer than he could have hoped. Despite the fact that it was a clear cock-up, was it altogether that bad ? After all, his speech was actually quite good, he spoke with passion and feeling, in a way I have not heard him speak before. I actually felt that a lot of time and effort (probably 13 years of time and effort since Blair became leader) had gone in to it and yes, although ...

It’s not brain surgery

It’s perhaps the most unusual way to earn £11.2m. Kudos to this man from Birmingham who makes sculptures that can fit inside the eye of a needle. “Willard Wigan is known for his painstaking care, working between heartbeats to avoid hand tremors.” This man can’t read or write, but he’s one of the few people I would [...]

Digesting the French elections

This morning CentreForum enjoyed a French breakfast in the company of Christian Lequesne, a professor from the College of Europe and Eric Albert, a journalist from La Croix newspaper. They discussed the implications of Nicholas Sarkozy's victory last weekend - you can see more of the details at the CentreForum website ("L'etat, c'est moi!") Today has had some reflection from the papers and news magazines too. Con Coughlin in The Telegraph draw's on Tony Blair's trip to Paris to comment on both Blair and Sarkozy ("Yesterday's man is still centre stage"), while The Economist panted breathlessly for long awaited reform ...

On becoming dignified

My year in charge of Oxford’s finances is now officially over. A new role beckons: Deputy Lord Mayor for 2007-08. A fair few people have expressed some surprise that I should wish to swap a place on the decision-making executive for a ceremonial post. Which is understandable - I have confined my attendance of civic events as a councillor to those which have a personal meaning to me, such as

Liberal Democrat Voice » Opinion: Ming must go

Liberal Democrat Voice » Opinion: Ming must go I began to comment on this thread, and then thought my comments a little lengthy and put them here! I think this whole leadership thing is a bit of a red herring just now. I publicly backed Huhne when the contest was held - and I gave my reasons [...]

Remarkable Persons

I hope that all Hooting Yard readers have become devotees of the magnificent BibliOdyssey. Today the site has a particularly splendid set of Remarkable Persons: “John Bigg, the Dinton Hermit, baptized 22nd of April, 1629, buried 4th of April, 1696. He lived [..] in a cave, had been a man of tolerable wealth, was looked upon [...]

E minus 1 day

Gosh, last night was surprising. Switzerland out, Andorra out, Norway out, Israel out, and, er, all three acts I’ve featured this week - Norway, Estonia and Belgium - out. Which big-hitters does that leave then? With a string of Eastern European countries qualifying from the semi-final, the chances to be leaning their way. The odds will [...]

First Lines

In a piece on the Guardian Books Blog, Lee Rourke identifies “the greatest first line of any novel I have ever read”, the opening of Ann Quin’s Berg: “A man called Berg, who changed his name to Greb, came to a seaside town intending to kill his father . . .” Some of the commenters [...]

The fairest drink on earth: a cup of free trade coffee

Jo Christie-Smith has questioned what non-"Fair Trade" coffee is if we don't have free trade. In doing so, she raises the whole question of “Fair” and free trade, and invites me to (finally!) write about one of my bugbears. Ultimately, “Fair Trade” coffee is a misnomer, because it is no different in trade terms form any other coffee. The terms of trade are identical. The difference is that the wholesaler/distributor has chosen to pay above the market price for the product. This is not really “Fair Trade” but (depending upon one’s perspective) a form of charitable subsidy ...

Sarkozy: Cash for what in French politics?

President-elect Sarkozy went on a ‘retreat’ after the presidential election as guest on a luxury yacht on the Mediterranean, to contemplate his future 'radical reforms'. Wonder if these reforms involve regulating lucrative tie-ins between government services and certain politically useful wealthy French individuals? Sarkozy’s shipboard host Vincent Bolloré for example, who told the press when the holiday story broke that he had no government contracts. Bolloré’s ‘SDV Group Logistics’ company in fact has at least three lucrative contracts: One: Carriage of the French Diplomatic Bag Two: Transportation of cash by air for the Ministry of Finance ...

HoodieTV: Ming must stay

Welcome to a much-delayed second edition of HoodieTV. This week's episode deals with Ming Campbell's leadership of the party, and the reason why he must stay and see us through to the next General Election.

Begrudging Blair

The problem with not keeping up daily posts is that fellow bloggers beat me to posting more or less exactly what I would have written. Not for the first time, step forward Liberal England. Perhaps there are a few things to add. By 1997, the Tories and the country really did need a long break from one another, and Blair is to be congratulated in putting together a non-Tory electoral force that was capable of winning repeatedly. The only other period in the past century that the Conservatives have appeared so utterly out of tune with the electorate ...

Have your say on Assembly coalition talks

Herefordshire results

Herefordshire saw one of the worst set of results for us across the West Midlands, we lost seven seats, Labour also lost two and the Independents lost one, the Greens gained one seat and the Conservatives gained 9 seats and overall control of the Council.

Local elections

So it's all over. The dust is settling on a Tory minority administration for Bath and North East Somerset. Overall the Tories went from 26 to 31 seats and are now the largest party in B&NES. However here in Bath honours were even with Tories and Lib Dems exchanging three seats - two Bathwick and one Combe Down gains by LD from Con and one Lambridge, Weston and Widcombe seats gained by Con from LD. In Combe Down Cherry Beath was elected with a majority of more than 300 over the nearest Conservative candidate and I was elected with ...

Missing link

This morning's media continues to heavily feature Tony Blair's resignation but there is hardly a word about John Prescott. This is despite the fact that in Wales at least, Peter Hain's bid to succeed him gets sympathetic coverage. Is the Deputy Prime Minister destined to be remembered only for landing that punch?

Orange Problems

I signed up with internet provider 'Freeserve' a few years ago for Broadband access, so imagine my surprise when I found that I could no longer access the internet or my emails at home, and Orange was my Broadband provider. Apparently 'Freeserve' was taken over by 'Wanadoo' and 'Wanadoo' was then swallowed up by Orange. I had various explanations as to why I was unable to get on line and a number of empty promises about getting back on line. Now 4 weeks on, I am still unable to access the internet through the broadband system ...

Free Trade - an increasingly live issue

Free Trade is coming back into serious debate, and not only in the electronic islands of the LibDem blogosphere. One question is whether a backlash against Free Trade in the USA could bring in some kind of neo-protectionism. ‘Free Trade’s Great but…’ is a theme discussed by Washington Post commentator Alan S. Blinder who as a ‘Free Trader down to my toes’ writes an article ‘Trying to Save Free Trade From Itself’. And more seriously Ralph Gomery ( a former senior vice-President at IBM who oversaw numerous globalisation processes from the inside) has published a critique ...

Graham's blog entry 11th May 2007

Nice but hopeless, Simon Jenkins should call it a day

This lamentable commentator cannot even master the electoral system to which he has hitched his comments. Surely it's time to fold up his tent. What is Simon Jenkins for? He is the flotsam of 20th-century journalism drifting on into the 21st, coagulated from ancient clubs, cabals, splits and defections from other newspapers. Not since the 20th century has he cohered round any great interest. He represents no mass movement, no breaking of the political mould. Ask Simon Jenkins what he is for and you get only a susurration of platitudes. Yet thanks to the newspaper industry this ...

Will Brown go the same way as Sunny Jim?

I'd put money on Brown never being confirmed as Prime Minister in a general election. He seems destined to follow "Sunny" Jim Callaghan, who famously didn't say "Crisis, what crisis?" after becoming PM when Harold Wilson retired. Like Callaghan, Brown has been in government an awful long time. One suspects Brown has the arrogance and disregard for presentational finesse which will land him on a

Focus on the Congo

Many of you will have listened over the last couple of mornings to the Today Programme’s reports on the Congo. If you have you will know how harrowing they are, if you didn’t then go along to Radio 4’s listen again feature; this morning’s report was on at about 7.40am. In it a young woman from the Congo told of how, amongst other abuses, she’d been raped by 19 men in one ‘session’, been forced

Cyber Attacks continue against Estonia

Russia continues to attack Estonia. The denial of service attacks launched from Russia against Estonian sites are extraordinary. Edward Lucas gives the details here. This is nothing more than a co-ordinated act of aggression against a NATO and European Union member state. The West continues to handle this with kid gloves- but for how much longer?

Just when constituents thought it was safe to go out...

The elections are over, leaflets have been written, printed and delivered, polling day is not for another year. Just when constituents thought it was safe to go out..... So what have I done this lunchtime? - written a couple of street letters for delivery tomorrow! And there are more to follow this weekend.

Substance is our strength - so no flighty gimmicks please

Many comments on the leadership’s ‘Immediate General Election’ call by various LibDems, the most detailed being this on Hoodie. On the whole I agree with the criticisms of this approach. We have our weaknesses and our strengths. The post-Blair political world offers unusual opportunities for us to play to our strengths. One of these strengths is the weight and substance of our Parliamentary team. Our Foreign Policy team, starting with Ming himself, outshines the Tories and catches labour in a confused state. The Home Office Team led by Nick Clegg is the most effective we have had in ...

Simon Jenkins encore

One point I missed in my previous post was the wrong-headedness of his comparison between the Lib Dems’ attitude to Scottish independence now and the Liberal party’s support for Irish Home Rule a century or so ago: That the party of Irish home rule should reject so liberal a proposal as territorial self-determination is odd.. The whole point of the Gladstonian Liberal party’s position was that it saw home rule as a final settlement that would recognise Irish aspirations for self-government while reconciling Ireland to the union. The Liberal party certainly did not support Irish independence. ...

No Panacea, but free trade is still vital for poor nations’ prosperity

Yesterday, Mark Valladares published a post in which he argued that free trade would harm the economic development of the people of Vanuatu, and so undermine their already fairly basic standard of living. I replied with a comment to the post in which I disagreed. Sadly, this comment has not made it onto Mark’s blog. I hope this is due to a technical error, or that Mark has been too busy to approve it. I would hate to think that a Liberal Democrat blogger was censoring the comments on his site because he disagreed with the content. (UPDATE: ...

I am going to stretch you, Tompkins

The government has announced a programme of university-run summer schools to "stretch the brightest pupils". No doubt many youngsters will enjoy them, even if stretching sounds like the sort of thing that Flashman did to Tom Brown on a wet afternoon. But the question we should be asking is why bright children are not properly catered for by the education they get during term time.

Tony is phoney to the end

The Daily Torygraph's Little and Large blog suggests that the audience for Tony Blair's speech in Trimdon Labour Club yesterday was not all that it seemed: “She’s from Mitcham and Morden,” yelled one Minister at one face on the television coverage today, or so I’m told. Another MP – admittedly an arch-Brownite – swears blind that a well-known Labour councillor from Newcastle-upon-Tyne was among the audience. “They must have brought them in from all over,” added this ardent supporter of the Chancellor.Later. Iain Dale has more on this.

Cleaner Engines

More efficient internal combustion engines. The above link tells of advances in the good old internal combustion engine. The change is to allow fine tuning of the air and exhaust valves allowing better fuel mixes to be created, leading to more efficient combustion and therefore less fuel usage and polluting emissions. This sounds great, and very promising. [...]

Blair out, me in

The Tony Blair resignation has obviously got a lot of publicity, and rightly so. I’m no political commentator, so I won’t add to the fray except to say that some of the coverage, especially on message-boards and letters pages, is almost unbelievably vitriolic in its criticism of Mr Blair. Yes, there have been disappointments, and yes, we are in a mire in Iraq – but regardless of political

Opinion: Ming must go

There is a well known political maxim (or at least there ought to be) which states that, “the party faithful are the last people who should be consulted upon their choice of leader” - the point being that it is to crucial swing voters that the leader must appeal, not to committed party members. Of [...]

Blair - I meant well

Tony Blair seems to want us to forgive any damage he did because he meant well and believed what he was doing was right. We should reject this line of reasoning. It is outcomes, not intentions which matter. One of the more famous quotations from Adam Smith is: It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the [...]

Growing Obscura

The Tony Blair Farewell Memorial Track is to be Let's Get Out Of This Country, the title track from Camera Obscura's most recent album.

File under ‘No Shit, Sherlock’

From the BBC: Teenagers who drink alcohol with their parents in moderation are less likely to binge drink, research suggests. Hopefully, what little credibility Alcohol Concern had before today has now completely evaporated. Share This

To Be Fair to Blair

I am no fan of Blair, but was a little too harsh in my posting yesterday, so I would recognise the following I see as achievements : Minimum wage NI - peace and devolution Scottish and Welsh devolution Civil partnership legislation No boom and bust - a relatively stable economy (albeit one coming under pressure now - Gordon leaving the Treasury at a convenient moment). Sure Start Tax Credits for those less well off (albeit fiendishly and unnecessarily complex) Increased resources for Education + NHS (although not always delivering 'value for money'). Trade Union recognition rights Compare northern ...

Will Brown introduce PR? Update

A long-standing rumour says that Brown's package of policies for his hundred days will include constitutional reform.

This week is not last week or so I hope

Last week saw a shock [to some] defeat at the hands of an independent for me in the Torbay local elections and the week was topped off by Nottingham Forest falling just short of automatic promotion to the ludicrously titled 'Championship' [Division 2 more like) and the end of 80 years of league football at Plainmoor. That Forest lost out to Bristol City - the team my step-daughter supports - makes it that bit worse. On the plus side the indie candidate beat the Tories too ! Never mind the hoo-hah about Blair it is a vital week ...

Madeleine McGann - is there something we should know?

I’m getting increasingly suspicious about the media management of the Madeleine McGann story. Something tells me that there is something quite significant that we aren’t being told and that the family has had professional help in ensuring that only a carefully crafted and sympathetic narrative is recounted by the mass media. Firstly, there is the [...]

Gordon Brown's campaign goes wrong at the first step

Such a shame that Gordon Brown’s face is all but hidden behind the teleprompt screen on the BBC coverage. Someone has got their camera angles horribly wrong.

So farewell then...

Watching Blair last night, it is tempting to be charitable. "He will be missed", "He had good intentions", "He had some successes". Indeed several fairly hard nosed commentators have been getting nearly as emotional as Blair himself- a positive chorus of E.J. Thribb-like commentary. I, however, can not see it that way.Blair's mistakes have been catastrophic: "Ethical Foreign Policy"Mishandling relations with the European UnionWasting two pounds in every three spent on HealthRunning up massive future debts in misconceived PPP dealsRunning up massive future debts in misconceived PFI dealsPeter Mandelson as Trade MinisterThe Millennium DomeFreedom of Information Act farceJo Moore AffairEstelle ...

Campbell most trustworthy leader - poll

A new poll for the BBC’s Newsnight programme shows voters rate Ming Campbell the most trustworthy of the three party leaders set to contest the next general election. More than two-fifths of those questioned rated Ming as trustworthy, compared to 38% for the Conservative leader David Cameron. Gordon Brown, the likely new leader of the Labour [...]

Liberal Review is back: Blair has gone

...or it at least he really is going. Time to look back on his game of two halves plus extra-time.

Labour nominate 'no-show' for Mayor

Labour have been getting on their high-horse recently about who should be the next Mayor of Southwark. Their own nomination for the top job is Councillor Tayo Situ from Peckham who disgraced himself last year when it transpired he hadn't turned up to single meeting of SREC (Southwark Race and Equalities Council). Situ's comment at the time was: "This is not a matter of whether I am present or not." This is not the most promising manifesto for a job that requires you to Chair Council meetings and attend hundreds of Borough functions in a year. Particularly ...

Things can only get better

Plaid Cymru's troubles in North Wales get a bit of an airing today with newspapers picking up on the story in Golwg that activists there are thoroughly unhappy at the failure of Dafydd Wigley to get elected. They have turned their ire on Janet Ryder, whose only crime it seems was to use the rules as they existed to get herself re-elected. What I am having difficulty working out is whether this minor uprising is aimed at getting rid of Janet Ryder as a North Wales AM, replacing Ieuan Wyn Jones as leader or both.

Can one recycle too much?

This is my recycling for this week to be collected from my door step (missing the blue box of bottles). Just image what it would look like if a wider range of materials were collect.

East Staffordshire results

In East Staffordshire we held Rolleston on Dove Ward with a new candidate - John Morris, we also gained Burton Ward with Michael Rodgers. A very good result overall in East Staffordshire for us which we build on in the future.

Congrats to Halewood

Rather belated congratulations to colleagues in Halewood. As well as the Liverpool and Knowsley elections, last week also saw elections for Town Councils in Knowsley - including the one in Halewood. And the Lib Dems gained control. There are three wards there - North, South and West and the Lib Dems now have eight of the Town Councillors to Labour's four (each ward elects four). There is a actually a long running practice of the various representatives working together on the Town Council - so its not the most partisan body in the world ( a ...

What about a review of the vote count fiasco in Breckland ?

The Electoral Commission has said that it will appoint a panel of independent experts to review what went wrong in the Scottish Parliamentary elections for so many people's votes not to count. What I want to know is why isn't this independent panel's remit widened to look at the count in Breckland and to make recommendations on whether some of the results should stand and ascertain what went wrong . Is it a case of Scotland being more important that English Districts ?

Dirty Pretty Things gig for Make Roads Safe

Just belatedly spotted that the Make Roads Safe website has some decent pics of the Dirty Pretty Things gig I went to a few weeks ago - where Tim Burgess from the Charlatans was also on stage. They kinda beat my mobile phone camera efforts hands down.

Norfolk Blogger: Lost in translation - Babelfish is not always the answer

Okay, making a post from a post that has already been made from another post is pretty lame as far as originality goes. But as I do manage to entertain myself disproportionately by badly written signs and I did German as part of my degree, thought I should share this: Norfolk Blogger: Lost in translation - Babelfish is not always the answer

Time for a general election? Err, no!

I was going to comment on Ming’s ludicrous call for a General Election now that Blair is going, but Jonny Wright has got there first with exactly what I wanted to say. As has been pointed out: we elect local MPs, we elect them to represent a party not a leader (if they did represent a [...]

The end of Blair

So did I shed a tear? Well no, but I confess to still being a little sad. Blair’s resignation today showed how brilliant he is at the big occasion and how he can do a barnstorming speech that says the things that are probably right at the time. But like so many people the big [...]

Spinning around

Who’d have thought it? Ming Campbell manages to give a good answer to the last funny question on Question Time, and at the same time looks in tune with pop music. To the question, “If ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ was the theme tune to Blair’s arrival as Prime Minister, what should be the music [...]

Has Hossam Ghaly played his last game for Spurs?

Just back from our penultimate game of the season, a 1-1 draw with Blackburn at White Hart Lane. The first half was absolutely dire - as bad a half of football as I have seen all season. Hopefully Sky didn't lose too many viewers, as the second half was pretty good. We now need a point at home to City on the last day of the season to guarantee UEFA Cup football next season. Frustratingly, 5th place is now not just ours to win, as Everton can secure that if they win their final match - even if ...

Do we really need a general election?

Ming Campbell has responded to Tony Blair's announcement by calling for a general election. Jonny Wright on Hug a Hoodie questions the wisdom of this. I am with Jonny.

If you value it, don't give it to John Reid

The government used Tony Blair's announcement yesterday to bury the bad news about the cost of identity cards. We expect nothing better from them. John Reid had an article in the Guardian in which he claimed: Our own, unique, identity is inexorably becoming our most precious possession.I am not sure if that is true. I am not even sure that it means anything. But if it meaningful and true, what follows from it? Our houses and cars are also valuable possessions. Do we make those over to the state to look after for us? Do we bunnies. ...

Friday 11th May 2007

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