And so we go from one selection, straight into another. I was still finalising the South East's Regional Profile at 1.30 this morning, and the cover letter and Selection Committee membership list aren't quite perfect yet (they will be, eventually). Fortunately, the hordes of potential applicants have obviously decided to wait until the weekend to deluge me with requests for the application pack,
Writing for The Guardian’s Comment is Free website, Ming Campbell said: Two years ago, Tony Blair said that the world’s most powerful countries “will not allow violence to change our societies or our values”. In truth, he has done exactly that. Too many of our hard won freedoms have been lost. They will not be easy [...]
I'm on The Westminster Hour again on Sunday (Radio 4, 10pm or if you miss the show you can listen again on their website).
{With my arms full of residents' surveys}
Just a little poll I'm doing, and remember its about influence today on liberal opinion, not influence in the past! Take your pick and put your vote in the comments section.Adam Smith, Keynes, Ricardo, Malthus, Hayek, Galbraith, John Kay, Friedman? and any others you can think ofPost away! PS i've already had one vote for Friedman from John Coatesatom.xml 
Members of trade unions affiliated to the Labour Party get to vote in that party’s deputy leadership contest. Lib Dem blogger and MP John Hemming was unaware that his membership of the Musicians’ Union gave him such a right until he got his ballot paper today. By expressing your choice in the comments section of [...]
Tonight a protest meeting had been planned to take place at the Shell service station at Walton to protest against the proposed mobile phone mast that had been planned to be erected there. But, because the plans were rejected by Stafford Borough Council on Wednesday, the protest turned into a jubilant victory celebration! Dozens of local residents supported Town Councillor Jill Hood's call for a
Met {Lynne Featherstone MP seeing how the Islington Streetcar street club works} with Streetcar. This is a car club. For those who don’t know - car clubs are just that. You become a member of the club and you can 'buy' access to a car, which will be stationed relatively near to you for an hourly, or 24 hour fee. It's secured with a sort of version of the Oyster Card that unlocks the door - and then you have a pin number to feed into a gismo that removes the immobiliser and releases you the key to start ...
Dizzy's blog has been an absolute tour de force of excellent opinion and little nuggets of comedy over the last week, but THIS piece stood out for me. Don't pass this on to Lib Dem MEP Chris Davies please !
With a wife a couple of months away from giving birth, it is always disturbing to hear of stories from friends who have gone through a pregnancy recently and have suffered problems. The latest horror story is a friend of ours, an NHS employee herself so not someone who would wish to denigrate the NHS, who gave birth yesterday. Her contractions went fro every ten minutes to five minutes, so they went to the hospital. "You contractions are not close enough yet, go home" she was told. She goes home, then the contractions get more frequent and ...
My House Points column from today's Liberal Democrat News. While we are on the subject of polar bears, you may be interested in knowing how Knut is getting on. Bear necessities When you are thinking of the causes of global warming, do not overlook the influence of the House of Commons. A major debate can produce enough hot air to wipe out an entire colony of polar bears. Things are not that much better during the long recesses. If you could wander through the deserted offices you would find the annunciator screens - the numerous television ...
After {Lynne Featherstone MP at Budgens in Crouch End sampling their produce which is as local and fresh as they can make it} meeting constituents face-to-face to hear the issues they wanted to raise with me it was off this morning to Budgens in Crouch End to launch / support their new scheme for getting us all to cut out using plastic bags for our shopping. Their campaign is called 'Pennies for Plastic' because the cost of each plastic bag is 1p and for every single one that the customers don't use Budgens are giving that money to ...
I love statues - this was fantastic, as though you could really talk with her. We left Brussels for a day in Brugge for coffee, lunch a boat trip and to get misplaced so we arrived back for the poor driver to make a mad dash for the ferry home. Back at work at lunchtime, today, the room was still swaying!
Our EU Parliament was so much more than I expected, so alive and busy and yet from home it appears remote and slow. The buildings amazed me, everything is reflected at a different point in the day in another part of a building!
Had my last ever exam on Nazi Germany today (History A-level, Chamberlain and Anglo-German relations 1919-1939) and although it was a tough, hard and 2 hour long struggle I think I've done pretty well. Answered both the questions in full, finished the paper just on time and now I am free to forget every single annoying peace of information I have learnt about his despotic regime and the British government's reaction (or rather lack of) to it. It was hard though, trying to learn every single bloody annoying treaty of mutual guarantee or geneva protocal or disarmament conference during the ...
Simon Wright, Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Spokesman for Norwich South, has added his signature to Shelter's 'Wall of Shame' in Norwich, and is urging others to do the same to turn it into a 'Wall of Hope'.
We listened to presentations by MEPs and asked questions before a presentation about how the EU is formed and operates on a day to day basis. At the end of the day we were able to listen to part of the plenary discussing the tragedy of the migrants left hanging on to tuna farm nets off the coast of Malta and the failure of new EU support systems to have been in place to prevent this and what is
Fans of Big Brother may already be familiar with the concept. Pink is the new black, as is illustrated by the launch of Fly Pink, a "boutique airline designed especially for women" which plans to operate from Liverpool's John Lennon airport. The airline will offer flights to Paris for "shopping breaks" in customised pink planes, and, to complete the experience, will also provide pink champagne and complementary manicures before take-off. The Guardian tells us that it is now possible for women to experience their entire day in pink. You can work out with a pink yoga mat and ...
Our north-west MEPs Saj Karim and Chris Davies had invited us to a rather nice lunch - we noticed that their pots were also made in the UK!!! Saj and Chris both managed to join us too, to talk about their roles in the EU Parliament.
Last night I broke my moratorium on buying new books, again. First it was Lord Ashdown (whose book has lamentably sat in a draw since then) who broke down my defences, and last night it was Lord Giddens. Clearly I can’t resist the authority of aristocracy! To be fair, I think it was a special case (inevitably!). Anthony Giddens was the author of The Third Way, which in 1998 provided a seminal outline of the New Labour mindset and laid out (perhaps for the first time) the supposed philosophy underpinning the Blair-Brown government. Ten years ... 
Susan led our way up the hill through the park to the EU building and security checks.
Some interesting information relating to Doncaster Hospital and the Research Protocol variously known as 85.02, 85.05, 85.09, the Cot Death Study, sleep studies, "Do infants who subsequently suffer sudden infant death syndrome have abnormal episodes of hypoxaemia, hypercapnia, sinus tachycardia, or periodic apnoea during early infancy", Do infants who subsequently suffer sudden infant death
Ming's media appearances often get missed. He was on Newsnight on Wednesday night talking about the revelations of poor morale amongst the army in Iraq. He looked and sounded very authoritative. Bear in mind that David Cameron is yet to appear on Newsnight as leader of the Conservative party, despite several offers. Ming was also impressive on Today on Thursday morning on the BAE/Saudi
The Labour Party have been kind enough to send me a ballot paper and booklet about their candidates for Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. That is because I am a member of the Musician's Union. Who should I vote for? The booklet with details of the candidates also details the candidate for Labour Leader. Apart from the fact that there are 308 MPs nominating 413 constituencies have also
So how is the Nuclear Navy getting on? We do need to keep an eye on this as at some stage in the future a decision will have to be made by the Party on accepting or not accepting the Vanguard (read ‘Trident’) deployment. Month by month 'new facts' are being created which will make alternative decisons more difficult. And the nuclear navy is closely linked to the ongoing sagas of BAe systems, the state within the state that constructs these vessels and which is of course embroiled in the Saudi Slush Fund allegations. How much pressure are ...
It comes as a huge surprise that Gordon Brown actually knows a joke which he tells - often - and it shows. It seems he can still learn from the professionals.
Brian Wheeler has written an excellent article on BBC News Online regarding unemployment. Joblessness is higher in percentage and absolute terms than it was in 1979. Then, the problem led to an outcry and the Tory "Labour isn't working" campaign, which help to hound Jim Callaghan from office. Today, there has barely been a mention of any concern over unemployment. Why not? Mr Wheeler provides
Wednesday and Thursday this week I visited the European Parliament and NATO as part of a delegation from the Liberal Democrat European Group. I had the chance to chat to many of our MEP's including Liz Lynne from Stratford who is the MEP for the West Midlands. This was an extremely valuable couple of days, which informed me about a lot of the issues we face right across the European region and the leading role Britain plays. On Wednesday we met a number of our MEPs and were able to have some very open and frank discussions with ...
It's Friday. Yes, it is. It Ended On An Oily Stage by British Sea Power was originally due to be titled Elegiac Stanzas, but there were concerns that this name would negatively impact upon it's airplay. They quite like John Betjeman apparently, and so do I. I also think that Romantic Type by The Pigeon Detectives, is quite good. Finally, Alex Narkiewicz’s graphic take on the Big Brother expulsion really deserves sharing.
Terence Blacker writes in the Independent: The new logo is startling but, once you get tuned into it, rather good, capturing a whiff of the edginess that makes London such an interesting city. Rather than pandering to the absurd illusion that our capital is a British Barcelona or Sydney, the designers have looked to the jagged shapes and garish colours of graffiti artists. The message conveyed is that London 2012 is represented better by awkward youthful dynamism than by plump corporate dreariness.What is that message? It seems to be "Welcome to London. We are obviously not in the same league ...
Ballot papers have now been sent out for Labour's Deputy Leadership contest. I personally am not too bothered who wins, but thought it would be fun to have a little opinion poll on the subject. So on the right of the main page you can vote on who you would to see win.
Apart from watching the entrance show I have not been watching this Big Brother, though almost certainly will tune in towards the end. It appears another racism row has broken, but the good news is Channel 4 have done something about it this time - they couldn't not surely - their statement follows:
Taking Liberties sounds like it’ll be an interesting film, though it’s a shame it’s not on in any cinemas within 50 miles of me. Still, I can go and watch lots of films about people being tortured or doing horrific things to each other - it was a very strange experience to go and see [...]
Over at Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science Blog, he has a Daily Politics piece by Jasper Carrot about the eeeevils of mobile phone masts. It’s all very nudge, nudge, wink, wink, conspiracy theory laden stuff with virtually no rebuttal (apart from a good dressing down by studio guest Gwyneth Dunwoody). About the only thing [...]
Following the disappointment of failing to get into QI the flatmate, and I dived into the National to see what standby tickets we could pick up. Two tickets to Andrew Upton's new adaptation of Gorky's Philistines were forthcoming, and so instead of a very English evening of eccentricity we had three hours of naturalistic Russian melodrama to enthral us. This is a play and production that needs
I am taking an overdue post-election break for the weekend from today, so there'll be no blogging for a couple of days. We are off to Cumbria for some walking, reading, eating, drinking and sleeping. Not necessarily in that order. The place we're going to is apparently quite well hidden, so my fear is that much of the weekend will be spent looking for it. But we shall see... In any event, I am
I got a very polite request from Paul Walter asking me to reduce the size of my font, which being as I am always keen to please I have dutifully done. Sorry Paul, its what comes of ageing gracefully, eyes and ears start to fail! Witnessed an interesting incident whilst trying to board a bus in Old Street the other night. I had arranged to meet Yasmin W-K for a "quick" drink after work. We decided to eat something and ended up with a platter that included fizzy hummus - yes fizzy hummus. Ever tried it??? We ...
It really has been a week for catching up with old friends. Harry’s Place picks up on what promises to be a truly appalling evening of cultural relativism with unspeakably vile hypocrite Yvonne Ridley, in discussion with the Guardian’s Madeline Bunting, author of one of the most misguided screeds I have ever read in a quality newspaper. I’d rather spend an evening licking dirt from the open mouths of pigs.
I agree with the Norfolk Blogger. Reading the reported remarks of Emily Parr , Channel Four were clearly absolutely right to immediately show her the door. Here are the remarks from The London Paper: Emily (on left in photo - referring to Charley's midriff) told Charley (on right in photo): "You pushing it out, you nigger." Accounts executive Nicky, who was born in India, replied with shocked
Today’s press is unimpressed by the deal reached by the G8 on global warming. 'Deal or Raw Deal?', screeches the Independent, proclaiming that George Bush had ‘refused to commit’. 'Too much grandstanding, too little progress', argues the Telegraph. Most blame the US president.It is correct that George Bush did not agree to committing the US to cutting emissions by 50%. But this misses a key point – George Bush has no greater power to commit the US to cutting greenhouse emissions than he does to sequester carbon from the atmosphere with his toes. To see why, read the US constitution: (The President) shall ...
Time to dust off some of my previous blog postings about the Al Yamamah arms deal, because BAE and corruption allegations are back in the news - and once again it’s Ming Campbell and Vince Cable making all the political running, whilst the Conservatives stay silent. A touch of embarrassment over their own Saudi links by [...]
Back from the US. The wedding went ahead with no problems (apart from the chaos before hand and the mother-in-law, bridemaid and aunt deciding that we obviously didn’t want our bit of wedding cake and throwing it away for us…) We had a short honeymoon in Orlando FL where I was ill (and gave the lurgie [...]
That’s what The Guardian is claiming today: British investigators were ordered by the attorney-general Lord Goldsmith to conceal from international anti-bribery watchdogs the existence of payments totalling more than £1bn to a Saudi prince. The story also goes on to say: The Guardian’s disclosure of British government complicity in the alleged payment of £1bn to [Saudi Arabian] Prince [...]
Two internal reports by the returning officer into the Lib Dems’ selection of their prospective Parliamentary candidate for Leyton and Wanstead have been leaked to the local press, which reports: RULES to prevent postal vote fraud were broken during the election for the Liberal Democrats’ prospective Parliamentary candidate for Leyton and Wanstead, the returning officer (RO) [...]
Yet more news, as reported in today’s Guardian, of the Labour Government’s complicity in bribes paid by BAE to a Saudi prince to secure a huge arms deal: British investigators were ordered by the attorney-general Lord Goldsmith to conceal from international anti-bribery watchdogs the existence of payments totalling more than £1bn to a Saudi prince, the [...]
New York one day, Greece the next! A quick turnaround and we made it here in time for a family wedding. Julia, my cousin's daughter, married Alexi yesterday in a beautiful chapel overlooking the sea at Agia Efimia in Kephalonia. Friends and family gathered from all over the world - between them they have a multi-lingual family from Greece, Germany, Jamaica,...
I’ve missed almost all of the current series of Question Time, so tonight I was determined to watch it. For now, you can too, as tonight’s programme should be available online, but the BBC have previously proved bad at maintaining their archive. Julia Goldsworthy (only third place? Your readers are mad, Stephen!) was pretty good, but hamstrung by being sat next to a bumptious buffoon (see below). Francis Maude was incredibly dull. Boris Berezovsky was interesting during the first half of the programme, which was devoted to Russia. And Melanie Philips was the token Daily Mail journalist, there to ...
For those of us starting to think about our pensions, it is very heartening to see Blogs popping up from young bloggers who are instinctively and passionately "liberal". I have added quite a few to my blogroll. A recent and welcome addition has been "A radical writes" from John Dixon. John recently started off a lively discussion with his posting, "I think my driving instructor's a BNP supporter
Suddenly everybody wants to get in on the act of who should form the Welsh Assembly Government and none of them are AMs. I reported yesterday on Adam Price's preference for a formal coalition government between Plaid Cymru and Labour, that has now been welcomed by Health Minister, Edwina Hart, who told Dragon's Eye last night that she would be happy to sit at the same cabinet table as Plaid leader Ieuan Wyn Jones. Are formal talks to be resumed? Rhodri Morgan's door is apparently open. All that it needs is for the Plaid Cymru leader to walk through ...
Thursday: Do you remember how Lord Blairimort ordered the SERIOUS FRAUD OFFICE to stop investigating the deal where we sell a whole load of hi-tech fighter jets to an unstable Middle-Eastern feudal state? Well, now the BBC's Panorama-rama-lama-lama-ding-dong Show have discovered that there MIGHT have been some SERIOUS FRAUD going on! At the time of the police inquiry being so MYSTERIOUSLY dropped, Sir Mr the Merciless and the Liberal Democrats made QUITE A FUSS, only to get the BRUSH OFF from our "whiter than white[*]" Prime Monster. [*] Other colours available, dirty greenbacks may be ...
The case of Cornelius "Neil" Horan raises interesting questions. Known sometimes as "The Dancing Priest" or "Grand Prix Priest" (although he has been defrocked), I watched with horror as he interrupted the 2003 Grand Prix at Silverstone. More infamously, he interrupted Vanderlei de Lima as he led the Olympic marathon in 2004. One is reminded of the sufragette Emily Wilding Davison, who threw
It was with great pleasure that I was asked to stand in for the Mayor and award 30 people from a number a organisations in Kingston all of whom had given over 100 hours voluntary service. The day was really about recognising the massive contribution that volunteers make to our local community and formally thanking them for sharing their skills. Without...
Off to a festival this year? Get your festival survival kit from Shelter, as Lauren Laverne says: "I've been going to festivals for years, and I've finally learnt the basic essentials that you've got to have to make it through the weekend. Shelter's new survival kit does the thinking for you - it has everything you'll need, including some things you might never have thought of." For every kit
As some readers may know James Lloyd will be taking the People & Planet Low Carbon Challenge of travelling to Tromso in Norway (via Germany and the G8) to compete in the Midnight Sun Marathon 2007. | < | June 2007 | > | ||||
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