Welcome to the 20th of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (1st - 7th July), together with a hand-picked quintet you might otherwise have missed. Your regular host, the Deputy Lord Mayor of Oxford, is occupied this weekend, so it’s my pleasure [...]
This one really takes the biscuit for unadulterated self-righteous hypocrisy. After allowing a bunch of Labour thugs to attempt to break up with physical force the Liberal Democrats' Sedgefield campaign launch, Labour's candidate Phil Wilson made this comment: "It amazes me that the Lib Dems are on the side (sic) of gangs....they should see the damage done by small groups of thugs. I am on the
Whilst surfing the internet this afternoon, I discovered a site called Trimdon Times. It is for residents of Trimdon or for those who have lived there but have moved away. It contains local news and information but also has a forum that allows people to set up discussions on anything they want to. One of them has set up a discussion about Labour's jackboot tactics they employed to try to break up
{rider on the Mall} I managed to take about 300 photos while watching the prologue on Saturday (thats just the ones I didn't delete straight away when I missed the rider and just got tarmac...) I'll be uploading a few more to flickr over the next couple of days. But this is one of my favourites from the collection. When the riders came down the nearside barrier it was sometimes impossible to see them until they were right on top of us. But with this shot I managed to lean out and get the shot without hindrance.
As the HQ was busier today I decided to take a few hours off to check out another part of the constituency. I’d been on the lookout for some jeans so with Dan in tow I headed out to Ealing Broadway. The shopping centre was nice enough, but the real treat lay just around the [...]
{Fabien Cancellara wins the Tour de France prologue in London} On Saturday I had the chance to see the Prologue stage of the Tour de France in London. I'd decided to take up a point on the Mall, and had hoped to be right outside Buckingham palace and at the junction with Constitution Hill. But it was busy there even 3 hours before the first rider. So i went back to the Mall where Green Park comes out on to it, this was about 380m from the finish line. I'd also decided to take my Canon 5D and a couple ...
I thought I’d save people the pain and drudgery of reading countless posts on a similar theme between now and polling day in the two Parliamentary by-elections. Basically, no matter what party you’re from, this is all you need to read: The other parties are losing, and they’re fighting dirty. Our candidate is your favourite [...]
I am making my debut tomorrow evening, appearing on Blogger TV at 9 p.m.
78%How Addicted to Blogging Are You? This cannot be right, surely! Hat Tip: Paul Walter
This is the claim the Conservatives are making, via their mobile public address systems. I heard the claim umpteen times this afternoon, as I waited in a traffic queue being one of the cars. It seems a remarkably ambitious claim. Thank you, James Graham, for giving me an idea for this posting! 
I don't care if Norfolk Blogger is the guvnor and it's his manor and I'm well out of order. Knife Painter has a thoughtful post with a beautiful photograph which captures the charm of Happisburgh. The only thing I would add is that, though the posting talks about land reclamation, it is worth pointing out that Happisburgh is threatened by the crumbling of its cliffs. Maybe there is a case for allowing overenthusiastically reclaimed land to revert to salt marsh, but that is not relevant at Happisburgh. Happisburgh, incidentally, is pronounced "Haisbro".
It was a delight to see a double bill of top Irish stand-ups at the Newbury Comedy Festival last night. First of all, one of my favourite comedians, Ed Byrne was hilarious. Then we were gloriously entertained by Ardal O'Hanlon. The latter told the story of when his fictional character from Father Ted, Father Dougal Maguire, was 1000-1 with Paddy Power to be the next Pope after Pope John Paul
Well, the Conservative candidate in Ealing Southall has. His one year old son is called Cameron. Hum.
Under Tony Blair in Sedgefield, Labour seem to have developed some of the lowest and scummiest campaigning tactics ever. Watch how they treat the Lib Dems in the first clip And how they treat David Cameron in this clip Possibly the nicest thing you could say about Labour is that they behave like scum in both, lowering the tone and acting like the sort of bussed in rabble that dictators rely on in the states that were part of the former Soviet Union. As for the Lib Dems and David Cameron, they ...
Give it a go. I am 65% addicted apparently, which doesn't sound too bad. 65%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?Mingle2 - Online Dating
Just spotted this thoughtful article on the issue of violent pornography which dissects the legislation in much more detail than I did when blogged about it earlier this week.
The sun was shining brilliantly in Ealing Southall today. While canvassing this morning I was struck by the large number of people who said that they feel let down by Labour, and are turning to Nigel Bakhai this time. I also heard grumblings about the Conservatives' tactics. They have a team of Corsa 1.2s driving round with loud-speakers on them, playing a very loud looped recording of a very
Pardes Weekly is turning out to be the most lively local newspaper during the Ealing Southall by-election. You might be hard-pressed though to work out their view of the Labour campaign from the latest edition:
I was surprised and disappointed today to discover that IKEA don’t sell bean bags - I felt sure that Swedes would love nothing more at the end of a long week than to place their buttocks in the gentle caress of a giant polyster scrotum full of polystyrene balls. And yet this is not the [...]
I read or rather glanced at an article in the Barnet Press (I think), which I no longer have in front of me as it's has already hit the recycling box. The article concerned the fact that Barnet had missed a number of it's key performance indicators. The easy thing for an opposition Cllr would be to stick out a press release or have a Focus leaflet story which had a go at the administration for missing their targets. However I am no great fan of PI's as they often measure the wrong thing or distort the truth. The questions ...
This weekend I went for the first time to the British Library, to see a small exhibition of the Proms through the years, which ended today ahead of the First Night of the Proms on Friday (forgive me for this, but WOOH! SUMMER’S HERE!). It is already well established that I am a ponce of the [...]
Little blogging this weekend, because I'm in France with Libby and her sister Cath, who lives in a massive chateu in Normandy. Cath's car has John Cleese vocals for the TomTom - hence comments like "At the next junction, bear right, beaver left" and "In eight hundred metres, or half a mile as I normally call it but we have to say eight hundred metres because of that bastard Napoleon". The wine is very good, the weather sadly pouring with rain, though that didn't put a dampener on the air show we were at earlier this afternoon. Haven't ...
Now that the lists of candidates are in and finalised in the Sedgefield and Ealing Southall by-elections, the extent of the Conservative splits in Ealing is clear. For one of the independent candidates is Gulbash Singh, a former Conservative member and - as recently as May 2006 - Conservative candidate in Ealing. In fact, he polled [...]
As mentioned on ConservativeHome today, all credit must go to Welsh Tory leader Nick Bourne for sticking to his guns after complaints were made about a blog post in which he unashamedly attacks the BNP: "One worrying feature about the Assembly election campaign was the increase in votes for the BNP. "Whilst the turn out in the Assembly elections went up slightly on 2003, it was still woefully low, particularly if one compares it to the sort of turnout achieved in the French Presidential elections of 85%, the 44% that was achieved in Wales seems ...
Just thinking about my up and coming inaugural meeting of the Haringey Darfur Action Group on July 19th. This is a group I am setting up to campaign locally - and I know Darfur and the genocide there seem far away - but you would be surprised how effective local pressure can be. And the scale of the horrors in Darfur means we must do something more. I have lots of ideas of action we can take so we don't have to stand idly by and feel impotent in this catastrophe. Also - I have set up a Facebook ...
There is no sense me trying to replicate the Wikipedia page (linked). It is an interesting piece of news that a conclusion has been reached (announcement on Friday 6th) as to a new Seven Wonders of the World. For any more, however, read Wikipedia.
All Bermondsey was out today for the Tour de France, putting on our best Gallic shrugs as the blur of colour whizzed by. Early on I bumped into Labour Leader Peter John lurking surreptitiously by a lamppost near Tower Bridge, before coming across Simon Hughes with the Thomas family near Southwark Park. The Tour is an odd event, a huge circus of T-shirt and other souvenir sellers pass by for over an hour before the main event which is over in a matter of seconds, leaving you wondering what on earth it was all about. Rather ...
I see Will Hutton in today's Observer talking about housing "shortages" and the panic that's setting in. He takes extensive coverage from the initial report of Stephen Nickell's National Housing and Planning Advice Unit I covered earlier. Tim Worstall comments here on one aspect of Hutton's suggestions - that the Bank of England needs to target house price inflation. {new affordable housing in Macclesfield} I would add that there was a piece by Eddie, now Lord, George, Mervyn King's predecessor as Governor of the Bank of England back in March this year which I didn't see ...
I'm just appalled by the twaddle that appears in the Eye these days... shameful, quite shameful.
I have just been watching YouTube footage from the Launch of the Lib-Dem by-election campaign in Sedgefield. The footage shows a disgraceful attempt by a mob of Labour activists to disrupt the event. [See Report from the Northern Echo] I cannot see how this helps the Labour campaign at all, there were Labour councillors in the mob who should know better and show a bit of respect rather than to be part of such a disgraceful display. They were behaving more like football hooligans than serious politicians. It is this sort of thing that switches people off from ... 
As mentioned the other day, I went to a presentation at Prestwich Cricket, Tennis and Bowling Club on Friday to learn about their plans for a new building and improved facilities. I think this is an excellent community facility, bringing people together for sport and social reasons. And I am behind their plans for the new building 100%. Funding is coming from a variety of sources, not least
In the days when Peter Allen and Jane Garvey presented the breakfast programme on Radio Five Live I listened to it in preference to Radio 4's Today programme. The show was not all about Allen and Garvey: an important part of its chemistry was the people doing reports on sport, weather and travel. The weather expert Philip Eden always came over as a strict school teacher with a wicked dry sense of humour. He brought order to the proceedings when the hilarity threatened to take over. He is also a proper meteorologist and he makes an important point ...
For several years there have been numerous complaints about the ugly hoardings outside the old Coop building in Radford Street and the old Fire Station in Newcastle Street. And with judging for Stone in Bloom only a ten days away it looks as if some anonymous citizens have decided to do something about the problem themselves! I can't disclose too many details because technically what happened
It's quite incredible to see Tories defecting to Labour. That never used to be possible. What it shows, I believe, is that there's now very little to choose between the two parties. They're both right of centre, authoritarian, free market and desperate to win at any cost. When I joined Labour back in the 1980s it was a progressive party. Now, after ten years of Blair and Brown, it's a conservative party. Try asking a Labour Party supporter to name one positive thing the government has done since 2001. Nobody can. There are none. Before 2001 we had independence ...
I've found myself lapsing into bouts of a seriously bad mood recently. I've been a right grumpy git on occasion. So apologies to anyone who has been discomforted by me in grouch mode. I think my bad mood has mainly stemmed from frustration at not being able to get things done. There seems to be so many things that I want to do that I'm not able to because of obstacles or I can't find the time
On Wednesday the next South of the Borough Neighbourhood Committee will be held at 7.30pm at Southborough School. Do join us if you are interested in anything on the agenda or want to ask a question. Members of the public can contribute to the discussion on any item. You can read the whole agenda and the reports for each item here. The Police Safer Neighbourhood teams for...
Catching up - last visit of the day on Friday was to see the old railway track turned nature reserve at the back of Cumberland Road in Wood Green. Haringey Council - having paid it no attention for years - suddenly seems to have served notices by letter about 'encroachment' to various houses whose back gardens adjoin the linear wood. I went via one resident's house to see what this 'encroachment' was. What I found was that the council boundary fence which might once have delineated where gardens stopped and the wood started is in complete disrepair. Decades ...
Thanks to Lib Dem Jonathan Wallace, we have video evidence of Labour party councillors and activists attempting to distrupt the launch of the Lib Dem campaign in Sedgefield by Andrew Stunnell MP. While Lib Dem challenger Greg Stone explained his policies to attending media, the Labour campaign team heckled and forcibly distrupted the event: The group [...]
I must say I'm impressed with Gordon Brown's constitutional reform package, especially relating to the royal prerogative of war and peace. Clearly he has realised that concentrating so much power in the hands of the executive at the expense of Parliament is unpopular, dangerous and unnecessary. Brown's first moves stand in stark contrast to today's revelation that Tony Blair eventually wanted to get on with things without having to worry what people thought of him. I can understand his desire to do what he thought was right, but seeking to disregard public opinion entirely is ...
BAE Systems is negotiating a new deal to sell military aircraft to Saudi Arabia. Today’s Independent on Sunday reports that questions have been asked into whether the new deal influenced the decision six months ago to scrap the Serious Fraud Office’s investigation into the Al Yamamah deal. Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrats’ health spokesman, said: “One [...]
Recent criticism of Ming Campbell over the tactics of Gordon Brown has been unfair. He should have said “no” immediately we are told by some. Well apart from silly arguments that have been made about it so far, which will soon be forgotten by the electorate, I do not see anything wrong in consulting colleagues first [...]
The LibDemVoice Forum will be down today to allow some upgrades to take place. The Members’ Forum is now back up.
Rod Liddle takes a startlingly accurate and hilarious swipe at the phenomenon in today's Sunday Times Magazine.
Local authority pension schemes are to review their investments into arms companies, based partly on how those companies win contracts. According to today’s Observer: The Local Authority Pension Fund Forum (LAPFF), which represents 40 funds with invested assets totalling £70bn, is drawing up a series of questions to put to defence companies as it seeks to [...]
Quite a few people have contacted me about this issue, so I was interested to read in the latest edition of "London Bulletin" (the magazine for London Councils, the organisation which represents London Borough Councils including Lewisham), a robust attack on Ken Livingstone's "campaign of mis-information regarding the future of the Freedom Pass." The article goes on: "The pass is used by over a million older and disabled Londoners allowing them free travel on the capital's public transport. It has been run and paid for by the capital's councils for 23 years, who remain fully committed to ...
I had a nice day out in London yesterday - even if I did get a little sunburnt - watching the prologue time trial of the Tour de France. There are pictures here, and I even remembered who some of the cyclists were, so they’re not all nameless blurs in lycra.
Now that Labour and Plaid have committed to each other for the next four years, it is the job of opposition to scrutinise their agreement and to probe its weaknesses. One item that stands out immediately is their policy on higher education. Throughout the last Assembly Plaid Cymru joined with the other opposition parties in protesting at the funding gap that had grown in higher education between Wales and England. They even ganged up with the Welsh Liberal Democrats and the Tories to force concessions from Labour to try and close that gap. Needless to say no real progress ...
How real Labour behaves. This video was filmed at the launch of the Sedgefield Liberal Democrat campaign at Trimdon Green. Note how, instead of engaging in debate, Labour's rent-a-mob seek to disrupt the event at every turn. Anybody would think that they were afraid of the competition.
Lewisham Council is consulting again on the Lewisham Gateway Planning Application for developing the land between Rennell Street and Lewisham railway station. This is because the Environmental Statement submitted with the application was "deficient in a number of respects" and further highway modelling was required. Any comments which people made on the original application will be reported to the Council's Strategic Planning Committee when it meets to consider the revised application. Any additional comments need to tbe with the Council by Wednesday 8 August 2007. You can inspect the application documents at: Planning Information Office, ...
Take a bow, Rt Rev Graham Dow, Bishop of Carlisle, for giving me a much-needed laugh. Taken from the Telegraph website - “This is a strong and definite judgment because the world has been arrogant in going its own way”. So,is he refering to a judgement on the way we have polluted the planet for years, or [...]
There are a number of blogs and newspapers taking the rather predictable line of asking how having nine pop concerts around the world is a good way of reducing our carbon foot print. it is a shame that these bloggers and journalists hadn't bothered reading the Live Earth organisers plan to use the profits to but millions of energy saving light bulbs which would very quickly repay the amount of carbon used by yesterday's concerts and more. So well done to the Live Earth organisers, although it might have been kinder if Al Gore could make his speeches ...
Last night we had to rush to the hospital. Nothing for anyone to be overly stressed about, but we arrived just after 3am and left just before 6am and were astonished by the parking charges. For less than three hours in the middle of the night on a Sunday we were charged £2.00. Okay, so £2 isn't a fortune, it is the same as I would pay for parking there in the middle of the afternoon on a week day. It does seem ludicrously expensive given the hour of the day, doesn't it ?
You have got to love Iain Duncan Smith. Unfairly maligned during his too short tenure as Conservative leader has come back to the forefront of politics today with his calls for a massive hike in the tax on alcohol and to reclassify Cannabis as a Class B. Way to get down with the kids IDS. I'm sure Dave will be thrilled with those vote winning ideas!
I got back home from Sedgefield last night, had a meal and had a bath. And as you would expect, lying there in the water, my mind wandered onto other things, especially Labour's tactics in Sedgefield. They reminded me of Robert Mugabe's tactics in Zimbabwe: what is in theory a multi-party democracy but the government deals with opposition by stamping on it and driving it from the streets using
I have had a bit of a Warwickshire weekend this weekend. Yesterday I was in Warwick and today in Stratford. I would have been in Ealing but for a long-standing commitment Saturday afternoon.
A warm welcome to another Bearwood Blogger - Second City Stu(mbler)
The linked story is to another Sunday Telegraph article in which they reveal another injustice. The national media are now on a hunt for injustice - which is helpful. There are also these letters in the Sunday Telegraph. A story in the Mail on Sunday Adoption targets
Yesterday can be summed up by one word - frustrating. If anyone has tried to deliver to tower blocks before then you’ll immediately understand! It was also the first day I caught sight of UKIP, Respect and the Monster Raving Loony Party - all of whom were making their presence felt on Southall High Street. [...]
Having established myself as an anarcho-geo-libertarian-mutualist I can't help wondering why is it that many libertarians seem to gravitate towards the Conservative party. A party with less libertarian instincts I can hardly imagine. Whatever their rhetoric on occasion, when they tactically oppose Labour's assaults on peoples' freedoms for example, when it comes down to it they are the archetypal we know best patristic party that is happiest telling the plebs what they can and cannot do, should and should not expect. They may point to Thatcher's rolling back of the state in the form of privatisation of ...
In Friday's House Points I mentioned the Norfolk village of Happisburgh and its problems with coastal erosion. There are more details on this website. The village pub is worth a visit too.
Good to see you can’t teach an old dog like Kaiser Fremp new tricks! Share This
There are many things I can (and do) criticise Ken Livingstone for, but the one legacy he will leave for which I will be eternally grateful is the Oyster Card system for integrated public transport in the capital. Mine may cost me the equivalent of the rental of a quite pleasant apartment in Istanbul each month, but [...] | < | July 2007 | > | ||||
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