LibDem Blogs - Archived! - Saturday 21st July 2007

A wet weekend

My blogging activity has been fairly quiet of late and I suspect it is likely to continue that way for some time now after a torrent of water passed through my house on Friday afternoon. Pictures below Inside the house as the washing machine and freezer start to drown The garden floats away View from the front door The adjacent railway line - hence all the problems between Reading and Newbury on Friday. Still only two rooms still have water above the floorboards ...

"Good Morning Prishtina"!

It's been a great time here in Prishtina. I've hardly had a chance to pause for breath as quite a few of my mates in international development are here working either with EU projects or for UNMIK. Wednesday night reunited me with a Bulgarian friend, Dimitrina Karayotova, who I had the pleasure of training and coaching in her home country back in 2000. She's now working for the Kosovo Trust Agency, a body tasked with privatising many of the state owned enterprises in Kosovo. Last night my friend Jim Duncan rolled in from Croatia where he's ...

In the long run

I was a mere spectator of the kerfuffle in Ealing Southall, what with having had far too much to do in my own patch, plus a hectic time with the day job, plus a strained Achilles tendon, plus a belief that winning Haverstock Ward, Camden (where inspired Lib Dem environmental policies are going down extremely well with local people) mattered more in the long run than not winning in Southall. Was the blizzard of paper whizzing through those Ealing letterboxes really a good idea? I got reports that electors were fed up with the quantity of it, ...

Those exciting Iain Dale poll results in full - Arslikkan is clear winner

Thank you very much to everyone who voted in my poll earlier today. The question was: When will Iain Dale finally take down the "Lit up Ealing Southall" box from his web site? The poll has now closed because Iain Dale deleted the box when he arrived in his Rwandan hotel room earlier today. The results of the voting were: -When he returns from Rwanda - 16% -When he returns from Arslikkan -

Just not Wicket

I’ve just heard that the Tories have shortlisted Warwick Lightfoot, star of Return of the Jedi, Willow and, of course, Leprechaun, for their candidate for London Mayor. I’ve always been a big fan of his work. Seems like just the candidate to stuff Boris. After all, look as the mess he made of that [...]

Lord Bonkers on the aftermath of Ealing Southall

Lord Bonkers writes exclusively for Liberal England: I learn from authoritative sources that David Cameron has sought asylum in Rwanda. I have to say that I am not at all surprised.

Heart of Ryemead ,campaign for Community Centre moves forward- Cllr Trevor Snaith & Cllr Ray Farmer - July 2007

The first meeting of the steering group met on 2Oth July. The group includes local councillors for district and county ,church groups and representatives from Green Issues ( representing interests of St James Homes). We are to meet with WDC officers to discuss how Community Centre can be delivered reallocating funds supplied by developer under S106 [...]

11 hours and 607 pages later

This morning at 6.30 I headed down to Asda, knowing that if I went via Amazon the postman would only be arriving by now and also for only a fiver I was getting a much better deal. Now if by this point you don’t realise that I’m talking about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, where [...]

My favourite Ealing Southall leaflet

This is my favourite leaflet from the campaign (click on it to enlarge). It was being delivered on the morning of polling day in particularly leafy part of Southall near the Grand Union Canal (for the record, I picked these two examples up from the street). Why is it in so-bad-its-good territory? Well, the [...]

Parkland Walk: progress from Haringey Council

Mosey along to the 'consultation' on the plans for Parkland Walk. It would seem from the number of times that officers told me that the priority for the walk was its role as a nature reserve followed by a walk for pedestrians - that the message has got through from we local people. The fear was that Haringey Council - in order to get the dosh from Transport for London (from their cycling department) - were going to turn Parkland Walk into a commuter cycle track. I had, subsequent to hearing local peoples' concerns, got with a Freedom of ...

Pledge support for private prosecution on cash for honours?

Over at Guido's he's got a discussion going about the possibility of pursuing a private prosecution after the CPS decided not to press charges in the cash for honours investigation. At the very least such a challenge would force all the evidence out in the open. There is still apparently some notion that Lord Levy and others will themselves prosecute the police for wrongful arrest, also thereby bringing all the evidence out - if they dare. I can't imagine many readers of these pages do not also keep an eye on Guido's blog but in case you ...

Have you been the victim of a hugger mugger ?

I've never been that good at public displays of affection so perhaps I would have been spared the latest method of robbery at the hands of hugger muggers.

Tories slapped down in Council

The proposal from Darlington Conservatives this week that Scrutiny Committees should all be chaired by opposition councillors was given short shrift by Labour Leader, John Williams, in full Council. Unfortunately, the Conservative proposals had been prepared by Alan Coultas, who was absent from Council. Cllrs Scott and Johnson presented the scheme in a rather lacklustre way - almost as if they

One Voice Movement

The One Voice Movement will launch in the UK this Wednesday apparently. One Voice Movement is a organisation/pressure group that seeks to highlight “mainstream” Israeli Palestinian views against those of the extremists. The cause and the aim of the group are virtually angelic, and morally impeccable, I say nearly because nothing can be perfect. The nagging thing for me is though that it is an American based program. It works with Israeli and Palestinian moderates, rather than been run by them. I always feel slightly uncomfortable with the idea of Johnny foreigner wondering in ...

House of Lords Bill

Sometimes you need someone with an untenable position to be able to see their way through an argument which is clouded for others by vested interests. Such an occasion occurred yesterday, when the Lords gave Lord Steel's House of Lords Bill its second reading. A general, smug consensus had been building throughout most of the contributions that Jack Straw was being terribly naive, and that

What the media says

Two good results for the Lib Dems on Thursday with swings against Labour and two embarrassing third places for David Cameron’s Conservatives. That’s our line - but what does the press think? Here’s a handy guide… Daily Express, Saturday 21st “Leading Britain is a grown-up job for a serious politician. Voters have had quite enough of windmills, [...]

Return to Ealing Southall

I’ve sure everyone is heartily sick of the Ealing Southall by-election by now, but I thought I’d add a few final thoughts. The Tories made a big play about how they were, to paraphrase one Iain Dale commenter, “parking their tank on the Lib Dems’ lawn”. Many of their leaflets did indeed ape our style [...]

Cash for Peerage whitewash

The Crown Prosecution Service has announced that no charges will be brought against the three people arrested in the cash for honours inquiry.

Harry Potter Mania

My youngest daughter, Kate, and best friend Aimee, ensconced themselves in front of the tv on Friday night to watch (yet again) the four Harry Potter films on DVD. Then at 11.30 they set off into town to join the hundreds of other fans queuing to buy the seventh and last book in the series. Arriving home at about 1.30am they both got stuck into their new books until falling asleep. Since waking

Sing It Back : Lyric Champion 2007 = Everything that is wrong with ITV

Last week when visiting my wife in hospital, I found myself watching her TV in her room and was confronted by what must go down as the worst TV programme on any of the mainstream TV stations at the moment. Sing It Back : Lyric Champion 2007 is a simple concept. They play you a line from a song, you have to attempt to sing the next line. And it is this principle that is maintained throughout the whole show. Somehow there is something strangely compelling about the programme, but only in the same way as when you are ...

Flooding - Time for an enquiry and new powers

Once a year there is a story about some town getting flooded, be it in Cornwall through a flash flood or Hereford because of extreme rain. However, this year's continued and appalling flooding is something completely out of the ordinary, but is also something that this country looks like it may have to put up with year after year. We need to know the reasons why our rivers and flood defences seem unable to cope with sever rain. It might be due to inaction or incompetence by the agencies with responsibility for flood defences. Equally, it might be that ...

Exciting New poll: When will Iain Dale take down the "Lit up Ealing Southall" box from his web site?

It's still there. The screen grab on the left was taken at 12:15 today. And yes, I have deleted all my cookies and temp files, and pressed F5 to check I am not seeing an old version of the page. So here's an exciting new poll: When will Iain Dale finally take down the "Lit up Ealing Southall" box from his web site? Vote on the right. The options are: -When he returns from Rwanda -When he

Prom 6: make or break

Prom 6 was the first time I’ve been to a performance of Tallis’s “epic” Spem in alium where Spem hasn’t been the centrepiece of the performance. In fact, conductor Peter Phillips positively rushed it - and at the time I could have leapt from the Gallery screaming “I’ll teach you to ruin my favourite [...]

Cameron's woes: campaign director quits, clashes with party groups and senior MP asks "Is Emperor wearing any clothes?"

Hard on the heels of Mark Field MP's intervention, the Times reports other problems for Cameron: There was talk of a “wobble”, the first under Mr Cameron, within the parliamentary party and it emerged that George Bridges, the campaign director, was quitting. His departure was agreed two weeks ago but the disclosure yesterday added to the sense of unease in Tory circles. The Times report also

Rumours from Ealing Southall

During the by-election I had the wonderful opportunity to meet with many people (usually interns, researchers or organisers) from within the party super-structure. Apart from meeting some great people I also heard a few bits of gossip, here's a little summary of the more interesting things I heard. There's a long term plan within the party to change our name back to the 'Liberal' party. Our choice for London Mayor may be the ex-chief of police for Brixton (a man who changed drug policy so marijuana was simply confiscated which turned out to be highly successful). Ed Davey may stand ...

Prince Charles gives wife sheep for birthday

Is there a hidden message here?

Newsnight Brown film "doctored"

A little while ago I blogged about a film on Newsnight about Gordon Brown. Interestingly, the assembly of that film has now been called into question. The sequence of a meeting between the filmmaker and a Treasury assistant was changed so it looked like one incident happened before another, when in fact it happened afterwards. (I would add that the BBC have also been criticised for not making

Tory MP accuses Cameron of showing "contempt" towards Ealing Southall voters

Mark Field, Conservative MP for the Cities of London and Westminster has come out of the traps to criticise David Cameron's campaign at Ealing Southall. Mr Field was on Radio Four's PM last night and is all over the press this morning. That coverage emanates from an article he wrote on Conservative Home. It is very strong stuff. In the article, Field says that Cameron may have done "lasting

Has Prince Charles' disapproval saved Nicholas Witchell's career?

Being Royal Correspondent for BBC television can be a bit of a poisoned chalice. Jennie Bond did it for 14 years and has since eaten rather strange bugs on "I'm a Celebrity get me out of here!" If you aren't careful the Royal reporting role can leave you a little bit, well, compromised as a journalist. Nicholas Witchell seems to have done very well though. I was very surprised to see him

Floods

I feel for those drivers stuck on the M5 in Gloucestershire since 8am yesterday. Apparently things are moving again now. Also, one feels for all the people who were badly impacted by the floods yesterday, and particularly the family and friends of the one fellow who is missing. I usually work from home on a Friday so it was Murphy's Law that I went to work yesterday. Fortunately, due to some

David Steel retraces his father's life on Channel 4

I was rather surprised to turn on Channel 4 earlier this week and see David Steel on a programme "Empire's Children": Born in Scotland, David's life changed dramatically when he was 11 years old. His father, a Church of Scotland Minister, announced they were to move to Africa, to the British colony of Kenya. After four years, with the situation in Kenya becoming increasingly violent the family

Advocatus Diaboli

For mid term By Elections, in Government held seats, after 10 years in power Ealing Southall and Sedgefield are remarkably good results for Labour. I will enjoy as much as anyone the next few days of Tory turmoil as the wheels come off Cameron's bandwagon but I have to ask aloud whether the Lib Dems have a Plan B for a deeply unsettling scenario. That the " Brown Bounce" becomes the " Brown Recovery". I won't take any national polling seriously till after the Conference season churn is over in October. Its quite possible even likely that "events dear ...

Two more views on the by-election results

Over on other sites, both Stephen (Guardian) and myself (New Statesman) have pieces about the by-election results. I don’t think either of us are 100% keen on the headlines used

An ordinary working day

An article in the Western Mail on 14th July arguing for an increase in the number of Assembly Members to 80 so as to effectively scrutinise primary legislation has produced a predictable reaction in their letters' page. David Williamson's original piece pointed out that the Assembly already has 18 separate committees all of which need to be appointed from a pool of 45 available AMs. Fifteen Assembly Members are not eligible to serve on these committees because they are either in government or the Presiding Office. This is the situation now, before we have even started to properly legislate. ...

Day 2389: To the Big Brother Mobile!

Tuesday: Our new Home Secretay, Ms Jacqui Spliff[*], has decided to allow the police to use road cameras to track our EVERY WAKING MOVEMENT! This is of course only a temporary measure… until they can fit us all with GPS trackers in our HEADS to monitor everything we are THINKING too! Ms Spliff gave us the USUAL excuse, TELLING us that this is because we are facing an "UNPRECEDENTED" threat from terrorists. Now I thought that everyone was pretty much agreed that the lastest bunch of terrorists to crawl out of the woodwork were actually ...

Saturday 21st July 2007

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