I am on the train heading home now. Tomorrow is Northern Regional conference. I have a stall there selling of all things the latest products from my jam range. The region takes the profits! My jams appear to be in demand. Cowley St today was down to the last scrapings from the last jar in the fridge and there were polite requests that more should be broughts in next week. And the other evening I 
It's good to see that Al Gore, maker of the environmental film "An Inconvenient Truth", has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, along with the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. A day ago a senior judge criticised nine errors in the film, but the Nobel Prize recognises the significant effect that the film has had in changing people's attitudes towards global warming. You may recall that we arranged a local showing of "An Inconvenient Truth" and we've been trying to get the film shown on TV. Maybe it's still a bit too inconvenient for the establishment. How different history ...
I have always been an admirer of Sarah Ludford. Unlike some of our MEPs, she has always struck me as a practical politician rather than an evangelist for the European project. Each week she sends out an e-mail bulletin. In the latest one (the story is not on her website yet) she writes: Only weeks after I asked the European Commission to investigate the dangers of bendy buses and the reasons for their poor safety record, another awful incident has occurred. This week saw the tragic and distressing accident when a man was killed after being dragged by a bendy ...
If you're applying for a school place for next year, it's vital that your application meets the deadline of 4.30pm on Friday 19 October, otherwise it will be treated as a late application and dealt with after those received on time. With further postal strikes possible, the safest bet is to apply online at www.southglos.gov.uk/admissions or hand deliver your form to Student Access and Support Team, South Gloucestershire Council, Department for Children and Young People, Riverside Court, Bowling Hill, Chipping Sodbury, South Gloucestershire BS37 6JX. There's also another alternative - if forms are handed in to ANY main South Gloucestershire ...
My column returns to Liberal Democrat News this week, but thanks to the postal strike I have not seen a copy of the paper yet. A snappy headline will appear here Welcome back to Westminster. Most MPs expected to be out on the streets by now, wrestling with letterboxes and being harassed by Jack Russells. Instead they find themselves in the Commons listening to Alistair Darling help himself to fistfuls of Tory policies. Gordon Brown, it has to be admitted, has made a fool of himself. But let’s be clear why. It is not because he has failed to call ...
The SouthGate project started its next phase this week with the official groundbreaking ceremony. Since Multi came on board the project has really been progressing well. All the old buildings have been demolished. Now the underground part can be dug out and the new buildings started. Image from the SouthGate picture gallery shows the scheme well. It is replacing a really...
Two columnists have taken markedly different views today of the future of Sir Menzies Campbell's leadership of the Liberal Democrats. Writing in the East Anglian Daily Times, Graham Dines says: With no election in prospect for at least 18 months, will Lib Dem MPs put pressure or Sir Ming to stand down? Since he took over, the party at best has been treading water and at worse appearing to be directionless.But while Sir Ming's speech in Brighton to his party's conference did not galvanise the voters, the Lib Dems would be - to borrow a phrase from the late Lord ...
I have always found Harriet Harman a particularly irritating politican. I think it has something to do with her patronising tone of voice that seems to say: 'I am both more intelligent and have better intentions than you. So if you disagree with what I am saying you are either a knave or a fool.' It's a quality she shares with other prominent Labour women, Margaret Jay and Patricia Hewitt being prime examples. Ms Harman was at her worst with the announcement on Question Time last night that she thinks Parliament not the prime minister should have the power to ...
Whether people like it or not the Ming question is out there, in the blogs, in the press and I would expect ready for a fresh bout of stories when the Sunday papers comes out. I find it a bit rich that some Lib Dems are protesting that the press is talking about the press comments on blog postings. Normally they would be leaping up and down with joy at blogs getting quoted, proving the power of
Labour in my ward have made the absurd and outrageous claim that Lib Dem Newcastle introduced a recycling policy that immediately had to be reverse at the cost of millions of pounds. The claim appeared in a leaflet they delivered last week (they clearly thought there was an election about to happen!) So I checked with John Shipley, leader of Newcastle Council, to ask him what Labour were on about 
I see that my old friend Jonathan Fryer has redesigned his blog. Looks good. Not too fussy. Neat and easy to navigate around. Nicely done Jonathan.
I was impressed by 87-year old Doris Lessing's cantankerous reaction to winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. After claiming that the Nobel Prize judges had told her in the sixties that they didn't like her, she comments: "So now they've decided they're going to give it to me. So why? I mean, why do they like me any better now than they did then?" and adding "They can't give a Nobel to someone who's dead so I think they were probably thinking they had better give it to me now before I popped off."
So, with no General Election, and the nights drawing in, MPs return to work. Sure enough the anonymous anti-Ming briefings resume. It seems that there are some MPs who have learnt nothing from the unpleasant, damaging and brutal way that Charles Kennedy was dispatched. It began with the constant drip drip of briefings to journalists from 'senior frontbench spokespeople' So the same pattern seems to be emerging. Todays Telegraph reports: One senior frontbencher said: "Time is up. We have had a life-threatening experience. The whole dynamic changes, now that there is no election for 18 months. We will get him. ...
Lib Dem President Simon Hughes, interviewed for GMTV’s programme on Sunday, has this to say about the party leadership, according to the BBC: “The leadership is always an issue in all of the parties, we live in a presidential system and therefore the leader has to continually do well and better and he had a good [...]
The ballot papers have gone out, and with them the candidates' manifestos. If the Royal Mail gets through the backlog created by the postal strike, some of you might even receive your ballot papers within the next few days! If you're reading this because my manifesto has led you to this website, then "welcome". I'll be adding a lot of new material to this site now that the ballot papers are going out, so do please keep coming back. You can contact me by commenting on this site, emailing matthew.harris@hotmail.co.uk or calling me on 020 8440 5866.
A media lie when repeated often enough becomes the truth. Discuss. I raise the point because the BBC is now peddling the same rubbish LDV criticised the Grauniad for just a few hours ago: The Lib Dems’ conference week in Brighton was overshadowed by speculation - denied by all concerned - about possible leadership bids by environment [...]
The very few by-elections held yesterday say one thing very clearly. The Lib Dems are not about to vapourise and disappear as the Tories would like to believe. Read HERE to see the results.
A few weeks ago when it was announced who the finalists were in the category of Lib Dem blogger of the year were announced a number of people offered advice to me, the most notable of which was that I should write more in depth analytical stories which will appeal more to Liberal Democrats. So, at least twice a week I sit down and write something in much greater depth, less tabloid and more broadsheet in style, which I hope will appeal to Lib Dems and others alike. Given that I have taken the advice on and am writing in ...
Perhaps it is just me, but isn't there something spookily similar about David Miliband and Michael Portillo ? I wondered at first if the Labour Minister was Portillo's love child ?
The real Iain Dale raised the issue of Kelvin MacKenzie's attack on Scots entrepreneurship last night. The BBC now reports that a considerable battery of fire is being aimed at Mr MacKenzie. I am delighted. Kelvin MacK has been cruising for a bruising for a long time. He is ignorant. Pure and simple. He thinks that if he shouts it will make his words sound more intelligent and weighty than they 
I, for one, welcome our new asexual overlords… Humans and most other types of organism reproduce sexually. The union of sperm and eggs results in two copies (or a pair) of genetic instructions within a cell, one copy inherited from each parent. This produces two nearly identical copies of each gene in each cell, and therefore two nearly identical proteins. The “re-shuffling” of genetic material over many generations allows sexual animals to adapt to changes in their natural environment. In contrast, many asexual organisms have died out because their rigid genetic make-up means they are unable to adapt in this ...
Londoners might not believe it having the GLA and all that - here in Stockport we are part of the AGMA (Association of Greater Manchester Authorities) - it’s a loose collection of authorities with no real decision making powers compared to a regional or city-wide assembly. There are ten borough that make up AGMA and there have been recent meetings about the voting rights and voting balances of the Strategic Commission on Economic Development. This is concerned with the new arrangements for AGMA for Economic Development of the Greater Manchester area. The ten Borough Leaders have one vote each to decide ...
I have to admit that I've watched the events of the past few days with increasing despair. I'll be honest, I didn't vote for Ming as my first choice (he got my second preference). Naturally, I thought that my choice (Chris Huhne) was better, but I accepted the verdict of the membership as I had in the past (in fairness, having voted for Beith against Ashdown and Rendel against Kennedy, I had
While watching Newsnight and browsing the Newsnight website late last night I came across the story of a petition on the number 10 website that had just sixty odd signatures attached to it. The petition was a call for an election in 2007 - I wrote about it last night as well. Basically Gordon Brown mentioned it in the House of Commons and made a great deal out of the lack of signatures, saying at the time that it had just 26 signatures (thanks!) - he also said he was going to monitor it - well it now has more ...
A fair while ago there was an article on the Times website about allergies - basically from some woman saying stop whinging, don’t be rude and just eat whatever I put in front of you when I serve dinner - which was nice. Actually it made a fairly well reasoned argument that far too many people jump on the allergy bandwagon just because they don’t like a food, become slightly bloated after eating a food or are on a diet and its easier to claim an allergy than say “oooo I’m not eating that it makes me fat” or worse ...
Looks like Simon Pegg is going to be playing the engineering legend on the Starship Enterprise when it next leaves Earth in 2008. Star Trek XI goes back to the shows roots and is based on the same Enterprise as captained by James T Kirk. In fact it will feature James T Kirk (not yet cast), Spock (the guy who plays Sylar in Heroes), Scotty (Simon Pegg) and the rest of the gang - not sure Pegg is right for Scotty - he isn’t Scottish! David Tennant should play Scotty - has all the right qualities - geeky, clever and ...
Peter, Colin and I are off to Warrington tonight for dinner with Simon Hughes. It's the Warrington Lib Dems fundraising meal. Jo Crotty and her Warrington team came to Liverpool recently to help us by knocking on doors and delivering leaflets. So now we are going to help her by....... eating lots of food and having a good time. Looks like we've got the best end of this deal!
On 24dash.com: A gaffe from Tory mayoral candidate Boris Johnson reduced Labour MPs to helpless laughter and prompted protests in the Commons. … It was triggered after Mr Efford (Eltham) noted archly that Mr Johnson had made scant contribution to the debate. “The candidate for the mayoral seat for the Conservative Party doesn’t seem to have a view on any of this,” he remarked. Rising swiftly, Mr Johnson observed: “Anything that encourages more cooperation and consultation between the mayor and the boroughs is a good thing.” Heckled by Mr Efford that he didn’t know what was being discussed, he added: ...
Struggling to get much done this week after the hectic few weeks we had until Brown bottled it. The highlight of my week was heading over to Wembley to see the excellent Rush. I saw them a couple of years ago on their 30th anniversary tour and they were fantastic - playing a 'greatest hits' set. This time they played a fair few tracks off the new 'Snakes and Arrows' album as well as plenty of old favourites. So here's some new Rush: And here's some old stuff too (with Liberals in mind):
A brace of good results in last night’s local by-elections in Horsham and Chippenham. Congratulations to Belinda Walters and Mark Packard. Jonathan Wallace has the full figures.
And in particular for the benefit of Andrew Pierce of The Daily Telegraph and Hélène Mulholland of The Guardian. First, please do try and get our name right. It’s simple common courtesy. A look at the mast-head or website address may help. This is Liberal Democrat Voice. We can happily live with Lib Dem Voice. But [...]
Colin Ross has reiterated his call for a referendum following various pronouncements this week from MPs, Government and the President of the European Commission.
Horsham DC, Holbrook West LD Belinda Walters 602 (43.9; +11.1), Con 554 (40.4; -6.5), BNP 163 (11.9; +11.9), Lab 52 (3.8; +0.2), [Ind (0.0; -16.6)]. Majority 48. Turnout 32.2%. LD gain from Con. Last fought 2007. Chippenham TC, Pewsham LD Mark Packard 493 (58.8), Con 346 (41.2). Majority 147. Turnout 19.5%. LD gain from Con.
Only just taken delivery of the council byelections for yesterday. 2 gains from the Tories: Election Results: Thursday 11th October 2007. Horsham DC, Holbrook West LD Belinda Walters 602 (43.9; +11.1), Con 554 (40.4; -6.5), BNP 163 (11.9; +11.9), Lab 52 (3.8; +0.2), [Ind (0.0; -16.6)]. Majority 48. Turnout 32.2%. LD gain from Con. Last fought 2007. Chippenham TC, Pewsham LD Mark Packard 493 (
For the conspiracy theorists among you, the fact that Lib Dem Voice has crashed on the same day as it is cited by both The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph as fuelling the pressure faced by party leader, Ming Campbell, might be just too much. I have my own theory: the LDV servers have revolted at the misnaming of the website by both those august journals as Liberal Voice. I would have thought
I'm absolutely outraged at Kelvin MacKenzie's anti-Scottish diatribe on question time last night and feel the BBC should issue a public apology for his nonsense. He claimed: "Scotland believes not in entrepreneurialism like London and the South east." Adding: "The reality is that the Scots enjoy spending it, they don't enjoy creating it which is the opposite of down south." What a stupid buffoon! He's obviously never heard of Ann Gloag, Tom Farmer, David Murray, Tom Hunter or even Andrew Carnegie. never mind the thousands of other Scots involved in running successful businesses. Perhaps he should check his facts before ...
The saga of the Assets Recovery Agency seems to me like an episode of The Apprentice. On the TV show, SirAlan gives the teams a few hundred pounds, sends them out with a task, and expects them to come back with a profit. But usually one (or even both) of the teams screws up, and comes back with 8p and a half-chewed biscuit, or something. Sadly, with the Assets Recovery Agency, it was £65m the team was given - and they came back with a rather paltry £23m, meaning they spent about £2.80 for every £1 they took off the ...
I am aghast that Al Gore has won a Nobel Peace Prize for his propaganda piece ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. This is a film which contradicts the best available science and exaggerates grossly. Johan Norberg is not impressed especially given Gore’s admission of exaggerating the facts for propaganda reasons. I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation [...]
To th’editor of the Telegraph Sir,I am humbled and astonished to discover from today’s article on Ming Campbell that many subtle nuances had been concealed from me on the Lib Dem Voice thread to which I contributed on 8-11th October. Not the least astonishing thing was that I have evidently been getting the name of the website wrong. And so have the site administrators. “Liberal Voice” you say? Well, I shall endeavour to remember it. How relieved I am that you were able to point out that the entire thread was “swamped” with messages demanding the resignation of Ming, when left to my own feeble devices I would ...
Ming Campbell's leadership of the Lib Dems has come under attack over the last three days in the newspapers. Both The Independent ('Delayed election revives criticism of Lib Dem leader') and The Telegraph ('Sir Ming warned as Lib Dems seek poll boost') have used rather selective quotes from Lib Dem blogs to suggest that Ming is under coming under great pressure. Lib Dem bloggers have railed against the highly pejorative use of their good offices. But clearly all is not well in the world of the Lib Dems. An IPSOS MORI poll in today's Sun puts the Lib Dems on ...
Tonight I am going to Rochdale for dinner with Ming Campbell. This is not though a candle-lit soiree involving just the two of us, a bottle or two of wine and some increasingly risque comments, unfortunately, fun though that would certainly be. I wouldn’t take him to Rochdale for that. Especially not now that Croma is almost up and running in Prestwich Village. Nothing impresses a date more than some great-value pizza just a stone’s throw from my house. Instead, this is a fund-raiser and mass party event held by Paul Rowen, the Rochdale MP. And it’s in the town ...
Just a link really - in case you missed it Adam Sampson, Chief Executive of Shelter, writes in the Guardian today on the undesirability of perpetuating the myth that home ownership is wealth generating and calls for more tax on property rather than less, including land value taxes: Adam Sampson: The price of house mania ...What we have is a classic disjunction between two policies, housing and taxation. Promoting affordable housing means making it more difficult to gain wealth by investment in home ownership. It means increasing taxation on the increase in the capital value of homes, not reducing it. ...
{Noah smiling} Smiling and purposefully bashing large purple caterpillars - what more is there to life?
Redcar and Cleveland Council successfully prosecuted 68 flytippers last year, as it tackled a total of 4,305 incidents, which cost £352,972 to clear up. Tyres, chemicals, building materials, furniture and household rubbish are just some of the items that crews have to deal with in places as diverse as laybys on the A171 and Skippers Lane Industrial Estate to open space in Dormanstown and Kilton Lane. The Council has joined forces with the Environment Agency in a region-wide crackdown targetting criminals posing as waste collection businesses. By law, all businesses must be registered with the Agency if they carry, collect ...
1. Did you know there was a minister Responsible for Identity (seriously - that’s what they’re calling her these days). 2. Did you know she’s not just going to be running ID cards, which you’ll register for at 16, but the whole “check in” to “check out” system, as the Home Office is taking over the General Records Office, registrars of birth, deaths and marriage. Essentially they’ll be tracking you from cradle to grave. The wonderful John Lettice dissects the decision so brilliantly I can only quote: The uncontentious register that previously existed will, as of next April, be run ...
I wrote some time ago that this had the potential to be a memorable night and that’s exactly what it was. I also said “The lead singer of the Guillemots is Birmingham-born Fyfe Dangerfield, a name to remember with a voice to remember. The Guillemots are his own orchestra, so to see how he can combine them with CBSO is a truly exciting prospect.” Well last night, the CBSO became his orchestra! During the first half they premiered a piece composed by Fyfe which twisted and turned and conjured up all sorts of images to create an orchestral fairytale. The ...
Liberal Democrats have voted for the philosopher John Stuart Mill as the greatest British Liberal in history. Party members at the Brighton Conference, together with subscribers to the Journal of Liberal History, took part in the poll, which ended at the Liberal Democrat History Group's fringe meeting on the last night of Conference.
Thank goodness I packed enough socks! I was half expecting the Prime Minister to dissolve Parliament on Tuesday and send us all home on Wednesday, but his interview last weekend ensured I packed enoug...
This is one of the less severe techniques used by the CIA to interrogate terrorist suspects. If the video doesn't work: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ1NYizv2sw
It's pronounced "rollocks" - for non-maritime types. If they can't even get the name of Liberal Democrat Voice right - they repeatedly call it "Liberal Voice" and they don't name the "senior frontbencher" or the "senior LibDem" quoted, and they don't quote many of the NAMED positive comments about Ming on LibDem blogs - only the unnamed or pseudonymous negative ones, why in the name of Sam Hill
A clash of meetings last night meant a choice between the North Road Community Partnership and the Public Protection Forum. I chose the former, which turned out to be a challenging meeting - though not for me, for a change. Nick Wallis, Cabinet member for Health and Leisure, attended the meeting as part of his peripatetic listening journey. Not quite William Cobbett's "Rural Rides", but with
My grip on reality is never at its strongest at 7am, so it is the worse for me when I leave my radio tuned to Xfm rather than #4, because then I get woken up by Xfm news. This typically starts with garbled versions of the three stories uppermost in the tabloids’ minds, then finishes on a fourth item that is either music-related and utterly mundane (”Following their sell-out gig at Brixton, the Foos have said they are feeling a bit tired”) or so bizarre and disturbing it was surely made up to fill in airwaves. This can be the only explanation for the ...
We have long been campaigning for land at Tonmawr, originally allocated for housing but never used, to be released - after minimal restoration - for much needed informal recreational use. Now we see that Seven Sisters Community Council is making a similar call in respect of a former ash tip. Both stories raise the question of what the "Communities First" programme actually achieves.
The link is to Dr Rant's post about hospital acquired infection. In that he effectively supports my arguments in my EDM about HAI. - see earlier this week.
When the Assembly Government went ahead with the construction of the Wales Millennium Centre there were a number of us who had doubts. It was inevitable that such a project was going to need substantial public revenue subsidy. Yet our fears were assuaged by promises of equal funding for projects outside of Cardiff, as well as an assurance that the business plan was robust and not overly-optimistic as had happened elsewhere. We became less easy when the new Labour Arts Minister scaled back the commitment to non-Cardiff based arts projects and as successive motions came to Plenary asking us to ...
Welsh and Scottish farmers are not to be compensated for loss of earnings from movement restrictions due to the Pirbright foot-and-mouth disease outbreak. £12.5 million has been allocated to English farmers. It seems that the Treasury is still punishing DEFRA for its £500 million failed computer project to process EU farm payments to English farmers. (Wales and Scotland adopted less sophisticated systems, and paid out more or less to time.) The immediate result was to cut other DEFRA budgets, such as that for inland waterways. Now it seems that justice for Welsh and Scottish farmers is to go the same ...
Wednesday: Now, I KNOW that I am TOO LITTLE to have my own car JUST YET, but this prototype looks VERY COOL! And – more importantly – because it uses HYDROGEN FUEL it has ZERO Carbon Dioxide emissions from driving. {Posted by Picasa} Its makers, General Motors (who actually own Vauxhall so they sort of made Daddy's tank Penfold, too), have created a "Project Driveway" to give over a hundred drivers Fuel Cell cars like this for a year. HINT HINT! Maybe Daddy could try one out for me! HINT HINT! Failing that, and since it IS a prototype, maybe ...
"Every few hundred years in Western history there occurs a sharp transformation. Within a few short decades society - its worldview, its basic values, its social and political structures, its arts, its key institutions - rearranges itself, and the people born then cannot even imagine a world in which their grandparents lived and into which their parents were born, We are currently living through such a transformation" Peter Drucker, "The Post-Capitalist Society" Chapter 1, 1993 In "The Future of Money" former Belgian central banker Bernard Lietaer suggests two examples of Drucker's "sharp transformation". {Johannes Gutenberg - inventor of the printing ...
I found a complete beauty today in The Cherwell, one of the two main student newspapers at Oxford University. It comes at the end of an article criticising Oxford's Permanent Private Halls (PPHs), semi-independent academic institutions within the University. They have a slightly different status from the normal Colleges, and are mostly small schools run by religious orders, teaching "subjects" such as theology, and with a high percentage of mature and postgraduate students. According to a recent internal report, PPHs are unsuitable for undergrad students of school-leaving age, and often fail to live up to the "liberal ethos" found in ...
The problem with referenda is oddly comparable of the current state of General Elections in the UK. That is to say, Gordon Brown will only call a General Election at a point in time when he thinks he is most likely to win. It is the same with referenda: proponents of a certain position on a certain issue will only demand a referendum on that issue when they know they will win. It is not unreasonable to suggest that they will always act in this way – rational self-interest points them in such a direction, and after all - who ...
The BBC reports: A community group in the Indian city of Calcutta says it has been sued by JK Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books, for breach of copyright.The group has been building a huge model based on Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry as part of celebrations for a Hindu festival.A court in the capital, Delhi, will start hearing the case on Friday.Given that I have proved that Rowling derived much of her inspiration from the film Carry on Camping, I think this is a bit rich. | < | October 2007 | > | ||||
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