Right lets catch up on this leadership election thing. There are a number of reasons why I've been feeling disenchanted with the whole leadership election. Inspiration Firstly, it doesn't seem that long ago that I was sitting watching contenders for the party leadership competing for my vote in the last contest, none of whom could I muster much enthusiasm for. I voted for Ming. I don't regret 
What a shame. James Graham is furiously typing up the interview he, Mary Reid, Linda Jack, Paul Walters, Jonathan Calder, Stephen Tall, Richard and Alex Wilcock (and possibly an elephant) did with Nick Clegg. So far we’ve had more meat than I think we’ve ever seen from Nick. It is a real pity that we didn’t get this interview sooner. I feel a lot more confident in my decision now.
This morning, the small group who interviewed Chris Huhne a fortnight ago (see part 1 and part 2) finally got a chance to put our questions to Nick Clegg - this time with Linda Jack but without Jonny Wroght. I’m running late doing this because I spent this afternoon having my hair cut so I now look like a human pinhead, and also because the sound quality on my iPod is appalling (something to do with the electrical equipment at Portcullis House I suspect - my recording of the Huhne interview at the Atrium down the road is fine). I’m ...
A note by Clairwil at the end of this week's BritBlog Roundup reminds me that Liberal England is hosting it next week. If you see any blog posts you think particularly fine over the next week, please send the link to britblog [at] gmail [dot] com. Any posting from a British-based blog or a British-born blogger made before Sunday lunchtime can be be nominated. And, yes, you can nominate something from your own blog. Thanks.
Thanks to Lib Dem Voice for pointing out that Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne will be debating the issues on Newsnight tomorrow (Tuesday, BBC2 10.30 p.m.) More on the programme's website. Let's hope Paxo is tough enough for this gig.
I'm back blogging and this time I'm angry! This blog has gone though another of its quiet periods, an odd time for one really given the Lib Dems are in the middle of a leadership election. But it has been in part my disenchantment with this election that has led to me feeling, essentially, that I couldn't be arsed. I have been busy with other things, but I've also been going through another one
I've commented before on how I suspect that issues around equality (is promoting equality of opportunity enough? or do we need more emphasis on delivering greater equality of outcome?) is one of the key philosophical differences between Chris Huhne and Nick Clegg. Don't get me wrong - I think both their beliefs sit more happily in the same party than plenty of pairs of Labour or Conservative MPs and their beliefs that I can think of! But I think there are some real differences here. All of which is a long introduction to saying - Chris has a piece today ...
I have been tagged with the Crazy Eight meme by Alix Mortimer. This may break me… 8 things I’m passionate about: The Dark Arts of Politics Hour Long US Dramas, especially Lost and Buffy Dystopian Novels. Religion (I’m not a fan) and Secularism (I am a fan) The Psychology of Cults Being against World Of Warcraft (see above) Human Knowledge, Pursuit Of, Study Of, Philosophy Of, Psychology Of, Philosophy of the Psychology Of… The Active Pursuit of the Dream of letting that which does not matter truly slide. (more…)
Newsnight, Tuesday, 10:30pm.
This afternoon I chaired the first meeting of the Environment Committee on the Review of Waste Management. An hour and a half wasn't bad for such a broad topic, and at the end of it we'd agreed the scope and the project plan. We aim to have carried out a comprehensive review of Stockton's handling of waste from households by the end of March next year, so lots of hard work between now and then. 
My question for Nick was to ask him to answer once and for all the charge that he was in favour of School Vouchers, a claim made as recently as last night by Lynne Featherstone on the Westminster Hour. Nick's response was that he was not now, nor had ever been an advocate of school vouchers. He explained that this misunderstanding arose when the journalists who interviewed him from the Observer and Telegraph took his advocacy of the Pupil Premium (which all good Lib Dems will know is already party policy) as being a voucher scheme. When Chris Huhne first ...
A very wet Monday in the rain in Lochee campaigning at the City Council by-election. Here's Nicol Stephen MSP, Chris Hall (Lochee candidate) and myself in the cafe at the Lochee Tesco store, escaping the rain! Tonight, at development quality committee, I moved refusal of the extension of a 24-hour take-away at the Peddie Street units, given residents' concerns about noise, etc. A disappointing result (I lost 22-2) and in my view detrimental to residential amenity.
Continuing my run of pissing on the tent from the outside... I feel I've been too harsh on old Huhne these past few days, so fuck it, let's give Clegg a well-deserved kicking too. The way I see it, if I attack them both, I'm bound to be in for job with whoever wins - I'm an equal opportunities bastard. It's also Monday, and I like to be mean on Mondays. A long time ago there was Paddy. And he led
I am feeling a tad tired, my day having started with a breakfast meeting at the Social Market Foundation to launch the "Spendometer" a brilliant idea to help people keep track of their money on their mobile, downloadable free, unless of course like me you have a basic no frills phone without WAP access. Actually I was pretty impressed with myself to be able to get up in time to catch the 7.28 from Bedford! But the breakfast meeting meant that I was in the vicinity at exactly the right time to be able to join fellow bloggers to interview ...
It’s worth pointing out at this point that: I didn’t get the ‘official’ emails from the two candidates I’ve had nothing through the post from either I’ve not had my membership card through. I’ve had no canvass calls. I wonder if the membership details the two candidates got weren’t as up to date as they could be? Will I get ballot papers? Did I give the wrong address? Questions Questions… I think I’d better get in touch with someone vaguely official. 
What the devil is going on? I put a counter on this blog on Tuesday of last week and for the first 4 days it showed that I was getting about 20 people a day viewing my mutterings, which is what I suspected would be about par. When I logged on on Saturday night I had jumped to about 400 hits and today it has gone totally ballistic - according to the counter I've had around 1500 people having a glance since last night. I can imagine 3 scenarios: 1. A newspaper or website has picked up on one of ...
This week at Clairwil.
Today, 19 November, is World Toilet Day. Enjoy yourself.
One good thing about moving house (assuming we manage to find somewhere and then complete on it in the next fortnight, which I concede might be pushing it) will be that the bombardment of mail that is this leadership contest will leave me alone and instead cascade onto whichever poor sap rents this place after me. Today I received another missive in the post from Chris Huhne, which I shall add to the top of the teetering pile together with the ones I have received already from Nick Clegg. And it may all come tumbling down if I add to ...
Thanks to Peter Harvey for pointing us to this photograph. It is taken from the St Petersburg Times and shows a Russian girl being fingerprinted for a British visa. O tempora, o mores.
I spent much of the weekend in Fenland. My County Council Group Leader, David Jenkins and I went 'on tour' visiting the Towns of the Fens. Ramsey, Chatteris, March and Wisbech. Lots of photographs, discussions with local activists, a demonstration for a road crossing with local children in Chatteris. A friendly welcome, as always and some of the best fish and chips in the country from Petrous in Chatteris, National Fish and Chip Shop of the Year Champions; made even better by the charming service we received. Great Food, Good Company, Excellent Campaigning. What else could a Lib Dem activist ...
When Parliament agreed the Human Fertilisation Embryology Act in 1990 it decided that surrogacy agreements were not enforcible - whether that is right or not I am not commenting. 36 Amendment of Surrogacy Arrangements Act 1985(1) After section 1 of the [1985 c. 49.] Surrogacy Arrangements Act 1985 there is inserted— “1A Surrogacy arrangements unenforceable No surrogacy arrangement is enforceable
You know, something that’s occured to me before is that Huhne’s strengths as a campaigner and as a policy maker, along with his ideas about internal party reforms and his goal of being a ‘champion’ of Lib Dem policies… none of these things actually require him to have the leadership in order to make these things happen. Nick, on the other hand, wants to reach out to people by talking about different types of things with the public and being an accessible, welcoming and above all competent face for the party. He can’t do this without the leadership role. I ...
Government propaganda more like. Hat-tip to Richard Holloway for showing me this laughably bad mini-game that fails to present how policy is made in government in a realistic way - for instance, where's the quiet word with the PM one hour after you make a gaffe on the Today Programme? Still, got to commend them for trying.
"Off to the Czech Republic, eh?" mused my friend, "Off mooching around Moravia, bumming around Bohemia, eh? eh?". "Yes" I replied. "Well, you know what you should do, don't you old chap?" he said in his inimitably whiney inflection, sopping on a long, thick Cohiba cigar, "you should bloody blog it, blog the whole bloody thing". I peered around the room. Intelligent, intrusive eyes penetrated my thoughts. Gladstone. Lloyd George. Churchill. Paddy Pants Down. We were in the National Liberal Club, and what a bloody wonderful place to be in. "Because you know what you're like", he continued, "you're like ...
I happened to be at St.Pancras International at the weekend, as a friend was getting a train from there (just to Derby, not on Eurostar). Had a little wander around and it does look pretty impressive. Even if it isn't actually finished yet. And one of the signs on the outside was broken (not lit up). They did have quite a long time to plan the opening... Anyway, it still looks good. Even if these photos don't. I am going to get a digital camera for Christmas - while that won't do anything about my terrible photography skills, it should ...
World Toilet Day may sound like a silly idea, but it has an important message. Across the world, 2.6 billion people do not have access to adequate sanitation (i.e. the toilets and sewerage systems that we so used to). This is part of our history - in 1858 in London the River Thames was literally an open sewer and children died in their thousands from diseases spread through streets covered in
Just when everyone was probably thinking the Lib Dem leadership contest was too boring, it's gone and got rather too interesting. What are they playing at? Or, more precisely, what is Chris Huhne playing at? Now, I only managed about 10 minutes of Question Time last week and didn't see the Jon Sopel ambush on the Politics Show. Well, I've seen the BBC clip of that part and read the online report, but I didn't see the programme. My general feeling from reading reports of hustings so far was that Huhne had been performing better than Clegg on the whole. ...
Liberal Democrat Councillors on Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council have reacted with disappointment to the news that the Council’s new home insulation scheme will only be free to people on benefits. When the Lib Dems ran the council as main partner of the Coalition until May this year, they introduced free insulation for all homes with residents either under five years old or over 60. However, Labour recently scrapped this scheme. Following pressure from the Liberal Democrats, the Labour-run council has now introduced a similar scheme for cavity wall and loft insulation, but it will only be free to householders ...
Amnesty International runs a regular campaign to send non-political (or religious) cards to victims of human rights violations and those who defend them. You can find out more at www.amnesty.org.uk/gc...
Welcome to the 39th of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (10th - 17th November), together with a hand-picked quintet you might otherwise have missed. Go on, guess which story’s dominated the last seven days’ blogs?
A couple of weeks ago, along with some of the Lib Dem Bloggers of the Year, I interviewed Chris Huhne (And is there Huhne still for tea) over tea and a box of doughnuts kindly provided by Millennium Elephant. Today Nick Clegg admitted that he was more nervous about meeting party bloggers than the world's press (or something like that) and even brought us tea and coffee himself. But no...
One of things the Liberal Democrats are trying out as part of the current leadership election is a video hustings on YouTube. Anyone can submit a video of themselves asking a question and five of these will be put to the two candidate, Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne, who will respond via video. You shouldn’t need anything more advanced than a camera phone that can handle video to record yourself asking a question. Here’s the introduction to the hustings from the party’s Chief Executive (and Acting Returning Officer) in what turned out to be one of the most watched videos ...
Richard Posner has an interesting post on the blog that he shares with Gary Becker about the bond market's movements on Iraqi debt and what that says about the facts on the ground in Iraq. Most liberals will agree with his conclusion: Friedrich Hayek's great legacy to economics was to show that the price system can aggregate vast amounts of information much more efficiently than a centralized bureaucracy can do. And intelligence agencies are centralized bureaucracies. The innumerable mistakes that the United States has made in Iraq suggest that our government does not have good means of obtaining and evaluating ...
A second helping! This is 7/4 Shoreline by Broken Social Scene.
There’s been a lot of ‘outraged of Libdemland’ blog posts about the ‘calamity’ document. Some have really gone off at the deep end suggesting that some cardinal and unforgivable sin has been committed. Now let’s be quite clear on a couple of things. First off - the title of the document is unacceptable - and I think Chris’s shock on being confronted with it was genuine. That said, who has not taken part in an election campaign during which some over-zealous supporter has overstepped the mark and had to be reigned in? It is unfortunate, but let not the sense ...
No snickering at the back… this is serious. Today is World Toilet Day, and on Wednesday, the UN’s International Year of Sanitation will begin. As Peter Newborne of the Overseas Development Institute comments, ‘in Europe, we take for granted a toilet on the premises, at home and work. In the developing world, however, almost one [...]
Ward: Combe Down App Ref: 07/03318/FUL Parish: N/A Registered: 14th November 2007 Expiry Date: 9th January 2008 Location: 6 Claverton Drive Claverton Down Bath BA2 7AJ Grid Ref: (E)377739 - (N)163173 LB Grade: N/A Proposal: Erection of conservatory to rear Officer: Richard Stott Applicant: Mr K Embleton Agent: J H Leeke And Son Ltd 6 Claverton Drive Claverton Down Bath BA2 7AJ Unit 1 Mwyndy Business Park Cardiff Road Pontyclun Rhondda Cynon Taff. CF72 8PN Ward: Combe Down App Ref: 07/03393/REG03 Parish: N/A Registered: 8th November 2007 Expiry Date: 3rd January 2008 Location: Foxhill Community Centre Hawthorn Grove Combe Down ...
Chris Huhne has successfully been painted as the radical candidate, yet he’s run an incredibly conservative campaign. I can’t help feeling that this reflects the state of the ‘radicals’ in the party. The so-called radicals I’ve come across seem to be incredibly conservative and formulaic. Its a shame, we need radicalism in the party. I try to [...]
One local story that hasn’t received the national coverage that it deserves is the University of Southampton’s plan to close the world-renowned Textile Conservation Centre at the Winchester School of Art. The Textile Conservation Centre is not just a centre of excellence. It is the worldwide centre of excellence in textile conservation research, education and practice. The majority of trained textile conservators around the world studied at TCC. Amongst other things, they’ve saved pirate flags, Nelson’s sails, the elephant man’s hat and Marlene Dietrich’s dresses. A petition against the closure has been launched on the Number 10 website and has ...
As predicted, the cuts in government grants have resulted in a reduction in fossil-fuel saving domestic schemes. LibDem MP Jenny Willott highlights the effect on a fledgling Welsh industry.
As I'm sure you'll all be fed up hearing by now, I recently was in an election to become a Vice Convener of the Scottish Lib Dems. The rules of engagement state that "no candidate nor any supporter may publish or circulate any material promoting his/her election. This prohibition includes the production of badges, posters, stickers, audio-visual or similar publicity material and any form of mechanical production (including photocopies or carbon copies) or any written material." I rather suspected that before mentioning my Candidacy on here I should check with the Returning Officer. I duly did so and received a ...
Surely I am not the only person who wonders why it took the Roman Catholic decades to admit that nuns beat children in orphanages in Ireland. Why they hid priest accused of abusing children. Why they obstructed police investigating abuse and refused to admit it was happening yet when IVF is offered to lesbian couples, the Roman Catholic Church reacts almost instantly. I wish all relgions would just learn to preach to the converted and stop trying to tell people of other denominations and none what they should be doing. Government has a legitimate role in dictating what all people ...
{Green Traffic Cone} Gordon Brown has finally got around to making a speech on the environment. The beef? Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said there will be a “green hotline” to advise people on what they can do to cut their impact on the environment. There is something about the word “hotline” that will be forever associated with John Major, partially because it is the only thing anyone can remember about his premiership. Not sure this was the wisest decision of Dr Brown ever. Share This
Please, if by some mischance you haven’t already, read this. In fact print it out, fold it up, and keep it in your weskitt pocket for whiling away the time at bus-stops.
The local paper in Norfolk, the Eastern Daily Press is running a campaign to support shops in small towns, which I support, but it also requires more than just simply shopping in a town. It requires you to look carefully at where you are shopping too. I still regularly go shopping where I used to live and where I was local councillor, in Fakenham. Although we live 20 miles from Fakenhan and just 5 miles from Norwich, it is far easier to travel there (it take 30 minutes), there is plenty of parking and despite what some people say, it ...
Earlier this year I wrote a piece for Iain Dale's Guide to Political Blogging in the UK about why I think MPs should blog. I'd not got round to uploading it to my website previously but with the question knocking round on various blogs as to whether or not the Liberal Democrat leadership candidates should be engaging online (e.g. by commenting on blog pieces) now seems a good time to get round to that: I started blogging back in 2003 because I could not bear the ‘you politicians you’re all the same’ type of comment. I wasn’t an MP at ...
Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Spokesman for Norwich South, Simon Wright, appeared on Anglia TV's Late Edition show on Thursday.
The head of the British Army has voiced concern about poor morale among troops and the strain placed on resources by operations invIraq and Afghanistan. An internal survey of views at all ranks of the...
I plucked this Neil Young track from my 'Classics' file. Enjoy!
I've just come back from an interview with Nick Clegg by a LibDems bloggers' panel. It was a big privilege to be part of the panel. Thanks very much to Nick for his time, to the Millennium Elephant for presiding over it and to his Daddy Richard for organising it. I was lucky enough to sit next to Nick and see him answering the questions at close quarters. He is remarkably impressive - extremely
The BBC are reporting that three Plaid Cymru MPs have been found guilty of spending taxpayers' money improperly after taking out adverts which broke parliamentary rules. Elfyn Llwyd, Adam Price and Hywel Williams have been told to repay the cost of the "campaigning" adverts. Plaid Cymru will now need to submit an accurate election expense return to the Electoral Commission that includes the cost of these advertisments, Because the £10,000 allowance that 'allows MPs to promote themselves and their work in the constituency' is still in its infancy the guilty trio will just get away with a slap on the ...
Last week I finally sold my “luxury” apartment, after trying to remove the gigantic millstone from around my neck for the better part of the last year. Unfortunately that didn’t mark the end of my dalliances in the property market, as I had to go house-hunting over the weekend, stumbling from awful house to awful house thinking that I would have to consign myself to decades of back-breaking penury just to buy one of the crumbling and horrifically furnished shacks put before me. To be fair, there were some nice ones. But the choice tended to be small-and-nice or big-and-yuck. ...
I recently read an article in the University of Sussex staff bulletin which highlighted a study undertaken by Steve Sorrell, a senior research fellow at the University’s Science & Technology Policy Research Centre which suggested that by being more energy efficient, we can actually increase emissions - an interesting concept I thought, and was intrigued to read further. The idea is, that where a person makes an effort to increase efficiency in some way, there is often a rebound effect. For example, if a person replaces their car with a more fuel-efficient model, they are likely to take advantage of ...
When a political contest is restricted to just two competitors it is bound to start to focus on personalities. When there is a clearly billed front runner, they are bound to play safe - at least in public (though behind the scenes things may be somewhat different!). The other candidate can't play safe, otherwise they will just fade into obscurity. It is the same in the Clinton/Obama battle. So
Earlier I mentioned Vince Cable’s excellent performance on the Today programme. Now in today’s post comes a letter from a local member, commenting favourably on Vince’s performance at Prime Minister’s Question Time. PMQs now open with naming the latest war dead. As an ex-serviceman, my correspondent goes on to say “Sending condolences to the [...]
It became abundantly clear during the campaign phase that the endorsement rules have become a nonsense for selections for Regional lists, and they were a cause of frustration to candidates and Returning Officers alike. So here’s the Rule that was the cause of such grief. 4.2 e) No material issued by candidates shall include any endorsements of the candidate, by word or implied by photograph.
Guido Fawkes helpfully links to an online copy of Chris Huhne's dossier on Nick Clegg's views. Shorn of its calamitous headline, it is nothing more than a collection of press cuttings which suggest that Nick has indeed succeeded in giving different people different impressions of his views at various times. Surely this is the normal cut and thrust of debate? What Nick is making an official complaint about I cannot imagine. Convincing a wide range of people that you agree with them is one of the political arts. And Nick Clegg is certainly good at it. The latest illustration of ...
This leadership election is, inevitably, getting a little messy. Why inevitably? Because attempts are being made to create massive policy differences where they simply don’t exist, on matters which are important to activists, but far less so to electors. In case the advisors to Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne don’t know, the key talking points [...]
Well, not Nick Clegg so much as his great great aunt Moura Budberg. I have written an article for the New Statesman website telling the story of Nick's scandalous forebear who was the lover of H. G. Wells, Maxim Gorky and a famous British spy, and quite possibly indulged in some espionage of her own. Given my nostalgic feelings for the Statesman in the 1970s, I am feeling rather chuffed. For a photograph of Moura, see an earlier posting of mine.
Thank you to Lord Bonkers for drawing my name from his hat and thereby selecting me as one of the winners of a copy of the Taking Liberties DVD . And thank you to Jonathan Calder for running the competition. I didn’t get to see the film at the cinema, so I’m looking forward to it!
This morning the Today programme had items on Northern Rock (Vince Cable was brilliant), climate change targets, invalidity benefits, a controversial heroin treatment scheme, and whether IVF babies need to have a father on the birth certificate. Last Friday an equally diverse segment included giving the Minister a hard time over jobs & training; plus salmon [...]
Those of us who were concentrating on loss of lottery money to Welsh organisations as a result of the funding arrangements for the 2012 London Olympics were in for a shock this morning. It seems that some private sector bodies are reviewing their funding policies as well. Lloyds TSB has sponsored the Gymanfa Ganu every year since 1979. But they have now told the National Eisteddfod that funding will not continue next year due to the bank’s financial commitment to the Olympics. There is a real danger that this decision could set the trend for other private sponsors of Welsh ...
Labour AM, Huw Lewis, has gone public with his concerns about the One Wales' government's budget today and in particular, that his party's partnership with Plaid Cymru is diluting their commitment to eradicating child poverty: Mr Lewis, who was recently appointed chairman of the Assembly’s expert group on child poverty in Wales, said that without clear spending plans for proposals like the wrap-around “Dignity” family support programme, many of Wales’s most vulnerable children would stay trapped in a cycle of poverty. He said, “I’ve been continually asking colleagues in Government about the Dignity Programme since May, and I’ve not received ...
I was back on Radio 4's The Westminster Hour last night - a nice quite political time to appear, not! If you missed it, you can listen again on the BBC website.
The Welsh Assembly's Standards' Committee is meeting on Wednesday evening to discuss, amongst other things, the use of blog sites by members. The agenda tells us that the Committee is invited to consider the issue of Members publishing to blog sites and the potential for this to result in breaches of the Code of Conduct, and consider whether to issue a note to Members regarding the use of blogs. People often complain about the creation of a nanny state. It seems that the nanny state culture is alive and well within the National Assembly for Wales itself. What will they ...
After popping down to Devon to see Vic's mum, we managed to get a round in on the Teignmouth's excellent "adventure golf" course on the Den. Not quite as busy as normal, well it is November, which also meant we weren't caught behind family groups with young kids not providing any coaching or guidance on at least hitting the ball safely, let alone towards the hole... It was yet another close game, but this time neck and neck between Mrs M and myself going into the last hole. Unfortunately Vic had had a mare and was never in it. That ...
*sigh* I'm not going to give them the oxygen of publicity by linking to them, but whoever has been posting anonymous attack blogs on Huhne under the pseudonym "Chris Almighty" - stop it, and stop it NOW. Liberal Democrats Do Not Do That Sort Of Thing. That is all.
I often find myself wondering in politics what my life would be like if I'd been brought up in a strongly Labour or Tory household. I've been a Liberal Democrat ever since I was able to vote. I was admittedly delighted when Labour annihilated the Tories in 1997 - however my views of Labour (and socialism) have taken a long road away from both since then. But I have to accept that my upbringing and social class make me a prime candidate to become a Liberal Democrat. The house I grew up in happens to be in the Mosaic demographic ...
I can claim to have encouraged Chris Huhne to stand for the leadership when Charles Kennedy stepped down, while simultaneously believing and saying for some time that Nick Clegg will be/should be the next party leader. I can also claim to have opposed both of them over the anodyne and partly mistaken views of the [...]
Today’s newspaper headlines are unsurprising: Clegg complains as Lib Dem leadership race turns ugly (The Independent) Lib Dem leadership contest turns nasty in TV studio clash (The Guardian) Chris Huhne targets ‘Calamity Clegg’ for Lib Dem leadership (Daily Mail) Lib Dem leadership rivals clash on TV (The Times) I hope in the cool, clear light of a Monday morning, both [...]
Chris K , Rob Knight on Liberal Review and Jonathan Calder have all blogged on the horrific news that a gang rape victim had her punishment, yes, her punishment of 90 lashes increased to 200 for having the cheek to appeal her sentence. And last week, we heard reports from the Chief of Police in Basra that 42 women in the city had been murdered between July and September for not covering up;
http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/1811_fiona_phillips.shtml
Listening to a group of women who shall remain nameless today you would have thought girls don't go out to party... They were telling me all about how you should never have a facial (you might have a ...
I thought this was quite funny, so I stole it from Nich Starling's blog. Please post accusations of hypocrisy and character-slurring in the comment section below.
This afternoon, the House of Lords will debate a Bill that, inter alia, removes the need for IVF providers to consider the child's need for a father when deciding on an IVF application, and allows the lesbian partner of a woman receiving treatment to be considered the other parent. Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor has written to The Times arguing that the Bill "radically undermines the place of the father in a child’s life, and makes the natural rights of the child subordinate to the desires of the couple". He describes the Bill as "profoundly wrong". This gets to the heart of the ...
We had our Christmas Fair this weekend, and it went very well. It's nice when people come away from an event planning the extra things they are going to do next year! Nick and Chris dropped in. I've already declared for Nick, but I'll admit that Chris won the first points by arriving early and staying the longest. Nick was on a very tight schedule, and it does annoy helpers when MP's are looking at their watches as soon as they arrive. But I haven't changed my view. Chris has this sort of self aware thing most MP's have, I'm ...
The biggest myth seems to be that marketisation and choice equals privatisation. That is not the case. If we were to privatise the education system we’d just sell off all the state schools and their assets and not have any assistance to people to send their children to school, we’d just let people pay for themselves. [...]
Now that we've all had a chance to sleep on the unfortunate events of yesterday, I would like to suggest a way forward to move on. First, Chris and Nick need to have a conversation. I don't want to know the gory details, but I want to see some sort of statement that the issues are resolved between them and that Nick has withdrawn his complaint. I want to see some recognition on Chris' part that the release of the document and his behaviour on the Politics Show. I don't want to see grovelling, just a bit of grown up ...
Now let me say before I begin that I have already declared that I am voting for Nick Clegg. Having seen all the fuss via Lib Dem Blogs I watched the clip from the Politics Show myself and was fairly gob smacked. My views can probably be best summed up by Chris and Glynis Abbott, Nich Starling and [...]
Whatever one thinks of the public spat on the Politics Show yesterday, and plenty of bloggers have made their views plain enough, not entirely always to their own credit, I can't help feeling that this is not the cleverest of moves: BBC NEWS | Politics | Lib Dems consider Clegg complaint: Senior Liberal Democrat officials are to consider a complaint by leadership contender Nick Clegg over a document describing him as a "calamity". That paper was issued from the camp of leadership rival Chris Huhne. Writing on his website, Mr Huhne "sincerely apologised" and "disassociated himself from it". Mr Clegg's ...
I have to say with a certain smugness that I was out in the pissing rain and blustery icy wind delivering Lib Dem leaflets while our two men in suits were spitting feathers at each other on John Sopel's lunchtime politics show. And reading some of the blog comments on it, especially, though understandably I guess as the "victim" of the briefing document with which Sopel ambushed Huhne, in the Cleggosphere, I was prepared to be confronted with a truly undignified public school spat complete with debaggings and wedgies. So, having just now watched it, and having already read the ...
It may have bolstered Clegg's campaign - either by indignation, outrage, stupidity or just clumsyness - but eitherway it seems to be the settled opinion that it wasn't wise or pleasant... To quote Harry Willcock "I am a liberal - i am against this sort of thing" It would be good if we could get back to "why I want to be leader" and away from "why he shouldn't be leader"
The Liberal Democrat Leadership election is starting to look as unedifying as the media ferment that saw Ming having to resign, and this time it’s largely self-inflicted by fellow Lib Dems. Despite that, I’m still happier with both candidates than with any of those on offer last year (and, yes, that does mean I think Chris has improved enormously). I can see advantages in each candidate that the other lacks, and drawbacks that the other doesn’t share. So to help me make up my mind, I’m trying to consider what a Leader is actually for, rather than the current vitriol. ...
As I recently added the Political Compass feature to my profile on Facebook I was asked to take the test again. This was the fifth time I had taken the test since March 2004 when I was introduced to it. | < | November 2007 | > | ||||
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