LibDem Blogs - Archived! - Monday 21st January 2008

Crime in a market town

Marcus James Hall, 26, of Shakespeare Avenue, Taunton, possession of mphetamine, £50 fine, £15 compensation, £60 costs; found in Sims Scrap Yard for an unlawful purpose, 12 days prison; possession of a lock knife for use in or in connection with a theft, 12 days prison (concurrent). (G). Addie Josephine Hope Harris, 19, of Allington Close, Taunton, possession of an air rifle and ammunition in Corporation Street, Taunton, disorderly behaviour, failed to surrender to bail, 12 months community order. Rafal Stanislaw Melkowski, 27, of Salisbury Street, Taunton, speeding, £60 fine, £15 compensation, £60 costs, three points.Ceri-Leah Shirley Fay Jackson, 22, ...

Three Cheers to AVDC Cycling Team (Bike It)

A few years ago the Wendover Parish Council sent, on my request, a letter to Chiltern Rail. The letter pointed out the inadequacy of the existing cycle racks at the Wendover station as they were exposed to the elements and insufficient. It also appealed for a solution to crossing the rail tracks for wheeled punters (prams, pushchairs, wheelchairs, bicycles and suitcases). The response was more than disappointing. Last year I contacted AVDC on the same issues. Two people took on the tourch. The liaison officer (with Chiltern rail) has given me hope. Lee Stevens of the cycling team got the ...

A Dragon on the treadmill

My first visit of the year to Bannatyne's Health Club on Haughton Road, as my aching muscles will testify. And who was the sweaty little chap on the treadmill in front of me None other than our eponymous hero himself! I thought of a few ideas to pitch to him, in the hope of getting invited on to Dragons' Den. Maybe a company to build roads, schools and Pedestrian Precincts for Darlington

The House of Commons for the EU Reform Treaty

The European Union (Amendment) Bill has passed it first reading by 362 votes to 224. The Bill, if passed, will see the EU Reform Treaty be ratified in the UK.

In honour of Lee Probert - Britain's worst ref

A few months ago I had the bad luck to witness one of the most inept refereeing performances ever from a referee who really never ought to be able to show his face on a football pitch again. his name is Lee Probert. However, in typical style, after a series of bad performances and inept decision making, and I highlighted the incompetence he showed in a Norwich game versus Derby County last March, he was deemed bad enough by the Premier League to become a Premiership referee (although he still does Championship games). I was pleased to see though that ...

Quote of the week

Yes, I know its only Monday, but this from Vince Cable on the Government's laughable Northern Rock plan is a cracker. "I'm minded to quote the Danish economist Hans Christian Andersen" Blogged with Flock

The Home Secretary's kebab-buying habits

Well, well - Home Secretary Jacqui Smith seems to have made a right mess of talking about the dangers of walking out at night. This was in fact the topic of second newspaper column I ever wrote. It was for the Ham & High, back in 2000 and started with a personal anecdote: A man followed me home from the tube last Wednesday night. It was about 11.30pm. He had been in my carriage from Warren Street, got off at Highgate, was behind me on the first escalator, behind me on the second escalator up to Archway Road - and ...

Vince Cable - the city traders' enemy

Thanks to a commenter called DavidA, on my previous post about Northern Rock, for this link to a site where city traders share tips and chat. The link is to where the traders were chatting during the House of Commons discussion of Northern Rock this afternoon. In summary, they liked Darling's speech very much because it sent the Northern Rock share price soaring as he spoke. They were all

Vince Cable - the people's hero

Many thanks indeed to Stephen Tall on Liberal Democrat Voice for highlighting Vince Cable's Commons speech on Northern Rock this afternoon. It is priceless. A devastating and hilarious critique of the government. It should be framed. I make no apologies for repeating it: Dr. Vincent Cable (Twickenham) (LD): I congratulate the Chancellor on brilliant originality. The Government, through their

Asking for the moon

I wasn't born when mankind first stepped on the moon and I was only a few years old when the Apollo programme was abandoned. So you might expect me to share the same blase attitude which most people have about it - been there, done that, got the moon boots. But I don't. It remains one of humanity's most stupendous achievements - but more importantly, one which reminds us of what is possible if we set ourselves far-sighted goals and will the means of achieving them, as John F Kennedy so famously did with the moon landings. My reason for ...

Selly Oak Constituency Committee - Tuesday 29 January 2008

The agenda for the meeting of the Selly Oak Constituency Committee on Tuesday 29 January 2009 has now been published and is available online. The meeting will be held at: 7pm Holy Cross Community Centre Beauchamp Road Billesley Birmingham B13 0NS Items on the committee agenda include: the consultation on the draft Community Strategy - Birmingham 2026;an update on the Neighbourhood Advice and

Coalitions and minority government across Britain

Centre Forum have sent this information about a meeting they are holding tomorrow Coalitions and minority governments remain unusual in Westminster but the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly now mean they are no longer a purely foreign import in the UK. Yet despite a hung parliament at the next general election more likely than at any [...]

Those nice people at Eclipse

I work for the Open University, which uses FirstClass as a conferencing and communications system. It's a big system - the OU has, I think, something like a million licences. Some people have problems with its speed of operation, because the port it uses or the type of packet it delivers is identified by some ISPs as a file sharing kind of thing, and they throttle it. Now the biggest culprits, I shan't name them, tend to flatly deny that they do anything like that, and continue to deny it even if you prove it to them, and even then ...

What Vince said next

The Voice has already pinned up the partys press release today with Vince Cables serious and pithy response to the Labour Governments latest attempt to hurl taxpayers cash at market speculators. The Lib Dem shadow chancellor, who has utterly outclassed his Labour and Tory counterparts throughout the crisis, contributed his words of wisdom today in [...]

I blame John Motson

We have parents buying cheat essays for their children at university. We have teachers believing internet plagiarism is a big issue. We have a professor at Brighton University, Tara Brabazon, banning google and wikipedia, which she expands on here. We have a fuss about whether students should be doing A-levels or vocational studies. All these are linked very closely together, and all are indicative of the state of both education and society in this country. Looking at the cheat mills first, they claim, with positively Hainian disregard for moral values, that they are selling study aids not material to cheat ...

The man who will play Bush in the movie

This is Josh Brolin, who will play Bush in Bush:The Movie (or whatever it is eventually called - suggestions) Oliver Stone is audaciously planning to make a film of George W Bush's life and release it on the same day that Bush leaves office. His previous Presidential films (JFK, Nixon) have been released well after their subject left office and died. So he's obviously planning something

The London mayoral campaigns getting interesting

Its been a big day in London mayoral politics. Tonights Channel 4 Dispatches programme, presented by the New Statesmans Martin Bright, has levelled a number of serious allegations against Ken Livingstone, detailed here in The Guardian. The most potentially damaging - if true - are that: - the Mayor’s former senior adviser on Asian issues, Atma [...]

Let's get back to some old politics

I'm fed up with the constant sloganising about "change", and "new politics". It seems to go along with more scraping away of our powers as voters. As Lord Greaves put it in a letter to the Independent last Saturday: the key must be the revival and re-establishment of local democracy. The Victorians invented multi-purpose local authorities, elected democratically and accountable to local people, because that is the best way to organise services at a local level, provide a strategic vision for local communities and represent their needs to government. Unless we achieve a massive renaissance of local democracy, dismantling national ...

FFS Its Monday: Organ Donation

Listen to this article: From political donations one week to organ donations the next, this column knows no subject it will not viciously maul like a rabid Frenchman at an underage brothel. Gordon Brown wants our organ, or rather organs plural, as he doesn’t want us to touch his soft, warm, freshly lubricated arsehole with our hardened [...]

More Free Stuff from Red Ken

I meant to blog about Ken's plan for another giveaway for elderly Londoners last week. But I didn't get around to it. I'm increasingly of the view that "more free stuff for old people" is bad policy and might even be bad politics. Let's start by saying that some older people, and particularly those who still live in central London, are a genuinely vulnerable and marginalised. Some have been badly let down by promises made to them by governments long in the past about what their pensions would be worth. However, this isn't a problem that can be solved by ...

A reason to be cheerful that Chris Huhne did not win the Lib Dem leadership

It was interesting to read that a front page for the Lib Dems main website had been prepared in case Chris Huhne had won the leadership instead of Nick Clegg. Though given what was produced, it should be a blessed relief that he did not win. After all, did we want a leader called stuttering Huhne After all a leader whose welcome includes the classic phrase "I'm proud to lead a a(sic) party" would have hardly made an auspicious start.

You are where you eat

In an attempt to improve food safety standards in Taunton, Wellington and Wiveliscombe, the food safety team at Taunton Deane Council has introduced a new star rating system for local supermarkets, pubs, restaurants, schools, hospitals etc. It works like this; the food safety team make an unannounced visit to a food seller, they assess the seller on; food handling practices, premises conditions and general food safety management systems. They then award a star rating on what they find. The star ratings range from zero which is poor, some major non-compliance with food and safety law, right up to 5 which ...

Britblog Roundup

Thanks to Jonathan Calder for linking to my post on party funding (part of the FFS It’s Monday series) in this week’s Britblog Roundup. The Realpolitik podcast also receives a much appreciated mention.

Barack Obama

Rarely, if ever, do I post an item on American Politics but after listening to this speech I just wanted to share it - for those who are interested. Posted by Richie Northcote

Tory woes in Uttlesford (Saffron Walden)

The Tory run council in Saffron Walden (Uttlesford) is apparently £1.8 million in deficit, and has lost control of its budget. Don't worry residents of Uttlesford, remember the Tories promised you lower taxes if they ran the council Well, er, sorry. They lied.

Concessionary Bus Fares

In April 2008 the Government will be introducing it’s new national concessionary bus fare scheme. From now on, every person over the age of 60 and all disabled people will be able to travel on any bus in the country for free. Sounds great doesn’t it Yes it does - and it is a great IDEA….. however, once again, not enough thought has gone into how this will actually work in reality…. Each borough across the country will have to pay for any journey started in it’s boundaries, regardless of where the traveller actually comes from. With a great town ...

Brightening up London

The efforts of the Mayoral Office to trash tonights Dispatches documentary in advance of its release have been significant Kens rapid response unit has clearly had plenty of practice at this sort of thing. Unsurprisingly, the Mayors acolytes have chosen to pounce on the messenger as much as the message. Witness; various groups purporting to represent Muslims have returned to their familiar accusation, that by criticising reactionaries amongst their co-religionists, Bright has become an Islamophobe and a Neo-Con. Some of the commenters on his New Statesman teaser post demand that he also scrutinise Paddick and Johnson in a similar manner. ...

Why are we subsidings India's Nuclear Weapons Programme

An interesting point made by many people after my last posting about India is that India is, according to them, a poor country that needs our support, which is why we are given them £825 million. Looking on the internet though brings up some useful information about what India considers to be its priorities. Unlike the UK government, India does not consider its poor to be its main concern. Instead, an expensive nuclear programme is India's number one issue. India gets away with not supporting the poor in its society because we (the UK) does it for them, and what ...

Boys and their toys

David and I were in York over the weekend. We paid a visit to a model railway exhibition where for the price of £4 we could play the Fat Controller, pressing lots of buttons to may trains stop and go and other buttons that lit up buildings, made cars fall over the edge of roads and so on. And if that wasn't enough, we then went to the National Railway Museum to play on full scale toys!

The government's £1 billion gift to Richard Branson

Alastair Darling's appearance on PM today was remarkable. Despite being asked several times by Eddie Mair he could or would not answer these questions: 1. Is there a cap on the taxpayers' liability (the answer was no, one assumes, as Darling wouldn't give a straight "yes") 2. On what date will the taxpayers' liability for Northern Rock end (despite being asked several times from Mair, who

The difference you can make - Earth Hour 2008

In 2007, Sydney (Australia) turned off lights for an hour right across the city, to highlight climate change. This year there are moves to make it a global event. You can sign up at the website Earth Hour 2008 and there is a Facebook group too (which already has 164,670 commitments to take part).

Tales from our inner city schools - Jacqui Smith please note!

I read this post today from blogger Ellee Seymour, who reports here a list of shocking incidents from a teacher in one of Hackney's schools. I totally agree with this observation from the teacher: "The truth is that there are some parts of Britain that are no-go areas. These are areas where there is a total break-down of decent values, these places are run by violent gangs, who intimidate the local community, this is why people never come forward as witnesses to crimes, because they know what the consequences will be theyre scared. There are twenty two different gangs in ...

Bureaucrazy

One of my contacts sent me an email today containing the wonderful phrase Our bureaucrazy over here needs a name to go with the paperwork. As his first language is Danish, it may be a mistake. I hope not! I love the concept of bureaucrazy and can already think of 101 situations where it [...]

Jacksons Lane: outcome of Arts Council meeting

{Lynne Featherstone MP and Cllr Neil Williams petition Arts Council over Jacksons Lane Community Centre} Well - Neil Williams (Lib Dem Leader of the Opposition on Haringey Council) and I met with Moira Sinclair of the Arts Council this morning to plead for the Arts Council to overturn their proposal to cut funding to Jacksons Lane Community Centre. The Arts Council meet to make this decision on Thursday. We have been swamped with responses to our petition which we handed in - thanks to everyone who responded; we will keep sending them in. I was very impressed with Ms Sinclair. ...

The destruction of Venezuela continues

Tim Worstall points outthis article. Price controls, forcing banks to lend at a negative interest rate, state theft of farms and banks… Not long until it all collapses now I’m afraid. All whilst our Dear Leader Mayor is buying cheap oil for one of the richest cities in the world from a poor country.

Treaty Boost for Expanding EU

A group of us who are members of the Coalition for the Reform Treaty have a letter in the Guardian today, timed to coincide with the beginning of the House of Commons debate on the Lisbon Treaty. As the letter says, ratification of the treaty will be good for Britain and for Europe. ‘The global [...]

Id cards save the world

Chris Huhne responded to the conviction of the killers of Gary Newlove at the hands of drunk local youths by calling for more police on the beat, which is our partys excellent policy. We could perhaps also ask on all such issues how ID cards would have helped. Would ID cards have stopped Mr Newloves death or would a greater uniformed presence to respond to situations where young people may be causing a nuisance offer a better response. Perhaps focusing on the practical, day to day side of ID cards and their utility would throw up some interesting examples, such ...

UK Political Blog Feeds

There's a very useful site UK Poli Blogs at http://www.voidstar.com/ukpoliblog/ and my blog is now featured (click on headline to link to this).

The myth of the free market

How often do you hear criticisms of the free market, claims that we are living in an era of laissez-faire, that markets rain supreme Its something I come across frequently. Its lesser heard cousin is that laissez-faire or classical liberalism failed in the 19th Century. Both are absolute nonsense. We never had a laissez-faire system. Even in the [...]

Government nationalises Northern Rock but privatises the profits

Press release from the party: GOVERNMENT HAS NATIONALISED NORTHERN ROCK BUT PRIVATISED THE PROFITS - CABLE Commenting on Alistair Darlings statement to Parliament today on the Northern Rock crisis, Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor Vince Cable said: It is particularly ironic that the Prime Minister felt the need to fly to a communist country to come up with a [...]

Jack Straws little helpers making dodgy press statements and threatening to lock up their enemies

The Legal Services Commission is the arm of the Ministry of Justice which supervises legal aid. This is, of course, a highly important public function. Without legal aid most people in this country would struggle to defend their rights in either civil or criminal matters. You might think that such an important public authority would conduct [...]

Some sense on biofuels

From the Environmental Audit Committee Biofuels are not green, they lead to pollution and environmental damage across the board. It is possible that this may improve, but right now they are a bad idea. That’s not counting the human costs of increased food prices, something which is already causing lots of concern and shortages in Mexico (thanks [...]

The Spencer Davis Group: I'm a Man

This week's Sunday video has turned into a Monday video. Complete with subtitles, this performance comes from Finnish TV and 1966. Which means that Steve Winwood, the keyboard player and vocalist, was 17 or 18. How is that for talent And he started even younger. In an article in Mojo magazine a few years ago, his older brother Muff (later a top A&R man) remembered joining a trad jazz band: "We needed a piano player so I brought Steve along. He was only 11, but he played everything perfectly. They stood with their mouths open. Because he was under-age, we ...

What to expect from Free Trade

Here’s an excellent NYT article. Why should you expect any compensation from the loss of a job due to free trade when you’ve benefited so much more from it in total (Of course, this does not negate any idea of helping those made unemployed at all, just no special benefits for those whose job loss is due [...]

Khameni backs the Guardian's Council in dispute with Ahmadinejad

Ayatollah Ali Khameni has backed the Guardian's Council, which in turn has backed Parliament, over President Ahmadinejad (a fellow blogger (click link)). Under the constitution every bill passed by Parliament must be sent to the Guardian Council, mostly made up by clerics and appointed by the Supreme Leader. The Council checks that the bill conforms to the Constitution and Islamic Jurisprudence. If it does then the President is legally obliged to ratify the bill. The Bill was over-turning the President's decision to disband the Monetary and Credit Council. It appears that Khameni has written directly to the speaker of Parliament ...

Schillings are at it again

Trying to censor Wikileaks over Northern Rock this time… Strangely they’re refusing to hand over the order unless it won’t be given to Wikileaks… Surely you have a right to know what the charges against you are Or is this considered equal to terrorism under the law

No Access to the Lisbon Treaty

I just came across this very funny bit of news courtesy of Ben Austwick. When you try to click on the pdf of the Lisbon Treaty on the FCO website it says access denied. I can't get the print screens up for some reason so you'll have to go to his site to see it.

RSS readers and blogroll

I’ve changed my RSS reader from Gregarius, a web based reader I ran on a computer at my parent’s house to Google Reader. This change was prompted by having too many feeds for Gregarius to cope with and a desire to start decommissioning that server (although it still has all my emails on it). In the process [...]

Incinerator U-turn Welcomed

Local Liberal Democrats are welcoming a change of heart by the Conservative-run Cabinet on Bath and North East Somerset Council regarding the proposal to build an incinerator for non-recyclable waste in the West. Liberal Democrats from across the former Avon area have been campaigning against the incinerator plans, being considered by the West of England Waste Partnership following a...

Best foot forward

Ive been trying out a great new website Walkit, which helps you plan your walking routes around London (thanks to David Hepworth for the tip). The TfL journeyplanner is great for public transport routes, but its walking routes are, well, a bit pedestrian. With Walkit you have the option of a quiet route not just [...]

More Data Trouble for the Government

The Mole certainly thinks so. This time it looks bad for Jack "I turn a blind eye to torture" Straw.

Well at least Im not gay

{Blood Sticker} I’m a regular blood donor. I have a nice certificate and a pin badge saying I’ve made it past 10, however this time last year I failed one of their tests. It turns out I’ve got Anemia. They wrote to me they advised me to see my doctor, and to come back in a year. I now take iron tablets each day, and my last blood tests showed everything to be ok. So when the email came around saying that the blood van was to be parked up in our work car park on the 4th February I ...

More Martin Luther King:

There’s something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that will praise you when you say, “Be nonviolent toward Jim Clark,” but will curse and damn you when you say, “Be nonviolent toward little brown Vietnamese children.”

The Cornish Lib Dem Family

I know the title is a bit twee, but all the emails of thanks I am receiving from people who attended Saturday's Cornwall Conference are using the expression themselves so it obviously fits! Saturday saw over 120 Lib Dems from right across the county gathering for the Cornwall Conference which took place to debate and discuss the manifesto for the elections in 2009. Everyone of Cornwall's five MP's were there along with our Lords (Tyler and Teverson) and our PPC's. Graham Watson MEP and Kay Barnard also came down much to the delight of the members who attended the Euro ...

BritBlog Roundup 153 - At last!

Sorry for the delay: let's get right on with it. A lot of political postings have been submitted this week, so we begin with them. Politics These days it isn't enough just to type. Gavin Whenman offers the latest Realpolitik Podcast and Tim Ireland makes his submission on the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act in the form of a slide show with sound. Other podcast related posts submitted were a daily roundup on The Wardman Wire and the highlights of 2007 from Wolverhampton Politics, Writing from a less technological age when a copier breakdown involved a sobbing monk, Archbishop ...

Government in disappearing up own fundament shocker

The Observer (I don't read it, honest) this weekend had the following article: Tax rebates plan if councils fail to deliver Residents could win a rebate on their council tax if their local authority repeatedly fails to collect rubbish or tackle yobbish behaviour, under an initiative to be announced this week. Communities Secretary Hazel Blears will launch plans on Tuesday for 'community contracts' that will give people the opportunity to negotiate written guarantees with their council on a wide range of services, from stamping out drug-dealing on estates to bin collection, clearing graffiti and street cleaning. She wants councils to ...

Hilary wins but so does Barack

Hilary Clinton won 51% of the Nevada Caucasus, Barack gained 45% and Edwards third with just 5%. However Barack actually end up with more delegates than Hilary (13-12).

McCain wins in South Carolina and Romney wins in Nevada

McCain looks like he is gaining the momentum in the Republican Presidential race after winning in South Carolina, although Romney won in Nevada is wasn't contested in any meaningful way by any other candidate.

Gee, thanks for the mental picture Jeremy!

{Paxo in underwear} Share This

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From a colleague's email: A lady with a clipboard stopped me in the street the other day. She said, "Can you spare a few minutes for cancer research" I said, "All right, but we won't get much done." - Jimmy Carr

St Anns Road junction delays will be unacceptable

I have once again been in discussions with the Council over their promised improvements to the ludicrous junction at St Ann’s Road and Bury New Road, which would doubtless take home the gold medal in the “Most Ridiculously Dangerous Road Junctions in Bury” competition, narrowly beating the one up the road at Hilton Lane. As a reminder, this is the junction with two out-of-sync sets of traffic lights within 10 yards of each other, more or less forcing cars to plough into other cars like some kind of Council-sponsored box car derby. God knows why it was put there in ...

Martin Luther King Day

Today is Martin Luther King Day in the US. To commemorate this extraordinary man and fighter for liberty, a man who managed to unite so many, of all races, of so many political views and religions, here’s his most famous speech:

Metrolink fares rise again

The cost of some Metrolink season tickets will go up from Friday 1 February, following the increases in single and return fares just two months ago. Weekly tickets will rise by up to 60p and quarterly tickets by up to £7. Metrolink management claim that these fare rises are fair, and that the Metrolink offers good value for money. But once again they show just how out of touch and wrong they are. The new increases means that it now costs £21.80 a week to go from Bury to Manchester, and £232 a quarter. This is more expensive than a ...

Peace talks

A fascinating headline in this mornings Bangkok Post grabbed my attention. Surayud calls for peace talks Presumably this would be about trying to bring peace to the southern part of Thailand where the government and insurgents have been waging an ongoing battle. But no this was about peace talks between the military and the incoming PPP coalition [...]

Degree Funding: Robbing the Already-Haves to give to the Have-Nots

The government has seemingly back-tracked somewhat on its proposal to divert £100m from funding second undergraduate degrees to the education of those who don't yet have a degree. It now says that extra money will be set aside to fund part-time courses and there will be an annual review of exempt courses and an immediate review concerning those related to religious ministry. To be perfectly honest, I see nothing wrong with the overall idea. Of course, it will put pressure on students to make a more definite decision about their career choice at an early stage (to the extent that ...

Todays votes on the Reform Treaty

I support a referendum on the Reform Treaty. As a consequence of this I will not be supporting the government position on the Second Reading of the relevant Bill tonight. I have not, however, come to final conclusions as to the merits of the treaty itself. Hence I will not be opposing the government. When a vote arises which has legal force in calling for a referendum on the treaty (not today

Our Feudal Economy

Chris Dillow, who I think is the most underrated blogger around, has this superb post, here, on the whether our economy is genuinely capitalist or just post-modern feudalism. Its a bit tongue and cheek but worth a read.

Serbia's Radicals

In terms of Great Power Politics, Serbia's first round vote results are not good. The Radical Party, formerly of part of Milosovic's ruling coalition, got the most votes in last years Parliamentary elections but were kept out of Government by a three party pro-European coalition. Now it looks like the Radicals will take the Presidency ushering in an uneasy period in Serb politics with conflicting views on: EU membership, economic development, Kosovo, and the role of Russia. Look out.

In the aftermath of NV and S.C.

In the aftermath of both parties' caucuses in Nevada, and the Republican primary in South Carolina, lets assess the state of the races.Firstly, although Hillary Clinton won, this is not a major blow for Barack Obama. Due to the vagaries of the way in which delegates are assigned, he actually won more Nevada delegates than Clinton, and remains favourite to take South Carolina. He is ratcheting up his rhetoric effectively, yesterday accusing Bill Clinton of spreading misinformation about his record on the Iraq war and in the process highlighting voters' concerns about the role the former president is playing in ...

Nominate your International ePolitician

I have a dream that the International ePolitician Award will go to a Brit, and a Lib Dem at that. Since I am involved with ICELE, which is sponsoring the awards, I can’t nominate anyone. The rest of you have got until next Wednesday to do the right thing. To quote: ePolitician making a difference on the [...]

Improved security through the un its a long shot but it might just work.

Heres a thing: we won the war (Hurrah!) in 1945 so we got a veto on the UN Security Council the following year. We then went into steady relative decline and other countries, including our pesky former foes Japan and Germany, have come to the fore in the world and quite reasonably seek a bigger voice on the world stage. Gordon Browns radical, forward thinking solution is therefore to, er, retrench the divide between the have-vetos and the have-not-vetos by doubling the number of countries with a veto to include those two as well as Brazil, India and South Africa. ...

Counterfactual Chris: Lib Dem Front Page

Rob Fenwick prepares for all eventualities, and created an alternative Lib Dem front page for the leadership election results day should Chris Huhne have been declared winner: Hat-tip: Alex Foster.

Improving our performance on ethnic minority candidates: a real way forward

This is a difficult article to write. I’ve already written more than one full draft which had to be discarded because I didn’t think it put it quite right, and I don’t think this version will win me any friends either. But at some level I think this has to be said, because it’s so important for our party and for our politics. There are two key things to say. The first is that the under-representation of ethnic minorities within the Liberal Democrats is an ongoing near-scandal which we have clearly not really begun to make any serious inroads into ...

Opinion: A Tale of Two Schools

Here is a true story about the primary schools in two neighbouring villages. It was told to me a while ago by a long-term resident of one of the villages. To protect identities I will call the villages simply A and B and say only that they are in the north of England and five [...]

Looking after our teeth

When Wrexham Labour AM, Lesley Griffiths raised the possibility of adding fluroide to our water in the chamber last week it was a bit of a bolt from the blue. I think everybody had assumed that this issue had been quietly sidelined. In this morning's Western Mail she expands on that intervention calling for a national debate on the issue. She says: "I believe the scientific case has been made and fluoridation is one important tool that can be used in the prevention of tooth decay among children. In my own constituency of Wrexham, for example, research by the British ...

More data is lost

In the Welsh Liberal Democrat debate on ID cards last week the Labour Social Justice Minister made a curious statement in responding to our points on the issue. He said: When I saw the topic of this debate, I wondered whether we were going to see something new or different from the Liberal Democrats. Had anything happened since the last time we discussed this matter in 2005 to suggest either that the overall political situation, or that of the Welsh Assembly Government had changed So far in the contributions, I do not think that the case has been made to ...

Two-faced Plaid

Plaid Cymru MP, Adam Price, really cannot help himself. Writing in today's Western Mail on the Peter Hain affair, he just had to get in some snide remarks about the Liberal Democrats. Almost as an aside he refers to his spat with Lembit Öpik on Radio Wales last week in which words were exchanged on Plaid Cymru's own problems with the misuse of public money. Mr. Price suggests that a difference of opinion between Lembit and his frontbench colleague, David Laws over what should happen to Mr. Hain is another example of 'why the Liberal Democrats have earned a reputation ...

The information market

Sometimes I come across rather frightening blogs where the author twists the information, has no regard for objectivity, historicity and is filled with paranoid propaganda. The sad aspect of this is that the authors of such blogs/sites and many of their readers believe their own nonsense. Ideology and propaganda have always been around, but the new means of information have much wider

How to Rig an Election

If anybody is thinking about getting me a present (a long shot I know), I'd love this book. How to Rig an Election by Allen Raymond. You can read a wired preview here.

Kenya is spiralling

Read the Vigilante's latest post. Warning: very graphic content.

Monday 21st January 2008

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