I am currently on the train heading back to Newcastle and I am taking a few moments away from the book I am reading (about wiild foods) to do an update about the coming weekend. First, news from the family. Esther, my sister who was rushed into hospital whilst on holiday in Jamaica in now back home. Seems as though she is in good shape and was able to catch her scheduled flight. I also suppose
I was being a bit easily distracted, and took the political compass test and here is my result: {My result} Interestingly, it suggests I should be a member of the Green Party. On further analysis, my result is in the 'voluntary regional collectivism (Libertarian Left)' quadrant - which sounds like me. Put another way, apparently this result is as left wing as 1972 Labour and as liberal as 1999 Liberal Democrats - I always did like Charles Kennedy.
As previously featured on LDV, Duwayne Brooks was running to be a Liberal Democrat councillor in one of yesterday's by-elections. Duwayne, along with fellow candidate Jenni Clutten, won. Congratulations to them both. Labour's campaign was at times, shall we say, unusual, with a heavy emphasis in their leaflets of a plan of their to have the Union Jack* flying over Lewisham Town Hall. As Dave Hill has written over on The Guardian: How does that work for you? It made me a little queasy. Shouldn't Labour concentrate on exposing the BNP for what it is rather than pandering to the ...
Why, they all feature in the same sentence in the excellent piece from Steve Richards on the Labour leadership rumblings of course.
I seem to be in that Friday night crystal window of thought between Gin & Tonic #3 and Gin & Tonic #4 so thought it just the time to have a root through the giant brain of Philip Blond, "high priest" of the so-called Red Toryism, who was profiled in the New Statesman yesterday. I have [...]
This is now live, courtesy of the Wardman Wire. I will be compiling the pre-Convention edition next week, over on Liberal Conspiracy. If you would like to host the Carnival for an edition after the Convention, email me at modernliberty@quaequamblog.net. I am, I have to confess, looking out especially for non-Lib Dems.
A new seat at the next general election that will be contested by three interesting candidates, currently the seat of Fulham is a Tory seat but what will it be after the next general election. The Conservative candidate is the current MP for Fulham; Greg Hands, he has a lot of experience and because he has been an MP and still is for Fulham he will probably win the seat. The Liberal Democrats have put up candidate Norsheen Bhatti who hasn't got a chance and to be honest is just a paper candidate. Norsheen can try all she wants to ...
I missed the news when it was announced, but the writer Edward Upward died a week ago at the age of 105. As his Daily Telegraph obituary explained, Upward: was a leading figure among the Oxbridge generation of Thirties writers, whose early work was described by Stephen Spender as representing a "further peak" beyond W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood.Upward later career never began to achieve enjoyed by his contemporaries. He sacrificed his literary gifts to Communist orthodoxy and, like many Marxists, spent his life teaching in private schools. But there was a happy ending to his life. As the Guardian ...
Former Director General of MI5, Stella Rimington, spoke out in the press about the current Labour Gov'ts use of the climate of fear to undermine civil liberties. She also spoke against Guantanamo bay, and the US's use of torture to obtain unreliable information. You merely have to look to Uzbekistan were use of torture has 'revealed' that most of the population seem to have met Bin Laden, personally!- see Craig Murray for more details (his book Murder in Samarkand is also a good read). Liberal Democrat MP, Ed Davey sums it up in the article by saying, This is damning ...
Not it's not! It's just had a nap. That was the response from Cornwall and the Isle of Man to the United Nations Atlas of World Languages in Danger which branded both Cornish and Manx Gaelic as extinct, ex-languages, no more, gone to..... OK you catch my drift. Cornish may well have been dead in 1777 as a first language bit linguists claim that it is a language in revival over the past 20 years now with about 300 fluent speakers. Meanwhile on the Isle of Man the language the UN claims died out in in 1974 when Ned Maddrell ...
Today's House Points column from Liberal Democrat News. In the slammer It's half term at Westminster, so let's report a story from the USA. Two judges have pleaded guilty to accepting more than $2.6 million in bribes from a private youth detention centre in return for giving hundreds of youths and teenagers long sentences. Soon, no doubt, judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan from Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, will be unwigged (or whatever happens to corrupt judges) and find themselves in the hoosegow. But their actions have wider importance because they are the logical outcome of allowing the profit motive into ...
Residents in Downham once again gave their backing to the Liberal Democrats by electing Jenni Clutten and Duwayne Brooks as their councillors in yesterday's by-election. The results left Labour and the Tories battling it out for second and third place. Jenni and Duwayne join Julia Fletcher to make an outstanding team of three who will stand up for Downham. The leading results were as follows: Jenni Clutten: 1075 Duwayne Brooks: 1062 Labour: 655 Conservatives: 654 Labour: 635 Conservatives: 632
LDV has eschewed mention of the past week's opinion polls, three of which have shown the Lib Dems to be the chief beneficiaries of the recent slump in Labour support. As our regular readers will know, we just don't believe there's anything to be gained from looking at any one individual poll in isolation - the media and blogosphere's slavish fixation on statistically insignificant percentage changes is usually just an easy distraction from discussing substantial issues that actually matter. But it hasn't escaped the attention of Guardian columnist Martin Kettle, who today ponders (with all the necessary caveats) if we're ...
We have just learnt that Council Officers have agreed to Raise an Objection to the proposed phone mast outside Forster Park and therefore the applicants can either appeal against the Council's decision or apply for a different development. The decision notice can be found on the Council's web page
Doug Henderson, who is a big knob adviser to burger giant MacDonalds, and in his spare time is Labour MP for Newcastle North, said in the Journal on 18th February that, "Nationalisation has sorted out [Northern Rock]. It is now on a road where it has got some future stability."Comments from the occasional invisible man of Tyneside politics are not always particularly interesting. This one was.
You will recall that, following my request to Tayside Police to upgrade the footpath area beside Seymour Lodge, this was undertaken last September (click on the headline above to view more on this). Following the upgrading work being completed, I asked the City Engineer if the footpath can now be adopted by the local authority. He has responded positively as follows : "I can confirm that this section of footpath is now in its one year's contractors maintenance period and will be be adopted in October 2009." He has also confirmed that this end of Seymour Street is now included ...
There was no escaping Lib Dem shadow housing minister Sarah Teather yesterday [not that you'd want to escape her, obviously - Ed] ... not only did she put in a sparkling performance on BBC1's Question Time, but, more importantly, she launched the party's new plans to 'rebuild social housing and rescue the construction industry' (full details at the party website here). Which, ahem, LDV managed not to cover yesterday {:oops:} - fortunately, though, the proposals did earn plenty of coverage in the media: BBC: Lib Dems unveil housing proposals - The Liberal Democrats have unveiled plans to boost the number ...
At the start of each month, the popular bloggers publish what they call their statporn - which to non-techie's such as me, is the number of hits their blogs generate each month. Maybe it's their way of satisfying their advertisers or attracting some more although I think it is the techie's psychological equivalent of "my dick's bigger than yours." I've always been fascinated to know the size of my blog dick but every time I've investigated my Google Analytics page, it's come up with a big fat zero. It's taken me ages to work out how to crack it (I'm ...
Back in January, I blogged about my constituent Graham Bennett and his tireless efforts to get the Council to tackle the problem of bins on pavements and the lukewarm response he has received from Labour councillors and officers. I'm pleased to report that the issue will be on the agenda for the next meeting of the Environment Scrutiny Panel which takes place on 3 March. This scrutiny panel has taken a much more active role in investigating waste and recycling issues since opposition councillors took over the chair and vice-chair. And, as Glenn pointed out earlier this week, the Labour-run Cabinet is ...
Those who remember the last days of the Raj may recall the tragedy that followed the partitioning of India. As millions of muslims migrated north to the new Pakistan, passing hindus heading south into the new India, many thousands died in religious violence. Luckily those days are long gone (we only have to worry about the threat of a nuclear war between the two countries these days). But in these times when we seem to have every reason to complain about Muslim and Christian extremists, it's worth remembering that Hindu fundamentalists are keeping themselves entertained too. Reported in the Guardian ...
Over at the Mirror, crusading Lib Dem MP Norman Baker writes (briefly) about the damage that the 'drip, drip, drip of stories about MPs' expenses' is doing to Parliament. Here's an excerpt (actually, it's pretty much the whole piece): We can't continue to have revelations that the public find so shocking. Jacqui Smith's homes are a prime example. It's not acceptable that she can claim her main home is her sister's spare room. Saying it is within the rules is not good enough. House of Commons officials must be able to veto MPs' declarations. They need to ask questions like ...
LDV has mentioned previously the tendency of Gordon Brown to attempt (rather pathetically) to rile Liberal Democrats by referring to 'the Liberal party' at Prime Minister's Questions. Well, up in Liverpool, the Liberal party is taking considerable offence at being referred to as Liberal Democrats, as the Liverpool Echo reports: A CITY leader is at the centre of a standards investigation into claims he was rude to a charity set up to encourage black people into politics. Liberal group leader Cllr Steve Radford is alleged to have breached the members code of conduct in comments he made to Operation Black ...
Now I'm not a great believer in the cliched 'it's grim oop North' stuff.On the other hand, here in Bradford, it's a bit chilly, it's dark and it's raining. The shops seemingly all closed at 5.30 and it all feels a bit desperate. There are a whole bunch of dead shops in the city centre, which can't help. Nice branch of Waterstones though, with a statue of Cobden in it.It'll be much nicer in
"Commenting on today's BBC Trust announcement that it will not overrule the decision not to broadcast the DEC humanitarian appeal for Gaza, Liberal Democrat Shadow Culture, Media and Sport Secretary, Don Foster said: "The BBC Trust has to allow the BBC Director General to make these types of editorial decisions. However, that doesn't change the fact that Mark Thompson got this decision...
Commenting on today's judgement from the Information Tribunal ordering the Government to publish two reviews on its ID card scheme, Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Huhne said: "The Government is increasingly realising that its ID card scheme is a laminated poll tax with all the same toxic ability to make it unpopular." "Ministers would win more plaudits...
A rare piece of political theatre was provided to MEPs this week when Czech President Vaclav Klaus addressed us on Thursday. He spoke as the head of state of the country presiding the EU, yet livened up what is often an uninteresting ritual by sharing with us his famously eurosceptic views. There were grains of truth in what he said, for example about how distant the Brussels bodies feel to many of our citizens and how honest criticism of them is regarded in some quarters as revisionist thought: but he lost many in his audience when it became clear that ...
It's nearly the weekend, which is a relief because today's early morning pre-work ascent from bed was probably the most difficult thing I've had to do since my IKEA bookcase arrived with no instructions. There is reason to repeat the "getting out of bed" trick over the weekend though. The new St Mary's Focus is written (by me), designed (by Cllr Mary D'Albert), printed (by us), and now ready to go, and so that's what we're going to be doing with our collective Saturdays and Sundays in the main. However, I am of course recently betrothed, and wedding plans stop ...
Apparently, between April and December of last year 170 drivers in Kingston were fined for driving while using a mobile phone. The Captain Kingston character was dreamt up by the Road Safety Student Council, which is made up of representatives from all the secondary schools in the borough.
A little something you may have missed: The Leicester Mercury reported on 18th February 2009 that Leicestershire's convicted murderer Colin Pitchfork has been given a date (April 30th) to appeal for immediate release from prison. Pitchfork was the first murderer convicted in this country from DNA evidence. He brutally murdered schoolgirls Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth in Narborough in 1983 and 1986 respectively. Please let us know your views: Should Colin Pitchfork be released from prison? Please answer YES, or NO, or DON'T KNOW, and add any comment that you wish to make. We will forward the completed survey results ...
Earlier this week David Cameron launched a policy green paper entitled "Control Shift - Returning Power to Local Communities". According to the party website this sets out "a series of policies that will see powers transferred from the central state to local people and local institutions". If true, this is surely very welcome: it is indeed quite right that power in Britain is far too centralised, and that many decisions would be very much more effectively and democratically made closer to the people they affect. But does the Conservative party actually really believe this? They have started to talk of ...
Though I've not blogged for a bit before today, bulletins from round the world have still been catching my eye - there may well be a flurry of late news at some point, but as a quickie from Valentine's weekend, did you hear "Children's Secretary" Ed Balls' particularly fine example of politicians' Daily Mail-friendly hyperbole without actually engaging his brain? In all the outcry over a thirteen-year-old dad, Mr Balls sonorously pronounced that it was "awful" and "unusual," and that "I want us to do everything we can as a society to make sure we keep teenage pregnancies coming down." ...
There was a nice clutch of Liberal Democrat successes in council elections up up down the country but a bad night for the Conservatives and not a lot for Labour to be happy about either. The results are below Lewisham BC - LD double hold. Lib Dem 1075 Lib Dem 1067 Labour 655 ...
Two interesting articles in today's Guardian, which taken together point to a real opportunity for the Lib Dems. In the first, John Harris, not someone I always agree with, points out that many Labour cabinet ministers are positioning themselves for the inevitable leadership election following their party's likely defeat at the next election. However, none of them are showing why they'd be any different or have any real understanding of the hole Labour finds itself in. Nor are they showing that they have any real ideas about what Labour should stand for in the future. Harris calls all this positioning ...
Just a quick note to say that on Sunday, the LDV team will be having one of our periodic "in person" meetings to have a discussion about where we've been and where we're going. We met up last year and generated lots of interesting ideas. Our second meeting may indeed actually be focussed on why more of those ideas - apart from publishing a book - haven't yet happened. {dossier-ldv} We'll be talking about our coverage of Spring conference in Harrogate - where we have planned a fringe meeting - and several interesting ideas for new ideas in the future. ...
If you thought the idea of Harriet Harman as the next leader of the Labour Party was ridiculous, then how about this one: Yvette Cooper. Truly, the Labour Party is in its death throes.
I am blogging today, to invite any readers of this blog, to join the Cardiff Student Lib Dems by the Main Building of Cardiff University. We are there to protest against the fact that £225,000 from our fees has been used to invest in the arms trade. What makes it worse, is that the current Dean of Cardiff University at first tried to deny that it was happening. As well as this initial protest, if the University finance department fails to change their policy, I understand those students who feel strongly about this issue will refuse to shake the Dean's ...
The Islington Tribune has picked up our protest about buses at Highbury Corner.
I write this entry from the comfort of a National Express East Coast service to Leeds. The free tea and light refreshments are very nice, and my first class seat is very comfortable. Curious, isn't it, that I generally have nice experiences on NXEC and Jonathan Wallace always has such awful ones. I still think that Jonathan should book his tickets under an alias... We're even on time...Ros and I
Over on LabourList, Tom Guise cites five examples which suggest that my favourite Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski is a couple of strawberry creams short of a Quality Street selection box. He could have added Kawczynski's bizarre attack on the BBC and the "liberal elite" for waging a propaganda war against Poles (but not the Daily Mail and its swan-eating nonsense, you understand, that was all fair comment). But the most uncanny omission of Guise's list is Kawczynski's utterly moronic defence of the first past the post electoral system (Kawsczynski is the chair of the All Party First Past The Post ...
This song will never be the same for me again:
Gordon Brown's temporary VAT cut is costing us all £31M a day. For the same money you could buy 31 MRI scanners a day for the NHS. Or 31 new children's centres. At £31M a day, that's nearly £1.3 an hour. Enough for a new adult education centre every hour of a 24 hour day. Or, [...]
The arrogant, self-important, holier-than-thou, über-bossy bullying Labour Government famously has no sense of irony (the last two words may be superfluous there), but today's news brings joy for taxpayers, friends of freedom and ironists alike. Labour's position is very clear: only criminals and terrorists have anything to fear from their humongously expensive ID cards and databases holding every scrap of personal information on every citizen (all the better for thieves, blackmailers and newspapers to get hold of it); but only criminals and terrorists could possibly have any interest in exposing what the Labour Government is up to in our name. ...
Yesterday evening was Local Party Executive night, so I arrived at a bungalow in Kingsbury to do my Secretarial duty and, I am pleased to report, it was a short meeting. This allowed me to get home in time to watch Question Time, not something I generally do, but on this occasion, Brent's very own Sarah Teather was on. It's not often that the media do anything in Peckham that doesn't mention
Liberator's latest rant against free market liberals has generated a few articles on the Lib Dem blogosphere. As a fully fledged 'right-wing' Liberal, I suppose it is people like me that they have in their sights when they say we should "accept your defeat and clear off." Bizarrely, there is quite a lot I agree with about the article. The authors state "The Liberal Democrats belong firmly to the social liberal camp." Sadly, they are right. I accept I am very much in a minority and the Party has been a vehicle for social democracy for 100 years. I accept ...
This was just going to be a round up of yesterday's by-election results and just as I was about to start writing, Labour's leaflets from the Downham by-election in Lewisham yesterday hit my desk. For those who are not clad in by-election anoraks, the background was that 2 Lib Dem cllrs retired from the Council last month, both representing the same ward. So the by-election was a double header.
I have always been someone who embraces new technology. I use the SatNav on my phone, I own more than one MP3 player (but not an iPod), I have a good AV system at home, love the internet, own more than one computer, I can network my music around my home (using ethernet cabling which is installed under the floor of my house), I have owned a Spectrum, a Commodore 64, Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, NES, SNES, GameCube, DS, Wii, Xbox and Xbox 360. Oh, and I also had a first generation Gameboy. Yes, in general I'd make the point ...
John Hemming, as ever, appraises us of the results of last night's by-elections. Congratulations are due to the Duwayne Brooks, Jennie Clutten and the Lewisham team for winning a double handed by-election to hold two seats in Downham. For those who don't know, the Lewisham Party has been going from strength to strength in recent years (in fact, since I stepped down as Chair, although that cannot be the reason of course) and would be a good bet to take over control in next year's London council elections. But the real message from the results must be the success of ...
These are the words of my colleague Lynne, who posted this link to the Health and Safety Executive's "Myth of the Month" page,which she highlighted on Facebook. I'm posting it here because I think it deserves a wider audience. The more proper ifnormation we have with which to shoot down the Daily Mail foam at the mouth plicrecknessgummad tendency the better.
Sainsbury's have let us know that they are withdrawing their planning application for the site on Booker Avenue. Several residents were in touch about this so hopefully this news will be good news for those who were worried about parking and traffic. They can of course re submit another application later on and I'll post details here if that happens.
It is no secret that the BNP have had some good by-election results recently.Often I hear Lib Dems suggest that we shouldn't put up a candidate wherethe BNP are challengers to allow the strongest opposition to them win.But if the people who saud this actually knocked on doors they would learn something. The problem is these people think that the BNP take votes off the Tories on the right, or off
Harrogate BC, BiltonLD Clare McKenzie 902 (50.4; +1.0)Con 673 (37.6; -6.9)BNP 164 (9.2; +3.0)Lab 51 (2.8; +2.8)Majority 229Turnout 42.0%LD holdPercentage change is since May 2007Lewisham LBC, DownhamLD Jennie Clutten 1075 Duwayne Brooks 1067 (39.3; -10.3)Lab 655/635 (24.0; -2.0)Con 654/632 (23.9; +6.2)BNP 287 (10.5; +10.5)Green 63/62 (2.3; -4.4)Majorities 420/412Turnout 27.4%LD hold x 2Percentage
I want to write about something that affects most of us at one time or another, especially those of us who live intowns and cities where the use of public transport is effectively mandated by the costs of parking or congestion zone charges; queueing for buses. It all seems so simple; walk to your nearest omnibus halt, wait for transport to arrive, depart for your destination in relative comfort with someone else to worry about traffic and no need to drive around in circles looking for a vacant non-resident's parking bay. Yet instead we regularly have the issue of 'time ...
You do have to wonder who writes the Liberator Magazine Editorial sometimes. In February's issue, the Collective launch into a fabulously splenetic rant (even by this shy retiring organ's own standards) against the "blues under the bed" who they demand "should accept (their) defeat and clear off". That the majority of Liberator's editorial board dislike the classical-liberal or economic-liberal or (shudder) right-wing of the party has never been in doubt, but you do wonder if there will be a point, after over 30 years of publication, where this Hamas-like Commentariat will proclaim an acceptance of the rights of the other ...
A group of Agony Aunts and Journalists will be speaking to MPs in a meeting on 25th February 2009 at 2.30pm to explain why they believe the care system and Family Courts in England is not working properly and needs more attention than the government is giving it. House of Commons Committee Room 17 - 2.30pm.Camilla Cavendish (The Times), Sue Reid (The Daily Mail), Denise Robertson (Agony Aunt -
On Wedensday the planning committee for South and East Bristol considered an application to change the car park at the Frienship Inn in Knowle. On the face of it a pretty straightforward application. but......The subtext to this is that the premises has been acquired by Tesco who want to convert the pub to a shop. This would leave a huge are with no local pub, and threaten the viability of the existing shops in the locality and on the Wells Rd. I spoke in opposition to the plan, and joined local residents and the Bristol Pubs Group in a small ...
Liberal Tweets is an aggregator (run by the king of Lib Dem aggregrators, LDV's very own Ryan Cullen) which displays in one convenient place all the latest tweets from Liberal Democrat members who are using Twitter. If you are one of those but aren't yet being included, you can email ryancullen - ryancullen.hat.libdemblogs.co.uk.spam.com (this is spam bot hidden email address, replace .hat. with @ and remove .spam.com for the real one)
Frank Field has a very interesting comment piece in The Times today where he sets out what he thinks is wrong with the welfare system in this country. He has some thought provoking (and politically provcative) ideas which I suspect will chime with the opinions of many in this country. He is a very well respected MP and is clearly very passionate about this subject. However what I want to focus on is something tangentially related to this that consistently bugs me about politcal debate in this country. I suppose the quickest way I can sum it up is that ...
Following the new that Labour are to organise in Northern Ireland, and seeing as the Ulster Unionists and Conservatives are treading carefully towards their allegiance, is is time to awake the electorally dormant but keen Northern Irish Liberal Democrats? And what does this mean for our sister party there the Alliance Party? The Lib Dems in Northern Ireland have long taken the stance that they would not contest elections but lend support to the most prominent centrist party, which is the Alliance Party with their 7 Assembly Members and 32 councillors. David Ford and his group of elected representatives have ...
Yesterday whilst watching Question Time Piers Morgan said something very interesting that I think needs a voice. He said the authorities in their investigation on Jacqui Smith can just ask her security about which property she spends more time at, her sisters or her family home. This same point was made by Iain Dale a couple of days ago. Personally I agree with both Piers Morgan and Iain Dale that they should ask the security of Jacqui Smith about where she spends most of her time as this would clear out the whole issue, making it easier for the investigation ...
It takes a lot to raise me from my relaxed torpor - miserable atheists seeking to bring everyone down to their level of ennui and lack of inspiration often manage to do it for me - but a new threat has emerged to a national institution which cannot be ignored. According to the Grauniad the government is planning to reduce the pastry in pies to make them healthier. Excuse me? I love pies. Meat pies, fruit pies, any pies. Mince pies, beef in ale pies, steak pies, pork and apple pies, Cornish pasties - all gloriously gorgeous. I went to ...
Derek Draper is apparently following me on twitter. It seems there is a use for the block option after all. My word, typing this entry without being rude about his character is proving far harder than expected. Draper is definitely in list of five political movers and shakers that I least like. So - who would [...]
In preparation of my FOCUS, a friend suggested to me (thanks, Adam) that I contact Vince Cable MP. You don't need to be a political fan to know that Vince Cable's star has risen sharply over the last few years. The Lib Dem Treasury spokesman correctly forewarned us about the recession, is one of the best parliamentarians in the UK, and is also well known from his spells as acting leader of the party. It is a sad fact of our party political and electoral systems that next year the Chancellor grappling with the worst recession for decades is likely ...
There has been a bit of a debate waging over the past week about "classical (or economic) liberals versus social liberals," partly due to the launch of the Social Liberal Forum and exacerbated by a recent editorial in Liberator Magazine. For the record, while the Social Liberal Forum does indeed believe that social liberalism is the mainstream ideology of the Liberal Democrats, we do not believe it is incompatible with other strands of liberalism. Being a broad church, and having its tenets challenged from time to time is healthy for a political party. We established the Social Liberal Forum to ...
(Thanks to the Grauniad for the cartoon).I have been pursuing the BBC's arcane complaints procedure to express my disgust at their refusal to broadcast the DEC appeal for Gaza. First, I received a response that simply re-iterated their original statement without answering my points. I replied to this as required and after two weeks received a response to my response to their response to my
Salford introduced a selective landlord licencing system 18 months ago with the aim of reducing the number of privately rented properties that were not up to acceptable standards. Further, the hope was that by only granting "suitable" landlords a licence, there would be a reduction in the number of anti-social behaviour orders caused by unruly neighbours. Unfortunately, this scheme has failed. Twice this week the local press (and Salford Council's own website) have reported that landlords have been taken to court and prosecuted for failing their tenants in the most dispicable way. Problems such as damp, mould, electrical problems, lack ...
A report today comes up with the rather sensationalist conclusion that Children in England are getting a "deficient" primary education. In many ways I agree, but don't let the headlines or government excuses allow you to believe for one minute that this is because of what is actually going on in schools. The problems for this lie with government and their addiction to recording what is measurable but not what is important. The truth of the matter is, as the report suggests, schools are focusing too much on maths, English and testing. And why is this happening ? The simple ...
It started, when they were repeated what some American investor (probably Warren Bufffet) had said about the Madoff fraud/credit crunch, something like: "When the tide goes out, you discover who has been swimming naked". This phrase has obviously struck a chord with reporters who seem to use it whenever they can but modify it (without mentioning its provenance) to make it sound like their own clever invention. However when they do this they inevitable make it sound clunkier and less apposite. I've since heard a reporter say: "When the tide goes out, you see who's got a swimming costume on" ...
The lovely Iain Dale interviewed David Cameron the other day, and has posted extracts of the interview on his blog. He's also, depending on your point of view, EITHER courteously pointed out to the LDV team that Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg is mentioned in passing, OR has engaged in a massive blog link whoring project to stir it within the Lib Dems who will hate what Cameron had to say. Here's what their dear leader had to say about our dear leader: ID: Do you think Nick Clegg is in the wrong party? [Lol lol roffle impish grin]? DC: ...
Today we as a country can only wish Gordon Brown a Happy Birthday and nothing more, he has just recked the whole country since he became Chancellor all them years ago. Since Brown and Blair took leadership of Labour everything has gone wrong for the Country. Tony Blair took us into an illegal war and allegedly have evidence that they were WMD in Iraq which turned out to be shoes that got used against Bush in an attack. Gordon Brown has done one thing to this country which is get it by its balls and cripple it, and I hope ...
Not literally of course - I am irreversibly against the death penalty - but today the Daily Mail - I was pointed to the story by another blog; I would never voluntarily read it - reopens the story about the UK cover up of official knowledge and condoning of torture in US detention: British collusion in U.S. torture of suspected terrorists was covered up after extensive top-level talks between the two governments, it can be revealed. Foreign Office officials spent three months working with their American counterparts to hush up the allegations made by Binyam Mohamed, it was claimed. Mohamed, ...
Yep, it's true. If you're a vegetarian, you can drive a big smelly car that produces loads of CO2, and it's OK. Meat eaters have to drive Prius's though.
Tory peer Baroness Warsi wants purely religious marriages to be registered, and banned for people who are already legally married. If such a law had been in place when djm4 and I had our commitment ceremony, there's a good chance that it would have been illegal, since it included Asatru religious elements and I was (and am) legally married to aegidian. He of course consented to and supported what we were doing, and we made it clear to all concerned that the ceremony was not legally binding, but to make a law work of the kind Baroness Warsi proposes, those ...
Fri 20th
08:59
Finally.. some common sense to primary education,baluster vase and more allotments required
An inquiry into primary education has finally realised that far too much time is spending on teaching kids how to pass a test and not on actually educating them! Sadness for the generations already lost in a system based purely on grades, results, funding and quotas but at least there might be a better future for kids starting their education now. (For anyone locally whose kids have been following Time Team on telly, the recent dig featuring a medieval keep, showed them finding parts of a baluster vase - Maidstone museum has some lovely whole examples of these vases should ...
Fred Phelps might claim to be a Christian, but few followers of Jesus would agree. He leads a small church in America; most of the congregation are members of his family. He celebrates the murder of homosexuals. He believes that the deaths of soldiers in Iraq is God's just punishment for America's liberal attitudes. Indeed, if the Westborough Baptist Church is to be believed, God spends so much time hating just about everything that he must hardly have a minute spare for anything else. God not only hates fags, he also hates America, England, Australia and, just in case anything's ...
There is a bit of thrashing around in the media today about the fact that the ONS has deemed banks liabilities to be those of the government where the government controls the bank. (ie has over 50% of the shares).This really should not surprise anyone. It is also important to note that when the government forecast borrowing they did not include the financing of the bank recapitalisation. This
This morning's Independent provides an easy guide to the extent that civil liberties have been compromised in this country. They say that a new audit of laws introduced since Labour won the 1997 General Election reveals that almost 60 new powers contained in more than 25 Acts of Parliament have whittled away at freedoms and broken pledges set out in the Human Rights Act and Magna Carta: The dossier, compiled by the Convention on Modern Liberty, criticises police powers to detain terror suspects for 28 days without charge, new stop-and-search powers handed to police (allowing them to stop people without ...
Welsh Lib Dem AM Mick Bates joins Don Foster in ignoring party policy over local business rates: Bates calls for review of Small Business Rates Relief Scheme Montgomeryshire Welsh Liberal Democrat Assembly Member, Mick Bates has written to the First Minister to highlight the plight of small businesses in Wales and is calling for a review of the Small Business Rates Relief Scheme to help businesses survive through the recession. Mick said:"Small businesses are an integral part of the local economy and I am deeply concerned that many are being forced to close due to the high threshold for small ...
Here's a policy idea from the new Social Liberal Forum, those lovely people wanting to reinvigorate the left in the Lib Dems. Tim Leunig writes: Those in social housing should be allowed to require their landlord to sell their home and buy a place of their choice.Wow. That's pretty out there, but it won't work (I'm not even going to start on a 'liberal' group proposing that landlords shouldn't be allowed choice in which property they own... ha). So say I live in the shittiest council estate in the country and this new law comes in that forces my landlord ...
A letter to this morning's Western Mail from John Dixon, the Chair of Plaid Cymru and Plaid Cymru Environment Spokesperson, Leanne Wood seeks to bring some clarity to their party's policy on nuclear power. Unfortunately, all they have succeeded in doing is to raise more questions about Plaid Cymru's position on this issue and that of their leader. The letter itself seems unequivocal enough: At Plaid Cymru's 2007 conference the party membership passed a motion reiterating the party's "total opposition to the construction of any new nuclear power stations in Wales". Our principles are clear. Wales should decide whether a ...
Paul Keetch A good wicketkeeper is the heart of any cricket team and I am always on the look out for a good prospect. When he was first elected for Hereford I asked some people I knew there: "Can Keetch catch?" When I was answered in the affirmative, I knew I had my man. Earlier selections:Len HuttonC.B. FryDavid SteelViolent Bonham-CarterMike BrearleyL.T. Hobhouse
A second visit this week to a local business turned up something unexpected. I visited DSTi Output in Bradley Stoke who employ around 200 people locally and are part of a multi-billion pound worldwide group. The company handle the billing for companies such as Orange and GE Money, so if (like me) you get an orange phone bill then the chances are it will have been generated, printed, folded, stuffed and posted out from Bradley Stoke. I toured round the factory and was highly impressed by the very hi-tech equipment that they have - for example, each person's Orange bill ...
This week's Neath Guardian carries yet another story about the extraordinarily personal and bitter in-fighting that has been a feature of Blaenhonddan Community Council in Neath in recent months. It is a pitched battle between Labour and Plaid Cymru Community Councillors in which no prisoners are taken and no quarter is given. No wonder the Cadoxton ward elected a Welsh Liberal Democrat County
Montgomeryshire Welsh Liberal Democrat Assembly Member, Mick Bates has written to the First Minister to highlight the plight of small businesses in Wales and is calling for a review of the Small Business Rates Relief Scheme to help businesses survive through the recession.Mick said:"Small businesses are an integral part of the local economy and I am deeply concerned that many are being forced to
... on winning both Lewisham (Downham Ward) byelections yesterday. Jenni Clutten (LD) 1075, Duwayne Brooks (LD) 1067, Damien Egan (Lab) 655, Christine Allison (Con) 654, Pauline Morrison (Lab) 635, Andrew Lee (Con) 632, Tess Culnane (BNP) 287, Cath Miller (Grn) 63, Lee Roach (Grn) 62. Turnout 27.4%
James Graham has very kindly said that this blog is "criminally overlooked" in a bloggers' interview. Thank you, James. I suppose this means I really ought to write something.
