A pensioner in Weaste, Salford was wrongly told by Salford Council her husband had died, when in fact he was alive and recovering from a stroke in a local authority care home. The elderly woman burst into tears when she read the Salford Council letter expressing condolences. "I didn't know whether it was true or not - it was a bombshell" she explained. The woman, herself recovering from major surgery, only found out her husband was still alive when her son phoned Salford Council. Labour Councillor Bill Hinds, lead member for customer and support services, said: "A human error resulted ...
John Rentoul writes in the Independent on Sunday: A sound bite, a photo opportunity and a Government defeat in the Commons: Nick Clegg is suddenly a player. He took a high moral tone against the Prime Minister: "If someone is prepared to die for this country, surely they deserve to live in this country." He posed with Joanna Lumley and David Cameron outside afterwards.Then, for the first time since the days of James Callaghan, the Government lost a vote on an Opposition motion - this one tabled by the Liberal Democrats.Suddenly, I was taken back to Saddleworth moor, to memories ...
The News of the World is reporting that the Government is thinking of levying a new tax on companies like Google and Facebook to help raise additional cash for the 'bloated' BBC and other public sector broadcasters. If true, this is despicable. It is bad enough that we have a state run media and broadcaster that is 100% subsidised. New media companies (that you would have thought the Government would want to encourage) have enough difficulties establishing themselves in this competitive market at the best of times. The idea that they would have to carry (or fund) their state run ...
There's a Nature's Gym session in Manor House Gardens this Thursday, 7th May, between 11am and 2pm. Particpants will be building a compost bin and a stag beetle loggery. If you're interested in taking part, speak to Lara Al Jabi - lewisham {at} glendale-services.co(.)uk var mailNode = var linkNode = document.createElement('a'); linkNode.setAttribute('href', tNode = document.createTextNode("lewisham {at} glendale-services.co(.)uk"); linkNode.appendChild(tNode); linkNode.setAttribute('id', "emob-yrjvfunz@tyraqnyr-freivprf.pb.hx-63"); mailNode.parentNode.replaceChild(linkNode, mailNode); - t. 020 83183986 m. 07919548324. The group are meeting at the park keeper's office - closest gate is Old Road.
Sun 3rd
22:10
Drowning in leaflets, and wasting my last breath talking about the European elections...
What better way to spend a bank holiday weekend than ploughing through a head-high pile of European election leaflets, appending an address label to each and every one until your hands wear away to leave nothing but stumps behind? It's a good job I'm saving for a wedding and thus financially unable to leave the house, because that's exactly how I've spent this bank holiday weekend, sticking labels to more Euro leaflets than there are people in the North West actually likely to vote in the European elections. If the Labour government have suffered from "lamentable failures in communication" (copyright ...
The 50th anniversary of the founding of Chris Blackwell's Island Records - there's another article about it in today's Sunday Times - has focused attention on that label's artists.Nick Drake died from a drug overdose (accidental or otherwise) at the age of 26, having issued three albums that were well received but did not sell widely. This song, perhaps Drake's best known, is taken from the first of them, Five Leaves Left.His second album, Bryter Later, was supposed to make him famous. But despite the involvement of a stellar selection of musicians - John Cale; Richard Thompson, Dave Pegg and ...
Sun 3rd
21:45
This from councillor john Warmisham as he been reading the BLOG? Come on who are we talking about wi...
Twitter Updates Twitter Updates We've got to many people who are career politicians no roots in the party. well done Hazel.It's about time the party woke up & smelt the coffee. Read my post sent early today about Labour Councillors in Salford!!!!!
Which blogging platform is better(online surveys) Please vote in the poll or vote by tweeting your reply to me @irfanahmed
| The Politics | History | Nick Griffin | Racist party | Democracy & Elections | Extremist Links | Criminality | Antisemitism | Islamophobia | Racism is at the very heart of the British National Party. It is racism that separates it from any other political [...]
We tend not to be too poll-obsessed here at LDV - of course we look at them, as do all other politico-geeks, but viewed in isolation no one poll will tell you very much beyond what you want to read into it. Looked at over a reasonable time-span and, if there are enough polls, you can see some trends. Here, in chronological order, are the results of the eight polls published in April: Tories 41%, Labour 34%, Lib Dems 16% - YouGov/S. Times (5th April 2009) Tories 43%, Labour 30%, Lib Dems 18% - Populus/Times (7th April) Tories 43%, Labour ...
A week before I bought the Paddy Ashdown biography, by sheer coincidence I spent about twenty minutes pacing about on Donaghadee (Nordern I'land) beach to get these photos. I then discovered that Paddy spent much of his childhood at this scenic seaside town. I am seriously considering framing one of these shots and sending it to him. ....Not sure which one though. View 1 above View 2 above View
I have been out campaigning with Linda Jack and the Bedfordshire Liberal Democrats again ahead of the June European, and local, elections.
HAZEL BLEARS: THE PEOPLE'S MINISTER Star date: May 3rd 2009 More Hazel Hypocrisy Writing in today's Observer newspaper, Hazel Blears, Salford MP and Minister for Communities, is still waffling on about being "in tune and in touch with people" and "effective communications". The Salford Star, still waiting for a reply to an open letter sent to her six [...]
Sun 3rd
19:55Life in Salford waste of money, this attack from one Lib Dem hits it right on the nail.
Further ructions for Salford's LIFE with 'propaganda' resignation | Print | Email to a friend Thursday, 06 November 2008 var sbtitle=encodeURIComponent("Further ructions for Salford's LIFE with 'propaganda' resignation"); var sburl=sburl.replace(/amp;/g, "");sburl=encodeURIComponent(sburl); The expansion plans, and to an extent the integrity, of Salford Council's LIFE IN Salford publication have been dealt yet another blow, courtesy of a [...]
Sun 3rd
19:40The first cracks in Gordon Brown's cabinet appear today Go Hazel Girl Go first thing she as said i a...
After a disastrous week in which the prime minister suffered his first Commons defeat and was forced into a humiliating retreat over MPs' expenses, the communities secretary, Hazel Blears, openly criticises the government's handling of the Gurkhas issue and says that voters no longer believe many of its big policy announcements. In a clear reference [...]
Okay, so she is a Blairite, but Hazel Blears has a reputation for being a Labour loyalist come-what-may. She always had a chirpie, rather irritating, often reality-free response to every Labour setback. So if she is making critical comment, the rot in the Labour party must be so far advanced that it is almost impossible to reverse in time to save them from a poor general election result.I still
I have a confession to make. I have made a habit of being a Paddy Ashdown fan. However, I struggled to read the last book I bought by him. I think it was the first volume of his diaries. I just about managed to get to Page 48 and then packed it up and sent it back to Amazon. I attached a letter requesting a refund on the basis that "I hadn't expected the book to be so boring". A refund was duly
{green-festival-4.jpg} April's Big Green Festival was a huge success attracting people to Chorlton from across Manchester. There were a couple of gripes, but quite minor. The organising group are having a debrief meeting at St Clements on Thursday (7.30pm) to look at having the event next year and any problems that need resolving or improvements that could be made. I would say that we underestimated the amount of parking needed for a 'green' festival and the film screenings could have been ruined by the sunset. Both solveable. You may have other thoughts that are worth raising. It would also be ...
I have always not liked Prater Raines websites because I think they are to basic, badly designed and aren't the best of sites to have that's why many branches just don't use them. Charlotte Gore has had a rant about it today something which I have been ranting about to other Lib Dems when I meet them but never online. Tim Prater and company are great, their is nothing wrong with them and their sites are just a little basic and badly designed but Lib Dems like them because of easy to use features. I would answer to this by ...
I have spent an inordinate amount of time this Bank Holiday weekend at various London Liberal Democrat offices, church halls and community centres, from Hornsey and Wood Green to Richmond and beyond, via Camden, Islington and goodness knows how many other London boroughs, moving around on trains and tubes and buses, as [...]
I blogged in the morning about some sleaze from with in the Westminister village here is yet another sleaze case. A MP claimed £10,000 extra for rent for his London property. Another reason for why a hall of residence is needed to which MP's and Lords need to get chained up at night, oh sorry I mean given residence!
It's been an interesting week for anyone with a message to spread. For me, it's summed up by this headline: "Swine Flu Name Debated by Industry Groups" It caught my eye (not only for all the shouty caps - that's just the way Americans present their headlines) but because Industry Groups, sorry, industry groups, were even debating the name at all. Hang on, is it even up to them? From US site Marketing Daily: "Swine flu may not yet be a pandemic, but can the same be said of marketer and media reaction to it? "Indeed, the avalanche of news ...
I'm delighted to announce that my new blog, dedicated to Creeting St Peter, has been brought to life. Think of it as a record of life in a small village...
I've just finished reading "Full Hearts and Empty Bellies" by Winifred Foley, published by Abacus, ISBN 978-0-349-12218-2 Winifred Foley was born in 1914 and died recently at over ninety years of age. I heard an interview on the radio where she was talking about the book and about her childhood. It's almost unimaginable now that a family should be so poverty stricken in Britain; but it's within living memory. Her father worked as a miner and yet could hardly afford to feed the family. They only had one set of clothes each, little food and no luxuries. Everyone had to ...
Have been in Keighley town centre this week in my capacity as a Town Councillor. Keighley Town Council had a temporary shop where we could talk to people and ask them for their ideas about what they want for the town, and also about any problems ...
Inspired by Alan Johnson's very, very bold statement that no-one, absolutely no-one would be better at being PM than Gordon Brown, I thought I'd compile my top 10 list of Potential Prime Ministers that would be better prime ministers just by turning up and doing absolutely nothing at all. #10: David Cameron Slippery PR weasel that he [...]
Media coverage of the abuses by various councils regarding the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) has been very welcome. Conversely, it has unfortunately meant that (at least from my experience) whenever it is brought up at council, those who dare scrutinise the usage of this law are dismissed as bandwagon-jumpers who simply wish to capitalize on the media orgy against council surveillance. This is why I brought a motion to Liberal Youth Conference in February that was passed unanimously to make restrictions on the legislation party policy; and Liberal Youth subsequently chose for it to go to federal ...
Well today's most ridiculous piece of spin has to be this from Alan Johnson, as reported by the BBC. This makes their Number 1 story. Haha! Health Secretary Alan Johnson has defended Gordon Brown's leadership, saying he is "better than me or anyone else" as prime minister. Better than anyone else? In the whole country? There's not a single [...]
In lieu of me having a proper Leeds-focused blog, here is a letter I sent to the Yorkshire Evening Post.... Dear Sirs, Alot of comment has been made about the proposed barbecue area on Woodhouse Moor, including your double-page spread on April 28th. One of the first things that is notable about this debate is it is being framed in totally the wrong way by opponents of the proposal. It is not a question of whether you want barbecues or not; some people invariably will, others won't. Regardless they will happen so the opponents of this proposal suffer from a ...
Over the years, I've accumulated various books that I no longer have a use for. Rather than take them all with me when I move, I'm looking to dispose of them. I'd rather they went to good use so am offering them up here - use the contact form to enquire or to make an offer (any considered, even nil, if its the best I get!). Note also that dates I mention are date of first issue / date of copyright issue, not necessarily when the book was purchased! At some point, I'll sort it all out properly, with categories, ...
The criticism of the government/Gordon Brown by Hazel Blears as reported in The Observer is interesting and it seems pretty clear to me that it is the opening shot in a new round of Cabinet infighting. There are also reports that both Alan Johnson and Jack Straw have refused to say whether they will run for the leadership. The problem is that speaking in code and muttering about "not getting the message across" is all well and good and can be parsed by political pundits and the rest but it is not clear enough. When Thatcher was toppled in 1990, ...
The Executive Committee of Liberal International yesterday morning marked my introduction to international politics, although I've spent a lot of time in the past working with various European organisations. We started the day with a round table discussion on the future tasks of Liberalism 2010-2020, with a key note address from Dr Tsai Ing-Wen, the current chair of the Taiwanese Democratic Progressive Party. Predictably, much of her presentation centred on the role of China in the world, and the challenges which may arise from China's rise to superpower status. She also made points which most UK Liberal Democrats would agree ...
OK, testing again. Using the Dreamwidth poll wizard, then looking to see if/how polls crosspost to LJ. Odds are you'll need to login with OpenID to vote, etc, but it's about time you did that anyway. View poll: Poll wizard testing
Far too many Lib Dem Constituency branches are dependent on the 'Build Your Own Cookie Cutter LD Site' package made by Prater Raines. It seems extremely popular amongst Consituency Branches, but for the life of me I can't understand why. Stuart Sharpe accidently stumbled across one of these sites looking for his local Lib Dem Party [...]
If anyone exists who wants one and hasn't got one, they just released a new batch and I have three. The easiest way to get a code to you is via email, so email me or leave a comment with your email address in (if you're having trouble logging in with open ID to comment, this page might help), and it's first come first served. Also, don't assume that if there are comments they are from people asking for codes - last time, most of the comments were "already got one, thanks". I shall update numbers as I send out ...
Sorry to mention Norwich City on this blog rather than my Norwich blog, but my thoughts on this need as wide an audience as possible.Let's not make excuses for Norwich's relegation this year. In truth, yes, we have had some abysmal refereeing decisions in so many games this year that it may well have cost us points, but in reality Norwich are down to League One for one reason, and that is because we are a bloody poor team, reliant on loan players and lacking any real backbone and spine aside from Sammy Clingan and perhaps Gary Docherty. Norwich are ...
How badly will Labour have to do in June's local and European elections for Brown to realise the game is up or for the Party to move against him? The current polls are saying Tories 45%, Labour 26% and the Lib Dems 17-22%. Run those figures through local election predictions, and I guess you get three headline figures on June 5th: 1. Labour will come third, behind the Tories and the Lib Dems 2. The Tories will poll in the high forties, and possibly touch the 50% mark 3. Labours vote will slump to the low 20's and possibly not ...
Sun 3rd
14:51Salford Councillor's allowances - 2007/2008 Have a look how many get special allowances then ask you...
The allowances underlined are all labour, funny part is they are quick to have a go if you can't attend a meeting.May be if we all had special allowances like Labour we would not have to work. I for one feel these allowances should be abolished, i sometimes think people forget why we got in to [...]
All of the council's services and activities, from refuse collection to social services, aim to meet one or more of the pledges outlined below. They serve as a long-term framework, shaping the way we work and guiding us towards achieving our mission statement: "To create the best possible quality of life for the people of Salford." Click [...]
A few months ago I had a bit of an argument with a friend in the Tory party about their commitment to the city of Leeds. He had written a blog saying Labour didn't care about Leeds and that the Tories would do a much better job. Now I completely agree with the first statement. From Supertram to the children's hospital, from a high speed rail link to the local government settlement, it is obvious that the Labour Party in London don't care about Leeds. However would a Tory government care any more (or less?). As quite often happens with ...
MySpace Countdown Clocks
Sun 3rd
14:20Blears backs people's revolution to recycle buildings? i would like to ask if it will be as succesfu...
Communities Secretary Hazel Blears has today unveiled a series of measures to back a people's revolution to recycle buildings by putting real power in the hands of locals to support communities during the downturn and beyond. The tougher economic climate has led to renewed interest in communities maintaining local assets, from post offices to pubs. [...]
I have been looking at some statistics of past election outcomes and have realised that a party got more votes on one ballot compared to another yet the election was on the same day. The fact that the ballot with the difference was because the candidate wasn't well known compared to candidates on the first but is their more to it. The Lib Dem vote according to the statistics decreased but the vote of the other two political parties increased? Does anyone reading this have any other thought about a reason or argument that can be used to justify why ...
Please read this. Weep at its simplicity and common sense. Then join me in carrying its writer Becky Hogge aloft down Whitehall. From the New Statesman: You cannot fix society with computers. People fix society, if you let them. That means freeing nurses, teachers, social workers - and their clients - from the relentless tyranny of Whitehall's cravings for ever more information. A benevolent state must have a human face, not an unblinking screen. Technology can help, but only if it is despatched by those at the front line. It is a perverse truth that in an age where the ...
The Sunday Times and The Register are reporting that Jacqui Smith's climbdown on a central database to record information on all our emails, web browsing and phone calls was not quite what it seemed. It appears that the Government had secretly allocated over a billion pounds to GCHQ to gather Internet data at key places in the network infrastructure and feed it back to Cheltenham, effectively achieving the same as the now-defunct master database by different means. The project, called Mastering the Internet (MTI) was started last year and, it seems, has only come to light because of a loosly-worded ...
Freedom Central has been up and running for a number of months now. Some of the people who contribute to the site met up at conference and identified some ways the site could be further improved, our first priority was to get more original content on here that sparked debate. On that score, check. but we need to keep it up.We want this to be a place where Lib Dem members can air their thoughts
An interesting little article in today's Observer talks about how the iPhone, revolutionary at its inception, is being rapidly matched and overtaken by similar devices from Nokia, Samsung, Blackberry et. al. It got me thinking about how so readily accept whatever we've got now as the norm or the right way to do it, and how difficult it can be to break out of that pattern. With smartphones, we've had years of clunky, painful interfaces where anything you wanted to do was buried in layers of menus or deep in some set of obscure options; where bending the phone to ...
If the story in the Sunday Times is accurate, that Tracey Emin is preparing to back the Tories, then its very disappointing. Tracey has always been an anti-establishment radical, left-leaning artist, and a little know fact, my cousin, of which I am proud. Our grandfathers were brothers: born in Cyprus, the sons of a black slave captured from the Sudan, and sold into slavery to a Cypriot merchant. Tracey has always been proud of her Turkish Cypriot family and heritage, and many of us are proud of her achievements. We don't know each other, though I know her father very ...
Hazel Blears says the government doesn't use the Internet as much to communicate with the general public and says that Internet campaigning shouldn't take over campaigning on the streets. Yet she then boasts about how her department uses the Internet to communicate and personally I think she is just stirring everything together to try and win votes. The Prime Minister claims that his government and himself are using the Internet to communicate with the general public the Youtube videos of the PM acting like a clown are meant to be a way to communicate with the general public? Personally I ...
photos by Nigel Ashton Kew Ward held a fundraising dinner with Lord Lee at the Bold Hotel organised by Cllr Fred Weavers. A goodly crowd turned out to hear the man that was Tony Greaves's MP tell of his dissolution with the Tory Party-particularly over Europe and his prediction that this government was down and out. Lord Lee won first prize in the raffle and took the signed copy of Vince Cable's new book-the closest thing we've had in Southport to a visit from Vince. Mike Booth took the initiative in getting the book which was most people's first choice ...
A man walks into a bar with an alligator under his arm. He asks the barman, "Do you serve economists?". The barman replies that indeed he does. "Great!", says the man, "In that case, I'll have a beer for me, and an economist for my alligator...".
With European Elections almost upon us signs are emerging already that Labour politicians and others are getting nervous about the impact of recent events on support for the BNP. Peter Hain in particular has been quite vocal on this subject. Writing in the Guardian he said:"Unless the rest of us get our act together, the BNP could easily win three seats - and quite possibly six or more -- in
Yesterday I had my last joint surgery with the police at the Cameron Centre, Lockleaze. As I will be standing down in June this was a special moment. A few old faces and some new. Still the casework to do. Helping out where I can. This is the side of being a Councillor I will miss. The little things. Sometimes with casework there is very little that you can do. Whereas sometines there is a lot you can do. There is room for impact. Frustratingly not 100% of the time. Alas the magic wand!
This morning's Observer carries good news in the fight to clean up the Government's DNA database so as to remove from it those who do not have a criminal record. They tell us that the DNA profiles of almost a million innocent people are to be destroyed as part of a major overhaul of the police national database. They include people who have been arrested and never charged, and those taken to court but found not guilty. The paper says that an estimated 800,000 of the 5.1m DNA profiles on the database belong to people in England and Wales who ...
An ironic twist in the latest MP expenses story - this time is it James Purnell, the minister in charge of ensuring that the rest of us don't claim too much in expenses, who is accused of claiming back more in rental costs than he actually paid out. The Sunday Express writes: CABINET Minister James Purnell was under pressure last night to explain why he claimed £10,000 more in Parliamentary expenses than he paid in rent for his London flat. The Welfare and Pensions Secretary, tipped as a future leader of the Labour Party, pocketed £10,143 more than the rent ...
All the papers are full of stories of Labour MPs and Ministers in full meltdown mode this morning as the ramifications of last week's votes hit home. Of note is Hazel Blear's piece in the Observer in which she says that the government is failing to get its message across to ordinary people or to relate to them. She has a particularly nice line reminiscent of John Major's 1992 soapbox offensive: 'I'm not against new media. YouTube if you want to. But it's no substitute for knocking on doors or setting up a stall in the town centre.' Actually Hazel ...
Nick Cohen has written a superb article for Standpoint magazine this month. You can read the online version of it here. He uses his experience and actual first hand evidence of Brown's henchmen at work to illustrate how Brown got to the top and the underhand tactics he has used since getting there. It makes it clear that the McBride/Draper Sleazegate scandal was far from a one-off and is fact symptomatic of how people close to the Prime Minister operate. Probably the best MSM article I have read this year so far.
I have had to call this blog post the Sunday Sleazes because they are so many of them: The Sunday Times reports how what stores MP's have been shopping at are to stay secret and censored.The Labour MP who was claiming £17,000 for his "car" and "mileage" yet he pays his office manager £60 to driveA Labour Peer has been claiming an allowance for a flat in Kent nearly £100,000 yet she doesn't live in the flat and lives in LondonDavid Miliband wants a private plane and a another on standby yet a flights are cheap with airlines like BMI ...
I suppose I wasn't really surprised to learn that the man whose idea it was to criminalise criticism of religion has, in the past, voiced some very intolerant views on gay rights. It's somewhat ironic that he was appointed to the role of Justice and Equality Minister. He wants to use his time in the role to make it illegal to "publish or utter.....matter that is grossly abusive to matters held sacred by any religion." There are surely elements of all religions that could seriously annoy some followers of others to the point of outrage before you even get to ...
The Lib Dems 4 Parliament site brings news of just the one selection closing in May (in addition to the two which closed on 1st May): SKIPTON & RIPON (8th May)
I very much welcome changes to the City Council's roads weeds spraying problem and I hope these will ensure no repetition of the large volume of complaints in the West End last year. In 2008, there were lots of complaints about residents in the West End about the extent of overgrown weeds on quite a number of streets and I am therefore pleased at new arrangements that I hope will avoid a similar problem this year. The City Engineer has advised me : "The weed spraying programme for 2009 started on Monday 27 April 2009. The programme consists of one ...
The 1933 MGM classic, Dinner at Eight was the first film to feature on screen chocolate eating action. Of course, as chocolate can be dangerous to dogs, this honour went to a human, not a dog: {Chocolate being eaten on screen for the first time in Dinner at Eight} Related posts:Dogs + chocolate = bad news Sometimes, I just wish I were human as this story...Measure the speed of light with the help of a bar of chocolate All you need is some chocolate, a microwave, a ruler...Facebook users know what matters in life: chocolate Two of the top ten ...
The "Gordon Brown resign" petition is now at around 46,000 signatures and is already No 1 of the active petitions. However if it can get more than 70,663 then it will enter the Top 10 of all the petitions they have ever had since the site was first created a few years ago under Tony Blair. Hopefully that target can be achieved in the next few days. Also, the petition creator now has a Google Group for discussion about the petition here: Brown "please go" petition HQ.
Inspired by the Grauniad, I took a look back at Gordon Brown's Mansion House speech from 20th June 2007, a week before he became our Prime Minister. It's quite a corker. He described his period at number 11 as "an era that history will record as the beginning of a new golden age for the City of London." Not just any era, but a new world order "And I believe it will be said of this age, the first decades of the 21st century, that out of the greatest restructuring of the global economy, perhaps even greater than the industrial ...
Just about every faltering Government has found some senior politician to bleat that "We are not getting our message across". This is a coded statement. In the current case Hazel Blears knows perfectly well that it is NOT the presentation that is the problem. It is the "message" itself that is wrong but she dare not say that. So New Labour goes on treating the electorate like they were idiots & will duly get trashed.
Writing solely in my capacity as a local councillor: Another aside in relation to the recently published Walklate report into the disastrous licence granted to Firoka at Ally Pally that cost local taxpayers at least £1.5 million. Labour councillors then on the board (and no Liberal Democrats) were asked a series of questions regarding their own recollections about how the situation unfolded. When it comes to one of the responses to the specific questions, that of Labour councillor Sheila Peacock, Mr Walkate observes: "Cllr Peacock has responded by answering 'no' to all the questions posed." That would have rendered Sheila's ...
The latest information from NHS Bury on Swine Flu is available here.
This is perhaps one of the falsest counter positions there actually is; starting from the top, most people are in politics because they care on one degree another about the world around them and want to change it for the better. Often there is a motivating factor, something that inspires people or that they see wrong and motivates them to get out there and do something but the basis of the commitment remains the same. An ideological commitment is similarly an emotional commitment as much an intellectual commitment; in fact, it is arguably more so. Without being a full statement ...
... inspired by a person who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty. View Poll: In your mouth...
The same line that they've been trotting out for about 5 years now: Communities Secretary Hazel Blears has attacked the government's "lamentable" failure to communicate. ... "reports" the BBC. Yes Hazel, because the problem with your Government is that it's doing a fantastic job but you're failed to communicate what a fantastic job you've been doing. Sheesh, then she explains what [...]
Labour peer Baroness Uddin has named a flat in Maidstone, Kent as her main residence and claimed around £100,000 in Parliamentary expenses for it. This is despite the flat being empty and Baroness Uddin living in Wapping, East London - just four miles from the House of Lords. From the Sunday Times: Residents from the five other flats in the same block as Uddin's property all say they have never seen her there. They could see through the windows that the bedrooms were unfurnished. Yvonne Adams, who has lived next to the flat for three years, said: "I can't emphasise ...
