This evening I chaired a book-launch, hosted by the Council for Arab-British Understanding, Arab Media Watch and Independent Jewish Voices, at the Arab-British Chamber of Commerce in Mayfair. In the hotseat was my SOAS colleague Gilbert Achcar, Professor of Development Studies and International Relations, but perhaps better known for his books, including The Clash of Barbarisms: ...
Ever since I started to take an interest in photography a few years ago, Martin Parr has been one of my favourite photographers. So when I had the chance to go and see him talk about his photographs and his career on Tuesday at the Hebden Bridge Arts Festival I jumped at the chance, and ...
Earlier than I expected. Great news. And – oh – our cup runneth over – Cameron is "considering" backing electoral reform! Now – about the system. Could we just put a little "+" after the "AV" please? Just a little "+" – easy peasey. Just two strokes of the pen.... From Politics Home (backed up by a 24-carat "The BBC learns" report): A referendum on the voting system will take place on May 5th next year, according to reports. The coalition committee are understood to have met today and chosen that date to coincide with Scottish and Welsh elections. Nick ...
Thu 1st
23:05
Do you remember: "Tonight's star prize - oooooooooh", "Open the box - take the money", or the "Yes, ...
...Just wondered. A wonderful piece of nostalgia this. I must have been between about four and nine years old when I watched "Take your pick" with Michael Miles every week with my family. We particularly enjoyed the bit when he said "And now here's tonight's star prize" and then the curtain would draw back as we all went "Ooooooooooooooooooh!" with the audience, as an electronic potato peeler was revealed. Oh, OK, it was usually a speed boat or a holiday for two in Majorca or something. For anyone under fifty I suspect that all means nothing. But, as TV Heaven ...
Text of a letter from Tom McNally about the demise of RMJ: REFUGEE & MIGRANT JUSTICE Thank you for your letter of 7 June, about the financial difficulties faced by Refugee and Migrant Justice (RMJ). You are no doubt aware that since you wrote the Board of Trustees decided to place RMJ into administration. Jonathan Djanogly MP, Legal Aid Minister for England & Wales, has carefully considered the concerns raised by you and many others. He wrote to Paul Gray, Chair of the Board of Trustees to explain the position and that he does not consider intervention appropriate. However, it ...
Hmm... This is not going to be so easy. Denise Rance and I at one side of the table - four officers on the other - two of them ex-police officers with a certain amount of ... well, presence. Denise led the meeting very well . However, it appears that since the beginning of March there has been an outbreak of complaints and the officers have to respond to these. We were confronted with photographs and we had to agree some banner sitings were a bit unwise. So we have had to fall back on trying to get the Pound ...
So Jonathan Lord had his name pulled out of the hat in the private members bill ballot and gets to pick a bill to go through parliament. What did he choose? This: SPORTS GROUNDS SAFETY AUTHORITY BILL – Jonathan Lord MP (Woking) "Bill to confer further powers on the Football Licensing Authority and to amend ...
It's #bbcqt day again and the Live Chat starts on this blog from 10:30pm as normal. David Dimbleby will be joined by the Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, the shadow home secretary Alan Johnson, Telegraph columnist Simon Heffer, Professor of Classics Mary Beard and social policy campaigner Dame Dr Camila Batmanghelidjh. Join us below from 10:30pm: BBC Question Time - 1st July 2010
Today during a Parliamentary hearing organised by Members of the EPP Group on the sexual abuse of children some of their members claimed paedophilia is connected to homosexuality, despite offering no proper evidence. This is because their claim is completely unfounded. Vytautas Landsbergis, Member of the European Parliament for Lithuania, former Head of the Lithuanian Parliament and member of the EPP group, said there was a connection between homosexuality and paedophilia. Children, he said, should therefore be protected from "homosexual propaganda" and "homophilic [sic] pædophilia". Anna Záborská, EPP Member of the European Parliament for Slovakia, later made a further remark ...
While in Shropshire a couple of weeks ago, I did a lot of tourist things. This involved visiting several gift shops where appealling foods were on sale. I worked out that it was silly to buy a jar of honey to carry it home to Market Harborough. But when I got home I wasted no time in visiting Farndon Fields Farm Shop and buying that sort of good - what Alan Bennett's mother called "out-of-the-way mustards". The shop must be doing well: much of the goats' paddock has been lost to extend the car park. But they are still well ...
This afternoon I was down at a photo call with the First Minister, Pat Watter, the President of COSLA - the Scottish Councils Umbrella Group and Council Deputy Leader Steve Cardownie. The event was to mark the announcement of the latest trance of council house funding and Edinburgh has done very nicely out of it! The cash announced, £2.88 million, will go towards building 96 new council houses in the Sighthill area. Pilton, where the photo call took place, is also part of the £150 million 21st century Homes project. This is about building the first council housing in a ...
I wrote earlier today about how Harriet Harman and Labour had, sort of, forgotten that they had no councillors in Cornwall. This was all because, as Paul Waugh blogged, Ms Harman and the Labour Party have launched a campaign to get Labour councillors in all areas where there is a Lib Dem MP to submit a council motion against the VAT increase. I pointed out in my earlier post that they might have a tough time doing this in Cornwall where there are precisely no Labour councillors. That got me thinking. Are there any other Lib Dem MPs whose local ...
... We'd say a big thank you to the 49,916 'absolute unique visitors'* who read Liberal Democrat Voice in June. Though that's way down on our May 2010 figure of c.136,000, that was an exceptional month – with a general election plus the formation of the new coalition government. In fact, compared with June 2009, Lib Dem Voice's readership is up by one-third. This brings our absolute unique visitor readership for the last year to date (1 July 2009 - 30 June 2010) to 582,154, over 80% higher than the equivalent figure for 2008-09 of 322,654. The 5 top-read stories ...
When I was a student at York, the left tried every year to persuade the Student Union to spend more than they had coming in as income. They called it "deficit financing". The implication that if only you read Keynes you would understand what they were getting at. The irony is that today this caricature has become the accepted view of Keynes even among the mainstream left. Let us remind ourselves what Keynes really said. He was concerned that the capitalist system was given to waves of rising and falling demand and that people suffered as a result. He therefore ...
This is perhaps the best of eleven analyses I have found so far on major US blogs of the new material I recently posted proving a UK ministerial policy of torture. I have done numerous foreign press interviews in the last two days, including Liberation, Boston Globe and Der Spiegel. But I got the brush off from the Guardian and Telegraph, no response from sending the documents to Channel 4 and the BBC, in fact precisely zilch from the UK media. What is wrong with this country?
Whenever the England football team fails in an international tournament the complaint that our players are not that good technically is heard. I don't know whether the phenomenon I am about to discuss is a cause or an effect of this, but it seems to me that our best players get pushed too far forward. Take Gareth Barry. I remember him as a wonderfully assured teenage centre back. I remember his manager at Aston Villa (I think it was Graham Taylor) saying something like: "We scream at him to lump the ball forward, but he takes his time and passes ...
Today I have been enjoying my favourite day of the school year, our trip to the Royal Norfolk Show ! For those who do not know, the Royal Norfolk Show is one of the biggest agricultural and trade shows in the country, attracting tens of thousands of visitors, including many thousands of school children from across the county. For me, the highlight still remains getting stickers and freebies from the stands, and I make something of a competition of it to see who can get the best stuff. I would like to think I did well with frisbees and baseball ...
I am delighted that the latest spate of legal action concerning Parliament Square has left Brian Haw and his neighbouring protester, Barbara Tucker, able to continue their camped protests on the pavement, where they've been for some years. Trebles and a quick chorus "we shall overcome" all round! The "democracy camp" which took up residence on the grass square, has been ordered to leave by Friday. So – there's an important distinction here from mullord the judge: *pavement: OK (as long as you were there before legislation came in against it – which Brian and Barbara were) *grass – not ...
Congratulations to Nick Clegg for his Your Freedom initiative. It is has reminded us that there is more to Liberalism than the slightly playground virtue of "fairness" and recaptured for him some of the freshness that so wowed the nation in the first leaders' debate. But it has to be admitted that in introducing it Nick has revealed a schism in the Liberal Democrats. For, reaching for an example of an absurd law, he said: I've just discovered for instance, would you believe it, that there's still an old law in the statute book that says it's an offence if ...
Following complaints from numerous residents that I have raised about the quality of grass cutting in parts of Logie and the Corso Street area, Dundee Contract Services has agreed to meet residents to discuss the concerns on-site.
This week we saw some real Lib Dem policies announced. First of all, Ken Clarke, was pushing OUR policy on crime, looking at constructive ways to punish and rehabilitate minor criminals instead of using short sentences, which don't work, never have worked, and never will work. Then today, William Hague wanting to place a stronger presence in the EU Commission, to be a loyal friend to the US, and to network in the wider world, that sounds suspiciously like Liberal Democrat policy. And finally the big one. Nick Clegg launching the yourfreedom.hmg.gov.uk website calling for ideas for undoing unnecessary legislation, ...
With the school summer holidays fast approaching, this evening at Blackness Primary School (pictured right), I held my final surgery until the new school term begins in August. During the summer break I can be contacted as follows : Home telephone number : 459378 (any time) Office telephone number at Tayside House : 434985 (office hours Monday to Friday) E-surgery : esurgery@frasermacpherson.org.uk (any time)
So, continuing my monthly stat porn figures, the monthly summary of my visitor stats according to google analytics is as below for June 2010. The busiest day on my blog last month was Thursday 17th June and the story was about Caroline Nokes MP, the MP who made a virtue of marriage during the campaign and then we discover she has been having an affair. Last month I had 3,010 absolute unique visitors, massively down from 6,069 last month. They made 3,993 visits and 5,129 page views. So, my top 10 referring sites for the last month (with previous position ...
Reuters reports: Liberal Democrats want a date to be set for a referendum on the move to the Alternative Vote system as a tangible reward for their role as junior coalition partners with the Conservatives. The LibDems hope a vote can be held as early as next May, although AV actually falls short of their desire for a genuinely proportional voting system. "I'm hoping to make an announcement literally in a couple of days, next week," Clegg said in answer to a question after making a speech in London. Read the full piece here. And as Mark's already blogged, it's ...
Video also available on YouTube here. This morning Nick Clegg made a speech, launched a website, and invited everybody's views on how the Government should redress the balance between the citizen and the state: This morning I want to talk about freedom. For too long new laws and regulations have taken away people's freedoms, interfered in everyday life, and made it difficult for businesses to get by. The state has crept further and further into people's homes, the places they work, their private lives. That intrusion is wrong; it's illiberal; it's disempowering and it's going to change. This government is ...
[IMG: Traffic survey on Icknield Way] I have written to Test Valley's Planning and Highways departments asking them to review traffic calming measures on Icknield Way. A series of build outs have been installed between Viking Way and Lilywhite Crescent to slow down traffic. Eventually the road will be closed to all but bus and emergency traffic. Local residents, however, believe the existing traffic calming is ineffective and that the delay in implementing long term plans means the road will become increasingly dangerous as it is used by more traffic to and from Augusta Park I and town councillor Barbara ...
Today, she had her first poetry reading, in public, and lots of people heard her reading her competition-winning poem, which is this:A Daffodil by Holly Rylett Down down down Under the ground The roots are carefully growing Up up up Over the ground A daffodil is starting to shoot High high high Above the sky The daffodil really shoots Low low low Under the sky The daffodil is dead (because it's winter!)How well has my little one captured the cyclical nature of life and death and the wonder of nature in those few words? * so proud *
The Labour Party, still in self-denial over the economic crisis, appear to have forgotten that, as well as having no MPs in Cornwall, they also have no councillors. Out of 123 in total, they cannot summon up a single Labour winner. Paul Waugh of the Evening Standard reports that Harriet Harman is launching a campaign against the VAT rise. The thrust of this campaign is to seek to embarrass the Liberal Democrats over the issue. She proclaimed that in an attempt to mobilise a national campaign, Labour will table motions at councils in the backyards of all 57 Lib Dem ...
Thu 1st
16:54Whisper it, so that 'elf and safety don't find out: The spirit of David Penhaligon lives on in the C...
The Evening Standard reports: MPs are sleeping secretly in the Commons after being stripped of their second home allowance. A handful of parliamentarians are bedding down at Westminster during the week because they are now banned from claiming on the taxpayer for a hotel, a rented flat, or a mortgage on a second home. But they want to stay anonymous for fear they will be evicted on health and safety grounds. ...They are understood to be using makeshift arrangements such as camp beds — but they have been kept awake by the bongs of Big Ben, as well as other ...
I was reading Linda Jack's blog (of the fluffy handcuffs!) today and it got me thinking. In it she states: `Firstly – freedom to me is being able to live my life without fear, and like most people I guess my biggest fears are around losing my loved ones, my health, my job.` Hold it ...
Northern Democrat No 52 June 10 This is the latest edition of the Northern Democrat, edited and produced by me for Lib Dems in the North East, Yorkshire and Cumbria.
The first in what may be a series of daily posts on anniversaries in Doctor Who history, covering i) real-world anniversaries of the births and deaths of people important to the history of the programme; ii) anniversaries of the first broadcast of Who stories on TV and radio (which get a bit thin over the summer, so we are starting gently); and iii) dates which are specified in broadcast stories or spinoff literature (of which there are surprisingly few). 1 July is rather a good date to start with; I wonder how long I'll be able to keep it up ...
I saw an odd headline on the BBC saying "Blair to receive US peace medal", so I investigated. An sure enough our ex-PrimeMinister is getting the US's National Constitution Centre's Liberty Medal. From their press release: Philadelphia, PA (June 30, 2010) - David Eisner, President and CEO of the National Constitution Center, announced today that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair will receive the 2010 Liberty Medal in recognition of his steadfast commitment to conflict resolution. The spokesperson goes on to say "This award recognizes both his dedication to and his success in building understanding among nations and creating lasting ...
To those who know Schiphol better than I do - is there anywhere in the airport where there is Wi-Fi, preferably free?
[IMG: Bury Town Hall] The second motion to last nights Bury Full Council Meeting was a Liberal Democrat motion following on from the Coalition Government's Emergency Budget and the resulting impact on Bury Council services. As a result of the emergency budget local authorities are being asked to cut immediately £1.6 billion from the budgets they approved in March for the current year. In Bury's case this boiled down to £5.2 million cut from grants expected from the Government. Local Liberal Democrats feel very strongly that so far as possible proposed cuts to services need to follow extensive consultation with ...
The latest "House of Comments" podcast with myself and Stuart Sharpe of the Sharpe's Opinion blog is now live. The 32nd episode which we recorded on Tuesday 29th June is available to download raw mp3 file here or you can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes here. The format is to invite political bloggers on each week to discuss a few of the stories that are making waves in the blogosphere. This week we were joined by Richard Angell, Deputy Director of Progress, and James O'Malley of the Pod Delusion podcast. We discussed whether the recent rebellion of two Lib ...
Taken from the comments on this page of Nick Clegg's frankly AWESOME 'Your Freedom' government website, where members of the public are invited to suggest which draconian, unnecessary laws they want to see scrapped. I hope this one makes it onto the bill, and if it doesn't I might well see about a motion to conference next year - I've long argued that it's disgusting to tell owners of pubs they can't allow a legal activity on their own premises! Test Your SHS (Second Hand Smoke) IQ 1. Who was the first European politician to implement comprehensive smoking bans? a) ...
[IMG: Town Hall] Last nights Full Council meeting at Bury Town Hall was probably the longest meeting for many months, starting at 7pm and finishing about 10.20 - and then with unfinished business. The highlight was two motions, the first by the Labour group calling for the re-instatement of the recently sacked board of Six Town Housing, Bury's arms length Housing management organisation. It has been well publiscised recently that Bury Council Chiefs fired the board of Six Town Housing because of actions of the board and a lack of consultation with the Council, arguing a number of reasons in ...
I have to say I was delighted this morning to see the debate moving to more traditionally Lib Dem territory with Nick Clegg's invitation to us all to let the government know what our idea of freedom is. I will be responding to the invitation, although I would be interested to know what will happen with the suggestions. For example, what if 12 million of us said the legislation we wanted to abolish was raising VAT and cutting public services? How will they decide what to implement and what to keep? How much say will we really have? Do we ...
Even as a critical friend of the new coalition government my approval of initiatives has so far been restrained to nodding acceptance. After 7 weeks in the new government has come up with something I find very encouraging, and is a step in the direction of something I passionately believe in, and have campaigned for. "I have long believed that IT can deliver better public services at a lower cost".Now this may not be the perception from the public who has been given the impression that IT is a colossal waste of money and invariably fails. Of course there have ...
You just can't them down, can you? Just when you thought the advocates of war with Iraq had lost the intellectual battle, it turns out that the UK's Education, Culture and Universities secretaries are signatories to an organisation which denied the legitimacy of the UN, and called for the forcible imposition of democracy on foreign countries. ...
What can I say about this?
Technology companies seem to operate a different set of rules to the rest of business, Microsoft for instances has frequently sent upgrades to my PC which have the effect of screwing up my email settings, currently they are trying to foist something called Office Genuine Advantage Notification, now the purpose of this is check my copy of Microsoft's Office which I don't have (too expensive and bloated) instead I use the much better OpenOffice which is free, the only advantage is for Microsoft who nosey around my PC, and track illegal copies of their software, a bit like those offensive ...
[IMG: http://www.wikio.co.uk] [IMG: Civic office] Last Tuesdays full Council meeting was interesting to say the least! This was the first meeting with our Coalition running the show, and the down-beat faces of the Labour party members said it all. It was also very clear that the two coalition groups worked very well together. This may seem strange to some (and even to me at times) but after years of Labour totalitarianism, both groups want to make changes for the better and for the good of Reading. The first order of business: The first item dealt with the 'Coalition agreement' and, ...
Bury Council are in the process of introducing bus lane enforcement across the Borough. In itself that is a surprise as I had assumed that as we had bus lanes, they would be enforced somehow! In any case that is the plan, however as part of that process they plan to amend the hours of operation of the bus lanes so that they all operate at the same times. This means that all 8 bus lanes across the authority will operate from 7am - 10am and 4pm to 7pm monday to saturday. I must confess that I do not see ...
It is interesting that there have been quite a few comments regarding the your freedom site that has been set up by the coalition government. Admittedly some have been criticising the idea of removing the smoking ban or what if the general public want to bring back hanging the majority have not focused on the ...
Ah yes, the joys of Local Government Review in Devon and Norfolk, where the outgoing Government behaved with such utter disregard for the criteria they themselves had established that the Orders creating unitary authorities for Exeter and Norwich were quashed at judicial review... Anyway, here's what Ros had to say yesterday... Baroness Scott of Needham Market: My Lords, when I retrieved the notes that I had written for the original Second Reading debate in this House, I saw that they start by saying, "Congratulate Baroness Hanham". I had intended at the time to congratulate her on her new job, but ...
Nick Clegg has launched a website today called "Your Freedom" which seeks to get public input into the process of deciding which laws should be repealed. Here is Mr Clegg outlining the idea behind the initiative: The law that I would put at the top of my list for repeal is the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. In my view this law has been shown to be hopeless in its aims of reducing drug use and actually perversely increases that harms caused to society. Many of the problems caused are actually due to this act rather than the drugs themselves. ...
Don't you just love it when things happen like they are supposed to? I know Sefton Council gets knocked by many residents for many things; bins not collected, state of the roads, street cleaning etc. and I too have been known to have a go. So that's why I thought it was important to post a story which shows that the Council do get some things right. Yesterday, a resident called to complain about some abusive graffiti on his garden wall which I duly reported to the Environmental team. Imagine my delight when today the graffit team called me to ...
As a Lib Dem working in online and multimedia communications, the concept of an 'Internet election' is something I have thought quite a lot about. In the build up to the election I expressed my concerns about the Lib Dems use of online tools on my own blog. I am pleased to say that on a national level my fears were misplaced. Our online campaign was excellent, and by far the best of the three major parties. In particular the Labservative spoof campaign was innovative, eye catching, and added a new entry to the politco dictionary. It was exactly the ...
This morning I've had a reply from Oliver Jones, the local highways engineer, about the various issues raised following my walkabout on Tuesday. On the skid surfaces on Dutson Road, Oliver says: I have had a look at this and it is clearly a material failure, I am going to arrange for a gang to remove the existing failed surface and take this issue up with the sub-contractor who undertook this work originally regarding remedial measures.On the graffiti, he has arranged for the swastika on the road surface to be painted over and the local street ranger, Rodney Hancock, is ...
Today the government opened up the Your Freedom site to the general public so that they could vote which unnecassery Laws should be repealed. The most interesting one, spotted by @jackyboy86, is a move to repeal the law of gravity. One which could have some very interesting consequences (why would oxygen stay around the earth? ...
Many Leithers are proud that the Royal Yacht Britannia is berthed in Leith Harbour, well now the Royal Yacht is to be joined by a second Royal Yacht, The Bloodhound! The racing yacht was once owned by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh and is due into its new home in Edinburgh to become a tourist attraction. The BBC website claims it has sailed into the Harbour already, but this shipping website is not showing it and I cannot see it from my windows or balcony. The Bloodhound is a massive 63ft (19.2m) and will be berthed alongside the ...
At last nights Full council meeting it was agreed that the final draft of the Tree Strategy would be adopted and added to the Council's policy framework. This has been a long time coming and has been something we have been campaigning for. Some residents remember hearing about this over 10 years ago! Since then they had to witness the steady decline of their local street trees. This is particularly apparent along Addington, Erleigh and Alexandria Roads. It was great to see so many people had returned surveys or wrote directly to the council during the consultation. The Lead Councillor ...
Anna is now on holiday for the next 7 weeks! It was great to turn off the alarm clock so that we didn't have to get up at 7:20. Neither of us really like these early mornings and I'm looking forward to having some lie-ins. Typically, though, after weeks of gorgeous sunshine, today it's tipping it down with rain. I hope this isn't going to continue until 18th August. In some ways it would be better if we structured our school year so that the Summer holidays were in May and June, cos that's when we get the best of ...
At the last full Council meeting I asked if Erleigh Road would ever be resurfaced. This comes after several comments from residents on the subject and the fact that the pot holes are making it a difficult road to cycle down. It's also been pointed out that the original tram lines are still under the current road! I had the following answer from our new Lead Councillor for Strategic Planning and Transport: "Due to limited funding for carriageway resurfacing it is necessary to prioritise schemes based on nationally accepted technical assessment processes. The annual programme for resurfacing of classified roads ...
Conservatives 4,120 votes (34.10%) winning 3 seats (-1) Liberal Democrats 3,546 votes (29.35%) winning 3 seats (unchanged) Labour 3,448 votes (28.54%) winning 4 seats (+2 seats) Green Party 424 votes (3.51%) winning 0 seats (unchanged) Independents 408 votes (3.38%) winning 0 seats (-1 seat) British National Party 135 votes (1.12%) winning 0 seats (unchanged) Conservative lead of 574 votes (4.75%)
10am Franklin House Tender Evaluation Interviews I was on the interview panel to evaluate two tender applications to build and manage a new Dementia care home and resource centre on the Franklin House site. Whoever gets the contract the new centre will be an invaluable resource for dementia sufferers and their carers.
30 DAYS OF DC: Day 1:Your Favourite Character This should surprise absolutely no one, really. Of course it's BC. One of the top martial artists of the DCU, with a powerful sonic scream she rarely uses becuase her non meta-abilities are just so shit hot, Dinah is the favourite niece/cool older sister of the entire suphero community. She just hits all my buttons; every single one: * she's massively into self knowledge and self improvment through consistently training her fight skills * she suffered a traumatic experience that nearly broke her, and then she got better. * she has a ...
OK, we all know the European Court of Human Rights is not the same as the EU, but they are of similar provenance. Born in the post-WWII era as an attempt to ensure the peaceful defence of human rights via due legal process, binding together the signatories in ways that will make it difficult for ...
One of the highlights of any full Council meeting is the chance to question the Leader about his work. This is mainly because on occasion the Leader can get his words muddled and come up with all sorts of mangled gems (calling our lady former mayor "Mrs Mayor" being my favourite ever example), but is also due to the fact that we do sometimes get important bits of information. Last night was no exception, as I asked about the involvement of Councillors in the programme of cuts that the Council needs to introduce as a result of the government's budget. ...
Last night was a meeting of Bury Council which started in the summer sunshine at 7pm and ended in the muggy twilight at 22:20 after more speeches, debates and hyperbolic bunkum than I care to think about. Sitting there stewing in that muggy Council chamber listening to my colleagues was akin to being slow-roasted by a particularly verbose team of chefs. There were two main debates. The first was about the recent decision to sack the entire board of Six Town Housing, which is the "arms length management company" charged with managing the Council's housing stock. The board was made ...
Last night's Council meeting debated Bury Council's response to the government's programme of cuts. As explained above, I didn't actually ge tthe chance to make the speech below, because it was far too late and we were all far too hot. I did say a few words on Labour's amendment, but had I had the time I'd have said what I was going to say about the government's cuts and what we should do about them, which is the following... "Thank you Mr Mayor. A couple of months ago I was at a general election candidates debate in Ramsbottom, and ...
Willie Rennie has stopped being a Special Advisor and is reported to be planning to run for the Scottish Parliament. Welsh Assembly member Mick Bates has pleaded not guilty to assault charges.
If the Taxpayers' Alliance have done anything with their latest campaign, they have illustrated how a Council newspaper, which is delivered correctly in terms of content and frequency can actually save public money, whilst enhancing the value taxpayers get from their local Council. The organisation have carried out a survey of the cost of these newspapers, together with any benefits and savings they realise. It seems that there is some good practice that other Councils can learn from. Amongst these are Swansea Council's Leader newspaper, which was depoliticised by the Liberal Democrat-led Council when they took charge in 2004. We ...
I'm glad to see from Liberty that the Government's final appeal over the use of Section 44 searches has been rejected by the European Court of Human Rights. This should mean that they are stopped once and for all. This is a nasty law which allows whole areas to be designated so that the Police can stop and search you without even suspecting you of anything. You are between 5 and 7 times more likely to be stopped under Section 44 if you are black or Asian. Figures show that in 2009 alone, 200,444 people were stopped and searched in ...
Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg has launched the 'Your Freedom' website seeking our views on which laws need to be repealed: We're working to create a more open and less intrusive society through our Programme for Government. We want to restore Britain's traditions of freedom and fairness, and free our society of unnecessary laws and regulations - both for individuals and businesses. This site gives you the chance to submit, comment on, or vote for ideas about how we can do this. Your ideas will inform government policy and some of your proposals could end up making it into bills ...
As I said at the rally to celebrate saving the Whittington A& E - we have to keep this in focus and remain eternally vigilant. The coalition government called a halt to the reconfiguration process (hurrah) virtually as soon as we were in Government but we need to be on the ball. To this end I met with the Minister, Simon Burns (hospital finance and performance) yesterday to make sure we all know what's happening. The Minister had brought in all the key players from the Chair of GP commissioning to Rachel Tyndall (who chaired the review and was key ...
Although it's the three year anniversary of the formation of the One Wales government, there won't be much celebrating across Wales today. Labour and Plaid Cymru took office together with a pledge that they were 'passionate about improving the lives of people in Wales and making our nation a better place in which to live and work'. Since the Labour and Plaid Cymru formed their coalition, the number of children living in poverty has increased and even now they have no concrete plans of how to get to grips with this social injustice. Thousands of workers across Wales have lost ...
An optimist about human nature, and most Liberals are, would quarrel with Douglas Hurd's famous admission that prison is "an expensive way of making bad people worse." Rather it's an expensive way of making badly behaved people worse behaved. It is nevertheless refreshing, if somewhat of a surprise, that it's a Tory justice minister, Ken Clarke, who aims to put an end to the competition to appear tougher on crime than the other lot, and to use more intelligent and effective ways of changing the behaviour of criminals. However, we have to ask how this squares with the promised cuts ...
Of all the many posts I've started (either in my head, or more rarely with actual typing involved) in the last couple of months - most of the political ones are now woefully out of date and only marginally likely to see the light of day eventually out of historical interest - the one that I absolutely wasn't going to write was the self-pitying personal one. I've tried to get up the enthusiasm to write, but even an imagined post of a few lines regarding Carry On Up the Khyber passed by at the weekend without setting fingers to keyboard. ...
FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: In Europe, the World Cup is Not for Wimps Renard Sexton explains the World Cup (tags: football) Czech parties agree on new government line-up - ČeskéNoviny.cz New Czech government - all ministers male (tags: eu)
Durham County Council today failed to meet its statutory obligation to approve its accounts for 2009-2010 by June 30th. This is not a failure which will result in any sanction, but it is an embarrassment for the council. A brief meeting of the Audit Committee was advised that it had been impossible to compile the accounts in time, and I have some sympathy with the many officers who have worked very hard to pull together the accounts out of the eight sets of accounts it inherited as the District Councils bit the dust. For all that, the date for approval ...
A few years ago I read an article about global warming and how the sea levels would rise. It went into great detail as to how our island's boundaries would change. I lived in east Lancashire at the time and my area was quite safe so I managed to sleep soundly. However I did notice that even though the north west did not do too badly, there was some land lost by the coast. Now I live in Morecambe and the whole peninsula is fairly flat. It is easy to see how the whole area may be at risk and ...
Yardley CSP met on Monday, under the new chairmanship of Cllr Mike Ward, following Jim Whorwood's retirement from the Council in the May elections. There were discussions about the Prosperous Yardley Delivery Plan and the Healthier Communities Delivery Plan. To me there is a slight air of unreality about such discussions at the moment as we wait for the inevitable impact of the budget cuts to work through to the detail of such plans. With £1 in every £4 of public spending being borrowed at the moment, we need to move back to living within our means, and those that ...
