YouGov/The Sun results 20th August – CON 34%, LAB 44%, LD 8%, UKIP 7%; APP -35 Looks like the Olympics bounce was short lived. Cameron must be hoping that a post summer holiday reshuffle can re-energise the government. Full results ... Continue reading →
Two reports in today's Guardian caught my eye: The government's plan to establish a new generation of secret courts has sparked fresh controversy after it emerged that the fact that a hearing is to be held behind closed doors may itself be kept secret.Fresh consideration is to be given to the introduction of airport-style mass security screening at mainline rail stations and across London's tube network.These stories may well be nonsense, but wouldn't it be great to hear Nick Clegg telling us so?
Mon 20th
21:59
The problem with being a 29 year-old virgin and having a Facebook account for your sanity levels
I don't like labels but sometimes facts are facts. I am 29. I am single and my dangly bits between my legs have never done anything that would result in a woman being worried about missing their period. It doesn't bother me too much although at times it grates and usually when someone shows an interest I either think that they are clinically insane and/or they become clingy and scare me off as I need my space. However in recent weeks this attitude of mine is being attacked – by proxy – by Facebook. At the point of writing I ...
Only Boris could turn an Out4Marriage video into an advert for London
I noticed in The Telegraph a report of James Callaghan's speech in 1976 when he basically said that Labour's current plan of an increase in the deficit to increase demand would not work. I have found the original speech here. We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession, and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting Government spending. I tell you in all candour
Esteban Volkov is the 86-year-old grandson of Leon Trotsky. In this video from the Guardian website, he recalls the two assassination attempts orchestrated by Stalin on his grandfather, the second of which was successful. Volkov, as a boy, almost perished in the first himself.
Mon 20th
19:55
What the public thinks of... Cameron & Clegg for ditching Lords reform & boundary changes &a...
Here's four intriguing findings from a ComRes poll for the Mirror and Independent released yesterday and conducted 15th-16 August... By 34%-29% public thinks Cameron was WRONG to abandon House of Lords reform Q: Do you agree or disagree that David Cameron was right to abandon the attempt to make changes to the House of Lords? Agree 29% Disagree 34% Don't know 37% Interestingly 21% of Conservative voters disagreed with their party leader's decision. Also interesting: the views of Labour and Lib Dem voters on this question were near-identical, disagreeing with David Cameron's decision to pull the plug on the Coalition ...
Next week Tuesday marks the 49th anniversary of the Jobs and Freedom march on Washington DC when the Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jnr made his famous I Have A Dream speech in front of 200,000 followers. In 2013, activists plan to ... Continue reading →
Work will begin shortly (set to start this week) on Gunthorpe Road between Lowther Gardens and Coniston Road, which will see long awaited work to replace slabs and reconstruction of the footway, which has deteriorated over the years. Commenting, local LIB DEM ward councillor Darren Fower said: "This work is needed and I am glad that the City Council have listened to the people and their concerns. Hopefully the work will stay within schedule and no associated problems occur!" The work reference code: 11000324 The work is planned to be completed on 24/09/12
A think tank closely aligned to the Conservative Party has today produced a report which could see some of the most expensive parts of Cornwall 'cleansed' of social housing. The Policy Exchange report, which has been enthusiastically endorsed by Housing Minister Grant Shapps, recommends that, when social housing in an expensive area becomes vacant then it should be sold off and the money used to buy or build social housing in cheaper places. Note that 'becoming vacant' often means the tenant dying even if they still have family who live in the home. The biggest problem with this plan is ...
So this is how my visit to Lib Dem conference this year will begin... by appearing on the panel for one of CentreForum's 27 (count 'em) fringe events, catchily titled Half-Time Oranges (and Blues): How to renew the Coalition while Preparing for the Next Election. Co hosted with the Institute for Government and Policy Exchange, the speakers include MPs Jeremy Browne and Tim Farron and Akash Paun, Senior Researcher at the Institute for Government. The venerable Peter Riddell will chair. And as I'm appearing alongside Jeremy Browne there's even a chance I won't be the most Orange Book panellist... You ...
The case of Wikileaks is an intriguing, delicate, diplomatic story. In addition to the international relations dynamic, we have the very current issue of dealing with serious allegations of sexual assault. Lucky then that we have Bradford's own rent-a-rant George ... Continue reading →
An overwhelming 91% are in favour of Redcar & Cleveland Council's pilot using three bins, according to the local Liberal Democrats' survey in Nunthorpe. But residents, by more than four to one, would oppose being charged £20 by the council for the third bin. In addition, eight out of 10 residents say they would not be prepared to have a plastic bag for green waste which has been piloted in part of Guisborough.The pilot involved using one bin for refuse, one for green waste and the third for recycling materials. The local Lib Dem Team thanks those who responded to ...
Canon Charles Kenny Canon Charles Kenny is quoted in today's Belfast Telegraph as saying homophobia is the new sectarianism in Northern Ireland. But is this really the case? We do have UUP leader Mike Nesbitt telling party members over the weekend urging them not to dance to the republican tune over the issue of marriage equality. A DUP health minister seemingly incapable of looking purely at the same science as the rest of UK when it comes to MSM* (men who have had sex with men) even if over 12 months ago giving blood. The politicisation of the LGBT agenda ...
Here's the BBC News report: Donations to political parties fell by almost £1m during the second quarter of this year, official figures show. The Electoral Commission said £7,873,478 in funding had been reported – down £992,312 on the first three months of the year. The Conservatives received £3,785,579, Labour £2,964,471 and the Liberal Democrats £717,797. The Lib Dem figure of £718k is the party's lowest second quarter fundraising performance since 2006 (when it was less than half this year's total, at £334k). This graph from the Electoral Commission which compiles the figures shows the disparity between the parties' financial muscle, ...
This morning I was part of a call-in meeting which voted to ask Cornwall Council's cabinet to think again about the incinerator plan. We considered that the cabinet had been given misleading information about the likely timescale of developing a Plan B and that they had failed to consider a reasonable request for an independent assessment of the alternatives. So what's the story about the incinerator? The problem is that incineration is old technology and the council is refusing to consider alternatives. Indeed, one officer today made the suggestion that any other option would be risky and was not yet ...
[IMG: Carwash canopy] The car wash at 2 Upper Tollington Park (behind Nandos) has put in a new planning application for a canopy, after its previous attempt to get retrospective approval for the current ugly canopy was rejected (see previous post). I've looked at the application online and spoken to the Council's planning office and this proposal is definitely better. The car wash have agreed to build a new canopy with a metal frame, set several metres back from teh front of the building. The canopy would not be enclosed on the side. However, I remain worried that, whatever the ...
I get increasingly upset by the quality of reports coming out of most think tanks. They come up with stuff that cannot be used practically, which is insular and which takes no real account of the problems of ruining major ... Continue reading →
Manchester City Council is currently consulting on changing the parking system in Heaton Park from a current £1.50 flat rate at weekends/holidays to an every day / all year round pay and display charge. Drivers could end up paying up to £6-a-day to visit Heaton Park under council proposals. Under the plans, visitors would pay £1 for the first two hours, £2.80 for up to four hours, £4 for up to six hours; and £6 for more than six hours. Parking would remain free until 10am each day. I am very worried about the impact on our local area. The ...
We're being presented with an urgent item for the meeting of the Council's Cabinet meeting this Wednesday – which is the Labour Council proposing to end the travel costs for children attending faith schools from September 2013. At present the Council will purchase travel passes for children in low income families who have to travel more than 2 miles to their nearest school (3 miles for secondary school children). It also pays for the travel of children attend a faith school which is not their normal school – and its this extra provision which is proposed to end from September ...
Supposedly, this is a video of Ed Maxfield and myself talking about our book, 101 Ways To Win An Election. Watch Ed as I speak, however, and you'll realise it is really a training session in a "How to stare into the middle distance just like Paddy Ashdown" course.
Until a few years ago a trip to the local tip had been largely unchanged for decades. You drove up and joined a queue of cars waiting to dump stuff. Everyone pulled up alongside a low wall, over which the contents of the cars was thrown. Below, the rubbish piled up until it was collected and sent for landfill. If you've not been to your local tip for a few years (in Greater Manchester at least) you're in for a big surprise. They're now called "eco-centres" and with good reason – my local eco-centre at Longley Lane in Sharston recycled ...
Mark Thompson: The Lib Dems are a very odd sort of "Power-hungry" (tags: ) Republican Senate Nominee: Victims Of 'Legitimate Rape' Don't Get Pregnant | TPM2012 Scariest thing? This guy is WINNING. (tags: ) HD Alan Rickman Makes Tea WRONG There is no way that water was boiling when the tea bag hit it. The tea is BAD AND WRONG. (tags: ) Sexual assault, victims and Assange (with tweets) · cjjc · Storify (tags: ) Owen Jones: There should be no immunity for Julian Assange from these allegations - Commentators - Opinion - The Independent (tags: ) TheDoctorWhoBar: Special Announcement: ...
While the massed ranks of the mostly right-wing political commentariat obsess about the imminent Cabinet reshuffle, Lib Dem interest has been relatively muted. In one sense this isn't surprising. As it stands, 18 of the party's 57 MPs are on the government payroll, so Nick Clegg has little room for manouevre even among the middle ranks of government. And with only five cabinet positions (four if you exclude Nick himself as Deputy Prime Minister) there's even less wiggle-room at the top table. Nonetheless, this reshuffle will most likely be the only one that actually matters for the Coalition: this is ...
Continuing the series of reposted Odanglesex adventures, this time with one which is heavily based on my own experience of a senior officer wanting more information. FROM: Reema Narlikar, Transformational Excellence Officer TO: Hamish Carpenter, Transformational Excellence Manager Hamish: Here's my report on our annual review of the Odanglesex Water Safety Partnership for transmission to Kenneth. FROM: Hamish Carpenter, Transformational Excellence Manager TO: Kenneth Spotlessnob, Director of Transformational Excellence and Strategic Vision Kenneth: here are the reports from Reema and Mike. All straightforward, I think. FROM: Kenneth Spotlessnob, Director of Transformational Excellence and Strategic Vision TO: Neil Balderson, Transformational Excellence ...
I'm on Wave 102 news this morning about an extension to the pilot project in Dundee that allows people to pay for parking by mobile phone - to be discussed at tonight's City Council meetings. Click 'play' below to listen:
Yes, I've still got Olympic fever... Mo Farah lives and works in Richmond Borough - he trains at the brilliant facilities at St Mary's in Teddington and here's his gold letterbox in Broad Street. Here's a statement from Liberal Democrat Group leader on the council, Stephen Knight "Mo Farah has very close connections with the borough, having lived and worked in Teddington and trained at St Mary's College in Strawberry Hill. His achievement of winning two gold medals at 5,000m and 10,000m must be an inspiration to so many young people. The Royal Mail has already honoured his achievements with ...
The leader of the Green Party in Wales has become the subject of social media interest over the last few hours as a result of an article in today's Independent that reveals that she drives a 10 year old Jaguar x-type car. Pippa Bartolotti is seeking to make a virtue of her apparent faux pas, as the paper points out. She 'accepts that driving the car which made John Prescott politically notorious (in his case, as "Two Jags") is likely to be a handicap in her ambitions to lead the low-carbon, public-transport-orientated Greens via their forthcoming internal election, but is ...
Lib Dem Voice polled our members-only forum recently to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Some 500 party members have responded, and we're publishing the full results. LDV asked: In the next couple of months David Cameron and Nick Clegg are likely to hold a Cabinet reshuffle. For each of the following 28 Cabinet members please say whether a) they're doing a good job and should stay in their post, b) they could be doing a better job but should still stay in their post, c) they're ...
I contributed this review to Liberal Democrat News in May of last year. I am reposting it because Assange is in the news again - and because I think it holds up well. WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy David Leigh and Luke Harding Guardian Books, 2011, £9.99 Leigh and Harding tell the story of Wikileaks and its release of 250,000 secret diplomatic cables and classified files from the Afghan and Iraq wars. Their own paper, the Guardian, was one of the newspapers that was given this material, and they dissect its often fraught relationship with Wikileaks' moving spirit ...
I have today criticised the City Council's alarmingly slow progress with the provision of Demand Responsive Transport, to fill gaps in bus service provision across Dundee. Back in 2008, as the then Planning & Transport Convener of the City Council, I discussed with the then Dundee Accessible Transport Action Group (DATAG) bringing in pilots of Demand Responsive Transport to improve public transport both in Dundee and across Tayside/Stirling for those with accessibility problems in terms of existing provision. As the then Chair of TACTRAN, the Regional Transport Partnership, I moved forward a consultation exercise for its buses strategy and, within ...
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of speaking at the River Crescent Residents' AGM at the Botanic Garden Education Centre. The meeting was tinged with much sadness as Sheila Fraser, former Chair of the Residents' Association, passed away last Wednesday, after a short illness. Sheila was a lovely lady and everyone in the street knew her - she'll be so sadly missed. Apart from paying tribute to Sheila, I updated the meeting on the Harris Academy decant and rebuilding project, the West End Christmas Fortnight arrangements, the new primary/nursery schools building project on the former Logie Secondary site, bus services, roads ...
The ill informed remarks of Paul Ryan concerning Britain's NHS has prompted me to send out a reminder to all those Democrats living abroad to register to vote. The first time I heard the words socialised medicine was from an American hospital administator I met on a train to Penang many years ago. She was ...
Firstly, I need someone who knows about World of Warcraft. Because I am finding it totally baffling and I need to write a ten question quiz round on it by tomorrow night. Well, tonight, now. I should possibly mention that some of the people who do the quiz know where my blog is, so perhaps email, rather than blog comment? Secondly I need someone who is based in the US to buy something from a website that will only post to US addresses and then post it on to me. This will involve me paypalling you money and things. Any ...
