[IMG: Liberal Democrats Logo] My political activity during 2012 was very limited but one of the few things that I had made a commitment to do was serve on the Liberal Democrats' English Council for the year. The English Council is the governing body of the Liberal Democrats in England. It meets twice a year to consider matters of importance to the English Party. My motivation for becoming a member of this somewhat obscure body was partly to find out just what it does and to see if I could do something to raise awareness of it's activities amongst the ...
My eagle eyed viewer may have noticed I've added a couple of new links - Gareth Epps and the Liberator blog. Both are well worth a read. And if you don't subscribe to Liberator I'd encourage you to do so. You might disagree with some or all of its content - but it is the only independent voice for liberals in the UK and as a result is worth its very reasonable subs.
Welcome to Broxtowe Enews, brought to you by the Liberal Democrats and edited by David Watts, the leader of the Lib-Dems on Broxtowe Borough Council. I hope everyone had a great Christmas and new year. We had a wonderful trip to Lapland for my girls to meet the real Santa and then had Christmas lunch at my sister's farmhouse in North Yorkshire, all of which was totally magical. 1. High Speed 2 The Government is due to announce this week where the route of the High Speed 2 rail line will run. The announcement may well come tomorrow, and the ...
Are you part of a local group that could do with some publicity and an opportunity to raise some funds? Is there a charity close to your heart that you'd like to help raise money while having a great day out? If so then you might be interested in attending next years Bar Hill Village Fete which will be held on Saturday 6th July 2013. The Stall Booking form for the 2013 Bar Hill Village Fete has just been published on the Village Fete website (see here). It's available as a direct download (via Google Drive) here; http://goo.gl/4fHp5 Feel free ...
This week's Sunday Sound comes courtesy of the fantastic The Blue Nile and Tinseltown in the Rain. Whilst undeniably Eighties, I think there is something timeless about the music: something which can't be said for the video! Andrew
[IMG: Thank you PostSecret for telling me in your own way over the years that I'll be ok. I am now. It feels amazing] Related: you can cope. [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
Take the lane down the hill from Hamperley Farm and you will come to the little mid-Victorian church of St Michael and All Angels at Cwm Head. It is set on a busy B road, which makes it positively dangerous to photograph, but I did like this outbuilding in the corner of the churchyard. It is said to be a relic of the days when worshippers would arrive here by pony and trap. A note at the end of Mystery at Witchend, Malcolm Saville's first Lone Pine story, published in 1943, says the book was written at Cwm Head, Shropshire, ...
It seems David Batty, Guardian "journalist", has come out of his self-imposed retirement on writing about Trans issues to produce a rather obviously spun story on Doctor Richard Curtis, a private doctor who practices in London. For those not aware of the history, David Batty has a history of attacking anyone or anything involve in Trans healthcare, including articles about Russel Reid's GMC hearing, a matter that is now regarded by much of the community as a witch-hunt against him by other doctors. I don't have many details of the latest complaint beyond what was in the Guardian article, but ...
Oliver Burkeman had an article in yesterday's Guardian Review section arguing that the modern obsession with security has had the paradoxical effect of making us feel less secure. This is not a new argument: Frank Furedi has been making it since he published the first edition of Culture of Fear in 1997. But Burkeman has a useful passage in which he points us to three recent books touching upon this phenomenon: Three very different books published last year might help us rethink our troubled relationship to insecurity. In Against Security, the New York University sociologist Harvey Molotch focuses on "airports, ...
Things proceed on track here at Eugene 2013 training HQ. I was scheduled for and completed 5 short, very easy-paced runs this week. My weekly milage was only 15, but I'm pretty convinced that the point of this part of the training is to get your body used to running many more days a week than it's used to (mine is used to 3-4, so the bump to 5 isn't toooooo bad, but I'm glad to start here instead of jumping up to 6 immediately). I'm also very excited because Marathon Talk's Spring Motivation Challenge starts tomorrow. I really loved ...
Earlier today, I received the following urgent concern from a constituent: "I have just been out for a walk - along the cycle track and on to the DCA. When I left the cycle track and crossed the road, heading for the back of the DCA, there is a huge cover missing from a manhole - the drop into the drain is so big that a child could fall through the gap." This was a matter of real concern and I immediately contacted the City Engineer and Roads Maintenance Partnership about it. Within a very short period, I received the ...
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 307th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere ... Featuring the seven most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (30 December 2012 - 5 January 2013), together with a hand-picked quintet, normally courtesy of LibDig, you might otherwise have missed. Don't forget: you can sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox — just click here — ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging. As ever, let's start with the most popular post, and work our way down: ...
This question put me in mind of that wonderful scene in Remembrance of the Daleks where Ace knees Grange Hill's Mr Bronson and when the Doctor asks what's wrong, she smiles "stomach ache." Of course, Michael Sheard wasn't playing Mr Bronson, but the headmaster of the primary school where all the action was happening. Sheard had a habit of playing Doctor Who baddies over the years, but to be fair to him, he was usually possessed by something. In this case, he was being controlled by the daleks, the real villains of the piece. That story was also the one ...
Yesterday, this blog reported the rumour that David Laws was to be put in charge of drafting the Liberal Democrats' 2015 general election manifesto. We can now confirm this story. Nick Clegg has nominated a manifesto working group and Laws is the proposed chair. Clegg's nominations will be discussed by the party's Federal Policy Committee (FPC) tomorrow (Monday) evening. The other proposed members of the group are the leader himself, the party president (Tim Farron MP), the four officers of the FPC (chair Duncan Hames MP and vice-chairs Duncan Brack, Julian Huppert MP and Julie Smith), Baroness Sal Brinton, Jo ...
[IMG: Nick Clegg and David Cameron] Right, time to set the alarm clock extra early for tomorrow morning to do a Radio 5 Live interview as it's the week of the Mid-Term Review. Not the original Mid-Term Review, as was planned back in the early days of the Parliament, that is – but the Slimmed Down Super Light edition, which will contain a fair amount of 'look how we're doing better than Labour' and then a clutch of new policy announcements for the second half of this Parliament. How well or badly the former is done matters a little for ...
The federal party has some campaign days coming up. You can read more details on the ALDC website here. If you want to see which events have been added to Flock Together on the first campaign day on February 9th, you can find the details at http://www.flocktogether.org.uk/campaignday/2013/02/09/
When I first got involved in Liberal Youth 6 years ago, I was immediately put off. The cliquey atmosphere and half-hearted executive officers meant that members like me often felt like their time and money had been wasted when going to Liberal Youth events. In one year alone, we had almost 40 resignations. It was ...
The Voice is only a success because of the interest and support from our readers. For many people just lurking and reading the site is all they want to do – and that's fine, we're grateful for people taking the time to read the site. You can though help us continue to produce interesting content for a growing audience. Here are four simple ways: 1. Let us have your tips for stories. Perhaps there's something outrageous going on in your local council? Or you're an expert in a particular area and have spotted a story other people have missed? Or ...
Is it any wonder there are fewer women in politics in Northern Ireland than anywhere else in the UK? Cllr Claire Hanna with the damage Picture via BBC Today there is the news that SDLP Councillor Claire Hanna, who happens to be chair of the East Belfast Policing and Community Safety Partnership, has had air pellets shot at the windows of her home. Fortunately she, her daughter and husband Donal were all out at the time of the attack. But yet again a woman working to serve the community as an elected representative with a young daughter has has the ...
A couple of days ago I encountered some rather misleading news reports on the internet, largely the product of some of our more excitable journalists. At first glance it appeared that the Church of England was willing to make overdue progress on at least one element of equality. Gay bishops are to be allowed, they declared. Finally, the church was seeing sense...or was it? The short answer - no. In fact, what has actually happened is that the church has reinforced its identity as institutionally discriminatory and made clear its determination to continue to discriminate against a minority group on ...
Cllr David Jenkins (LD, Cottenham, Histon and Impington) The County Council revealed yet another Adult Social care black hole this week. It seems to have become an annual event and Leader Nick Clarke was interviewed about it in the Cambridge News Click here to read about it. He was quoted as saying: 'I want ministers to understand that district and county councils are two very different beasts. A district council is an SME but we are a county council with a £1.2 billion budget. We are a FTSE250 company, and when you treat a FTSE250 company in the same way ...
Today's media are full of Sunday-for-Monday stories about tomorrow's launch of the coalition government's 'Mid-Term Review' (MTR) - see for example the BBC, Express, Independent, Sun. The MTR is intended to relaunch the coalition but is unlikely to justify the hype. In fact, the ambitions for this exercise have been scaled down considerably compared with what was originally planned. The MTR started life in 2010 as 'Coalition Phase 2', a policy planning operation based on the assumption that everything in the original coalition agreement would have been implemented by the middle of 2012, and that a comprehensive second agreement would ...
According to the Ipswich Star, Conservative Town and District Councillor for Stowmarket North, Frank Whittle, has joined UKIP. Given his comment that he was "sick and tired of all the political correctness and politicians who are all mouth and no action", I suspect that he'll be right at home there until he loses his seats in 2015. Perhaps the more interesting thing was the response of the Chair of the local Conservative Association. Andrew Speed said, We are disappointed that Frank has felt the need to move to UKIP but we retain a healthy majority on the district council.There are ...
Graeme Littlejohn has been working for Scottish Liberal Democrats in various capacities for the better part of five years. He started off as an intern, and then worked for Tavish Scott, George Lyon and latterly was also the Scottish Liberal Democrats' Director of Communications. It was in this latter role that I constantly teased him about how sinister he looked, lurking in the shadow while senior party figures took to the public stage. I christened him the Minister for Sinister, a name I feel he (not so) secretly liked. I first worked with him on the Glenrothes by-election in 2008. ...
Sun 6th
14:05
Nick Clegg's Letter from the Leader: "The G8 summit is also about combining a strong economy with a ...
Nick's first missive of the year to Lib Dem supporters was despatched this weekend, its message combining two stories with the same core message: the role the party and the UK must play in creating a strong economy and a fairer society. He defends the party's decision to send a memo to key Lib Dems with key messages for voters, arguing the party has "to be clear, simple and consistent in what we say to voters". And he argues the G8 summit's focus on global tax fairness and creating a level-playing field for poorer countries rich in natural resources show ...
...also known as "What has it got in its pocketses?" This being the first weekend of the year, I find my pockets weighed down by change accumulated over the Christmas break. To be precise, I have 39 coins of various denominations, from nine different euro zone countries. 15 of the 39 - 38% - are from the country where I live, Belgium, and feature King Albert II looking firmly to the left. I have at least one Belgian euro coin in all eight denominations. The next largest group of 10 coins - just over 25% - is from France, one ...
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Here's today's hand-picked selection that caught my interest... Lib Dems face toughest election in a generation, says party president | Politics | The Observer "With the Lib Dems at 8% in the polls" notes the Guardian website – ignoring its own polls showing the Lib Dems at 13% http://buff.ly/ZsbrSI Borgen and Elizabeth: how political leaders transform into Machiavelli's Prince | Stephen Tall To mark the return of Borgen, this from me last Feb » How political leaders transform into Machiavelli's Prince http://buff.ly/Uri1Cf
It is always dangerous to go down the route of criticising politicians for their expense claims, or even their mode of travel as one does not know the individual circumstances. Certainly, in my case I rarely use the train or the bus to travel to Cardiff because I often have to make stops all around my region on the way back for various meetings at times of the day and night that cannot be accommodated by public transport. Nevertheless, the basis of this Daily Mail story does appear to be superficially intriguing and more adequate explanations should be forthcoming from ...
I'm still not being very good about a lot of communication stuff, like replying to emails, or to helpful comments left in my blog posts, so I thought I'd post a brief explanation about this. For 18 months or so now, I've been suffering from various stress-related illnesses — mostly psoriasis, asthma and migraine, but ...
I was on 'The Big Questions' today at 10 am. The debate was about whether the Pope was right to condemn 'unregulated capitalism' in his New Year message. I was invited onto the programme to give my view. In his message the Pope said: "Although the world is sadly marked by hotbeds of tension and conflict caused by growing instances of inequality between rich and poor, by the prevalence of a selfish and individualistic mindset which also finds expression in an unregulated financial capitalism..." Unregulated capitalism is a disastrous economic role model for children. It is a false state. I ...
Sun 6th
12:15LibLink: Tim Farron - A party of both competence and compassion is in a unique position in British p...
[IMG: Tim Farron speaking - Some rights reserved by Liberal Democrats] In today's Observer, party president Tim Farron begins the year in chipper mood, pointing out that the political pundits are quick to predict the deaths of political parties, including the Lib Dems — yet we've endured it all to become now a party of government: This year marks the 30th anniversary of Margaret Thatcher's landslide, after which serious political commentators, including those writing for the Observer, speculated that Labour could never win again. In March, we will observe the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, an illegal act ...
For all the worry and concern this man has caused me in Parkside ward over the last year, I hope he steers well clear of the area after his EIGHT YEARS are up. I couldn't vouch for his safety in this neighbourhood if he ever ventured back.
The Internet is "the world's most efficient copying machine" -- Cory Doctorow. This is a long and rambling blog post which asks two questions: Given that we can only read one book at a time - can we set up a "Kindle Stock Exchange" for our unused media? If so, what effect would this have on content producers and sellers who rely on artificial scarcity? This has been mulling over in my head for some time. [IMG: (c) FreeFoto.com Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License] Image from FreeFoto.com Transactional Friction One of the great advantages of ...
We hope to have a Don Foster surgery in Odd Down shortly, looking at 23rd February
It is easy to laugh at the Bee Gees for their disco heyday, but as the tribute programmes that have, sadly, been necessary in recent years have proved, they have written an awful lot of good songs over the years. In fact, when they re-emerged in the second half of the 1970s it was as though dinosaurs had been sighted swimming up the River Welland. Beacuse I just remembered them from their first period of popularity some 10 years before. Here, on his 1998 album Landfall, Martin Carthy makes a Bee Gees single from 1967 sound like an ancient folk ...
One of my favourite Radio 4 programme's is Tim Harford's More or Less. It takes a weekly look at some of the statistics and numbers in the news and explores the basis of these: often uncovering cases of these being misapplied or misrepresented. Yesterday I listened to the 2012 "numbers of the year" edition in which various journalists, reporters and personalities chose a significant statistic and explained something about it. Bill Edgar, Statistics in Football writer for the Times, and author of Back of the Net: 100 Golden Goals decided to look at the chances of there NOT having been ...
Good Morning and a belated Happy New Year to my readers. I personally had a great Christmas and New Year. Like everyone else I spent it watching too much TV and eating too much. I also managed to get through three book and out to see the Life of Pi and Midnight's Children in the cinemas and catch up on a mass of household chores. Politically 2013 is an election free year in Scotland and provided all political parties up here with a period of respite after annual elections tussles for the last four years. Before the next set of ...
[IMG: Lynne Featherstone in Zambia. Photo: some rights reserved by DFID http://www.flickr.com/photos/dfid/8220719712/] Another year, another set of attacks on development aid in the right-wing press. Prompted by a spectacularly ill-informed paper from Civitas, the Telegraph, Mail and Spectator tried once again to argue, without evidence, that high proportions of British aid are wasted. The truth is that, under the Coalition, far more attention has been paid to value for money in aid spending than ever before. What is more, there's little need to speculate about where Department for International Development (DFID) money goes, as it ranked as the most transparent ...
MPs' shock as gamblers put £400m a year in high stakes slot machines (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus) That figure is just for Bradford O_o (tags: ) An amazing mea culpa from the IMF's chief economist on austerity (tags: ) Amazon.co.uk: Customer Reviews: Barrettine Methylated Spirit 500ml Via Andrew Ducker, another set of hilarious amazon reviews. (tags: ) Catholic church to lose historic property tax exemption in Italy (tags: ) Dr Who: A celebration My boss's thoughts on the Whoniversary (tags: ) Alan Rickman fanboys Maggie Smith I love the wistful expression in the last gif. (tags: ) Social Media ...
In the period since the 2007 Financial Crisis "economics" has played an increasingly high profile role in shaping policy. The austerity policies implemented in many western countries, with significant negative impacts upon citizens' well-being and the social fabric, come with the endorsement of many economists as the correct medicine to deal with our economic maladies. Yet, over the same period, the claims of the discipline of economics to any privileged insight into the workings of the economy and society have come under greater critical scrutiny than at any point over the last forty years. The sense of disillusionment with the ...
Politics is back, with a full Sunday morning of political debate, including the Prime Minister on Andrew Marr.
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 550 party members have responded, and we're publishing the full results. 84% think the CofE should allow women to be come bishops [IMG: women bishops] In November the Church of England's Synod failed to pass a vote that would have allowed women to become bishops. Do you think the Church of England should or should not allow women to become bishops? 84% – Should allow women bishops 2% – Should not ...
Residents have brought to my attention the mass of graffiti on the empty shop unit at the corner of Rosebery Street and Baxter Street - see right. I have raised this with the City Council's Rapid Response Unit asking that the graffiti be removed. As this is not the first time there have been a graffiti issue at this location, I have asked if repainting the corner in anti-graffiti paint may be possible. We have seen a significant improvement in the past year in terms of stamping out graffiti in the West End and it is important that all instances ...
I think it is fair to say that 2012 will be remembered for the successful Olympics that dominated our lives for a month in the summer, the celebration of the Queen's diamond jubilee and the Leveson inquiry looking into the culture, practices and ethics of the British press. For a few weeks in the summer, the country had an opportunity to come together, celebrate and be distracted from disappointing economic news. While the British and Welsh economies have not grown as quickly as we may have wanted, there have been signs during the latter half of the year that our ...
Over the past decade, it is increasingly clear that foreign policy approaches adopted by countries across the globe are filled with inconsistencies, hypocrisy and contradictions... A diplomat or more often a senior government politician will respond to a situation, complaint or series of events by espousing their commitment to a set of theories or ideological ...
[IMG: manifesto-artwork_-copy] Someone asked me the other day what I did for a living so I created the term Direct-to-Learner™ or Direct-to-Student™ business to describe it. Direct-to-fan is a business model that has been around for a while, where musicians bypass the major label system to sell direct to their fans. In a similar way the Direct-to-Learner™ model allows teachers, instructors, educators and brands to provide education directly to their students and customers and bypasses traditional institutions such as universities, colleges, schools or education publishers. Direct-to-Learner™ allows anyone to build and leverage a community of learners throughout their career and ...
