Many of my readers will know I have been busy for a while, and yes way too busy for blogging. A lot has happened since I last blogged, a Pope has resigned! Who would have seen that coming? The voice and creator of Roobarb and Custard both died. Oh and of course the Lib Dems won a by election on Thursday, in the Berrylands ward of Kingston Borough Council my old stamping ground. There may have been one of two other things that have happened too. Of which I will say more later, but one colossal thing that has happened ...
Try this yourself. Search for my Conservative MP, David Morris's surgeries and then search for my neighbouring Liberal Democrat MP, Tim Farron's surgeries. If you don't have the time then I'll let you know that in the first case you will find three surgeries, on the 19th and 26th October and one on the 9th November. I just can't work out the year to which they relate. On Tim's site there are regular surgeries from now up to and including August - this year. The reason I looked was because I am a follower of both MPs on Twitter and ...
Birmingham City Council duly voted through Labour's budget this week, the first of the new administration. Nationally, Labour love to criticise a broad range of government spending cuts, but hardly ever identify which service they would cut, or tax they would raise instead. Its unrealistic, misleading and frankly dishonest politics. So, I'm glad to say that the Lib Dem group on the Council, when putting forward their alternative, were quite specific, both about where they would spend more, and where they would find the necessary savings to keep the Council's budget balanced (which has to be done by law). The ...
Latest in The New Statesman. Hats off to the team in Kingston once again... In light of last night's by-election triumph (and our political editor's written permission to show off a little), I'd like to accept the opportunity to say that our victory demonstrates why the rumours of a Lib Dem wipeout in 2015 have been wildly exaggerated. Berrylands was exactly the sort of seat the Tories should be winning, a relatively affluent corner of the world with a strong Conservative showing in the 2010 election and the sad loss of the previous Lib Dem office holder removing the incumbency ...
What with all the racist and xenophobic bile poured out by the tabloids every day, this is a tough competition to win. But last week's Sunday Express triumphed with: 'Avoid London, it's full of Pakistanis,' Romanians warn fellow migrantsCombining hatred of Pakistanis and Romanians is enough to give any bigot an orgasm. But what clinches it is the opening paragraph: Romanians preparing to swamp Britain next year are insulting British towns and cities and making racist comments about fellow immigrants on the internet.Yes, the Express is being racist while purporting to criticise "racist comments". Cant is piled upon cant when ...
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 314th 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 (17 -23 February 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: 1. Eastleigh By-Election ...
Kenyans go to the polls on Monday and with campaigning banned tomorrow the two leading campaigns held their final campaign rallies in Nairobi. I'm not sure these pictures really do the scale of the Jubilee Coalition's final rally in Uhuru Park justice - where a quarter of a million people spent more than six hours listening to political speeches. It puts Nick Clegg's town hall meetings into perspective:
Letter published in the South Shropshire Journal 1 March 2013 It seems that Ludlow's almost new police station is to close and the police are to move into offices elsewhere in the town. We should view this proposal with caution. We need a police station close to the town centre where the majority of crime ...
We learned on Wednesday this week that the Justice and Security Bill is being rushed into Report Stage in the Commons. The government has now published its latest proposed amendments to the Justice and Security Bill. Astonishingly I was told yesterday (Friday 1st) that Conservatives are saying the Bill has been moved forward to conclude in the Commons on 7th March to avoid a further motion at our Spring Conference. Julian Huppert and Mike Crockart worked very hard during the Committee stage of the debate, and voted (supported by Labour) to defeat secret courts when their attempts at amendments were ...
I mean he can't be? Can he? I've noticed this before but generally just assumed I'd misunderstood him or something. After all he's Oxbridge educated, had pieces published all over the place, used to be a columnist read by millions and is a successful author. Surely someone that successful can't be totally naive can they? Well three things I have seen/heard from him in the last 24 hours make me think he is. Firstly there was this piece for the Telegraph yesterday where he seems to honestly think that the Conservative Party are going to come to some sort of ...
New Eastleigh MP Mike Thornton's life is about to change immeasurably. On Monday he takes his seat in Parliament. I don't know if he's visited the place before, but even now I've been there many times, my jaw drops every single time. When you go into the Scottish Parliament, it's all bright and shiny and new and modern. With Westminster, you can feel yourself stepping back a century or two when you step off the escalator from Portcullis House. I am sure it's going to be quite an overwhelming experience for him. One of the very first things Mike is ...
Well, the big two parties have selected their Candidates for the 2015 election and the lines are being drawn but the battlefield is constantly changing and 2015 is not 2010. Things have changed and a Tory walk over is far from certain. Indeed my predictions show them losing one MP, keeping one and a fight that is fairly difficult to call as it is dependent on so many factors. I'll try and explainmy reasoning. Rochester & Strood: Reckless vs. Igwe Mark Reckless has been somewhat of a wild card within parliamentary politics. He has been very good to his constituency ...
Nearly 900 people voted in the Second Derwent Valley It's up 2 U making the event itself a winner. 16 Projects were chosen by the public to receive funding of up to £3,000. In each case the funding was fixed to a maximum of what the group had asked for to deliver its project. Willowburn Hospice topped the poll, bidding for £1,392 to purchase two marquees for fundraising events, important in the average British Summer where the standard B&Q gazebo really doesn't provide sufficient cover. Second was the Act On Theatre Group whose enthusiastic young members not only stuck out ...
[IMG: Eastleigh HQ leaflets] At the Conservative Party conference in Bournemouth in 1990, Margaret Thatcher famously used Monty Python's 'dead parrot' sketch to mock the Liberal Democrats' newly-designed bird of liberty. After a series of name changes and a derisory 6% of the vote at the European elections in 1989, the Lib Dems had been virtually written off. But the Eastbourne by-election gave the party the opportunity it needed to defy its media critics and get back into the game. This week, the dead parrot bit back - again. Mike Thornton's stunning victory in the Eastleigh by-election is testament to ...
Over at the Lib Dems Against Secret Courts blog, Jo Shaw does a good job of destroying some of the ridiculous arguments put in favour of the Justice and Security Bill in her response to a Lib Dem MP. This is a Bill which will place the Government above the law, allowing it to present ... Continue reading »
Latest Letter from the leader... [IMG: nick_light.png] Nick Clegg
I want to keep you informed on where we stand in the various processes that have started following the allegations against Lord Rennard. There are now three processes in place: Inquiries by the Metropolitan Police to ascertain whether criminal activity might have taken place. This is still at an early stage and there is no set time limit on when they must decide whether or not a criminal investigation should take place. An internal investigation by the Party, headed by Alistair Webster QC, to establish whether disciplinary action under the Party's rules is due. This whole process must take no ...
Yesterday evening I took part in an event outside Christ the Saviour Church, Ealing Broadway, where myself and about 20 people were given a cardboard box by the West London YMCA as part of their "Sleep Easy" event. We were outside at the mercy of the weather for 12 hours. Although it was only for 12 hours and we had a cardboard box it gave me a sense of what it might be like if I was made homeless. So many people have negative opinions of those who are homeless but when I did this it gave me, perhaps in ...
25 years ago this weekend the Liberal Democrats were officially founded. Here's a 5-minute interview I did for BBC 5 Live's Morning Reports with Nathan Turvey, broadcast at silly o'clock this morning:
One line in David Cameron's response to his party's third place in the Eastleigh by-election caught my eye: I would like us to do far more to focus on the bread-and-butter issue of cost of living. I think living standards are declining. We talk about only a protest vote. One of the reasons why people feel inclined to protest is because they are hurting in their pocket. Yes, dead right. If you can keep prices down relative to wages, then people are better off. Spikes in food or energy prices can force some very tough decisions in the household budget. ...
Here's today's hand-picked selection that caught my interest... Stop shouting at Hilary Mantel - there are real outrages to address » The Spectator Hugo Rifkind Hits Nail. "Stop shouting at Hilary Mantel - there are real outrages to address" » The Spectator http://bit.ly/Xfym1W Tim Bale: Eastleigh By-Election: Worst of All Worlds for the Tories .@ProfTimBale spot on abt Cam's Eastleigh woes » 'Worst of All Worlds for the Tories' http://huff.to/WwE2kc
For everyone who has tried to contact the council by email since Wednesday, or who is expecting an email from the council, all the IT systems at Wokingham Borough Council except the website have been down since Wednesday morning. They were beginning to be brought back on Friday. I believe everything is expected to be working normally by Monday. But there will still be some delays in responding to residents, due to the backlog of work that will have built up while there was no IT.
I am appalled by Tory controlled Test Valley Borough Council's decision to increase our council tax by over 4% (see previous post). This comes at a time when the majority of Andover's residents are lucky if they get any pay increase at all. Listening to the debate at the council meeting what came across was that the increase could be imposed without fear of sanctions so they'd do it. The decision means the council loses £60,000 of government grants to keep council tax down. At the same time councillors voted to put a further £1.6 million tax payers' money into ...
Wow! What a roller coaster ride Eastleigh was. On the night of the by-election I only got 4 hours sleep because I was so excited and nervous. Now it is time for the analysis. I have been leafleting for three years and now the world is becoming increasingly digitalised. I wonder if leafleting is becoming outdated? Leafleting takes up time and money. It is dependent on volunteers and although there were plenty in Eastleigh there won't be enough people in the general election because Eastleigh was a one off where people came from everywhere to help out. Leaflets are a ...
At the Test Valley Borough Council meeting held on Friday 22 February the council voted to accept the Tory controlled Cabinet's recommendation to raise Council Tax by 4.1%. A proposal by the Liberal Democrats to freeze council tax for another year was defeated. Councillor Hurst, leader of Test Valley Liberal Democrats said "the administration's approach is to raise council tax because they can whereas the Liberal Democrat approach would be to freeze council tax because we can." He went on to say "It is important that the council recognise the financial difficulties that a lot of residents are in and ...
I've recently learned of the "Pottermore Affiliate" scheme. You may have already started seeing banners around the web directing you to visit Pottermore - the official Harry Potter shop - where you can buy eBooks and audiobooks. Click on one of the banners and the site owner will get a 4% commission on anything you buy. That works out to be £1.55 if you buy the complete collection of ebooks for £39. What's interesting is the way they are reaching out to Harry Potter fan sites. For years there has been an uneasy relationship between The Official Harry Potter Rights ...
Well finally it is looking as though Spring temperatures might arrive this week, so until I can get out and get on with some gardening, here's some birds who have been visiting the garden this winter ~ Long-tailed Tits ( Aegithalos caudatus) To encourage long-tailed tits try planting for an insect and butterfly/moth rich habitat. Plenty of roses, honeysuckle, willow and herbs. They like high food sources and so plenty of good scrubby cover and trees. Wren (Troglodytes troglodytes)Love the Latin name of this little bird, which means a reclusive, cave dweller. They are insect and spider eaters so low ...
Back from Eastleigh with a bad ankle (too many doors) and a bad stomach (too much fast food), but happy. On polling day, we found many residents had attached hand-written notes to their front doors, loosely translated as "Go away !". O'Farrell posted one on twitter than was more explicit in conveying what Clement Freud used to render as "Go forth and multiply". In case they can't be read
Good Morning, Depending on how organised I am, and what else I have on, I sometimes put this post together in stages over the course of the week. Other times, the majority of it is written on Saturday morning. So it is this week, with the exception of the first selection: As I type this particular entry, it's Sunday evening, and already I cold have filled up this post with entries regarding the allegations against Lord Rennard - and the alleged cover-up. I'm sure there will have been many more articles by the time you read this - but here ...
In 2010, Hillary Clinton described social media as a new nervous system for our planet. Even in the few short years since then, social media has gone from strength to strength. In 2013 every corporation has, or at the very least needs, a social media strategy. And in truth, political parties and our individual Members of Parliament no different. That's why I do not have time for parliamentarians who tell me that they have no interest in social media. For me as an MP, I have a duty to be wherever my constituents are and engage with them in whatever ...
I know, kicking the Co-operative Bank is like being horrible about Princess Catherine, Julie Andrews and Alan Bennett all rolled into one. But there is time for just a little scepticism, and here it is. The Co-op Bank was the main beneficiary from the Great Banking Collapse in 2008. If you wanted a half-way decent bank, with scale enough to have some branches, and with an ethical core - where else was there to go? I know, there's Triodos (but they don't do business accounts), and Metro (not bad but still to prove themselves when I was looking around), and ...
It's typical of the mainstream press as they have done since Mike Thornton's victory in Eastleigh on Thursday to focus on the fact that UKIP came second and the Conservatives came third. You'd hardly know that the Lib Dem candidate had won judging from the front page coverage since then. It goes without saying that I am very pleased Mike won. He fought a good campaign and I was one of the thousands of activists who poured into the constituency to help him. It is a deserved victory. However we should not get over excited. Mike got 32% of the ...
Afrter the fairly traumatic week and a half that the Liberal Democrats have had, I hope I can be forgiven for looking at the tribulations of the other mainstream parties stemming from the result of the Eastleigh by-election. Without a doubt it seems that it is Cameron who is in the most trouble. His party came third of course in a seat they should have won and already we can hear the knives being sharpened. The Independent reports that Conservative MPs have rounded on their leader to demand a dramatic change of direction in his leadership amid fears about the ...
Hard pounding, gentlemen: but we shall see who can pound the longest.- Duke of Wellington Arthur Wellesley 1815 'stand firm' behind Mr Clegg during what could be years of 'hard pounding' from voters. - Paddy Ashdown 2011 (From the Daily Mail) My Twitter feed was full of Lib Dems yesterday celebrating a by election win and showing not a little schadenfreude at Tory discomfort and their whinging at the first past the post system they went all out to defend 20 months ago. I hope non Lib Dems will forgive my colleagues some of this, after all, as activists we ...
the Indy dissects Eastleigh (tags: ) How rape prevention discussions get derailed (TW) (tags: ) 10 things we've learned from the Eastleigh byelection (tags: ) [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
The Coop supermarket on Lordship Lane has applied to sell alcohol 24/7. 9BZ02950[1] This is a direct consequence of MP Tessa Jowell licensing laws pushed through in 2003. We think this would be a disaster for Lordship Lane, exacerbate the night time economy problems the areas around Lordship Lane are already suffering and boost binge drinking. We've formally objected to this application. If you also support our objection that this will make the atmosphere of Lordship Lane worse then contact the licensing department via Licensing@southwark.gov.uk and copy us your local East Dulwich councillors james.barber@southwark.gov.uk. In carrying out its licensing functions ...
As far as I aware, there are no meetings at Blyth Town Council next week
Sat 2nd
06:26
If this is the 'official line', then Lib Dem MPs and Ministers are being seriously misled
Many fellow no-to-secret-courts campaigners have emailed their MPs, Liberal Democrat or from other parties, to express opposition to the Justice and Security Bill. We have seen some of the responses. This one came in earlier this week from a Liberal Democrat MP and Minister who shall remain nameless. I was so shocked by the misinformation in the email that I felt it would be useful to respond line by line. The worst offence against the truth is the suggestion that there is any risk of compensation money finding its way to terrorist organisations (paragraphs 4-6 below). You may have seen ...
Yesterday I received a very nice thank you email from Mike Thornton, the newest Liberal Democrat MP, after his victory in Eastleigh on Thursday. One of Mike's first jobs as MP is likely to be voting on the Justice and Security Bill Report stage which has been rushed into the Commons to start on Monday (4th March) and finish on Thursday 7th. Astonishingly I've been told the rush is to avoid a potentially difficult Lib Dem Conference motion getting in the way of the government's plans! This is my reply to Mike Thornton's thank you email: Dear Mike, Congratulations on ...
Last year, I highlighted the poor state of parts of the pavements of Windsor Street, following concerns raised by residents. The City Council promised that improvements to the worst parts of the east footway and I am pleased to now report that two sections are now undergoing resurfacing - see right.
The Welsh Liberal Democrats have today published their submission to the Silk Commission, which they believe will make progressive steps in securing home rule for Wales. In a wide ranging piece, the Welsh Liberal Democrats have called for: • A new model for devolution • A separate legal jurisdiction for Wales following substantial preparatory work • Devolution of prisons and policing • Devolution of energy planning • Powers for the National Assembly to alter electoral arrangements for local elections, including electoral reform and lowering the voting age to 16 • Significant changes to the regulation of broadcasting • Additional powers for Wales over family services, including fostering ...
Liberal Democrats kept up their pressure on the ruling Conservative group at county hall on Tuesday. The LibDem alternative budget, which was balanced and fully costed, allowed for up to one-third of all lights currently going off at midnight, to be turned back on, with the lights chosen by the local county councillor for each area. However when LibDem councillor Malcolm Cowan (Handside and Peartree) asked the Conservatives which councillors would take up this opportunity, not one put their hand up. 'This clearly shows that the promised review of part night lighting is likely to be no more than window ...
The next Bar Hill Community Market takes place today from 10:30am to 2pm in the Octagon next to the Church (a map, courtesy of OpenStreetView.org, is below). Stalls include Fruit and vegetables, Homemade cakes, Jewellery, Cards, Confectionery, Jams, Knitted items, Patchwork, Bags, Wooden crafts, Beauty products as well as stalls raising funds for local projects. There will also be refreshments and, weather permitting, a BBQ. If you wish to be part of this, or future, markets please contact us. Karen Austen 01954 781085 or Sue Gadsby 01954 200875 Please come and support your local community! PS. The next Community Market ...
