This afternoon I shared a link on my Facebook page, to an open letter to the BBC by Rob Hopkins of Transition Network on the subject of climate change, and more specifically about Lord Lawson's appearance on the Today programme. Because it's a well written letter about an extremely important subject and because it deserves the widest possible circulation, I'm also linking to it here. I would advise anyone interested in climate change to follow that link. It succinctly demolishes the "false balance" which is too often to be found in discussions of this subject, as well as debunking some ...
News reaches LOWA towers that Kingston and Surbiton MP Edward Davey and wife Emily (who did the hard work) have a new daughter - Ellie - born at Kingston Hospital. Congrats go to them all.
Kiron Reid looks at how the experiment of elected police and crime commissioners is faring one year on. The government's own figures show that the case for the badger cull was exaggerated, reports Peter Black. "Sprawl has trapped many Americans in poverty: Unable to afford a car, maintenance, insurance, and gasoline, they cannot get from their suburban homes to jobs." Ben Adler on Grist argues that we can make cities greener and more equal at the same time. "In 70s uncool Leicester, Silver Arcade with its arty/studenty clothes shops made me feel a bit more 'happening'." Middle Aged of Middle ...
The Kent and Sussex Courier wins our Headline of the Day Award.
[IMG: Day 28 - West Midlands Police Helicopter - Air Ops - Alpha Oscar One] Much excitement. The National Police Air Service based at Benson, Oxfordshire, will be starting their tweeting on their Twitter account on February 25th. From that date, we should know the reason for each police helicopter hover over Newbury. This is very much to be welcomed. No longer will we have the sinister noise of the helicopter rattling overhead, with us thinking "What on earth is it doing?". By coincidence I have recently received a list of the reasons for police helicopter hovers over Newbury between ...
.@IsabelOakeshott has tonight left the Sunday Times to work with me on the Cameron biography. Really looking forward to it...... — Lord Ashcroft (@LordAshcroft) February 15, 2014 A tweet from Lord Ashcroft this evening reminds me of a picture I posted last month...
[IMG: cropped-Houses-of-Parliament_tonemapped2.jpg] Liberal Democrat Voice have initiated a debate on PMQs, based on a recent Hansard society report. About four-fifths, or about 25 minutes, of PMQs consists of very earnest questions and equally earnest answers with no ribald antics. Question: "Will the Prime Minister agree to look at the appalling situation concerning the plight of Mrs Muggins/the threatened closure The Royal Free Muggins Hospital/the disastrous flooding in Mugginshire in my constituency?" – Answer: "The Right Honourable member is absolutely right to highlight this situation. I share her/his concern and I will look into it and get back to her/him in ...
Being childless myself, I am fortunate in that the inadequacies of Suffolk County Council when it comes to education don't directly affect me. On the other hand, when your local authority ranks 146th (out of 152) at primary level and 137th at secondary level, you have to wonder whether cutting expenditure on Children and Young People services is really that good an idea. For a 6% cut in real terms is what our local Conservatives have come up with for the coming year, which can hardly augur well. Of course, it does mean that the council tax precept is frozen ...
There is one meeting at Blyth Town Council next week Special Council, Thursday 20th February at 6:30, Arms Evertyne House The Planning & Development Committee that was due to meet that evening has been cancelled
Despite the wind, it's been quite a nice day in Creeting St Peter so far, and so Ros and I went out earlier for our usual walk up Creeting Lane towards Stowupland. And whilst it was good to be out, the amount of litter, even on a remote country lane, was vaguely annoying. A small gesture for the environment However, being vaguely annoyed doesn't achieve an awful lot, and shooting those who litter isn't encouraged, so I decided that, once we had turned for home, I would pick up some of the recyclable stuff and bring it home, and here ...
The Welsh Government's housing bill is a substantive document that actually amounts to just one part of their planned legislation in this field. The intention to modernise the licensing system for residential mobile home sites has already been dealt with through my government-backed private members Act, whilst a further bill on tenure reform is due in the next 12 months or so. The current bill, which comes to 85 pages, 8 parts, 128 clauses and three schedules is a weighty document which seeks to revolutionise the way we manage the private rented sector in Wales. It aims to transform our ...
The Independent reports that the UK Government's highly controversial badger cull has suffered a further setback after it released figures which showed it had exaggerated the case for the cull. The paper says that the Department for Food, Agriculture and Rural Affairs (Defra) has admitted that an IT glitch meant it had overstated the number of cattle herds infected by tuberculosis in Britain to such an extent that there had actually been a decline in the year preceding the badger cull in September 2013, rather than the rise it had previously announced: Revised numbers, calculated after an error was found ...
I don't often use this blog for book reviews, in fact I rarely write book reviews at all. It is not a medium I am particularly good at but I promised the author of this book that I would give it a go so here it is. Anybody who has read the Mid Wife Crisis blog will be familiar with the characters in this book. It is a fictionalised account of a Labour MP's caseworker and her dysfunctional family, based on the real experiences of the author. Molly Bennett is a pseudonymn of course, as is Polly James, but that ...
The Washington Post today has an interesting profile of Judge Arenda Wright Allen who penned the historic judgment (covered in my last blogpost) overturning Virginia's ban on gay marriage, surely, with an eye in its place in the history books. Arenda L. Wright Allen Click here for the story.
Imagine you are in a meeting trying to make your case. How would you feel if, every time you opened your mouth to speak, somebody interrupted you before you had got to the end of your first sentence? Not just once. Every. Single.Time.Imagine you are in a meeting, trying to make your case, but the decision has clearly been made by a small cabal of powerful men who have reached their own understanding over dinner and some booze the night before, at an event that you were not invited to.Imagine you are in a meeting trying to do your job ...
The Geneva2 Syria peace talks have broken up without any agreement. Lakhdar Brahimi, the veteran Algerian mediator, nobly apologised to the different parties for his failure to broker a deal, but he really isn't to blame. There are people entrenched in their political positions on both sides who would rather the slaughter continues than concede [...]
Sat 15th
14:30
A longer read for the weekend: Nick Harvey on how "the whole model of local Government funding is no...
There was a mini-Lib Dem rebellion this week, when five MPs – Tim Farron, Nick Harvey, Andrew George, Stephen Gilbert and Adrian Sanders – all voted against this year's funding settlement between the Treasury and local government. As the New Statesman's George Eaton points out here, "By the end of 2015-16, the budget of the Department for Communities and Local Government will have been reduced by a remarkable 60.6 per cent, with several years of austerity still ahead." But Whitehall will have been emboldened by this recent ICM poll highlighted by the BBC showing 60% of the public think service ...
[IMG: 9841631403_b0ebea1646_b] I must admit I was scratching my head when it was announced by the SNP that they are proposing to keep the pound if Scotland votes yes to independence. So, an independent Scotland has its money governed by the Governor of the Bank of England. Note: "England". And that governor is appointed by the Westminster government. It is just bonkers. Really bonkers. But never mind. Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon are very confident of their superior intelligence. All of us who were surprised by this were being stupid. It really was logical, they said. Indeed, it was the ...
[IMG: toilet humour] 1. Until recently, Dave Lee Travis had a library of books on flatulence in his downstairs loo. 2. Katie Hopkins is hospitalised, on average, once every ten days. 3. Lined trousers are a real boon in this weather. I am getting old. Photo: LicenseAttributionNoncommercialShare Alike Some rights reserved by Bruce Stokes [IMG: Post to Twitter] Tweet This Post
[IMG: Legends of Somerset] From the Wells Journal: WELLS MP Tessa Munt has shared naked men with leading Liberal Democrats in Parliament – in the form of naked calendar Legends of Somerset. Her party leader, Nick Clegg, and fellow MPs David Heath of Somerton and Frome, Don Foster of Bath, Simon Hughes of Bermondsey and Old Southwark, David Laws of Yeovil and Jeremy Browne of Taunton, all agreed to have their photo taken with the hit charity calendar. The calendar is being sold here to raise funds for Macmillan Cancer Support. Here's how it got off the ground: On the ...
Sat 15th
11:15
Feminism and Liberalism: as far as I am concerned they are two aspects of the same thing
I'm not actually sure whether I realised I was a feminist first or a liberal. Logic would say feminist, but it doesn't really matter. Why not? Because both my feminism and my Liberalism spring from exactly the same point. Every single person I have ever met has been an individual. Everyone has a unique perspective and a unique set of experiences, and I love that. I love that everyone I meet has something new to teach me, and I love learning from them. And therefore I loathe all the nasty little systems of social norms that try to quash that ...
Is patience a thing of the past? In all walks of life these days we seem to be more and more impatient. We turn on our computers and expect it to boot straight into a screen that we can click ... Continue reading →
[IMG: steve gilbert] Our sympathies and best wishes to Stephen Gilbert, Lib Dem MP for St Austell and Newquay, who put out the following statement on his website this week: Stephen Gilbert, the Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament for St Austell & Newquay has been diagnosed with "Bell's Palsy"; a viral infection of the facial nerve that has led to temporary paralysis of the muscles in the right-hand side of his face. Stephen was diagnosed on Wednesday 5th February 2014 at the Accident & Emergency department of St Thomas' Hospital in London, following the sudden development of the condition overnight. ...
Here's what I told the BBC: [IMG: Parliament - Big Ben] Five years ago at the height of the expenses scandal we were promised a new kind of politics. How's that going?... Lib Dem commentator Mark Pack says the coalition gets nine out of 10 for effort, but only four out of 10 for achievement. He says: "One of the reasons it has not changed massively is that the real, genuine public anger over expenses did not convert into sustained public demand for changes in the way that the system operates. It is a shame." You can read the full ...
Imagine you are in a meeting trying to make your case. How would you feel if, every time you opened your mouth to speak, somebody interrupted you before you had got to the end of your first sentence? Not just once. Every. Single.Time. Imagine you are in a meeting, trying to make your case, but the decision has clearly been made by a small cabal of powerful men who have reached their own understanding over dinner and some booze the night before, at an event that you were not invited to. Imagine you are in a meeting trying to do ...
Would you take your mum to see Lars von Trier's sexfest Nymphomaniac? (tags: ) The Little Girl from the 1981 LEGO Ad is All Grown Up, and She's Got Something to Say sharing this again because it's just that awesome (tags: ) Teetotallers die younger, don't let 'em fool you (WARNING: contains actual science) (tags: ) Nick Clegg and other Liberal Democrats enjoy naked Legends of Somerset calendar (tags: ) [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
This post originally appeared on Liberal Democrat VoiceThat the SNP would dismiss yesterday's announcement on currency by George Osborne should not come as a surprise to any of us.Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon have taken to the airwaves to complain of "bluff, bluster and bullying" by those nasty big boys from Westminster. It's actually quite brazen to sit there and say, having been told a very firm "no" that the answer was really yes. But their aim was to whip up fury amongst their own supporters, to incite an emotional reaction in those who don't like English Tories telling things ...
Lib Dem County Councillor Sandy Walkington, opposition spokesperson on the Environment at County Hall, has challenged the county council and other authorities to 'up their game' as further heavy rain threatens continuing misery and disruption to Hertfordshire residents. "Yes, the amount of rainfall is virtually unprecedented," Sandy said. "But we all know that gullies have not been maintained and road-side ditches in countryside stretches have not been dredged. "Before these local floods happened, I have been challenging officers on whether they need to adjust their thinking in the light of the flooding elsewhere in the country and the likelihood of ...
[IMG: Hansard-Society] Prime Minister's Questions, the half-hour weekly pantomime that transfixes Westminster and the SW1 media, got a deserved pasting from the Hansard Society this week which released a report, Tuned in or Turned off? Public attitudes to PMQs. The results couldn't be clearer. PMQs is a significant 'cue' or 'building block' for the public's perceptions of Parliament, and it provides a lot of the raw material that feeds their negative assumptions about politicians. The public like the 'theory' of PMQs but dislike the current practice of it. They recognise that the opportunity to hold the government to account is ...
Further evidence that meritocracy is a myth: In his State of the Union address, Obama got a standing ovation for pointing to John Boehner as proof that the American Dream is intact. But Boehner's rise from son of a barkeep to Speaker of the House might not have anything to do with modern America or [...]
