Former Liberal MP Has Just 21 Seconds To Talk About "Blogging"

The former Liberal MP is Clement Freud , the show was last evening's "Just A Minute", and you can listen again from this page

Ros Scott

I've only met Ros Scott once - at a small Lib Dem 'do' in Basildon last year.

She was charming, warm and funny, someone that people can easily relate to, and I'm delighted that she's standing for party president.

I'm With Gavin - And Paddy

Gavin's written about the EU treaty better than I could have done .

Becoming A Refugee....

There's a new entry on the Baghdad Burning blog. For those who haven't seen it before, "Baghdad Burning" isn't updated very often, but gives a fairly stark account of life in the Iraqi capital. Or at least it used to. In the previous entry - back in April - the author advised that she and her family had decided to leave Iraq. It's only now that there's a new entry that tells how they left:

....The last few hours in the house were a blur. It was time to go and I went from room to room saying goodbye to everything. I said goodbye to my desk- the one I’d used all through high school and college. I said goodbye to the curtains and the bed and the couch. I said goodbye to the armchair E. and I broke when we were younger. I said goodbye to the big table over which we’d gathered for meals and to do homework. I said goodbye to the ghosts of the framed pictures that once hung on the walls, because the pictures have long since been taken down and stored away- but I knew just what hung where. I said goodbye to the silly board games we inevitably fought over- the Arabic Monopoly with the missing cards and money that no one had the heart to throw away....

....The Syrian border was almost equally packed, but the environment was more relaxed. People were getting out of their cars and stretching. Some of them recognized each other and waved or shared woeful stories or comments through the windows of the cars. Most importantly, we were all equal. Sunnis and Shia, Arabs and Kurds… we were all equal in front of the Syrian border personnel....

Advice, Please!

I'm thinking of shifting from my current BT-based email to a web-based system like hotmail. (The impetus for this being that my current email folders seem to be corrupted and I can't receive any emails to my normal address at the moment)

As email is very important for my council work, I want to make the right decision...

So I'd be grateful for any comments or advice - particularly from other councillors- as to whether they are happy with hotmail or yahoo.

I probably send and receive 10 emails a day on average.

Thanks :)

Alas , Poor Paris, I Knew Him Well, a Liberal Democrat Cat of Excellent Jest

Life's been too busy to blog for the last few weeks, but I'll probaly start writing again soon.


At the moment we're mourning the loss of Paris, one of our fine pair of brother cats. As you can see, he was always interested in our Lib Dem leaflets.... but he had a weak heart, and even though he had 350 ml of fluid drained from around his lungs, more fluid came back in a few days... he's now gone to the great Lib Dem Cats Home in the Sky...

We'll miss him.

My Lib Dem Favourite

I heard that Stephen Tall has done some sort of list of his top Lib Dem 100. So I thought that I could at least mention my favourite. It's no great surprise that it comes from a Lib Dem constituency in Scotland. In this sort of contest, nothing from London is going to win. (Or Essex, come to that)







In fact it's from Orkney, and as you can see in the picture it's pretty green with some white flowers. I've been to Orkney once and really liked the place so this is definitely my favourite sort of Lib Dem Bog.

Are you old enough to remember this one?

It made me smile.

In the Hood, In the Hood, He's the Wizard in the Hood, He uses Magic Powers for the Forces of Good...

Hat-tip, and thanks, to: Barcharters Anonymous

Iain Dale's Diary is Doomed

I'm sorry, it's my fault.

I've had links to three proper Tory blogs:

Martine Martin's Lebwog - it was beautifully put together, she's intelligent and strongly dislikes Bush. But she's stopped writing.

Prague Tory -interesting stuff, though I often didn't agree with him. But he's just stopped writing.

That leaves Iain Dale's Diary. I'm sorry, I'm clearly a jinx, it's doomed.

Lib Dem Policy On Job Centres?

Last week Lib Dem Voice reported on our new party strategy to lift 5 million people out of poverty. A big, wide-ranging document that covers everything from benefits claims to affordable housing.

So it was odd that there were precisely zero comments left about it at Lib Dem Voice - compared with 35 on the stripagram, and 37 on the myth of classical liberalism.

Now, I also help run another, local blog for our local district. We didn't mention the policy document on our local site. But one of our regular readers there was so concerned about the apparent policy to transfer the 'jobfinding' part of jobcentres to the private and voluntary sector that she left a comment there anyway, and there's a thread with 5 comments now.

Does anybody care to go there and explain our new policy better than I can?

Dean Friedman and Milton Friedman

There's been a lot of comment in the last few days over a certain Lib Dem councillor who works as a stripper. As a result three other Lib Dems have switched to being independents. They were quoted as saying:

" We believe our integrity and principles will be compromised if we stay. Myrna just doesn't believe that she is the inheritor of Locke, Smith, Ricardo and the Mills. And we were shocked, shocked to find she hadn't read “Anarchy, State and Utopia” of Robert Nozick, “Persons, Rights and the Moral Community” of Loren E. Lomasky or “Principles for a Free Society” by Richard A. Epstein."

OK, I made the last bit up. They were concerned about her work as a stripper, not her economic knowledge. But maybe some people do get a little pre-occupied with all the stuff about our party's historical roots and associated economic theories. I've got to confess that I haven't read any of those books either. Nor do I know much about Locke, Smith, Ricardo and the Mills. And I know more about Dean Friedman the singer-songwriter than I do about Milton Friedman the economist.






One of the good things about reading Lib Dem bloggery is that you are exposed to all sorts of material. This week I've enjoyed the item at Lib Dem Voice on "The Greatest British Liberal" - my choice would be William Beveridge:






And tonight I've struggled through the comments on John Dixon's interesting article, also at Lib Dem Voice, on classical liberalism.

Now, I generally let other Lib Dems debate the finer points of what 'Liberalism' actually means - I'm happier to get on with being a councillor and focussing on day-to-day matters. But I have felt I've learned a little reading through the article and the comments below it.

However I must respond to a comment below John Dixon's article which said:

A century of welfarism has surely shown us that that policy has not only not delivered in terms of poverty reduction and opportunity growth, but that it is costing ever huger amounts of money to perform it as a government function

And that's where I disagree. Strongly. Looking back at my own family experience , my father had to leave school in 1914 - at the age of 13- because although he had won a scholarship to Bristol Grammar School, his family were so poor he had to go to work. Four or five decades later, thanks to the likes of Lloyd George and Beveridge, there was a sufficent welfare state for me to get a good education (though not in economics!) - and a sufficent NHS to give me adequate health care when I needed it. It certainly gave me opportunity growth.

I'm content for other people to discuss the party's historical roots. But let's avoid worshipping capitalism. Let's remember that the pace of technological and climatic change over the next 20 or 30 years will probably affect the world more than the scholars of 200 years ago. And also remember that in Milton Friedman's last interview, he said that the greatest threat to the world economy was "Islamofascism, with terrorism as its weapon." He might even be right on that.

60 Days Extra In Jail....

From the Miami Herald

A Broward prisoner accused of committing a sex act while he was alone in his jail cell was found guilty Tuesday of indecent exposure.

Hat-Tip - Andrew Sullivan

Not Bad

Hat-Tip: Millennium Elephant

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

Hat-Tip: Niles

Seventh and Best

I began reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows outside Borders at Lakeside at 5:00 pm, and I've just finished it....

What do I think? I think that JK saved the best till last....