Author Archives: Alex Foster

A tweet arrived earlier in the week from the official UKParliament twitter account with a link to this wonderful clip about Big Ben and the world-famous iconic clock at one end of the Houses of Parliament.

It’s just one of a series of official Youtube tours of the Palace of Westminster, so if you’re unable or unwilling to get yourself to London to have a proper look, you can find more in the UK Parliament channel.

It’s reasonably easy to get a real tour if you want one – particularly for UK citizens and in MP’s summer …

Just a quick update on the atheist bus campaign, which we first featured here.

The campaign opened a page on Justgiving for donations yesterday, and smashed through their fundraising target in a matter of hours. By the end of the day, they had raised over £35,000 – seven times their initial target of a fortnight’s worth of advertising on a handful of London buses.

And Ariane Sherine, who inadvertently set the whole thing off a few months ago, penned a further post here for the Grauniad.

See what John Cleese thinks about Sarah Palin.

“Monty Python could have written this!”

Another interesting mail drops into my inbox, which I’m sharing because we’re otherwise having a quiet day. I also think it will chime rather well with a subset of our readers.  I’m not actually an atheist myself, but I am irked at how one-sided the religion-based advertising scene is.

The Atheist Bus Campaign is launching officially on Tuesday October 21 2008. 

THE CAMPAIGN

The Atheist Bus Campaign began thanks to readers of The Guardian’s Comment Is Free blog. Comedy writer Ariane Sherine wrote an article in June about the Christian adverts running on London buses, which linked to a website saying non-believers would burn in hell …

A quick reminder – we provide a weekly round-up of the best Lib Dem blogging, statistically speaking, every Sunday evening – and we add to that list of 7 statistically succesful blog posts a list of 5 bits of excellent writing that you, the public have suggested we add, if you see what I mean.  Some weeks, we have a wealth of suggestions, others, not so much.

So if you’ve seen some stellar blog posts this week that you feel deserve being brought to the attention of a wider audience, please feel free to send a link and any brief …

It seems that official statistics on fuel poverty are two years in arears, as the BBC reports that a million more people fell into fuel poverty in 2006.

The number of households in fuel poverty in the UK rose to 3.5 million in 2006, government figures show.

The figures from the Department for Environment and the Department for Business show this is an increase of one million on 2005 levels.

The report goes on to blame rising energy prices.  There was an increase in fuel costs of 22% between 2005 and 2006 and when fuel costs rise but incomes don’t, the fuel …

All the serious, talented writers for LDV are on holiday or in meetings today, so it falls me to mind the shop and react to news stories.  My meetings don’t start until 4.30 when I have a board meeting, residents’ meeting and Lib Dem local party exec in quick succession.

So, I’m browsing around the news sections of the BBC trawling for content, when my eyes alight on… this little gem.  Quite apart from refusing to believe that “Never gonna give you up” was 21 years ago… have you seen what Rick Astley looks like today?  Oh boy!

Erm, ahem, trawl …

A startling story appeared on the Beeb yesterday, in which the self-confessed sole Tory lesbian suggested gay men should vote blue.

We contacted DELGA, the Lib Dem LGBTQ experts, for a response, and chair Jen Yockney replied:

Margot James’ comments are a mixture of incoherence and reasons to vote Lib Dem rather than Conservative.

At the top of the Tory party there are a few fresh faces and less overt homophobia. But the great swathe of that party is still the same party with the same values that introduced Section 28 twenty years ago, and has fought tooth and nail to block every move toward LGBT equality

…