Author Archives: the founding editor

I’m blogging the leadership contest from the perspective of a floating voter over on my personal blog where you’ll find:

• Some of the scandals that may befall the contest
• The first episode of a Podcast where I begin to make my decision
• The second episode of said same Podcast (better than the first, there will be more)

This story appears in the Guardian and other places:

Commenting on the resignation of Northern Rock’s chairman Matt Ridley, Liberal Democrat Acting Leader and Shadow Chancellor, Vince Cable MP said: “The Government should have made Mr Ridley’s departure a condition of its loan, rather than waiting for him to go.

“Furthermore there are other directors, including Derek Wanless, who are equally culpable. All of the senior management of the company led by Mr Applegarth should have been cleared out on day one.

“I nonetheless welcome this step as belated recognition that somebody in Northern Rock should be

…

…according to those ever-present “Sky Sources”

UPDATE: David Cameron has appointed non-elected Conservatives to his shadow cabinet, including Sayeeda Warsi (Community Cohesion) and Pauline Neville-Jones (Shadow Secretary of State for Security). Both will take up seats in the House of Lords.

According to the 24 hour news channels some of the papers will report tomorrow that Shirley Williams is to  join Gordon Brown’s government – not in ministerial office but in a position that will place her “close” to Gordon Brown.  No more detail yet, but we’ll not have long to wait to find out for certain.

A small, simple pleasure – but click to watch David Heathcoat-Amory being given a verbal spanking by Mr Speaker Martin, from last week’s business questions. No wonder the Tories hate him.

Welsh Liberal Democrats have agreed to try to revive plans for a coalition assembly government with Plaid Cymru and the Conservatives.

A special Lib Dem conference in Llandrindod Wells voted 125 to 77 to resume talks with the other parties.

It comes days after the “rainbow alliance” collapsed when the party executive failed to back the plans.

More 

The Welsh Liberal Democrats have rejected coalition talks with Plaid Cymru and the Conservatives to form a government in Wales. They have also said they will not reopen coalition talks with Labour and will abstain from voting for a First Minister next week.

Story here.

Party press release:

The Liberal Democrats today called for the Department of Communities and Local Government to be merged with the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Ireland offices into a single government department.

The call comes following the successful reinstatement of devolution to Northern Ireland. The move could save taxpayers millions of pounds.

Commenting, Liberal Democrat Shadow Wales and Northern Ireland Secretary, Lembit Öpik MP said:

“With devolution now successfully up and running in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, there is absolutely no need to keep wasting taxpayers’ money running four separate departments in London.

“The Government should now recognise that the devolved Parliament in Scotland …

LDV was down overnight due to something going screwy with a file on the server (there’s technical for you) which required an upgrade of the blog software.  This shouldn’t make any difference to you, but if you notice anything acting oddly, please say.

A certain blogger and I have been having another spat. I know. I know. But she started it, really mother.

Take a look at the comments:

Now, comments one and three are from me. They’re written in my usual ‘style’ – punctuation and all (whether it’s right or not).  When I ask a question, in comment one, there’s a question mark.

Comments two and four are written by someone else.

Comment five is not written by me, even though if you click my name it goes through to my blogger profile.  It’s written by the author of …

More from Peter Black.

Commenting on today’s debate on the Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill in the House of Commons, Liberal Democrat Shadow Justice Secretary, Simon Hughes MP said:

“This has been a shameful day for the House of Commons – MPs should set an example of open government, not apply it to everybody but ourselves.

“David Maclean’s Bill and the way it has got through the Commons will clearly diminish respect for Parliament. But the battle will go on and hopefully the Lords will deliver us from this terrible mistake. 

“I hope the public will make their views very clear to the MPs who supported the …

From BBC News:

The Electoral Reform Society has hailed Scotland’s council election as a resounding success.
The organisation has suggested that there were “major inadequacies” in the vote for the Scottish Parliament, which saw more than 140,000 rejected ballots.

However, a report from the society will say that the single transferable vote (STV) system used in the council election worked well.

It wants Holyrood to adopt the STV method, a call backed by the Lib Dems.

Research carried out by the BBC has shown that the proportion of spoilt ballot papers was far lower for the council election on 3 May.

More

Or rather, a picture in a career.

Phil Willis’s career has been occasionally colourful! I will give, oh I don’t know, a shake of the hand to the first person (not pictured in the photograph) to come up with a plausible explanation for what Sarah Ludford is doing with that shark and what Phil Willis is doing with Will Howells’s foot.