Tag Archives: shirley williams

Helen Duffett

Daily View 2×2: 27 November 2009

By Helen Duffett | Fri 27th November 2009 - 10:26 am

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.

2 Big Stories

Hacker Gary McKinnon to appeal after extradition blow
The BBC reports that Gary McKinnon’s lawyers are to make a “last-ditch” attempt to prevent his extradition to the US. They are issuing judicial review proceedings next week after Home Secretary alan Johnson decided not to block his extradition on medical grounds.

Glasgow-born Mr McKinnon, 43, who has Asperger’s syndrome, is accused of breaking into US military computers. He says he was seeking UFO evidence.

Now of Wood Green, London, he faces up to 60 years in prison if convicted.

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Posted in Daily View | Also tagged , , and | 1 Comment
Alex Foster

#ldconf podcast: IPPR fringe

By Alex Foster | Wed 23rd September 2009 - 8:01 pm

We were taping ippr‘s fringe with our own Editor at Large Stephen Tall along with some relative political unknowns – Shirley Williams, Menzies Campbell and Charles Clarke.

The ippr did say they were recording the event themselves, and their recording is probably better than ours, but I can’t immediately find it on their website.

Posted in Conference and Podcasts | Also tagged , , , , , , and | 1 Comment
Stephen Tall

The Shirley Williams story – Climbing the Bookshelves

By Stephen Tall | Sun 13th September 2009 - 2:00 pm

Shirley William’s memoirs, Climbing the Bookshelves, is published on 24th September, and you can order it from Amazon using this link (and earn the party some commission). Today’s Sunday Times serialises the book: “the rebel ‘Gang of Four’ politician, reveals her maverick streak was rooted in a free-spirited childhood”. Here’s an excerpt:

I was a competitive child. I liked risk, matching myself against challenges. Climbing my father’s bookshelves to the very top was one such challenge. So later was amateurishly climbing mountains, breaking fingernails as I clung on to wet rock. Risk was one of several things that attracted me to politics when I was young, though I was also drawn to some obvious causes — poverty and inequality, lives limited by the accident of birth. …

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Posted in Books | 3 Comments
The Voice

Our Shirl on how Ted Kennedy inspired the UK’s minimum wage

By The Voice | Fri 4th September 2009 - 11:15 am

Lib Dem peer Shirley Williams has a letter in today’s Times looking at the role of Democratic senator Edward Kennedy – and herself – in promoting a national minimum wage in the UK:

I knew Ted Kennedy well as the chairman of the Senior Advisory Committee of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government … In 1989 and 1990 I was acting director of the institute. … The Senator and his staff had done a good deal of research into the minimum wage, research that showed conclusively that in the US it had not damaged employment

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged | 3 Comments
Stephen Tall

YouTube ‘cos we want to: an SDP special

By Stephen Tall | Sat 1st August 2009 - 8:00 am

If the SDP had lived on*, 2009 would have marked its 18th** 28th birthday – which spurious segue is all the excuse we need to dust off three video clips tracing its rise and fall.

Let’s begin at the beginning, with the explosion of the ‘Gang of Four’ – Roy, David, Shirley and Bill – onto the scene, here holding their first press conference in March 1981:

For a year or more it really did seem as if the SDP might truly break the mould of British politics. But the party was shattered by the results of the June 1983 general election, winning only six seats. Here’s the start of the BBC’s election night results programme.

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Posted in YouTube | Also tagged , , , , , , , and | 4 Comments
Stephen Tall

Shirley’s six of the best

By Stephen Tall | Sat 18th July 2009 - 7:45 pm

Over at the Express, Lib Dem peer Baroness (Shirley) Williams lists her six favourite books. And in case you’re wondering what they are, here goes…

  • Perkin the Pedlar by Eleanor Farjeon (Out of Print)
    I read this children’s book when I was seven, if not younger and it helped me learn the alphabet.
  • The Great Transformation by Karl Polanyi (Out of print)
    An absolutely brilliant history book which tells the story of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, covering among other events the Industrial Revolution, the creation of nations and the birth of empires.
  • Testament of Youth by

…

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Posted in Books | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

“What we have is lessons about sex, but nothing about the consequences of sex” – Shirley Williams

By Mark Pack | Thu 9th April 2009 - 9:50 am

The latest Journal of Liberal History (published by the Liberal Democrat History Group) is a special issue on liberalism and women, including an interview with Shirley Williams. One question looked at what changes in society she thought were still needed when it comes to issues of gender, and this part of her answer caught my eye:

Societal change has to be in two ways. One which has already happened is the move towards flexible working … The second big societal change is to teach children at school about parenthood, certainly in secondary schools. What we have is lessons about sex,

…

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Posted in News | 9 Comments
Stephen Tall

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Shirley, Simon, Chris and David

By Stephen Tall | Wed 1st April 2009 - 1:45 pm

The Times tells us that four senior Lib Dems will be on hand to inspect police treatment of protesters at today’s climate camp in London’s Square Mile:

Four Liberal Democrats – Baroness Williams of Crosby, Simon Hughes, Chris Huhne and David Howarth – will act as legal observers at the climate camp to prevent violence initiated by police, rather than protesters.

Mr Howarth, the MP for Cambridge, said that police and media were guilty of “talking up the violence”, adding: “The danger is that they are putting off peaceful protesters, and attracting the wrong sort.”

Over at the paper’s Comment Central …

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Posted in News | Also tagged , , , , , , and | 3 Comments

Thatcher more popular than Shirley Williams?

By the founding editor | Mon 18th December 2006 - 11:24 pm

It cannot be. Two words. Vote Williams.

Posted in Polls | Also tagged | 2 Comments
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