Luton is “riven with factions” says Esther Rantzen

My attention was drawn (hat tip Richard Stay’s blog) to a piece in the Independent on Sunday diary column which tells us that former TV presenter and independent candidate for Luton South at the last General Election, Esther Rantzen, may still have political ambitions. Although next time it might be by standing for Labour.

But sadly for us it won’t be in Luton;

‘”I would try somewhere else next time,” she says. “I have to say I was shocked by what I found in Luton,” she adds, describing the constituency as “riven with factions”.’

I am tempted to say – no, that’s not being riven by factions – it’s called an election campaign…..

Date 13th January 2012  Time 09:54  Comments 0  Tags Luton, Politics 

A song for the New Year 2012

I had planned to do a few more New Year related posts this week, looking back at 2011 and forward to 2012, but time and priorities have, so far, defeated me. So instead here is a great song that kind of goes along with the optimism that I hope I am taking with me into the next 12 months.

Gil Scott-Heron – I Think I’ll Call It Morning:

 

Date 12th January 2012  Time 20:22  Comments 0  Tags Miscellany 

Top five posts of 2011

According to Google Analytics these are the five most viewed posts on this blog during 2011. While I seem to have a readership that comes here via the Lib Dem Blogs aggregator and Lib Dem Voice, and I have seen an increase in links from Facebook and Twitter, the most popular posts have been those that people have found when Googling for information about the EDL rally in Luton at the beginning of the year and the link to this blog from the ‘Have I got News for You” programme pages on the BBC website.

  1. Should I take out an injunction or demand royalties?
  2. Update on the EDL rally in Luton planned for the 5th February
  3. How I became a poster boy for Lib Dem misery
  4. 2nd update on the EDL rally in Luton planned for the 5th February
  5. Eyewitness report of today’s EDL rally in Luton

Date 1st January 2012  Time 14:15  Comments 0  Tags General 

Chief Exec of Luton Culture is awarded an MBE

20111231-184523.jpgI am extremely pleased to see that Maggie Appleton, the Chief Executive of Luton Culture and my good friend, was awarded an MBE in the New Year’s Honours List yesterday. She was given the honour “For services to Museums and Heritage”.

This is a thoroughly deserved recognition of not only her leadership of Luton Culture over the last few years, but also her role in establishing the success of the Stockwood Discovery Centre, and her career working in the museums service in Luton and elsewhere. I am delighted for Maggie but I also hope this is seen as a boost for the whole of Luton Culture as the organisation faces some difficult challenges.

Some good news to start the New Year!

Date 31st December 2011  Time 18:30  Comments 0  Tags Luton 

Good riddance 2011 Welcome in 2012

As far as I’m concerned 2011 has been a rubbish year for me personally. It has been characterised by frustration, anxiety and a fair bit of melancholy. I often felt uncertain what my role was and what I was trying to achieve. I lost an election in circumstances I found very frustrating. I’ve been constantly dogged by financial worries and have had periods of gloom and lethargy. I also turned 40.

Before this all sounds like too much of a whinge there has been some good stuff to. Not least my becoming an uncle again.

I have learned some important lessons this year and I have ended it in a far more positive frame of mind, and more comfortable in my skin, that I started it. I also should record my gratitude to those colleagues, friends and family who have helped and supported me this year. Often when I haven’t been the easiest person to get on with. I am very grateful.

But in all honesty I’m glad to see the back of it.

So I am looking forward to 2012 with the expectation that it will be a far more positive year.

My overwhelming priority for next year is to concentrate on work and business, and in doing so I hope to see a significant improvement in my financial circumstances. I have some half formed ideas and plans about how to do this, but I recognise that, at least for the first half of the year, I will need to do some serious graft.

Beyond that, given the need to prioritise, I’m not making many other plans. Since the local elections, with one or two exceptions, I’ve largely withdrawn from political activity. I felt I needed a break. This is likely to continue for most of 2012 – it will give me some time to work out what I want to do next. However, I have made one or two commitments and intend to spend some time writing and thinking about political issues.

Finally, if things do improve on the work front, I’d like to be a lot more social in 2012 than I was in 2011. I may even throw the odd party!

Date 31st December 2011  Time 12:36  Comments 0  Tags General 

LDHG Meeting: Peace, Reform and Liberation

I was disappointed to have missed the Liberal Democrat History Group‘s fringe at the September conference this year as I was at the Love Luton fringe meeting instead. However, yesterday I was able to catch up on it thanks to the wonders of the internet.

I’m glad I did. It is a bit special.

A strong and well balanced panel gave a set of fascinating contributions to a discussion on the full sweep of the history of the Liberal Party to what came across as a rather high spirited audience. Julian Glover makes you wish all Guardian journalists were more like him. Paddy Ashdown was on great form with a rousing performance littered with classic quotes. But the real star is Shirley Williams who is scholarly and thought-provoking in equal measure.

Well worth taking the time to watch:

Date 31st December 2011  Time 09:33  Comments 0  Tags Politics 

Random Thoughts 13: November and December

Given my recent blogging hiatus we’ve missed a number of things I could have included in my Random Thoughts series of posts. So here is a bumper catch up of thoughts I should have posted over the last two months.

Various thoughts I should have posted in November

At the beginning of the month I found this handy flowchart for working out where you should post your status on social networking sites. Much truth in graphical form.

The organisers of London 2012 have released a series of Olympic posters designed by contemporary artists. I liked the nod to classicism in Chris Ofili’s poster and the sentiment in Tracey Emin’s, but my favourite is the Rachel Whiteread.

In local news it was announced that Bedfordshire is to get a new Lord-Lieutenant. The Queen has appointed Helen Nellis to succeed Sir Samuel Whitbread when he retires in February. Another local change in personnel will happen next year at the University of Bedfordshire when long serving Vice Chancellor Les Ebdon retires in September.

Other happy local news is that there is a new baby elephant at Whipsnade Zoo. The baby was born a couple of weeks ago after a 700 day pregnancy.

Various thoughts I should have posted in December

I rather liked this Magna Carta word cloud; hat tip to Liberal Burblings.

I had a good chuckle at Danny Alexander’s choice of Christmas card.

Far less self aware is this horribly self-pitying interview with Mid Beds MP Nadine Dorries.

There was good news on the development of our local infrastructure with the Government’s announcement that it was giving the go ahead for the first phase of the proposed rail link between Oxford and Bedford. This should have positive knock on benefits for Luton.

 

Date 30th December 2011  Time 14:51  Comments 0  Tags Random Thoughts 

Now the BBC thinks I am Scottish

One thing that I have made frequent reference to on this blog this year has been the story of how I became poster boy for Lib Dem misery.

I spoke at the time of my fear “that from now on when anyone at the BBC wants some stock footage of a Lib Dem looking miserable it will be that picture of me looking at my phone”. Well that fear has become more real than I could have imagined over the following months, and they are at it again, although this time for some reason they seem to think I am Scottish.

This screen grab is taken from a review of the Liberal Democrats’ year on the BBC website – but I think I have been appearing on the news channel as well.

Date 30th December 2011  Time 00:05  Comments 3  Tags Politics 

Margaret Moran may be too ill to face trail

My blogging has been rather light of late, but in the gap between Christmas and New Year I thought I’d try and catch up with a few posts. While it does seem a bit unpleasant to start with this in the festive season I feel I ought to start with the Luton related political news and the most significant story is the latest in the Margaret Moran saga. Something that I have been blogging about regularly here.

The news broke in the middle of December that legal arguments had been heard that the disgraced former Luton South MP, who is facing charges related to her expenses, may not be well enough to face trail because of the state of her mental health. Apparently she has been seen by several psychiatrists and that their opinion is that she is “unfit to plead”. There will be a hearing in the new year to decide wether the scheduled trail will now take place.

More here:

Mentally ill Moran is ‘unfit to plead’

Fitness to plead hearing for ex-MP

Margaret Moran ‘unfit to stand trial’

Featured on Liberal Democrat Voice

Date 27th December 2011  Time 18:01  Comments 2  Tags Luton, Politics 

Little Boots – Shake

I’m loving the new single from Little Boots. A perfectly formed and executed slice of electronic pop.

Date 14th November 2011  Time 11:04  Comments 0  Tags Miscellany 

The missing element from Luton’s free school meals campaign

The latest edition of the council’s free newspaper, Lutonline, leads with a front page story about a new council campaign to get more people to claim for free school meals. The story claims that more than 5,000 children in Luton are missing out on the free school meals they are entitled to. So the Council wants to make sure that the number of parents claiming rises.

This is a good thing. Over recent years we have become more aware of the importance of proper nutrition in the development of children and we know that it is the poorest within society who most often find it difficult to provide a proper balanced diet. School meals can make a huge difference to this problem. So it is only right that all those who are eligible are encouraged to sign up to receive these meals for free

But why launch this campaign now?

Aside from the obvious direct benefit of getting more people to sign up for free school meals, there is another good reason why councils should be encouraging this. The number of children receiving free school meals is the basis for calculating the pupil premium. For every pupil that gets free school meals that a school has attending it receives a sum of money. In the first year it was £488.

The pupil premium is a way of directing school funding to the neediest pupils. Luton is exactly the kind of area that should be benefiting most from the pupil premium. As I have written here before in its first year it has meant £3,642,000 coming to the town’s schools. If there truly are 5,000 plus pupils who could claim free school meals but aren’t then the town is missing out on a lot of cash.

The introduction of the pupil premium is one of the flagship policies of the coalition government, and something that was insisted on by Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats.

Funnily enough the article in Lutonline, published by Labour run Luton Borough Council, doesn’t mention the pupil premium at all. I wonder why?

Date 7th November 2011  Time 11:51  Comments 0  Tags Luton, Politics 

Speaker Bercow backs Select Committee amendments proposal

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the polite parliamentary row between two Liberal Democrat MPs, Sir Alan Beith and David Heath, over proposals to give select committees the power to table amendments to legislation in their own name. This suggestion, which would strengthen the powers of backbenchers, was supported by Sir Alan but opposed, on behalf of the Government, by David Heath. At that time Government opposition was strong enough to stop the proposal moving forward.

Now it seems that the House of Commons Speaker, John Bercow MP, has given his backing to the idea. Or at least deemed the idea “worth discussion”.

In a speech to the Hansard Society to mark the centenary of the 1911 Parliament Act, Speaker Bercow praised the strengthening of the independence of the select committee system that has occurred over recent years. But he argued that it was now time to strengthen the authority of select committees and had three proposals of how to do this. These were:

  • New powers to compel the attendance of witnesses
  • Greater influence over significant public appointments
  • Further ways to “link the output of select committees to the chamber itself”

It was as part of the last of these that he suggested that allowing select committee amendments should be considered. Something, I suspect, that will have caused various mutterings within government.

Date 6th November 2011  Time 10:23  Comments 0  Tags Politics 

Boundary Commission to hold public hearings in Luton on Monday and Tuesday

I’ve blogged here about my reactions to the proposed new parliamentary boundaries for Luton that were published in September and written in detail about the proposed new seats of Luton South and Luton North and Dunstable.

Those interested in these changes should be aware that the Boundary Commission is planning to hold public hearings in Luton on Monday 7 and Tuesday 8 November at Luton Town Hall. This is your chance to have your say about what is proposed for the town, the rest of Bedfordshire, and the Commissions proposals more generally.

More details of the Luton hearing are here and more general information here.

Date 5th November 2011  Time 15:28  Comments 1  Tags Luton, Politics 

What is the English Council for?

A couple of weeks ago I went along the annual conference of the East of England Liberal Democrats. Whilst there, after a sudden rush of blood to the head, I decided to put my name forward for the English Council of the party. This is probably the least known of the party bodies within the internal structures of the Liberal Democrats. So my motivation for doing this can best be described as ‘curiosity’.

As there were twelve candidates for eleven positions an election was to be run. So yesterday I duly knocked up the artwork for a manifesto and sent it off.

However, this morning I heard from the hyper-organised returning officer, Chris Williams, that there had been a withdrawal of one of the candidates and that consequently I had been elected. That’s the easiest (and most successful) election I’ve fought this year!

Not wanting to waste the effort however, here is what I would have said in my manifesto if it had been needed:

“I have been a member of the Liberal Democrats for over twenty years. In that time I have taken a keen interest in how the party is organised.

I’ve spoken in debates at conference about issues of party organisation. I have written about organisational matters on my blog and for Liberal Democrat Voice. I know the difference between an AO and SAO. I’ve read the Federal Constitution.

Yet even I still only have a vague idea of what the English Council does. So goodness knows what the average member knows about it, if they have even heard of it.

This is not healthy. How we organise ourselves, how we make decisions, matters. We can’t afford to have parts of the party that are obscure and that lack relevance to our campaigning. The pressure of coalition government alone makes it vital that our internal structures are effective. But how many of us can confidently say that this is the case?

I’d like to make a small contribution to putting that right. So my purpose in standing in this election is to find out what the English Council does and see where we can improve things.

So please give me your first preference and if elected I will:

  • Work for greater transparency and accountability, finding ways to report back to the wider membership.
  • Encourage greater focus on activities that support grassroots campaigning.”

Date 4th November 2011  Time 11:06  Comments 1  Tags Politics 

Margaret Moran to stand trial in April

I’ve been a bit slow on following up on the latest on the Margaret Moran saga but we have now got a date for her trial.

I’d noted before that Moran was due to appear last Friday at Southwark Crown Court to face 21 charges of  fiddling her expenses to the tune of around £80,000. In the end she didn’t appear in person but a brief hearing set a provisional trial date for 18 April next year. A further pre trial hearing will be held in December.

Date 1st November 2011  Time 14:32  Comments 0  Tags Luton, Politics