A Celebrity Parliament?

So following the news that Esther Rantzen will be standing for parliament we now have the news that Ricky Tomlinson may be standing against the official Labour candidate in Liverpool Waivertree.

This can only be good news for the local Lib Dems in that area. It's a seat that the Lib Dems will hoping to win at the general election and it seems that the Labour Party are intent on helping them! A splitting of the Labour vote from Ricky Tomlinson will help the Lib Dems. I only hope that Ricky doesn't feed into the anti-politics spirit and split the Lib Dem vote too.

The disaster that the local Labour Party have become in Liverpool Waivertree should mean that the Lib Dems will have a free run at the seat on May 6th (or when ever Brown has the guts to call an election).

CF Activist Suspended for NAZI comments

The front page of the Yorkshire Evening Post yesterday had the story of a Conservative Future activist who has been suspended from the Conservative Party (apparently for just two weeks) for using the language of the Nazi Party to describe how CF activists would fight the next general election. This was a spectacularly misjudged comment.

Seems that CF have still not managed to shed the image that haunted the Conservative youth movement throughout the 1980s and considering how protective CCHQ is of the party's image it seems amazing that this statement was apparently approved by a party press officer before it was sent out.

Pickles was then informed of the statement and this was when the CF activist who made it was suspended from the party.

Clamping Regulation

It's good to see that the government is considering restricting clampers. In some cases clamping companies are no better than a group of organised thugs who extort money from motorists. It's about time this practice was made illegal in England, as it already is in Scotland.

Protest Against Tariq Zaman

At the weekend I took part in a protest against Tariq Zaman, a former landlord in Leeds.

This case is a lesson for the government. They need to more strictly define and enforce rules about what it means for a landlord to be 'a fit and proper person' and they need to give councils tougher powers to restrict who is allowed to hold a landlord license.

Grammar Vigilantes

Saw this at Leeds station the other night. Love that someone has taken the time and effort to correct the mistake with a marker pen. Maybe Netwrok Rail will get it right next time!

Garden Waste Collections Start Again

Although this won't really have much relevance for my area of Leeds, garden waste collections are set to resume across Leeds. This is the last step back to normality for collections following the bin strike.

New Lib Dem Members Site

The new Lib Dem members site was launched a couple of days ago. It looks really great and will be even better when it can be used for telephone canvassing and online campaigning. This should really compliment ACT.

Is this really progress?

With all the LGBT rights legislation that the government have passed over the last few years (and credit where it's due, it has done a lot) you would have thought that there would have been a far more drastic change in attitudes to homosexuality than this. It's disappointing that a third of the UK population still that homosexuality is 'wrong'.

Just goes to show that it is hard to change people's feelings through legislation. I would imagine it's a generational difference and it would be interesting to see the figures on this.

What a load of rubbish

Just read this load of self-indulgent rubbish from Tory Bear.

It's disgraceful that some still believe that in the twentieth century it is the job of a wife to support her husband in his job and that a wife cannot have different political views from her husband. Oh well, suppose it's what has come to be expected from the Tories.

Why we should save general election night...

Mark Pack has some excellent reasons on why we should still be counting votes on the Thursday night, straight after polling day.

I think his fourth and fifth points are the most important.

In the Internet age there will be really damaging speculation about the results if they are not declared early. Damaging because there will be so much uncertainty and uncertainty and a power vacuum are not a good mix for any democracy.

The security issue is also really important. Even if there is a very small chance that there will be any tampering (as I believe there is), keeping the ballot boxes unopened overnight will not give the public confidence in a fair result. Confidence of the public is hugely important for a democracy like ours.

I agree with Iain Dale that government should bring in an election night bill to ask local authorities to count as soon as possible.