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| Photo © Andrew Carpenter |
He is seen here outside the Angel, Market Harborough, with East Midlands EU referendum coordinator Cllr Phil Knowles and Harborough Liberal Democrats' parliamentary spokesperson Zuffar Haq.
Showing posts with label Vince Cable. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vince Cable. Show all posts
Vince Cable outside the Angel, Market Harborough
He is seen here outside the Angel, Market Harborough, with East Midlands EU referendum coordinator Cllr Phil Knowles and Harborough Liberal Democrats' parliamentary spokesperson Zuffar Haq.
Six of the Best 601
Martin Hancox on the insanity of the badger cull.
A proposed new law would make it harder to criticise the ruling regime on Jersey. Voice for Children has the details.
"Reiner ends his memory with an envious observation: 'The word fuck is a perfectly good word now.' 'I never minded Richard Pryor saying it,' says Van Dyke, 'but so many comedians use it constantly instead of good material. That’s when it gets offensive.'" Katherine Brodsky interviews Dick Van Dyke and Carl Reiner, who are both past 90 but still crackling with ideas.
"If you’d have said that to us 50 years ago, that’d we’d be doing this still, we would have not believed it. That was the time Lennon said that he didn’t expect to be still doing it when he was 30!" Midlands What's On interviews Rod Argent from the Zombies.
Can you name the six London Underground stations named after pubs? Londonist can.
Hear Vince Cable speak on Europe in Oadby and Market Harborough on Thursday
Sir Vince Cable will be in the Harborough constituency on Thursday 2 June as part of the Remain campaign.
He will give a speech at Oadby Community Centre, Sandhurst Street, Oadby LE2 5AR from 6.15 to 7.30pm.
If you want to reserve a place, email Linda Broadley.
Before that Vince will be speaking to the Chamber of Trade here in Market Harborough. The meeting takes place at the Angel between 5 and 6pm.
This event is open to the wider public - email Phil Knowles if you are interested in attending.
Lord Bonkers' Diary: Reviewing David Laws’ memoirs
A breeze stirs the May blossom, inspiring me to prop open the French windows in the Library. I settle down to review David Laws’ memoir of his time in government for the High Leicestershire Radical and am embarrassed by my inability to find the volume. Only after I have led my staff in a systematic search do I find it propping open those windows.
I find the book has three heroes: Nick Clegg, Danny Alexander and, above all, Laws himself. (Poor Huhne and High-Voltage Cable, who must be admitted to know how many beans make five, do not get a look in.)
Still, one has to admire the mordant wit of Jonny Oates, as quoted by Laws: “Your constituents will be mad if they do not re-elect you, Danny. And if they don’t, we should ask for all that money back that has been sprayed around your area – the extra ski lifts and the gold-lined roads.” Except that, if you have been to Badenoch lately, you will know that Oates was speaking no more than the truth.
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.
Previously in Lord Bonkers' Diary
Vince Cable looks back on the tuition fees debacle
Vince Cable spoke to Times Higher Education this week after taking up an honorary professorship at the University of Nottingham.
Asked about the Coalition decision to increase tuition fees, he said:
"It was politically very traumatic, but it was actually good policy. One of my colleagues, I think, came up with the phrase that we got 8 out of 10 for the policy but 2 out of 10 for the politics.
"The problem was that we made this pledge about not increasing student tuition fees – it was disastrous, it was not deliverable. ...
"We got hammered for it – loss of trust, all those things. But it wasn’t deliverable in the financial climate of the coalition.
"My job was to try to make the best of a bad job and produce a system which was genuinely progressive. It is. Nobody pays fees; they pay a form of graduate tax when they leave, depending on their income.
"The universities as a consequence are now quite well funded, unlike most other bits of what you could broadly call the public sector."You can see the heart of the Liberal Democrats' problem in the photo above - and I don't mean Nick Clegg.
We pledged to vote against any increase in tuition fees in the next parliament and to pressure the government to introduce a fairer alternative,
As was pointed out (I think by Polly McKenzie) in the debate I posted the other day, this took it for granted that we would not be in government after the 2010 general election.
Ambitious Liberal Democrats circle our most promising seats
Members of the Lib Dem Voice queued up to comment, but it was all a bit gnomic and I am not sure we were much better informed when they had.
The good news is that peace has broken out and Tony Greaves is writing for Lib Dem Voice - on an almost daily basis.
I imagine him and the editorial team running through flower-filled meadows hand in hand.
The best gossip in the new Liberator concerns the people who have their eyes on some of the more promising seats for ambitious Lib Dems:
Richmond may soon be the scene of a by-election if Tory incumbent Zac Goldsmith is either elected mayor of London or sticks to his pledge to resign if a third Heathrow runway is permitted.
With last May's candidate Robin Meltzer having decided not to stand again, flocks of Lib Dems are circling, some from as far afield as Guildford.
Next door in Twickenham, which Vince Cable almost held, a similar effect can be seen.
And then there are Yeovil and Sheffield Hallam... But to find out who has their eyes on those you will have to buy the magazine.You can subscribe to Liberator via its website.
