Lib Dem Success in Top 50 Scottish Blog Poll

Iain Dale is a great big tease. There. I've said it. Last night he posted a tweet saying that the Total Politics blog results would be up "soon, morning". So those of us who were on Twitter, while we pretended that we didn't actually care, went into a bit of a spin wondering whether the list would go up last night or this morning.

What he actually meant was both. At around 9pm last night, the list appeared without any fanfare on the Total Politics site. For a bunch of people who didn't care, the congratulations were very soon flying around Twitterverse.

I was completely amazed and stunned to get to number 7 from 30 last year, so I'm really grateful to everybody who voted for me. It's a rise of 23 places from last year and it appears that I'm either the top or second woman, depending on the gender of the rapidly rising Libertarian blog, Underdogs Bite Upwards. One of the depressing features of the list is that out of 50, there are only 6 women that I can see - correct me if I'm wrong, please, but it's not brilliant. I know that I would have been trounced by Subrosa if she hadn't taken herself out of the running. And if I have anything to do with it, the Scottish Blogosphere's most talented guest poster, Wendy Fraser, will have a blog of her very own to enter next year.

Congratulations must go to Tom Harris, who, unsurprisingly, comes in at number one. His blog is my guilty pleasure. Anyone who can ignite such strong emotions through the written word, even if they are often shock, anger and horror must have something going for them. He also never ever misses the chance to take the piss out of the Lib Dems. In fact, his fellow Labour MP Eric Joyce will probably not be invited back after his serious breach of protocol in this guest post earlier this week - he actually wrote the words Lib Dem without any sort of snidey comment attached to them. Despite all of that, he can also be very funny, self deprecating, down to earth, and entertaining and I do find myself reading and enjoying what he writes much more often than I'd ever admit.

It was also great to see a huge rise of 22 places for Marathon Man Malc who, by the way, you can sponsor here and to see Yousuf's excellent blog acknowledged. Nationalism and its nemesis in the form of Jeff and Scottish Unionist are up there too, along with the ever fabulous Doctorvee,whose transition to top flight journalism can't be far away and the always relevant and fascinating Will.

The Lib Dems also see remarkable success with Stephen, Andrew, Katy , Bernard, Iain, Fraser and Willie Rennie MP giving us a significant rise in our representation on the list. We are the second Party to the SNP with some very promising young bloggers, ably mentored by Blogfather Stephen ready to challenge for next year.

I'm looking forward to getting to know some of the new additions to the list in the months to come. Thank you so much again to everyone who voted for me. I really do appreciate it and I hope that I continue to do whatever it is that you like. If I don't, tell me!

MacAskill and Megrahi - the decision and the aftermath

I have to be honest and say that I don't envy Kenny MacAskill. The decision he has had to make on the future of Abdelbasset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber is a hard one. He faces pressure from all sides.

On one hand, the irrefutable medical evidence that Megrahi has aggressive, terminal prostate cancer and has only a few months left to live. If he were anyone else, he'd have been quietly released and nobody would really be any the wiser. On the other hand, we have US politicians and even the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, requesting in no uncertain terms that he should be left in prison. The families of the 270 victims of the attack are divided - in the US, the families are indignant at the thought of release, while in this country I guess British families have had enough experience of judicial failure in the cases of the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four to doubt the safety of his conviction.

We're not going to know what is going to happen until 1pm, when Kenny MacAskill makes his announcement and he's certainly going to be doing that in the glare of the international spotlight. To my mind, the right announcement would be compassionate release, as I've said before . I know that puts me a bit out of step with good people in my Party and it's only fair to mention their opposition. I disagree with Jim on this, but I understand where he's coming from. Since I wrote that posting, I've discovered that compassionate release is the usual course of action for a terminal illness of less than 3 months' prognosis. To my mind that humane prinicple should be sacrosanct and not subject to political intervention. For that reason, I think what I said in my last posting about these sorts of decisions being made by an independent body, considering the medical evidence, and risk of danger to the public alone, was justified.

There shouldn't really be a political factor in this. We shouldn't buckle to pressure from the US, nor should the decision be portrayed as one of standing up to the US. If I had lost someone I loved, I may well be spitting mad at the thought of compassion being shown to their murderer, so the families deserve our thoughts and sympathy at what will be a difficult time for them.

Having said all that, boy have the SNP completely cocked this up. If he was in a room with a locked window and an open door, it seems like Kenny MacAskill would choose to go out the window. This is where I totally agree with Tavish Scott. MacAskill took his decision from the judicial to the political the moment he set foot in Greenock jail. No way should that ever have been allowed to happen. I can't imagine what on earth he was thinking. When do Ministers ever go and visit convicted murderers in jail? There was no need for that. All MacAskill needed to have was the report from Megrahi's doctors.

Not only that, but there was the leak to the BBC a week ago saying he was going to be released, then the dropping of his appeal which posed many more questions than it answered about whether a deal had been done with him. Why on earth has this process been as drawn out as it has been? Why has the Scottish Government not been able to manage the flow of information in a more competent manner?

I suspect there will need to be full scrutiny of the way in which this decision was made at some point so that we can understand the processes involved. We need to ascertain how he came to drop his appeal. He has always maintained his innocence, and, to be honest, when the trial was going on, I had my doubts as I listened to what was presented. Wardog outlined some of the issues in what I found to be a very helpful posting on the background to all of this.

I certainly hope that if MacAskill frees Megrahi today, we are not subjected to him receiving a hero's welcome in Libya. He's not a returning hero. He would be a convicted murderer being released on compassionate grounds to spend his dying weeks with his family.

This is a day when everyone in the world will be watching Scotland and its judicial system. I think that there are clear questions over the way in which this decision, however right I think it is, has been made - and these questions could have been avoided. The SNP's incompetence on this is not going to show Scotland at its best.

UPDATE: Scott has given a link to his excellent posting on this subject in the comments but it's worth putting here. Despite chatting on Twitter for months, I'd never actually got round to visiting his blog until just now. I was impressed with what I saw, so I've added him to my blogroll.

Panorama shows plight of Afghan Women

Last night I settled down to watch Panorama, knowing that I'd find it absolutely horrendous to see its depiction of the terrible repression in Afghanistan.

Reporter Jane Corbin had been to Afghanistan and had interviewed women who had suffered terrible brutality, who showed incredible bravery in speaking out about their ordeals. My 10 year old daughter came in to the room just as 17 year old Saida was explaining how she'd been married off at the age of 9, sold by her brothers to a 60 year old man who beat her and forced her into prostitution. It took her 7 years to excape this vile creature. Anna was quite shocked by the contrast between her carefree life, reflecting on the fun we'd had altogether at a fruit picking farm, where the most taxing thing she had to do was help her daddy find a way through the maze, and the lives of these young girls her age thousands of miles away.

Then there was Zeinab, who had set herself alight after years of beatings from her husband and who saw no alternative but to return to him after she recovered.

We heard that despite the law, the majority of marriages are forced, that 80% of women face domestic violence, and, not at all coincidentally, the same proportion is illiterate, yet in this climate of oppression, courageous and inspiring women look to the future. There's the lawyer, Maria, who has armed guards outside her house after the Taleban tried to blow her up to stop her working. There's Maryam, driven out of her village after winning second prize in the Afghan version of Dragon's Den and who plans to use her winnings to build a factory and employ women - which she can only do if their husbands consent but which will show women that there's another way to live where they can have a say in their own destiny. There's the young MP, frustrated at the Government's failure to make progress on women's rights.

I was particularly moved by the 13 year old girl who was determined to continue her education and become a doctor. When asked what would happen if she was forced into marriage, she said that her husband would just have to let her continue her studies. I hope her idealism is not in vain and she gets the chance to do that.

Depressingly, there was also the only woman remaining in President Hamid Karzai's cabinet. She looked resigned and almost uncomfortable as she spouted the Party line -that cultural change doesn't happen overnight and could take decades. I suspect it'll take a good bit longer than that if men can get away with beating and raping their wives, never having to fear prosecution because they'll likely be able to bribe their way out of it. Presumably the Minister's willingness to comply was the reason she was the sole woman in office.

We also heard that President Karzai's wife is herself a doctor, who could show an example to other women - remember these powerful images of Mousavi's wife in Iran and how that turned the election - but who is not allowed by her husband to appear in public.

I think what made me most uncomfortable, though, was the fact that they were showing the footage of women's situation to the mother of a soldier who died there. At the end, Jane Corbin asked her more than once whether she thought her son had died in vain given the treatment of women in Afghanistan. It looked like they were pushing her to say that he had, which I felt was a bit insensitive and unfair.

I think what the programme showed was that the Afghan Government, despite having the benefit of thousands of international forces to help them, is only able to pay lip service to the laws guaranteeing equality and fairness to all. It's surely time for President Obama and Gordon Brown to put more pressure on whoever the President is after the elections to put its words into actions and stop the terrible abuses faced by most Afghan women.

Save our Apostrophes!

I'm still feeling rubbish but I was tickled by this article pointed out by Wendy.

I have to say that I do have a huge amount of sympathy with Stefan Gatward, who has been adding in the missing apostrophes which have been omitted from his local street signs. If I was confronted with a sign that read St Johns Close, I'd have been tempted to do the same.

I don't know quite what it is about an apostrophe in the wrong place that brings me out in hives to the extent that I even have to persecute my fellow bloggers, but I do think it's important to get these things right. I have to say that I really appreciated Yousuf's gracious response - even if he did make the same mistake in a later posting.

They're a useful tool for any sort of written communication and in the wrong place can drastically change the meaning of a sentence.

Our language does lose out if we continually dumb it down and fail to teach the next generation how to properly express themselves.

Hysterical overreaction? Possibly, but I can't afford the therapy to get me over it, so you'll just have to put up with it:-)

Afghan President betrays Shia Women

How far would you go to win an election?

I don't think anyone I know in any party would ever betray women in the way that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has done. In order to get the support of Shia men in the forthcoming Presidential election in Afghanistan, he has quietly allowed the enactment of this law. Incredibly, it states that men can starve their wives if they refuse to have sex with them. This is supposed somehow to be better than the original law which Karzai shelved in April which removed the requirement to consent within marriage and stated that women were obliged to have sex every 4 days.

This law is like a game of cat and mouse in which the mouse is bound, gagged and tied to the cat's food bowl. If a woman decides to say to her husband "Stuff you, I'll go and get a job and buy my own food", she can't because she's not allowed to work without her husband's permission. If she decides to leave an abusive husband, then she'll lose her children as husbands and grandfathers automatically have custody. This is bad enough on its own, but if you look at this blog posting from around a year and a half ago, you'll see that it alleges that between 60 - 80% of all marriages are forced, often on very young girls.

So, tell me, please, how is forced sex on threat of being denied food any different from rape.

It's not enough to say that Karzai is the best of a bad bunch. Our soldiers, 201 of them now, have lost their lives trying to keep him in power during an awful war of attrition with a Taleban that shows no signs of going away any time soon.

I am just so appalled that these are the values our men have been sent to defend and I think that the Government really ought to start thinking about what it's going to do to ensure that this evil and barbaric law is repealed as soon as possible.

Don't Mess with our NHS

As I was writing the title to this, it dawned on me that it sounded like some sort of Union slogan against Tory spending cuts. They must have used it at some point. They get it right sometimes!

As I said before, I'm a big fan of the NHS. It's not perfect, and there's room for improvement, but the principle of universal healthcare free at the point of need is an absolutely brilliant one. I would fight tooth and nail to preserve that principle and the last thing I want to see is the Tories dismantling it as I fear they might given half a chance.

Charlotte's blog seems to have become a forum for robust debate on this issue and I wanted to respond to some of the points that have been raised there by Charlotte and others.

I think it's quite telling that the people who are saying the NHS is rubbish are either young, rich or healthy or a combinstion of these elements. I was shocked to see people describing it as crap yesterday. How can you call a system crap that, amongst other things:

immunises all our children from all sorts of diseases that were real killers just half a century ago, diseases like Polio, Whooping Cough, Diphteria, Tetanus, Measles, Mumps, Rubella, Meningitis;

provides free access to contraception which is so liberating for women in particular;

that provides a huge range of health care, routine and critical, every single day without people having to worry about being handed a huge bill at the end of it?

I'm clearly not alone, as the momentum that the #welovethenhs discussion on Twitter has shown. I'm quite perturbed that an organisation which has even the most tenuous connection with our party is behind the rival #no2nhs. It's worth pointing out that these people are very much in the minority within the Party. James posted about this the other day.

Mark has not wasted any time getting back to top form on his return from holiday with this posting analysing Daniel Hannan's comments, so I don't need to. Hannan was just plain wrong and I think it's very worrying that David Cameron has not pulled him up severely for what he said. The only reason I can think of for that is that his position is a commonly held view within the Tory Party which will always put the interests of the wealthy first and not bother about the vulnerable.

Where Mark and I part company is his suggestion that we look at insurance based systems such as those in Singapore and Holland. I think we need to keep the NHS funded through taxation as it is at the moment and to maintain its free access. We can debate how it delivers its services and look for different and creative ways of meeting people's needs, but that principle really is sacrosanct.

Part of the reason I feel so strongly about this is because of my father in law. I never knew him - he died in 1974, long before I met my husband. He was for over 30 years a General Practitioner in St Andrews. If you're called Thomas and were born in St Andrews between 1933 and 1963, it may well have been after him cos he delivered you. He moved there in 1933, when he had already been qualified for several years. He was in his 50s when my husband was born, and in turn my husband was almost in his 50s when our daughter was born. I guess there aren't many people who can say that they were born almost exactly 100 years after their grandfather.

He had around 20 years of experience of practice before the NHS was invented and he found it very hard. We don't know much about his early career, but we do know that he spent some time in Yorkshire working with other young doctors in a very poor area. He spoke of people dying unnecessarily because they couldn't afford the treatment. He apparently also spent some time campaigning for greater public sanitation, being well aware of how poverty reduces life chances and health.

He did used to treat people who couldn't afford to pay, but there were obviously limits to what he could do. He found it very traumatic that he couldn't save everybody.

When the NHS came in, obviously all of that changed, and he was able to ensure that everybody got the medicines he needed. Bob says he used to complain even in the early days about all the forms that had to be filled in, though in the creation of this massive bureaucracy.

I don't think that any insurance system that you could bring in would give the vulnerable sufficient protection. They put a much greater proportional burden on people on lower incomes which is why I guess rich young Tories like Hannan are so much in favour of it. What they really want is to pay less tax to the Government and to only provide for themselves without seeing any greater obligation to society as a whole.

Please don’t let anyone kid you that the private sector is going to make better decisions than the public sector, given their imperative to make profits for their investors. If you've ever tried and failed to get an insurance company to pay out on a travel insurance or redundancy protection insurance, just imagine what it would be like if a family member needed a life saving operation and the insurers refused to pay for it. I wouldn't rule out the NHS using the private sector if necessary, though, and I do think there needs to be some flexibility on things like allowing people to supplement their treatment as Nick Clegg suggested last year.

Nor do you want to go believing that you get loads of choice if you have an insurance based system. You don't tell your insurance company that you want to go to a particular hospital. Or you cam, but most likely they'll turn round and tell you that you have to go to the hospital that they have the commercial arrangement with. So there.

It's also worth pointing out that one of the people who posted on the Twitter #welovethenhs thing was Sunday Times journalist India Knight. She told, in 140 characters, how she had gone private with her third child and how she had to fall back on the NHS when things went wrong.

I also read somewhere that the average monthly wage in Singapore is round about £2500 - much more than it is here at around £1900 - and of course many people earn less than that.

I am also concerned that people think that the US system, which leaves at least a fifth of its citizens uncovered for double the proportion of GDP of our NHS, is being lauded as some sort of a success story.

If the US system does provide protection for most of its people, then why is it deemed necessary to bring in what seems to me quite basic comsumer protections - for example, stopping your insurance company from refusing you cover if you’ve been sick, or discriminating on the basis of gender, or charging ridiculous amounts for expenses. To me what Obama is trying to do seems quite mild.

Despite it not being perfect (and find me an organisation, particularly one with over a million employees, which is), I think it's great that people have stood up to be counted in their support for the NHS at the moment, to defend it from the misrepresentations not just from Daniel Hannan but the powerful and rich American right and its health related commercial interests. Remember that a lot of the inaccurate information about the NHS comes from organisations with direct financial interest in maintaining the status quo.

However, Labourlost, with your orgy of self congratulation, and Tom Harris, who seems to think that Daniel Hannan is some sort of get out of jail free card for the Labour Party take note: this alone is not going to win you the election. I suspect that Labour spin doctors are putting together an election campaign that relies entirely on fear to get their core vote out. That might work, but it won't help them where they need to win. If you have a hope in hell of avoiding your worst defeat ever, you're going to have to come up with some half decent ideas that capture people's imaginations on a whole range of things. I won't hold my breath.

Drink Beer for Healthy Bones, Girls

In the days of yore, when I was a student, if I strayed too far into normal pubs and away from the usual student hangouts, I was looked upon with great suspicion if I tried to order a pint. I remember being told at least once that they didn't serve pints to women. Needless to say, I left. Even when we lived in Nottinghamshire, ordering a pint of real ale and being female had its incompatibilities.

Anyway, I was amused to see this story which suggests that moderate consumption of beer can actually protect women from Osteoporosis. However, you get the best results if you're naughty and consume more per week than the Government thinks is safe - around a pint a day on top of the two units you are allowed to be exact.

The Osteoporosis Society was at best bemused by the research and was at pains to warn us not to drink too much:

"While low quantities of alcohol may appear to have bone density benefits, higher intakes have been shown to decrease bone strength, with an alcohol intake of more than two units per day actually increasing the risk of breaking a bone.

"There are also many other health concerns linked with alcohol which cannot be ignored."

The good thing about the research is that they think that plant hormones present in beer may have something to do with improving bone health and these will no doubt be studied more and might lead to something which helps reduce the misery of Osteoporosis.

In the meantime, mine's a pint of St Peter's Well....

Fraser MacPherson - top Lib Dem Councillor Blogger

Iain Dale has started publishing his top bloggers' lists from his recent poll. Today was the turn of Councillor bloggers to come under the spotlight.

The top Lib Dem in the list is none other than the Scottish Blogosphere's Fraser MacPherson from Dundee, whose blog is one of my favourite reads. As well as loads of local information for the people in his ward, Fraser also discusses Scottish and UK wide politics from a Lib Dem perspective as well as his favourite music - it's Shirley Bassey week this week.

Congratulations to Fraser on a well deserved achievement.

John Prescott - did he convince you?

Oh, bless him, John Prescott clearly sees himself as the knight in shining armour rushing to the side of a beleagered Barack Obama. He's been tweeting his You Tube video decrying the preposterous claims about the NHS made by Daniel Hannan to various official US Government sources and media networks.

I know he means well, but I'm not sure if he's really thought through what he's saying and his audience.

I think he could have done a much better defence of the NHS - surely to goodness Labour have some party election broadcast footage inside NHS health facilities that they could have used with a voiceover from Prescott or others. I'm not sure that Prescott's at times faltering delivery from the House of Commons Terrace with his chin looking like it's going to drop through the bottom of the screen compares too well with Hannan's slick delivery on the broadcast networks. The fact that Hannan is talking complete bullshit and Prescott is almost right is irrelevant in a country where image and presentation are taken so seriously.

The line that made me laugh the most was the one which basically said yes, we have waiting lists, but it's all the Tories' fault. I'm not sure that traditional British political quarrels are going to resonate much with the Americans. It's also quite a tragedy that the Labour Party actually believes that. The NHS has now been in their hands for 12 years, and there's lots more they could have done to improve delivery of services, making them less bureaucratic and more people centred.

Prescott was right to point out that in Daniel Hannan's own constituency, health was improving and deaths from cancer and heart disease were reducing, but, honestly, he did make a bit of a pig's ear out of delivering the information. Sometimes, it's just better to do another take. What was the rush? The internet's open 24 hours a day - it's not as if he had to meet a deadine.

I wonder how long it will be before the commercial interests opposing Obama's very reasonable reforms get hold of the footage of JP's wee argument with a voter from the 2001 election? I can't imagine that going down too well with an American audience either.

Prescott had the right idea, but maybe with a bit more thought, his production could have been much more relevant to the people he's talking to.

Much as I'm loathe to say it, the British politician the Americans would have listened to is Tony Blair - is it time to send him round the US networks defending the principles and practice of the NHS? He's well known there, the right, who are the ones who actually need to be convinced, respect him and might listen to what he has to say.

What do you think of Prescott's efforts?

Why I Love the NHS

Apologies for light blogging - I'm in the midst of a particularly poor spate of health at the moment. It's really frustrating because there is so much I want to write about and I just don't have the energy. I lie in bed with ideas in my head that I'm going to have to hope hang around long enough for me to be able to write them down.

I couldn't let the day go by, though, without writing a little bit about the NHS and what it means to me. I'll jump into the political fray at some point - and I still haven't read Charlotte's posting on the subject - but I want to keep this simple. This is not an exhaustive list, but a few examples of what the NHS has done for me and mine.

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the NHS gave me my grandparents: when I was born, my Granny was 66 and my Grandad was 77. They did not have a lot of money. Unlike many Tory MPs, they didn't live a life of riches and privilege. In fact, they lived in this tiny, cramped two roomed flat which was up some pretty treacherous and precarious stairs. The toilet was two floors down and shared with other people. Grandad died when I was 9, but Granny lived there until 1982 when she moved into sheltered housing. She died 14 years ago at the age of 93.

Both of them suffered from health conditions which were easily managed with drugs that they would not have been able to afford if they had been in the US, where they would probably not have been able to get health insurance. If it hadn't been for the NHS care they received, I don't think they would have lived for as long as they did, and I wouldn't have got to know them. They were also my parents' main source of childcare when I was in primary school. I went to Granny's every day after school and during the holidays or when I was off sick.

The NHS gave me my sister: My sister's birth was wrought with complications and it took some skilful intervention on the part of the doctors and midwives to persuade her to breathe on her own. I don't think my parents would have been able to afford private health care in those days so it's possible that we would have lost my lovely sister.

The NHS looked after my premature niece: My niece Laura was born 7 weeks prematurely just under 17 years ago. She was in Special Care for ages in an incubator and received phototherapy for jaundice. While she was in Special Care, we saw the dedicated and skilled staff save the lives of many premature babies. Laura now has just got fantastic results in her Highers and has all sorts of opportunities open to her.

Just recently, she had a really unpleasant bout of Tonsilitis which, without antibiotics, could have been an awful lot worse - what if her parents had been in America,and had lost their jobs and with it their family's health insurance as a result of the recession? What if they hadn't been able to afford the drugs that Laura needed? It doesn't bear thinking about.

My youngest niece, Aimee, who's now 4, got Pneumonia as a toddler - a terrifying event for my sister, as you can imagine. Thankfully a spell in hospital sorted her out, again freely accessed by her parents.

Her brother, Ru, who's 10, had his appendix removed at the start of the Summer holidays. A simple procedure, but one which if he had been in the US without health insurance may not have been accessible for his parents.

I should mention my remaining niece, Emma, who hasn't had any medical dramas in her life, but, like my daughter Anna, owes her safe arrival in the world to the NHS. All the children have been immunised against diseases like Diphtheria, Tetanus, Whooping Cough, Measles, Mumps, Rubella, Polio and several forms of Meningitis at no immediate cost to their families. When my husband was growing up in the 1950s, he knew children who died or suffered long term consequences as a result of these conditions.

My husband had a very severe chest infection after Flu a couple of years ago - he was treated and cured at a cost to us for drugs of no more than around £40, much less than the drug companies sell them for. If we had been on a low income, these drugs would have been provided free.

These are just a few simple examples of what the NHS has done for me and the people closest to me. I could think of many, many more. Thankfully, we've so far been lucky enough to enjoy reasonably good health, but if we need it, I know that the NHS will be there to provide us with treatment which is not dependent on our ability to pay.

There have been so many scare stories in the US about what right wing Republicans and insurance companies with their own commercial interests to protect see as state socialism. Sarah Palin has even had the nerve to talk about death panels and others have mentioned rationing.

What do they call their system, which provides excellent care for the rich and the well, but leaves a quarter of their population with no health insurance other than an extreme form of rationing? Why do they not want to give the vulnerable the access to health care that, let's face it, they need a lot more than the rich?

To me, this is big business putting profit ahead of people and, for all its imperfections, that's not something you could accuse our NHS of.

Tory MEP Daniel Hannan's appalling comments denigrating the NHS on US TV have brought nothing more than a shrugging of David Cameron's shoulders and a dismissal of him as if he were a drunken uncle at a wedding. I expect that if a US politician came over here and slagged off the American way of life on British TV, he'd have hell to pay when he got home. I remember Bush Senior slating Bill Clinton for going on protests against the Vietnam War while he was at Oxford, virtually painting him as unpatriotic.

I don't trust the Tories on any sort of public service mainly because most of them are so independently wealthy that they don't actually need to use them, but Cameron's non reaction to Hannan's comments prove that I am right to be sceptical about their commitment to the NHS. Views such as Hannan's are not unusual in the modern day Conservative Party.

I am not alone in my gratitude to the NHS. It's amazing to see that #welovethenhs on Twitter is one of the ten most popular topics and for a while today was actually ahead of the always busy #FollowFriday. When I first heard of the campaign, I was a bit concerned that the Americans might react to it as they had done to the infamous Operation Clark County in 2004 where the Guardian encouraged British people to write to voters in a marginal county to get them to vote for John Kerry instead of George Bush. To say that this did not go down to well would be leaving the eggs out of the pudding.

However, #welovethenhs is our response to wildly inaccurate lies being spread about a system of health care which may have its flaws, but we are right to be proud of.

Schumacher halts F1 Comeback - for the moment

A fortnight of almost intolerable excitment at the thought of seeing Michael Schumacher race for Ferrari again has given way to disappointment and tears in the Earl Grey as he announced today that he's had to pull out because the effects of a neck injury he sustained in a bike race in February mean that he can't take the stresses that an F1 race would inflict on him.

His statement had a very interesting turn of phrase, though:

"That is why my neck cannot stand the extreme stresses caused by Formula 1 YET." The emphasis is all mine, and I know I might be reading too mucch into it, but why say it if nothing else was planned and this was it, over, finito, for good.

I kind of thought that I was clutching at straws until this story came out via Autosport later in the day saying that Ferrari were trying to find a way of getting a third car on the grid for next year for Michael Schumacher to make at least a partial comeback. Now, I can't see it myself, especially as the FIA have opened selection for the final two slots on the grid, but I do wonder what they're playing at.

It certainly seems that Schumacher wants to race again, even if just for a little while. I wonder if the YET could also signify that, with training and physio, he could be race fit for Monza in mid September or for one of the later races in the season if Massa has not returned.

It's a big shame for all the people who had bought tickets for Valencia to see the Schumi comeback. It would be really nice if he was able to go down there and meet some of the fans. Mind you, they're going to have a lovely weekend in a gorgeous place, so they're not really missing out - and hopefully they're going to see the Brawns back on form.

This whole episode makes it seem to me that Ferrari have been really bad at succession planning. The second Ferrari at Valencia will be driven by Blast from the Past Luca Badoer who has been Ferrari's test driver since his remarkably unspectacular Formula 1 career ended in 1999. Ferrari seems to me to be like this big close knit family that when it takes you to its bosom, doesn't let you go again. Even Ross Brawn, who is a big boy now and has his own team said to Gazzetta dello Sport, an Italian paper, that “Michael has simply responded to the passion and the bond of loyalty he has for Ferrari,” says Brawn. “A passion I continue to feel myself." (Hat tip to James Allen ). You get the feeling that Ross would have understood a huge part of his team's fan base trying and failing to suppress the words "Go Schumi" as they watched Michael race. It's kind of like the ex you've never quite got over coming back when you're settled in a new relationship.

Anyway, to get back to the point, once you're in the Ferrari family you're in, but they don't seem to do that much planning for the future. Why are they not getting younger test drivers, with talent, in so that they can grow up with Ferrari and drive for them in the future. It's been the Ferrari way to grab the hot driver of the moment and hang on to them, but there are obvious flaws in that strategy, as we are now finding out.

Caron's Favourite Musings - a meander down Memory Lane

That nice Mr Tall gave us more homework at the weekend, and again, I'm bringing up the rear. My health is still somewhat erratic, to say the least, and I don't know from one day to the next whether I'll be running a fever with glands so swollen it looks like I've got a spare tyre round my neck, or able to function for a few hours before collapsing in a heap or somewhere betweeen the two. I had meant to do this yesterday, but the excitment generated by unveiling Ms Gore's true vocation, discovering that she did indeed have witchy heritage and the prosect of Dr Pack using both of us as some sort of dark electoral weapon was just too much for me to cope with.

Anyway, the purpose of the Tall Task is to get us to make the Lib Dem Blog of the Year Judges' choice easier by gettig us to pull out what we think are our best posts of the year. Out of 546 eligible, I now have a shortlist of 33. I will try not to inflict them all on you so I'll be pruning as I write. I'll also try to put them in some sort of reasonable order. I don't expect you to go through every single one -just take a look at the ones that interest you and leave the rest.

In which I pick fights with people

You don't pick fights with Mr Quist lightly - I mean, those horns are sharp - but I still think he's wrong on Lapdancing Clubs.

We made up though, and found a common enemy in cosmetic surgeons.

And then there was Tom Harris, Labour MP for Glasgow South. Where do you start with him? His attack on teenage parenthood made him sound like Iain Duncan Smith lite, so he got a Misogynist of the Week Award. I'd posted what I thought was a more rational approach to the issue some time earlier.

More recently, a conversation with him on Twitter led me to conclude that Labour MPs really do think we're stupid.

Taking the Media to task for inaccurate reporting of MP's expenses

If the press is going to write lies about my friends and colleagues, you'd better believe I'm going to step in to defend them. The Telegraph and the Scotsman got the sharp end of my tongue for printing garbage about Jo Swinson and Alan Reid.

Reform and rebuilding trust

First of all, in the eye of the expenses storm, I wanted to report on some of the good things MPs had done that week.

Then I wrote about the opportunities for reform that the whole debacle and explored them further in Summertime.........and reforming is easy.

The election of the new Speaker provided excitment for us all and for me definitely knowing what I didn't want in Beckett the Unspeakerable and mused on traditions worth keeping and those we should ditch in Dragging the Commons into the 21st Century

Freedom - what does it really mean?

Freedom of speech and expression issues have been controversial this year, not least with the BNP getting two MEPs. I wondered if the Scottish experience could help defeat these fascists.

I wasn't best pleased when Chris Huhne backed the Government's decision to exclude islamophobic Dutch politician Geert Wilders from the UK.

I also had a bit of a rant about religious expression covering issues from wearing the veil to praying for patients. I also explained why I no longer go to Church

This little piggy - Swine Flu and its consequences

With the first swine flu patients down the road, how worried should I be and would the Government's nice leaflet help? And did the pandemic highlight flaws in devolution settlements?

The ones that made the Golden Dozen:

Your first time is always special;

Then a report of Lib Dem triumph in two Scottish by-elections - and complete embarrassment for the SNP

Taking Irfan to task for an appalligly sexist post. Paul Walter, who nominated it to Libdig, said that I was giving him both barrels. Well, in fact, I'd toned it down considerably and I thought I was being moderate. Oh dear!

The Vote for a Change one.

And Finally.......

Included only because I think you need reminding of that New Year Guitar Meme. Stephen has still to give us his response, I note with interest.

And this is the best argument against independence for Scotland I've ever seen.

Charlotte Gore is a Witch

There, that got your attention, didn't it?

I don't, of course mean that she's a green faced, pointy hatted, broomstick riding turning people into toads sort of a person. And she's unlikely to have any self respecting kitten go within miles of her after this, #3 is the point you need to read. I betrayed my small furry friends everywhere by laughing till I cried when I read it.

When I say she's a witch, I mean it in the sense that she's a wise woman who is quite comfortable with challenging the conventional thinking of both her time and her party. A few hundred years ago, women like Charlotte, and Jennie, for that matter, would probably have been put on the ducking stool for being outspoken. Of course, in those times, you could be a man and be as outspoken as you liked and just be labelled as an eccentric and looked upon with amused affection.

Charlotte is probably about as far removed from me in the Lib Dems as you could possibly get. In essence, I am an old fashioned peace loving, tax and spend lots on lovely public services liberal hippy while she is, to say the least, a little bit sceptical about the need for ever so many public services. In other, less tolerant, parties, she and I might view each other suspciously, at daggers drawn, each of us questioning the other's ideological purity. I remember first coming across that sort of nonsense at Uni watching the Labour students. Unless you fitted into a very narrow ideological slot, you just weren't good enough for them. The good thing about this party, is that we not only practice what we preach, we relish in it. We naturally welcome diversity, be it of culture, opinion, food and ideas or whatever, see it as a chance to learn or at the very least have a very satisfying argument.

Charlotte and I can be at the opposite ends of the party and still respect each other's liberalism and, hopefully, learn from each other and have a bit of a laugh in the process. I like the way she challenges our long held perceptions in increasingly creative, often very funny ways. And this from someone who was complaining of Bloggers' Block a wee while ago.

The reason I started this post, and called Charlotte a witch was really to say that the other day, on Twitter, she started talking about the Lib Dem Blog of the Year Awards - and, you know what, just hours later, Lib Dem Voice started advertising them, so she can obviously see into the future as well as her many other talents:-).

Anyway, according to LDV, this is what the awards are all about, and how you submit your nominations for them:

"The Liberal Democrat Blog of the Year Awards, run in conjunction with Lib Dem Voice, are back for their fourth year. As usual, they’ll be awarded in a budget lavish ceremony at the party’s autumn conference in Bournemouth. (There’s further information on the event over at the Lib Dems’ Flock Together site). Click on the following links to see last year’s Shortlist and the Winners.

This year’s awards are as follows:

* Best new Liberal Democrat blog (started since 1st September 2008)
* Best blog from a Liberal Democrat holding public office (The Tim Garden Award)
* Best use of blogging / social networking / e-campaigning by a Liberal Democrat
* Best posting on a Liberal Democrat blog (since 1st September 2008)
* Best non-Liberal Democrat politics blog
* Liberal Democrat Blog of the Year

To be eligible for ‘Best blog from a Liberal Democrat holding public office’, a blog should be written by a councillor, elected mayor, assembly member, or parliamentarian.

The ‘Best use of blogging / social networking / e-campaigning award’ recognises the expanding role of both blogging and the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube in politics. It’s a deliberately open category: you might want to nominate a good campaigning YouTube video, or a particularly interesting Twitter feed.

The Best non-Liberal Democrat politics blog winner will be chosen by you, dear reader (should you choose to take part). Once the judges have chosen their shortlist, these blogs will be put up for public vote here on Lib Dem Voice.

The judging panel is still being finalised, but I’ll let you know as soon as possible which judges have blogs so that you can avoid nominating them, as they’re not eligible to win. Liberal Democrat Voice and any official party blogs (such as Home Office Watch) aren’t eligible either.

You’ve got until 4th September to nominate your favourites, but the sooner the better (and you can send more than one set if you’d like). Please don’t feel the need to round up hundreds of people to nominate your blog as the number of nominations aren’t taken into account.

Send in your nominations by email to ecampaignteam@libdems.org.uk and remember to state which award category you’re nominating for, in each case."

Now, I am sufficiently far enough down the food chain not to be remotely in the running for any of these awards. Everyone expects the front runners for Blog of the Year to be Charlotte, Costigan and Mark and, to be honest, I can't really imagine anyone else getting much of a look in. I've already spoken about Charlotte, Costigan is just awesome in the way he takes the sting out of tabloid frenzies and exposes hypocrisy - and, of course, his USP is a smattering of smut throughout, and Mark has stormed to the top of the Lib Dem bloggers' tree after his famous post correlating safeness of seats with excessive expenses claims. That posting has probably done more to advance the cause of electoral reform than anything I've seen in my quarter century in this game.

If there were any justice in this world, they'd each get one of the big awards - Charlotte for Blog of the Year, Costigan for Best New Blog and Mark for Best Posting. I want to see others rewarded too, though - people like Jennie who is brilliantly outrageous. She actually got my number one vote for what she calls the Total Bollocks Awards. I bet her blog is read by more people outside the political bubble than any other, because it's down to earth, straight talking and has people doubled up in laughter at the original way she expresses herself. This is one of my favourite postings of the year from her. Actually maybe that's either Jennie or Charlotte for Lib Dem Blog of the Year.

My personal choice for best Lib Dem blog from someone holding public office would be this one because I want the Party to recognise the dignity with which Paul has dealt with a very tough year and has continued to serve his constituents, fighting hard on the local issues that matter to them. He's always been one for technology, bringing his laptop to meetings before they were fashionable, and has always been committed to using technology to bring himself closer to the people he represents.

In terms of best use of Social Networking and Blogging, I'd go for Jo Swinson. She doesn't have a blog, but she uses the web effectively and has been recognised for her efforts on this. Tom Brake, for his innovative Facebook surgeries also deserves a mention, as does the Sugar Daddy of Liberal Democrat social networking, Steve Webb, who showed everyone else how to do it.

So there's my tuppenceworth on this year's awards. Whatever you do, cast your vote for somebody and let's make this year's awards the biggest ever

Should we free dying prisoners?

I always thought that the practice of keeping prisoners shackled as they gave birth was barbaric and could not believe that it went on until 1996 with the now sainted Ann Widdecombe justifying it.

I always think that the punishment part of a prison sentence is being deprived of liberty, of the ability just to nip out whenever you want and of being in charge of your own life. Living in such circumstances would be one of the worst things that could happen to me, restricting the amount of time, to almost next to nothing, that I could spend with the people I loved. Imagine if that happened to you? How would you cope spending 23 hours a day locked up with strangers?

It's right, of course, that we can and should as a society restrict the liberty of people who have committed crimes against society, and that these punishments should be proportionate to the crime - the worse the offence, the longer the sentence. I also readily accept that there are some individuals, thankfully few and far between, whose crimes are so awful that they should never be let out as long as they are considered a risk to the public.

I do wonder, though, whether it's right to keep someone who is in the final stages of a terminal illness in jail, and whether it's right that a politician is the one who has to make the final decision as to whether to let them go. The two recent cases, of the Lockerbie bomber and Ronnie Biggs have made me think about what happens to you if you are not a high profile prisoner and find yourself facing death in prison. Al Megrahi and Biggs are dealt with by two different legal systems, but their final fate is down to the decision of the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Kenny MacAskill for Megrahi and Jack Straw, UK Secretary for Biggs.

My instinct is that regardless of the crime that the person has committed, that the compassionate thing to do is to let them free to spend their last days with their families if that's what they want to do. Should that not happen as a matter of course? I can't imagine that anyone in the final stages of a terminal illness is going to pose much of a danger to the public.

I know it's a controversial thing to suggest, and that many victims of crime, especially those who have lost a family member to murder would find it hard to see someone being given in death something they denied to others. I sympathise, of course, and if I were in their position I may feel the same way.

I can't believe that Jack Straw didn't release Biggs two months ago when he was first asked to. There was never any public danger from him and I feel he should have been more compassionate then.

Robert Brown had a point when he accused Kenny MacAskill of grandstanding over his visit to Al-Megrahi. There was no need for him to go, but nor do I feel there is a need for a politician to have the final say over whether someone should be released. They are not going to be making their decision in a vacuum - they are bound to have half a mind to the political consequences of whatever they do.

Shouldn't these decisions be made by an independent body and there be a presumption in favour of release in the final stages of any terminal illness? To me it's what a civilised, compassionate society would do. What do you think?

Nice work, if you can get it, Peter and Alex

I've been amused by Peter Mandelson's ostentatious portrayal of how he manages his work life balance over this weekend. The papers are, of course, whipped up in a frenzy about the fact that mobile reception at the villa of Nat Goldsmith can be a bit dodgy, and, horror of horrors, Mandelson might end up practicing his dark arts via an Albanian mobile phone network.

I want to be reassured that no extra public money is being spent so that Mandelson can have an extra few days in the sun, but otherwise I doubt we're in any great danger. And anyway, if there were a real crisis, I bet you anything that the Great Clunking Fist would be back in Downing Street. He's way too much of a control freak to stay away.

It amuses me that 3 people, Harman, Mandelson and Brown, can't manage to work out a timetable where their holidays don't overlap over almost 2 months between Parliament rising and the Party Conference season starting.

If a senior civil servant in any Government Department had asked to carry out their supervisory role from some luxury holiday destination, I expect they would have been laughed out of the room. One rule for one lot, another if you're Peter Mandelson, it seems.

At least,the Dark Lord flew by Easyjet - although, of course, he would have been paying for that himself. The Sunday Times also includes an article telling us that the Ego of Bute House charged us more than five grand for a first class flight to Washington DC. Jeesh! Under figures obtained by Freedom of Information, it transpires that when our SNP ministers travel, they do so in style. Out of £57,410 spent on travel, business and first class flights totalled £48,365 while only £9,045 was spent on economy flights.

I don't see why on earth we should be having to shell out for all this luxury travel. If Ross Brawn and all his Formula One race team can fly out to a race destination by Easyjet on a Wednesday or Thursday and then spend all weekend working atrocious hours getting their cars sorted for the race on Sunday, and do this pretty much every second week for seven months of the year, then the same method is good enough for our Ministers when all they have to do is go to a few meetings, or even a trip to the theatre. If it's really long haul, I could just about put up with the odd business class flight if there's a really good reason for it, but otherwise, make them fly economy.

The typical response of the SNP was to look back to the previous administration and point out that they cost us more. We're in different times now - everyone is strapped for cash and the Scottish Government should cut their cloth accordingly. If I were a Minister, I would not permit anything other than economy travel to be booked for me and I'd only take trips that were absolutely necessary to promote Scotland's cause. I'm not entirely convinced it was necessary to spend almost another five grand to send Jim Mather to Kentucky for the Ryder Cup, for example.

It's time the SNP showed some restraint, particularly while financial black holes are appearing in the country's finances, most notably, as Andrew pointed out this week, for Strathclyde Police. My Granny always used to say that if you looked after the pennies, the pounds looked after themselves. She was a lot cleverer than Scottish Ministers, it seems.

Eileen Baxendale to fight Glasgow North East By-Election for the Lib Dems

Glasgow North East Liberal Democrats have chosen retired Social Worker Eileen Baxendale as their candidate in the forthcoming Glasgow North East by-election.

Eileen has also served the community as a Director of the Ethnic Minorities Law Centre and the Fair Shares Trust.

Speaking after her selection, Eileen said:

“I’m delighted to be chosen as the Liberal Democrat candidate in this election. If elected I will be a strong voice for the people of Glasgow North East in Westminster.

“At a time when faith in MPs is at an all time low, it’s time for a fresh start in Springburn.

“Gordon Brown’s Labour Government is gasping its last breath. Labour are out of touch and letting local people down. The SNP is no alternative. They will be full of empty promises - their track record at Holyrood speaks volumes.

“If people in Glasgow North East want a committed voice to stand up for them in Westminster, they should vote Liberal Democrat. I will be a strong champion for the people of Glasgow North East.”

Scottish Liberal Democrat Glasgow MSP Robert Brown added:

“Local people deserve a hardworking MP who will speak out on issues that matter to them, like unemployment and crime. Eileen will make a great MP for Glasgow North East.”

With her background, Eileen Baxendale is extremely well placed to fight for Glasgow North East. She understands the problems people are facing, she has experience of empowering people to regenerate their communities and has a long record of public service.

I'm sure she'll inject some light into what has so far been an aggressive, heated war of words between the Labour and SNP candidates.

Scottish Liberal Democrats highlight botched operations

Ok, if you're about to have an operation in a Scottish hospital, please don't panic. The chances are that the medical team operating on you are going to do their jobs with excellent professionalism and skill.

However, the Scottish Liberal Democrat Health Spokesman Ross Finnie has obtained figures that give cause for some concern. He is worried that patient safety is being compromised in some cases as Health Boards are pressured to meet targets on things like waiting times.

The figures released in a Parliamentary answer show that in the last 5 years, 3106 people have suffered some sort of organ damage through cuts being made in the wrong place, for example, out of a total of 5514 surgical errors such as leaving swabs inside a wound.

The first thing I asked myself when I saw this was "how many operations took place in Scotland during this period." Fortunately I didn't have to look very far, because the Scotsman had done it for me - 1.2 million operations took place during 2008. If you multiply that by five, that gives 6 million. On these figures, the risk of surgical error is tiny - 0.0919% of an error happening, 0.05% chance of organ damage.

So, while there's no reason for panic, the fact that over 5000 operations have resulted in some kind of error is a cause for concern. It's important that every instance is properly investigated and action taken to prevent these mistakes happening in the future. It's also important to work out whether these errors are being caused by too much pressure being put on staff and if so, then, I'm sorry, but patient safety has to come first.

It does seem to be that the chance of error is highest in the busiest places - Edinburgh, Glasgow and Fife being the top three. I wonder if there's some relevance in that the first two especially carry out some of the most demanding, specialist procedures which are riskier anyway. I'd like to see some more detailed figures, broken down further to see whether it's the routine operations for conditions where there are long waiting lists, or the specialist surgery that have the most chance of ending in an error. There's no excuse either way, but knowing that will help find a solution.

Our NHS is excellent and deserves its good reputation, but we can't let things like this pass without taking action.

All credit to Ross Finnie and his team for their work on this. Let's hope that the SNP Government takes notice.

Lock up your sons, the Feminists are coming, cries Daily Mail

The Daily Mail is excelling itself this Silly Season. First of all it publishes an article advocating eugenics and now it sees plans to teach children that domestic violence is wrong as some sort of scary sign that civilisation is about to end and these nasty feminists are going to take over the world.

This short article from the Economic and Social Research Council states that, depending on how you measure it, there are between 240,000 and almost a million children in the UK affected by domestic violence. They reckon that these figures are a gross understimation of the real problem. So, actually, that's a fair few children coming to school with an all too good idea of what domestic violence is all about because they see it on a regular basis.

The Fail squeals with horror that hard pressed teachers are forced to put time for this in an already packed curriculum while parents complain that they don't want their children indoctrinated. If they were being told that they'd all go to hell if they didn't say their prayers, I'd agree, but surely it's a good thing if they're having some guidance early on in what constitutes a healthy relationship.

I can't believe the paper is failing to see the problems domestic violence causes yet it goes all hysterical about Swine Flu, which for the overwhelming majority of its sufferers will turn out to be a mild infection, necessitating lying on the sofa watching trashy tv for a few days.

It's not the school lessons that are sinister, it's the Mail's attempts to paint everybody who pursues equality as some sort of harbinger of hell. I don't expect to see them printing any time soon this piece of research which shows that feminists tend to have healthier relationships and that men in a relationship with a feminist partner report greater relationship stability and sexual satisfaction.

Top Scottish Blogs on Wikio - August 2009

The Wikio rankings for August are out and, apart from Stephen leapfrogging Jeff, are pretty similar to last month's.

1.(1) Tom Harris (10)

2.(2) Cute Greek Baby (18)

3.(3) Subrosa (64)

4.(5) Stephen's Linlithgow Journal (68)

5. (4) SNP Tactical Voting (69)

6. Caron's Musings (76)

7. Amused Cynicism (85)

Let's hope we get some more of us in the top hundred next month.

Marathon Man Malc and Awesome Audrey - Training Update

As some of you may know, Malc and his friend Audrey are running the Loch Ness Marathon in just 61 days' time to raise money for the Multiple Sclerosis Society Scotland. I am supposed to be Chief Spin Doctor, er, I mean Publicist for this effort and was conscious that while they have been training hard, I've not done a huge amount for them. They did get some press coverage in Malc's home local paper, the Banffshire Herald which you can see on their Facebook Group.

Since they decided they were going to do this around a month ago, they have run well over 200 miles between them and their Twitter Feeds. The commitment it takes to do that, at least 5 days a week, is quite phenomenal. Between them over the last month, their total mileage would take them from Edinburgh, round Loch Ness and back down to about Kingussie. If they go on at this rate, they'll do the equivalent of back to Edinburgh, up the A9 all the way to John O'Groats and back again at least.

I don't know what their exact training schedule is, but I do know that they've been running at least 6 miles most days during the week with a longer run at the weekend. This Saturday they did 12 miles. Last night they had a bit of a treat and got to do something brutal called interval training which involved, basically, sprinting 800 metres 3 times with a 1 minute rest in between.

I thought I'd do a bit of research into how you would prepare for a marathon and came across this website which gives a basic 16 week training schedule. It just shows what investment of time, energy and diet it takes to prepare physically and mentally for the big day.

They're more than a third through their preparation and are still going strong. Now you can see how hard they're working, why not sponsor them to spur them on. I know how much it spurs them on as they see the donations mount up. In fact, they smashed through their first target in around a week so they've doubled it and are on course to meet their second one very soon.

So, I'm hoping that having read what they are doing, you'll be suitably inspired to encourage them by following them on Twitter, joining the Facebook Group and giving as much as you can to their cause.

Strictly Sexism Part 2

My second rant of the day is about the departure from competition of Strictly Come Dancing professional Karen Hardy. I first found out yesterday, via Sara. Honestly, I went out for the first time in weeks for a couple of hours and in that time the stories came out about both Karen and Nelson Piquet Jr.

I've already had a complete hissy fit about the sacking, sorry, putting out to grass, of Arlene Phillips.

Karen is 39, and is being replaced by a 25 year old despite her obvious talent for clever choreography. She joined the show in 2005, quickly building a partnership which has become legendary in Strictly Canon, with BBC Breakfast presenter Bill Turnbull.

She went on to win the show in 2006 with cricketer Mark Ramprakash with audacious and sensual routines, particularly for the Argentine Tango and the Salsa.

She's one of the best pro dancers on the show and it's a scandal that she's being got rid of, or at least, sidelined.

As well as being a former world Latin champion, she's also an experienced Latin judge. If they were going to make any changes to the judging panel, then she would have been the first choice for a position there, not Alesha Dixon, who would have made a much better presenter.

Why is it that if you are a man on Strictly, your job is safe, but women's positions seem to be much more vulnerable as they get older? Fellow pro dancer Anton Du Beke (and I love him, too so I'm not calling for his head on a plate) has been 42 according to the Daily Mail for the last 4 years, yet he's still got a job. He should have, because he's hilarious and the show wouldn't be the same without him - but then so is Karen.

I don't want her to be sidelined to It Takes Two - that's Claudia's show - or to some small part in the main show. I want to see her build a partnership and compete in her inimitable style.

The BBC is publicly funded and should therefore not be allowed to act in such a blatantly sexist manner. It's bad enough when such attitudes come from a commercial broadcaster, but if it's my money that's paying for it, I want to see more regard for equality and less ageism for women on the BBC.

Anyway, as a treat for Karen fans everywhere, here are a couple of her highlights:

The Salsa with Mark from the 2006 final:



Her Viennese Waltz with Bill, the week he had a horrid ankle injury:

Flavio Briatore gets a long overdue fit of Piquet

Nobody who follows Formula One can be particularly surprised that poor Nelson Piquet Jr has been fired by Renault. Speculation about his future at Renault has dogged him almost since he started racing for the team in 2008.

The manner of the announcement is, however, surprising. Rather than a terse statement from Renault saying that Nelson is leaving but look at their nice shiny new driver, the news has been made public by a very well crafted tirade at his former boss from Nelson himself.

If half of what he says is true, and I believe it's more than that, then it's hardly surprising that Piquet did not flourish at Renault. He describes Briatore as his executioner. It sounds like the environment was thoroughly poisonous, with him being threatened with sacking 15 minutes before races or qualifying sessions. I remember as a child I was always falling over and scraping my knees. In an attempt to make me a bit less clumsy, I was told that if I came home with another plaster on my knee, I'd get spanked. That made me so nervous that going home with the plaster was almost inevitable.

Piquet is not the first number two driver to have suffered from Flavio's aggressive management style: to name but a few, Heikki Kovaleinen, said by Ron Dennis to have been systematically taken apart by Flavio Briatore's management, Jos Verstappen and Johnny Herbert. Flavio was quoted as saying after Heikki's debut race that he hoped the real Heikki would turn up next time. Hardly the way to build confidence.

Michael Schumacher no doubt got better treatment when he joined Benetton in 1991because, firstly, he was the number one driver and, secondly, he had a separate manager, Willi Weber, who would have agressively advocated for him if there had been any funny business from Briatore. For both Kovaleinen and Piquet, Briatore was both their manager and their team owner, a clear conflict of interest which left them vulnerable. Perhaps this is a warning to up and coming drivers to make sure that they have a separate manager to protect their interests.

If you look at Piquet's results in his career, last year in the races he finished, he was in the points more than half the time. I'll grant that his one podium was more down to good luck than anything else, but he had an uncompetitive car. He hasn't shone this year, but he says this is because he has not had the upgrades to the car that Alonso has had. It's plausible given that the difference between the cars at the front and back of the grid has become much smaller. It's now only a second or a second and a half where it used to be 10 or 20 times that.

For this year he says that he was allowed to do much less testing and in less favourable conditions than Alonso. You could argue that this was because they got better feedback from Alonso, but if you're being bullied, are you really going to be able to turn round and tell your bully that the car that his team has designed is not very good?

Piquet had a solid history in the feeder formulae, as he says, and in a more nurturing environment, he may have flourished. I'd love to have seen what Ross Brawn might have done with him, for example, or Stefano Domenicali.

Commentators such as James Allen think that unless his father buys either the Sauber team as is rumoured, or one of the new entrants, that Piquet's F1 career is over. That would be a great shame. He's an obviously talented, very personable guy and I hope to see him back in the Paddock soon.

It may not be the done thing to speak out about bullies in the macho environment of F1, but I'm glad he did, because it needs saying.

I did have a cheeky thought, though - clearly F1's problems are down to the fact that it's run by men. Maybe we should kill two birds with one stone by sending Harriet Harman to sort it out....

Jo Swinson gets credit for use of Facebook and Twitter

I'm glad to see that Jo Swinson has been praised for the way she uses Facebook and Twitter to keep in touch with her constituents.

I enjoy seeing her tweets coming in from Prime Minister's Questions, giving her perspective on what's going on, recounting something that we tv viewers wouldn't see. I like the way she asks for opinions on various issues via Facebook and Twitter. Both she and Sandra Gidley have recently asked for suggestions for Parliamentary questions, too. Jo has also been part of the Speakers' conference on diversity, aka how do we get the House of Commons looking less white, male and middle aged and she's tweeted from their meetings.

Her use of social networking gives an as it happens view of the life of an MP - whether she's speaking in Parliament or visiting a business in her constituency. She also shares some of her private life with us - I know, for example, that she went to see the new Harry Potter last night and was even happier to do so knowing that Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Harry, has said he supports the Lib Dems.

Don't for a minute, though, think that Jo is so welded to her keyboard that she's given up on the face to face stuff. She is one of the hardest working, dedicated people I've ever met and she spends pretty much every spare moment knocking on doors in East Dunbartonshire. I know people who moved there just over two weeks ago and already they've had a visit from one of the Swinson Team.

All credit to Jo for using technology to make herself more accessible. Jo's informality and approachability both in person and online is very genuine. I think part of the success of the way she uses these things is that you get the real Jo, however you talk to her.

Swinson calls for tighter rules on airbrushing to protect teenagers

One of the huge worries I have as mother of a soon-to-be-teenage daughter is that she will feel pressure to conform to the increasingly unrealistic and actually unattainable expectations about appearance set by advertisers and magazines aimed at young people.

Women are expected to have enormous breasts, disproportionately tiny waists, perfect skin, hair and teeth and they become objects of ridicule if they go out without make up. And if they don't have those things, there's a huge pressure on them to go out and buy themselves new teeth, bigger boobs, liposuction, a straighter nose and so on.

I've seen these magazines poke fun at people for being size 12-14 which for most people is a healthy size with a healthy body mass index. Back in the day, size 12 was a thin size, but now it's portrayed as bordering on the obese. These publications are encouraging girls to go on potentially harmful starvation diets in order to look like the celebs and models in the magazines. Similarly, these images are giving young men completely unrealistic expectations of what women should look like and they will often put pressure on their girlfriends to lose weight when they are perfectly healthy as they are.

I've seen young girls get really anxious about being too fat or not the right shape or their skin and they take some convincing that the models in the ads have had any so called "flaws" digitally removed. Appearance angst is nothing new, but it somehow has become more intense and there's a cruelty about peer group pressure that wasn't there when I was growing up.

I'm pleased to see that the Liberal Democrats in the form of Jo Swinson MP are calling for something to be done about this. Jo wants airbrushing to be banned on ads aimed at teenagers and for school pupils to be given lessons in body image, health and wellbeing.

As a keen runner herself, I'm sure she feels the benefits of healthy exercise in her own life and she wants schools to encourage exercise classes for girls.

I think that these are all very sensible suggestions, but I wonder if they go far enough. Kids read the likes of Heat and Closer which are aimed at adults, so why stop just at adverts aimed at the under 16s, or at least make the requirements to say whether an image has been airbrushed bigger than the imprints that you normally find on election leaflets.

This has to be a better option than seeing a generation of young girls being pressured to try to reach a weight or look that is simply unattainable for them.

UPDATE: There's a lively debate burbling on over at Paul's. He's taking the opposite view to me, but his article and the comments that follow are worth reading.

Salmond threatens Court action if he's not invited to leaders' debate

Is there no limit to Alex Salmond's ego? It appears he thinks he should be included in a UK wide debate between the Party leaders if one is arranged during the next election campaign and if the big boys won't let him play, he's going to take them to court.

What a ridiculous notion, for a party which is fielding candidates in less than a tenth of the seats across the UK? If you allow the SNP in, then you probably also have to include the Greens, UKIP, the Welsh and Cornish nationalists as well and potentially even the BNP. It's going to be a crowded stage and not conducive to deep and meaningful debate.

The only people who should really be in that debate are the three main UK Westminster Party leaders.

I don't get why he should want to be on the UK stage as he spends his time telling anyone who'll listen that he wants Scotland to be independent. It doesn't make sense that he should want to hang onto the coat tails of Clegg, Cameron and Brown.

The SNP view is only relevant in Scotland and there will be, as at every other election, the chance for senior Scottish figures from each party to put their case. There usually is at least one debate of some sort and that's the place for the SNP. Why on earth would people in Derbyshire or Hampshire want to hear Alex Salmond going on about Scottish independence? In a US election context, it would be like including Schwarzenegger, the Governor of California, in a presidential debate - nonsensical.

If Alex Salmond wants to blow the SNP's election budget on a court case he's bound to lose, then that's up to him, but he will just make himself look stupid in the process.

Facebook, Bullying and an out of touch Archbishop

I think that the comments made by new Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols linking social networking sites and teenage suicides are completely wrong. Costigan has already said why, but there are a few things I'd like to add.

Firstly, it's not as though Facebook invented bullying. As I well know, it was alive and kicking, and I mean kicking literally, in the 1980s for me. I will never, ever, forget the feeling of isolation and ostracisation I felt and I would never want anyone else to go through it. From the daubing of ink on my coat, to making certain animal noises whenever I approached, to calling names which really, really hurt, my first three years of high school were an absolute nightmare. I felt the effects on my confidence for a long time. I honestly did at times want to throw myself off a cliff.

I think we've all seen arguments blow up online which get all out of perspective, but in terms of social networking sites being used as instruments of bullying, then it's likely that the people who are using them are bullying their victims in real life as well. We've seen it with other forms of technology. Way back nine years ago when I was first involved in helping Cllr Marilyne McLaren stand for the Lib Dems in Edinburgh South, she was working on ways to combat text message bullying and now in her role as Convener of Education, Children and Families in Edinburgh, she has ensured that guidance on the use of mobile phones has been brought in.

I think one good thing about kids having fairly unfettered access to the internet is that it's also a whole load easier for them to get hold of help from organisations such as BullyingUK. They reckon they support half a million people a year on a budget of just £50,000. There was nothing like that back when I needed it almost 30 years ago and it's a vital resource for kids when their school or their parents either can't or won't do anything to help them and for those parents who do want to support their child.

Eric Joyce speaks out on MOD compensation

It's not like me to be nice about Labour MPs, but credit where it's due, Eric Joyce deserves it today for speaking out in a Scotland on Sunday article against the MOD's action to limit compensation settlements to injured soldiers which I wrote about earlier this week.

I think he deserves our respect for standing up for his beliefs on this and for someone who has never, ever (despite what his They Work for You record might say), in 8 years, voted against the Government, this is a major step for him to take.

In his article, Joyce argues that the MOD might well be technically right, but it's morally wrong. He said:

"In this compensation case, a victory for the MoD in October at the Court of Appeal would come against the backdrop of a giant neon sign saying spelling out the word 'Pyrrhic'. It would represent a victory for bureaucracy over bravery. The appeal should be dropped."

On this issue, I think he's got it right, and I hope his boss, Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth, listens to him.

The horror of homophobia

I've been shaken today by this Sunday Herald report which tells of the rise in incidents of so called "corrective" rape and often murder of lesbians in South Africa.

Coming on top of the reports of the hate filled murder at a lesbian and gay advice centre in Tel Aviv, it's a sign of the dangers of inaction on homophobia.

Andrew has written powerfully of his reaction to the Tel Aviv murders. He mentions that he has also been attacked simply for being gay. It makes me so angry that anyone would cause harm to one of the nicest people I know just for being who he is.

These horrible hate filled incidents grab the headlines, but every single day, across the world, gay people have to hide who they are for fear of persecution by their Governments or ostracisation from their families, teenagers trying to come to terms with their sexuality hear homophobic language being used as a matter of course and out gay young people can be bullied by their peers. Every day, adults are bullied at work, or passed over for promotion for being "too obvious" about their sexuality. Being "too obvious", by the way, can be living with their partner. I'm appalled that people are expected to deny themselves a basic human right in order to fit into society.

What we really need in this world is a strong injection of live and let live. That's the essence of liberalism, allowing people to be who they are and to make their own choices. It's wrong to repress what we don't like unless it actively causes harm. Nobody has the right to force their views or way of life on others.

I'm thinking of the families of those who have been murdered in Tel Aviv and of those who have been so brutally raped and murdered in South Africa. There's so much more work needed across the world to wipe out this hate filled violence.

F1 Drivers' Messages to Massa

In the wake of Ferrari's Felipe Massa's horrid accident last weekend, Sky Sports rounded up his 19 fellow drivers and asked them to record a short message of support for him. It's now up on You Tube, so I thought I'd post it here in case you hadn't seen it.



All of the drivers are clearly concerned for Felipe, although Kimi in typical fashion gets his message into as few words as possible. Some of the drivers are clearly uncomfortable in front of the camera and having to think up a message, often not in their first language on the spot.

The affection that Rubens and Nelson have for him is obvious and their words, even though they're in Portuguese, are obviously very warm.

What struck me, though, was Jenson Button. He was the only one to say his name, which I thought was interesting as at that point Felipe was still unconscious. I thought that was quite a thoughtful thing to do because he may have thought they would play it to him while he was still unconscious. He was also very much a natural, walking along, talking to the camera and smiling. Betcha we see him in tv presenting at some point because that's quite a thing to pull off.

Hat tip to James Allen.

Lib Dem Member? Have your say on Trident

My attention was drawn to an advert in Lib Dem News which I want to publicise in the blogosphere.

Former leader Ming Campbell has been asked by Nick Clegg to review alternatives to the Government's plans to replace Trident.

As the ad says:

"The review will consider Britain's options for its nuclear posture beyond Trident and seek to balance national security needs with the part's long-standing commitment toa world free of nuclear weapons.

Together with Liberal Democrat shadow Defence Secretary Nick Harvey, MP, Menzies Campbell will consider evidence and input from specialists, academics and party members.

Please send any written submissions by September 30th 2009 to Menzies Campbell MP c/0Emma Collinson, Room 301, Portcullis House, Bridge Street, London, SW1A 2LW or by e-mail collinsone@parliament.uk.

If you have strong views on this, don't miss the chance to have your say.

Gary McKinnon: Cruel and Unusual Punishment for British Man

I'm as appalled as everyone else by the failure of our Government to protect Gary McKinnon from extradition to the US to face charges for hacking into Pentagon and NASA computers in search of information on UFOs. Of course, it's highly embarrassing to the US Government that A N Hacker could manage to access such supposedly confidential information so they want to throw the book at him and make an example of him in the US, where he could face penalties which mean he'd spend the rest of his life in prison.

There are very clear compassionate grounds for Gary to be tried in this country, not least that he has Asperger's Syndrome and being taken thousands of miles away from his family and support network would be a punishment in itself which could have severe consequences for his health and wellbeing. To face trial in an unfamiliar judicial system and potentially spend the rest of his life in prison would surely meet the US constitutional definition of "cruel and unusual punishment". For a start, I have no problem with the idea that McKinnon's extradition would be an example of

"any fine, penalty, confinement, or treatment that is so disproportionate to the offense as to shock the moral sense of the community"

I wonder to what extent this angle has been looked into. I know the US Constitution is there to protect US citizens, but anyone going through its judicial system should have the same treatment. He's already been through the best part of a decade of hell - doesn't that count?

It looks to me that Gary in many ways did the Pentagon a favour. It's not like he tried to cover up what he did, as this report from CNN shows he even left messages to say that it was ridiculous he could get into their systems to draw their attention to the fact that they weren't as secure as their administrators thought.

I can't add much to what Jeff, Andrew, Jonathan, Subrosa and Mark have already said. They have ably highlighted the failure of the Labour Government to stand up to the US authorities. If they had shown some backbone sooner, this 7 year nightmare for Gary and his family might have been put to bed years ago.

And don't think David Cameron's going to help either. He may have offered fluffy words of support but hasn't said that his Home Secretary would pursue this more vigorously with the Americans.

The biggest lesson we can learn from this is how stupid it is to negotiate international treaties in haste on a knee jerk reaction. Drawn up in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the extradition treaty gives a disproportionate power to the US. It's an irresponsible selling of the rights of UK citizens down the river and probably deserves an enquiry into Government incompetence in its own right. It just goes to show that agreements made in haste with your friends can fall apart and leave you vulnerable. Gary McKinnon is paying the price for the Government's haste and lack of foresight and unless there is a wholesale renegotiation of this treaty, more vulnerable people could suffer.

There is a Free Gary campaign which tells you all the ways in which you can make your voice heard to support him if you agree that he is suffering an intolerable injustice