Bishop Gene Robinson to visit Glasgow

I was absolutely delighted to see that Bishop Gene Robinson, the Bishop of New Hampshire, is going to be visiting Scotland in August to preach at St Mary's Cathedral in Glasgow. Bishop Robinson is the only Bishop not to have been invited to the forthcoming Lambeth Conference with the Archbishop of Canterbury. He is the only Bishop to acknowledge that he is living in a gay relationship.

I am glad that he is going to receive a warm welcome here in Scotland. I know Kelvin Holdsworth, the Provost of St Mary's - he is one of the warmest, most genuine, wisest and most tolerant people I have ever met. It is hardly surprising that the services at St Mary's are so packed that they run out of consecrated communion hosts. Just out of interest, I wonder what happens then.....

David Davis' Empty Gesture

Before we all get swept away on a tide of hysteria about what a saviour of civil liberties David Davis is, we maybe want to take a long, hard look at his record. Here is a man who quite happily voted for 28 days' detention without charge not that long ago - a huge increase from the then 3 day limit. He is pro hanging. He has voted, as well as more recently created, the Tory line on immigration. I suspect that if he is re-elected he will continue to vote the Tory line on pretty much everything.

I wonder if he would have had such an unsurmountable attack of principle if he had represented a Tory/Labour marginal, where just a few votes switching could send him down to the Job Centre. Now that the Liberal Democrats have given him a free run at his own seat, he only really has to defeat a fairly negligible Labour vote.

I don't believe that this is some sort of heroic plan, hatched last night, to stand up for our rights as citizens. Election campaigns take time to plan, even with the modern by election sprint campaigns we have been used to. This is just another Tory opportunistic stunt.

Remember the Tories are the people who banned unions at GCHQ, introduced Section 28, failed to take effective action against South Africa during apartheid, failed to support devolution, fair votes, and equalities laws. They supported the Iraq war while the Liberal Democrats have consistently stood up for human rights and civil liberties as part of our core philosophy for a very long time.

Part of me wants us to take Davis on and beat him. If there is any sign of any Conservative management of his campaign, then I think we could honoourably change our minds and enter the contest. We are in a reasonable second place and could do it. Why let him fight a by-election on an issue of his choosing? If he wants to face the people, he should do so on his whole record, and that of the party he is still a part of.

The result of this unnecessary by election will be completely meaningless - Labour couldn't win if they tried there. Maybe we are right to refuse to dignify this opportunistic charade, but I can't help feeling it's an opportunity lost.

A humiliating victory

Tonight's vote, won by the Government on the back of the support of Anne Widdicombe and the DUP, is another much more important travesty.

It was rightly described by SDLP MP Mark Burdan as a humiliating victory.

I have to say, though, that Nick Clegg's overtures to the DUP, on the grounds of their supposed commitment to civil liberties, stuck in my throat just a wee bit - has he met Iris Robinson, DUP MP, who, last week, while being questioned about a homophobic attack in Northern Ireland, suggested that homosexuals could be turned around with psychotherapy?

Shame on you, Sir Alan

To choose a mediocre man over a brilliant woman once was bad enough, as Simon Ambrose won over Kristina Grimes last year, but two years in a row smacks of vile misogyny. Claire Young seems to have missed out tonight simply because she speaks her mind. She was by far the best candidate - she has listened, taken and acted upon difficult feedback throughout the 12 weeks and carried Lee through the last task.

It was a travesty of justice that she did not win tonight.

The Evening Boris gloats..........

I have it on good authority that depressed Labour Party staff got into work on Saturday to find a huge pile of copies of the Evening Standard - the one proclaiming "Boris is the Mayor" along with a compliments slip from the publisher.

Let's see if they're as happy to be associated with him in a couple of years.....

10p Tax Misery

It was with some trepidation that I opened my payslip this week, falling as I do into the group of people affected by Gordon Brown's catastrophic abolition of the lowest tax rate, which he himself brought in to almost universal approval in 1999.

It's not like they weren't warned. Ming Campbell told them what a stupid idea it was in his response to the Budget last year. The Tories are now hanging on our coat tails on this one. Surely nobody really believes that Conservatives are actually going to stand up for the lower paid against the rich unless it was for purely opportunistic purposes.

Anyway, at a time when food and fuel bills are soaring, losing money is a complete nightmare for people. At least here in Scotland, we have a Council Tax freeze, but that's not the case south of the border.

This is as ill thought out and perverse a step as the Poll Tax and it should be immediately reversed. Not everyone who has lost out stands to be compensated and those who will won't see any difference until the end of the year. A Liberal Democrat victory in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election might bring some more immediate action from the Government, though..........

Liberal Democrats come second

The Liberal Democrats' leap into second place in the popular vote is mentioned in today's press but such an achievement deserves a bigger spotlight. It's not just a nail in Gordon Brown's coffin - it's spectacular in its own right.

Some of the kinder predictions in the media suggested that we would be doing really well if we lost only 50 seats. Well, we gained 34 nationally and made some amazing gains in Sheffield. Two of my friends were on campaign teams which were responsible for more than a third of our total gains, in Sheffield and South Lakeland. I was very pleased to see Cllr Clive Leal elected in South Lakeland, having done a fair bit of telephone canvassing for him.

The Tories completely failed to live up to their expectations that they would grab back the ground they lost to us in the nineties. They are being feted in the press as victors but we should not forget that behind the smiles and the cuddly green facade, they are still the same pro big business, pro the rich, anti commumity party they were in the days of Thatcher. Interestingly, Nigel Lawson is interviewed in today's Guardian doubting that we need to do anything about climate change.

Labour really do look like a bit of a pathetic rabble. Yvette Cooper was like the proverbial rabbit caught in the headlights on Channel 4 News last night. They're out of ideas, out of touch and seemingly out of energy to do anything about it.

People are still, rightly, dubious about David Cameron and I wouldn't let George Osborne run a bath, let alone the economy. Mind you, I can't really think of any Tory I'd leave in charge of any sort of fiscal policy.

I think the Tories only did so well because they weren't Labour in many places. Where the people were already served well by Liberal Democrat MPs and Councillors, the Tories actually went backwards. Tim Farron, who has a majority of about 250 in Westmorland and Lonsdale, found that Thursday's results showed 21000 Liberal Democrat votes against 13000 Tories. In Chris Huhne's Eastleigh constituency, we even took a seat off the Tories.

I hope that the successes of this week bode well for Elizabeth Shenton in Crewe and Nantwich, which Labour has called with indecent haste, even before the funeral of Gwyneth Dunwoody, one of their best Parliamentarians, for 22 May presumably because they are so scared of being beaten.

If I were a Londoner........

It will come as no surprise to anybody that I would be putting Brian Paddick first if I had a vote in the London mayoral election. It just seems that if you want a competent mayor who makes solving London's problems rather than ridiculous self promotion a priority, then he's your guy. Who could be better placed to make the strategic decisions necessary to tackle crime than someone with so much experience in the field.

But what would I do with my second preference? Would I decide "a plague on both your houses" and leave it blank?

I actually think I'd have to click my heels together 3 times, cross my fingers and hold my nose as I put Ken second. This is only because Boris is just so much of a joke. His record on everything I care about stinks and the thought of him as mayor makes my flesh creep. I reckon Ken is the least worst option if Brian doesn't win.

10p Tax Meltdown

Like many others, I await my pay slip for this month with some trepidation, having heard scary things from friends and family who have already had their's. I come into the bracket who will be worst off as a result of Gordon Brown's abolition of the 10p tax rate.

This is no laughing matter for people who are already struggling with rising food and fuel costs.

It seems incredible that Labour simply have completely underestimated the effect of their actions. Even now they don't seem to have a clue how to handle it. Yvette Cooper's talk of a "process" today will not help those people who are struggling to make ends meet now.

Panic at the Pumps

Well, I've just wasted half an hour of my life buying petrol. It's always a bit of a panicky process for me - I usually wait until I'm running on the whiff of an oily rag before I even think of going to a petrol station and I'm sure I've come close to not making it on occasion.

However, tonight was different. The queue was horrific, people were bad tempered, and to cap it all, our lovely profiteering petrol station had put its prices up.

Minister for Everything John Swinney has helpfully brought in an independent expert to try to avert the strike - although it might have been a bit more helpful if he'd done it a couple of weeks ago.

Ineos, the owners of Grangemouth have done themselves no favours with all their scaremongering about the weeks' long effect of any industrial action - they have just succeeded in creating a self fulfilling prophecy out of the media frenzy. They would have done better to concentrate their efforts on the negotiating table rather than the media war. Mind you, why should they walk away from an excuse to make money.

I'm no great fan of trade unions - yes, in principle, they're great, but I often think that they're macho monoliths who don't really do much for their members. However, the actions of Ineos are making me quite sympathetic towards them.

THAT Clegg interview

You can always rely on Piers Morgan to lower the tone of anything he takes part in, so it's no surprise that he subjected Nick Clegg to what I can imagine was for Nick a quite uncomfortable personal grilling. In an interview for GQ magazine, reported by the BBC, he answered some pretty intimate personal questions in his usual straightforward and honest manner.

I see that I was not alone in wondering if the reports of this interview were not an April fool. Christine suggests that some things are better left unsaid, but I think he did the best he could with such a cheeky line of questioning. He had 2 options - refusing to answer, which would have come across as prudish and po faced or making the best job he could of it. I think that he comes across as a likeable human being and escaped with his dignity intact. He wasn't crude or disrespectful to anyone.

I can't help wondering, though, what would people be saying if a female politican made the same comments. I suspect that the Fleet Street columnists would have a field day, calling her all sorts of names. There's still an expectation, even now, that women should have a relatively small number of sexual partners and should never, ever talk about them.

Hold them to Account

Today seems the launch of holdthemtoaccount a new campaigning site from the Lib Dems to hold those MPs who voted for the Iraq war to account.

This come at the same time as a vote in the Commons on a Conservative motion calling for an inquiry into the war. Hang on, are those the same Tories who trotted meekly into the Aye lobby behind the Government when the Commons were debating going to war?

Everybody knows that the Liberal Democrats have consistently opposed the illegal invasion of Iraq, a war which has cost $6.5 billion and rising, 170 British soldiers' lives and thousands of Iraqi civilians there and as a direct consequence how many more in Afghanistan as a result of our troops being overstretched.

It's not just Labour who need to be held to account on this. This war could not have happened without the complicity of the Tories and the craven support of their front bench. Do visit the website, sign the petition, and if your MP voted for the war, demand they apologise.

There are also useful links to the campaign to give asylum to Iraqi interpreters. The Government seems to think it's ok to use Iraqi citizens and then dump them to be persecuted when we're finished with them. Such an approach is a moral outrage so make sure all your friends know about it and sign the petition.

A Matter of Conscience

The forthcoming vote on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill is generating much more heat than light at the moment. There are some very complex issues up for discussion and at the moment the debate seems to be polarising between the Labour Party and the Catholic Church, with Labour MPs being forced to choose between the two.

Gordon Brown is taking control freakery to a whole new level by not allowing his MPs a free vote on this. Whatever happens now he will be damaged - either by being forced to back down or by losing what is projected to be up to 12 of his ministers.

It's rapidly being characterised as a debate between utilitarian scientists and a luddite religious community which does a huge disservice to the issues.

The debate over human-animal hybrids is a case in point. You would think we were going to be making bizarre pig people when in fact the truth is much less scary. As I understand it, you basically take a cow egg, scoop out everything that was ever cow about it so it becomes a container for a human embryo for the important stem cell research which could lead to cures for diseases which cause major suffering such as Parkinson's and Motor Neurone Disease. It's a lot less Brave New World than you would think.

What we deserve more than anything else is that our politicians vote after considering these complex issues after an informative debate with arguments presented in a rational manner. We need to see them weigh up the consequences of progress and decide for themselves how they are going to vote.

This isn't a straightforward matter of right and wrong and you can't make policy on it because of the conscience issues - no party could or should whip its MPs. Unfortunately, I suspect that all we'll have is scaremongering and talk of yet another blunder by Brown.

David Cameron, Saviour of Children?

So David Cameron has pledged to protect children from "ruthless marketers and shameless retailers."

So is he going to put his money where his mouth is and pledge to enshrine the WHO code on the marketing of breastmilk substitutes in UK law?

I bet not. I won't be holding my breath.

Mehdi - it's not over yet

While it's definitely a good thing that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has agreed to look again at gay Iranian Mehdi Kazemi's asylum application, the battle is not over yet. Now is the time to build support for Mehdi by ensuring that you and everyone you know signs the petition at
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/UKMADHI/

You will be asked to make a donation, but don't worry, you can skip through that part.

Also make sure that you write to Home Secretary Jacqui Smith MP and your local MP to stress your opposition to his deportation.

Quit smoking for a good natured baby

I was intrigued by the article in today's Scotsman about a study which showed that women who gave up smoking during pregnancy were more likely to have good natured babies.

I quit a longstanding and heavy smoking habit the minute I saw a positive pregnancy test and I ended up with the world's easiest baby. I hadn't really considered that the two might be connected. Even now, she is generally sunny rather than stormy and a real pleasure to be around.

Unsurprisingly, the study reveals that babies whose mothers continued smoking were more likely to have babies who cried more and who had an irregular routine. I guess this is just the tip of the iceberg and you're quite lucky to have a baby who cries when you are exposing them to a greater risk of miscarriage, stillbirth, SIDS and respiratory complaints.

Intolerant? Probably, but justifably so. I have very little sympathy for women who continue to smoke when pregnant or any parent who smokes round their children. If I can give up, anyone can. Kerry Katona has gone on about how her health professionals advised her to keep smoking because it would be less stressful than giving up. I am sure that's her hearing what she wants to hear. I'm sorry, but there's no excuse.

David Laws makes me proud - shock

I have never been excited by David Laws before but I am thrilled to bits that he and Annette Brooke have adopted an anti smacking policy, recognising the rights of the child.

I have always felt very uncomfortable with our previous position that we were happy with "reasonable chastisement". I got this the other day......

"The Liberal Democrats want to see that children have the same rights as adults against any physical assault. We do not believe that physical violence is acceptable against children, and it can often send out the wrong messages. We want to introduce policies to encourage more 'positive parenting' and more support services available to families. We believe that these policies will help to reduce harm and violence against children, as has been the case in other European countries, and in the longer term will lead to a culture in Britain where children's rights and protection are given the priority they deserve.

Annette Brooke MP, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson on Children, Schools and Families, supported calls by the UK's four children's commissioners for a ban on the smacking of children in January 2006. She said:

"This is a welcome call by the four commissioners. Smacking a child is not an effective way of changing behaviour and can make matters worse over the long-term.”

The Liberal Democrats were disappointed by the Government’s decision not to bring in a total ban in October 2007 after a review of the law. England’s Children’s commissioner called this decision a ‘betrayal’ saying that by not changing the law “we continue to send out confusing messages to parents about the acceptable use of violence across society.” There needs to be a clear signal that physical punishment is counter-productive and damaging. Children that are hit are more likely to hit others and are more likely to be bullies. If it is wrong to hit an adult, it is wrong to hit a child - children deserve equal protection. "

Now we just have to persuade the Scottish Parliamentary Party to take the same view. I get very cross with the idea that you can't discipline a child unless you hit him or her. My daughter, who has never, ever been smacked, was praised by her teacher for just about everything at her parents' evening the other night.

Shame on the Home Office - Again

You would think by now that I'd have become accustomed to the harsh and brutal decisions made by the Home Office regarding asylum seekers and people seeking to settle in this country. In two years I've seen breastfeeding babies separated from their mothers (which is against Home Office policy), several people deported to almost certain persecution and even when our Embassies make a clear error, it's still the person who wants to live here who suffers.

I'm still shocked and horrified every time I see a new injustice. Now Mehdi Kazemi, a young gay Iranian student has been refused asylum in Britain because, according to the Home Office, he'd be fine going back there as long as he was discreet. Fearing deportation, he fled to the Netherlands, a much more enlightened country where they understand the realities of the situation facing him. Unfortunately, because of some obscure treaty, the Dutch are not allowed to accept him as he is only allowed to apply to one EU country.

At best the Home Office's attitude is discriminatory. At worst, if they deport him, they are as guilty as the Iranian authorities of whatever fate befalls him. We believe in a free and liberal society. Labour, to their credit, have passed some good laws enshrining the rights of gay people. Why, then, on their watch, do they send people back to pretty much certain death? Mehdi doesn't have discretion as an option. His boyfriend gave the authorities his name under torture before his execution.

If you want the Home Office to grant him asylum, or to allow the Dutch to do so, please make your voice heard by writing to the Home Secretary. Simon Hughes is his MP and has written very eloquently in today's Independent about his plight. I agree with Simon that no lesbian or gay man should ever be sent back to Iran.

A storm in a cafetiere?

I think we do best as a Party when we decide what we believe and stick to it.

I agree entirely with Nick Clegg's analysis of the Lisbon Treaty - it's not the same as the EU constitution, it's less radical than Maastricht and we don't need a referendum. I would have felt a lot more comfortable had we either allowed a free vote, as we did on Maastrict, or gone with our professed policy, against the referendum. We would still have lost three good people from our front bench, but it would have all looked more coherent and consistent.

Way back in '93, we had the chance to bring down the Major Government over Maastricht. We didn't, because we believed that the right thing to do was to back that treaty. We took some flack for it at the time, but it was the right thing to do.

Tonight was not our finest hour. Every party has moments they would like people to forget about and this rare tactical error is put into shade by Labour's relentless attacks on civil liberties, personal data losses and illegal wars. The opposition will remind people of tonight at every oppportunity, but we must move on with a radical and positive agenda.

How YOU can help miscarriage of justice victims

I have just come back from the Liberal Democrats' Scottish conference in Aviemore. A good time seemed to be had by all. I had thought that, not being an office bearer any more, I would be able to wander round doing pretty much as I pleased. No such luck - I spent less than an hour listening to debates all weekend as I kept being dragged off to various meetings. I managed to miss both Nick Clegg's and Nicol Stephen's speeches, much to my annoyance.

One meeting I was determined not to miss was the one organised by Willie Rennie MP to highlight the plight of victims of miscarriages of justice. Basically, if you have had your life ruined by being wrongly imprisoned, sometimes for decades, you are worse off once this injustice is recognised than you would be if you had been guilty.

The meeting was addressed by Paddy Hill, one of the freed Birmingham Six, and John McManus who works for the Miscarriages of Justice Organisation. Paddy powerfully told of his experiences and how the system had continued to let him down after the initial euphoria of his release after 17 years in prison.

If you have been in prison for a long time and you are guilty, a lot of effort goes into preparing you for release into the outside world. You get short visits home, or even outside. You are brought up to date with new technology. You are gradually prepared for life beyond the institution which you have known exclusively for many years. This is very sensible. Prisons can be hostile and unpredictable -Paddy Hill told how you could say Good Morning to a fellow inmate one day and be beaten up for daring to speak to him; if you said nothing the next morning, you could take a drubbing for blanking him. The rules of engagement in a prison environment don't transfer to the outside world, and if they are all you have known for years. If you were locked up in the mid 80s, you would be amazed by things we consider basic, satellite tv, laptops, mobile phones. It would be like being released to a totally different planet.

For those wrongly imprisoned, life is very different. You are basically thrown out of the Appeal Court and left to fend for yourself. You can't claim much on benefits cos you haven't paid NI contributions - cos you've been in prison. You aren't given advice on health care and finding employment. Paddy Hill described it as like a diver having the Bends from being taken to the surface too quickly.

It takes ages to sort your compensation out, too. Too add insult to injury, and you really won't believe this, the Government effectively charges you for the time you've spent inside - your compensation is reduced by a malevolent item called "saved living expenses." So, no mattr that your house might have been repossessed and your family might have suffered terribly, financially, physically and emotionally as a result of your wrongful imprisonment, but the Government thinks it's fine to charge you for your bed and board.

If you are outraged by this, please do the following 3 things:

Have a look here and see what the Miscarriages of Justice Organisation wants to achieve and to read some of the dreadful case histories of people. I am very familiar with some of those involved and have been horrified at their treatment by the state. They have been completely failed by local, Scottish and UK Government.

Tell all your friends about what you see and get them involved.

Write to the Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill (scottish.ministers@scotland.gsi.gov.uk or kenny.macaskill.msp@scottish.parliament.uk), who, so far, incredibly, has refused point blank to even meet with MOJO, and ask him to do something to help. For all I have said about the Labour Government in the past, and will do in the future, at least Home Office Minister Maria Eagle did so and actually listened to what they had to say. It's going to take action at all levels of Government to get something done, and why Mr MacAskill has chosen not to get involved is a mystery. Let's try to change his mind by showing we care, so he should.