Tom Harris, IPSA & a reminder of how the Labour Government treated people

Tom Harris has been writing fairly extensively in recent weeks about the problems he and others have experienced with the new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. On some issues, I agree with him - I really don't see why MPs should have to pay 15% of their constituency office phone bills. They should not have to subsidise their public service. Of course, it's the MPs who work hardest to serve their constituents who will end up paying out more in hard cash. It's a very silly rule, and I hope it changes.

In his latest post, Tom gives some examples of inefficiency, ineffectiveness and general craziness in the new system of MPs' expenses some of which are quite unfortunate, especially those relating to staff not being paid.

From Tom's complaints, you would think that the public services the Labour Government he was a member of was perfect in the way they dealt with people and they never made mistakes. Sadly, I could spend all day giving examples of inefficiency, ineffectiveness and general craziness I've come across. The people these blunders affected didn't have around £5000 a month to fall back on, either. (Actually, as Tom points out in the comments, it's only £3200 after deductions, so I put my hands up to that inaccuracy, but, well, it's more than most people get).

Let's start with an example of UK Border Agency incompetence. Someone applied for a work permit. UK Border Agency lost all the original documents they sent. They forked out for copies and then turned the person down for not having original documents.

Then there's the (numerous) examples of how the Tax Credit Office computer suddenly decided to start forgetting that claimants had children, and pursued them for overpayments of all the Child Tax Credit they had ever received, often thousands of pounds, despite being provided with evidence that the children existed.

Sticking with the TCO, they're not above losing things either. I've seen families struggling on Income Support have to wait for months for their tax credit applications to be processed when they have children, repeatedly lsing official documents and being slow to pay for their replacement. They often had issues with taking forever to process a claim in the easiest of circumstances, leaving people without any money to buy food.

This slightly puts into perspective reports that MPs' mortgages aren't being paid. It's not as if they are going to be out on the street - and IPSA, if they are in error, will, I'm sure, refund bank charges.

Then there's the Tax people being slow to deal with correspondence, creating all sorts of problems for people and businesses. Imagine any private company telling people their letter, no matter how urgent, wouldn't be opened for at least 3 months.

Then there's the Child Support Agency, lumbering one particular person with tens of thousands of pounds of arrears of maintenance, not accepting that they actually never lived at the address they'd sent the initial correspondence. It took years to sort that one out.

And paying one person's payments to somebody else, leaving the first person with no money to pay for fuel in the depths of Winter.

I have a particularly special love for Department of Work and Pensions. They can pay off their own staff after decades of exemplary service because their occupational physicians define them as too ill to work. When these same individuals try to claim benefit, the very same company tells them they are fit for work.

Those same people then have to wait for months to appeal, receiving reduced payments in the meantime and at the moment almost half of the appeals are successful.

Then there's people's benefits being stopped for all sorts of random and unjustified reasons with no warning.

In all cases, people report that when they try to communicate with the department concerned, they are made to feel like criminals, and the people on the other end of the phone are just so rude to them. There is no excuse for that.

There might be some who take a bit of perverse pleasure in seeing MPs being treated like that. I'm not one of them, although I have no objection to them having to provide documentary evidence of things. You try claiming benefits or tax credits without providing supporting documents and see how far you get. Most MPs, as I have repeatedly said, are good people - but then so are most people who deal with the Department of Work and Pensions, the UK Border Agency and HM Revenue and Customs - and nobody should have to put up with poor systems and bad service.

One thing IPSA hasn't done yet is lost any confidential data, unlike HMRC under Labour where the details of Child Benefit claimants went missing.

I do have a slight concern about the way in which one MP spoke to the IPSA officials (apparently interns, who have no power in the organisation) when asked to file his children's birth certificates:

It is not yet known whether the IPSA official in question is even physically capable of performing the act the MP then requested of him, or even if it is legal within the United Kingdom.

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I wonder if this is a bit of poetic licence on Tom's part but if a benefit or tax credit claimant had spoken to a Government official like that, they would have suffered some fairly severe consequences and perhaps been denied service, however understandable the grievance. I also think Tom would be the first to stand up and defend the relevant Government agency in that instance.

I hope that the new MPs' Expenses regime settles down and starts to operate efficiently, but Labour MPs who are annoyed about its operation should reflect that this is exactly how they have been treating the vulnerable for the last 13 years, with far more serious consequences. What I would say to Tom is make sure you pick your fights carefully, otherwise you sound a bit like the boy who cried wolf. Nobody else would be able to claim expenses without evidence. I know that's a big change for MPs, but it's a change for the better, and they just have to suck that one up. There are, however, justifiable concerns and changes need to be made - they shouldn't drown those out with relatively petty complaints.

Let's all have a laugh at Frank McAveety

Bless Frank McAveety. People are still dining out (geddit?) on the time when, as a Minister, he had to grovel to Parliament for turning up late for Question Time and using Ministerial Business as an excuse. Ministerial greed was in fact the cause as he was actually scoffing a pie in the canteen at the time. Thing is the Holyrood canteen is frequented by journalists and guests as well as MSPs so his fib was very quickly discovered and he was lampooned for a while.

Today, when we could all do with a good laugh, he obliges again. You would have thought that after Gordon Brown's incident with Gillian Duffy, politicians would take more care when around microphones. Nah. In a break while chairing the Public Petitions Committee, Frank was recorded leching over a woman in the public gallery.

If we're honest, we've all done similar in our time, but we do tend to leave it to more appropriate moments. I just hope that everyone who comes across him in Holyrood for the next wee while takes the mickey relentlessly.

Now they say things happen in threes, so I'm just looking forward to what he comes up with for his third major gaffe. In the meantime, I'll enjoy the endorphins flowing through my system as a result of my giggling like a schoolgirl at his antics today.

An over anxious mum thanks Lynne Featherstone

Last year, this over anxious mum wrote of her horror at the new idea of the then Government to introduce a vetting and barring scheme. This would have mean that anyone who helped out by, say, driving a minibus for Brownies, would have to register with an Independent Safeguarding Authority. This Authority would then decide whether they were suitable people to be allowed round children. In doing so they could use everything from police records to criminal convictions to gossip. Yes, gossip. At least that's what I took "other appropriate sources" to mean.

I, who am probably one of the world's most over anxious mothers, saw this as a deeply illiberal and unpleasant system which assumed guilt. I also thought it would be ineffective as it would not have identified Ian Huntley, the Soham murderer, as a potential risk. Even if it had, he would have had to have lived somewhere and at some point no doubt an opportunity for evil would have presented itself.

So I was really pleased to see that our Lynne Featherstone, now a Home Office Minister, has put a stop to all this nanny state nonsense.. She has halted the registration process that was due to start on July 26th and she's going to look again at people's concerns while reviewing all the vetting and barring arrangements.

It's refreshing to see such common sense being talked by a Government Minister. I'm not used to it:-).

Bloody Sunday; Cameron apology helps as victims exonerated

It's taken Lord Saville 12 years to hear all the evidence and compile a report that's 5000 pages long, so I feel I need to be a bit careful about commenting on the events of Bloody Sunday in a quick blog post.

I thought the House of Commons was at its most grown up this afternoon as David Cameron made his statement, revealing the dreadful conclusion of the Saville Report, that 13 British citizens had been killed by the British Army in an act that was "unjustified and unjustifiable".

I didn't agree with everything that David Cameron said this afternoon in the House of Commons but I feel that he went with a good attitude. He was about 5 years old when this happened, and so was his Deputy PM - and so was I for that matter. I'm glad that he clearly and unequivocally delivered a genuine apology on behalf of the Government for the mistakes that were made. There was no weaselly use of language, no trying to wiggle out of it, just a very clear and straightforward "I am deeply sorry".

Governments have traditionally been slow to apologise for the actions of their own or their predecessors' mistakes. I'm just glad that a Conservative Prime Minister, of all things, was sensitive enough to the needs of the families and other people in Derry this afternoon, to say, with feeling, the words that they required.

One thing that Cameron said kind of worried me - basically that this would be the last time we'd spend so much on such a huge enquiry. This needed looking into, though, and if there is a similar issue which deserves such scrutiny, then the Government's and agents' of Government's actions have to be properly investigated. I'm not saying it should last 12 years and cost £200 million, but the Government has to be properly accountable. Let's hope, though, that nothing like this ever happens again.

I really felt for those families today. I was struck by the fact that it was nieces, and daughters and sons and brothers of those who died that day who came forward to proclaim their innocence in front of the Guildhall. The parents had not lived to see the day that had exonerated their children 38 years ago and I felt especially sad that they had not received the little bit of peace that today would have given them.

I have to say that if I had been in Derry at that time, I would have felt minded to be on that march, against the practice of internment. I think it is a pretty shameful part of our history that authorities acting in our name arrested people they suspected of being in proscribed organisations and kept them locked up without trial.

Bloody Sunday was just one violent day in a violent 38 years for Northern Ireland. Many, many innocent people lost their lives in all communities and I have the same sympathy for all of their families. Nobody in 1972 would ever have envisaged a DUP/Sinn Fein coalition running Northern Ireland. That situation took too long to bring about, and the events of Bloody Sunday only made things much worse.

I remember as a 9 year old hoping that the peace movement, set up by Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan, would bring a swift end to the violence. I remember being awed by the work that those women did at the time, at the huge crowds on the streets asking for peace.

The work towards peace and reconciliation is an ongoing work and I'm just grateful to everyone who has played a role, however unlikely, in bringing the current situation about.

I was struck by something Labour MP David Cairns said in the House of Commons today, talking about how the main issue in the General Election in Northern Ireland was water rates, and that was a sign of how much progress had been made.

For all those who are calling for the prosecution of the soldiers involved, I just feel that we have to be quite careful what we say. Politicians shouldn't be making decisions on who to prosecute - the judicial and political systems are separate for a good reason. Every case has to be decided on the evidence and it's the Northern Ireland Prosecution Service which is the appropriate body to make those decisions. I am certainly sympathetic, though, to the soldiers involved being stripped of any medals now that a major investigation has said that their actions that day were wrong.

I hope that Stephen, who wrote about Bloody Sunday today from the point of view of a child growing up County Down, feels that today's report will enable Northern Ireland to take another step forward in its peace process.

Caron's Corkers - 14th June

There's been some good stuff around the blogosphere recently - I haven't done a round up for a while, so here's what you've been missing:

In 2008, Mat Follas won Masterchef with an inventive menu of foods he'd foraged for himeslf. He now has a restaurant called the Wild Garlic in Dorset. Kavey has reviewed it. I want to go there.........

I have been meaning to link to Cllr Iain Roberts for some time because his assiduous work in collating all the local election results in Stockport in history has to be acknowledged somewhere. He's got to 1980 so far and the Liberals aren't doing too well. I'm looking forward to the next couple of instalments so we can see if the Alliance makes a difference. I'm kind of glad we know that this story has a much happier present though, otherwise I would probably cry! I like the fact that he's putting in the results in full. The people who stood for election then provided the foundations for the success of the party now. If you look back when BBC Parliament shows the election results from the year dot, you'll always see that the Liberal Democrats performed strongly in places like Hazel Grove, East Dunbartonshire, Devon and Cornwall - areas where we have parliamentary representation now. It's nice to see the people who helped build the party acknowledged.

Andrew remembers his much loved friend and colleague, Belinda Eyre-Brook.

I don't often agree with Mr Eugenides, but I have some sympathy for his argument that in a time when we need to be careful with our national pennies, the National Play Strategy might be something that we don't really need. I'm struggling to find to find a piece to quote, as there are lots of very, very bad swear words in it, but I'd much rather specific projects in sport and the arts are retained because they seem to have a lot more use.

Can any keen gardeners help Sarah with her vegetable problems?

James Graham on David Willetts' ridiculous comments on tuition fees.

Rather than watch the football, Jennie finds a lovely classic car to sit in.

That's all for now.

Why I feel sorry for Rob Green - and why England needs Candy Piercy!

As I predicted on Saturday, I did indeed end up watching the England game on Saturday night. In a way, I'm kind of glad, because it means that I can comment on the villification in the press of England goalie Robert Green with just a little bit of knowledge. I know that can be a dangerous thing, but I'm going to feel the fear and do it anyway.

Now, it came as something of a shock to me that some guy called Green was the goalie, seeing as Twitter had told me on Friday that the England goalie was one David "Crazy Hair" James. Now, on doing a bit more searching, I find out that there's yet another one, called Joe Hart.

So, we turned on the match and within minutes, that moment now being replayed round the world, when the Americans scored happened. Rob Green got to the ball, but he couldn't stop it going in. Yes, for a professional goalie, that was a mistake, but the villification he's getting in the British press for it is way, way over the top.

You would think, from the coverage he's getting that he was the love child of the Grim Reaper and the Big Bad Wolf. I saw on Andrew Marr yesterday that the News of the Screws had 7 pages devoted to slating him and today another tabloid has been digging into his personal life.

For heavens' sake! I may not know much about football, but I know that the team has 11 player, not just one. What got me about the England game is that bar a couple of exceptions (Gerrard and Heskey), the rest of them just seemed to stand around casually passing the ball to each other. There didn't seem to be a whole load of passion for what they were doing. It's not like the US had scored in the dying momnets - they had about 2/3 of the match to try and score again and to my mind they just didn't seem to be putting a whole load of effort into it.

I wasn't alone in that assesssment - as a few of my friends on Twitter who do know about football agreed with me. In fact, at one point, Spiderplant and I decided that we could happily go out there and motivate the England team. However, having thought about it, we should go as glamorous assistants to one of the best Lib Dem trainers and motivators of all time - Candy Piercy. Let's give her half an hour with the England team. That would get them back on form!

Anyway, I suspect my football commentating career will be rather short lived. England next play on Friday but I am out with the girls so, unfortunately, will not be able to watch it.

F1: What will it take for Lewis Hamilton to get a penalty?

I am very grumpy this morning. I'm shattered from a very busy weekend, and my general feeling of yuckness is not helped by events in Montreal at the Canadian Grand Prix this weekend. I've not yet seen all the race because we were out at a friend's First Communion yesterday, but Stephen can testify that I was fit to be tied on Saturday after qualifying. He may even have learnt some new sweary words.

Not only did Schumi not make the final pole position shoot out for the first time, but Lewis Hamilton ended up on pole as he was able to get in an extra flying lap by crossing the line with seconds of the session left. All well and good, but he didn't actually have enough fuel in the tank to do a flying lap, and then get the car back to the pits to give the required fuel sample. On the team's instructions, he stopped the car on the circuit.

The FIA weren't chufed about it and delivered what was effectively a tiny slap on the wrist - a $10,000 fine and a reprimand.

The difficulty is that this is not the first time Hamilton has played fast and loose with the rules this season. Remember that weaving in front of Vitaly Petrov at the Chinese Grand Prix?

Again, the stewards looked benevolently on that incident. It uesd to be Alonso (nicknamed Teflonso) who got away with everything. That mantle seems to have been inherited by Lewis Hamilton.

I asked the same question, what infringement of the rules it would take for Hamilton to get a penalty. My friend Josh (for whom I probably have to declare an interest as a fellow Ferrari fan) offered this suggestion:

He'll have to actually decapitate someone, and then parade the results around the track, and then speed in the pit lane, and then lie to the stewards about the whole affair despite it all being recorded on tape, and then admit about lying to the stewards...then he *might* actually get a suspended 1 place deduction for the Micronesia Grand Prix in 2055.

That, unfortunately, does not sound that implausible. I hope that nobody actually has to lose their head, though.....

David Coulthard gets an MBE!

I woke up this morning to the fantastic news that David Coulthard is getting an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours list.

I followed his F1 career right from his first race, the Spanish Grand Prix in 1994, where he replaced Ayrton Senna, who had been killed at the previous race in Imola. He drove with Williams, McLaren and Red Bull and I really wish he'd stayed for one further season, when Red Bull finally produced a decent race winning car. However, if he had stayed on, he wouldn't be part of the fabulous BBC Formula 1 reporting team where he and Eddie Jordan make us howl with laughter every week.

One of my favourite DC moments was when he won the British GP in 2000, passing Rubens Barrichello in the process.

It's all here:



And then there was the first podium for Red Bull in Monaco where I was so pleased for him that I forgave him for looking like a prat in a red superman cape.



Congratulations, DC, and enjoy your day at the Palace.

Is there a football match on, or something?

Well, as Helen Duffett reminded me on Twitter yesterday, I'm in no position to complain about people tweeting at the World Cup, after what I put my loyal and wonderful followers through during the General Election with my constant stream of things I agreed with Nick about, or things I thought were his fault.

Also, so many of my friends who do like football are going to get some rest and relaxation watching the football, which they really deserve after knocking their pans in over the last year, that I can't really begrudge them.

I suspect I will have to watch the England game tonight. Stephen is coming for dinner and although I suspect I'll be distractable with the F1 quali and Doctor Who, he'll want to watch the footie afterwards.

Yesterday we had to suffer preachy tweets from a few Scottish Labour MPs like Tom Harris and Jim Murphy urging us all to get behind England. I suspect their motivation may well have been more about having a go at the SNP than the actual football. See this from Murphy's site:

Scotland is more confident. The nationalism that defines Scotland for what its not is in retreat. Last months(his missing apostrophe, not mine)general election result proved that once and for all.

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Yawn!

I'm afraid I can't go much further than I don't wish them any harm. Not for some great ideological hatred of the English, but more that I really just don't care. It's football that doesn't involve Inverness Caley Thistle. Why would it interest me?

Having said that, I felt a bit shamefaced yesterday because I set myself the challenge of naming as many England players as I could - and I only got to five.They were the vile Ashley Cole, John Terry, Frank Lampard (who I'd heard of more because of their antics off the field), Joe Cole and Stephen Gerrard. I should latterly add that I should have added Wayne Rooney to that list and also Rio Ferdinand and Theo Walcott, but I thought they didn't count I felt a bit mortified that I hadn't a clue who their goalie was - and he's important. Apparently, thanks to Twitter, I now know his name is David "Crazy Hair" James. Last England goalie I'd heard of was David Seaman.

I'm quite upset that the horrendous environmental disaster that is the oil spill in the Gulf has been trivialised by the press into a slanging match between Britain and the USA, just in time for the football match between them. This is too important to be treated in that way. And, to be honest, I'd rather see all those involved putting their energy into solving the problem rather than feeding the Media Beast.

As I expected, last night turned into a football fest on Twitter (although there were some parts of my feed where the much more important issues as, er, botox, and being ginger were being discussed. I did at one point turn over to France v Uruguay just to see what everyone was talking about. I barely lasted 30 seconds before I had to seek refuge in a comforting episode of Neighbours.

So, I bear England no ill will even if I can't muster up enthusiasm for their games. I guess my thoughts will be mostly with the women who have real reason to fear the World Cup

Angela Constance questions Nicola Sturgeon on GP surgery high rate phone numbers

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have thrown an occasional strop because my GP surgery has an 0844 number. This means that calling to get an appointment or a prescription costs me an absolute fortune. There was one month when the costs purely of contacting the surgery were over £15. Now, I can afford to take that hit, but there are many who can't. Most landlines don't include 084 numbers in their free calls, nor do mobile companies who charge a fortune for them. You also have to bear in mind that many of those on the lowest incomes don't have landlines these days and so are reliant on mobiles.

I raised this some time ago with my local MSP Angela Constance, and she's been really good at continuing to work on this and keep me in touch with what she's been doing on the issue.

Yesterday she raised it with Nicola Sturgeon at Question Time in Holyrood. Here's the exchange:

General Practitioner Practices
(Premium-rate Numbers)

9. Angela Constance (Livingston) (SNP): To ask the Scottish Executive how many GP practices use 084 premium-rate numbers and whether it has any plans to actively discourage the use of such numbers by GP practices. (S3O-10892)

The Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing (Nicola Sturgeon): As at 3 June this year, there were 44 GP practices using 084 telephone numbers, which represents just over 4 per cent of the total number of practices in Scotland.

We intend to discuss the issue with the Scottish general practitioners committee, which is supportive of the idea that all patients should pay local telephone rates and is considering offering guidance to those practices that use 084 telephone numbers to encourage them to review their current telephone contracts. The Scottish Government would support that.

Angela Constance: I am sure that the cabinet secretary will recall the representations that I have been making on behalf of many of my constituents, who are having to bear the increased costs associated with the use of such telephone numbers by GP practices. Does she agree that it is wholly unacceptable for patients to bear those increases in their phone bills, which, for the many who need to make regular and repeated calls to their doctor's surgery, have been significant?

Nicola Sturgeon: I can understand that view and the frustration on the part of patients. I am sure that Angela Constance will appreciate that only a small number of GP practices in Scotland use 084 telephone numbers, but the practice can lead to increased costs for the patients who use such services. That is why it is important that we work with the general practitioners committee to encourage GP practices that use such numbers to offer local telephone rates instead, if possible. I will be more than happy to keep Angela Constance updated on the progress of those discussions.

I'm grateful to Angela for continuing to pursue this. I know it's only a small number of practices across Scotland, but that will still affect thousands of people who incur extra costs. I guess what I'd be looking for is that if the GP Committee's polite requests were ignored, then legislation should be brought in to completely ban the use of such numbers for all public services.

If your surgery uses a premium rate number like this, please let me know, and if you want to see things change, ask your MSP to take action.

Tavish catches Salmond fiddling while education burns

FMQs is usually a display of brimstone, bluff and bluster from our imitiable showman of a First Minister. Occasionally he surprises and behaves like a grown up, just to remind us (or maybe himself) that he still can. Increasingly, though, he's been all over the place in recent months. He knows that the SNP's star is most definitely waning. Their election was pretty much a disaster - they didn't increase their seats at all despite boasts of a target of 20 seats. Maybe if nothing else the experience has taught them about expectation management. Next May looms closer and the Government normally has to fight on its record - but it's hard to see exactly what the SNP has actually been doing since May 2007.

Today when he was replying to Iain Gray's questions about business rates, he seemed distracted and subdued. Mind you, it's an issue his Government has been found well and truly wanting on. Basically, there's been a business rates revaluation which has resulted in some businesses see their rates bills go up by 200%. There's a particular issue with pre-school nurseries in Fife which have seen huge rises. The revaluation is carried out by an independent assessor so Salmond tried to do what he always does - find someone else to blame. Not so fast, though. In England the rises have been brought in gradually, whereas here it's come as a huge shock. Mr S might want to think about that when he delivers two years' cuts for the price of one next year, by the way.

Anyway, it's good to see that our Leader of the Opposition has finally caught up with an issue that Tavish Scott and the Scottish Liberal Democrats have been campaigning on for months. Maybe he wanted to make a good impression on one David Miliband who was watching from the public gallery.


The best question came from Tavish Scott, though. Listing, at some length, the various crises in education at the moment - the debacle of the curriculum for excellence in secondary schools, teacher numbers falling, class sizes rising, manifesto pledges broken (although of course that's the Councils' fault, not the SNP Government's according to, er, Mr Salmond), he asked the First Minister to say what he'd written to Education Conveners about recently.

For a fraction of a second, I thought Salmond looked a trifle shamefaced as he realised that he looked like Nero fiddling as Rome burned before he admitted that his letter was encouraging the Councils to make St Andrew's Day a school holiday. Now, I have no problem with that in principle, but when my Council is thinking of cutting £198 from the amount of money they spend on my daughter, I would hope that my local education convener, SNP member or not, would have more important things to think about.

Salmond, though, did try to pin the blame on Denis Canavan who had apparently been encouraging him to ensure that the holiday was adopted. Why can he never just take responsibility for things? Honestly. Tavish's follow up question was brilliant, though. He basically pointed out that the Government had had precious few responses from Councils, even SNP ones, to its efforts on this issue. This seemed to spark Salmond into life and he launched into a bizarre tirade accusing Tavish of being unpatriotic for not supporting the idea of a holiday on our national day. I have to say that really annoyed me. To me it's an abuse of the word patriotism to bandy it about in political debate like that - utterly poisonous. I said so when Jim Murphy used it on the SNP and I do so again now.

Tavish was on very, very good form, though and he certainly landed a significant blow today, showing up the First Minister's lack of sense of priorities. I doubt the electorate of Scotland will be very impresseed next year if his key achievement is a new bank holiday as they're coping with job losses and spending cuts.

Will saltire fly from No 10 if Andy Murray makes Wimbledon Final?

Much as I'm pleased to see some of the stuffy protocols regarding flags on government buildings relaxed, I will go through at least 29 different kinds of fury if Andy Murray doesn't get the same treatment as the England team should he, or any other British player, make the Wimbledon Final, or in fact even the latter stages of the tournament.

Now that they've set the precedent, it had better happen for all world class sporting achievers these islands produce.

Simon Hughes is new Lib Dems Deputy Leader.

If the deputy leadership contest ends up between Tim Farron and Simon Hughes, my head says Tim, who has huge amounts of dynamism and energy and my heart says Simon, who is where I'm at politically. I kind of feel that my heart is owed.

Or so I wrote 2 weeks ago.

Thank you, MPs, for electing Simon as Deputy Leader tonight. His main strength is his ability to inspire. His main weakness is his abiity to organise. The Deputy Leader role has all of the former and none of the latter. He will be utterly brilliant at it. I'm on a kind of food metaphor binge tonight so Simon really is your ultimate comfort food, perfectly seasoned mashed potato, or gooey chocolate pudding, or toad in the hole with onion gravy with loads of madeira in it. He'll be great for getting us through the "bumps and scrapes" of the coalition that Nick described. When I'm locked in that cupboard with the gin bottle, it'll be Simon who encourages me out and gets me phone canvassing or delivering leaflets again.

Here are his coments tonight on his election:

“It is an honour and a privilege for me to follow Vince Cable as the new Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats. This is not a responsibility I will ever take lightly.

“I will fight every day for the principles which underpin our party: fairness, freedom, openness, equality, stewardship of our environment and standing up for those who cannot stand up for themselves.

“I will work tirelessly with Nick Clegg and all other Liberal Democrats to help liberal democracy blossom and flourish throughout the land.”

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That's our Simon, showing exactly why I campaigned for him for leader and president. Good luck to him in his new role.

Labour Leadership - who would you vote for?

Well, of course I don't have a vote, but if I did it would be emphatically cast for Diane Abbott. Not because I agree with everything she says. Far from it. But because she has earned my respect over many years for not conforming in a party that demands conformity and sheep like behaviour when in vicinity of voting lobbies.

Let's look at what she had to say on the issue of 42 days' detention - a speech that tugs at the heart strings of any Liberal Democrat, a speech so good that Liberty put it on their website.

This stuff is, well, wow!

I am a Londoner and I heard the last major IRA bomb, at Canary Wharf, from my kitchen in east London. Like thousands of Londoners, I waited for the early-morning call that assured me that friends and family on their way to work and school had not been caught up in those bombings. I will not take lectures from ministers about not taking terrorism seriously.

I do not believe, as ministers continue to insist, that there is some trade-off between our liberties and the safety of the realm. What makes us free is what makes us safe, and what makes us safe is what will make us free.

and then this:

I came into politics because of my concern about the relationship of the state to communities that are marginalised and suspected. It is easy to stand up for the civil liberties of our friends or of people in our trade union, but it is not easy to stand up for the civil liberties of people who are unpopular, suspected and look suspicious—people the tabloids print a horror story about every day.

However, it is a test of parliament that we are willing to stand up for the civil liberties of the marginalised, the suspect and the unpopular.

I came into politics about those issues, and I believe that if there is any content at all in ministers' constant speeches about community cohesion we must offer every part of our community not just the appearance but the reality of justice and equality before the law.

Seriously, read the whole thing.

And on top of all that, she even voted against the Digital Economy Act.
. She is good and if she won, she'd have some serious tanks to park on our lawn.

The chivalrous rush of rival candidates to get Diane Abbott on to the ballot would never have happened if any, of them thought she could win. And to be honest, from their point of view it's such tokenism that it's actually worse than our presenting our members with a choice of 2 middle class white males.

She's the only candidate, though, who represents a break with the past and who wasn't a part of the Government which has wreaked such havoc in the last 13 years. She's the only candidate who actually voted against the Iraq war. While the others have been swift to distance themselves from the worst of new Labour's excesses, and some have even sought out new depths to stoop to, Diane is the only one who can say on most of the issues that "it wisnae me".

There's a bit of me who wants to see her win, partly to puncture the smugness of the others, and partly because you'd hope that it would lead to a more mature politics, where genuine debate and discussion was the norm rather than the exception.

Among the rest we have Ed Balls, who Cameron completely skewered today, calling him the Alf Garnett of British politics. I mean, it's got to be bad if that comes from a Tory. David Miliband - the man who chickened out of challenging Brown in Summer 2008 and from then on had journalists camping on his doorstep every time there was a hint of rebellion in the air. He bottled it just like Brown did when it came down to it. I also just don't warm to him at all. His brother Ed - what's that all about - seems to be the more genuine and sympathetic a personality of the two brothers but tell me, what exactly did he achieve at Energy and Climate Change? As for Andy Burnham, well, ditto? If those four were a meal, they'd be polenta added with a side order of cous cous without any flavouring and no side salad.

I'm really disappointed that two people from the previous Cabinet have not bothered to enter the contest - Harriet Harman and Alan Johnson. I always used to look forward to PMQs when it was Harman, Hague and The Almighty Vince, it was always much more intelligent and lighter, I think. As for Johnson, well, Brown did well to put him in the graveyeard job of Home Secretary, but he could have injected some much needed personality and humour into the contest.

There's a long way to go, but I have yet to see anything that sounds like an original idea from any of the candidates. This is a party that thinks it can put its feet up for five years and point, laugh and be as destructive as possible. They think bucketloads of bile will win them the next election. We'll see, though, whether they can bring themselves back from the party that trashed the place and left everyone else to mop up the mess. How do they make themselves credible again?

It's a long time until the ballots are counted on 25th September. Let's see whether the campaign inspires or drags on. I'm not holding my breath.

Another slap in face to Strictly fans from BBC

Now, before you say anything, don't say I can't handle change. As a leftie peace loving Lib Dem hippy, I am coping better than I ever thought I would with coalition with the Great Blue Devil.

That doesn't mean to say that all change is good change. The BBC seem to be hell bent on ruining one of my favourite tv programmes, Strictly Come Dancing. After dumping the excellent Arlene Phillips as a judge last year and replacing her with someone half her age whose entire dance experience had been as a contestant on the show two years previously, they are now sidelining Strictly fans' favourite professional dancers leading to the departure of one of my favourites.

Just about the only saving grace is that the much loved Anton du Beke is safe otherwise Rachel Williams and I would be chaining ourselves to something at TV Centre.

Rather than mentoring celebrities, and therefore being a real part of the show, favourite dancers Ian Waite, Lilia Kopylova, Matthew Cutler, Brian Fortuna and Darren Bennett were offered places in a "professional dance troupe". That is rubbish. Generally once a celebrity has left the show, their dance partner takes part in the Saturday night show dances but is often never heard from again for the series. Sure, some of the lucky ones appear on It Takes Two, the fantastic nightly spin off show presented by Claudia Winkleman, but it's not the same.

Let's look at the record of the people they've put out to grass in favour of bringing in 3 new male dancers:

Lilia Kopylova - this is the woman who took sequin hating cricketer Darren Gough from his first uncomfortable cha cha cha to winning the series in 2005. The previous year she'd done wonders with Aled Jones. She is incredibly funny and an excellent dancer and teacher.

Darren Bennett is Lilia's husband and he won the first main series in 2004 with Jill Halfpenny. This is as good an excuse as any to show them doing their Jive which is one of the best dances ever seen on Strictly.



He's also been a fantastic mentor to the likes of Emma Bunton, Letitia Dean and Lynda Bellingham.

Ian Waite took Zoe Ball, Jodie Kidd and Jade Johnson, all of whom had various hang ups about dance, and not only transformed them into dancers, but really inspired them to enjoy what they were doing too. I only ever saw him have one snippy moment with a celebrity - a barney with Denise Lewis in series 2.

There is no excuse whatever for taking Matthew Cutler out of the main show. If I were going on Strictly, he would be the pro I would hope I'd get. He's lovely, patient, kind and to my knowledge has never ever thrown a strop with his celebrity. He and Alesha Dixon were fabulous together when they won in 2007 and Carol Smillie and Christine Bleakley have also benefitted from his sweet, affirming and lovely style of teaching.

All of the above is bad enough, but Brian Fortuna, who made up Team Awesome with Ali Bastian last year has decided he doesn't want to be part of the "Professional Dance Troupe" and has quit the show. He was great - not only was he a gifted teacher, to both Heather Small and Ali, but he also kept in touch with his fans regularly via Twitter and Facebook.

It seems to me that none of these dancers were going to give the viewers much in the way of rows with their celebrity partners - these are the ones who took the teaching part most seriousy and professionally. On the men's side, we are left with the likes of James, who has mellowed in recent years, but in his first series was vile to his partner, actress Georgina Bouzova, Brendan, who can be mercurial, Vincent, who's very funny but who has an ego the size of Jupiter and Anton, who is very funny and charming and who absolutely puts his foot in it at times, but if we're being honest, sucks at Latin. I'm not sure what the new male professionals will be like but they don't seem to have a whole load of teaching experience.

So, female celebrities, it's down to you. You can save this yet. Just refuse to sign your contracts unless our favourite dancers are brought back - simples. They can't do a show with no women on it at all..........

A New Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy Fan

With her interest in all things Doctor Who, and her general quirky sense of humour, I suspected that Anna might like Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy, but it's so long since I read it, and I was an adult when I did, that I wondered whether she was still a bit young at 11. So, I did what we all do these days to solve our dilemmas, I asked Twitter.

The almost unanimous verdict was that I should get her started on it - the one dissenter was my friend Kelvin who said that the best way to be introduced to Hitchhiker was through the original radio series.

So, the book arrived yesterday. She was glued to it at the breakfast table. She took it to school with her, knowing that the wet weather would give her a chance to read at playtime and came out this afternoon quoting large parts of it - relating to bypasses and points A, B, C and D, - from memory.

I think she likes it. I explained about Towel Day on the way home from school and I suspect it'll have a new recruit next year. She's already asked me to order the next book so she has it as soon as she's finished this one........

When Helen Duffett met Iain Dale

Why would a woman from Scotland spend a Monday evening listening to a local London radio station? And why would she consider making it a regular date? Every Monday at 8, LBC has a bloggers' panel. Last night it was chaired by the one Jennie refers to as the Egregious Tory Tosser who was sitting in for the regular presenter who was sick.

I hesitate to say anything nice about the King of the Tory Blogosphere, but he's unlikely to read this, nor is anyone who knows him and is likely to tell him, so I'm fairly safe, but actually, he's really good at this radio presenting lark. He's assured without being a prat about it, interesting, witty and very engaging. I was so interested that I actually kept listening until the end of the show at ten, when the subjects under discussion were the Greencoat Boy incident (of which more later) and Martin Amis' comment that only depressing books win prizes. It was quite funny to hear Iain suddenly remember that he'd chucked Martin Amis out of Politicos for smoking. I mean, who would smoke in a book shop? Nothing there could catch fire, could it?

The panel comprised Tory Bear, Alex Hilton and my reason for listening, my mate Helen Duffett. Not only did she have to engage in sparky debate for an hour, she also had me stalking her via Twitter. She mentioned the word elephant within the first 5 minutes, so I challenged her to get the first word I associate with elephants, Millennium in as well. And she did it, in the dying moments of the show.

The subects under discussion ranged from spending cuts, to William Hague's surprisingly friendly toned comments about Europe, to the election of the deputy speakers in the Commons.

I rather liked Helen's first major contribution to the debate (after a plug for the Lib Dem Blog of the Year Awards) in which she said that that it was people that mattered, not pounds. That sort of commitment to protect the vulnerable is what the Lib Dems bring to this coalition.

Another great moment for her came when an idiot phoned in saying that Child Benefit should be scrapped because it only encouraged people to have children. Helen stepped in and said that she had 4 children, and she certainly didn't do it for the money. Iain Dale very cheekily asked her why she'd had 4 children, like it was any of his or anybody else's business and she replied, quick as a flash, "to pay your pension, Iain." I relayed this exchange via Twitter, Iain Dale saw it and read it out on air.

He read out another tweet of mine on air a bit later, too, when discussing the Greencoat Boy. Now, I think that what happened to LGBT Labour, when they were effectively refused service on Saturday night, was absolutely appalling. The company who owns the pub does seem to have been falling over itself since then to make it up to them, to their credit, but it should never, ever have happened. On this issue, I am completely on LGBT Labour's side. However, I am still pretty darned livid at the way in which Labour tweeters through buckets of bile at David Laws last week when understanding would have been more appropriate. If it had been a Labour minister who had had the same circumstances, I would have backed him or her up. So, I tweeted that I wondered whether the LGBT Labour people would have more sympathy for David Laws having suffered such homophobia themselves. Iain put that to the chair of LGBT Labour, with the addition that I was making a political point - but certainly no more point scoring than Labour have been engaging in on this issue. I wasn't impressed with his answer, which said so little that I can't actually remember what it was.

All in all, this show was a good way to spend a Monday evening. I reckon Iain should get his own regular radio slot and it's always lovely to hear Helen. Whenever she's on the radio she always comes out with something pertinent in a memorable and original way.

Why some women have real reason to fear the World Cup

I have been approaching the forthcoming month long football fest that is the World Cup with an air of resignation. If it's not about Inverness Caley Thistle, then, frankly, my dear, I really don't give a damn and it annoys me that every four years this one sport dominates our national lives in the way that it does. It winds me up, and nobody in our house even likes the sport that much. It must be a nightmare to live with a fan who will hog the tv at all hours to watch the most insignificant matches. I really have nothing to complain about, though.

It made me sad, and furious, in equal measure to see a discussion on BBC Breakfast this morning saying that domestic violence increases by as much as 30%, or at least that's just the incidents that get as far as the Police, during this particular sports event. Apparently the peak last time round was on the day that England was knocked out.

What is it about wall to wall football that incites 70 extra men a week in Leeds to beat up their partners? That is only one city - what's it going to be like across the UK. That will an extra 70 extra women and all of their children who will be spending the World Cup living in fear. Alcohol has to be a factor - sitting around drinking beer and watching wall to wall football from morning till night troughing can after can of Stella is bound to increase the likelihood of violence. Then you see the often disgraceful on field behaviour when players, who get paid so much that anger management therapy really is within their budget, behave like two year olds having tantrums. Why is it that David Beckham kept his position as a national hero when he wasted the opportunity to represent his country by getting in a strop and kicking a member of the opposing team 12 years ago?

Add to that the really quite appalling way that many footballers treat the women in their lives - Ashley Cole, that would be you I'm talking about, just for starters, and you can see where this culture of violence comes from. The alcohol, the accepted anger on the field, the general attitude towards women all combine to make kindling that just requires a tiny spark - maybe a linesman having an off day, to cause an explosion which leads to a violent attack on a partner.

Many millions of people across the world will watch the World Cup and just enjoy the football. They won't get drunk and beat up their partners or children. However my thoughts will be for those families for whom the final whistle heralds a drunken, violent onslaught - and for those in the charities and the Police who will be working to support them. Is there not some role for the footballing world in all of this? Some England player could surely express horror and disappointment at the violence this tournament is known to cause and urge people to drink and behave responsibly? Maybe some sort of longer term campaign in the run up to future major football tournaments could be organised?

This week the Scottish Parliament will spend 2 and a half hours debating violence against men. Certainly that's an issue and statistics obtained by the Liberal Democrats showed last year that domestic violence against men was up by 167%, and that against women up by 40%. Those are truly shocking figures. I hope that part of that is due to more incidents being reported - I remember way back when I was involved helping a domestic violence charity that women would endure around 36 attacks before asking for help. While there does have to be help for men available, the vast majority of attacks are against women and children. With no direct involvement in the World Cup for us, there may not be such an increase in attacks over the next few weeks. However, it's an issue that should certainly be raised in the debate.

Live in West Lothian? Respond to Council's cuts consultation by 30th June

Ok, so West Lothian Council aren't calling them cuts, they're calling them tough choices, or savings. The growing lexicon of budget reduction will rarely include the C-word, preferring its more comforting sounding options.

The public aren't stupid. We know that the country is in an economic fix that can't be wished away. We know that unless we take action to reduce the deficit, we'll be in big trouble.

Nick Clegg earlier this year compared and contrasted what's happened in Greece with the way Canada dealt with its budget deficit in the 90s, by properly consulting with the people, asking for their ideas on cutting public spending. He said:

At that time, Canada had an annual budget deficit a tenth the size of its economy…
Almost as large as the UK’s is today.
Rather than making cuts behind closed doors, the Liberal Government realised that if people were to understand what needed to be done they had to talk to them.
They held a massive consultation.
About every last line of public spending.
Asking the people who really knew: what to cut and what to protect.
And they managed to eliminate that vast deficit in four years…
Taking the people with them.

Liberal Democrats will follow Canada’s lead.

West Lothian Council seem to be taking the Canadian experience to heart by asking local residents to take part in a consultation exercise, using a document called Tough Choices as its basis, as to how they should reduce spending. They are asking every single household to submit suggestions and responses to the officers' proposals.

I intend to look at this in more detail, but I wanted to make sure that you were all aware of this and had enough time to make your submission by the closing date of 30th June.

There are sections for every department, but my concern is that every single budget is bound to be cut over the next 3 years. Why do I think that? Because the figure for the projected budget is the same as this year's - which has to be a cut by the rate of inflation, currently at 3.5%.

It makes me wonder whether the SNP Government at Holyrood's Council Tax freeze over the past 3 years has been sensible. I'm also very concerned that they've decided to postpone cuts in the Scottish budget until after the elections next year. Some might say that was a cynical move, because I don't believe that they can't find anything to save money on this year.

Take that, Gina Ford! A tale of parenting by instinct.

My husband came excitedely through with the Sunday Times yesterday, keen to point out this article in one of the magazines, written by a dad, Matt Rudd, about how and his wife had chosen to do without the copious advice of self styled childcare experts and do what comes naturally.

This is very much what we decided to do when Anna came along 11 years ago, although what came naturally for us wasn't what came naturally for the Rudds. There was no way either Bob or I could have coped with ditching nappies, for example,although I know a few families who have done so successfully and I am so clumsy that I wouldn't have felt comfortable carrying Anna round in a sling outside cos I'm always falling over my own feet. However, she was held and carried a lot for most of her babyhood.

The decision to keep her in bed with us was an easy one, done mainly for reasons of laziness than because we were following any sort of ideology. Sleep deprivation was the thing that scared me most about parenthood because one night with one sleep is bad enough, but two and I turn into the witch queen from hell. Having Anna right next to me meant that even though she didn't sleep through the night until she was well into her third year, apart from the very early days, it didn't bother me at all. One of the best books I've ever read in my life was Deborah Jackson's Three in a Bed which has all sorts of research showing that sleeping with your baby is quite safe and actually helps both get better quality sleep, and UNICEF has produced this leaflet with FSID giving safety information to breastfeeding mums who share their bed with their babies. Like all mums, I was pretty scared about SIDS and I was utterly paranoid about making sure that there were no covers apart from her wee cellular blanket anywhere near her. It all worked really well for us.

I just think it's great to see a dad write about what is definitely a minority parenting style with enthusiasm (although admittedly he isn't crazy about the co-sleeping). In a culture that's deluged with regime orientated parenting methods, it's just great to see a man be positive about following your instincts. His and his wife's instincts are different from my instincts and any other family's instincts because we're all different. Anyone who says they can come up with a regime that suits everyone is simply wrong.

I was very proud of Nick Clegg earlier this year when he spoke about how he and his wife had decided that Gina Ford's methods were not for them.

One of the things I really appreciate is that Bob always supported my instincts as a mother and recognised and respected Anna's need to be with me. It's paid dividends for him as his understanding deepened my feelings for him and consequently our relationship and also has led to him having a really close relationship with Anna.

Matt Rudd makes this bet with himself about how the prevalent parenting regimes of today will be seen in the future:

A hundred years from now, people will look back on us the way we look back on the Victorians and many will find it astonishing that we treated children the way we do. The more extreme parenting strategies appear to deny the fact that we’re parents at all. The aim is to get back to our normal, child-free lifestyles as soon as possible.

Well said, that man.

Reply from Giles Thorley, CEO of Punch Taverns, re #Greencoatboy

This just popped into my inbox.

Pretty much word for word the same as the statement on their website, but you have to give them credit for trying. Pretty much word for word, but not exactly - for example the e-mail doesn't mention the deputy manager at all.

Mistakes happen in every company, unacceptable mistakes - and what happened on Saturday night was completely avoidable. There are no excuses. Punch Taverns have recognised that and at least they are trying to make amends. Certainly choice was not part of the equation. Here's the e-mail:

Dear Ms Lindsay

Thank you for your email regarding the incident at the Greencoat Boy on Saturday night.

I would like to take this opportunity to reassure you that Punch Taverns seeks to provide open and welcoming venues to everyone. We are shocked and saddened that the Labour LGBT did not experience this at The Greencoat Boy and have apologised unreservedly.

Across our estate, diversity and inclusion are a core part of our ethics and are clearly referenced in our recruitment process, our equal opportunities policy and training. We would like to stress that this is an isolated incident; we have a strong track record on equal opportunities and do not tolerate homophobia in our pubs, whether from guests to other guests, or involving our employees.

We are currently conducting a full investigation of the incident and are cooperating with the police. We have also arranged to meet with members of the LGBT Labour group this week to discuss how we can work together to further improve our policies and procedures.

In addition, we have contacted all of our general managers and pub teams to remind them of our equal opportunity policy and our no tolerance approach to discrimination. We will also seek to work with external partners to further enhance our training to ensure that inclusion remains at the heart of it.

Please be assured that we take this incident seriously and we remain committed to ensuring that all of our guests are welcome at our pubs.

Regards,

Giles Thorley

CEO

Let's hope that this incident is entirely isolated. The outraged Twitterstorm has shown how effectively and quickly information can be spread across the internet and how people can be engaged and united on a particular cause. Commercial organisations should take note.

Posh and a Lib Dem? Surely not!

On Friday, the Daily Mail, with its usual talent for profound social commentary, published a quiz which proclaimed whether you were posh or not. Apparently you only had to score 3 to consider yourself posh. Well, I, much to my disgust, got 5, or maybe even 6 if you consider that I quite often buy £10 bottles of wine when they're on offer much cheaper....

I'm not sure that my talking about where I went to school (Bishop Eden's Primary School in Inverness and Wick High School, seeing as you asked), drinking Earl Grey, doing the cheek kissing thing, although I actually prefer a hug, eating hummus and knowing what Prosecco (which anyone who'd ever watched Nigella would be aware of) constitutes poshness, but this is the Daily Mail, I guess.

Not to be outdone, Liberal Democrat Voice decided to do a similar quiz on how Lib Dem you are. Their definitions were a bit sappy, to be honest (although I did get 11.5 out of 13, failing on the fact that the dogs have never actually got their teeth into me as I'm usually too chicken to put the leaflet through if I detect they are there, but I have been chased out of a fair few gardens in my time, hence the 0.5), and leaflet delivery being a competitive sport, cos I'm just not fast enough.

Jennie did much better with her version though. I only scored 10 out of 13 on this one, not having a beard, special dietary requirements (unless more chocolate, please counts) or a penchant for yoghurt weaving, although my hippy child rearing practices might count for that. Make that 11, then.

Look Who's Here!

Well, Anna did eventually wake up on her birthday. She has never been one of those children who are shaking you awake in the middle of the night at birthdays and Christmas and this was no exception. The photo shows what, or rather Who, she saw as she went into the lounge. I have to confess that I couldn't believe that my husband had blown £30 on what is basically a bit of cardboard box, but hearing Anna's squeals of delight, hysterical laughter and shouts of "cool" and "awesome" made it all worthwhile. She loved all her presents, but the lifesize Doctor was by far the best. She told all her friends at at choir and drama about it and won herself quite a bit of kudos from the boys in particular.

This was quite definitely a Doctor Who birthday. Inspired by Jennie, I'd made a last minute purchase of The Five Doctors. As I said before, Stephen had given her the K9 box set and her daddy had also bought her some proper grown up Doctor Who magazines while he was in the Forbidden Planet. I know that there is more to come, too - a Destiny of the Daleks DVD from my sister which Amazon didn't quite manage to get to us on time.

By the time Anna had gone off for her long day of rehearsals and performances on Saturday, I was exhausted and had to go back to my bed for a couple of hours. Then in the afternoon we went to watch her in two concerts. I'm going to write about them separately, because I am concerned that funding for things like the National Youth Choir of Scotland needs to be preserved, but here they are on stage:


Unfortunately by the time we left the theatre on Saturday tea-time, the Summer weather had given way to rain, but we got changed and headed out for pizza with Anna's friends Molly and Emilie.

By the time we left the restaurant, rain had turned to monsoon, if you can imagine a monsoon without anything like heat. The car park had about 2 inches of water in it - just what you need when you have 3 girls wearing glittery pumps.

Anyway, when they got home, they all changed into waterproofs and wellies and went outside splashing with great enthusiasm. When Anna came in as it was getting dark, utterly drookit, dripping everywhere, she proclaimed it was the best birthday ever.

Once she was in warm, dry clothes, we settled down to watch Vincent and the Doctor - Curtis is a genius - which was a fitting end to the Doctor Birthday - or at least the first one. Doctor Who geekery doesn't tend to be something you grow out of.

As she'd had to work so hard on Saturday, we'd always planned to extend the celebrations to Sunday. We both slept really late and didn't get out of bed until after 11 and then snuggled up on the sofa with bacon rolls to watch "The Invisible Enemy" the Doctor Who story where Tom Baker and Leela meet K9 for the first time. We both really enjoyed it. It confirmed Anna's love for Tom Baker. It was quite funny, though - she was amused by the reference to the first cloning experiments taking place in the 40th century when in fact Dolly the sheep came along less than 20 years later, before Anna was even born.

In the afternoon, we went to Ocean Terminal. Can you guess which shops we went to?

Punch Taverns apologise to LGBT Labour over #Greencoatboy banning

Well, I guess this is something from Punch Taverns, owners of the Greencoat Boy pub in Westminster where LGBT Labour were refused service on Saturday night in what has to be one of the stupidest and most ignorant blunders by a pub manager ever.

This is the full statement from their website:

"Punch Taverns seeks to provide open and welcoming venues to everyone. We are shocked and saddened that the Labour LGBT did not experience this at The Greencoat Boy last night and apologise unreservedly.

"Across our estate, diversity and inclusion are a core part of our ethics and are clearly referenced in our recruitment process, our equal opportunities policy and training. We would like to stress that this is an isolated incident; we have a good track record on equal opportunities and we do not tolerate homophobia in our pubs, whether from guests to other guests, or involving our employees.

"We are currently conducting a full investigation of the incident and the Deputy General Manager will not be on site until the investigation is concluded. We are co-operating fully with the police and plan to meet with the LGBT Labour Group early next week to discuss how we can work together to further improve our policies and procedures.

In addition, we have this morning contacted all of our general managers and pub teams to remind them of our equal opportunity policy and will seek to work with external partners to further enhance our training to ensure that inclusion remains at the heart of it."

This is a well worded statement, I think, which aims to point out that diversity is at the core of their values and not something they do simply because they are required to by law. It's good that LGBT Labour are going to meet with senior managers next week.

I can't quite get my head round what the manager thought he was doing on Saturday night. I mean, turning away the LGBT Group from a major political party. Did he think they were just going to meekly go away and not tell anybody about it? The story spread across Twitter really quickly and tweeters from every political party and none expressed their anger and disbelief at what had happened.

I suppose this incident shows that, unfortunately, homophobia is alive and well in this country and having experienced it at first hand, I hope that LGBT Labour will reconsider some of the poisonous tweets from Labour members directed at David Laws last weekend. Ben Bradsahaw, in particular, ought to be ashamed of himself for this tweet. Labour did not create a discrimination-free utopia while in office, regardless of what they think, and I'm still angry at the lack of understanding they showed David.

Sure, the man himself has realised that he actually had nothing to worry about, having received nothing but support from the very people he feared would reject him. Having said that, not every story has this sort of happy ending. Just amongst my friends, I know a few people who have had a really hard time with their families and have been terribly hurt as a consequence.

At least in this instance, Punch Taverns have done the right thing. They took more time than they perhaps should but they've taken action. Let's hope that they have a successful meeting with LGBT Labour this week.

So what should happen to the manager of the #Greencoatboy?

When we came in last night from Anna's birthday dinner last night, I saw that Twitter was awash with comments featuring #bigotbar. It didn't take me long to discover that LGBT Labour had booked the place to hold a function but when they got there, they were apparently told by the manager that had he known that they were an LGBT group h e wuold never have taken the booking and refused them service.

That seems to be a clear breach of the law. Look what the Equality Act (Sexual Regulations) 2007 says:

(1) For the purposes of these Regulations, a person (“A”) discriminates against another (“B”) if, on grounds of the sexual orientation of B or any other person except A, A treats B less favourably than he treats or would treat others (in cases where there is no material difference in the relevant circumstances).

It appears to me to be an open and shut case of discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation to me, not that I'm a lawyer, of course.

The people concerned from LGBT Labour have rightly reported this breach of the law to the Police and this is by far the least of the problems that the pub's owners Punch Taverns in the morning. Their Chief Executive Giles Thorley, who actually leaves at the end of this month, will have a fairly full inbox (askgiles@punchtaverns.com in case you're wondering), including this from me:

Dear Mr Thorley

I’m writing to express my horror at hearing that the LGBT Labour group were denied service at your Greencoat Boy pub in Westminster on the grounds of their sexuality.

This is a clear contravention of the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation Regulations) 2007 which clearly state that:

“1) For the purposes of these Regulations, a person (“A”) discriminates against another (“B”) if, on grounds of the sexual orientation of B or any other person except A, A treats B less favourably than he treats or would treat others (in cases where there is no material difference in the relevant circumstances).”

I will not use any Punch Taverns facilities unless or until I can see that you are taking action to deal with this breach of the law, are working as an organisation to ensure that all of your employees know their legal obligations and that you will not under any circumstances tolerate such homophobic discrimination in the future. A public apology to the group concerned would be an essential part of that.

I look forward to hearing from you with details of your response to this shameful incident.

Yours sincerely

Caron Lindsay

Also note that Mr Thorley is leaving at the end of this month and his place is being taken by Ian Dyson who formerly worked at Marks and Spencer. If the current regime fails to deliver an acceptable response, the new one might.

So what should Punch do?

In my view they have now had plenty of time to issue the required grovelling apology to LGBT Labour, weekend or not, but that is essential.

They need to show that they take this seriously and will ensure that nothing like this happens again.

What about the manager whose comments sparked the incident, though? Should he simply be sacked? I'm not so sure. He needs to abide by the law in future, but I'm not sure sacking him straight away would help and it would only have the effect of entrenching his own views.

I'd really love to have half an hour with him, just to see if I can find out where his prejudice came from. We know there is far too much homphobia out there - I've written about it often enough in this blog and like all prejudices, it will have its roots in irrational fear or lack of knowledge. Maybe if someone had a chat with this man in a non threatening environment, his views could be challenged and he might change his mind. Is that not worth a try?

Happy Birthday, Anna

Today is Anna"s 11th birthday. I can"t believe I"m awake at this ridiculous hour. It"s a bit like the day she was born, when we finally got up to the ward at 5 am or so. I had been awake for some 26 hours at that point so you would think I'd want to sleep, but all I could do was look at my gorgeous little baby in wonder, gratitude and astonishment. Those feelings haven't diminished one bit in 11 years.

As I watch her sleep now, I have 11 years of amazing memories to make me smile. Obviously she's gone through many different phases. So often I've thought that motherhood couldn't possibly get any better but it always does.

This year has seen her become more of a Doctor Who geek, enjoy the Twilight books, develop a flair for making videos and take up two new interests, Judo and Drama, both of which she loves. She's still also involved in the local youth choir. Unfortunately, today's going to be a day of work for her as she has a drama dress rehearsal immediately followed by two choir concerts. We're going out for dinner afterwards so we won't see Doctor Who till later.

Stephen came over last night and gave her the K9 box set which includes the very first K9 story ever & K9 & Company which was a much inferior forerunner to the Sarah Jane Adventures, but it has K9 and Sarah Jane in it so I watched it regardless.

I should also say Happy Birthday to Stephen's mum who is celebrating today too.

As for Anna, I hope she likes the presents we've given her. She has everything she asked for & a little bit more.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

How on earth can Inverness be considered ugly?

I am spitting mad with fury that Inverness, the town of my birth, has been nominated for a Carbuncle Award.

This is not a simple matter of me looking back with rose tinted spectacles. I visit the city regularly and although you can't help but wonder exactly what the architects who designed some of the questionable 60s architecture at the bottom of Bridge Street were on, I still think it's one of the loveliest places I've ever been to.

I never fail to smile at that bit on the A9 where the Kessock Bridge comes into view and Inverness unfolds before you. Although it's 31 years since I actually lived there, I feel like I'm properly home when I see that.

There have been huge changes since I lived there, of course. The city has really expanded with many new housing estates being built, like many other places, but still, the sights that made me happy as a child are still there. If you start walking along the river at the Greig Street Bridge, looking over to Huntly Street and St Mary's Cathedral hall where I did so many of my primary school concerts, and walk alongside the river until you come to the green, lush, cool and beautiful islands, I defy you to find anything unpleasant about it. Ok, you'll need to turn your backs on the Caley Hotel and the aforementioned monstrosities on Bridge Street, but the rest of the walk, looking up the hill to the castle, going past the lovely Ness Bank church, going past the Glen Mhor hotel (a favourite place for family "occasions"), looking across to the awesome St Andrew's Cathedral, where I was christened in the font which could easily be mistaken for a weeping angel, Who fans..

Seriously, even away from this walk, as you go out of town towards Lochardil, Stratherrick Road is gorgeous. So is Culduthel Road, going out of town from Castle Street which has trees, gorgeous gardens, lots of side roads with lovely stone houses.

I also think that the Inverness Caley Thistle football stadium on the shores of the Firth, is just gorgeous. There is nothing like basking in the sunshine watching the team play.

I just find it really insulting that such a beautiful, thriving city should get within a million miles of this shortlist.

I would seriously go back to live in Inverness tomorrow if I could.

And as for John O'Groats' inclusion on the list, just because the last house in Britain hasn't turned into a concrete sprawled theme park does not mean it should be condemned as a ghost town.

I really wanted to be in Caithness yesterday afternoon when Phillip Schofield tweeted this

The long walk begins. John O Groats to .... afternoon tea :)

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If a southern softie like him can stand at John O'Groats in short sleeves, then it must have been a glorious day.

He then posted a series of photos throughout the evening showing the amazing Summer evening Caithness sunset, still not dark at 11pm. I hadn't realised that his wedding had been at Ackergill Tower and he'd returned there yesterday.

It's made me want to find a nice Highland holiday cottage for this Summer.

Is it wise to warn against alcohol consumption for under 15s

I have a confession to make.

I've been regularly consuming alcohol since I was probably 9 years old.

And I don't think it's done me any harm at all.

I'm not sure exactly when this started, but I'm guessing around 1976. Every Sunday we had a proper Sunday dinner and my dad opened a bottle of decent red wine. Every Sunday I had a small glass of this decent red wine. I still think that this was a factor in me never really having a great desire to get drunk in my teens. The only really costly effect is that it's given me a taste for a decent bottle of red. However in those days and for much longer, really, at least until the 90s, my father refused to accept that anyone other than the French could make decent wine, while I was branching out and experimenting much earlier.

I think that this model of responsible drinking did me some good so I'm slightly alarmed to see that Welsh parents are being warned not to give alcohol to under 15s, listing the binge drinking culture and physiological damage.

I'd like to know exactly how much booze you'd have to give a 15 year old to cause damage to their brains, but I'm betting a glass of wine with Sunday dinner is not going to be significant and will pay off greater dividends in giving an example of a healthy more sociable attitude to alcohol.

I've never been a great fan of banning certain foods. Don't get me wrong, I fed Anna water in an opaque cup and called it juice for as long as I could get away with and did lots of mushing up of organic vegetables and avoiding processed foods in the early days. It's funny, but to this day, water is her first drink of choice. I never encouraged frequenting fast food restuarants, but nor did I stop it, although we go to them less these days because I also make sure I leave stuff lying around showing the environmental impact of these places.

The only thing I've stuck rigidly to is absolutely no Nestle products because I really disapprove of that company for more reasons than I have time to tell you about at the moment, but this will give you a rough idea. I will not buy anything from Nestle under any circumstances, although I'm not so evil as to ban Anna from having them anywhere else. Funny, though, she will voluntarily turn them down even if I'm not there most of the time.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm all in favour of parents (and everyone else) being given accurate scientific evidence based information, but I'm not sure that advising prescriptive blanket bans on things suitably equips a young person to make healthy choices in the future. Does that make sense?

BBC publishes new MPs' Diaries

Some of the new intake of MPs have been talking to the BBC about their first weeks at Westminster.

It's interesting to read about their different experiences of the place.

Rory Stewart takes over from David MacLean in Penrith and the Borders. Mr MacLean was one of the prime movers in trying to keep MPs' expenses secret. He also stood in 1983 in Inverness against Russell Johnston which is when I first heard of him. Anyway, his successor will I hope be prepared to be more open and transparent than his predecessor.

He described the first meeting of the 1922 Committee. I don't get the need to bang on tables when your leader comes into the room - but then I'm a Lib Dem and we tend not to show too much reverence to our leaders. Respect, if they earn it, but we just don't do deference and forelock tugging.

One of the most interesting things he had to say was his experience when trying to chat to some Labour MPs. He's made some friends on the other side of the House but others wore their tribalism on their sleeve:

I actually had a very good conversation with some of them though I must confess there was a moment I thought, when I was talking to Luciana Berger (MP for Liverpool Wavertree), that when I told her I was a Tory she didn't seem so keen on talking to me anymore.

It felt a little bit like I had turned up at a dance and somehow was wearing the wrong kind of shoes.

Whatever happened to taking people as you find them? I don't think I'd ever voluntarily have a conversation with a member of the BNP - and even under coeercion I'd find it difficult, but most people, from all parties, are good people who are there because they want to improve people's lives.

The Liberal Democrat contributor is David Ward, the new Liberal Democrat MP for Bradford East. He writes about how he missed his son's birthday:

I've got to check my rail ticket for getting back home - it's my son's birthday on Thursday and I'm actually taking a later train because it's £40 cheaper so I'll get home at 11pm on his birthday.

I'm saving the taxpayer £40 but is this really what I want to be doing to my son on his birthday and missing the meal I would be having with the family?

What I get from him is that he just wants to get on with work and he's a bit fed up with the pomp and ceremony.

What a difference a week makes for former NUM president Ian Lavery. On week 2, he was fed up with the lack of a proper desk, describing himself as an "industrial gypsy." It's amazing what a few diamonds and a bit of a show can make to a left wing trade unionist:

It's been quite a lively day today, the day of the Queen's Speech. For me it was a very, very extraordinary day, all from the way in which the Queen arrived to the House of Lords this morning, the pageantry, the cavalry, the horses. It was absolutely fantastic.

I'm not a great Royalist but to see this display was quite fascinating and I must say really, really enjoyable.

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Maybe he should have a chat with Luciana Berger about open-mindedness. He's on the Labour benches, so she'll talk to him.

Tory MP for Totnes Sarah Wollaston, the former GP who was selected by open primary, has a realistic sense of the precariousness of her position. I like her attitude:

It's quite a strange experience being a new MP. You swing from really special moments like that backwards and forwards to times when it's going horribly wrong.

You can never quite decide whether you're an important person or really, right down there at the bottom of the food chain.

Finally, Chi Onwurah, Labour MP for Newcastle Central didn't like the Tories' triumphalism:

All the Tories in the dining room banged and shouted, and yeah, it did feel like a public school canteen, not that I've ever been in a public school canteen. That's when I decided to leave.

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This is just a taster of the programme that's on Radio 4 at 4 pm today. I'm looking forward to listening to it.

Yikes, there's a snake on the loose

I really like @Labourcat on Twitter. She is kind and sympathetic and interesting and we have lots in common but she ruined my day before I even got out of bed this morning, with this tweet about a snake that's escaped in Falkirk.

I really can't abide anything that slithers along the ground on its belly and snakes really scare me. When Willie Rennie ended up with one round his neck during the election campaign I couldn't even look at the pictures. The thought that a 6 foot boa constrictor is on the loose 18 miles from my house does not make me happy.

The BBC is kind of missing the point about it not being venomous when actually it squeezes you to death. Well, it would probably have a bit of a hard job with me but that's beside the point.

Do you know, I even looked up on Google to see how fast they could travel and, in 18 hours' time, it could be in my back garden. If you see it heading down the A801, please don't tell it that our house is near woods where there are lovely juicy bats for it to pick from the trees, as I read that they are quite partial to this particular delicacy.

The BBC has some handy advice if I do happen to find it in my back garden:

Anyone who sees the boa constrictor has been advised to leave it to experts and contact police or the Scottish SPCA.

Like I was going to invite it in for tea...........

My First Ever Statporn - May 2010

On the first of every month I see lots of other blogs unveil their stats for the previous month and I've never done it before. What's prompted me to do it today is not entirely that I've had the most successful month on my blog ever, by a long way, with, according to Google Analytics, 5,268 absolute unique visitors, but what they read.

Here's me, thinking that it would be the discussion of the election, the subsequent forming of the coalition or something political at least that would have been most popular but no. Well, actually, it was the post about what the Lib Dems would do to tax credits that was the most popular, but hot on its heels, much to my disgust, was the one about Lewis Hamilton and his earrings.

Here are the top 10 stories from May 2010:

1 Liberal Democrats and Tax Credits - the truth exposed

2 F1: Boy with the Black Earrings

3 Tory Candidate Philippa Stroud prayed for gays to be released from demons And this woman is now a special adviser to Iain Duncan Smith! It figures, I guess, but, yikes.

4 Why I support David Laws

5 Did I miss Labour's Holyrood Democracy Riots? on the 55% dissolution issue.

6 "There is no money left" jokes Labour as Lib Dems promise social justice.

7 Excited about Elephants in London. I want to go see them!

8 Sorry guys - I lost. That tweet from Willie Rennie that still brings a tear to my eye.

9 Digital Economy Act - ask your MP to take action..

10 New MPs warned that they could lose their seat. Hmmm. Weird Commons rules take precedence over will of people? I doubt anyone's going to test this one, though.

It occurs to me that you may have seen some of these already seeing as they were the most popular. Maybe I should add in another few of my favourites:

Sehar Shabaz - an injustice too far - the coalition has to stop this sort of thing happening.

Digital Economy Act - get your MP to get behind EDM 17 - on Julian Huppert's efforts. He's going to be an awesome MP.

Middle Aged Men in Suits - the story of the election and things to come?

Some Friendly Advice for our new Lib Dem Ministers.

Has Livingston Conservative Candidate breached Data Protection Act?

I take great pride in the fact that a fair number of people searching for UKIP Bad end up on here. Otherwise the searches are pretty predictable. I'd never have thought there were so many ways of writing Lewis Hamilton's earrings! I'm quite intrigued by the fact that someone looked for "Graeme Morrice - Livingston - Black Dog". Graeme is my new Labour MP and I have no idea as to his domestic/pet arrangements but I wonder where that one came from. "88 year old comic Caron" made me smile too. I did look in the mirror the other day and wonder when I turned into a hag, but 88 is a bit unkind. There was another one "Caron to cut welfare benefits". Whoever wrote that really doesn't know me at all. And then there was "Clegg - Livejournal - Jaffa Cakes".

It's been probably one of the most exciting months since I've started blogging. Even though I've had more time, I still haven't written half the posts I've wanted to. As unemployment and life as a struggling writer beckons, I hope that'll change.