Housing Plans

Residents in Broxtowe have reacted with disbelief to the proposals of consultants that three large housing estates could be built on the greenbelt in the borough. Before I go any further I'll make it clear that I would personally be very affected by these proposals as the largest proposed estate is directly behind my house. I don't hide from that at all.

Even if I wasn't affected personally I would still consider the proposals to be deeply flawed. The consultants did not look at any possible sites in the flood plain. That may be understandable given last years flooding, but if buildings were properly designed with flood risks in mind then matters could be far better than they are at the moment.

Equally on the largest proposed site in the borough, that directly behind my house, the consultants taken no account at all of the wholly inadequate transport arrangements that exist here for getting into the centre of Nottingham. All traffic has to go on one of two already highly congested roads, the A52 or the A609. Neither of these has the spare capacity to take potentially a further 10,000 vehicles travelling each way each day.

As a member of the Development Control Committee I have to consider any planning applications impartially and dispassionately, which I will do, but I cannot see how this proposed rape of the green belt could ever be justified.

Labour Out Of Touch

Two comments by politicians recently have illustrated how out of touch Labour have become with ordinary people, the people that their party was formed to represent.

First Gordon Browns answer to the economic squeeze - delivered just before he attended a banquet apparently costing £85,000 for the meal, is that people should eat less and not throw anything away - Monday's meal will be the leftovers from Sunday, that sort of thing.

If that wasn't bad enough we then had the appalling Angela Eagle trying to justify massive increases in road tax by saying that it won't affect poor people because they don't own cars. The arrogance of this was unbelievable. She obviously had no idea that the changes she was bringing about would make it ever harder for those on low incomes to be able to afford to buy and run a car.

It's pretty obvious now that Labour will lose the next election. The challenge for myself and my Lib-Dem colleagues is to make sure that people realise that it is our policies, rather than those of the Tories, which represent the best future for Great Britain.

Shame of Alistair Darling

When the Chancellor of the Exchequor announced the loss of two data disks with 25 million sets of personal details on last year he blamed it on a junior employee ignoring established procedures. The report on the fiasco published today shows that this was simply not the case. The fault lay with the management (or lack of it) in HMRC. Where is Darling's apology? He misled Parliament but doesn't seem in the slightest bit worried about this, let alone the fact that the department he presides over, and which Gordon Brown presided over for ten years prior to that, is a complete management fiasco.

TV Debate

Well the TV debate over allegedly racist comments has happened. I think that everyone agrees that we came out very much on top and showed the Tory position up for the complete falicy that it is. According to their spokesperson they are concerned that the publicity will reflect badly on the council, but it is of course them who have generated and sustained all the publicity. Rarely has an argument rung so hollow as theirs.

Incidentally, we are thinking of organising a whip round to buy the Tory spokesperson a tie as he clearly couldn't afford one!

Inappropriate Comments

The leader of the council last week used a phrase in a meeting which was wholly inappropriate. He has however offered an unreserved apology for it and for any offence caused. I for one am happy to accept this and the matter should now be closed.

Initially it seemed that this would be the case. Our Tory opposition, having told the press that they were going to move a motion of no confidence, failed to do so and said that if a full apology was offered then as far as they were concerned the matter was closed. However it took just 48 hours for their lies to be exposed, after I received a call from the BBC asking me to appear on TV on Sunday to discuss the matter in opposition to the leader of the Tory group. Which I wonder is the bigger sin, the council leader making a comment in a meeting where no members of the public were present and for which he apologied unreservedly, or the dishonesty of the Conversatives who, having told everyone about the remark in the first place, then said that they accepted an apology and regarded the matter as closed but who then immediately stirred things up about it again.

I've always known not to trust the Tories and this just demonstrates so clearly why. A party with no morality is totally unfit to govern.

42 Days and All That

Well the events of the past few days in Westminster have been breathtaking. Labour got their crazy 42 day proposal through only by selling out to the DUP. If Gordon Brown thinks that this is an endorsement of his premiership then he's deluding himself. The simply fact remains that there is no justification for this and it's yet another attack on personal freedoms in this country. Frankly the Government is doing the terrorists jonb for them.

Next David Davis resigns to force a by election on the issue. For the first time in my life I found myself agreeing with him. The Tory Party leadership though appears to have scored a huge own goal by failing to support him wholeheartedly. Thank God that the Liberal Democrats reallyt do believe in freedoms. If we didn't exist you'd have to invent us.

Poverty In The UK

Today's revelation that in the past year 3,000 more pensioners and 1,000 more children have fallen below the poverty line shows how badly Labour are letting down the people that they promised to support. Mind you, this is the party that gave pensioners an extra 75p per week a few years back, and last year suspended the winter fuel allowance, For a minister to describe the figures as disappointing, as one did on Radio 4 today, is the understatement of the year. These aren't disappointing, they're appalling. They are a national disgrace. Labours promise to halve child poverty by 2010 and abolish it by 2020 rings hollow. The truth is taht they have abandoned the people who looked to them for help.

Prospective Parliamentary Candidate

I have been given the honour of contesting the Broxtowe Parliamentary seat for the Lib-Dems for the third time at the next election. I'm delighted with this and would like to thank the many members of the locally party who voted for me.

My intention is to campaign positively as to the benefits that the Lib-Dems can bring. I'll leave negative campaigning for others. I want people to feel that politics is something relevant to them, and to encourage as many peoople as possible to get involved.

Blair Must Go

The Metropolitan Police have been found guilty in a criminal court of causing the death of an innocent man, and yet the Commissioner says that he won't resign. This is sadly sympotomatic of modern society, where people seem to want the power without the responsibility that came with it. I think politicians started acting like this when John Major was at number 10, and it has carried on since Labour came to power.

The bottom line is that there are times when the person leading an organisation must take responsibility for the actions of that organisation. This is one of those times. However much Blair tried to justify himself today (and his comments outside of court were cringeworthy) he is the man at the top and his organisations actions have been proved, beyond reasonable doubt, to have caused the death of an innocent man. For him to stay in post now would be to drag the Metropolitan Police even further into the gutter than they already are. Likewise the officer in direct charge of the operation, Commander Dick, should also resign. The jury may have said that they attach no personal blame to her but she headed up that unit and they caused the mans death.

One point that needs now to be looked at was why this matter even went to trial. Why didn't the Metropolitan police plead guilty and admit what they have done wrong? Why did they try and blame the victim, and try and exonerate themselves? The honourable thing to do would have been to accept that they had failed Mr De Menzes and his family, but they didn't even have the decency to do this. Every day the police seek confessions from suspected criminals for teh crimes that they have committed and yet the police themselves were unwilling to admit their own criminality.

Ever since Mr De Menzes was shot I've wondered where this shoot to kill policy of the police came from? How do they possibly think that this could have been lawful? The police are allowed to use reasonable force to restrain or arrest someone, and at times this could equate to lethal force. However to have a policy of shoot to kill is something different altogether, and yet the police adopted it without any public discussion or concensus, and without seeking the approval of parliament.

Vote Nick Clegg

Sad to see Ming step down but I think it was pretty inevitable. The King is dead, long live the King. I hope Nick Clegg, MP for Sheffield Hallam, will put his name in the hat and if so he'll get my vote for leader. Nick is a former Euro-MP for the East Midlands and I have now doubt could lead us onward to victory.

Fixed Term Parliaments

All the farce about a possible election over the past few weeks has led me once again to consider the benefits of fixed term parliaments. Other countries operate this quite successfully so why shouldn't we. At the moment the Government of the day can choose the timing of the election and inevitably pick a time which most suits them. This is acting in their interests, but not necessarily the country's interests.

Surely in a modern democracy we can cope with fixed length parliaments, preferably of four years in duration. That was everyone knows where they are and this silly phoney war doesn't happen. If we were really bold and coupled it with sensible hours for parliament actually sitting ans introduced more efficient voting methods then we could make it somewhere where things actually got done.

Brown Running Scared

So Gordon Brown has announced that there won't be an election this year. After allowing so much speculation to occur it's obvious taht he was intending to go to the country in November, so he's obviously beeen worried by recent poll results. I don't mean opinion polls, but genuine votes in genuine elections. The 1,000 votes that Labour lost, mostly to the Lib-Dems, in the Coalville by election on Thursday must have helped to make up his mind. Where people are offered a choice they are turning more and more to the Lib-Dems, and that must worry Labour half to death.

Is This Really How Richard Branson Wants To Make His Millions?

As I've said below (and by the way, thank you for all the messages of support following my last post) I've been targetted by a silent caller. Thankfully this has now stopped. There is now a bar on the phone line so that withheld numbers can't get through. However I've had to really battle with Virgin Media, whose phone system I use, to get anything done.

When I first rang the malicious calls bureau at Virgin Media all they were interested in doing was selling me new products. Apparently they think that silent calls are a good way to make money. Their so called customer service advisors seem to be nothing more than sales people. Frankly I was appalled that they want to make extra profit out of people in this way. The advice that they gave me was also wrong. They told me that:

a) The police wouldn't want to do anything - not true, the police were very good and very helpful;
b) Making silent telephone calls isn't a crime - Even when I pointed out to them that I am by profession and training a criminal lawyer they stuck to this incorrect line - in case anyone has any doubt it is an offence under s2 of the Protection from Harassment Act 1996 to pursue a course of conduct which causes another person harassment, alarm or distress, and this sort of behaviour is exactly what the offence is about; and
c) That is was probably just an automated dialing system - not true because we are TPS registered, an ex-directory number and I could hear someone present at the other end of the line.

The malicious calls bureau also told me that it is impossible to tell where calls have come from without having a trace on the line. Friends who work for BT tell me that this is in fact something which is very easy to do. I'm no expert on that, but I'm happy to trust the expertese of my friends. Even when the police said that they wanted a trace put on the line to check where future calls were coming from Virgin simply didn't want to play ball.

I never signed up to Virgin Media. They bought my old phone company. The temptation to now change to someone else is very strong. I feel very let down by them.

I'm sure that somewhere in the higher reaches of Virgin they will have a customer service charter or something like that. The senior management will tell themselves that they really do put customers first. Unfortunately experience on the ground shows that this is simply not the case.

Silent Telephone Calls

Someone has been targeting me with silent phone calls during the night. Frankly this sort of behaviour is pathetic. If you don't like what I stand for then come and debate the issues. I'm fully open about my beliefs and opinions, and I'm always willing to discuss them and explore other points of view. If people aren't willing to do this, and instead try and resort to campaigns of harassment and intimidation, they have already shown the weakness of their position and just how small minded they are.

I've had to report this matter to the police. They have now arranged for a trace to be placed on my telephone, and to block caller withheld calls. If it's you whose been doing this the message is simple, continue and you will be arrested and caught.

Given my criticisms of the far right parties in recent weeks I suspect that they or their supporters are behind this campaign. If so, it re-inforces my view that we need to stand up against evil, and describe it for what it is.