Liberal Burblings

Archive for October, 2010

Oh dear. I love Stephen Fry dearly. Yesterday I had a W.H.Smith’s voucher from last Christmas to spend. Sadly, I went through all the shelves and couldn’t find a single book to buy. OK, I wasn’t in the mood. But what really made my stomach turn was to see all the self-satisfied faces of celebrities on books brought out for Christmas. And chief amongst the celebrities who turned my stomach was Stephen Fry.

He’s got a book out so he talks total todge about sexuality.

Stephen (who I am under no delusion will read this, but I’ll write it to him directly anyway) you are brilliant, rich and fatastically witty. I greatly admire the way you have struggled with bipolar condition and helped to get its sufferers more accepted by the public. We love you. You don’t have to do any more. Just enjoy yourself.

Now shut up.

…Or in the words of Clement Atlee:

a period of silence on your part would be welcome.

The Mail on Sunday reports a furious row between Bob Russell and Nick Clegg over the housing benefit cuts. Apparently Bob Russell left the room (where the discussion was taking place) in such a fury that he “took the door off its hinges”. The next morning, Mike Hancock MP returned to the scene, presumably wearing overalls and carrying a DIY box, and attempted to repair the damage before it was noticed by the Commons authorities.

Cross-posted from Liberal Democrat Voice

James Lyons of the Daily Mirror tweeted last night to say “Oh dear – lib dems picked wrong weekend to call for curbs on anti-terror measures”.

He referred to a Guardian story about LibDem backbenchers calling for the scrapping of control orders and the limit to detention without charge to be reduced to 14 days.

Well yes, I suppose if you have a hangover this morning and, therefore, impaired thinking faculties, it is easy to hear the news (of the discovery of the toner cartridge bombs on their way to the US) and think “silly, woolly Liberals” for raising their heads above the parapet at precisely the wrong time.

Except, surely we, as a society, have learnt the lessons of acting in a red mist of anger to put in draconian measures left, right and centre, have we not? Labour did that for thirteen years and got us into a mess.

Surely a democracy can do more than one thing at once, can it not? Can we not ensure we have tight security controls while making sure we don’t throw the baby of freedom out with the bathwater?

And can we not actually think things through? From a cursory first glance, the disocovery of the bombs in Leicester (yes, dear old Leicester!) and Dubai came about, it appears, as a result of something which has been lacking in recent years. Good old fashioned, ears to the ground in the Arab world (specifically Yemen). It is doubtful that the sort of connections which allowed MI6 to flag up this plot are going to be fostered in future by knee-jerk Jack Strawism here in the UK.

Here’s an example of one of the many thousands of cigarette lighters – all pretty similar in shape and colour – which have washed up on Cornish beaches for several years.

Perhaps a container of them was washed over board from a ship several years ago…

It reminds me of the 29,000 yellow plastic ducks, blue turtles and green frogs that have spent 15 years travelling 17,000 miles around the world’s oceans.

It’s good to see that there is a way that malicious trolls can be brought to book.