Curious?

Live for the next half hour, and around periodically after that. Ask me anything you like, no topic off limits but no guarantees you'll get an answer either if you get too out of hand! http://formspring.me/stephm0g

Taking the Mick

Poor Mick Bates, eh? What rotten timing, to have a night out go completely Pete Tong for an AM right at the worst possible moment, when the Welsh Lib Dems are trying to have a nice bit of upbeat conference coverage.

Oh, hang on. If you squint at this article you'll see that although it was written this morning, the incident in question happened on the 20th of January. Wonder why it wasn't considered news til over two weeks later then? I'm seething.

Blah blah who would you do a deal with blah blah blah..

Really, really, REALLY tired of every time a Lib Dem has any airtime, the only thing the interviewer keeps asking is what the party would do in the event of a hung parliament.

Get. this. through. your. heads.

IF one was generally supportive of the Conservative party, they would join the Conservative party. IF one was generally supportive of the Labour party, they would join the Labour party. (Though why anyone would want to do either is beyond me).

The Liberal Democrats do not exist as some organisation who just wait to see who they can lend their influence and expertise to. They're a party in their own right. In case you haven't noticed, they have a fully costed manifesto based on their own guiding principles and liberal instincts. Their own agenda.

Whether the Lib Dems are the third party, the second party, the outright winners or partners in a coalition, what they will do is the same as they do in those different positions at different levels all over the country - they will push for the reforms that make taxes fairer and greener, politics more accountable and less paternalistic and corrupt, and individuals freer to make their own choices over their own lives.

It's simple enough to understand, media goons! Think of some new questions, we've had enough years of the tired rehashing of this one. Or better yet, try asking Labour and tory talking heads whether they would go into a coalition with each other. It has to be said, those patronising authoritarian stuffed shirts all have more in common with each other than they do with any of my friends...

Clunky Logic.

I've lost count now of the amount of people I've had this row with. Someone will tell me again that it's good for the environment to incentivise drivers to scrap their old cars and buy brand new ones, so I might as well say what I have to say on the matter here so I can just wearily point at it.

This is not an environmental policy, it's an economic one. It's meant to kickstart the auto trade, not save the planet. Just stop and think about it for a minute and you'll see... I would love to have the figures on how long you would have to drive a cleaner car to offset the environmental cost of the manufacture of it.

It's just another sop, a near meaningless salve to our consciences while we blithely continue to destroy the planet, like the recycling industry. Actually worse. At least recycling does lead to some reduction in mining and refining, even if it is infinitely better to reduce packaging in the first place or come up with ways to reuse materials.

I'm not claiming to be blameless. I love driving, I drink pop from plastic bottles, I'm a filthy consumer just as much as anyone. I just wish everyone would be a bit more honest about it.

Tories plan to cut number of MPs.

So it says here, and on the radio earlier today. Apparently it's going to save public money: Mr Cameron said: "I think the House of Commons could do the job that it does with 10% fewer MPs without any trouble at all." Does any of this sound familiar? Well, perhaps not. We did word it better: There are too many national politicians, and they cost too much, so we'll shrink parliament by 150 MPs. But you know, it's on page *twelve* of the Make It Happen document the Lib Dems launched three months ago, so I expect it's taken dopey call-me-Dave this long to read that far, you can't expect him to rephrase it eloquently as well.

I wonder how long it will take the tories to cotton onto the fact that using public money to underwrite loans that the banks see as too risky to take on is NOT such a good idea? Probably when they catch the news and see that we don't like it. On a side note, I'm not sure who it was from the Lib Dems that was quoted in that last link there but they're right - a stunt is precisely what this is. But then, haven't New Labour always been a selection of cunning stunts?

Glad That's Over...

I have had a hard time with internal elections in the party this Autumn. Not as hard as Lembit, or Jenny Randerson, I'll grant you, but it's been tough finding myself necessarily pitted against people I like and respect because I'm supporting a bid by someone else I respect and like.

It's a big part of why I've been missing from the blog arena. I am a soft sod who likes everyone to be getting along, basically. And politics isn't always like that. In fact, it's much more often about backbiting and sniping - there's a reason why general workplace bitchiness has been termed 'office politics'.

I am extremely happy that both wonderful ladies I was supporting won their respective elections. Ros Scott is continuing to work in the same manner as party president as she did during her campaign, taking time to reach out to people in and out of the party via her blog and visits to all areas of the country. Kirsty Williams is an inspiring, incredible woman and has hit the ground running as the party's first female leader, and the first female leader of any political party in the Welsh Assembly, announcing a reshuffle just days after her election, and like Ros planning visits to various local parties over the next few months.

Now that we have our president and leaders in place, I just hope any resentment and hard feeling between the erstwhile candidates and their supporters melts away as we all remember that we are colleagues and friends in this party. I'm sure it will, knowing the lovely people involved. I promised Ros I wouldn't share any of the pictures I took of her and Lembit having an impromptu duel with toothpaste tubes in the Bournemouth sunshine a couple of months back when we ran into him on his way back from shopping for dental hygiene supplies, so I won't, but I do want to share this one. Altogether now: ahhhhhhhh bless!

Political Statements that Stink

I love Barack Obama as much as the next liberal, but I'm a bit concerned about a T-Shirt that a UK company is encouraging us to wear to show our support... it carries the legend:

I ♥ BO

I'm amazed, frankly, that their stocks of this design are running low. I would be too frightened of all kinds of armpit-in-face shenanigans to wear that in public!

'Non-hunting' Season and the Indomitable Spirit of the Brits

We're a funny old people in the UK. Give us any kind of rules and we bend them to distraction with a cheeky grin, and break them when nobody is looking. Irrepressible. Watch the motorways, where they aren't completely traffic-bound, and you'll see people slow to precisely the 70mph speed limit where they know there is a speed camera, or where a police car is in sight (indeed Douglas Adams and John Lloyd coined a term - a Grimbister - for the body of vehicles around a police car, travelling at the speed limit in their book The Deeper Meaning of Liff). The rest of the time drivers will proceed at a speed they are more comfortable with, generally around 80-90mph. The 'lock-in' is a quaint pub tradition where as long as the curtains are closed and the doors are shut, a pub will continue to serve alcohol long past official last orders time to their friends and regular customers inside. I have no doubt that there are smoking landlords and ladies who get out the ashtrays once the doors are shut too. The police generally turn a blind eye because frankly, we all have a sense of proportion and some laws are more important than others. It's all part of the innate liberal mindset we're born and brought up with, or that's how I see it - "it's harming nobody, leave them to it".

Today is the start of the third annual foxhunting season since the ban on the sport. I love this piece in the Independent. It tells it how it is. We Brits carry on doing whatever it is we want to, staying mostly just within the limits of the law. I love this country. I love the two-fingers-to-the-establishment attitude of people and encourage it. If your moral compass is sound, and you know you're not going to harm anyone by doing what you want to do, then go for it. I guess that faith in humanity is what makes me someone who could never be a member of either of the other two main parties in British politics. Daddy state does not know best. The police don't have time to chase people around for such petty misdemeanours as hanging around in groups of more than three on a street corner, smoking a joint in their living rooms because vile unpleasant alcohol isn't their drug of choice, or maybe (possibly, accidentally) coming across a fox when they're on a drag hunt. I'd like to tear down some of the illiberal laws that have been created over the last ten years, but some days it's enough to know that people all over the country are ridiculing them anyway. Tally ho!

Priceless Palin Prank

Sooner or later, if you take yourself too seriously as a public figure, you're going to come up against people who will send you up in style. I was a huge fan of The Sunday Show for this brand of humour - Dennis Pennis had it nailed.

The more ubiquitous form of the gag is the radio DJ wind-up call. Normally these are a touch on the mundane side, but BoingBoing just brought me pure gold. Two guys from a station in Montréal called Sarah Palin this morning. And she actually thought she was talking to President Sarkozy of France for a full five minutes. Even after they opened the call by telling her his special advisor was Johnny Hallyday. EVEN after they said they had seen the "documentary on her life" Hustler's 'Nailin' Palin'.

This so needs disseminating to anyone who might have thought of voting for her and the slimy creep "that one" McCain on Tuesday. It would have to be the final nail in the coffin, there's no way anyone could visualise her in a position as important as Vice President after hearing that. Hell, I even feel sorry for the people of Alaska, she has made the whole state look stupid.

E-voting machines. What a marvellous thing they're not.

Already, there's contention.

For heaven's sake! What is so wrong with a cross on a piece of paper? Or at least getting the technology *right*. With this kind of cock-up hanging over the process before polling day even comes around, it messes with the mandate and the authority of whoever wins.

Brown is the New Black?

When I was growing up, my mum displayed her Judas Priest and Black Sabbath LPs with pride and had fabulous liquid eyeliner and a love for the Rocky Horror Show that knew no bounds.

That sort of thing is cool, but it has its downside - what was I meant to rebel against?! Now the same feeling must be sweeping the nation with the revelation that the inhabitants of Number Ten are metal fans.

Imagine if you will, after a hard day in Prime Minister's Questions, Gordo posing with a hairbrush and screeching along to Iron Maiden in the cabinet room. It puts a smile on my face, anyway. I think he should start throwing the horns for photo ops.

The energy problem.

Just a quick one - this started out as a response to Anders Hanson's latest post, but got a bit out of hand! It follows on from discussion of green issues that have been on many Lib Dem blogger's minds lately, as you'll see if you visit his blog.

I have had the nuclear-as-green spiel from a couple of Lib Dem members. The argument starts from the same page as everyone: that we do need to stop burning coal and gas to produce energy, as it's polluting the earth and galloping through limited resources. Solar and wind power are all very well, say nuclear enthusiasts, and should be used much more, but they say we would need nuclear energy as something turn-off-and-onable to ensure continuity of supply as both the sun and the wind are so variable. Of course, storing power is not an easy task - if we could just keep it in a big warehouse or reservoir when we have a surplus, and send it down the wires when we need it, that would be lovely, but we just don't have the technology.

Fair enough then. What other sources of electricity could be turned on and off at will to fill the gaps when demand is greater than a wind/solar supply? To me the obvious answer is hydro and wave power - but I'm told I'm being naive and that even if we could build the infrastructure we need to combine those sources into a reliable energy network that could provide everything we need on demand, it would take so long that more nuclear power is still needed as a medium-term interim measure.

Hrrrmmm. I don't know. I still think that ensuring security of electricity supply by building nuclear power stations around the country is about as well-advised as ensuring security of your home by sticking landmines around your garden. I grew up hearing the stories of Windscale and Chernobyl, and you can tell me it's not the same these days until you're blue in the face, I just can't see how you can guarantee that accidents won't happen.

The Big Green Irony

I was one of the first wave of kids to be educated on environmental issues from primary school age in the UK. In the late eighties, I pestered my mum into spending what was a fortune out of her budget at the time on a catalytic converter for her car. I designed posters to stop people from using sprays that contained CFCs. I was the captain of my primary school's Environmental Quiz Team, and got to travel to other schools to take part in panel quizzes at assemblies and kick ass with my impressive knowledge of biodiversity and green issues.

I felt I was a typical member of my generation, as much as one analyses these things at the age of ten or eleven. So how is it that as my generation have grown up and entered the spheres of industry and politics, that in a lot of places we've lost our way so desperately? We can pat ourselves on the back for cutting out CFCs, but think about some of the ways we have moved backwards:

• Doorstep deliveries of locally produced milk, fresh every morning, in bottles which were sterilised and reused, have been replaced by plastic bottles picked up in bulk weekly from the supermarket.


• Instead of drinking soda from glasses, poured out of deposit bottles that could be returned to the newsagent for reuse by the drinks company, we grab plastic half-litre bottles of Coke or our sugary poison of choice, which are more likely to be thrown away than recycled.


• Unnecessary packaging has increased almost everywhere you look, it's almost impossible or at least prohibitively expensive to buy vegetables by weight in paper bags as we used to, with the majority picking up their (already impervious to contamination by means of their skins) fruit in plastic trays, wrapped with more plastic. That's if people are eating fruit and vegetables at all, when processed foods with huge carbon footprints are so much more convenient and often cheaper to live on.


• I don't know anyone locally to me who has a compost heap in their garden. In fact I only know one or two people who grow any food, or feed birds, rather than leave their garden as a close-cut lawn or something even more sterile featuring vast quantities of gravel.


• Modern children have more toys than ever, scores of brightly coloured plastic objects which often see little use before being discarded to make room for the latest flavour of the month.

This is all more on my mind than usual recently, as on Friday I took a trip with the Housing Association panel I'm on, to the Centre for Alternative Technology in Machynlleth. It was a return journey for me: I have visited once before, with my family, when I was about thirteen or so. I delighted in rediscovering the place, especially its ingenious cliff railway powered by gravity and rainwater (two things there are no shortage of in the Welsh mountains!) and astonishing engineering. You can see some pictures from my phone here, if you wish.

It was heartening to wander around with the Director and the new Manager of Pembrokeshire Housing, who have always been concerned and conscientious, on the lookout for yet more green initiatives they could incorporate into their policies, their existing stock and their new build houses.

The atmosphere at CAT is great, people there are doing positive things, from volunteering and living in a low-impact way to undertaking hugely impressive postgraduate research. You can't help but come away thinking. The idea is that you go away inspired and energise, I think, but I have to admit to feeling a little troubled.

As I said above, it's profoundly ironic that all the time we have been becoming more 'environmentally aware' this past couple of decades, we have also been consuming more, and doing so less responsibly on the whole. I am proud to be a Liberal Democrat for so many reasons, not least of which is our green credentials as a party: in the areas where government can change these things, we aim to (see the Green Tax Switch for a prime example). In many places where we lead councils you can see the difference, with better public transport and provision for pedestrians high on the agenda (try google searching for "Liberal Democrats pedestrians" and watch the number of campaigns that come up all over the country), and better, properly separated doorstep recycling facilities.

But we can't expect to come in as politicians and make everything better overnight. The mess we're in is up to all of us to take care of, and the eleven-year-old me is still in there somewhere dying to nag you so here goes...

While it is laudable that much is made of recycling up and down the country now, and almost everyone has some form of doorstep recycling scheme, I can't help but think that it is being regarded quite wrongly as a panacea. Sure, it's not entirely greenwash. I would rather see a recycled drinks can than one which is made by mining bauxite and using 95% more energy, that's not in doubt. But people seem to forget that recycling still uses energy and resources to achieve. Here are just a few things that will reduce your waste output in an even more green way than recycling:

• Buying less, and buying ethically with reducing waste in mind wherever possible, ideally from places that use less packaging or biodegradable packaging - farmers' markets are an obvious example, you could see if there's a local 'box scheme' to get fresh fruit and veg delivered to you in season, and away from food I'm a particular fan of Lush (bath and beauty products) for their commitment to this ethos of minimal and degradable packaging. If you aren't frightened of looking eccentric, as it's so rare to find people doing it even now, you could try doing what Ben Bradshaw was urging two years ago and dumping excess packaging at the checkouts. If we could all do this and successfully encourage others to do it, there would come a tipping point where the retailers had to rethink their attitudes.


• Swapping. Oh yes. I have actually done clothes swapping parties and it's a much greater fix than buying a new outfit, because you don't spend anything, you get rid of stuff you don't wear any more, and you get new-to-you stuff that you'll love.


• Composting there was a tiny part of the vast array of displays at CAT that really impressed me and taught me something I didn't really know the extent of: they had two vegetable beds, side by side, into which they had planted precisely the same varieties of seeds. On the left, the weediest little runts of leeks, barely thicker than a pencil, struggled to survive. On the right, the beefiest, biggest leeks I have ever seen stood proud of the bed and jostled for space. The only difference between the two tiny plots was a layer of home made compost. This is an awesome way to cut down your household waste, it's really easy to get started and you can even use waste paper, especially newspaper, in your compost bin.


• Selling things. You might think of eBay or Amazon marketplace immediately, but it's not all about getting the highest price for your limited edition books and music you no longer want! There are still places that will pay to take empty cans off your hands: try looking here to see if there's an alupro centre near you.


• Re-using items, either for their intended purpose or any variety of new ones. Pretty craft projects are great and you don't have to be handy with that kind of thing, everyone can make a lemonade bottle bird feeder! And it's not only on this kind of small scale you should think about reuse of your junk - next time you're throwing out shelves or a microwave, don't just skip them, find out if your local authority has links with charities for such things to be repaired and resold cheaply. In Pembrokeshire, Frame perform this function, and provide work and training to disadvantaged individuals into the bargain. It's where most of my furniture came from :)

I know I sound like an idealist hippy. I know these ideas are still not mainstream. I know we're all very used to life moving quickly and everything being available and disposable to us. I'm as guilty as anyone of all the worst excesses of 21st century life. But we desperately need something politicians are hard-pressed to provide or impose, and quite probably shouldn't in some areas. We need a massive culture shift. And it's been twenty years or more coming. Let's help it gather speed.

Self-indulgent ramble, feel free to ignore...

I have been avoiding this blog assiduously for some weeks. I've had a storming head cold and a mental and financial hangover from conference but that really wouldn't normally be any excuse for me to stop writing, quite the opposite. I'd like to say I don't know why I've not been around, exactly, but the truth is, I do.

Over the course of Lib Dem Conference, I got to know someone who described me as 'the most utterly sorted person' he had ever met. I was disbelieving, stunned. I may project an aura of confidence and savoir-faire, but underneath I've been a bit of a mess, if the truth be told, for about ten years.

I've faced some difficulties over that time that were not of my own making, but many more that were entirely, if unconsciously, self-constructed. I have set about transforming my life into one I could be proud of, one more fitting of my native wit and intelligence and the schooling I was so generously afforded by my family, several times. And each time I have simultaneously done things that set me up for catastrophic failure. I could go into anecdotal evidence, but it is all too painful and too private to broadcast here. Take my word for it, I have the process of taking great opportunities and spectacularly blasting them to smithereens down to a fine art.

I'm not scared of failure. I'm used to failure by now. I am deeply, deeply ashamed of living in a housing association house and working for two days a week in a job that doesn't actually stretch me one iota. It has caused untold damage to my relationships with anyone I care about who knew me before about 1999: I am seen as prickly and unapproachable - permanently on the defensive because I have become so accustomed to seeing myself as a poor, lost cause that I am convinced that that is all anyone else who knew me as a child and a teenager will see when they look at me and it makes me bitter. And that is a high price to pay for being a failure in my own eyes, but I have continued to plant seeds of destruction in my life thus far because I don't fear failure at all. What I fear is success.

So, one and a half years into my membership of this party, when I find myself unexpectedly the subject of praise and admiration, when I find myself pushed from all quarters to become a parliamentary candidate, when I am surrounded at conferences (and at the end of the phone from at other times) by a whole network of good, worthy people who see huge potential in me, when I find myself nominated for Lib Dem Blog of the Year against and over other bloggers that I don't feel like I come close to measuring up against, I feel tearful. I am actually even struggling to write this.

The truth is, I didn't join the party with any ambition in mind. I joined because I met some people who liked to talk about politics and political history, who had noble ideals and kind faces, and I wanted to spend more time around them and people like them. I laughed when my PPC said to me at the time that I would find that responsibility comes quickly in this party and I may find that things snowball, I remember saying "what, so you'll have me delivering leaflets in no time, then?". So to find that actually, this is a place where I could achieve some form of success, not only some form but a form that really appeals to me and would make me proud of myself as like anyone I want to be, deep down, TERRIFIES me.

I actually woke up this morning and swore off going to Welsh Lib Dem conference this weekend, ostensibly because of the aforementioned cold, but in reality because I'm in the grip of terror. You have my mother, who knows me well enough to know when I need an arsekicking, to thank (or address your hate-mail to!) for the fact I've changed my mind. And the fact I'm back here.

A Proper Blog Post follows shortly.

Aten't dead.

I have been feeling a bit snowed under with one thing and another, and suffering the corresponding painful low that comes after being so utterly manic at conference. I have a few posts half written and saved as drafts (including the interview with Nick Clegg), will finish them and deliver them to you all when I'm feeling back up to speed. Thanks for your patience...