In response to Nick Clegg’s speech to conference earlier Eric Pickles MP has said

"After this muddled conference, it's now clearer than ever that if you want to get rid of Gordon Brown and his big brother state, and if you care about our schools, our quality of life and our liberties, you need to vote Conservative for a progressive, liberal government."

Surely now Eric must admit to living on another planet. The Tories are not liberal, they’ve never been liberal and they never will be liberal

I’m currently up in Edinburgh, enjoying the fringe with a few friends from uni. The city is amazingly beautiful, and when I get home over the weekend ill post some of the photos up on here, for all to see.

I would just say though if you get the chance to come here take it. Even if it is not the time of the Fringe, there is plenty to do in this wonderful city.

That said I would just like to know which idiot in the city council decided to effectively dig up all of Princes Street during August – when the city is at its busiest? Surely it would have made more sense to do the work needed say in September when the main tourist attraction to the city isn’t taking place.

As Adam Hills said last night – “that’s quite a cluster-fuck”

Why is it when Parliament is sitting constituents have a hard time grasping the idea that Monday to Friday MPs work in parliament?

I've worked for a MP for 10 months now and every week I have pretty the same conversation at least once. It simply is;

“can I speak to My MP?”

“Unfortunately no – He is in Parliament at the moment but you can see him at his advice bureau...”

The title is Member of Parliament; yet this simple title seems to fly straight by when constituents are involved. They expect the MP to be in the constituency office, personally dealing with every enquiry that comes into the office. I can speak for other MPs offices, but the one I’m working in does anything from 50 to 100 cases a week – ranging from the nice and simple, to long and complicated and everything in between.

So constituents expect the MP to be in the constituency all the time, especially when Parliament is sitting. Its become my experience that some people will only speak to the MP – that’s fine, that’s why MPs have advice bureau, but unfortunately part of the job of being a MP means your away from the constituency office 4 to 5 days a week (unless your a London MP) and the reason they’re away, is that they are representing you in Parliament.

Why is it everyone thinks MPs are on a 80day holiday?

So now that its recess I can have an all new conversation – mostly consisting of
“MPs are on a 80 odd day holiday”

Right first things first – ITS NOT A FUCKING HOLIDAY.

Just because Parliament is not sitting doesn’t mean that MPs stop working. Parliament does not always sit on a Friday, yet MPs work on that day in the constituencies. Yet this idea of working in constituencies seems to not have spread to when parliament is on recess.

Now I agree that 80 days is far to long, and there are simple ways of dealing with that problem (I favour the Canadian System where Parliament sits three weeks out of four – so that the MP works in the constituency for that week). However until someone has the balls to change the lengh of the summer recess were stuck with – so lets make the best of a bad situation.

I was asked today whether the MPs advice bureau will still go on as “there on recess”. I have a feeling no matter how many times I’m told this over the next few weeks the message wont get through. People will choose to believe that MPs have stopped working for the whole 80 day period and the simple reason is that despite they know better the media will always report a ‘scandalous’ break from parliament rather than what it actually is – just working in a different office

The Birmingham Post has published a list off all claims for the MPs in the area

Included in the list are;

Liam Bryne (Lab - Hodegehill) & Roger Godsiff (Lab – Sparkbrook) who haven’t released his receipts yet
Caroline Spellman (Con – Meriden) who claimed £102.13 on a sat nav system - becuase she doesn't know her way around Birmingham

Rt Hon Geoff Hoon MP
Secretary of State for Transport,
Great Minster House,
76 Marsham Street,
London,
SW1P 4DR

Dear Rt Hon. Mr Hoon MP,

On behalf of a great-full nation, thank you....thank you for making our normal working live impossible for the last five days. Why is it the Department of Transport, which during normal weather is semi competent at best, is able to cause the entire country to shut down in one demonstration of miss-action (I’m aware I have answered my own question, but let’s keep going anyway)

Why is it that your department is in capable of watching a weather report? I mean its not difficult, BBC news and Sky news show at least two an hour. And even if you miss them the BBC news/Sky news websites provide weather reports.

Maybe I’m being too hard on you, as lets be honest the weather isn’t the only reason your department is so spectacular in its failings

So let’s look at all of your recent spectacular failings.
• Well there’s been the ‘improvements’ to the West Coast Mainline which resulted in it being shut for almost an entire week (and lets remember that was only four weeks ago)
• Then there is the spectacularly stupid decisions to build a new runway and terminal at Heathrow (completely ignoring any notion of reducing C02 out put from this country)
• And now we have your department not watching a weather report

By the way I’m sure there are more failings but these are the ones most recent in my mind
The fact that weather isn’t a science, more of an educated guess shouldn’t have been forgotten but nevertheless within a 72 hour window they are usually pretty accurate. But that should not be an excuse for not being ready for snow. I could understand not being ready for a snow storm in winter if we lived in sub-Saharan Africa, but we don’t – we live in northern Europe which has cold winters (and in our case almost always shitty summers), and cold winters mean we often have temperatures below zero Degrees Centigrade.

Now as you have all failed to watch the weather reports, I’m going to assume that you all failed even the most basic lessons of science. So he is a very quick lesson for you when the temperature gets below zero degrees centigrade water freezes. And when water freezes on roads they need gritting, to ensure they can still be driven on.

Now that is about as simple as I can make it and hopefully you are beginning to see where you have made your mistake. You see having enough grit to last a few weeks would, again would be ok if we weren’t so far away from the equator. What we need is enough grit for the roads so it doesn’t run out, or get close to running out after only a few days.

Now as for the railways – why is it Norman Baker MP can get on a train in Norway, and get all the way to the North Pole (and be there on time) yet a Virgin Train can not leave Birmingham New Street because it has been snowing for about an hour.

Please not other train operators also spectacularly failed over the last few days and it is unfair to blame this completely on Virgin Trains...although that isn’t going to stop me.

Why is, it the trains are so bad on a normal day, let alone and the slightest change in Weather? Virgin Trains have brought a new level to the word incompetent. 4 four weeks ago Sunday I was going to London. Now whilst I got to London roughly when I wanted to, the same can’t be said for the other people on the train, as you guessed it the train had been delayed.

Actually whilst were on the subject of Virgin Trains being delayed, can I just say that if by chance your train is delayed, and they get you into the station on-time...be prepared for a smug announcement for the train manager – believe me I’ve had to listen to one and it was unbearable.

Anyway Mr Hoon you are running a shameful department. To honestly expect everything to carry on as normal when the world changes so quickly, is one of the labour party’s more ridiculous notions. The fact of the matter is with no preparations at all, your department has brought the country to a complete standstill with no action, followed by no-action, followed by even less action.

Yours Sincerely,
Stephen Morgan

Someone who will never vote for you, and perhaps one of the few people in the country who didn’t blag a day off work this week to play in the snow

Yes even though it is likely to end terribly, I will be getting on a Virgin Train later and attempting to use the West Coast Mainline to get to London. I say attempting, as of course we all know two things about that particular route

A) Its had a few problems over the last week, &

B) Even when there aren’t problems with the line itself, there still no guarantee that the Virgin Train will be on-time.

I like so many other people have had mixed problems with Virgin Trains, whether it be the time that I got on 3 separate trains before we even left Euston or the time where we left Birmingham 20 mins late, only to arrive in on time in Euston, and have to listen to the smugness of the train manager boasting that he and his crew had actually done their jobs correctly.

It is of course unfair to blame these problems just on Virgin Trains, when they don’t actually run the tracks; no that’s left to a far more incompetent company. The six days of travel disruption last week, were not the fault of Virgin Trains, but predominately the fault of Network Rail, who apparently when upgrading the line, forgot that very occasionally it is cold in the UK, and maybe some form of precaution for that should have been taken into account.

On the transport chaos Liberal Democrat transport spokesman Norman Baker MP said: "Natural events do occur, but Network Rail needs to build more resilience into the network. I have travelled from Stockholm to the Arctic Circle on a train that arrived five minutes early, yet Britain lapses into chaos at the first hint of snow."

So my hopes of getting to London today (as I’m working in Parliament all next week) are slim. The chance of a virgin train being on time, are slimmer and the chance of network rail doing their jobs; well that just doesn’t exist.

With the governemnts announcement that shops will no longer be allowed to have cigarettes on display, in a vain attempt to stop people, or more specifically teenagers from smoking.

Whilst I would rather people didn’t smoke, ultimately it is up to the individual whether they do so or not, and the government on another of its nanny state lecturers. What exactly do the government think they will achieve with this? Instead of having an open and frank discussion, they want hide the problem away.

The logic for hiding cigarettes away is right up there with the logic of “Duck and Cover”. It seems that the government think that, the only reason 11-15 year old start smoking is because they see the packets of cigarettes in the shops. This is utter crap people don’t take up smoking because they’ve seen a pack of cigarettes; they do so because they’re pressured into it.

So once this hasn’t worked, which I guess the government will work out in what 9-12 months, they’ll go onto their next stupid idea. Now unfortunately I haven’t got a TARDIS so I don’t know if this will happen, but my prediction of the next stupid idea will be this;
The government will ban smoking on TV before the watershed – because children only smoke because it ‘looks cool’

Can’t the government just realise that people are free to live their lives as they want to, and not how some stuff old men in Whitehall, who lets remember when the smoking ban went through tried to exempt themselves.

This is just typical of New Labour; hide the problem in the corner, pretend that it doesn’t exist and then clearly all is solved.

I think its a shame. I think its a shame when our elected representatives demonstrate that there humanity is buried so deeply that its hard to see within them. What respect I held for Cameron and Brown was lost on Wednesday, when they took a tragic event and played political ping-pong with it, and not for a second did they think about what they were saying and how it would effect the situation. Instead the two jumped up and down to grab the attention of the press sit in the gallery above them

They jumped up and down, ignoring the issue, trying to look compassionate, but failing so spectacularly. They took there humanity and left at the door of the chamber and spend 10 vile minuets shouted across the chamber at each other, forgetting the entire issue. They spend 10 minuets playing politics, when what was really needed was for them to stop shouting and act like adults.

For 10 minuets we watched the Prime Minister and the Leader of the opposition disgrace themselves beyond belief, and quite frankly they no longer deserve to call themselves Rt.Hon Members.
And what did they achieve with this little shouting match? Very little. In fact the pair of them have achieved nothing substantial with this entire affair.

“Mr. Cameron: You accused me of party politics about this— [Interruption.] My apologies, Mr. Speaker; he accused me of— [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. I appeal to the House again: it is not good, at a time when we have heard this news about a little child who has gone before us, that we should be shouting across the Chamber. Let the Leader of the Opposition speak, and also— [Interruption.] Well, if the Leader of the House lets me do my job, she can do her job. Let the Leader of the Opposition, and also the Prime Minister, speak.

Mr. Cameron: The Prime Minister accused me of playing party politics. I did not mention who runs this council—and I did not mention who ran it when Victoria Climbié was tragically killed—and all I am asking is that the Prime Minister withdraws his accusation that I was in any way playing party politics, and not asking a perfectly reasonable question about a tragic case. I was putting to him a point made by his own Children’s Secretary, so I ask the Prime Minister one more time: please just withdraw the accusation that I was playing party politics, because he knows I was not.

The Prime Minister: I think the whole House will now want to find unity around these three things: first, this tragic incident must be investigated in every possible way; secondly, the Lord Laming review is the right inquiry to have; and thirdly, now that the full case review has arrived with the Children’s Secretary, he will take the necessary action. I hope the whole House can agree that these are the right things to do, and we are doing the right things to get the right answer.

Mr. Cameron: Obviously the Prime Minister does not feel able to withdraw what he said.”

Did David Cameron ask all those questions because it was the right thing to do, or was he just making sure that he would be in the papers the next day? I know what I think, but I’ll leave it to you to decide. I know one other thing though, Cameron didn’t look like a Prime Minsiter, he looked like a man desperate for the limelight, and desperate for attention.

And as for our illustrious Prime Minister, he too looked like he was desperate, but only desperate for media attention. He did not need to engage in a shouting match, and yet he did anyway. He did not need to anger Mr Cameron and draw him into a political discussion about this, and yet he did anyway. Yes Mr Brown you are the Prime Minister, and have been for some time but it appears no-one told you how to do the job properly, so here a few quick guidelines.
Tip number one, PMQs is when you answer questions, not ask your own ones. If you don’t want to answer the questions, resign and sit on the backbenches; but for as long as you sit by that dispatch box on a Wednesday your job is to be scrutinised by the Chamber. And the second Tip – trying acting like an adult for once.

There is so only one politician, who is making sense on this issue, and I’m not just saying this as she is a lib dem. Lynne Featherstonebrought some grounding to PMQs on Wednesday when instead of shouting and jumping up and down to get on TV, she talked about the issue at heart;

Lynne Featherstone (Hornsey and Wood Green) (LD): “I was leader of the opposition on Haringey council at the time of the Victoria Climbié tragedy, and I was told that lessons would be learned and that such a thing should never happen again. Yet it has happened again. Although I welcome the Prime Minister’s announcement yesterday that Lord Laming would lead a national review of child protection services, in terms of Haringey that does not go far enough. I hear what the Prime Minister says about looking at the report, but that report will not guarantee the safety of children in my borough. I ask the Prime Minister to look at that report, but also to call for an independent public inquiry.”

Lynne asked the only sensible question during the whole proceedings and she did it without shouting and playing to the camera. She seemed to be the only person who remembered that this wasn’t an issue for party politics but a tragic and terrible event that should never has been allowed to happen in the first place.

Today Conservative PPC Margot James (Stourbridge) said that homosexuals have a duty to vote conservative at the next election.

Ms James said that homosexual couples often don’t have children and thus they should vote conservative to get tax breaks. I was thinking that this would never get passed the pro-family conservative base, but then it came to me. This is just an extension of the Conservative’s favourite family policy – you must have two parents; a man and a woman. This isn’t support of the homosexual community by the Tory party this is a just new way or persecuting against their rights, and let’s be honest if some of the Conservative Party had their way, they would round up homosexuals along with any other minority group, and deport them out of this country.

But the idea that homosexuals do not benefit from taxes is completely wrong. Yes maybe they don’t have children, but the children who are currently going through the state school system (and thus benefitting from the taxes) may grow up to be in all sorts of fields that can be a benefit to the whole society (e.g. doctors and nurses).

So this PPC, who is openly gay, thinks that the ‘new modern’ Conservative Party can simply wash away years of actively promoting homophobic polices – especially the hideous bit of legislation known as Section 28. The idea that the Conservative party is open and friendly towards the homosexual community is one of the most ridiculous notions presented by the conservative party in recent times. Having met some of the Tory party activists and councillors from across the country, I now know that these people just spit bile and venom at anyone who doesn’t agree with their way of thinking.

So it’s obvious to me that that Ms James has never met these people, as if she had she would never had said; “gay people should not just vote Conservative, they have a duty to vote Conservative.” Duty? Duty to vote Conservative? I don’t think so. Yes people have a civic duty to vote but quite exactly why an entire community should all vote for the conservative party is beyond me. Ms James as well entitled to voice her opinion, but the idea of the entire homosexual community voting Conservative, is as about as likely Margaret Thatcher and Norman Tebbit leaving the Conservative party and joining a Communist party.

The scars of section 28 can’t be removed by Cameron’s showman politics. When the repeal of section 28 went through the House of Commons, the vast majority of Conservative MPs voted against it. And this of course was the second attempt to remove the bill; the first was stopped by the Conservative peers in the House of Lords. Now maybe Ms James forgot about all of this, because of course this only happened in 2003.

There is of course another area where the Conservative Party was able to show its homophobic credentials – the equal age of consent laws. Those with good memories; will know that it only passed after the Parliament Act was used, and this only happened because of a group of peers led by Baroness Young kept stopping the bill in the House of Lords.

Even more recently the party changed its rules so that during selection meetings, the panel can not ask a candidate about his or her sexual preference. This was three years ago. Everyone else grew up along time ago and realised that a candidate’s private life, is that; It’s private. It’s not up for discussion at a selection meeting and it is not a qualification for the job.

So, what Ms James was talking about, the proposed measure that gays should vote for the Tories and in return get tax breaks, is just another example of the modern Conservative party not promoting equality, rather they’re fighting against it. As normal (for them) one section of society will have different rules than the other, and even within the homosexual community there will be a difference in attitude from a Conservative Government; those that conform with their ideals will be rewarded, and those that fulfil their human rights to live their lives as they choose to and going to be punished by the government. So as I said not equal but segregated; the Tories not tolerant, just Homophobic and Ms James is just naive.

Ever since the first rumblings of unhappiness within the labour party towards Gordon Brown, the media have been out in force looking for the plotters who wish to oust the prime minster, in the vain hope that Labour won’t loose the next general election. And then they started to untangle the ‘plot’. First they found the Lancashire Plot and now they’ve found its bigger more powerful brother, and slowly but surely they helped to out the MPs who had, had enough with Gordon. So, the media have found one ‘plot’, and now they’re at it again.

So what do The Western Mail, The Time, and The BBC all have in common?

They all believe that there is a plot amongst senior Liberal Democrat officials, both at the national level and in Wales, that there is a ‘stop Lembit becoming president’ campaign. The Western Mail first reported the story, that several senior Welsh lib dem’s, are exercising there democratic right to choose who they want to be the president of the party, and by doing this they’ve chosen Baroness Ros Scott. So the Western Mail thinks that this is a plot, as the six obviously aren’t allowed to individually choose who they want to be leader, nor are they allowed to announce who they want to be leader or exercise any democratic right, that we as party stand for.

So that is one ‘plot’, the other is at the federal level, or at least according to The Times. This morning they reported that senior Lib Dems, including Vince Cable, Chris Huhne and Danny Alexander are secretly plotting to prevent Opik from winning the presidency. The article also points to Ed Davey, who ran Nick Clegg’s leadership campaign, being one of the main people running Ros’ campaign.

So again, the media have decided that when politicians make an electoral decision, they clearly can not make this on their own, and their must be something else going on.

So that’s a group of Labour MPs who all want Brown out of office, a group of lib dem’s who have publically endorsed Ros Scott and a second group of Lib Dem’s, who are being accused of trying to stop Lembit from winning.

Are these plots? Or maybe, just maybe these are politician’s exercising there rights to say whatever the hell they like. But obviously if you write a newspaper, that doesn’t matter – and it’s defiantly a ‘plot’.

Since this topic has once again been raised by Jack Straw, who has by all accounts become obsessed with trying to complete something that has for all accounts being going on for over a hundred years. Now not being the first person to write about this, and I probably won’t be the last, I’m just going to follow what other people have said – coz it worked so well for my dissertation.

So first some background. The House of Lords was the first chamber of Parliament to be created, and it dates back to the thirteenth century, where it served was an advisory council to the monarch of the day. By the fourteenth century there were two distinct bodies, which would later become the House of Commons and the House of Lords, advising the Monarch. One was made up of knights and Burgesses; the other was made up of Barons and churchmen. The two Houses were practically equal, and this remained the case until the early fifteenth century where the Commons denied the right of the House of Lords to influence tax policy.

Hereditary peers have been sitting in the House of Lords for hundreds of years. For most of that time, this only applied to male peers. In the 1920’s female hereditary peers were not allowed to take their seats, as there was a fear that they would promote radical reforms. It was not until 1963, under the ‘Peerage Act’, that woman hereditary peers were allowed to take up their seats.

There are now only 92 hereditary peers who were allowed to sit within the House. There composition is; 2 Labour peers, 3 Liberal Democrat Peers, 42 Conservative Peers and 28 Cross Benchers. These peers were elected by the House of Lords, in 1999 with the exception of the Earl Marshal and The Lord Great Chamberlain who remained so that they can carry out their ceremonial functions. If one of the 92 hereditary peers dies, then a by election is held to ‘elect’ a new hereditary peer to the House.

Reform of the House of Lords is not a new issue; rather it’s an old one. In 1867 Lord Shaftesbury said that “The people must govern, and not a set of hereditary peers never chosen by the people”. Proposals for reform of the House of Lords were seen twice in the 1920’s; with each time the government of the day backing down, but it was not until 1999 that a government passed a major piece of (composition) reform.

So as it stands no there are 4 options for reform of the House of Lords, known as the 4 R’s (a term coined by Lord Norton). The 4 R’s, are; retain, reform, replace or remove altogether.

Retain- House with non elected members

The argument to retain the House of Lords, refers to retaining the chamber in it’s present ‘interim’ state, and keeping the chamber as it is, as it compliments the current House of Commons

The legitimacy of having a completely or mostly appointed chamber, in a democratic state is one of the reasons against this argument of reform; however there are second chambers around the world that’s membership are mostly appointed, for instance the Canadian Senate. The appointments to the senate are made by the governor general, who represents the British Monarch, but in practice they are appointed by the Prime Minister of Canada.

The Canadian Senate is considered to be, on paper at least, a strong second chamber; in fact it has been called “one of the strongest second chambers imaginable, because it has full veto power”. However the issues of legitimacy of the unelected members has meant that despite having the power of a veto over the Canadian House of Commons, the Senate is seen, worldwide as “one of the weakest legislative bodies because it has so little political credibility”.

Reform- House with mixed membership

This section of the debate refers to completing the reform of the House of Lords, also known as the second phase of reform, rather than leaving it in its current ‘interim’ state. This is by all accounts what the government is pursuing, and is an attempt to create a hybrid chamber – part elected and part appointed. This process would see the House of Commons remain as the dominant chamber, whilst the House of Lords would continue to debate and revise.

Replace – House with all elected members

This model of reform would see an end to the House of Lords as its now, and possibly even the name, and it being replaced with an all new second chamber. Within parliamentary systems of government there are second chambers that are elected, and that work alongside the lower house, where the government is predominantly formed from, like the Australian Senate or the French Senate.
In Australia, the senate’s membership is controlled by the country’s constitution, where it states that the chamber must half the number of members of the House of Representatives. This means that currently the chamber has 76 members, and rather than the two chambers being equal, the lower house remains to be the dominant chamber.

One aspect that a potential new upper chamber could take from the Australian senate is the issue of regional representation. The senators, in the Australian Senate are elected to represent an entire state, instead of a single small constituency like members of the lower house. If this was applied to a new upper House in the UK parliament then it would allow the English regions, as well as Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to have a more distinct voice in the political process.

However a fully elected chamber would hold greater legitimacy over the current House of Lords, and if some form of PR was used for the elections the House of Lords would be more representative than the House of Commons. So, in other words the second chamber may be politically weaker than the House of Commons, despite it being more representative of the nation as a whole.
If the second chamber in Parliament was to be elected there would be an issue of whom the government would be accountable to.

Currently the government comes for the most part from the House of Commons, and subsequently it is the House of Commons which, has more power to bring the government to account. This is seen not only through the use of ministerial question time and ministers appearing before Parliamentary select committees but also through the use of votes of no confidence, which can not take place in the House of Lords. These votes can either be held on the issue of a minister or member of the cabinet, such as the vote against then Secretary of State for Health, Patricia Hewitt, or the government as a whole such as the vote against the Labour government in 1979, which the government loss and led to the 1979 general election.

One of the reasons that this system is not part of how the House of Lords operates is because of the historical bias in the chamber towards the Conservative party. This bias would mean that successive Labour governments would potentially be unable to govern as the Conservatives in the chamber would attempt to undermine the elected government. However with the current system of appointments, or the use of elections, it is unlikely that any one party would have a majority of seats within the House of Lords.

Remove Altogether

Surprisingly, the majority of the world’s legislatures are a unicameral; i.e. they have only one chamber. Currently, worldwide there are 77 Bicameral Parliaments and 114 unicameral parliaments and within Europe, there are 17 Bicameral Parliaments, compared with 31 unicameral parliaments.
However, unicameral parliaments are traditionally only seen in countries, where the population is under 5 million (although China, with a population of at least 1.2 billion, being one exception to this rule)

The obvious factor against abolition is the sheer size of the population Great Britain, which according to the2001 census is 58,789,194 and this figure is almost 6 times larger then the largest unicameral state in Europe (Portugal with a population of 10 million), and 12 times larger than the average unicameral state (the average size is 5 million). Therefore, the British parliament requires a larger membership to fulfil its constitutional roles which are much heavier than those seen in smaller countries which have unicameral parliaments. There is however one possible way to have a unicameral chamber – by reforming the House of Commons. But this is questionable – can the House of Commons act as its own safeguard?

So, those are the options do we continue to reform the chamber so that there are both non elected & elected members, or bring in elected members and run the risk of the two chambers fighting against each other. Or do we get rid of the chamber altogether and run the risk of the House of Commons fighting with the country at large. Or just perhaps we keep the chamber as it is, and let it do the job that it does so very well.

Wednesday 23rd July

Do we stay or do we go?

We learnt today that David Cameron MP (or C**T as I call him for short) will be at the Royal Welsh Show tomorrow...so the question is do we go there as well, so that there is a good quantity of lib dems to counter act the evil Tory presence, or do we stay in the office so that we can get on with our very important case work?

However for the record David Cameron will likely spend just a few hours there, whilst Roger Williams MP and Kirsty Williams AM, the 2 Liberal Democrat politicians who represent Brecon and Radnorshire were at the show for hours both on Monday and Tuesday, and Kirsty has spent today at the show as well, and the two of them have been attending meetings that greatly affect the constituency, as well as spending time with constituents who have dropped by the stall.

Tuesday 22nd July

I’m so tired  As I write this to you all its 20:41 on Tuesday afternoon, although of course you wont read this for at least a few days (or maybe less if I can blag some internet access at work!!!). Anyway today I've been at the Royal Welsh Show, which for those of you who haven’t heard about it (which included me until last week) is the largest agricultural show in Europe and attracts around 200,000 people over a 4 day period (although this figure is based on last year where after heavy rain, made the site was more like the Somme).

So for those of you who haven’t been to the show, it’s basically in two parts. There’s the agricultural side which includes all the competitions and there is the stall side, and even within the stall side there is 2 separate parts. There are the mountains of local craft stalls selling everything you could ever think off – from tractors to dog pillows, and then there is the side where the stalls aren’t selling so much as there getting you to listen.

So in other words the second side is like the exhibit and conference, and just like conference the aim is to get as much free stuff as possible.
There were only 2 drawbacks to my time there, 1) I was working so didn’t have that much time to go and explore all the stalls or get much free stuff, and 2) we were practically opposite the evil Tories (I’m sire there are some nice tories in the country but as of yet I haven’t found that many, or at least not ones who work for the party). So to avoid the traffic we (I got a lift up to the site with my boss and a couple of other people) left Brecon around just after 7.45am (which meant I got up at 6.30am, which would have been fine except for the fact that the night before I couldn’t get to sleep, and so I had only had a few hours sleep). We got to the site with no problems at all and were at the lib dem stall, which we were going to be running for the day by 8.30am, with the site opening at 9.00am.

The weather in the morning was cloudy and quite cool which made the impression that the day would be cool and a relatively nice day to be out. Instead the weather had a surprise for us – it was bloody boiling. Now I’m not complaining that were finally having temperatures that should be seen in July but by mid afternoon it just became to hot to stand outside on the pavement between the stalls so we retreated to the canvass covering our stall. But that was in the afternoon, we spent the morning handing out leaflets that had been produced for a campaign that is being led by Roger Williams MP.

The campaign relates to the high cost of petrol, but specifically it relates to rural petrol stations, like the one’s seen in Brecon and Radnorshire. You see, whilst the cost of petrol in urban areas is very high, lets say for example it costs on average £1.19 to buy a litre of petrol in a city centre (like Cardiff for example) it would cost £1.23 from a petrol station, from the same company, in a petrol station in Brecon (which is less that an hour away by car, to Cardiff).

So, why is this? Well it costs more to transport the petrol to the rural areas; the rural areas that have little choice of where to buy petrol from and as a result people living in rural areas pay on average at least 3-4p higher than those people living in urban areas. But there is a solution – and EU law which allows governments to have a rebate in rural areas so that the price of petrol can be the same as in urban areas. When the last finance bill went through Parliament an amendment was offered by the Lib Dems to enact this EU law. The Labour party voted against it, whilst the Conservatives (who claim to be a party for rural areas, as well as urban areas) didn’t vote at all.

David Cameron Mp, will be coming to the Royal Welsh Show today....but instead of being all environmental, Mr Cameron will be arriving by hellicopter!

So does that mean that he's no longer courting the green vote?

Having spectacularly failed to blog recently, here is a round up of news items from around the world.

Last week a US governor signed state wide legislation into affect that made cyber-bullying illegal in the state of Missouri. The bill means that harassment is not just defined in terms of offensive communication through written letters or through conversations on the phone, but also includes text messages and messages sent using the internet, specifically the use of social network sites.

President Bush has celebrated his final birthday of his term, aboard Air Force. The President, First Lady and the majority of his senior staff were flying to his final G8 summit, which is taking place in Japan. The President was presented with a wooden box made out of a tree that fell in the White House grounds that was planted Benjamin Harrison’s daughter. The box was filled with letters and cards from White House staff.

And finally on Thursday the by-election in Haltemprice and Howden by election will take place, but now no-one seems to care as a more interesting election is now taking place in Glasgow . Some of the candidates in the Haltemprice and Howden by-election include; Ronnie Carroll who is standing for Make Politicians history Party who want to abolish MPs and parliament altogether in favor of devolving powers to city states. So in theory if elected Ronnie Carroll will have to find a way to abolish himself.

Whilst David Davis is resigning his seat in the House of Commons, the US Supreme Court has ruled that prisoners at Guantanamo bay have the same constitutional rights as American citizens do. The court ruled 5-4 in favour of the fact that the government has no right to break habeas corpus and imprison anyone without a fair and free trial.

So if the United States most powerful court has ruled that detention without trial is illegal, why exactly is our government trying to push through a law which allows for exactly the same thing? Yesterdays vote was a victory for the government, but only in the sense that they won the vote and taken in any other sense it is a loss, not just for the government but society as a whole. When a government has a majority in the 60’s it should not have to buy off opposition MP’s in order to win a vote.

For society this is perhaps our greatest loss; our loss of our rights. These rights are the very thing that terrorist hate about us – the fact that we are free to choose who and what to believe, the fact that we have the rights to say what we want, protest against the government and have the freedom to live our lives as we see fit. By passing this law, and the other civil liberty infractions that the government has perused over the years, we are being forced in to changing our way of life, and as a result are we not letting the terrorists win?

After 7/7 the most important underlying message that our political leaders told us was to go about our lives as normal and not change a single thing, yet despite this advice the politicians seem to ignore it and slowly but surely they pass law after law which means that our way of life can, at least not for now never return to the way it was.

There is only one ray of sunshine to all of this, and that is at least for now this law will not reach the statue books. Whilst the government has a majority in the House of Commons, it does not have this in the House of Lords and unlike the spineless opposition MPs who were bought with empty government promises the membership of the House of Lords cannot be bought so easily. The government will have to overcome the combined effort of the Conservative party, the Liberal Democrats as well as the cross benchers, who for the most part hold the balance of power in the chamber, and this combined group will likely vote down this legislation, and with the DUP only having a handful of peers in the chamber, the government will have to look elsewhere for new friends to help them out.

So the bill will not pass, at least not any time soon, and it will be sent back to the House of Commons, and so the game of political ping-pong will start and the two chambers at the heart of our democracy will fight it out for the heart of our rights. And once the House of Lords has rejected the bill 3 times, the government will ask the speaker to invoke the parliament Act, and the fight for our rights will move from the legislative branch, to the judicial branch (just like it has done in America).

So the fight will have moved, first it will go to the High court, then either to the Supreme Court, or if it still isn’t ready it will ironically go back to the House of Lords, where the Law Lords currently sit and have the right to vote in the chamber. Assuming that neither side accepts the ruling of the Law Lords the fight will end in the European Court of Human rights, which take one look at the bill in all its glory and then take one look at the European Convention, of which we are signatories to and strike down the bill as it violates Article 6 of the convention – specifically the right to fair trial.

So that is what we can expect to see and this fight for our freedom. It all seems like a waste of time when the conclusion is well known that this bill violates the heart of our freedoms and will be, eventually, ruled illegal by the courts.

Every political commentator, whilst waiting for the results from London to come through, is talking about the national picture, after yesterdays vote . The big question; that everyone seems to be asking is what if the predicted national share of the vote was seen at a general election.

Well thanks to the BBC, and their general election seat calculator (from the 2005 general election), as well as the exit poll/research they used last night we can see how many seats each of the three parties would have had if it had been a general election. Last night the national (predicted) vote went; 44% Conservative, 24% Labour, 25% Liberal Democrat and 7% went to other political parties.

Based on those results the Conservatives, not surprisingly would form the new government, with a massive 459 (up from 192 MPs) seats in the House of Commons. Labour would be on 107 (down from the current 351 MPs) and the Liberal Democrats, despite polling 25% of the vote would only be on 56 seats (down from 63 MPs). The other political parties would make up the remaining seats in Parliament, with a combined 24 MPs. This would mean the Tories would have a majority of 272 MPs according to this projection. To form the government, under the current number of seats in the House of Commons which is 646, the majority party needs 324 seats, and clearly the conservatives pass this margin spectacularly.

Now obviously this wouldn’t be the full make up of a new parliament, because last night only saw elections in selected areas and there were no elections in either Northern Ireland (which has 18 MPs on its own and none of these are from the main political parties) or in Scotland (where the Conservative party has only a single MP, out of the 59 which represent constituencies in the country).

Add to that, no matter what is said at the end of the day these were local elections, and for these local issues are the most important. Yes national policies come into affect but there are places throughout the country where the threat to council run public services or the performance of the council over the last year takes priority over what is happening in Westminster.

With 2 of the 3 Lincolnshire councils, to hold elections this year, reporting results it has been a night for the Conservatives, and unfortunately a bad night for the Liberal Democrats.

Here in Lincoln the Conservatives have gained a seat from Labour to take their majority to 3. The council make up is now 18 (Conservative) 14 (Labour) and 1 (Liberal Democrat) – please note that the BBC have got it wrong on their website, and the way that I know this is that I was at the count and saw Helen Heath re-elected by a greater margin than she was elected by last year.

In West Lindsey, the Conservatives took 4 seats from the Lib Dem’s, which has switched control of the council from Lib Dem to Conservative

As for North East Lincolnshire, it appears that it will remain no-overal-control but the Lib Dems will be the majority party at the council, they are predicted to be just 1 seat short of forming a majority council.

The Sky News
website has launched a new feature - If i were Prime Minister. it is simple put a (well i was going to say game but thats the wrong word) way of seing how the government spends the revenue it makes on tax, although there is no button for Northen Rock...or misplacing people's personal data.

But more than showing you where the money is spent, it invites you to change the figures around alowing you to spend more or less money in as many or as few departments as you like, and then afterwards shows you the affects of the decisions you have made.

and its time to look to the future. and i beleive it isnt Chris Hugne or Nick Clegg, and it deffinetly isnt Simon (please please dont run again simon). the future of our party is Millenium Elephant!!!!!

Millenium will make the perfect leader, hes young, fit, agile, will always remember everything (so he wouldn't need notes during speeches and PMQ's) and most important of all the other party leaders will have no idea how to attack him :)

So lets start the campaign now, and get Millenium Elephant to be the first elephant to lead a british political party.

Also please join the campaign to get Millenium Elephant on facebook, which ive been meaning to blog about since i started the group a few weeks ago.

Here is the second part of what i got up to at the Lib Dem conference in Brighton.

Ok, so monday morning headed off into the conference center for the climate change debate. now just like harrogate (where trident was a main focus of the media) this debate was at the heart of what conference was about, and it shared another similarity; Vince Cable MP was speaking before it. now i have no love for tax policies, in fact i hate it and find it mind numbingly boring. so bored am i when i listening to an economic debate that i dontpay attention, which is why at harrogate when i was sat in the main hall during Vince Cable's speech i was reading the paper and not paying attention, and managed to miss him announcing new tax policy to the delegates applause.

So this time my plan was simple. I left the flat as Vince Cable took to the stage, so that i would have enough time to get through security, go to lib dem image to pick up some things and get into the conference hall, just in time for Chris Huhne MP to start his speech. it was good debate, and clear early on that the motion was going to be carried, which was helped by very good speeches by Chris Huhne and Ross Finnie MSP. One little interesting thing for me is that Simon Hoggart sat a few seats away from me for most of the debate.

after the vote, i think there was only a handful of people that voted against the motion, i went into the exhibition it self, got a free bottle of water from one of the stalls (cant remember which one it was, only remember that there were free bottles of water) quickly went over to the free computers and checked my emails and facebook. Afterwards headed back to the flat, droped off some stuff then Ross and I headed over to the holiday Inn to see Nigel Farage MEP at a fringe about britian in the EU.

Surprisingly Mr Farage didnt get the best reception from the lib dem activists, esp when he said "it is not that awful to agree with UKIP occasionally", to which the woman who was sta behind me and Ross shouted out "yes, it is!" afterwards we went and got some food from the town center and then went and ate it on the beach lol, and then headed off to see the speech given by EU President Jose Manuel Barroso, and then we stayed for Mings Q & A which was hosted by Sandi Toksvig, which was quite funny, and an overall good performance by Ming, possibly the best id seen up to that point, despite the joke about the rock, which i didnt really understand (possibly because it wasnt funny).

Didnt do to much more that day, went to a fringe hosted by the BBC in the evening, about the problems in Africa, then went back to the flat.

Tuesday
well, lie-in in the morning, before going for a walk around Brighton, had lunch, then went back to the flat where everyone else eventually returned to. watched Michael Moore's speech on the tele, which was ok apart from it didnt actually have an ending, and people only knew that it was over when he walked off the stage (kinda like Ming's at harrogate). Afterwards went to the Grand hotel to meet Roger Williams MP. Roger was a friend of my grandfather, who owned a chemist shop in Brecon where he grew up. in the evening Ross and I went to a channel four and Hannsard Fringe event entitled "Are Political Parties a waste of time?"

Afterwards had fish and chips back at the flat then went off to the blog drinks at the Evening Star pub. met someone who works for Fiyaz Mughal, whose name i cant remember (sorry), who is one of the Candidates to me the lib dem candidate for mayor of London. We talked about the various candiates, described Chamali Fernando as 'someone who looks like she is running for head girl of london, and not mayor' and Borris Johnson whose candidacy will "attracted shit towards him like a magnet"

after leaving the Evening star, we went to the grand for a drink, saw people wearing "I pick Opick" stickers, to try and join the campaign for the 2009 Lib Dem Presidential Election

Wednesday,
well i was very hungover, and spent pretty much the whole day in bed :( finally got up around 2.30 (although technically i did get up just after 12 b4 going back to bed) went for dinner at wetherspoons before going to a fringe even hosted Will Howells and Steve Webb MP about how to use Facebook to aid elections. after the fringe, those of us that were left used the laptop to quickly check our facebook accounts, before going down to the bar for a drink, and then heading off to glee club at the Grand.

It was ok, felt like it was bteer at harrogate, when it was in a smaller room (and had the added bonus of not having the liberal reveue perform, who werent very funny). One good point was Lord Ashdown. he was seen in the room, and was invited onto the stage. there he almost did a rallying call to the activists. he said things werent as bad as they seemed, as the Lib Dems are now on 20% (which got a big cheer), and when he had joined the liberal party had an approval rating that was an asterix (in other words it was in the margin of error of nothing) and their leader was on trial for murder (which also got massive laughter), followed by "You have no problems at all". He also described conference votes as "optional opinion on what he may or may not do"

Stayed at Glee club till just after 12.30, went back to the flat and eventually went to sleep.

Thursday.
Instead of going off to the conference hall to watch Ming give his speech, we stayed at the flat to sort all our stuff out, and clean the flat. this meant that as soon as Ming finished his speech we headed straight to wetherspoons, sat down had a drink and ordered our lunch, just as other delegates got to the pub :) after wards went down to Ben & Jerry's for ice cream, then walked up to the peir so that Heather could buy some rock. we ran into a couple of people we knew, just outside the entrance to the flat, and after talking to them for a bit, we got our stuff together packed up the car and set off home. Got back to lincoln just after 9 :)

so here is the first part of what conference was for me;

We, as in me, heather, Ryan and Ross, left lincoln just after 9 oclock on staurday morning to drive down to brighton. the drive was ok, didnt hit too much traffic till we got to the M25. we stopped a couple of times and got to brighton around 3, and eventually found our way to the appartment we had rented for the week. it was a very nice place, and very new. we worked out that the building had only been open for about 6-7 mounths.

once we settled in we headed off into the city center, to a siansburys local, and stocked up on supplies (which included 2 bottles of wine but we didnt buy extra tea bags and sugar lol). after we headed back to the flat,me ross and ryan went down to the conference center, which was literally across the road from where we were, to get Ross' conference pass, and then onto the Grand. we saw a couple of people that Ryan knows and were stood around a table close to the bar. after about 10-15 mins Ross turned to me and said that he thought he saw Lynne Featherstone over at the desk in the foyer of the Grand, and lone behold not only was the lovely MP stood over there, she then came over to our table, because she knew one of the people we stood by, and then offered to buy us (and by us i mean everyone around the table) a drink form the bar. now bearing in mind that this is the most expensive hotel in brighton (a small 175 ml glass of wine costs £5, and tea or coffee costs £3 on its own) this was slightly surprising to me and ross.

so we stayed at the bar for a few more mins, then headed back down to the lat. we ran into a couple of people that we knew just outside the Odeon, then after maybe an hour in the flat we went for a walk around Brighton to look for somewhere to eat, and eventually settled on the first place we saw. after we ate, and paid we took a walk down the seafront to see where most of the hotels were, and then headed up into the town center, before going back to the flat.

Sunday
Woke up just after 8, didnt have breakfast (which would come back to haunt me later). headed off down to a training session at the Holiday Inn, with Lembit Opik, who had to leave beofre it finished, as he was filling in for Simon Hughes and opening conference. after the training sessions finished heaed off down to the lobby of the hotel and waited for Heather and Ross to finish there training.

Now before i go on, i feel i should explain a game that we were plaing - MP Bingo!!! the rules were incredibly simple to follow. if you saw an MP, MSP, AM or MEP, and knew there name say it before anyone else and you would get the points

5 points for a member of the media (although they had to be famous)
10 points for a MP
15 points for a MEP, MSP or AM
20 poiints for one cheeky girl
50 points for both cheeky girls at the same time
And 100 points for both cheeky girls and Lembit seen at the same time.

Anyway as we were walking from the Holiday inn to the Grand hotel where there was a fringe which had free food (which was the only reason we were going) Heather saw a MP she recognised and started shouting "David! David! David", which got all of our atention and then Ross chimed in with "David Laws", to which Heather responded "you Bastard!!!". so immediatly David Laws looks up, whilst we were all luaghing and kinda gives heather (well all of us really) evil looks. and then we passed Vince Cable - and i got the points for him :)

so we got to the grand, and the fringe was full, and didnt actually have good food. so we took advantage of the free drinks then went to a fish and chip shop, before taking the food back to our flat. After Ryan got back from his second training session of the day all of us heaed down to the conference center, to have a look around the exhibition, and to get a free copy of the Independent (which included a free book of Political Quotes)

so the aim of the exhibtion is to get as much free stuff as possible, and we would later learn that the TUC had the best free stuff this year, including a usb fan for your computer. other good stalls this year were the RNIB which had free bubbles (which i have 2 bottles of) and the electoral commission where if you completed a a set of clogs so that the an arrow would move, you got a free pen that was also a screwdiver, and some other stuff. the interesting thing about the electoral commission'game' was that the clogs eahc had what the electoral commission may or may not do, and only the ones with what they actually do, do would make the thing work. Fortuantly for me and ryan we not only knew what the commission does, but we also completed the game the fastest, well at that point though.

In the evening, after we left the exhibtion, we decided to not go to the rally,and instead went to a fringe event hosted by BBC radio4, for a recording of The World at one, which featured Nick Clegg MP, as well as Linda Jack and another activist.

the fringe, unfortuantly was slightly delayed, as Nick Clegg was at the rally, and he couldn't exactly walk of the stage whilst Ming was in the middle of his speech. the Debate which took place in the world at one was titled "Are the Liberal Democrats drifting towards the margins?", which unsurpisingly was defeated unanimously

After the recording finished me and Ryan headed over to the Lib Dem Blog awards, which took place in the resturant at the Holiday Inn. Before the awards were given out Lynne Featherstone gave a short speech (which you can read in full here), but i just wanted to show you one little bit;

"Blogging is the poetry of the 21st century. We all go off and commune with out thoughts – to send out our feelings, our messages our words. It can be done by anyone – and despite competitions and awards like this – that freedom of expression, that liberty to say and put out there the outrageous, the unthinkable and the fantasy – is the medium of our day."

the awards were funny, espically Liberal Mafia's 'statement', although i was slighlty disappointed that Millennium elephant lost. after the awards finished we stayed around in the bar for a little bit before heading back to the flat.

Californian governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has announced that he won’t be attending the Conservative party conference this year .

The governor was going to speak on the issue of climate change, as California was the first state in America to impose a cap on green house gas emissions, but he will now be staying in California to try and get his reforms passed by the Californian state legislature.

His health care, political and water policy reforms have stalled in the sate legislature (the lower house in the Californian state Congress) which is scheduled to end its current session on September 14th. However the governor has the option to call for a special session of congress for to allow passage of the Bills.

The governor is also facing the possibility of offending his own party by allowing Californian voters to vote on the following question ; (in February 2008) “Should the U.S. withdraw its troops from Iraq?” 

UPDATE - Governor Schwarzenegger has also cancelled a plan trip to India, to discuss trade with the country, so that he can stay in california to try and get his reform bills passed.

Boris johnson has said the media and the wider world will have to wait and see, to see if he will run for Mayor of London. now bearing in mind that the close of nominations is on monday we will not have to wait long to see what the Henley MPs deceison is going to be, so to help boris make up his mind here are some pros but mostly cons, for him running.

there is no doubting that Boris is one of the most widely known politicans in the country, allbeit not actually for political reasons, and in the world of the celebrity ciulture, maybe his fame and the recgnition that comes with that could be enough for him to be mayor.

however the main problem with a potential Boris candidacy is that very same thing. His fame & noteriety. Boris is famous for making gaffs about cities, and even whole countries, not having a clue whats going on, or even what his policies are on certain issues, and ofcourse the small affiar he had with Petronella Wyatt, that lasted 4 years and led to micheal howard firing him from the shadow cabinet, although Mr Howard says he fired Boris for lying about the affair, and not the affair itself.

so the facts about boris are;
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was born in 19th June, 1964, in New york city. He went to Balliol College, Oxford and eventually became President of the oxford union, where it is claimed that during his campaign, he claimed to be a member of the SDP to get the favourable support of the majority of students. so perhaps if boris does run, he'll quickly supprt the lib-dems to try and get some extra votes that-way.

After leaing univeristy, and after a brief stint as a managment consultant, boris became a traniee reporter at the Times, although he was sacked within a year for falsifying a quote (always a great thing for a politican to do, lie about something and be caught, but ofcourse theres no history of that in the Tory party so Boris should be alright). he joined the telegraph in 1987, so thats mayb a plus point with the base of the conservative party, and was the papers EC correpsondant for the paper (mayb not a plus. it would have to depend on which wing of the tory party boris was trying to impress, inorder to get thier votes so that he can in fact be the candidate for Mayor).

1999 he became editor of the spectator, and in 2001 won the incredibly safe tory seat of Henley (so not an actual test of public opinion as the local tories would have voted for a blind bat as long as it supprted the tory party)

Now back to Boris' fame, and more specifcally have i got news for you. hes a ppaerd on the show numerous times, and eahc of the episodes have gone down as some of the most entertaining momets of televison. after Boris was elected as an MP, he apperaed on the show and was asked several questions, in a mastermind style ound, about then leader of the Tory party IDS. Boris did quite badly, ok he didnt get a single question correct (although that probably shouldnt be held against him. i mean come on can anyone remember much from when IDS was tory leader)

his stints as guess presenter have been equally as funny (for u the viewer, maybe not so much for him). he has not 1 but 2 dvds dedicated to his perfromace, with them showin the full lengh episodees of his first and second attempts at the job. his third appearance on the show, however is proabably more interwsting to the voters. he addmitted he had tried and failed to take cocaine. now obviously for Mr Cameron that is not an issue as its all in the past, but for voters who judge an MP on every aspect of their lives surley taking, or at least trying to take, cocaine could sway the vote against him.

there is one thing that could help Boris' bid, and that is that in theroy no-one form Liverpool or Portsmouth or Papua New Guinea, will be allowed to vote. ofcourse if anyone from these places could chances are they wouldnt vote for Boris (so a plus for him there). Although Boris didnt write the piece in the spectator that offended the people of Liverpool (about Ken Bigley's kidnnapping) he was the editor of the magazine that it was in, and so Michael Howard sent Boris up to Liverpool to apologise for his actions.

before i go on i am starting to get the feeling the William Hauge might be glad he stood down as leader of the party in 2001, as he hasnt had to deal with any of Brois' numerous gaffs.

anyway Boris description of Papa New Guinea caused a small internatinal incident, so im sure that country's embassador to the UK will be thrilled to be living in a city where he is mayor. Boris desciped the people of Papa New Guinea, as those who involve themselves in "orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing"

and finally Portsmouth which Boris described as "one of the most depressed towns in Southern England, a place that is arguably too full of drugs, obesity, underachievement and Labour MPs". (which is wrong for the start as the city does have a lib-dem MP)

Most of us find Boris incredibly funny, and are slight amused by the thought of Boris Johnson running for and becoming Mayor of london, altough im sure there are people in london who are scared of that very idea. but before that can even happen Boris, with his known history of gaffs and cock-ups will have to convince the conservative party that he is able to do the job, and he is only got a few weeks until the nominee is chosen.

although if he did win, Mayors question time in the london assembly would be alot more interesting

From the BBC South Yorkshire website here are a cople of pics from sheffield's more famous landmarks;

Hillsborough Stadium


Outside Meadowhall


Inside Meadowhall