I’ve been reading lots of my local newspaper today as part of our press monitoring process, and it seems to have been a slow week for news.

As I was getting into it, I was highlighting non-stories in the political field to my colleague in the Lib Dem office this afternoon.

Some of the stories included “X Party delivers leaflets – campaigners for B MP in the Y constituency say they will deliver 40,000 leaflets in the coming months. This comes after many local people have received information from the Y party’s new PPC.”

Erm wow. Delivering leaflets is news now?

It continued with other stories in similar veins – little snippets of politico’s daily lives in the paper, and we regaled each other with articles.

Then we went home. About 10pm, I got a call from my colleague who had just picked up today’s paper, and had to share a story he found, under the headline “Chat to councillor” – Cllr C will be holding a surgery in a library at $day, $time. Cllr D will not be a holding a surgery in January.

Hold the front page.

I’ve been avoiding commenting publicly on the leadership election since I fell slightly between two posts.  Of my former party employers, one was a candidate and another was a key campaigner for the other guy.

But now it’s all over, I’m delighted it’s Nick Clegg, my former MEP, and my former employer.

I have to say Nick inspired me the first time I met him.  Writing it now seems fawning and mawkish, but it’s true.  He came to Nottingham University and gave a speech to a student society.  I can’t remember what he said, or who he said it to, but I can remember feeling uplifted.  And for the very first time I felt I’d heard a politician who didn’t say a single thing I disagreed with.  I had already joined the Lib Dems at that point, but it wasn’t until then that I became active in the party.
I just hope he has the same effect on hundreds more people.  He has said upfront he wants to spend a day a week in the nation’s town halls talking to real people. this is exactly what needs to happen.

Happy Christmas, Lib Dems – here’s your new leader.

Well, I’m on the front page of our local newspaper today with a comment on a story I sort of set going.

When my Development Control committee papers arrived a few days ago, I was surprised to see Old Market Square listed as one of the planning applications, so I thumbed through to see what it was.  Turned out it was a planning application for a temporary ice-rink – one which they’ve already started building.

In the normal run of things, you should check whether you need planning permission long before you start building anything.  In the case of the temporary ice-rink, it’s due to open the day the committee decides whether it’s allowed or not.
I thought this was a sign the Council isn’t quite joined up enough in its planning, and joked about it with colleagues, who suggested we phone up the very good Politics Correspondent on the local paper, Charlie Walker.  Initially, I was pitching it as a jokey diary piece, so I was rather surprised to find it on the front page today.

I don’t want to come over as a complete kill joy, and when the application comes to committee I will, as always, consider carefully the evidence in front of me before I make my decision.  I’m pretty sure I’ll vote for it, but I am legally obliged to go into the committee with an open mind. On the one hand, Nottingham already has an ice-rink, so I’m not entirely convinced we need another.  On the other, I remember an outdoor ice-rink outside the Hotel de Ville in Paris when I was there one year, and it looked great.  And Nottingham’s outdoor ice-rink has already proven popular, with some early sessions already fully booked.

Either way, you can see the ice rink being built, and in the fullness of time, you’ll be able to see skaters, on the Old Market Square Webcam.  And that’s another thing I can claim credit for – I asked for the webcam to be installed in the Council House so that we could share the view of the construction of New Old Market Square a year or two ago, and the webcam is still there now.

As you’ll know if you’ve been near a telly or a radio recently, the Lib Dems are engaged in a leadership election right now.  In order to let the 70,000 members who get to make the decision on who the next leader will be, we have hustings where both candidates set out their stalls, and people ask questions to check which candidate thinks the right things.

Those hustings are taking place up and down the country.  There was one in Derby recently that I attended with a hundred other local Lib Dems – but there are still many more around here and in many other places up and down the country that won’t have the opportunity to quiz the hopefuls in person.

So, the party has been innovating, and finding new ways for people to quiz the contenders from the comfort of their computers.  There’s a plain text forum, but more excitingly, there’s a Youtube hustings going on.

Chris Rennard made a video inviting people to film themselves asking questions of the leaderships candidates:

As I write, 14 men have videoed their contributions.  (I’m assuming that the question about whether Spiderman could beat Darth Vader – with Darth allowed to use his light sabre – came from a man, but I’m open to correction.)

But no women have asked a question.  Which begs a question all by itself!

PS – Spiderman vs Darth Vader – that is tough!  Darth Vader has the Force, his light sabre…  What does Spiderman have?!

Liberal England highlights a post by Paul Hulbert from Sunday that points out that it’s 100 years since we first had women councillors. There was a 1907 Act of Parliament that allowed women to stand for election to County and Borough Councils, many years before women got the vote or could stand for Parliament. The first women were elected to local councils that November.

There’s an interesting timeline of women’s history on the BBC’s Woman’s Hour website.