Category Archives: Politics

Failing to grow my own food

This will be another year in which I’ve failed to grow my own food.

Like many previous years, I’ve not really gotten around to sowing seeds in February and March when I should have done – indeed, I was down for raising seedlings for the Lib Dem stall at the Green Fest this year, and ended up providing something with a much shorter lead-in time.

Anyway, at the Green Fest, I snapped up the stall’s leftover sunflower seedlings, nurtured them in the conservatory for a wee while, then planted them to the huge flowerbed P dug last year that hopefully soon we will be transforming into a cottage country garden border (ps, any tips?).

They got eaten by slugs within days. Completely destroyed. Every vestige of leaf munched by gastropods.

When I went to the garden centre to buy canes for the sunflowers, I also picked up some healthy looking tomato plants, and I put them in the earth in front of the sunflowers.

They looked more promising for a while – they grew big and strong, and had loads of flowers, and when we got back from Durham, there were small runs of healthy, fat-looking green fruit. And then they turned brown. The stems withered and went slimey and the brown consumed the fruit as well. I think I got blight.

Whilst I was on my planting spree, I put a row of sweetcorn seeds in the ground too. It was far too late to sow corn in May, but I figured what the heck? Of about 5 seeds, two came up, and have put on healthy leaves. They too are being munched, but have so far survived. I don’t have high hopes, however, just because they went in so late. They’ve no signs of flowers or cobs, and they need to get on with it at this time of year.

Over the years, I’ve had many attempts. The potatoes I planted and never earthed up that didn’t grow very much.  Other people’s surplus tomato seedlings – including the ones I put so many slug pellets on I didn’t quite dare eat the ensuing tomatoes;  the year I planted beans, but didn’t pinch out the tops, and only really got a plateful; and the other years I planted beans, and nothing came up.

Oh well. There’s always next February / March. What with a general election expected in 2010, I can’t think I’ll be busy around then?

Iain Dale’s question

In response to Iain Dale’s question – can men use their sexuality to influence elections? – I bring you… “Congressman Studly”

AaronSchock

I know next to nothing about this man – I’m a little vague on the name – but I’d vote for that.

Two interesting things happened about sex and nudity yesterday. First there were the German politicians getting their cleavage out in the name of electioneering.

Secondly one of the participants in the plinth extravaganza in Trafalgar Square got up there and took all of his clothes off. He was promptly ordered by police to cover up – at very least putting some underwear back on.

As the Lib Dem Glee Club song puts it so pithily:

You can end up in the dock
If you whip out your cock
In an English Country Garden

Speech to Nottingham Gay Pride

I was very happy to be invited to be one of the speakers at Nottingham Gay Pride’s Speaker’s Corner. Here’s what I had to say (minus the inappropriate jokes I ad-libbed on the day).

Hello, my name is Alex Foster and I am one of Nottingham City’s Lib Dem councillors.  If you live near the Beechdale Baths, it could well be that I represent you.  I’m also gay.

In fact, I’m in politics BECAUSE  I’m gay, not in spite of it.  Let me explain.

HISTORY

The first political thing I ever did was write to my MP about the age of consent.  I’m 31 next week, so when I was in school, Parliament was having its great debate about whether the age of consent for gay men should be lowered from 21 to 18.  I had found out all about this in the pages of Gay Times, and read about the Stonewall campaign, and it was because of them that I wrote to my MP.

I got a nice letter back – my Tory MP then was Peter Temple Morris – and although he didn’t agree with me he told me he respected my position.

There was a great debate going on at this time about this issue, and I got quite involved.  I saw that the Lib Dems were arguing in favour not just of lowering the age of consent to 18, but of equalizing it with heterosexual people at 16.  It was there in black and white in their 1992 manifesto:

Guarantee equal rights for gay men and lesbians through changes to criminal law, anti-discrimination legislation and police practices. We will repeal Section 28 of the 1988 Local Government Act. We will create a common age of consent regardless of gender or sexual orientation.

Continue reading →

A rather lovely thing happened to Mike on Twitter

My once-met net friend Mike who used to blog at Troubled Diva, now uses his blog as a repository for his successful but (to me) incomprehensible music writing for the Nottingham Evening Post Entertainment Guide.

Last week, I mentioned on Twitter that Giles Coren, star of the Supersizers, looked hot in his 80s gear. Deliberately a little ambiguous, but of course I meant that he looked attractive.

Mike agreed on Twitter, conceding that his “Guilty crush” might move on from Alistair Campbell to Giles Coren.

A few hours later, Mike got an unexpected personal response from @CampbellClaret:

@miketd why move on, say I?

Awww!

It’s a lovely graceful reaction to news of a covert crush that might fox a lesser man: although Alistair Campbell is definitely a sex god to a number of Labour women I know, I wonder how many gay men he counts among his followers?

It clearly shows that Alistair Campbell is carefully searching on instances of his own name showing up across the twitterverse – a latterday equivalent of grepping the newsfeed for your own name. I’m divided on whether that is a vain or sensible thing to do for someone in the public eye.

And it’s an object lesson in how a very simple gesture – five words! – can completely make someone’s day. A bit of a lovebomb from time to time can do great things to your reputation.

Clegg interview in Guardian

Just spent a few minutes reading this long interview with Nick Clegg in the Guardian lifestyle section today.

Helen wrote about it for LDV a few minutes ago, and excerpted a few of the best bits, but I will just add in a para that I think people should read:

[…] What can Clegg offer that Cameron’s hoodie-hugging, broken Britain-fixing Tories can’t provide?

“Do you think,” he snaps back, “that the Conservative party as an establishment party is going to take on the vested interests in a tax system? Is going to say to middle-class folk that little Johnny will be in a class with another child who will have more money allocated to them? Are they going to do that? No. Are they going to take on the Daily Mail on Europe? No. You’re never going to get that from the Conservative party. Never. You’ll get it rhetorically, you’ll get the spray paint – and it’s a great spray job he’s done already. But you won’t get the conviction.”

Nicely pressed trousers

Chris Huhne displays his neatly pressed trousers image (c) Alex Folkes/Fishnik.com and republished here under the terms of the creative commons licence on Flickr.com

A small sigh of relief is audible in some Lib Dem circles as the Telegraph spotlight turns to the serried ranks of Lib Dem MPs.

So far, the scale of dubious claims by our MPs is not in the same league as those of the other parties. No moats, no pools, no tennis courts, no flipping of houses. Just some rather excessive interior design and a trouser press.

There has been a long standing joke in Private Eye about trouser presses, so it is more than a little odd to see one turn up in a more serious context.

Just a few more thoughts about the whole issue – cui bono? Well, the Telegraph for one – their publication of the expenses scandals over the last few days has bumped their circulation by nearly 100,000 copies. So it looks like forking out for the leaked information has more than paid its way.

There’s an excellent rant by Sarah Teather MP in the Guradina pointing out that this is essentially a problem of MPs’ own making – they had opportunities to fix the problem before it came to a head, but voted down reform, and nearly voted to conceal expenses altogether.

See also Ming Campell’s explanation of his expenses.

For those thinking like Norman Tebbit and considering backing a smaller party in the Euro elections – think carefully. The European Parliament is an important institution, whether you like it or not, and it needs members who will work. Do you want to be represented by a hard working Liberal Democrat with an excellent attendance record or a permatanned celebrity who will get elected for one party, quit it, form another party, quit that too, and not shown his face much in his constituency at all? Even the Nottingham Evening Post could not reach him for comment on his performance on his term in office over the last five years.

In other news, the Lib Dems launched their Euro manifesto today. I don’t like the design much, but I have high hopes for the content. We are the pro-EU party – and our key message is “stronger together, poorer apart.” But our manifesto is clear that Europe is not perfect and we have a checklist of problems that need fixing.

7 Reasons I joined the Lib Dems

Stephen has started off an excellent meme, so I’ll just join in.

  1. The Lib Dems agreed with me on gay rights.  Specifically, at the time, the age of consent.
  2. A friend of mine ran the DELGA website at the time.
  3. The Lib Dems also agreed with me on student finance, which was important when I was going to university, and still is now generations of students are graduating with massive debt in an uncertain world.
  4. The Lib Dems also agreed with me on Europe.  Like or not, that’s the continent we all live in, and it makes sense to work with our neighbours.  There are important changes needed to make it work much much better, but on the whole, stronger together, poorer apart FTW.
  5. Finally The Lib Dems agreed with me on the importance of protection the environment.
  6. I just wanna be me!  The Lib Dems are happy letting people be themselves.  The Tories want us all to be consumers and the Labour party see us all as workers.  It’s only really people of liberal persuasion that are happy with everyone being different and special in their own unique way.
  7. I met Nick Clegg MEP at a meeting and I was really impressed.

Good grief, whaddya know?  As someone who now thinks of himself as not very hot on keeping up to date with the minutiae of party policy, it’s almost all policy reasons that made me join in the first place.

I also worried I might struggle to get to 7 reasons, but it all flowed quite easily once I started.

Lord Bonkers on squirrels

The next instalment of the Diary of Lord Bonkers has hit doormats on the back page of Liberator, and his diary secretary Jonathan Calder is posting them up day by day on Liberal England.

Today’s gripping instalment covers squirrels. As we have previously learned in these pages, Lib Dem peer Lord Redesdale is trying to eliminate grey squirrels – first from Northumberland, then the rest of the country.

Lord Bonkers gives the compelling reason why this effort is so urgent:

Whereas our native red likes cricket, morris dancing and good ale, and understands the principles of queuing, the brash American Grey chews gum, flashes its money about and demands good service in hotels. Clearly, it must be extirpated from these islands.

I wonder, if when in Morpeth, he heard the local ringers ringing Morpeth at Morpeth? As the new Northumberland County Council becomes unitary with the Lib Dems as largest party, Castle Morpeth Borough Council shuts down. This has ended traditions that link ringers with civic life there, including a peal for each new Mayor, and five minutes of ringing before each council meeting. To note this, the Morpeth ringers learned a complicated and difficult method named after their town: Morpeth Surprise Minor.

The method is here (click Morpeth in the table at the intersection of Canterbury and Wells). News report here. The record of the quarter peal is here. And interestingly, Nottingham University Soc of Change Ringers scored a quarter of this at Clifton last month.

Freedom is in Peril

All-round good-egg Jonathan Calder has a deliberative piece today that eventually links to this piece in the Guardian about a very old wartime poster that has suddenly found new favour.

Two things struck me about the article.  

One was the nice little detail that the Nottingham Emergency Planning team have a copy in the Emergency Control Centre in the Guildhall on Burton Street.  (I’ve never been in that room, but it must be the easiest room to find.  The Guildhall is a complete rabbit warren, but every floor and every corridor has a sign in it pointing out the direction to the Emergency Control Centre.)

The other interesting thing is the words from other posters.  Yes, “Keep Calm and Carry On” is a good phrase.  And “Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution Will Bring Us Victory” certainly rings out a wartime feeling.

But the phrase that really has legs at the moment is the middle one. Freedom is in Peril. 

This time the enemy is within.