Apologies to Martin, who,  at Conference, I told that Voltaire said, “Mankind will not be free until the last prince is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”

Not only did Voltaire not say, but Diderot didn’t say it either.

This comes hot on the heels that Voltaire also might not have said that he would defend to the death your right to say a thing of which he disapproved.

No, I’ve not given up driving for lent.  It’s been the previous month: at the end of January, I was running late for a residents’ meeting in my ward, hopped into my car, put the card in the slot, pressed the brake and hit the “start” button – Renault Meganes not having keys for ignition – when all hell broke lose.  The wipers fired and wouldn’t stop (the same wipers that had failed completely in December, needing a replacement motor).  The lights flashed.  The dashboard flashed its WARNING and STOP! signs alternately.  The engine had started, but wouldn’t stop.  The wipers started to squeak.  I dove through the handbook to look for clues and didn’t find any.  There was a helpful thing that said if all else fails, hit the start key 5 times to stop, so I tried that  – but the engine resolutely failed to respond.  There was no way the car was drivable through the chaos – even if the lights and wipers hadn’t been running amok, the steering lock hadn’t released itself.  I live, and park, on a hill, so I always point the wheels into the curb when I leave the car in case the handbrake fails.

Ater a good few minutes looking at the chaos, I still hadn’t figured out how to stop the engine, let alone work out what the fault was or how to fix it.  I eventually remembered back to my driving lessons one sure fire way of making the engine stop – to stall it – so I brought the clutch up too fast and bump, the engine stopped.

But that left me with a useless car and on the wrong side of town. I phoned my ward colleague and asked him to send my apologies to the residents and went back inside to play with the internet instead.

The following morning, I phoned the dealer.  The car has a lifetime warranty to replace anything that goes wrong with the expensive quid pro quo that I have to have all my servicing done with the dealer. I explain the symptoms and they sympathise and say it doesn’t sound like anything they’ve heard before, and yes of course they’ll have a look at it, but first I have to get it to them. They don’t have a collection service, and I don’t have AA membership, so I have to phone a tow-truck myself.

The tow-truck duly arrives and the chappie who gets out says “Megane?  Going mad? Wipers and everything?  Oh yeah we get called out to that all the time!  Usually a sign your battery is going.”  And he gets out his big portable battery charger thingie, gets his socket set out to the remove the battery cover, clips on the red crocodile… and the car starts normally and is generally fine.

So I stupidly assume the car is now mended, wave my visa card at the tow truck and let life carry on as normal.

Only later in the afternoon when I actually need the car again, the battery is totally totally dead.  So dead the central locking no longer works, and if it hadn’t been for the fact I accidentally left the car unlocked, I wouldn’t even be able to get in.  You certainly can’t open the boot without the battery as it’s electronic not manual.

So I kick the tyres and resolve, the following day, to walk to Halfords and buy myself one of those big chargeable free standing battery chargers.  Next day arrives, which involves a taxi to the Notts Fire and Rescue HQ which is in the middle of a forest and not accessible by bus, and then I walk to Arnold to buy a charger.  Only I balk a little at the cost. They’re over £70, which I just think is too much.

Then it snows, and I give up on driving for a few days.  The snow stays in the hilly bits of Nottingham much longer than anywhere else and there is compacted ice on the road for nearly two weeks.  It takes an age for the last bits of snow to melt in the garden.

A colleague lends me a plug-in battery charger.  Only, unfortunately, the car is parked on the far side of the road from the house.  P forbids me to trail wires across the road to charge it, so I look in the manual to see if it is possible to remove the battery to charge it in the house.  There’s a paragraph that warns about FIERY DEATH if you try and do anything of the sort, so I give up.

A few more days later, and I feel too much of a wimp, so I have another go with the charger.  I crack the bonnet, find the socket set, unscrew the battery cover, and RISK FIERY DEATH.  Then I put on my orange hi-vis vest and trail a wire across the road.  My thinking with the vest was that I could highly visible and stop passing cars to remove the wire before they either caused death by crushing the wires, or got the wires all tangled up hideously in their axles.

As it was, I just looked a total prat who felt the need to get all dressed up before attempting car maintenance.

I did manage to get the charger fixed to the battery, at which point it started to make ominous ticking and beeping noises, so I read the multilingual warnings on the battery cover I had so readily discarded. WARNING OF FIERY DEATH it said, if you attempt EVER to charge the battery without first disconnecting it from every last vestigial remaining car wire.  I hadn’t done that.  It looked like an awful lot of unscrewing to remove all the wires.  And it was ticking and beeping and looking suspiciously like FIERY DEATH so I took all the clips off and rolled up the extension lead and retreated back into the house, the car still not even remotely working, feeling the least masculine I have ever felt.

Days later, I phoned the tow truck again, and they turned up again, and started it in 2 seconds with a screwdriver and battery pack.  This time, I insisted they followed me to the dealer and I left the car with them.

Five days at the dealer and £300 later, it came back with a new battery, new brake pads and replacement wiring which means the ignition works properly again now.  I guess the mechanics at the dealer face FIERY DEATH every time they crack open a bonnet and need adequate remuneration, but £300??  It irks me just how many people work at the Renault main dealer, and they all have very fancy uniforms…

Add in two tow-truck calls and I’ve just paid £400 to *not* drive my car for a whole month.  Bargain!

In the mean time, I have rediscovered what I knew all along – that Nottingham’s buses are by and large fantastic.  There is a fast and frequent service from near my house to the city centre that runs pretty much every two minutes through all the times I am awake.

There is a bit of a niggle, of course, and one I have raised regularly in committee: the buses are amazing if you want to go directly from a suburb to the city centre, but all but non-existent if you want to go from Suburb A to Suburb B.  In my case, I don’t live in the ward I represent, so I am frequently to be found driving across town to leaflet or visit residents or attend ward meetings or surgeries.

Despite the excellent bus route into town – and despite also the fact that it is really only two miles and I ought simply to walk into town – I have a free parking space in the city centre and I succumb to driving in far more than I should.  My personal rule is that I only drive in when I have a multi-hop journey to make.  Fine to drive to the city, then drive to the ward, then drive home.  Sort of ok to drive to the city, then to the supermarket and then home. Not fine to drive in and then straight home again.

But I was breaking that rule more often than adhering to it, particularly after discovering I can get from front door to sitting down in the Committee room in 18 minutes if I drive… 

In fact all those short little hops probably contributed to the death of the battery, as did flattening it by charging my mobile and listening to radio whilst on a camping trip last summer.

In my car-free month, I got by fine by

• using the bus a lot more
• walking a little bit more
• taking 3 taxis (to Chalfont Drive, Radford Rd Police Station and Fire HQ)
• relying much more on lifts from friends
• getting P to take me for the “big shop”
• stopping doing some things entirely, eg leafleting, evening ward meetings.

I could get by without the car.  But life is much easier with it.

At some point in the coming months, I expect that Nottingham’s workplace parking levy will come in, and John Heppel MP told Parliament last night that I will have to pay it:

In fact, the councillors are among those who will have to pay the workplace parking levy for the parking that they use in the city centre, which is effectively free. I do not think that many people in Nottingham will mind the fact that the councillors will have to pay.

This isn’t a surprise, of course, the fact that I will have to pay it has been at the back of my mind since the Lib Dems voted for WPL last year.  But it’s nice to have it confirmed on the floor of the house in one of my MP’s rare speeches.

It does mean that I’ll have to make a proper decision: do I make a change or do I pay the charge – the equivalent of 70p per day.  I haven’t yet made that decision.

Finally, here’s a list of all the things that have gone wrong with my car since I bought it:

• vanity light on drivers door randomly lights up my feet when driving at night
• electronic boot switch needed replacing after locking the boot shut
• lost a hub cap
• spark plugs died and needed replacing
• replacement spark plugs died within weeks and needed replacing during a singing holiday, which was a right pain to organise!
• one headlight failed, and I discovered just what an immense PITA it is to attempt to replace the headlight yourself
• both headlights failed at once, and I failed to notice, driving on side lights for a few weeks and wondering why I couldn’t see
• hydraulic clutch developed intermittent fault and needed replacing (scary that one – suddenly and without warning the clutch pedal just hangs limply and isn’t connected to the engine)
• the wiring on the clutch gave out, which meant I could only start the ignition with the brake pedal
• windscreen wiper motor failed – but only at some speeds

All this in only 30,000 miles / three years.

See also: this car-free paradise from Orwell-prize-nominated LDV co-editor Alix Mortimer.

A tweet arrives:

@NickAnstead Just found an excellent way to break British constitution: http://is.gd/kdq5. Enter: LD – 33, Cons – 31, Lab – 29 = MELTDOWN

The link takes you the UK Polling Report swingometer, and if you put in those polling figures it makes an estimate of how many seats in Parliament that would net you at a General Election, assuming that there was uniform national swing – a highly dodgy statistical notion that means there is no individual campaigning in individual constituencies, and that every voter in the country behaves exactly like the 1,000 or so people who were polled in the first place.

Anyway, key in those polling figures and you get the following seat distribution:

Hung Parliament, Labour 45 seats short

Now those polling figures are unlikely, but not impossible. Labour’s numbers are about right, but we’d have to gain 11 points over our most optimistic recent polling, and it would have to be at the Tory’s expense. (Well all we need is a few more voters like the ones in Brighton…)

But the scariest thing in those numbers is the repeated reflection of just how unfair the voting system is, and what an uphill battle it is for the Liberal Democrats.

It’s not as if pushing the Labour party into third place is completely impossible. We did it at the last local elections, and now some (well, one) serious political commentators are suggesting it might even happen in the next general. The excellent Stephen Tall looks into that here.

But if the Lib Dems were to actually beat the Labour party into third place in terms of popular vote, if we were to beat them by four percent, we still be hundreds of seats behind them. The Labour party on 29% get more than double the number of seats the Lib Dems get on 33%.

The starkest illustration of that is to put into the swingometer 32% for each of the parties. On exactly the same percentage vote, the Lib Dems get 106 seats, the Tories 208 and the Labour party a massive 305, 21 short of a majority. There’s some information on that in the UK Polling Report’s “Electoral Bias” page, but itself with a bias in favour of the big two parties. There’s something in the tone of the writing that suggests the Lib Dems are only there to help one or prevent the other large party from forming a majority.

Remember I told you I asked for a webcam overlooking Market Square in Nottingham? At the time I thought it would be interesting to share the view that councillors got of the progress of the nearly £10m works being undertaken on the square.

Over the weekend, some wag thought to use the newly fallen snow in the city centre to write a very rude word in enormous letters to be displayed wherever the webcam was seen.

This included the local BBC Nottingham pages, which for a goodly few hours blithely displayed the very rude word on its webcam page.

Just like when the Nottingham protester/artist covered the city centre with “Public Urination” posters, Twitter lit up with news of the enormous swear within a few minutes of it happening.

And whoever the prankster was, they were much more successful at making a word legible than a few Umrats in Basel trying to communicate with Blighty through a municipal webcam!

If you want to see for yourself what the rude word was, you can find it here.

Joe.My.God, my own personal window on all things American, with a particular slant towards gay rights in the US, was thrilled to note that within minutes of Obama’s inauguration, the Whitehouse website was amended to give Obama’s priorities for LGBT Americans.

The words are not new – they are taken from the change.gov site that filled the gap between election and inauguration.

But it is a good sign to all those worried see them so prominently displayed on the new Whitehouse.  Particularly since so many commentators had been reading worrying signs ahead from the invitation of a notorious anti-gay pastor to preach at the ceremony.

And a still stranger sign to see LGBT priorities upfront and centre at the top of the list under the “Civil Rights” whilst faith issues are relegated to “Additional Issues” – along with, worryingly, science.

There were good indications from the inaugural address, highlighted by some of those I follow:

kayray “…hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism.” Curiosity! Tolerance!

joswinson “we extend our hand if you will unclench your fist”: inspiring stuff on foreign policy, feel the world is ok again, tho’ with big challenges

stephenfry “Curiosity” – that’s an inspired point. So damned right. A human quality so often overlooked, but so crucial

stephenfry “and non-believers” yay!

stephenfry “We will raise science to its rightful place”. Yes. Yes. Yes!!!

For my records – here are the things he pledges to do for gay people in the states.  This is the list we’ll be judging him against.

Support for the LGBT Community

“While we have come a long way since the Stonewall riots in 1969, we still have a lot of work to do. Too often, the issue of LGBT rights is exploited by those seeking to divide us. But at its core, this issue is about who we are as Americans. It’s about whether this nation is going to live up to its founding promise of equality by treating all its citizens with dignity and respect.”— Barack Obama, June 1, 2007

• Expand Hate Crimes Statutes: In 2004, crimes against LGBT Americans constituted the third-highest category of hate crime reported and made up more than 15 percent of such crimes. President Obama cosponsored legislation that would expand federal jurisdiction to include violent hate crimes perpetrated because of race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, or physical disability. As a state senator, President Obama passed tough legislation that made hate crimes and conspiracy to commit them against the law.
• Fight Workplace Discrimination: President Obama supports the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and believes that our anti-discrimination employment laws should be expanded to include sexual orientation and gender identity. While an increasing number of employers have extended benefits to their employees’ domestic partners, discrimination based on sexual orientation in the workplace occurs with no federal legal remedy. The President also sponsored legislation in the Illinois State Senate that would ban employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
• Support Full Civil Unions and Federal Rights for LGBT Couples: President Obama supports full civil unions that give same-sex couples legal rights and privileges equal to those of married couples. Obama also believes we need to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and enact legislation that would ensure that the 1,100+ federal legal rights and benefits currently provided on the basis of marital status are extended to same-sex couples in civil unions and other legally-recognized unions. These rights and benefits include the right to assist a loved one in times of emergency, the right to equal health insurance and other employment benefits, and property rights.
• Oppose a Constitutional Ban on Same-Sex Marriage: President Obama voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment in 2006 which would have defined marriage as between a man and a woman and prevented judicial extension of marriage-like rights to same-sex or other unmarried couples.
• Repeal Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell: President Obama agrees with former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Shalikashvili and other military experts that we need to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. The key test for military service should be patriotism, a sense of duty, and a willingness to serve. Discrimination should be prohibited. The U.S. government has spent millions of dollars replacing troops kicked out of the military because of their sexual orientation. Additionally, more than 300 language experts have been fired under this policy, including more than 50 who are fluent in Arabic. The President will work with military leaders to repeal the current policy and ensure it helps accomplish our national defense goals.
• Expand Adoption Rights: President Obama believes that we must ensure adoption rights for all couples and individuals, regardless of their sexual orientation. He thinks that a child will benefit from a healthy and loving home, whether the parents are gay or not.
• Promote AIDS Prevention: In the first year of his presidency, President Obama will develop and begin to implement a comprehensive national HIV/AIDS strategy that includes all federal agencies. The strategy will be designed to reduce HIV infections, increase access to care and reduce HIV-related health disparities. The President will support common sense approaches including age-appropriate sex education that includes information about contraception, combating infection within our prison population through education and contraception, and distributing contraceptives through our public health system. The President also supports lifting the federal ban on needle exchange, which could dramatically reduce rates of infection among drug users. President Obama has also been willing to confront the stigma — too often tied to homophobia — that continues to surround HIV/AIDS.
• Empower Women to Prevent HIV/AIDS: In the United States, the percentage of women diagnosed with AIDS has quadrupled over the last 20 years. Today, women account for more than one quarter of all new HIV/AIDS diagnoses. President Obama introduced the Microbicide Development Act, which will accelerate the development of products that empower women in the battle against AIDS. Microbicides are a class of products currently under development that women apply topically to prevent transmission of HIV and other infections.

Faintly depressed by this Guardian video – it’s highlights of Steve Bell’s cartoons of George Bush over the last 8 years, with a commentary from Steve Bell.

(Hat-tip – Beau Bo D’Or)

In a new way of engaging the American people, Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi has released the following video of… her cats in her office.

And an unexpected change halfway through.

Did you know that the Lib Dems have two MPs on twitter? They are Lynne Featherstone and Jo Swinson.

Isn’t that amazing?

You should know this, of course, because I told you last year. Repeatedly.

Still, if you knew that Jo Swinson and Lynne Featherstone were on Twitter, congratulations. You’re two steps ahead of the Guardian.

Earlier today on LDV I uploaded an excellent, academic summary of the life and work of John Maynard Keynes:

The most influential and important economic thinker of the twentieth century, Keynes’s most important academic works were concerned not only with challenging accepted economic theory but also with finding solutions to real economic problems; his ideas came to underpin the post-war economic strategy of Western governments. He was an active Liberal and contributed to Lloyd George’s reshaping of Liberal Party policy in the 1920s; he also helped to found the Liberal Summer School

And to that learned and worthy contribution to the sum of human knowledge, I added this tacky fast buck machine that should hopefully earn the Lib Dems a bit of cash in Amazon referrals:

http://ws.amazon.co.uk/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&MarketPlace=GB&ID=V20070822%2FGB%2Fnileshomepag%2F8010%2F214d817e-d3e2-4209-9357-871f2d5c33fb&Operation=GetDisplayTemplate Amazon.co.uk Widgets

But if you think that’s bad, you should have seen the earlier attempt that nearly got through…

http://ws.amazon.co.uk/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&MarketPlace=GB&ID=V20070822%2FGB%2Fnileshomepag%2F8010%2F544c2a95-6aac-4b73-bf57-5bbe4c349b78&Operation=GetDisplayTemplate Amazon.co.uk Widgets