Tweets on 2008-09-13

  • My hotel has outsourced breakfast to a neighbouring pub. It feels so wrong! #
  • #LibDem08 wandering around conf centre trying to work out where our facilities are. #
  • #LibDem08 Ooh, fabulous, we’re in a room with a telly screen for the main hall. #
  • #LibDem08 Giving the conference rally a miss – but thanks to the wonders of hashtags on twitter, it’s almost as if I’m there. #
  • #LibDem08 Hmmph. Come all this way to the sunny seaside, then spend all the daylight hours cooped up in a windowless room #
  • Well, it looks like I only get a chocolate éclair on my pillow on the first night. #
  • Sucked in by high drama on Casualty. Blog awards coming next. #
  • Mental note to self: watch Casualty more often. That was amazing! #

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Tweets on 2008-09-12

  • @willhowells No steam pipe trunk distribution venue this year? #
  • Eek, p12 of today’s Daily Mail is the LDV member survey. #
  • Prevaricating. I should be packing a suitcase and going to the printers on the way to Bournemouth. But instead I’m distracted by email. #
  • @willhowells Don’t have superglue in stock, but if need is urgent enough, I can detour… #
  • Running out of toner halfway through a mailmerge. Sounds like a good metaphor for something. #
  • #LibDem08 Warning my hotel I probably won’t hit Bournemouth before midnight. #
  • Completing my last Nottingham errand and heading to Bournemouth. #
  • Gordon bennet, still on the road, but only 40 more miles. #

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Magistrate vs Armed Response

An interesting post on Magistrate’s Blog gives us a picture of armed response police officers and asks why some of them are wearing balaclavas that obscure their identities.

I think the fact that the picture is still easy to find months after the incident probably answers the question.  It seems entirely fair to officers put in this really difficult situation that they not become public figures because of the actions they have to carry out.

I wouldn’t want to be an armed policeman, and I sure as heck don’t want to see the police carrying guns as a matter of routine.  But I entirely understand that we need some officers to be armed, and I hope I never find myself in a situation where I need them.

It is interesting, though, that although both armed cops and magistrates will simply because of their jobs from time to time have to take decisions that prove controversial in the long run, you’re currently not allowed to take photos of magistrates on the job. I wonder how Magistrate would feel to see his photo in a tabloid along with some rabble-rousing copy along the lines of “THIS IS THE BEAK THAT LET THE PAEDO GO”.

All this may change – there are plans at Lib Dem conference to debate letting cameras into court.  I wonder if Magistrate will start wearing a balaclava if his decisions get opened to wider scrutiny.

Tweets on 2008-09-08

  • Really, really not understanding this trend for skinny jeans. #
  • Good grief, 90 mins for council questions is a bit of a record. Don’t think we’ll be done by teatime. #
  • Barnstorming speech made lots of people laugh but didn’t quite achieve the desired outcome. #
  • Just called the Labour group as a whole unreconstructed Socialist dinosaurs. Not entirely with a straight face. #
  • Flaking out in front of Dave and Dave+1 instead of laying out next Focus. #

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