Can I haz title? Does that come with ermine?

On 14 December, the following item is on the list of business in the House of Lords;

Baroness Deech to ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will make proposals relating to the titles used by the husbands of women members of the House of Lords.

Now I don't know where this question comes from, and I'm not sure what Baroness Deech's motivation is, but I am certainly intrigued by the prospect of an answer.

However, it isn't clear to me what title one might give. Of course, the wife of a male Peer is given the honorific 'Lady' (I'm not sure if this applies to the civil partner of a female Peer - anyone know?), but 'Lord' seems somewhat inappropriate. A life baronetcy perhaps, although Sir Mark has a bizarre ring to it.

No, I tend to think that things will be left as they are. After all, if all political parties are committed to reform of the second chamber and a mostly or fully-elected House, why bother with further fripperies? And if this Government were that bothered, you would have thought that Harriet Harman would have acted before now...

Zac Goldsmith - not a fit and proper person to be an MP?

My morning was somewhat brightened up by the news that Zac Goldsmith has been outed as a 'non-domicile'. As an old friend of Susan Kramer's (she was our candidate in Dulwich & West Norwood when I was active there), anything that legitimately helps her to gain re-election in Richmond Park is a good thing.

However, I see that Iain Dale has chosen to defend him on the grounds that what he is doing, using his non-domiciled status to avoid capital gains tax, inheritance tax and income tax, is perfectly legal. I therefore feel obliged to remind him that the public clearly don't see that kind of old-style thinking as acceptable any more. That might seem unfair and unjust but, as we know, the public view of politicians is fairly poisonous.

As for Zac, he is guilty of a degree of hypocrisy. Proposing a range of green taxes when you are actively avoiding paying what many would see as fair levels of taxation smacks of 'one rule for you, another for me'. It is true that he has told the Sunday Times that he will voluntarily give up his non-domiciled status, but it does seem odd that someone who is selected to fight a Parliamentary seat should consider himself to be non-domiciled.

To be automatically considered non-domiciled in the United Kingdom, you must fulfil the following criteria;

• you must be born outside of the United Kingdom
• your father must have been domiciled outside of the United Kingdom at the time of your birth
• you must have come to the United Kingdom for the purposes only of employment (including self-employment) and must intend to resume employment abroad when that employment ceases

I presume that Zac meets the first two criteria. The third, however, is not so clearcut. What exactly is his employment status? Perhaps the Residence & Domicile Technical Team of HM Revenue & Customs might want to take a look?

I'm not of the view that David Cameron is obliged to sack Zac as the Conservative candidate for Richmond Park. Of course, he may feel that a candidate whose behaviour brings his Party into disrepute might not be a fit and proper person to be a Member of Parliament. After all, if buying a duck house on expenses is an offence sufficient to cause the loss of a nomination, how relatively heinous is using your non-domicilied status to avoid potentially hundreds and thousands of pounds in tax?

Only a week late into Edinburgh...

I'm a busy man and not always the most organised, and so it shouldn't have come as a great surprise to discover that, on arrival in Edinburgh for the Bloggers Unconference on Friday night, it had taken place the previous weekend. Luckily, a full schedule of events was available to me, and I had already swapped blog comments with Jo Swinson before setting off, so my journey wasn't in vain.

Friday saw me on the 14.00 Aberdeen service from London King's Cross, bound for the Edinburgh Pentlands St Andrew's Day dinner, in the company of John Barrett and his wife Carol, where an excellent meal (game terrine, chicken stuffed with haggis, Lanark Blue cheese with oatcakes) was enlivened by an excellent speech from the guest for the evening. So that was a second element of the Unconference achieved...

Saturday opened with with a mince pie and mulled wine event for Edinburgh North and Leith, where I ran into the godfather of Scottish Lib Dem blogging, Stephen Glenn (the third element), before heading to a Christmas Fayre in Edinburgh West, where I paid £2 for a go on the 'water or wine' stall. The idea is that there is an array of sealed gift bags with bottles in. You pick one and it either has a bottle of wine in it, or a bottle of water. On the basis that you stick with your party colour, I picked a yellow one and was most gratified to find a bottle of sparking rose in mine. John Barrett, who had an unblemished record of winning bottles of water, took my advise and picked a gold bag. Sure enough, there was a bottle of wine in it.

By this point, we had met up with Mike Crockart, and I pointed out a yellow bag with white polka dots - I was beginning to suspect some subliminal Liberal Democrat bias by this point (does a 13,600 majority cause that?). And yes, when Mike picked it, there was a bottle of wine inside.

But, it was getting on, and our day wasn't finished. I did, however, have time for a haircut. It appears that I got a bit carried away though, and Ros is still slightly traumatised by the result. It is very short, I fear. The one disconcerting moment was when my barber took out a piece of wire with a lump on the end, set fire to it and announced that I shouldn't worry about the naked flame being held close to my ears. Apparently, this acts to singe the hairs on the ears, making it easier to remove them.

Next stop, Perth...

Thoughts from the Train: What if Deutsche Bahn rang my local rail franchise?

Liberal Bureaucracy has received, in a brown paper package, a copy of a document purported to have been sent to Lord Adonis, the Secretary of State for Transport, following his announcement that National Express will have their current franchise for East Anglia truncated so that it ends in 2011. The covering letter is signed by the Chief Executive Officer of Deutsche Bahn.

Having read through it, here are the key proposals;

Frequency

Trains will run at least hourly on all routes. We have ways of making them run on time.

New services and special arrangements

It is our intention to run more services to Stansted Airport and to Harwich from across the Region, with the intention of making it easier for East Anglians to travel to European cultural centres such as Berlin, Munich and Heidelberg, and for central Europeans to travel to important towns such as Stowmarket. We see particular potential in running special services for those seeking to make pilgrimages to worship before Dalai Russell in Colchester.

Catering

We intend to reinstate the restaurant car, where the finest local food will be served, alongside a range of German beers and wines, as well as classic bierkeller snacks such as pretzels and weisswurst, all served by staff wearing traditional outfits.


Entertainment

Naturally, we will introduce an accordian player on mainline services to provide an opportunity for passengers to sing traditional drinking songs as they return after following Colchester United, Ipswich Town and Norwich City to away games. Whilst we understand concerns about drunken and unruly fans, we are confident that, by providing them with good German lager, brewed according to the ancient laws that still control beer production in Germany, they will be happy to behave positively.

The Future

Naturally, we expect to seek an anschluss with the franchise covering services from Fenchurch Street, and will look to seeking to extend operations across Cambridgeshire to Lincolnshire, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire in due course.


Well, I don't know about you, but I'd sign up to that...

Pearson of Barking? Barking of Rannoch? Is this important?

I am led to understand that Lord Pearson of Rannoch is the new leader of UKIP (I'm cocooned on an East Coast train somewhere near Newcastle, on my way to Edinburgh...).

In fairness, Malcolm Pearson is probably ideal for the job, in that he is of the view that between them, Islam and the European Union are determined to destroy the country that we love. Indeed, there are enough people out there who agree with that view to attract a rather more than infinitesimal share of the vote.

His big problem at the moment is the issue regarding a very large donation, over £350,000, which is to be returned, due to the donor not being on the electoral register. It appears that he is of the view that being on the electoral register should merely be optional, and must therefore assume that he would be happy to receive money from anyone, regardless of their link to this country - an odd thing to believe for someone who believes in pulling up the drawbridge, but there you go.

He also supports those who believe that the Koran should be banned, yet demands the right to freedom of expression. Perhaps, in this case, he means freedom to express that which he agrees with. Of course, he is consistent here, in that he believes that Islamism has taken over. As he asked on 23 March,

Does he further agree that all must be equal under our law, including women, gays and those who wish to convert from Islam to another faith, and that Sharia law should therefore not be allowed to go on holding sway in this country?

On House of Lords reform, he is of the view that it should only take place once the United Kingdom has 'reclaimed power from Brussels' and reformed the House of Commons. That would be never then...

I suppose that we should be reassured in a way. With Pearson of Rannoch at the helm, UKIP are clearly not intending to be anything other than an anti-European, anti-Islam political party. In other words, completely irrelevant to the day to day needs of mainstream public opinion. Thanks, Malcolm, thanks very much...

Extreme inconvenience to the enemies of Valladares (part 2)

For those of you who wonder what a bureaucrat does in his spare time, I can confirm that one of the things I don't do is sticking pins into wax effigies of National Express East Anglia management. I can't speak for Andrew Adonis though, but if he does, he's pretty good at this voodoo stuff. Less than forty-eight hours after I complained to and about NXEA, it was announced that their franchise will be terminated three years earlier than scheduled, in 2011.

There has been, for some time, a sense that National Express were doing just enough to meet the performance targets built into the franchise agreement. However, the loss of the restaurant car service, the increasingly shabby rolling stock, with faulty toilets and deteriorating standards of cleanliness, and the claims that removing customer service staff would improve the service provided to passengers all pointed towards a corner-cutting, asset-sweating approach by a company in financial difficulties.

Perhaps we will get a better deal from a new franchise agreement this time. It would be nice if passengers were more involved in drawing up such an agreement, although I am not optimistic on that score.

Interestingly, the withdrawal of the last three years of the agreement allows for a bringing together of the currently separate East Anglia and Fenchurch Street to Southend franchises, the latter, held by c2c at the moment. I have little doubt that a foreign bidder will emerge, and that likelihood will only be increased if the two franchises are brought together. The significant commuter traffic from East London and Essex will provide the backbone for the income stream, whilst the rural routes in Norfolk and Suffolk will offer potential growth linked to population growth.

To be honest, I'd been tempted by any bidder who offered to put the breakfast service back at the pre-2009 levels... ah, pork...

Will the last London-based civil servant please turn the lights out?

It seems that the Government have reached the conclusion that a review is needed to see what civil service and quango jobs could be moved out of London and the South East... again. There is, it is suggested, scope to move some of those 132,000 civil service and 90,000 "arms-length bodies" jobs and achieve not only savings but place civil servants in the heart of the communities they serve.

Well, yes and no. Firstly, there are those of us who are still struggling through the reorganisations wrought by the Lyons Review, published in 2004, which called for transfers of work out of London. As a result of that, corporation tax work for most of the City of Westminster (my old office) was transferred to Hull, and that for South West London was transferred to... Dundee. To go for another reorganisation so soon would certainly be challenging but, if that's what Government wants, that's what Government will get.

Indeed, Lyons wasn't the first transfer of work out of London. In 1991, the final tranche of PAYE work left London, in the case of my then office, Hendon, it went to Salford. I was moved to deal with wealthy self-employed individuals and those with significant investment income in Maida Vale, only for that work to be transferred to Leicester in 2001.

There is little of the local network left in London nowadays, with much of the work transferred to enormous sheds in Washington, Merthyr Tydfil and East Kilbride (to name but three). And yet the intention is that we should be closer to our communities? Does that mean that the work already transferred out of London will suddenly materialise back into the city? No, of course not, that would be consistent. In other words, the community only matters if it isn't in London and the South East, and the warm words are merely intended to provide cover for another transfer of jobs to Labour supporting areas in the North and the Celtic fringe.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to the transfer of work out of London. The arguments about the cost of accommodation, of London weighting and about retention and recruitment all hold some merit. However, if you believe that a national civil service is about providing a high quality of service everywhere, it means that you need to provide that service everywhere. Technology means that much of the work can be done remotely, especially where it involves processing of documents. However, you do need people to provide the face to face service, and there comes a point where you cut numbers beyond that required.

I am astonished that it took Liam Byrne seven months to come up with this proposal. Given that all he needed to do was pull the Lyons Review off of the shelf, get someone to update it a bit, and then act upon those recommendations that haven't yet been carried out, it shows that any sense of originality has been drained from an increasingly desperate Government.

Diversity: Labour's control freaks want us to be control freaks too

And so the Labour Party Speakers Conference has concluded that political parties should be made to publish the number of women, ethnic minority, disabled and gay people are applying to be Parliamentary candidates. Let us not be under any misapprehension here, this is an attempt to impose a Labour solution on the body politic, regardless of the fact that other political parties see the solution to the diversity issue in very different forms.

The phrase 'Speakers Conference' is meant to reassure, to provide the cover of apparent cross-Party agreement for an authoritarian attempt to blackmail other political parties to adopt the sort of 'nanny state' positive discrimination that, as liberals, we prefer to eschew. However, a closer look at its membership reveals that, far from being cross-Party, there is an inbuilt Labour majority, with nine Labour members, four Conservatives, two Liberal Democrats (Andrew George and Jo Swinson) and one Democratic Unionist.

So, unsurprisingly, it has gone for a 'name and shame' approach in its efforts to make Parliament more representative of the nation. If that is the best that they can come up with, then we should be demanding our money back.

I fundamentally object to being told that I must betray my Party's philosophy and principles in order to achieve the goal of fair representation. As a liberal, I believe that everyone is equal, and that equality of opportunity is something that we should strive for. That doesn't mean equality of outcome regardless of merit, it means creating processes that do not discriminate, and providing support and encouragement for anyone who wishes to offer themselves up for consideration.

More than most people, I know that Liberal Democrats have wrestled with the desire for proper representation with the idea that we select on merit, with the only consideration being ability. We believe that Local Parties are sovereign, with the only roles for the centre being in setting minimum quality standards for candidates and designing the processes for approval and selection. I've been at the heart of the debate for a long time and I know that we haven't always got it right, but we have tried.

For smaller Parties without deep-pocketed funders, it is difficult to provide the training and support that candidates, regardless of background, need. We do our best given the limits placed upon us, trying to be smart rather than omnipresent. And given the evident lack of support for state funding of political parties, I suspect that it is a problem that will not go away.

However, it seems that they have also fallen into the classic trap of believing that numbers are all that matters. As I have pointed out, and won the subsequent argument, the number of women, ethnic minority, disabled and gay candidates is far less important than the numbers in those categories who can actually win. In the past, I have heard positive reports that we selected, for example, eighteen BME candidates in London. The fact that none of them had a hope in hell of winning was considered to be of less importance.

On the contrary, this is not like the Olympics, it isn't the taking part that matters, it's the winning, and only the winning, that matters. The runners-up don't sit in Parliament, they don't count towards the diversity statistics that anyone cares about - the number of women/BME/disabled/gay MP's.

So, Mr Speaker, if you think that you'll make friends and influence people with a report like this, you're wrong. Oh yes, your new Labour friends will love you. But remember, they auctioned off their principles to the highest bidder years ago...

Brief reminders about Cambridge and, for that matter, the rest of England...

Time is running out!

Yes, the deadline for filing your papers to apply for approved candidate status for the 2010 General Election is just six days away. Hurry, hurry, hurry...

Oh yes, and the deadline for nominations for the Cambridge selection is coming closer too - 5 December is the cut off date. It will be a quick turnaround affair, with the calling notice reported to be scheduled for issue before Christmas. Watch this space!

George Osborne - Peggy Lee probably has it right

Now I admit to being a bit partisan. Yes, I would like the Liberal Democrats to form a government, introduce all of those things that I've been keen on over the years, and generally make the world a better place. However, if I can't have that, then all I ask for is that whoever is in charge gives the impression that they care and that they have a high level of competence.

Which brings me, once again, to the subject of George Osborne. It appears that he has managed to make a mess of his claim for mortgage interest expenses, claiming £1,400 for his second home in October, when the limit is just £1,250. His office claim that it was a 'submission in error'.

Error it may be, but it is indicative of a general level of sloppiness and a lack of attention to detail. In an aspiring Chancellor of the Exchequer, that can't be good, and it demonstrates once again that, whilst George hit gold once with his inheritance tax proposals in 2007, he has added very little to the sum of human knowledge since. One presumes that his retention as Shadow Chancellor is linked to something other than his skills in finance and economics, especially with Phil Hammond lurking in the shadows - a far more comforting option, might I suggest.

All this said, George does have form with expenses. Who could forget the £440.62 chauffeur bill for driving him from his second home in his constituency to London (he was entitled to a 5% discount for prompt payment but claimed the full amount anyway)? Or the rebuke for using public money to pay for an overtly political website? And, of course, the charge of 'flipping' after his rather fancy footwork over his mortgage arrangements?

All in all, not a pretty picture. Combined with his seemingly sub-GCSE grasp of economics, it does make you wonder... Perhaps Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller got it right, and so the final word goes to Peggy Lee. Take it away, Peggy...

National Express East Anglia - a reply?

Thank you for contacting National Express East Anglia Customer Services, we have received your email and we aim to get back to you as soon as possible. Our target is to answer 90% of our contacts within 6 working days.

However, if your contact is urgent you may prefer to give us a call on 0845 600 7245 mentioning that you have already sent an email.

We'll see, shall we?...

National Express East Anglia - their contribution to saving the planet (this post may contain irony)

Sometimes, just sometimes, I find myself travelling backwards and forwards between London and Suffolk in first class, usually because the fare is marginally more expensive or, on the odd bizarre occasion, because it is actually cheaper. Today is one of those occasions, and so this posting comes to you from the 19:30 from London Liverpool Street to Norwich, the one train of the day when they provide an at-seat dinner service.

Except, with the flair and competence with which NXEA are now renown, I am sitting in a darkened coach J for the second time in a fortnight because the people who apparently manage this company cannot arrange to have lights that work, and so those lucky people who have actually paid a full fare to ride this evening are forced to peer through the gloom at whatever they are trying to read. No apology, no explanation. It may be environmentally friendly, but it isn't service.

Oh, but it gets better. Many of us use this train because of the dinner service which, although not complex, is at least nourishing, and therefore, we haven't eaten. It seems that, when the staff turned up to run the service, they discovered that their operations staff had somehow failed to include a carriage with a kitchen in it. Therefore, no dinner service, and as my train makes it way through the evening, I am not very impressed. Add the fact that the train is already nine minutes late at Chelmsford, and I am not in the mood to forgive this evening.

So, I will be writing to National Express East Anglia to complain about their continued inadequacy not, quite frankly, that I expect to get a reply. The manner in which they wriggled off of the hook in terms of their contract to run the East Coast Main Line service is probably indicative of their general contempt for their passengers and the Government.

Oh, and yes, I can guarantee that this will not be the last that NXEA hear of this...

George Osborne demonstrating that he isn't fit for purpose... again

It is clearly time for George to say something that sounds that it might be popular, and so he has leapt aboard the 10:10 bandwagon. Now clearly, as Liberal Democrats, we support the notion that organisations and individuals should cut their carbon dioxide emissions by 10% next year. However, in those places where we run councils, the commitment has to be backed up with action. George doesn't have that problem, and it shows.

He suggests that government departments should achieve the called for 10% reduction and, if they don't achieve it, he'll cut their budget. It's a great soundbite, albeit an entirely vacuous one. I suspect that if HM Treasury fail, or the Department for International Development, whilst the usual liberal suspsects will cry out, the populace won't. On the other hand, if the NHS fails, is he seriously saying that he would cut its budget? The Home Office? Would he cut the number of prison officers or probation officers, would he restrict the budget of police authorities? Thought not.

It is another reminder that he, and his fellow travellers, still do not understand how government works. He seems to think that the only way to get civil servants to respond is to beat them with a stick - we've been here before, I think - whereas the private sector only respond to carrots. Actually, both public and private sectors respond to the right incentive, and it isn't always the same one.

So, another fail grade for George. Six months until a General Election, and the Conservative front bench still shows no sign of grasping what is actually required from a political party in power. Come on ladies and gentlemen, get a grip, it's later than you think...

Defending the regulators - a bureaucrat breaks cover...

We did lose one vote during the debate on the theme resolution at the ELDR Congress, 'Liberal Answers For A New Prosperity', ironically on an amendment to an otherwise perfectly acceptable clause. A late proposal to call for a 25 per cent reduction in the administrative burdens for business by 2014, compared with their current level, set this bureaucrat's antennae twitching. What did it mean? A 25% reduction in the number of regulations? A 25% reduction in the administrative impact of regulations? Indeed, where did the figure of 25% come from at all?

Having spotted it, and argued against it in the working group, I then found myself supported by the delegation and given the freedom to speak in the debate itself. And this is what I said...

"Congress, I have a confession to make. I am a bureaucrat. It's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it.

Regulation is not simply a burden, it is a balance. We regulate to advance our social agenda, to advance our economic agenda, to advance our environmental agenda. We balance the financial impact of that regulation against its benefits. Therefore, whilst Liberal Democrats support the principle of reducing the administrative burden, we believe that Europe and the member states need a scalpal, not a chainsaw, when attacking excessive bureaucracy.

The reduction sought of 25% has no basis, no precision. It does not indicate whether we wish to reduce the number of regulations by 25%, or the resource impact of regulation by 25%. It is, in short, a pretty soundbite, not a considered policy.

I therefore urge Congress to support the removal of the arbitrary figure from the resolution. Fellow liberals, let us be surgeons, not butchers."

It was, I believe, a fairly well-received intervention. Unfortunately, by a vote of eighty-nine votes to seventy-six, it turned out not to be quite well-received enough. Ah well, the point was made, and perhaps some of those so enthusiastic to slash regulation will remember my words when they discover just how difficult it is to carry out a balanced agenda without some, if not all, of our existing regulatory framework.

An unexpected turn of events in Barcelona

I have to admit that I hadn't exactly expected to do anything more than attend the ELDR Congress, take a few notes and otherwise listen to some speeches. Indeed, I took in the working group on the theme resolution in the expectation that it would be interesting, informative and make good reportage. I didn't expect to have to do very much.

However, as it appeared that virtually all of our delegation had other plans for their time, I became the second spokesperson for our group on the resolution itself, with Gordon Lishman leading. Fortunately, Gordon is good on the political philosophy end of it, upholding our stance that, whilst free markets are a good thing, there is sometimes a need for balancing what is good for business with what is good for individuals and the wider community.

I was somewhat surprised by a proposal that regulation be cut by 25%. Given that the original draft called for a reduction in regulation, it seemed foolhardy to call for a precise figure, especially given that, whilst the figure was precise, its meaning was anything but. And so I found myself arguing against the proposal on behalf of a party which regularly calls for a reduction of the regulatory burden on companies.

Given the makeup of the working group, I wasn't entirely surprised to lose there. However, there was always a possibility of arguing the case in front of the entire Congress - a slim one, I admit, but a possibility nonetheless. And so, in the delegation meeting that evening, the case was made, and it was agreed that we should continue to argue it.

By the next afternoon, I had prepared a brief intervention, only to discover that Gordon had been appointed to be a counting assistant for the Bureau elections, leaving me to 'lead' the delegation in its voting on the theme resolution. Perhaps I should have taken more notes... Fortunately, there were enough members of Federal Policy Committee around to guide me past any areas of uncertainty, and we managed to cast our votes as Party policy dictated.

It is odd that an non-policy wonk should be put into such a position, and it isn't something that I would actively seek to do in future, but it is reassuring that, if the need arises again, I could do the job and get away with it.

Oh yes, you'll want to know what happened in the debate. Let's leave that for another story...

Oh yes, you and whose army, Tom Strathclyde?

The Guardian reports that Lord Strathclyde, the Conservative leader in the Lords, is threatening to balk Labour attempts to push new legislation through before a General Election. Apparently, he feels that, without the consent of Tory peers, nothing can be passed. It seems that, amongst his many skills, arithmetic isn't to be found.

Firstly, he presumes that he can get his side to turn up and vote. The evidence of divisions since the summer recess is that he can't, especially after the dinner hour. Vote after vote that might have been won has been lost because Tories would rather be in a cosy armchair than doing their job, with at least one instance of a Conservative amendment lost in spite of Liberal Democrat support because they managed to turn out less than thirty to vote in support.

Second. and most importantly, assuming that the crossbenchers will not coalesce around one position - they are independents, after all - the House of Lords is in no overall control, with roughly equal numbers of Labour and Conservative peers and the rather more motivated, better organised and frankly more cohesive Liberal Democrats holding the balance of power. Our team vote in numbers, punch well above their weight, and are far more likely to hold this shambolic Government to account.

So, if Tom Strathclyde is reading this, he might like to remember that those pieces of legislation that address Liberal Democrat concerns in an appropriate and effective manner actually have a majority in the Lords, with or without the tattered remnants of the Conservative benches.

And, if David Cameron can find someone on his benches that can count, perhaps a new Leader might be worth consideration...

An A-Z of Valladares - J is for José

There are very few images of today's Valladares, flying or otherwise, for it is none other than José Sarmiento y Valladares (1643 - 1708), conde (count) de Moctezuma y de Tula, viceroy of New Spain from 1696 to 1701, and seemingly not a bad ruler relative to the time.

His first wife was a direct descendant of Moctezuma, the last Aztec emperor, from whence his title came. Whilst viceroy, he established a night watch in Mexico City to combat crime and, whilst the penalties were fairly extreme (whipping for a first offence, branding for a second offence, the loss of an ear for a third), one presumes that they were effective.

A supporter of Habsburg claims to the throne following the death of Charles II of Spain, he found himself on the wrong side when the Bourbons came to power in Madrid. However, he returned to Spain after being removed from his post, survived the residencia (effectively a commission of enquiry into charges against him) that followed and went on to be created Duke of Atrisco and becoming a grandee of Spain.

Liberal Bureaucracy at the ELDR Congress!

Blogging here at Liberal Bureaucracy will be a bit light for the next few days, as I'm off to Barcelona to attend the ELDR Congress (oh, the glamour!). I hope to cover the event for Liberal Democrat Voice, but there may be some reportage here too.

Curiously, this will be my first ELDR Congress since Copenhagen in, if memory serves, 1990. Strangely, it was one of the things that I didn't reconnect with when I returned to frontline Party service in 2004, but it should be interesting.

Another addition to the blogroll

A few months ago, I was in Vancouver, attending the congress of the Liberal Party of Canada, and met a few of their bloggers briefly. And so, in honour of that occasion, I bring you Liblogs...

Cllr Bureaucrat and the Budget of Doom

Back to the demesne for another Parish Council meeting last night, with a packed agenda and a Chair keen to finish early so that he could catch "I'm a Celebrity, get me away from Jordan!", or whatever it's called.

An issue of interest to villagers is the introduction of taxi metering by Mid Suffolk District Council, and given that I've noticed the effective fare increase, I thought that it was right to question our District Councillor, Caroline Byles, on the subject, only to get an answer that I hadn't expected. She claims that an amendment moved by the Green Party group and passed by the appropriate committee has added to the fare charged to those whose journey starts from somewhere other than the town.

This raises two questions. Firstly, Mid Suffolk is a Conservative-run council, so why are the Greens winning votes? Second, where was the consultation, or even the announcement? As a Parish Council, we might well have had something to say on the subject. In any event, I'm keen to find out what really happened. Allied to the advice from Suffolk County Council that we can't have a bus stop for the village, it's been a bad week for public transport in Creeting St Peter.

Our first discussion of the budget was a gentle one. There is a difference of opinion as to what we should be attempting to do, and how we fund that. I am a cautious soul, and am uncomfortable about spending other people's money without their tacit approval. It would be fair to say that my view is not universally shared, but we have agreed to consider our options and make a final decision at the next meeting.

I'm looking at the budget on a line by line basis, adhering to the principle of 'value for money' - which doesn't necessarily mean the cheapest option - as I'd rather spend our limited funds on things that actually make a difference. Besides, I have a duty of care, don't I?