Jonathan Wallace

I am at the Falcons Rugby Club in Newcastle, packed out with Lib Dems, for the Vince Cable dinner. There are double the number of people here that normally attend the North East Region AGM. So, here's my suggestion for the agenda for the next AGM: charge more and put on dinner with Vince! Quite a crowd puller.
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I am not in Cowley St today. Instead, I have just struggled across London on the rush hour Tube to get to Kings Cross. I rarely travel on the Tube in rush hour and I had forgotten how bad it is. I pity those who have to do it everyday. Anyway, I am on the train to Newcastle now, just waiting to leave KX. I am heading home early as Vince Cable is speaking tonight at the Newcastle local party dinner. All 180 tickets have been sold but I will be there, doing photos as well as eating dinner. The added interest is that I am interviewing Vince for the regional video newsletter I occasionally produce. This will have a slight difference however as it will be used with constituent email newsletters as well.

Doors of train have just closed. I'm now on the way home.
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I was digging around the Parliamentary website yesterday (someone has to!) and came across this comment from Jack Straw, made in May 2007. “It is utterly irresponsible!” he exclaimed about the Lib Dem administration that had just taken over Hull City Council.

The issue at stake was the Council's 31% stake in Kingston Communications PLC. The Lib Dem administration decided that it was time to cash in the shares and bank the money instead. Apparently, such a move was regarded by the new Lib Dem council leadership as safer than playing the stockmarket with council taxpayers' cash.

Hull Labour MP Diana Johnson, however, seemed to think the sale was a bit of a bad idea. Nevertheless, the sell off by the Lib Dems netted the authority a cool £100 million.

The shares in the company were trading at around 80p when the sale went through last year. Now they are less than 10p.

Under Labour, the investment would now be worth about £12-13 million. I bet the residents of Hull are sighing with relief that the Council decided to follow the "utterly irresponsible" policy of protecting their investment. Apparently, the money from the sale last year could now buy the company twice over!

Interestingly, when the fuss first blew up, Blaydon MP Dave Anderson came rushing in with an EDM attacking the sale of the shares. Were he to lose his seat and need to get a new job, can I suggest that becoming a financial adviser may be an occupation he would wish to avoid!?

Along comes another rumour to send them running back to the trenches. And this time, it's David Cameron expressing unhappiness with his band of merry wanderers. According to the Whip in The Sun:

Now senior Tories are aghast at rumours that David Cameron was rubbishing them during a private dinner recently. He is said to have told a pal: “I’ve got six or seven people in the Shadow Cabinet capable of working in the government. The rest are useless.”

You can enjoy the fun at The Spectator

Got an email from BBC Panorama this morning. Unfortunately, my section of the programme has been axed. Oh well, at least I got a good photo of my being interviewed! The thing was, I had forgotten about the programme until the email arrived! I guess I'll have to stick to appearing in my own YouTube videos - one of which has had nearly 100,000 viewings!
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It has been some time since I last experienced temperatures this cold in the UK. Yesterday we had to defrost the car before going to Corbridge. It took about 10 minutes before we could leave the drive. And we had to make another stop on the way to clear the windscreen again. So we planned to leave the house a bit earlier today to give us time to clear the car of ice. It was done a lot quicker than expected, helped by my taking the car down to the office in Whickham last night. I ended up with a much longer wait for my blessedly non-cancelled train at Newcastle Central. I hid away in the waiting room, trying to keep warm whilst I waited.

I am now on the train to London. It will be a short week in the capital. Vince Cable is coming up for a dinner in Newcastle on Thursday and I'll be back for that. Apparently all 180 tickets for it sold out in record time. Watch out for the exclusive photos on Friday!

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Government ministers were not made aware of, or involved in, the arrest of Damien Green MP, the Tories shadow immigration minister, claims Jacqui Smith. I believe her. But that is not the point. The use of anti-terror powers in non-terror issues, the clampdown on legitimate protest, the requirement to register your personal details with the government and face fines for failing to do so, the plans for records to be kept of all phone calls and emails, the bullying of the media: these are all part of the culture of government Labour has created. Ministers do not have to be involved in the decision to be complicit. They simply have to express a desire to be rid of a turbulent problem or civil servant, and the structure they have created goes into action. Ministers did not order the arrest of Green. They didn't need to. They simply let the repression of their own system of government kick in.

Labour is a party in a democracy. Too often they exhibit a one party state mentality in which other parties and alternative points of view are regarded at best as an extreme irritation, and at worst a form of insubordination and insurresction which the system needs to destroy. I have seen this for years in the North East where Labour believe their birthright is to rule unhindered. Now, with a Prime Minister whose only guiding motive is staying in power, we are enduring the same style of government across the whole of our nation.

Labour's guiding principle of staying in power at any cost leaves the people of the country to pick up the bill. And it ain't cheap.
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Just back from my sister's house in Newcastle from a family get together. I pick up my work emails and find a message from Penny Reid, our Leader on Blyth Valley District Council in Northumberland. I'll let Penny explain:

As some of you may have already heard, last year's Mayor of Blyth Valley, Councillor Cilla Isles, has resigned from the Labour Party and has joined the Liberal Democrats. Cilla is a hard-working, community councillor and we are very pleased to have her in the party and in the Lib Dem council group. Labour continue to show their darker and more devious side as the end of their reign in the south-east approaches and whilst Cilla is the first to see them for what they are, I hear she may not be the last.

I had an unexpected trip to Corbridge in the Tyne Valley, Northumberland, today, to take David to a magistrates reception. The house where the reception was held was just along the road from the Corbridge Roman site. So I dropped off David and went along to Corstopitum, armed with cameras.

I have filmed videos in all sorts of places throughout the Roman Empire. And at some point I am going to pull them together onto one dvd. But that requires shooting lots of footage on Roman sites in the North East. It is, after all, Rome's northern frontiier. So watch out soon for my video appearing on YouTube.

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We have traded some homemade jams and chutneys for some pheasants. This will make for an interesting weekend of pheasant plucking! Now that we are part of the self-sufficient fraternity (or rather, we are attempting to be - the plan is to be largely self-sufficient in food by 2010) we can expect more plucking weekends engaged in food preparation of this nature!

And when I am not plucking, I will be writing and printing Focus leaflets. I had to spend tonight changing a village focus from an A4 to A3. We had a load more news come in we needed to report to constituents. And when I'm not writing Focuses, I'll be printing them! The interlude amongst this will be spent at a local fayre. I seem to have donated a fair chunk of the tombola prizes for our stall - a supply of jams and chutneys!

We will however have a family get together on Sunday, at my sister's house. Andrew, older brother is up from Leicester.

I am now on the train heading home. As we are not yet at full self-sufficiency level, I am eating an M&S sandwich. At least this time I have avoided buying a bagette from Upper Crust. I'm not touching them again.

Irritatingly, National Express have lengthened this journey by 20 minutes (at the same time as they were telling people at from the end of next year they wil be introducing shorter journey times.)

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It was announced today that Neil Trafford died on Sunday following a road accident. Neil was the campaigns officer for the North West region. I have known him for some years and saw him last week when he came into Cowley St. He was a first class campaigner and had made a significant contribution to the party, especially in the North West.

It is a great tragedy that such a young and talented person has been taken from us. I worked with Neil on the Sedgefield by-election. He was on the literature team. He was usually amongst the first to get the photos I had been sent out to gather in.

A great guy. Neil, you will be greatly missed.

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