David Walter R.I.P.

There have been some very fulsome tributes to David Walter here, here and here (and no doubt elsewhere). I would not pretend to have known the man well enough to pay tribute to him in any qualitative form. But I would just say that I approached him at a Lib Dem conference while he was still an ITN journalist, to excitedly tell him that I shared a surname with him. It’s not often we Walters meet another Walter without the “s” which is, more often than not, appended to the end of our surname (it happens to other surnames which are, or sound like, forenames also, apparently. Ask anyone called “Roger” or “Rodger”).I didn’t have time to enquire as to whether he was one of the Bradworthy Walters (like me) or the, much more elevated, Bearwood Walters.

He was very charming about my approach, but, I must admit, he looked ever-so-slightly bemused.

Anyway, a great liberal, a great journalist and a man who very valiantly tried to hold the seat which has gone in and out of the Liberal/Lib Dem party – namely West Devon/Torridge. After a famous by-election win celebrated in august circles of the party (there is apparently a recently restored stained glass window depicting it in St Asquith’s), it was once held by the none other than Mark Bonham-Carter, grandson of Asquith.

Dick Cheney's heart transplant which isn't a heart transplant

For those of us who remember Dr Christian Barnard and his pioneering heart transplant surgery, heart transplant is a big deal. It is for others, no doubt.

As a fellow human being, with a family, I wish Dick Cheney all the best for a successful recovery from his “heart transplant”. Strictly speaking, he hasn’t actually had a heart transplant. He’s had the installation of an Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD) powered by batteries. It’s often described as a “bridge to heart transplant”.

Rachel Maddow on MSNBC explains with the help of an expert below.

There have been lots of jokes about all this on Twitter. Perhaps they can be summed up by the number one Twitter Cheney “heart transplant” joke:

Don’t you need to have a heart in the first place to have a heart transplant?

[Drum roll – Cymbal}

In praise of Earl Scruggs R.I.P.

Earl Scruggs. “Who he?” comes the shouted communual response from the Liberal Burblings reader, as well as “Ed”.

Well, he was quite a man. A misucian, but particularly a banjo player. – Ask Billy Connolly, banjo player extraordinaire.

I was once forced to present a Country Music show or four on Radio 210 in Reading. I struggled. Country Music just isn’t me – even though I do understand the crossplay between it and rock/pop music. But Earl Scruggs was an oasis. “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” can be enjoyed by most people. A sheer piece of beauty.

Here he is with it – Foggy Mountain Breakdown – at the Camp Springs Bluegrass Festival in 1971.

The proud Lib Dem tradition of losing deposits

We should not let the Bradford West Lib Dem deposit forfeiture pass without recalling this excellent song from the Liberator Songbook. It is sung lustily at most conferences to the tune of ‘Waltzing Matilda’:

Once a floating voter came across a polling booth,
Went inside to cast his vote,
When he came out, he found he’d voted Liberal.
Who’ll come a-losing deposits with me?

Innovative BBC drama on gang murder

I recommend watching BBC3’s My Murder here on iPlayer. It’s a really accessible and moving drama telling the true story of 16 year-old Shakilus Townsend, who was killed in a “honey trap” gang murder in 2008.

Mixing real CCTV footage and 999 recordings with acted scenes, it tells the tale from the point of view of the victim, Shakilus. For example, at the end, he describes, in chilling detail, the injuries he received. You then see scenes from his funeral, and his (actual) mother speaking tearfully of her lost son. You then see images of the gang who were put away for long stretches in jail for “joint enterprise” murder.

I’ve been thinking deeply about the utter senselessness of knife crime recently, spurred by a local murder. I have to say “Well done BBC” for this superb modern drama which eloquently and powerfully portrays the shameful stupidity of knife crime.

Is Francis Maude competing for the "Prat of the Month" award?

First, came his car crash Today interview, when he tried to defend the indefensible – that Cameron entertaining donors in premises owned by the taxpayer was a private matter.

Then, today the idiot was telling drivers to fill up a “jerry can” with fuel to combat a possible strike. As the words left his mouth, he sounded like a 42 carat plonker, even before you thought about what he was saying. Explosions? Fires? That sort of thing. And is enough fuel for 150 miles of travel (the legal storage limit) really going to help defeat a strike at least seven days away?

Also in defence of Tim Farron

I’m in a minority of two with Stephen Tall.

Need Healing? God can heal today! Do you suffer from Back Pain, Arthritis, MS, Addiction … Ulcers, Depression, Allergies, Fibromyalgia, Asthma, Paralysis, Crippling Disease, Phobias, Sleeping disorders or any other sickness?
“We’d love to pray for your healing right now!
“We’re Christian from churches in Bath and we pray in the name of Jesus. We believe that God loves you and can heal you from any sickness.

For a party founded (largely) by non-conformist Christians, there is a remarkably virulent anti-Christian tendency within the Lib Dems. Just mention the word “Christian” and they’re off on one. Mention an Archbishop and it’s Rantomania Day.

But still, it keeps their blood moving. – All good for the circulation, in moderation.

Tim Farron is perfectly entitled to sign up to protest at an Advertising Standards Authority ruling. It’s not surprising that he did, given that he is a faithful Christian – as was, by the way, our last President but one Simon Hughes.

You can see the “offending” advert above and it and associated material here.

As one of my favourite French and Saunders sketches goes:

STUFF AND NONSENSE!

Just take out the words “God can heal today” and I think the leaflet (aside from the website) would have been acceptable to the ASA anyway.

Personally I don’t agree with such an advert. Quietly praying for people is much better than going around advertising it. But it’s a free country. The Healing on the Streets group were within their rights to attempt the advertising. The ASA were within their rights to adjudicate on it. The MPs were within their rights to write a letter to the ASA. Various bloggers were within their rights to blow their tops at Tim Farron. And I am within my rights to write this. (Do you see a pattern emerging?)

But what a waste of good blood pressure all round…

Advice to Conservatives: When in hole stop digging

Francis Maude has given a very good impression of a man sliding down the edge of an oversize razor blade today. Painful to watch.

On Today this morning his performance was ludicrous in the extreme.

In the Commons he says it’s all Labour’s fault – they have been “shameful” on this Cruddas affair he says.

It’s all quite ridiculous. It has been obvious all along that Cameron should reveal his dinner guests at the Number Ten flat, as he has now done for donors. We’re told these are private affairs. Cameron pays for the dinners out of his own pocket. Bollocks! It’s a state-owned property for pity’s sake!

All the guests should be revealed. It’s just the same as when the US President lists all the guests to the Lincoln Bedroom in the White House.

In a nutshell: That "granny tax" = tax break they never had in the first place

From my friend and occasional commenter here, Mark:

For nearly 90 years, pensioners have enjoyed more generous personal income tax allowances than working adults: a legacy of the days when retirement was a short, painful and often rather alarming business. Now, in order to help fund large and continuing hikes in the personal tax allowance for low and middle-income workers (which have so far seen two million people lifted out of income tax altogether by this coalition government), those more generous pensioners’ allowances are being frozen in real terms so that the working adults’ allowance can catch up, until the distinction between workers’ and pensioners’ allowances vanishes and the two systems can be merged.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t make a snappy Mail headline though, does it?

Mitt Romney: The "Etch A Sketch" candidate

The LA Times reports:

Eric Fehrnstrom, one of Mitt Romney’s top aides, torpedoed what should have been a gangbusters news cycle for the campaign with this answer to a question about how damaging the primary has been to his chances in November.

“I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch-A-Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again.”

Romney’s critics suggested it was proof of what they’d long been warning conservatives — that he’d taken positions now to appeal to the party’s base that he’d quickly distance himself once he locked up the nomination.

Political Wire states:

Joe Klein thinks the Etch-A-Sketch gaffe “may go well beyond a momentary embarrassment and become a campaign-defining disaster, much as John Kerry’s ‘I voted for it before I voted against it’ gaffe — which came at almost exactly the same point in that campaign.

The key reason: “Most obviously, this was a classic Kinsleyan gaffe — an inadvertent blurting of the truth — that goes to the very heart of the character problems that have bedeviled Romney throughout this campaign.”

But more important: “It makes it much harder, perhaps impossible, for Romney to begin to tack back to the center to appeal to the centrist voters, an absolute necessity for the fall campaign after the free-range extremism of the Republican primary. Every time Romney makes a move, or even a head-fake, it becomes an Etch-a-Sketch moment.