I have noticed that the Royal Mint have used images of Euro coins on their website. They’re probably stock photo’s but I wonder what the fruitcakes in UKIP think about it

http://www.royalmint.com/store/catalogue/Collectable/Collectable.aspx

 Look at the hand holding the coins, and the image appears to be reversed but they’re definatetly Euro’s!

Visit Lib Dem Act

Tony Blair has failed in his bid to lead the European Union, and I for one am delighted. I congratulate Herman Van Rompuy in his new role, pesonally I supported the Prime Minister of Luxembourg (who is not a Liberal) for the post. Tony Blair spent the last five years of his premiership lining himself up for the post, eventually converting to be a Roman Catholic to make himself palatable to the European centre-right. Tony Blair needs to be investigated for his role in the deaths of thousands of innocent Iraqi’s, while Gordy signed the cheques.

Thousands of people commemorated the sacrifices made by men and women in services throughout the country. Old, young, rich, poor, white and black all bowed their heads in respect for those who died. What I saw over the weekend was not the sign of David Cameron’s broken society but a respectful nation, brought together in obvious grief for the latest round of military deaths overseas.

Britain thrives DESPITE it’s broken and archaic political system, but it is time for a change, not just of political party but Britain needs to change it’s political culture and electoral system. There are many good people out there who could bring so much to their communities, but hold back because they don’t want to be ‘tarred with the same brush’ as some of the self-serving and politically corrupt who currently occupy the seats in Westminster.

It’s quite clear to me that society IS NOT BROKEN, but politics is.

Well, now that the Lisbon Treaty has been signed and the Tories have dropped their ‘promise’ for a referendum, I want to remind everyone of the long-standing Lib Dem pledge for a  IN OR OUT referendum on the European Union.

Only people who were of voting age in 1975 have had a chance to vote on this important issue and I believe it’s time for another one.

The Conservatives of course, are suffering from amnesia on this issue as they took us into the Common Market in 1973. The Maastrict treaty, founding the European Union was signed in 1992 without so much as a glance in the direction of public opinion. The Lisbon treaty just tidies-up the decision making process in the EU, and in itself should not require a referendum, but it is time for an IN or OUT as I for one am fed-up with the griping from the sidelines, we should get stuck-in or try going it alone and see where that takes us.

Once more government spin has triumphed and much of the media has got it wrong. The new Home Secretary Alan Johnson has not made any significant changes to the scheme. Compulsion by stealth is still the order of the day, just as it always was. Someone joining the ID scheme ‘voluntarily’

will still be placing control of their identity in the hands of the IPS for life.

The Home Office line remains the same. No compulsion (as the Home Office defines it) was going to be applied until almost everyone had ‘volunteered’ and then it was only a matter of rounding up a minority of resisters and marginalised people.

The Home Office’s idea of “voluntary” is not the same as yours and mine.

Since 2004 the scheme was (and it still is) to proceed by “designating”

one-by-one under the Identity Cards Act 2006 other documents issued by official bodies — in the first place passports.

Once a document has been designated, you won’t be able to apply for one without also applying to be entered, for life, on the national identity register. If you don’t agree to be registered it won’t be that you are refused (say) a passport; you’d have voluntarily decided not to apply.

There’s no compulsion to have a passport. It is useful for travelling.

But you aren’t compelled to travel.

Or (say) to drive. Or to work as a security guard. Or with children. Or in healthcare. To get parole from prison. To practice as a lawyer. …

Any official licence, registration certificate or permit can be designated, and — in the home office’s skewed logic — handing control of your identity to the Home Office’s Identity and Passport Service will still be entirely voluntary.

That they were due for a confrontation with the airside worker’s unions over designating new passes at Manchester and City Airports is an illustration of just how voluntary “voluntary” really is. But the fact they have now ducked that fight for political convenience suggests saying no does work - if you say it loudly enough.

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It is still not too late for MPs to derail the scheme by repudiating the regulations due to be debated next week and detailed in the last newsletter. Only one of those statutory instruments has been dropped. If you have not done so already, please contact your MP:

http://www.writetothem.com

(NO2ID’s lobbying guide, written for us by the former assistant of a very distinguished retired minister, is brusque but absolutely to the

point: http://www.no2id.net/downloads/print/NO2ID-HowtoLobby.pdf )Peers will also have a vote on this; so if you happen to know one (or be one), then it would be a good idea to alert friends in the Lords now that the matter is soon to come up.

Against all the (BBC) odds, Gordon has survived Labour’s slaugher at the polls. To be honest, the economic situation is so bad that I don’t think anyone (apart from the King of economics, Vince Cable) could do any better, so a general election would be pointless. The longer Gordon continues, the more Labour will self destruct. I for one won’t mourn the passing of Newlabour because as a Liberal the past twelve years have been awful for civil liberties and freedom of speech.  

The first elections that the BNP have contested in Littlehampton have been an awful result for the BNP. I am pleased that their message of hate and predjudice has been rejected, although UKIP came in third across the town with their ignorant and jingoistic stance. The BNP should have done better, given the national situation but among the people of Littlehampton there are many retired people who were children during the war, who saw the horrors of Nazism and, although will never be ‘liberal’ will always be repulsed by a party who rejects Britsh values of fair-play and internationalism. Long serving Labour county councillor George O’Neill has lost his seat on the county council to the Tories, Ian Buckland came in a good second, losing by 68 votes.

Clause 152 of the Coroners and Justice Bill [1] - currently being debated by Parliament - would allow any Minister by order to take any information gathered for one purpose from anywhere, and use it for any other purpose.

An ‘Information Sharing Order’, as defined in Clause 152, would permit your information to be trafficked and abused, not only all across government and the public sector - it would also reach into the private sector. And it would even allow transfer of information across international borders.

Your information, your family’s information, arbitrarily used without your consent or even knowledge. The very reverse of ‘Data Protection’.

If you care about fundamental rights and freedoms, privacy and confidentiality, the time to act is NOW.

Please write to your MP - you can do this at http://www.WriteToThem.com

- and tell him or her that you REFUSE CONSENT to having your information shared under any ‘Information Sharing Order’, and ask him or her to vote to have Clause 152 removed entirely from the Coroners and Justice Bill.

I’ve had enough.

Restriction of our fundamental rights and freedoms has gone too far. ID cards, more CCTV cameras per head than any country in the world, a database of children’s fingerprints, a government that wants to conceal its own record on the disastrous war in

• Scrap ID cards for everyone.
• Restore the right to protest in Parliament Square.
• Scrap the ContactPoint database of all children in Britain.
• Remove innocent people from the DNA database.
• Reduce the maximum period of pre-charge detention to 14 days.

River ward councillor Ian Buckland by the Littlehampton hospital site.

Liberal Democrats in Littlehampton have redoubled our campaign for the rebuilding of the Littlehampton Hospital, for which we organised the all-party protest in September 2007. Ian Buckland is the Liberal Democrat councillor for River ward, where the hospital site is located. River has some of the lowest life expentancies in the south of England.

Cllr. Ian Buckland pictured with one of the giant potholes in Littlehampton. 

Littlehampton’s Liberal Democrats are fighting for imrovements in local infrastructure while Littlehampton’s roads are falling apart and the number of potholes around the area has reached worrying proportions. The Tory-controlled county council appears to have forgotton Littlehampton when it comes to road improvements and the building of cycle lanes.

 River ward councillor Ian Buckland said;- “If the tyres on my car were as bad as Littlehampton’s roads I would be prosecuted, so why does the Tory council think it’s OK to leave our roads in this state?” He continued “I have been fighting for better, safer roads as well as safe cycle lanes for families to use in our town, why is it that the cycle lane from Clymping stops at the river, forcing cyclists onto a dangerous roundabout. We have much to be proud of in this town, such as a good community spirit and excellent local businesses, but our Chichester-based county council has let us down.”