Monday, March 24, 2014

Ten stories from ten years - 24 March


Taking my lead from Caron Lindsay on Liberal Democrat Voice, here are snapshots of 24 March over the years here on Liberal England:

2013 - Marianne Faithfull sang for us while I wrote about her grandfather's libido-liberating Frigidity Machine.

2012 - I visited the Portland Enclave, which lies off the London Road in Leicester. The picture above is taken from this post.

2011 - A guest post by Ruth Kinna offered a beginner's guide to anarchism.

2010 - Rory Stewart had compared Liberal Democrats to the Taliban. I remarked that I would be more outraged at this if I had not once begun a Guardian article as follows: "Fierce, bearded and wedded to an impenetrable ideology. Not a description of the Taliban, but the average commentator's view of the Liberal Democrats."

2009 - On Ada Lovelace day, I paid tribute to the woman herself.

2008 - I congratulated to the pro-Tibet activists who attempted to disrupt the lighting of the Olympic torch in London.

2007 - An amusingly shaped parsnip had made it from the pages of the Shropshire Star to the Guardian.

2006 - As so often in those days, my House Points column dealt with Labour's attempt to give the government more powers against terrorism: "Never mind traditions of local accountability and mistrust of an overmighty state: whisper the word “terrorism” and we are supposed to throwaway everything we believe in. The problem with today’s world is not that terrorists believe in their cause so strongly: it’s that the democracies’ belief in theirs is so weak."

2005 - Responding to reports that Mark Thompson had bit a colleague when working as editor of the Nine O'Clock News, Lord Bonkers said: "I knew Lord Reith well and never saw him bite anybody, but there were persistent reports in the 1960s that Hugh Carleton Greene had eaten a junior researcher."

2004 - "Twitchy local authorities, obsessed with safety and frightened of compensation claims, are turning urban areas into 'fun-free, soulless' spaces," said a campaign launched on this day.

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