The Wildhearts Strike Back

For lovers of fast paced but tuneful rock an excellent new live CD from the legendary Wildhearts is available now.

Find out more at: www.thewildhearts.com

Innocent until proven guilty?

This week's barmy Blair idea is that juries should be told about a defendant's previous convictions in certain criminal cases.

This is yet another 'quick fix' attempt to be seen to be doing something about crime, without actually helping the situation one bit.

In any given court case their is either enough evidence to convince a jury that the defendant is guilty beyond reasonable doubt, or there is not.

The only impact information about previous convictions can have is to persuade a jury that is not convinced on the evidence of the case to find the defendant guilty.

This is likely to lead to the police being even more likely to simply finger convicted criminals known to have committed similar offences and get them into court, safe in the knowledge that they will clock up another conviction.

The aim of the criminal justice system should be to identify, convict and sentence the person guilty of the offence, not just someone who happens to have committed a similar offence previously.

The idea that increasing the chances of wrongful convictions somehow helps the victims of crime is laughable.

There are many things that can be done to improve the way the system works and makes it harder for people to get off on technicalities, but this is not one of them.

John Peel RIP

I was very sad to hear that John Peel had died today.

I have been listening to him for more than 20 years now. I still remember listening to him late at night in my early teens and discovering bands that I probably would never have heard otherwise.

Some of the stuff he played I loved, most of it was awful, but he was excellent throughout.

It is difficult to pin down exactly why so many people loved him, as evidenced by the reactions today. For me it is because listening to his show was rather like being round a mate's house having them play their favorite records to me.

I never got The Fall mind!

John Peel RIP

I was very sad to hear that John Peel had died today.

I have been listening to him for more than 20 years now. I still remember listening to him late at night in my early teens and discovering bands that I probably would never have heard otherwise.

Some of the stuff he played I loved, most of it was awful, but he was excellent throughout.

It is difficult to pin down exactly why so many people loved him, as evidenced by the reactions today. For me it is because listening to his show was rather like being round a mate's house having them play their favorite records to me.

I never got The Fall mind!

Delight and sadness

I suspect many Liberal Democrats will have had mixed feelings yesterday. In one batch of emails came the delightful news that Sarah Kennedy is expecting her first child and the sad news that Conrad Russell has passed away.

I am delighted for Sarah and Charles. I understand that the baby is expected in April, which is interesting timing given the likely general election date. I hope all goes well for them.

I am very sad that we have lost Conrad. I can't claim to have known him personally but I have had several chats with him over the years. He did a visit to support my campaign in Wantage at the last election and I often chatted to him at by-elections and conferences.

He was immensly engaging, very, very clever, very amusing and a true liberal.

My party, and politics in general, will be worse off without him.

Albums worth listening to

I saw this on Steve Guy's blog which he got from doctorvee. (I haven't got as far as working out clever link thingies yet so you can't link to them). But being keen on listening to albums I thought I'd join in anyway:

Copy the list on to your blog, put in bold the ones you have listened to (completely from begining to end) and then add three more albums that you think people should have heard before they turn into their parents - remember, it isn't necessarily your most favourite albums but the ones you think people should listen to... and when we say listen we mean from track one through to the end...If you put a link to your follow-on post in the comments of the site where you found it, the chain will be trackable. You are also allowed to DELETE up to THREE albums on the existing list, if you feel a) that this is an album which should not reasonably be foisted upon anybody, or b) that one Radiohead album is quite enough for one lifetime, thank you.
This is Hardcore - Pulp
Moon Safari - Air
Elastica - Elastica
Never Mind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols - Sex Pistols
OK Computer - Radiohead
The Kiss of Morning - Graham Coxon
Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars - David Bowie
The Wall - Pink Floyd
Setting Sons - The Jam
Train a Comin' - Steve Earle
Come From the Shadows - Joan Baez
The River - Bruce Springsteen
The Very Best of Joan Armatrading - Joan Armatrading
What's Going On - Marvin Gaye
Metal Box - Public Image Ltd
Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain - Pavement
Apple Venus Vol. 1 - XTC
Marquee Moon - Televison
Daydream Nation - Sonic Youth
The Joshua Tree - U2
Untitled fourth album - Led Zeppelin
Jagged Little Pill - Alanis Morisette

Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd
Leige and Leif - Fairport Convention
Afraid of Sunlight - Marillion

I added these last three and would remove:

Confield - Autechre
Ágætis Byrjun - Sigur Rós
Folksinger - Phranc

Hypocrisy

At a press conference last night Jack Straw said:

"It's hard to imagine what it must be like to go through so terrible an ordeal.
"But it's even harder to imagine how anyone could inflict such suffering. To kidnap a man, to subject him and his family to the agony of prolonged uncertainty and, then to murder him in this way in inhuman."

This is something we could all sign up to.

But if he really believes it why isn't he saying the same things about the Bush administration - which is treating innocent people in exactly this way - and why is the Blair Government arguing in the courts that it should be entitled to use information extracted by torture in other countries?

Busted

I see pop rock boy band Busted have come out as Conservatives.

This is apparantly on the basis that know that they are earning a bit of money they don't want to spend any more in tax.

Should help the Tories win that all important 6-12 year old girls vote!

Near miss in Hartlepool

Just back from the north east after spending a day with my dad in Redcar.

I'm proud of the Lib Dem team and the campaign they ran. It still strikes me as odd that it is the Lib Dems who are the party making the running in these by-elections. Labour's leaflets. despite seven years in power, largely consisted of attacks on the Lib Dem candidate. The Tory campaign started late and barely existed. Local Labour members were (w)rightly ashamed of their party's campaign.

I am happy to see Labour delude themselves that a 19% swing to the Lib Dems is a victory, although their poor result is nothing compared to the Conservatives falling to fourth.

If the Tories are set for any kind of breakthrough in the General they should be closing on Labour in a by-election in Hartlepool (they did start from second place!) - not cede ground to the Lib Dems. There must be a lot of very glum Tory activists heading for Bournemouth today.

Jody Dunn deserves a huge amount of credit for fighting such an energetic and positive campaign. She was quite clearly the best candidate and remained unflappable until then end, even in the face of the nasty and self-defeating antics of the so-called Fathers4Justice.

Disappointed not to win, but delighted to have helped such an outstanding candidate and to help push the Tories nearer to the dustbin of history where they belong.