Jo Hayes

Local Lib Dems have selected Naomi Smith as their next Prospective Parliamentary Candidate in the seat of Cities of London and Westminster. Naomi is already well known among young Lib Dems, as she is President of Liberal Youth as well as a party trainer. Possibly less well known is that Naomi shares at least one unusual skill with Paddy Ashdown - they can both speak Mandarin Chinese. In this most multicultural of constituencies that could come in handy. Congratulations, Naomi.

It would be nice to have confidence in the people in charge, but the Brown/Darling pledge to mortgage my future to the hilt to combat the present banking crisis, makes that impossible. Instead, it turns out that the people in charge are a load of blooming amateurs! Not one of them saw this coming. But Vince Cable did. And now they don't know what will happen next, and they don't know what to do. As for the official opposition, they seem no fitter to govern. Inherited wealth proves nothing. George Osborne as Chancellor? Don't make me laugh. At least, it would be funny if it weren't so frightening. Anyway, what can the party of the capitalists possibly have to contribute? It was unregulated capitalism that brought this mess about. It's remarkable, really, that the government and official opposition get paid loads of salary and expenses for being so useless.

President-elect Obama’s story could only have happened in America. Today every person on the planet who believes in democracy can walk taller. The power of democracy to effect peaceful change has just been demonstrated. Obama won by awakening a determination in millions who had not voted before, not even in the high water mark election of 2004, to willingly register to vote and then to use their votes, and to do that he had to get them on his side, to include them and to inspire hope. There is a lesson for us about leadership here. And there is more hope in the air than for years.

In a sombre address to the ELDR Congress on 31 October, Mikhail Kasyanov (former Prime Minister of the Russian Federation) characterised his country as a place where the democratic institutions had been replaced by imitations. Mr Kasyanov was at the ELDR Congress as leader of the People’s Democratic Union and had earlier presented his party’s case to the ELDR Council for joining the ELDR as a full member. Mr Kasyanov impressed the Council with a trenchant analysis of the current political direction of Russia. He was extremely critical of the elections whereby former President Putin and his associates tightened their held on power earlier this year. The Russian authorities refuse to accord legal status to the PDU and in January of this year they refused to register Mr Kasyanov as a candidate in the presidential elections. The reasons for these refusals seem flimsy in the extreme. Needless to say these refusals did not prevent the ELDR Council from considering the application for memb...

The winter before last I attended a Colchester Lib Dems' annual dinner at which Lembit was the guest speaker. His energy and infectious enthusiasm were obvious but what impressed me most was the speed and accuracy with which he astutely sized up the political situation locally. Last winter Ros was the guest speaker at the same event and she came across in a quieter way but with similar warmth and ability to communicate. Both have that vital quality, a good sense of humour. In their different ways they each have a very serious claim to be elected as President of the UK Liberal Democrats. In my view, anyone who does not see this - such as, for instance, the person who has been commenting anonymously in an unpleasant way against Lembit on my friend Linda Jack's blog - is either incapable of objectivity or a bit of an idiot. Possibly both. I haven't a clue who is ahead in the election but I feel confident that whether the winner is Ros or Lembit, we in the UK Lib Dems w...

This evening I feel satisfaction to have succeeded in getting the Congress of ELDR (short for European Liberal Democratic and Reform Party) to adopt an energy policy proposal that is hugely important. This is the creating of a new European electricity supergrid, transmitting electricity along high voltage direct current (HVDC) cables. Energy losses on DC lines are far lower than on the traditional AC ones, so the new supergrid will make it economic to transmit electricity over long distances. It is feasible and economic to transmit electricity for 3000 km or more using HVDC transmission lines. This will mean that the benefits of renewable energy can be shared throughout Europe. It could be, for example, geothermal energy from Iceland, tidal energy from coastal regions or wind energy from exposed regions. Energy could even be imported from hot desert regions, such as North Africa, by means of "concentrating solar power" (CSP) technology - a huge and inexhaustible source of...

Westminster City Council has, or had, £17m in Icelandic banks: £7m in Landsbanki and £10m in its UK subsidiary, Heritable. Nearly £10m of these deposits were placed in August. According to Councillor Colin Barrow CBE, Leader of the ruling Tory group on the Council, in August "both banks had excellent credit ratings of the highest standard". But on 30th January 2008 David Ibison, writing in the Financial Times about Landsbanki and two other major Icelandic banks, stated there was "increased uncertainty over the banks arising from their perceived reliance on wholesale funding, cross-ownership issues, an alleged lack of transparency, and macro-economic imbalances." How come this increased uncertainty had not come to the attention of Cllr Barrow? I am surprised, especially as according to his biography on the Westminster Conservatives' website (not yet updated to reflect his promotion to Leader), he "handles the Council's finances, as Deputy Leader of the...