Cllr. Steve Cooke

Seven years today since the illegal Iraq invasion began, with disastrous results and thousands and thousands of deaths. Labour and Bush told us there were weapons of mass destruction ready to be deployed at a moment’s notice against us. Seven years on and the mythical WMDs have yet to be found. Such a shame that our troops have been put into such situation with inadequate equipment, poor housing back home, and too many wars to fight.

Isn’t it time ethics, decency and the rule of law started to feature in our foreign policy?

Read the Lib Dem policies on Defence and International Affairs.

I’d just like to promote a new campaign by Nick Clegg and LGBT Lib Dems calling for Marriage Without Borders – removing the gender restrictions on marriages and civil partnerships, and improving international recognition of same-sex relationships.

Please sign the petition; if you’re on Facebook you can become a fan, but do make sure you sign as well – and then invite your friends to become fans, and share the page on your own profile!

Gordon Brown is desperately scrabbling around trying to find places to make cuts while the economy plunges deeper and deeper into debt (over £800bn of public debt at last count). He’s sensibly identified Trident as a possible place to make cuts, but he’s far too nervous to go the whole hog and scrap it, so he’s proposing a small scaling back and reduction in capacity (welcome though that is).

What’s annoying though is not so much Brown’s innate timidity (from a man who ironically wrote book on courage), but the fact that he’s trying to sell this as an example of ‘statesmanship’ in the move toward unilateral disarmament. Do me a favour! We can all see what this is about; Brown is spinning a defence cut as something he planned all along in the name of multi-lateral disarmament. Just this July Brown stated clearly that he was committed to updating the Trident submarine-based missile system despite its estimated £20bn cost (see: here) and he was adamant that he was committed to Trident in its current configuration in 2007 (see: here). By now though, Brown has probably convinced himself that his new position and his fine words are what he really meant and believed all along.

I used to think that if you could sum up Labour using only one adjective it’d be: autocratic or controlling. Now, I’m beginning to think that self-deluded might be more appropriate.

For several years Salford Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in conjunction with Salford Pax Christi have commemorated the horror of the atom bomb on Hiroshima on August 6th 1945 in speech, poetry and song.

This year they meet to do so beside the War Memorial on Chorley Road, Swinton from 12 p.m.

I am not a member of either group – but plan on being there during my lunchbreak to add my voice.

P.s. – apologies to those who commented recently and got caught in the filters for a few days; I’ve been unable to devote much time to the blog in the last couple of weeks (Swine Flu amongst other things).

Nick Griffin, the BNP leader elected so recently as an MEP for the North West, has offered us a way to end immigration. Nick thinks that we should get the Navy to drown black people attempting to illegally enter Europe. Nice. I really hope that this isn’t a view shared by the people who voted for his party.

Well, most of the results are in. Labour have had a terrible time of it, and we held our own, though I’m disappointed not to have two Lib Dem MEPs in the North West. Instead the xenophobic conspiracy theorists in UKIP did well and we have two facists to represent Yorkshire and the Humber and the North West. The Yorkshire and Humber BNP guy looks like an old fashioned Hitler loving Nazi – former British National Socialist Party member (founded on Hitler’s birthday), former National Front leader. A sad day that so many are willing to vote for racists and bigots.

I really think we ought to stop pretending that many of those voting for the BNP are not really racists. I met a guy who used to live on my estate the other day – he said he was voting BNP because he wanted ‘the coloureds out.’ The irony that he comes from an Irish immigrant family was not lost on me.

Still, a gain of an MEP, a strong showing in key seats and excellent vote share in the local elections is a positive. Slow, but steady progress. Have been impressed with the direction Nick Clegg is taking the party and shaping our messages.