It's Friday...It's little Danish plastic men

I'm not sure why but my week is going to be summed up by some little Danish people and no I don't mean Sandi Toksvig.

First up of course we lost Jeff Conaway who played Kenickie in Grease so here is Summer Loving, I believe it is now officially summer, so where is the loving?



Then of course there were announcements about The Hobbit films titles part will be The Unexpected Journey while part two will be There and Back Again.  If you can't wait here is a little sneak peek of the filming going on somewhere in New Zealand Legoland. No doubt oneexwidow will be pointing out some canonical inaccuracy.



Of course the other story of the week was Lewis Hamilton who seems to be the only one in Monaco or who saw what was going on not to know why the stewards wanted to have a word. Of course IF Lewis truly were the size of a Lego man and able to make a Lego bridge for Santader he'd have caused Massa, Maldonado
or anyone else would have far less issues with him.

Stonewall UK, only no NI in Stonewall

Stonewall use the Twitter name stonewalluk however this is a misnomer. They only operate in England, Wales and Scotland. I thought I'd take their sexual health survey and only got so far when I got this page when I couldn't answer with one of the four countries of the UK (only the three listed above were available).

Yup you guessed it another UK wide organisation that doesn't want to include Northern Irish data in its reporting. Which if they are presenting this data to Parliament ends ups being misleading, as it is not inclusive.

Andrew Reeves in ten Blogposts

Is it possible to sum up a man in just 10 blog posts, all his passion, vigour, emotions and concerns? No of course not and I'm not even going to say I will. However, what I have done below is put together a collection of ten of Andrew Reeves's blog posts that show the depth of the man, he wasn't all politics and campaigning.

Many of us who knew Andrew always heard of Roger, his husband since January 28th and partner for many years before, but very few of us ever got to met Roger. I even canvassed for Kevin Lang at their front door and got no reply, so called Mr Reeves from my mobile to be sure we could rely on his vote. However, I'm sure the proudest moment of Andrew's life was the day he an Roger got married so I have to start with his report on that day.

Of course in recent months we know that Andrew had another man in his life, Richard Kerrigan, his personal trainer at the David Lloyd gym just down the road from his flat. Those of us know knew Andrew were impressed by the progress his health regime was making. We along with him were convinced it would lead to him having many happy years left with us. Anywhere here is Andrew's blog about that first glance across the sweaty gym.

His mother meant a lot to Andrew. Her sad loss in 2009 was a spur for him to raise money for charity. But it also gave him an empathy with David Cameron when his father passed away last year.

Like me Andrew loved his sports, like me he was a sports fan who, as the header to his blog reads, "happens to be gay". He was a fellow football fan, if one who supported Chelsea can be called, and like me was rather annoyed at  what Sepp Blatter, recently reinstalled dictator of FIFA, had to say about gay fans going to Qatar for the 2022 World Cup, where having man to man sex is illegal.

Andrew loved it when he was asked to write up match reports for the Edinburgh Capitals ice hockey team. Sadly a passion we shared but never got to go see a game together, there was always talk of going to a Capitals v Belfast Giants match. Next time they are in town I will go in honour of my friend. But here is a match report of a game we would have been supporting opposite sides.Victory for Capitals in close match

Andrew would love the fact that his death caused him to trend on Twitter in the UK, especially in light of the fact that just before Christmas the service suspended his account when he retweeted and erroneous ITN staffer's tweet from the business account. Back then the support was immense and no wonder that his sudden passing led to similar outpourings. This is almost like a thank you to all of us for the love we showed him again today.

Looking through Andrew's posts I recall how much his loved the Eurovision Song Contest. Here is what he said about the first time that Graham Norton hosted the show. His Tweet Paper the Andrew Reeves Daily came out today and included this Eurovision song listening to it today the words are somewhat appropriate for Andrew, not that he ever ran scared but listen closely.



Of course there was always a cheeky side to Andrew and he was never one to big up a salacious headline. He would even ejaculate it over and over again on Twitter to make sure you came to have a look at it, including this bit of good news for the men of Glasgow.

But of course Andrew was a campaigner and put his heart and soul into it 110%. You have any doubts about that read this account of just one 12 hour part of his life during the campaign last year. It shows he was human after all.

And finally I'm returning a compliment here. Shortly after I moved to Northern Ireland the top 75 Scottish Blogs for last year were announced. Andrew wrote "Stephen Glenn leaves a great legacy in the Macblogosphere - and although only over the sea, we miss him loads." The same to you Andrew, the same to you. Sadly you are not just over the sea, so our missing of you is more permanent than my transient one.

Fittingly On this saddest of weeks there were three blogs (including this one) dedicated to Andrew in the Lib Dem Voice Golden Dozen top 7 as well as his last blogpost.

Update: Although this made the Lib Dem Voice Golden Dozen and was a sign of how much Andrew was loved and will be missed by many, via Facebook I recieved this comment from his partner Roger, which made me shed a tear when I read it, but made the tears of going over Andrew's blog worthwhile to create this post.

Stephen. Thank you so much for this. I have cried and laughed at it. I never used to read Andrews blog much. But this was fantastic. He loved to blog. He even said on Wednesday he should blog more, but he didn't have the time. Thank you again Rogx

Andrew Reeves - Gone too soon

I woke up this morning to hear the tragic news that the man who changed the course of my life 7 months ago had tragically passed away.

It was Andrew Reeves who when asked did he know of any good campaigners who could front up the Yes! to Fairer Votes campaign in Northern Ireland immediately thought of me and told me to apply. Of course in the three all too short years that I have really gotten to know Andrew much of that time was spent on the campaign trail, it was his job after all and my passion (until recent months when thanks to him it became my job too). It started in Glasgow East, when I myself was just returning to full campaign mode. Yet somehow I still managed a day of tenement mountaineering without any adverse health issues. That was the campaign that Stephen was back, yet Andrew had arrived.

There followed Glenrothes, Glasgow NE, the European Election and last years General Election of course. The late night strategy meetings in Glenrothes always happened around the dart board. I was sometimes there waiting for Caron to give me a lift back, aware that the achieving a score wasn't always as important as throwing the dart as hard as possible in the general direction of the board.

 Andrew had set up his blog as Andrew's Running Blog before he had come to Scotland. The aim was to get him into shape to run the Great North Run. Health was an issue that Andrew would visit time and again on his blog. Having lost his mother 6 weeks after she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2009, he chose her Birthday this year to be the day that he got married to his long time partner Roger.



But his own health was also something he fought hard for. He knew that having a sedentary life wasn't helpful to him, so when he could he would get to the gym, walk (preferably with a bundle of leaflets in his hands). It was his approach that even though he was leading the campaign he still needed to get out and walk to keep some motion going that led me to do just the same at least once a week during the Yes! campaign. I even was on a conference call once while out and about delivering off the Falls Road in the rain.

For a while there were just three regular prominent Scottish Lib Dem bloggers, him, Caron and I. We could on occasion all take the same story and tell it in a different way that was our styles. We also could each get away with saying things in certain way because of our positions in the party and occasionally one of us knew that one of the other two was the better person to put something out there, so the idea was spread. Many of the rest of the Scottish blogosphere knew that while there only the three of us that didn't lead to a lack of quality or quantity. Yesterday he was on about the E.Coli in Spanish and German cucumbers in a typical Andrewesque way. It seems strange to think that I will never again read a new blog post from him again.

My frequent visits into Scottish Headquarters at Clifton Terrace in recent years were always greeted with some sort of put down from Mr Reeves. For years before I was actually selected again for Linithgow and East Falkirk he would refer to me as the Potential Prospective Parliamentary Candidate PPPC rather than PPC for the seat. The case being that if Gordon Brown were to suddenly want to secure a mandate I would be willing to stand again for the seat. I was one less seat for them to worry about in a hurry. While of course he wouldn't always have a smile on his face, he did sometimes have to be serious after all, there was always a sense that he would or could crack a joke to lighten the mood at any point.

Andrew was only a little over a year older than me, taken at the tragically young age of 43. The last words he said to me as I was leaving Scottish Conference in March were, "Go back there and win this thing, then we can talk about it next time your over." sadly that chat will not be taking place. He was a man with an immense heart for the party, for campaigning, for those he knew. Sadly this morning that heart gave way.

My thoughts are with Roger, who had to work in the recent days off that Andrew had been enjoying, therefore missing too many of what were unknown to be some of the last quality hours for his husband. Also to all the team in Clifton Terrace who have lost someone who's motivation and passion will be hard to replace. To all my colleagues, friends and fellow campaigners, not just in Scotland but everywhere who were touched by this man that so many of us today know we have lost a dear friend.

Read also

• MarkPack on Lib Dem Voice
• His former boss Lynne Featherstone
• Caron the other of that blogging trio and so much more
• From the Youth of Callum Leslie and the rest of Liberal Youth Scotland
• Though the candidate that is Alex Cole-Hamilton
• Those who he never meet but had a kind and timely word for like Spidey
• To those who knew his my reputation and brief encounters Michael and Gavin
• Even the BBC and STV
• Plus colleague Graeme Littlejohn's obituary in The Scotsman
• Tweetdeck trending even used by descriptor of the Trend. "Director of Campaigns for the Scottish Liberal Democrats who died suddenly aged 43 on 3 June 2011"
• Plus I attempted to sum up Andrew in 10 of his own blogposts.

It has been rather a bizarre day.

Andrew with Katy Gordon and me out campaigning in 2009

Dear Hypothetical Northern Ireland Conference Rep #ldconf

One of the things I have always prided myself on is that I can recruit people to our party with the phrase, you too can make a change to the way we make policy. It is a rather unique  selling point that our party is one that gets together twice a year and any local party can propose policy. Any party member can speak on the policy proposals and any voting rep can then vote on them (anyone of course can then get to be in that last category).

Now consider my role as a Membership Development Officer here in Northern Ireland in light of the new regulations regarding police accreditation of those that attend Lib Dem conference. Now not everyone who is politically active over here has a clean police record, there are people on both sides who have done things in the troubles which even now cause ructions but would also in the vagueness of the guideline of how Greater Manchester Police are going to be vetting applications to Liberal Democrat conference(s) be open to exclusion.

Is it possible that I might recruit an ex-terrorist, may be even one with time served into the Liberal Democrats? I would like to think that the way Northern Ireland is moving and the things that the Liberal Democrats stand for that of course that is possible. Looking at the people that I have worked with in the past there are people in other parties in Northern Ireland that are both Liberal and Democratic but just haven't realised it yet. So yeah there is a distinct possibility especially looking at my contacts list. There is also the possibility that somebody with that depth of political feeling would not want to sit on the side lines.

This is all hypothetical, but there is potential a real possibility that an able Liberal Democrat could be excluded from attending conference due to past deeds, even if these are recanted and put behind them. That is in contravention I believe to our federal constitution. It has been a move made by the Federal Conference Committee at the 'request' of the police, but is a constitutional change without the 2/3 backing of conference.

The police should not be the final arbitrators of which Liberal Democrats should be allowed to attend conference, that is for the local parties. My hypothetical but entirely possible Northern Ireland Rep above shows you one reason why.

Update There is now a petition to keep Liberal Democrat Conference Liberal please go and sign it.

I may be approved, but I may not be accredited #ldconf

Some things that as a candidate I stood up for in the 2010 General Election as a Liberal Democrat, they are right there in our manifesto.

•  Reduce time-wasting bureaucracy at police stations with better technology that can be deployed on the streets. (page 72)
• Scrap intrusive Identity Cards and have more police instead, and also scrap plans for expensive, unnecessary new passports with additional biometric data (page 94)
• End plans to store your email and Internet records without good cause (page 94)
• Remove innocent people from the police DNA database and stop storing DNA from innocent people and children in the future (page 94)
•  Scrap the intrusive Contact Point database which in intended to hold the details of every child. (page 94)

What I didn't sign up to was having a police force either now, or at some point in the future (as my "information will be retained and/or passed to other police forces in the future to assist with the accreditation of subsequent political conferences only") deciding that I even though deemed worthy by my local party am not trustworthy to attend and vote on their behalf by some policeman.

The guidelines stipulate that I have to give some form of ID. Passport, National Insurance Number or Driving Licence number. The police will then go through their records so see if I can attend my party conference.

Now in my long history I have been on a number of protest marches etc. Not all of them have ended up peacefully. Indeed there may have been one or two occassions in recent months that I have stood there against current government policy, because I don't always agree with Nick. However, whilst I myself have never been arrested, my presence may flash up next to a known agitator without my knowing it. After all there have been so many pictures taken of me as I walk the streets in recent years who can possibly tell.

If they use face recognition software on my stored passport photo, or the one that I have to resubmit to the "conference big brothers" who knows whom I may have inadvertently stood beside and I might get flashed up as a potential threat. Of course there are also the number of letters I have written to a number of constabularies about the handling of policing at football games. Of course never have I been complimentary when I wrote those letters, but critical of the way my fellow fans were getting treated. What if one of the officers who I've flagged up in the past takes offence at a citizen showing concern (or budding politician taking on casework)?

Now my UK passport history does include trips behind the Iron Curtain, before it fell and in the immediate aftermath. There is all sort of interesting activity on it recently, it has been used as photo id on a more frequent occurrences than in the past, my frequent flyer miles have been up since November. There was the stop and search at Stranraer harbour last August. Now of course I could use my Irish passport but that would bring up a whole other set of issues and I may get banned from a Liberal Democrat conference simply because some dissident Irish Republican Group wanted to threaten a partner in the UK Government.

Of course the fact that I am applying for a Northern Irish Local Party may cause eyebrows to be raised. After all you will not find reference to my local party on the Lib Dem Federal website. Go on try and but in the postcode for Parliament Buildings at Stormont BT4 3XX into the find your local party finder on the home page. Or scroll to the bottom of that page and click on the link to Northern Ireland, do you end up here or here?

So the possibility is that as  local party number 900 (Northern Ireland) somehow does not seem to exist on the party's own website some over officious bobby may create "the unlikely event that your accreditation is unsuccessful". Where then is my recourse, or my route of appeal? This is not listed on the eventsforce criteria, a site that looks like a Lib Dem site but needed a separate sign in to get to (we have an all encompassing log in which I was logged into at the time I'd just been on the Membership database).

In light of all this and the emails and info on the site ironically though I may be an approved candidate with the party, able to stand for election to Westminster or Holyrood. Though I have been selected now for a new local party to carry on as a voting rep. My accreditation lies in the hands of some police officer, not in the West Midlands where I once frequented Mosques as part of the day job, but from Greater Manchester (oops all those comments last saturday about the Champions League final from this Liverpool fan may stand against me).

Our party constitution states:

Article 6: The Federal Conference
6.1 The conference will consist of
(a) Representatives of Local Parties...
6.3 Representatives of Local Parties shall be elected by all members of the Local Party concerned...

Now there is nothing there about me being refused admission to party conference on the say so of some police force. There is no mention there that "The submission of the application form does not confer any right upon the applicant to attend the conference". The right for me to attend conference was conferred on me by the democratic action of my local party last December when they elected me to be a Federal Conference rep along with 3 others. So even as an approved candidate of 6 years standing, doesn't mean I can automatically assume accreditation for conference*. What if being one of the 104 public objectors becomes a criteria to refuse entry?

I first read 1984 on my way to one of my earliest Lib Dem conferences. I never thought Sheffield would have been topped, I appear to have been wrong. But looking at the comments from Caron, Jennie, Spidey, Jonathan, and David I am not alone in my concern (looks like no bloggers may get accredited).

Now if you'll excuse me I'm off to see if I can scan my JSA documentation, because in the words of Caron I'm not going to boycott, because I'm not going to let party policy be decided soley by those who think these measures are ok and 'liberal'. I need to be in it to win it, or at least try to be in it. Wish me luck, I'll need it after no debits from my account for Olympic tickets.

Update There is now a petition to keep Liberal Democrat Conference Liberal please go and sign it.

* There's something about the sportsman in me that says I'm not playing until I see the teamsheet.

Artful Thursday 2 - Stalker

Every year just before Christmas one of the highlights is to see just what card arrives from my late father's sister and her husband.The reason being that my Uncle Geoff is a painter, mainly of portraiture but has expanded into landscape. One year I believe the following picture featured. It seemed a little odd to us at the time, mostly pictures were of family (see below) the layout also appears somewhat odd. However, when explained as he does on his website it all makes sense.

The bearded gentleman who appears four times is Dr Jim Skinner, or rather he was. It was he who commissioned the work. All the other people featured are his children, a son and three daughters, and their families. When he died in 2002 the work which is on four panels could be divided so that each of the families has a picture of them with Jim.

Another Christmas card and this one named after my Aunt and Cousin. My mum and dad both said, "Huh?", until I spotted the shadows on the water, and there they were.