Former Kingston Lib Dem leader charged with possessing 'thousands' of child porn images

The Surrey Comet reports former Lib Dem Leader of Kingston Council has been charged with possession of 'thousands' of images of child pornography - including 50 at the highest level 5 and more than 150 of bestiality.

If found guilty at Southwark Crown Court later this month he is likely to face a custodial sentence of years rather than months.

Council by-election night 4

A bumper crop of by-elections tonight with 10 contests from Carlisle to Cornwall.  And already the Lib Dems have lost a seat with their failure to defend a vacancy in the Torrington ward of Torridge.

The Lib Dems are standing in six contests - Boston Fenside; Carlisle Yewdale; Cornwall Wadebridge East - where the independent councillor resigned over remarks about 'putting down disabled children' and had a majority of just four over the Lib Dems in May; Daventry Ravensthorpe; East Cambridgeshire Ely East and Northamptonshire Middleton Cheney.

In contrast the Conservatives are standing in every contest as are UKIP and Labour in nine out of ten.

The seats to look out for from a Lib Dem perspective are the previously mentioned hyper marginal Wadebridge and the constest in Ely East where the Tories have a majority of 57 over the Lib Dems.

UKIP will be confident of picking up the former English Democrat seat in Boston where they did very well in the counties.  Labour should hold comfortably in Charnwood (where the Lib Dems are not standing) and in Carlisle.  The Tories should pick up the rest - apart from Torrington where two independents, UKIP and the Greens make up the field and an independent already holds one of the seats.

Danny Alexander in North Kingston

This morning, Chief Secretary, Danny Alexander visited North Kingston, with Parliamentary hopeful, Robin Meltzer, to talk to local businesses - including Pascalle of the Kings Road Cafe and Jacqueline Lott of the North Kingston Focus Team.  Robin has launched a campaign against the corporate tax avoidance that means firms like Starbucks pay a lower tax rate than local cafes.

Davey meets local Lib Dems and talks Syria

A hastily arranged meeting this evening at a local church hall saw Kingston and Surbiton MP and Energy Secretary addressing local Lib Dem members about the Syrian crisis, the recent Commons vote and his and the government's position.

Although extremely well received - particularly for his openess to question and debate - my feeling was that the vast majority of those there remained unconvinced of the need for any military action.

Can you solve the gerrymander jigsaw?

US political website Slate has a rather fun game...

Friday favourite 120

Here's Bastille with Pompei at the British Museum earlier this year...

Byelection night 3 result

A routine hold for the Lib Dems in South Lakeland with a small swing to the Tories:

Lib Dem 431

Cons 248

Lab 29

 

Council by-election night 3

There appears to be just a single principal authority by-election this evening. It's in the Windermere and Bowness North ward of South Lakeland District Council.  As the Lib Dems had almost two thirds of the vote last time and the ward is in the redoubt of Party President Tim Farron anything other than a comfortable Lib Dem win would be a shock.

A correction from last week.  I mistakenly thought that the Lib Dems fought both Scarborough wards, but they only fought Ramshill where their vote slumped to 56 - just 9.6%.

Former Kingston councillor Adrian McLeay had the best Lib Dem result of the night coming second in Doncaster with 261 votes and 12.1%.

In total 392 people voted for the party.

Clegg should listen to Alex Wilcock on Syria

Love and Liberty by Alex Wilcock sums up perfectly my view on the unfolding Syria crisis: 

"One of the few bits of moral high ground we still have that lets our supporters sleep at night (and still vote for us) is that unlike the Labour Party, at least we didn’t invade another country and soak ourselves in blood in defiance of international law."

You can read the full post here.

 

Sheep sacrifice quote of the day

Commenting in advance of tonight's Champion's League match at Parkhead, Shakhter Karagandy's manager, Viktor Kumykov, suggested they may again sacrifice a sheep before kick off saying:

"As far as we know in Scotland the agriculture is very developed so it shouldn’t be an issue to find a sheep."