Welcoming to the Government's announcement today that the Gatwick Express service has not only been reprieved but will run on to Brighton at peak times Serena Tierney, Lib Dem parliamentary spokesman for Mid Sussex, said:
During Prime Minister's Questions today, Ming Campbell challenged Tony Blair to explain why nurses in England and Wales are not getting their full pay increase up front (as they are in Scotland). He also lambasted him for failing health care workers in general, including newly qualified nurses who can't get jobs, junior doctors and nursing assistants hit by the budget. The Royal College of Nursing has threatened to ballot its members on industrial action unless ministers reverse their decision to award nurses an "insulting" below-inflation pay deal. Nurses at the annual conference voted 97% in favour of investigating what forms of action could be taken.
Chris Huhne and Ming Campbell have announced the Lib Dems latest plans (www.libdems.org.uk/news/climate-change-starts-at-home-campaign.html) to save carbon emissions from our homes. These plans should save as much carbon as taking every car in the country off the road. They are crucial to tackling climate change. More than a quarter of the carbon we burn comes from our houses, and we currently waste energy in our homes on a heroic scale.
Haywards Heath is the 15th worst town in the country for identity fraud according to a new study by fraud prevention company, Experian.
Local Liberal Democrats were promoting the party's policies on crime in Scarborough this weekend. A team of campaigners were talking to the public and collecting signatures for Shadow Home Secretary Nick Clegg's 5 steps to cutting crime.
There can be few more emotive questions than the appropriate protective powers of the state over mentally ill people. Cases like that of Michael Stone - who, 11 years ago, bludgeoned to death Lin Russell and her daughter Megan - arouse deep-seated and understandable fears about dangerous men being allowed out on the loose. But set against such cases are stories like that of Randle McMurphy, who in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was destroyed at the hands of a mental institution. It is a fictional tale, but one which too often finds echoes in real-life reporting, which time and again has exposed how ruinous the behaviour of the over-stretched authorities can become once they are freed of the need to be led by the wishes of the patient.
