Following the recent elections West End Parish Council now has a new mandate to serve the people of West End. For the first time in nearly 15 years there were contested elections for the Parish Council in one ward. In that ward, West End South, the people of West End elected all five of the Liberal Democrat candidates standing plus the two conservatives to fill up to two remaining slots for the ward.
This week at a meeting of Bedfordshire County Council the Council voted to back Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader Councillor Susan Gaszczak's motion to have nothing to do with ID Cards unless required to do so by law.
News that earlier this week, a Liberal Democrat action plan to tackle climate change was voted down by Labour MPs in the House of Commons, as the Conservatives sat on their hands was slammed today (Friday 11th May) by Dundee Liberal Democrats.
Tony Blair has announced that he will resign as Prime Minister on June 27th. He will remain prime minister until the Labour Party elects a new leader. He made the announcement in a speech to party activists in his Sedgefield constituency, after earlier briefing the Cabinet on his plans. Sir Ming Campbell said "Tony Blair has been the first Labour Prime Minister to win three consecutive general elections and he will be rightly remembered for this. Yet overall his period in office can only be characterised as a decade of missed opportunities in which the hopes of the British people for a new kind of politics were shattered."
The official cost of the ID card scheme has risen by £400m to £5.31bn, the Home Office says. The Liberal Democrats say that the Home Office broke the law by releasing the updated costings a month later than they should have. Under the Identity Card Act, the government must give an update on the costs of the scheme twice a year. The latest update was due on 9 April. Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Nick Clegg said: "It is bad enough that the Government seeks to bury bad news behind the camouflage of Tony Blair's resignation announcement. "Breaking the law to do so breaks new ground even for Tony Blair's Labour Party." He added: "The costs are now spiralling out of control. On the grounds of expense alone, the government should do us all a favour and abandon this great white elephant before it is too late."
The BBC have featured Dhan Gurung as the first Gurkha councillor to take office in Britain, as he promised to represent the whole community in Cheriton. Lib Dem Councillor Dhan Gurung, 39, was voted on to Folkestone Town Council in last Thursday's local elections. He served as a Gurkha in the British Army for nearly 20 years before retiring in 2004.
