Silbury Sun Roll

This year's sun roll down the side of Silbury, courtesy Pete Glastonbury

Gypsies and Travellers

Here is the Conservative-LibDem coalition programme.

I'm getting quite a few emails on Gypsy & Traveller education, so correspondents may find it reassuring to see the statement in the programme under 'Spending Review', that

"We will fund a significant premium for disadvantaged pupils from outside the schools budget by reductions in spending elsewhere"

Since many research studies show that Gypsy & Traveller children are the most deprived of all ethnic minority children, this commitment is very good news.

Tomorrow afternoon an announcement will be made on the division of responsibilities among junior ministers at the DCSF, and there are reasons to hope that an effective person will be appointed to implement the commitment to disadvantaged children.

On the question of ending unauthorised encampments by ensuring that enough land is made available for authorised sites, the LibDems pledged during the election that

' we are not intending to disturb the plans already in place for providing traveller sites'.

One would expect that a LibDem Minister appointed to the DCLG will see that this is honoured. And the joint leaders of the two parties have said they will get on with measures that are agreed, leaving contentious issues aside, meaning that the statement made by Caroline Spelman MP on Travellers in the Conservative manifesto will need to be laid aside..

A late post - with dear Margaret Wingfield's daughter and granddaughter at Nick Clegg's rally in Lewisham during the election campaign

Lunch at the George & Dragon, Downe, after the ceremony

Wing-Cdr Jeff Jefford

Uncle Eric's memorial

Here are Lyulph's photographs of today's ceremony. And here's another set.

And here are Victoria's.

Sunday, May 16

To High Elms, for the rededication of the memorial to my uncle Eric Fox Pitt Lubbock, killed March 11, 1917. Lyulph had organised the event and said a few words of introduction, followed by the Rector of St Giles Church, Farnborough, the Rev Matthew Hughes, who spoke about Eric and blessed the memorial. I then spoke briefly. Uncle Eric was my grandmother’s favourite child, the one she loved with such intensity that she remained in deep mourning from the day he was shot down, for the remaining 30 years of her life. But he lit up the lives of everyone he knew, family, friends, his father’s scientific colleagues, and comrades in the armed forces. My father, who Eric called ‘dear little Moke’, born seven years after Eric, idolised him, and so I bear his name. When my father was little he couldn’t pronounce the name ‘Eric’ and he called him ‘Yay’, a nickname that was transferred to me within the family when I was a child.

Eric hated war, and my grandmother wrote that if his life had been spared, he would have worked for real peace, as his father had done, thoughi in vain. But he joined up from a sense of duty at the beginning of the war, and was in France with the British Expeditionary Force by the end of September 1914. In 1915 he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps, and the memorial, a representation of the Sopwith Camel in stone, commemorates his service in the RFC, for which he received the Military Cross in 1916. Wing Commander Jeff Jefford, historian of the RFC, was with us today.

The memorial was originally in the family graveyard in the wood just below St Giles’ Church. After my mother died in 1981, the local authority removed all the memorials, to save them from vandalism. Most were relocated in St Giles Church graveyard, but the aeroplane was held in a council depot, presumably because it was considered secular, and also possibly because he was actually buried in Poperinghe, Belgium. After several years it was somehow acquired by a stonemason, Lloyd of Bedwyn in Wiltshire, in a transaction the records of which no longer exist . When John Lloyd closed the business down last year, the contents of his yard including the aeroplane came on the market, and thanks to cousin Roderick Lubbock, we were alerted to the sale. Lindsay and I went down to Great Bedwyn on the day of the auction and I bid for it successfully. The London Borough of Bromley kindly agreed to give it space at their new sustainable environment education centre ('BEECHE') in what used to be the kitchen gardens of High Elms, where uncle Eric and I both lived, and after a few hiccups with the transport it reached its final resting place at his ancestral home. The staff at BEECHE, the officials at the London Borough of Bromley, and the Rector and the Parish Council of St Giles have been wonderfully supportive of the project since we first discussed it with them last autumn. The whole family values enormously our connection with High Elms, and we’re delighted that Eric’s memorial has returned to its rightful home, where it will be treasured by everyone who visits this sacred spot.

Kentish Times article on the return of the memorial: http://www.bromleytimes.co.uk/content/bromley/times/newnews/story.aspx?brand=BMLYTOnline&category=news&tBrand=bmlytonline&tCategory=znews&itemid=WeED20%20May%202010%2010:12:26:163

Haircut

A visit to the excellent Alberto at Camberwell Green this morning for a haircut

Thursday

To Oxford, starting with Underground to Stanmore where Lyulph picked me up in his car. In the morning, I chaired the Maurice Lubbock Memorial Fund at Balliol, then after lunch to the Department of Engineering Science for their Open Day - an exhibition of projects undertaken by students, followed by two excellent half-hour lectures: Dr Constantin Coussios on Killing tumors with sound: engineering the next generation of cancer therapies, and Dr Ian Reid on Robust visual tracking for visual survellance. Then tea, followed at 16.45 by the 36th Maurice Lubbock Memorial Lecture by Professor David Mackay FRS, the Chief Scientist at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, on Sustainable Energy - without the hot air. He is in the middle in the photograph, and on his right as you look at the picture is Professor Guy Houlsby, who came to Oxford exactly 30 years ago as the Lubbock Junior Research Fellow at Balliol.

This was a sell-out, with 180 in the main lecture theatre, 150 in the overflow, and a further 40 who logged in to watch it live online (including people from Heidelburg, Toronto, Paris and the USA!)., and it was a brilliant analysis of what could be expected from each of the renewable sources and from nuclear. It turns out that a stupendous programme is needed to achieve the reductions in CO2 emissions that are calculated as necessary to meet the 2050 target of cutting the net UK carbon account for the year 2050 to at least 80% lower than the 1990 baseline. In my brief thanks to Professor Mackay at the end of a vigorous quetion and answer session, I said that in the title of the lecture, he should perhaps have substituted 'with a dollop of cold water' for 'without the hot air'.

Every thinking person who's concerned about the future of the planet should read Professor Mackay's book, which is available as a free download at www.withouthotair.com/. One who I am sure is studying it intensely is my LibDem colleague Chris Huhne, who faces an immediate challenge of meeting the Government's target to reduce central Government emissions by 10% over the next 12 months. Will they all be putting on long johns and turning down the thermostats next winter?

Wednesday

Unbelievable, amazing, unprecedented, fantastic, astonishing - we've all run out of adjectives to describe yesterday's events. In a letter to a friend from Chicago I tried to explain what had happened:

Politics doesn't have to be a never-ending tribal conflict. More can sometimes be achieved by dialogue and compromise between people coming from different philosophical backgrounds.

We said we would deliver strong and stable government to cope with the dire economic situation this country faces. That we have done.

We said we would usher in a new kind of politics. This is it.

We set out in our manifesto a detailed set of policies, many of which appear in the joint programme announced this afternoon. That's an amazing achievement for a party that, under our discredited electoral system, got only 57 seats.

We have got the Tories to agree to a referendum on AV, to which they had been implacably opposed in the past.

At 00.03 this morning, after hearing from Nick Clegg and our negotiating team, and debating the agreement between the Parties for 2 ½ hours, the Commons and Lords Parliamentary Parties voted unanimously in favour of the agreement, and gave the team a standing ovation.

Of course there will be some problems as Nick Clegg has acknowledged, not least in explaining the unexpected outcome to the rank and file of the Party. But I hope they will see, after analysing the facts that will be presented to them at the special Assembly in Birmingham on Sunday, that we have delivered as much as possible of what we told the people we would do at the elections. This was the only solution available that produces a Government with the combined forces needed to deal with the economic crisis, in the national interest, and at the same time putting into operation so many of our flagship LibDem policies. Our Ministers will be there in Cabinet to make sure it all happens, and nobody can say, in the light of this outcome, that a LibDem vote is a wasted vote!

We have a duty to explain this agrement in detail to LibDem members and the public. That's why Nick and the negotiating team have taken great pains to explain every step of the road to the Parliamentary Party in both Houses and the Federal Executive, culminating in the unanimous votes of approval at 00.03 this morning by the Commons and Lords in separate votes, and why there is a meeting to which all Party members are invited at Birmingham this Sunday. Nobody can deny that our processes of consultation are more democratic than those of any other Party.

The explanation must include an account of the negotiations with Labour, and why they were always destined to fail. Apart from the refusal of the Labour team to make any concessions, it became apparent from the comments of John Reid, David Blunkett et al, Gordon Brown would have found it impossible to sell any deal to his Party, and there would have been widespread public opposition to what was being described as a 'coalition of the losers'.

Decision Day?

As we know, there are offers on the table now from the Conservatives and Labour. Subject to any further amendments from today's talks between the negotiating teams, the LibDems have to make up our minds on whether to accept either offer, first on the basis of our undertaking to do what is necessary in the national interest to get a strong and stable Government, and on the extent to which the agreement satisfies the principles we had set out in our manifesto. We must obviously have regard to the likelihood that the offers made are deliverable by the leadership of the parties when put to their rank and file; the chances of getting the measures agreed through both Houses of Parliament, particularly the interim move towards electoral reform of the Alternative Vote, and the guarantee that whoever is Prime Minister wouldn't suddenly pull the plug on us by calling a snap general election.

16.00 Large bags or holdalls are being loaded into cars at the back of Downing Street and it has been announced that the talks betweeen LibDems and Labour have ended. A number of senior Labour statesmen including David Blunkett Andy Burnham and John Reid have said effectively that the Labour Government is finished.

Some Tories have been critical of the LibDems for holding the talks with Labour, but the Party would have crucified the leadership if we hadn't made serious efforts to ascertain what the possibilities were of a LibLab deal. It has become clear that even the limited offer they made would have been vetoed by their Parliamentary Party.

18.00 Peter Riddell of The Times says the best deal would be one that lasts four years, though he didn't add that fixed term Parliaments of that length should be a priority. The Tories and LibDems have now been negotiating the fine print of the deal in the Cabinet Office for something like 4 hours, and its an encouraging sign because stable government requires as few loose ends as possible. The danger will always be that something they hadn't thought of would cause a dispute of principle between the two partners. If the LibDems had to leave the coalition, the Tories would presumably continue as a minority government, and the stability needed for economic recovery would be forfeited. The LibDem Parliamentary Party is meeting at the LGA at 20.30, which means that the marathon discussions at the Cabinet Office are expected to last a bit longer.

19.00 The Labour National Executive has just finished its meeting, and made clear that they wouldn't have swallowed a deal with the LibDems. The marathon in the Cabinet Office is continuing, and rumours are coming out of some elements of the agreement. The BBC are pointing out areas of potential dispute such as Europe and immigration, and one hopes there will be a mechanism for resolving them.

19.10 Journalists in Downing Street are expecting the Prime Minister to appear, which is thought to mean he has been told the LibDem-Con deal has been sealed. So maybe Her Majesty will have to postpone her dinner, but won't have to stay up late.

A busy Monday

The LibDem peers met for nearly two hours this morning and there was a very good attendance - better than a normal Parliamentary day for which we get paid, and someone remarked - and almost everyone spoke briefly. There was a second meeting at 17.00 at which again there were comments on the situation as each of us saw it. We were invited to a third meeting with the Commons, a departure from the customary practice where the Members of Lords and Commons always meet separately, with a token presence from the other end of the building. So the final meeting of the day was in the Grand Committee Room, starting at 22.40 and continuing until shortly before 01.00. There were a few indomitable journalists and TV cameras waiting for us to emerge, and asking us to say something about what had transpired. I said 'Hello'.

Negotiations

It has been an extraordinary day with the detailed talks between the LibDem and Tory negotiating teams, another one-to-one meeting between Nick Clegg and David Cameron, and a meeting between Nick and Gordon Brown. Most commentators are saying that a 'rainbow coalition' with Labour, LibDems and the minority parties, is arithmetically and politically a non-starter, so the options are narrowing. The LibDem peers are meeting tomorrow at 11.00 and presumably we will get some idea of what's been going on behind the scenes.

Lindsay at Chiswick House this afternoon. We visited it on the way back from Heathrow, where we had taken Phil to catch his flight back to Chicago. Before that Phil gave us brunch at Richoux on South Audley Street. Our last transactions there had been our wedding cake 25 years ago, and John William's christening cake.

Saturday

Yesterday, to Oxford, for the annual dinner of the Maurice Lubbock Scholars at Balliol, the 53rd anniversary of the first award. Howard Davies and Malcolm Forrest, the first and second Scholars, were both there, and of course the more recent ones as well. The room we meet in, the old SCR, holds a maximum of 23, so it would be a problem if everyone turned up. Afterwards, back to Paddington on the 23.05, home at 01.00.

Today, no appointments for what seems like the first time since the election campaign started, and a chance to reflect on the outcome. After we were apparently on a plateau of 27-28% in the opinion polls, we actually got 23%, a consequence I suspect of the onslaught by the print media on us in the last week, and perhaps the classic third-party squeeze, making people think they are choosing between the two parties likely to form a government. It was still an improvement for us on the last general election, but perversely, a drop of 5 Commons seats to 57, fewer than half the 123 we would have got under fully proportional system. As the LibDem MPs met this afternoon, over 1,000 people demonstrated noisily outside demanding that Nick Clegg insist on electoral reform as a condition of any agreement with the Tories. There's a strong groundswell of opinion, not just among Liberal Democrat supporters, that we ought to go all out for electoral reform in any agreement with either Tories or Labour.

The probability must be that Cameron isn't in a position to deliver anything other than his offer of an all-party committee to look into the matter. We had already been round that loop years ago with the Jenkins Commission, whose report is gathering dust in some forgotten cupboard in Whitehall. So a coalition with the Tories seems improbable, with disagreements on other key policies including Europe, nuclear power, and immigration. Maybe there is still a chance of agreement on a more limited 'arrangement’ whereby the LibDems agree not to vote against the motion to approve the Queen's Speech and the Budget, while keeping their options open on measures introduced by the Tory Government.

If the negotiations with Cameron fail, the LibDems could still negotiate with the Labour Party, perhaps under a different leader as one senior Labour MP has already suggested. The chemistry between Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown is said to be poor, and Brown's conversion to a referendum on electoral reform was eleventh hour. He sees it as an unpalatable necessity for his survival, not an essential reform of an undemocratic system that delivers arbitrary results.

But the arithmetic is against a Lib-Lab deal. As The Guardian points out this morning, even with the ScotNats, the Plaid Cymru, the SDLP and the Green on board, there's only a bare majority of four, desperately vulnerable to casualties and by-elections, taking one back to the knife-edge days of the first Harold Wilson Government of 1964, which also started with a majority of four. Yes, it can be done, but remember that Harold went back to the country, encouraged by a by-election win at Hull, after only 16 months. This time, the other Parties would again be at the mercy of the Labour Prime Minister, whoever that may be, and s(he) would obviously pick a date for the next general election that suited them and not us. The scenario also presupposes that deals could be done with each of the minor parties, involving a protracted set of negotiations the markets can ill-afford, and possible concessions that would be seen as the tail wagging the dog.

At the end of Saturday, its too early even to guess at the likely outcome. All that can be said is that the decision to allow 19 days between pollibg day and the Queen’s Speech was sensible.The probability must be that Cameron isn't in a position to deliver anything other than his offer of an all-party committee to look into the matter. We had already been round that loop years ago with the Jenkins Commission, whose report is gathering dust in some forgotten cupboard in Whitehall. So a coalition with the Tories seems improbable, with disagreements on other key policies including Europe, nuclear power, and immigration. Maybe there is still a chance of agreement on a more limited 'arrangement’ whereby the LibDems agree not to vote against the motion to approve the Queen's Speech and the Budget, while keeping their options open on measures introduced by the Tory Government.

If the negotiations with Cameron fail, the LibDems could still negotiate with the Labour Party, perhaps under a different leader as one senior Labour MP has already suggested. The chemistry between Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown is said to be poor, and Brown's conversion to a referendum on electoral reform was eleventh hour. He sees it as an unpalatable necessity for his survival, not an essential reform of an undemocratic system that delivers arbitrary results.

The arithmetic is against a Lib-Lab deal. Even with the ScotNats, the Plaid Cymru, the SDLP and the Green on board, there's only a bare majority of four, desperately vulnerable to casualties and by-elections, taking one back to the knife-edge days of the first Harold Wilson Government of 1964, which also started with a majority of four. Yes, it can be done, but Harold went back to the country, encouraged by a by-election win at Hull, after only 16 months. This time, the other Parties would again be at the mercy of the Labour Prime Minister, whoever that may be, and s(he) would obviously pick a date for the next general election that suited them and not us. The scenario also presupposes that deals could be done with each of the minor parties, involving a protracted set of negotiations the markets can ill-afford, and possible concessions that would be seen as the tail wagging the dog.

At the end of Saturday, its too early even to guess at the likely outcome. All that can be said is that the decision to allow 19 days between pollibg day and the Queen’s Speech was sensible.