Ahead of his time…

One of the things I appreciate about Ming Campbell has been the way he has led opinion on several domestic and international issues: whether rendition, the Home Office or the current Middle East situation.

On the Middle East, he has been leading the way in the UK in calling for an immediate ceasefire in the face of Blair’s usual kow-towing to Bush and the US neocons.

On the Home Office, he faced Blair’s usual evasiveness and glib superficiality at PMQs, as reported in Hansard on May 3, 2006:

Ming Campbell
Is the Home Office fit for purpose?
Tony Blair
That might be a question better asked of the right hon. and learned Gentleman. I do not believe that the answer to this problem lies in reorganising the Home Office. I think that the fit between prisons, immigration and asylum, and crime is the right one. The issue is the way in which the system works.

But seems to have, once again, been proved correct by events according to this BBC report on May 23, 2006:

Home Secretary John Reid has damned his department’s immigration operation as “not fit for purpose” with “inadequate” leadership and management systems.

While we’re on the subject of media coverage, I’m also surprised that the media haven’t gone after Cameron for his silence on the Middle East. This article by Matthew Parris suggests it may be because coming down on one side or another – particularly the neo-con side which close Cameron advisors such as George Osborne, Michael Gove and Ed Vaizey strongly favour – could put the carefully constructed facade of Conservative party unity at risk. It will be interesting to see if this would-be Prime Minister will have anything interesting to say on the most pressing issue in world politics on his return from Afghanistan. Or perhaps he is going to wait a year for the outcome of one of his policy reviews on the subject?

Liberal Drinks – going viral?

Liberal Drinks is quietly gaining momentum – with 5 “drinks” going on around the country now:

It’s early days, but it’s an encouraging trend. (And mostly thanks to the hard work of James Graham).
You can find out more at the Liberal Drinks website (which also has a Liberal Drinks map).
If you’re registered on Flock Together, you can also add your own ‘drink’.

Another video

I’ve just done another video over on Taking Power.

An almost embarrassingly cheap set-up (which perhaps you can see in the production!):

Equipment was:

The Ixus (which dates from 2004) is a pocketable digital camera and not a camcorder, and only goes up to 320×240 at 15 frames per second. Google Video currently take 640×480 at 30 frames per second so it may be time to put a higher res camera on my birthday present list. šŸ™‚

Obvious opportunities for improvement in lighting and framing. But then I suspect the first Focus didn’t look too hot by today’s standards!

Video frenzy

Following all the other video activity on other Lib Dem blogs, I’ve been going on a bit of video frenzy to see what might be the best way to make Lib Dem videos. I’ve also used the Democracy Plug-In and Democracy Widget to set up an online poll to get your point of view.

So here goes…

First we have the mobile phone video:

Closely followed by some video on a Canon Digital Ixus 400.

I then experimented with supplementing the video with separately recorded sound using a Sony Microphone and an Olympus Digital Video Recorder.

And finally, I recorded some video on my webcam

Let me know what works best for you. Personally I think the digital camera with separate sound recording appears to deliver the best results – although the video on the webcam is higher res running at 25 frames per second rather than 15 fps on the Canon. From my own perspective, I find the better sound makes a bigger impact than having better video (although I suppose I could have done a synchronised recording on the webcam too). I’ll be interested in what other people say. The obvious missing category of video is video shot using a proper video camera, but unfortunately I don’t have one! You may need to go back to the home page to enter the poll.