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Dec 8, 2024 | 
liberalbureaucracy.blogspot.com | Mark Valladares
And so, I was elected to the Regional Candidates Committee for the East of England Liberal Democrats - fairly comfortably as it turned out. And that wasn't a given. I've been far from active in Regional Party politics since my two year stint as Regional Secretary more than a decade ago, and many of our current members weren't around then.
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Dec 8, 2024 | 
liberalbureaucracy.blogspot.com | Mark Valladares
And so, I was elected to the Regional Candidates Committee for the East of England Liberal Democrats - fairly comfortably as it turned out. And that wasn't a given. I've been far from active in Regional Party politics since my two year stint as Regional Secretary more than a decade ago, and many of our current members weren't around then.
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Nov 30, 2024 | 
liberalbureaucracy.blogspot.com | Mark Valladares
It’s not that I can’t afford to dress well, it is perhaps that I prefer to spend the money on travel and, from time to time, good food. There was a gloriously short period when I escaped my usual colour palette of blues and greys, but I was stick thin to the point where the staff I managed started trying to feed me, I had a 29 inch waist and my collarbones stuck out.
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Nov 29, 2024 | 
liberalbureaucracy.blogspot.com | Mark Valladares
One of the things about getting older is that the NHS tends to take more interest in you. Now, given that I believe that preventative medicine is a thoroughly good thing, I can hardly object to that. And so, when I received an invitation from my surgery to come in for a free NHS Health Check, naturally I thought that taking this up might be a good idea. After all, what's the worst that could happen, right? Hmmm... well, actually, quite a lot, I guess. I am, after all, the far side of sixty.
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Nov 27, 2024 | 
liberalbureaucracy.blogspot.com | Mark Valladares
I am, allegedly, a responsible adult. At least, I am the Chair of a Parish Council which should, theoretically, make me a responsible adult - I leave that to others to judge. But, in planning our trip to Tirana, I had suffered something of a diary malfunction which meant that, whilst I was starting my day with an excellent breakfast in our Tirana hotel, I was supposed to be finishing it at a Council meeting in Creeting St Peter.
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Nov 26, 2024 | 
liberalbureaucracy.blogspot.com | Mark Valladares
I am, it's fair to say, not the sort of person who photographs their meals, poses in front of hot venues or influences very much, if anything. I understand that there are (mostly) young people who do these things, and I wouldn't stand in their way for one moment, but such behaviour mostly engenders a wry smile and attempts to make sure that I'm out of shot. I hadn't expected to encounter such a phenomenon in Tirana though.
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Nov 26, 2024 | 
liberalbureaucracy.blogspot.com | Mark Valladares
Whilst Albania isn't exactly a big place - just over two hundred miles from north to south and less than one hundred from east to west - it isn't entirely easy to get around. There are, theoretically, at least, trains, but once you leave the major highways, the road system is sub-optimal and the mountainous terrain means that straight lines are few and far between.
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Nov 25, 2024 | 
liberalbureaucracy.blogspot.com | Mark Valladares
I may have mentioned that our hotel in Tirana was part of the Air Albania Arena. What I have hitherto failed to mention, and discovered rather late in the day, was that the Albanian national football team were due to play a home UEFA Nations League fixture whilst we were in town. I did think about buying tickets, but they had officially sold out and I wasn’t wildly keen on spending significant sums of money on the grey market to see a game between two teams I don’t really know.
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Nov 25, 2024 | 
liberalbureaucracy.blogspot.com | Mark Valladares
Normally, when we go places, I take special care to organise dinner on Friday and Saturday nights because, you know how it is, places are busiest and you really don't want to be in a strange city, walking from restaurant to restaurant in the hope that they'll have a table free. I might have been happy enough to wing it in my twenties and thirties but not now.
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Nov 25, 2024 | 
liberalbureaucracy.blogspot.com | Mark Valladares
It shouldn’t come as a complete surprise, I guess, because the argument that multiple tiers of government are less financially efficient than one has been around for a long time. But it’s a brave government that commits itself to a major reorganisation of local government, especially this early in its mandate.
