Lynne Featherstone

Meetings, meetings, meetings – from blogging, to China to trying to Stop the Trafficking of children in the developing world – and Shadow Cabinet too. Later today, I lead for the Liberal Democrats on the Conservative Opposition debate on Attacking Global Poverty. The Tories have spent 18 months producing a huge tome from their commission. But – they barely mention climate change. Given that is the most catastrophic threat the developing world is facing – a bit of an omission I thought. I’ve put down an amendment on the climate change aspect – but it won’t be selected because the Government amendment (which is almost identical to the Tory motion) always gets selected.

Listening to Nick Ferrari this morning though, Cameron was getting it in the neck for being in Rwanda rather than Witney which is under water. Cameron isn’t doing himself any favours by going when Parliament is sitting (rather than waiting a week and going during recess – after all, that’s part of the justification for having recess, so you can devote chunks of time uninterrupted to a particular issue) and surrounded by a press pack (compare with Paddy Ashdown’s trips to spend time with people when he was our party leader – done without a trailing press pack). That having been said – Iain Dale’s blog is a window on the aftermath of genocide and worth reading.