Robert Buckland Weblog

St. David’s Day was always a special day in school for me.  The girls would dress up in traditional costume, whilst the boys would sport leeks, daffodis and Welsh rugby jerseys.  Not much has changed in the ensuing years.  St. Patrick’s Day is always celebrated with gusto by the Irish, wherever they may be.  St. [...]

Much analysis in the Sunday newspapers about the woes that are besetting Labour; increasingly, the talk moves on to the problems that will face the next Conservative Government.  There is plenty of sound advice for David Cameron when it comes to the way that the Government should be run.  From my perspective,  it is clear [...]

Endsleigh Insurance rank Swindon as the fifth safest town in the country.  This is good news for those who are renewing policies with this company, but the value of this report can easily be overstated.  The number of claims made is not a direct reflection of the amount of crime in any given area.  Police [...]

There is now a video link to the Cardiff leg of the Convention on Modern Liberty held at the end of February.  Please click here to look at speeches from legal experts and politicians from all parties (except Labour!) on Civil Liberties.  I particularly enjoyed the opening speech of my friend and colleague Chris Rees [...]

Lord Hoffman’s speech to the Judicial Studies Board a few weeks ago has now been published and has caused something of a stir.  His concerns run not to the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into English Law by the 1998 Human Rights Act, but to the interpretation of these rights by the [...]

Am still nursing some sore joints after a good few hours of litter clearing in Liden on Saturday.  Over forty local residents which included the WI and the local Scout, Guide and Beaver packs turned out on a sunny day to fill over fifty bin liners full of rubbish.  We formed four teams, covering an [...]

A few days in Northern Italy have left me longing for more.  This was our first trip without the children in over five years,  so things felt very strange.   After a fine Saturday morning seeing an exhibition of Canaletto and other Venetian landscape painters in Treviso, which has a lively and attractive town centre, the [...]

The reality of the potential effect of the Regional Spatial Strategy on future development in Swindon is already beginning to bite.   The RSS has not yet been fully adopted, but already there are plans afoot to build over 3000 new houses on land adjacent to West Swindon, near the Swindon to Kemble railway line and [...]