Robert Buckland Weblog

Another snowy week has brought much disruption to our family life.   I must admit that sailing down the hill on a tea tray near to our house in Wroughton yesterday afternoon was a moment of stolen pleasure that caused much hilarity in the Buckland household, but our obsession with health and safety has meant that there [...]

This Autumn has brought more than its fair share of sadness;  the death of broadcaster Patrick Hannan at the age of 68  last week was unexpected.   I had the pleasure of participating in quite a few of his programmes on BBC Radio Wales over the years, and admired his style and depth of knowledge.  His [...]

There will be another meeting of the Swindon Special Educational Needs Network tomorrow evening, this time at the Lawn Community Centre in Guildford Avenue, starting at 7.15pm.  We shall have the usual group sessions, plus an update as to the progress of the Autism Bill, which will soon have Royal Assent. I had an excellent [...]

Some very sad news from Swansea; two people who were influential in different spheres of my life have died.  Barrie Harding OBE, who has died of cancer aged 68, was a leading Welsh Conservative for many years.  Barrie was a teacher and latterly a lecturer in German.  His knowledge of education was deep, and his [...]

The high winds of the night have passed, and it is a lovely Saturday morning here in Freshwater, Isle of Wight.  A trip to France with the family curtailed my blogging, but I have been following the Scottish Executive’s decision to release the Locherbie bomber.  A naive decision that has had appalling results, I think.  [...]

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 [...]

Our half term visit to the United Arab Emirates is throwing up a host of contradictions.   Here in Dubai, we see conspicuous wealth and constant development, but are also faced with the poverty of many of those who are building this new city of over half a million.  The Burj Dubai will be the tallest [...]

The death of Sir John Mortimer QC has robbed us of a great and rare talent.  I don’t think anyone got closer to a portrayal of what life was really like in Chambers than he did with Rumpole.  The sadness is that the world of Rumpole is rapidly vanishing, what with the ever-increasing use of [...]

Mr. Brown has been to town, and the Swindon Advertiser asked the question that I wanted put to the Prime Minister about the car industry in Swindon.  It is clear that Honda continue to plan carefully how to manage the recession, by managing a reduction of jobs in stages rather than making sudden and unannounced [...]

As our break in Cornwall comes to a close, I thought that I would make some recommendations about good places to visit.  If you like bracing beach walks, there can be no better a place to go than Perranporth Beach.  Beloved by surfers, the Atlantic rollers are a sight to behold.  One of the major [...]