Robert Buckland Weblog

No, this is not yet another attempt to bring together random events from twelve calendar months in order to construct some sort of narrative – thousands of paid journalists have been doing this for the past few days.  Instead, I wanted to note the progress being made by my daughter Millicent.  Words and sounds have [...]

Greetings from a mild and sunny Cornwall, where we are spending a few days over the New Year.  This short break marks the end of a year when we have holidayed in the UK.  Our two visits to Cornwall were punctuated by a summer holiday in Cumbria.  We are enjoying clearer views and drier days [...]

That’s it!  I have officially had my fill of car track construction, battery installation and general present assemblage for another year.  The assembly instructions for Millie’s tricycle were designed for experts who speak a minority European language.  At midnight on Christmas Eve, I finally gave up trying to assemble the front brake system.  I will [...]

I have been very pleased with the amount of media coverage of the 90th Anniversary of the 1918 Armistice.  With only four British veterans from the Great War now left, perhaps we are all realising that the War is about to slip firmly out of living memory and into the pages of history.  For most [...]

News has reached me that the body of Sir Mark Sykes has been exhumed for the purposes of investigating the precise nature of the virus responsible for the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918/1919 that carried him and millions of others off.  (Afficionados of “Upstairs Downstairs” will recall that it took dear Hazel Bellamy, who was [...]

Our journey up to Cumbria took several days; visits to Cadbury World in Bournville and Thomas The Tank Engine Land at Tamworth were followed by a stop in Liverpool and a chance to see an excellent exhibition at the Tate Liverpool: “Gustav Klimt, Painting, Design and Modern Life in Vienna 1900″ before it closed at [...]

At least I wasn’t facing the prospect of having a Guardian reporter embedded with us during our holiday, but Westmorland in August was always a risk.  To say the least, it was rather disappointing to experience Novemberesque fog at Tarn Hows (a National Trust site promising memorable views)  in the middle of our stay.  It [...]

As I go on my summer break (to the Lake District this year), you might be interested to know that the past few weeks have shown me in a variety of guises. My least favourite one was belly dancer, when on a visit to the Swindon Pride event last Saturday I was “volunteered” by my [...]

More coverage of the unlawful use of knives in our society has resulted in yet another public safety proposal, namely a change in the design of everyday kitchen knives to blunt their ends.  Apart from causing me great problems when cutting tomatoes, removing the shartp pointed end from kitchen knives misses the real point about [...]

I have been trying to think of a way to link Wales’s Triple Crown triumph, the death of Lord Pym and the coming Local Election campaign. Whilst I continue to ponder, I thought it only right to tell you about how much I have been enjoying wallowing in the reflected glory of a superb effort [...]