A-levels, universities and Gary Lineker's son

So why did Gary Lineker's potty mouthed son fail to get into uni? Was it the Pre-U exams adopted by his private school in place of A-levels, or was it because he went on holiday just before he took them?

Every year, the A-level results bring record pass marks and accusations that they are getting easier. In fact, the biggest change was moving from a quota system (whereby only the top x% were awarded A grades) to an achievement system (whereby anyone who achieves over a certain number of marks is awarded an A grade).

But this year there is a new story - many universities are full and tens of thousands of prospective students are going to struggle to get a place at all. One of those people is George Lineker. Except that in his case he studied for a different type of exam - the new Pre-U which is based entirely on exams with no coursework elements.

According to the Independent, George's Facebook reaction to failing to make the required grade was:

"Didn't get into uni... cheers school u massive knobbers!"

The article goes on to say that, rather than revising, George went on a holiday to Tenerife just before his exams and points out that he is seen on the London party circuit with a glamour model.

I'm not going to get holier than thou about his holiday. In the Easter holidays before my A-levels I went with two friends to Spain on a camping holiday. My excuse was that I was studying Spanish and I took a couple of history text books with me which never got opened during the trip but weighed a ton. As it turned out, I did better in my history exam than in Spanish...

Travel Advisory: Bosnia - Go there

I'm back from my training trip to Sarajevo.I used to go there two or three times a year as a trainer but this was my first trip for about five years and boy has the city of Sarajevo changed.

If anyone is looking for a decent holiday not too far away then I'd definitely recommend Sarajevo.

The city is divided into four municipalities officially, but for the tourist you can probably look at it as being the old quarter, the church and embassy quarter, and the rest.

The rest comprises lots of 'could be anywhere' architecture and bog standard hotels and facilities. The tourist attractions are few and far between and, if you are staying here, you're missing out.

The church and embassy bit is much more attractive. There's a heck of a lot of nice architecture, including some rather bizarre stuff. There is a huge mix of styles including a catholic seminary apparently modeled on St Mary Clement Methodist Chapel in Truro.

Of course, the 'point' of Sarajevo is that it's a huge melting pot for religions. It has even been described as the Jerusalem of Europe. There are a lot of mosques and minarets and, because we were there during Ramadan, a gun to mark the breaking of the fast each day. There are catholic churches and a cathedral in an apostolic style. There are also orthodox churches and an orthodox cathedral currently undergoing extensive internal refurbishment - but it is still magnificent.

Once you get into the old muslim quarter, you are in a very different type of society. This is where Sarajevans go for their evening stroll - the sort of 'see and be seen' walk common in Italy and elsewhere. It is also the home of cafe culture with lots of open air eating including coffee shops, cevapi houses, burek sellers and full on restaurants.

For the uninitiated, burek are rolled tubes of filo pastry with meat, egg or spinach and cheese fillings. They are sold by the kilo (which can lead to massive over-ordering) and usually consumed with yoghurt. Cevapi are most definitely NOT kebabs, despite the fact they consist of spiced meat sold in pitta bread.

If you eat out in Sarajevo, burek will cost about 8-10 kmarks per kilo (about two kmarks to the pound or Euro, the latter are accepted just about everywhere). A cevapi meal will set you back about 4 km and a decent meal in a restaurant will cost roughly 20 km with beers about 4km each - so prices are not extraordinarily cheap.

Tourism has increased markedly over the last five years. There are plenty of tour groups being shown the sights or Sarajevo, including the 'Sarajevo Roses' - shell holes which have been filled with red plastic to serve as a constant reminder of the civil war. Many buildings also have bullet holes.

Out of Sarajevo, there's a pretty good bus service and a train line running down to Mostar and Dubrovnic.

I would really recommend a trip to Sarajevo.

Pics (from top): Sarajevo city; riverside architecture; Catholic cathedral; the place where World War One started; burek; a Sarajevo rose; main market;

What's the time in Bosnia?

I'm in Sarajevo for four days training parties in campaigning. The idea of the training, which is funded by the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, is to help build more robust parties which are cross community (ie not aligned with Serbs, Croats or Bosniaks).

But the biggest problem so far has been deciding what time it is. Bosnia operates on Central European Time which is one hour ahead of the UK. In the old days you would simply put your watch an hour ahead when you landed or kept it on UK time but remembered that it was an hour behind local time.

But not any more.

I don't wear a watch and rely on my mobile phone to tell me the time. So we landed and I didn't bother to change the time on my phone. When I went to bed I set my alarm for 6.30am - so that it would go off at 7.30am local time.

Except that my very clever iphone had changed time zones of its own accord and I got up an hour before I needed to. Mind you, of the four of us on this trip, we came up with three different possible times between us.

The training's going well tho!

Ali Bongo (good at contortionism)

As the world's focus is on Afghanistan, another election has taken place and this too seems to be mired in fraud accusations.

In Gabon, Ali Ben Bongo has won an election - allegedly with the support for the French to help rig the poll. Mr Bongo's father, Omar, ruled the former French colony for more than four decades.

Now President Sarkozy has come down behind the new President Bongo sending a letter of congratulations - a letter which President Bongo is now using to authenticate his victory.

Why the Afghan elections will be deemed 'free and fair'

It is a foregone conclusion that the elections in Afghanistan will be declared to be 'free and fair'. But the fact that they will be declared as such bears little resemblance to whether the elections meet any sort of reasonable standard.

How come?

Well to start with, the term 'free and fair' is meaningless. There is no single benchmark that decides these things. Free is meant to indicate that the people are able to vote for their preferred candidate without hindrance and with the full understanding of what that candidate stands for. Fair is meant to indicate that the polling process worked properly, that the electoral law is just and robust, that the media is unbiased and that the results declared accurately reflect the votes that went into the ballot boxes.

If you think that any election in the world meets all these standards at 100%, then think again.

And so we are talking about degrees of freedom and fairness.

International election observers understand this and so they compose their reports without resorting to shoddy terms like free and fair. I have been an international election observer on behalf of the UK on many occasions and I led the UK mission to several elections. Here is a brief idea of how it works.

Election monitoring is split into two streams. There are the long term observers (LTOs) and there are the short term observers (STOs). The LTOs look at the electoral law and whether it is just and equal; they look at the media coverage and see whether all candidates and parties have equal access and whether reports are biased in favour of one party or another; they look at the voter registration process to see if that is comprehensive and equal and they look at the plans for polling day to see that access to voting is sufficient.

(Incidentally, do you remember the pictures of the first South African elections post-apartheid and all the queues of voters waiting to cast their ballot. Western politicians hailed this as an embrace for democracy after years of oppression. It was certainly a magnificent step to freedom, but the queues were caused by bad planning rather than a sudden love of democracy).

For STOs the job is simpler. You go in a few days in advance and receive comprehensive training in the laws and processes of the country. You are being trained in what SHOULD be happening. A number of former colleagues (curiously, all American) seem to struggle to accept this and think that if is not being done the American way then it is wrong. But our job is to accept the law as it exists in the country we are in.

You are then allocated a partner (almost always from a different country), a driver and an interpreter. The latter is vital. Relying on your bad spoken Russian if you are observing in Ukraine does not win you many friends.

Each team is sent to a particular patch. There might be as many as 100 polling stations in the patch and your job is to visit as many as possible - starting from when they open and finishing when they close. It is a long day and you need to keep your wits about you the whole time, because your job is to observe everything that is going on. Specifically, your job is not to intervene - ever. If you see something happening wrongly, then you need to note that on your form. You can ask questions, but you cannot make suggestions. Each polling station visit will last between 30 and 40 minutes. Anything less and you might miss something. Longer, and you will not reach as many stations as you need to.

Depending on the distances involved and polling hours, you will visit between 15 and 30 polling stations in a day and at each you will consider many questions and talk to many officials.

And at the end of the day, you will reach a station as it closes and observe the count (almost all countries except the UK count the vote in the polling station). This can be very long and drawn out as there are always forms to be filled in in triplicate and someone always goes missing at the wrong time. But you cannot leave until all is done as someone wanting to corrupt the process will know they cannot do so as long as you are there.

When the count is finished, you follow the result form and ballot papers being taken to a regional centre. You may need to follow them further than this. At any time, the transposition of a few figures can disrupt the whole process.

A final rule is that you should never tell anyone how you think the process is going. Your words can ruin the whole mission. I recall one visiting VIP telling a camera crew at 11am that he thought there were no problems at all - despite having no clue about local laws and procedures and only having visited one specially selected polling station for 5 minutes. For the rest of the day, state media broadcast that this person had declared the whole electoral process free and fair. We might as well have given up and gone home straightaway.

The observation mission HQ will analyse all the individual reports (many thousands of them) and compile statistics based on the number of occasions on which certain problems are encountered. They will then issue a report which details the successes and failings of the system overall before coming to a conclusion. An interim report might be delivered within a few days, but the final report will take weeks.

(On one occasion the election had gone so badly that the report was delivered in a news conference at the airport with the engines running).

So if the news reports tomorrow carry UK or US spokespeople declaring that all has gone well and that the elections were free and fair, ask yourself this. How can they possibly know? Have they analysed the reports of independent observers at a significant number of polling stations? Have they had a sound and evidence based analysis of the emdia campaign, registration and electoral law procedures?

Or are they just spinning like crazy on behalf of their Government's self-interest?

Sierra Leone (again)

Been off for a week in Sierra Leone training their political parties ahead of their local election campaign which starts on Monday and ends on July 5th.

This was another cross party effort (as none of the UK parties really have sister parties over there)/ I was training in the second city of Bo with Sheila Gunn, John Major's former press secretary and a former Camden Councillor (until beaten by the Lib Dems, natch). Also over there were Lib Dem Winchester PPC Martin Tod and Chris Page of Labour, a councillor in Southwark where I used to work.

How was it? In a word, hot. In two words (to misquote Robin Williams being unfunny) Damn Hot.

We were meant to be training women on the first day and young activists and candidates on the second. Unfortunately, one of the parties got things mixed up and we had their male candidates (of all ages) on the first day. Still, things worked out ok with about 25 trainees on day one and 37 on day two.

We talked to them about building a campaign team, about the message that they wanted to get out to the electors and about how to get that message across. As ever, there were many lessons that we learned from them as well as them from us.

The trickiest thing about the trip was what to do when you get to Lungi Airport. For the uninitiated, it is on a spit of land separate from the city. Flights tend to arrive late afternoon and the options are:

- driving on unmade roads for three hours with the constant danger of a speeding airport fuel tanker coming the other way;
- taking the ferry which is usually over crowded and has a very poor safety record;
- staying at the airport hotel and travelling next day (fully booked usually);
- taking the hovercraft (recently suffered loss of engines and drifted out to sea for two hours before passengers evacuated to fishing boats;

The helicopter option (1960s Soviet machines with 1960s soviet pilots) is no longer there as one of them had a little 'incident' recently which resulted in the deaths of a Togolese football team and the other cannot get a safety certificate.

Took the hovercraft. At least in would be over quickest.

Freetown is still very busy and the petrol supply seems to have been restored. Bo is another kettle of fish. The second city is tiny in comparison and has virtually nothing going on. We stayed at a passable hotel but there was no other possible option. The road from Freetown was patchy - fully paved in many areas but packed earth in others - and there was nothing on it. Apart from NGOs, almost nobody travels between cities and, more importantly, nothing else does either. As with the UK in the 1770s, the food for the city is grown in the fields around. There is no 'bread basket' of the country and if food runs out in an area then people starve.

We did venture out to see the sights and found a town with lovely old architecture in a colonial style - houses with full length verandas facing each other across the main street. Sheila felt it was like the wild west and expected gunslingers to come out of the doors. I felt that if that happened they were unlikely to be quaint and more likely to carry uzis.

The 'best restaurant in Bo' according to Lonely Planet serves a full menu of seafood choices as well as pasta and an interesting assortment of other dishes. When we got there we had the choice of chicken or fish. Hmmm.

Back home now. Must right up proper report.

Lebanon - a shock to my system

It seems very strange to me that just six weeks ago I was in Beirut and would have mocked anyone who said that the city (indeed, country) was about to descend into what appears to be civil war.

I'm not going to pretend that I saw it coming or anything like that. When I was there (admittedly, only in a tiny patch of the city) I felt free to walk around anywhere I wanted to with no risk. The local economy seemed pretty good and the restaurants, casinos and nightclubs were full.

We walked along the Corniche and came across plenty of soldiers, but I don't think people seriously considered that there might be any need for them.

We were able to have wonderfully interesting discussions about the Arab way of doing things and I learned a heck of a lot. If Lebanon falls back into civil war then I fear that many more countries than this will slip away from liberalism (and, indeed, and form of constitutional politics).

Before I went, the Lib Dem's International Office were anxiously giving me plenty of chances to pull out if I no longer felt able to go. We got special travel insurance that covers civil war and terrorism which I regarded as a bit of a joke. Even more so when I got there.

During the time I was there we went to restaurants, walked the streets and felt completely safe. There were posters of Rafik Hariri (the assassinated President) everywhere and taxi drivers genuinely seemed to love his memory.

Today, according to the BBC, armed shia militants were marching down the street outside the hotel I stayed in and 11 people are reported to have been killed in fighting.

Measles or vaccination - the Egyptian view of islamist politics

Have had fascinating talks with a colleague from Egypt this afternoon. It was one of those lunchtime discussions which just ran on and on until we suddenly looked at our watches and saw it was 5pm.

In essence, he likens the threat posed in his country by radical islamist parties (and how to deal with them) as being like a choice between measles and vaccination.

In deciding how to handle the threat posed, he says that the dilemma for the mainstream parties - and he includes the Government and main opposition - is whether to engage with the islamists or not. He argues very forcefully for engagement and he holds regular public debates with the islamists.

His view is that to engage with them is the vaccination approach. You try to counter the disease so that, although there may be isolated cases, the widespread outbreak of the virus never happens. The alternative is not to engage and risk a pandemic which will take many generations to get over. You might be lucky of course and it may never happen, but the chances are that it will and you will have done nothing to stop it.

He goes further with his comparisons, describing the 'ROMification' of the young islamists. He says that many of them have been so brainwashed that they have lost the power of reasonable thought. They can only store ideas and parrot them back - like a computer with ROM memory. For rational thought a human needs the equivalent of RAM memory - the ability to process new data. His fear is that a whole generation has been lost and it may be a long while before a new set of young people can be debated with.

So why engage at all if these people are lost. There is particularly the danger that the liberals will be lumped into the same basket as people like Bush. His view is that this is a problem. But to refuse to debate risks the islamists starting a debate for themselves with people who are even more extreme - in Egypt they are the jihadis. A debate between violent and non-violent islamists will result in victory for the the more reasonable sounding group. But you still end up with islamists.

As for the George Bush problem, the argument is that George Bush effectively started a debate (ok, not a debate, a war) with the jihadis. By engaging with them on their terms (armed conflict) he gave them credence they do not deserve.

The additional dilemma comes with the problem of what to do if the islamists win an election. What is to stop them changing the constitution so fundamentally as to talibanise the country? His argument is that they would seek to persuade the islamists to sign up to an agreement with the fundamentals of elections and the rule of law. Even if you cannot get that, he says, by their very engagement in debate and through their participation in elections they have, de facto, agreed to the concept of elections and the constitution that goes along with them.

I'm not sure that I go along with the argument entirely, but it made for an interesting discussion. If you do accept it then it has some parallels for the UK. Should we in the UK debate with those who argue for sharia law or with the BNP.

On another note, he points to the crucial nature of Egypt in world politics and suggests that the islamist movement in the country is one which the world should be taking seriously. He points out that 1953 and the Suez crisis led to the effective end of empires; that 1972 saw the beginning of the end of Soviet control way before the fall of the Berlin Wall and that 1978 was the turning point for the recognition by Arab countries of the state of Israel. His characterization is the Egypt in world affairs is the same s the Middle East in the game of Risk. In order to win the game, a player needs to take and hold that territory.

As I say, a very interesting lunch. Arguments welcome!

In Beirut

I'm in Beirut for a meeting of the nascent Liberal Arab Network. There are people here from Egypt, Palestine, Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan, Algeria and Lebanon. As with my work in Africa, these parties vary in their levels of electoral strength and experience, but there is a wonderful determination.

Arrived last night wondering what sort of place I was flying in to. Turns out to be a wonderfully modern airport which is the gateway to a very modern city. Ok, so I've only been to the city centre so far, but it all looks typically mediterranean. Lots of coffee bars and ice cream parlours and, being a Saturday night, huge numbers of people on the streets having a good time. The bars and clubs (and coffee shops and casinos) get truly busy after midnight.

The taxi driver who brought me from the airport talked about the political situation here and described the country's three neighbours - Israel, Syria and the sea. He says most Lebanese believe that only the sea is friendly!

We had a dinner tonight as guests of our host party at a very busy and popular local restaurant. Feasted on mezze, grills, very sweet puddings and lots of fruit. I was sat with representatives from three different Egyptian parties. The fact that they compete with each other electorally doesn't seem to worry them here!

The only downside is the fact that everybody smokes. Not just after dinner, but as they eat. And the waiters come round with shishas which people smoke as they eat. One of my colleagues juggled a cigarette, a shisha and his fork.

Pictures of assassinated Prime Minister Rafik Hariri everywhere and Hariri medals are sold by the airline on the plane.

More studied analysis to come. And maybe some pictures.

Photos from Mozambique

Meeting the President


















A workshop session featuring delegates from Tunisia, Burkina Faso and the Democratic Republic of Congo


















Senegalese Minister Mamadou Lamine Ba speaking to the press after meeting the Mozambique President


















The flag of the meeting


















The closing Press Conference


















Our hotel, the Holiday Inn in Maputo

Raul Castro is a reformer

There is an old joke about liberals marching on Parliament chanting

"What do we want? Gradual Change! When do we want it? In due course!"

Well I think the decision by the Cuban Communist Party to adopt Raul Castro to replace his brother Fidel fulfils that wish. In the 16 months that he has already held the effective reins of office, Raul Castro has introduced a number of significant changes that have set Cuba on a path towards a more enlightened regime. It's not democracy and the rule of law by any means but it is a welcome start.

There are, I suspect, many people like me who hate the idea of the totalitarian regime such as the Cuban one, but also have a secret (or perhaps not so secret) admiration for the way that this tiny impoverished state has thumbed its nose at the USA for so long. We would like to see the Fidel regime replaced and the Cuban people freed, but we don't want the island to become yet another haven for US cruise ships and drug cartels.

So the prospect of a continuing gradual change is perhaps the right one. Raul may be almost as old as his brother, but he has shown a marked difference of approach and the choice of the 78 year old Machado Ventura as Vice President may not be the slap in the face for the next generation that it is perceived as being. It just may be that Raul is not yet ready to annoint a chosen successor and wants the possible candidates to show him what they are made of first. Just as in the USA, we can be sure that the current Vice President is not the one who will take the top job next.

Mozambique - was it worth it?

It's clearly not a cheap operation to organise a conference such as the one I've just got back from, but in my mind it was well worth it:

- I know from the feedback forms and conversations with most of the participants after the end of the session that they got lots out of it. Lots of the feedback forms praised me (which is, of course, nice) but also talked about the bonds they have made with their fellow participants from different countries. We were able to put people from different ends of the continent in touch with each other - especially where they share a common problem - so that they can keep in touch about their means for addressing the issue.

- For the smaller parties, it was fantastic to be able to chat at length with the likes of Minister Lamine Ba from Senegal and David Pierre from the Seychelles National Party - one of whom is in power and the other gets 46% of the vote. It goes to show that a Liberal Party can make it in Africa and to carry on campaigning even when they might only have received 3% or so at the last election. In case anyone doubts the true Liberalism of, for instance, the PDS in Senegal, have a look at the party's website (warning - it is in French).

- It got a lot of good publicity for our hosts, the PDD of Mozambique. They deserved praise from us for all their hard work and it was nice to be able to catch up again with my friend Joachim de Castello who is the General Secretary of the Party. But more than this, as President Guebuza said during our meeting with him, Maputo became the capital of African Liberalism. We got lots of favourable press and tv coverage which gets both the cause of liberalism and the policies of the PDD more coverage in a country which reporters without borders classifies as not necessarily the strongest free press in the world.

Another Iain Dale copycat blog

Following the shameless Iain Dale copycatting from yesterday, here's another - a list of my TV appearances.

There were a few TV cameras present during our meeting with the President yesterdaym but we thought no more about it. Then, when we were out in Maputo for dinner last night there was a TV in the corner of the restaurant. One of my dinner companions suddenly pointed at the TV and said 'That's us!'. And indeed there we were, meeting with the President.

I don't know what passes for a standard item on Mozambiquan TV News, but we were on for at least 5 minutes.

And no, we didn't get a discount on dinner.

Leaving Mozambique

It's been a fascinating trip to Mozambique. I've got to check out of the hotel in half an hour before the trip back via Lisbon.

The event was a workshop and Assembly of the Africa Liberal Network, an alliance of parties from around the continent. They range from the PDS, the Senegalese Government (and we had Minister Mamadou Lamine Ba from the party) as well as parties such as the SNP from the Seychelles who get 46% of the vote yet still come second there. There are also developing parties such as our hosts the PDD and ANADER from Congo.

The role of the Lib Dems is to support the Network by helping them to come together. All the main parties in the UK work through the Westminster Foundation for Democracy to assist the development of democracy and parties around the world. This is one of the ways we choose to provide support. So I was facilitating a workshop presenting ideas from the UK covering party structure, campaigning and policy development. Obviously we cannot and do not want to dictate what should be done but we encourage the different parties to share their own experiences and build support groups with each other. Having a Government Minister from a successful Liberal Party there helps enormously with this!

The final day was an assembly meeting of the Network to discuss future business and to prepare the Network to make an impact at the next meeting of Liberal International in Belfast in May.

A word to travellers - both intrepid and otherwise. Mozambique is a fabulous country with great weather and superb beaches. There is tons of incredible seafood and fine hotels. Can't recommend it highly enough. Regrettably we didn't get enought time to go outside the capital but I understand there are also good safaris to be had.

I've got loads of pics which I'll post when I get home

Eat your heart out Iain Dale

Iain Dale recently posted claiming to be the first to post a blog from the Oval Office of the White House. Well, I've gone one better (ok, sort of).

This post is coming to you from the Office of the President of Mozambique - Armando Guebuza. And the President is in the room meeting with the members of the African Liberal Network.

More soon...

Offline for a while

I'm off to Mozambique for a short trip to take part in a workshop organised by the African Liberal Network and the Friedrich Neumann Foundation.

We've got about 32 representatives from a dozen or more different countries attending so it promises to be interesting.

Will blog updates if I can find a plug adaptor that works - apparently different parts of Mozambique use three different sorts of plug - one of which is almost unique to the country.