My Highlights of 2007

A bit late but here are my own highlights of 2007. Two sections: political and personal.

Political

1)getting re-elected to Gateshead Council with the biggest vote, majority and share of the vote of any candidate in Gateshead.

2)capturing Labour’s Mugabe-style bully-boy tactics on camera and posting the result up as the “Battle of Trimdon Green” during the Sedgefield by-election. You know you want to see it again!: Battle of Trimdon Green

3)discovering there was to be no election in the autumn whilst out picking sloes near our village of Sunniside – I should have left the blackberry at home!

4)the conference vote for the Trident motion – ever so close but clinched by a last minute intervention from Ming.

5)exposing Blaydon Labour MP David Anderson for spending taxpayers’ money on a personal attack on me and my Lib Dem colleagues in Gateshead – he ended up having to repay the money!

6)experiencing Labour making complete fools of themselves in my ward over a leaflet they put out (in October when they thought there was going to be an election) attacking us (they simply made up ridiculous claims about Lib Dem run Newcastle which didn’t even have a shred of evidence to support them). The editor of the leaflet subsequently denied any knowledge of the contents of the leaflet even though his name was all over it. I’m sure we’ll be reminding everyone in the local elections in May about this, were this person to stand again!

7)enjoying the spectacle of Tyne Bridge Labour MP David Clelland announcing publicly that he has stopped using taxpayers’ money to pay for his website so that he no longer contravened the rules on MPs’ allowances, therefore allowing him to continue to use the site to attack me personally!

8)attending the announcement of Nick Clegg as the new leader. I had to fight with the other photographers to get a place at the front!

9)the shock of learning about Ming’s resignation. We only knew half an hour before it was announced on tv.

10)the Sedgefield by-election campaign.

Personal

1)in November, I welcomed the fact I have now spent half my entire life with David – 22 years!

2)safari in Kenya and seeing African elephants in the wild.

3)visiting a reptile park in Mombassa and having a number of snakes put round my neck. I have a video of this: Snakes and Lizards

4)Kayaking along the coast of Madagascar.

5)snorkeling with turtles over a coral reef on the French island of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean.

6)giving my sandals away in Madagascar because they needed them more than I did.

7)giving away most of my shirts to kids who rowed out to our ship when we arrived at the island of Anjuan in the Comoro Islands in the Indian Ocean. They needed them more than I did!

8)buying enough spices in Zanzibar to keep us in experimental cooking for years!

9)filming wild ponies on the hills above Penmaenmawr in North Wales. Yes, there is a video: wild Welsh ponies

10)Handing on one of my videos to the London Transport Museum for use in an exhibition they were running. The video: A trip on the London Eye