News reaches us that Conservative MEP Edward McMillan-Scott has defected to the Liberal Democrats and will be joining us here at party conference.

The MEP said today: “I have been around the higher circles of the Conservative party for long enough to fear that on Europe Cameron says one thing in opposition and will do another in government.

“I have long fought against totalitarianism and the extremism and religious persecution it brings. It was wrong of Cameron to associate with MEPs who have extremist pasts in his new European alliance.”

I guess Liberal Democrats will be partying like it’s 1999 2000.

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Today is notable as the day before LDV’s fascinating fringe event on how to make authoritarian MPs pay at the ballot box – do join us tomorrow in Birmingham to find out how.

302 years ago today, Queen Anne was the last British monarch to withhold Royal Assent from a bill of Parliament.

In 1864, Sheffield saw a Great Flood when a dam under construction burst. The ensuing inundation wrecked a number of bridges, destroyed 800 houses and killed 270 people.

People born on March 11th include Laurence Llewellyn Bowen, Harold Wilson and Douglas Adams; and deaths include Alexander Fleming, John Wyndham and Slobodan Milošević.

2 Big Stories

Parties battle over high speed rail

Will Labour’s Y or the Conservative Reverse-S win the day? Find out in The Times

Clegg will unveil 4 demands

The Independent is trailing party leader Nick Clegg’s keynote conference speech. Will he take Stephen’s sage coalition advice?

Mr Clegg will use his party’s spring conference in Birmingham starting tomorrow to unveil “four steps to fairness” that would be his initial negotiating demands for backing a minority government led by David Cameron or Gordon Brown.

Four things, you say? Whatever could they be?

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

• Stuart Bonar puts the costs of the Iraq war into perspective
• Jennie Rigg trumpets the rise and rise of the sex-positive feminist

Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.

One final thing – did you realise how big and scary Google is? Bonus points if you can identify the end image before the film gets to it.

@dr_nick #menu is a bit unbalanced – too many ampersands in reply to dr_nick #

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If you are unfortunate enough to lose your wheelie bin in the next financial year, there will be a charge for a new one. At the moment, the first one you lose is free, but the council charge you if you lose any more than that. But as we all know, there are 50 ways to lose your wheelie bin. And we know a song about that, don’t we, boys and girls?

I had asked on twitter if anyone could help me out filling in the rest of the song. My example of a way to lose a wheelie bin was… arson attack, Jack.

My friends on Twitter came up with the following:

• Ripped off the lid, Sid,
• Flood swept it away, Fay
• Rolled down the street, Pete

And tossing the idea around in group we also tried

• It’s just knackered, Saghir Akhtar

… which doesn’t really work but got the biggest laugh.

That’s all a bit of fun, but the main idea here – that Labour will charge for replacement bins – is still a bad idea.  There are many ways you can lose you bin, including theft and arson, so many of the people who will end up paying the charge will themselves be the victims of crime who are penalised again by the Council.

One of the things that irks me most is that one of the standard dances in the budget speech is that the Tories propose a charge for the collection of bulky waste, and the Labour group knock it down saying that if you charge for what is currently free, you will force innocent householders to become fly-tippers overnight. In fact, the City Council currently has some interesting pilots to see if there are even better ways of dealing with bulky waste than the free collections – for example there’s a pilot in Aspley where there’s a weekly bulky collection instead of an on-demand service.

Labour didn’t seem to see that the same argument with bulky waste will probably apply to wheelie bins: if you charge, there will be more fly-tipping.

They’re also looking at some unhelpful ideas like not charging benefit claimants, or maybe not charging people with crime numbers.  That will have some unhelpful consequences: recorded crime would rise in the second instance, in the first, the Council might even create a black market scheme where people in work steal the bins of benefit claimants, because they can get a free one when the workers can’t.

All in all, a crazy scheme that should just be, erm, binned.

@foxc_uk did you not see the start of the diet post? People on diets are allowed the occasional chocolate mousse. in reply to foxc_uk #

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A good number of reasons have prompted me to do this. Only one is the upcoming nuptials – amongst the many others are how many of my close colleagues and internet acquaintances have recently been diagnosed with cardiovascular disease like diabetes and heart attacks. Another is that my clothes don’t fit, and if I get any bigger, I’ll have to leave the high street behind. Yet another was a recent internet chat with friends across the planet. I was kvetching about being overweight and heading for early death and there being little I could do about it – only to discover the two svelte hunks with web cameras have both been heavier than me in the past and both lost the weight.

I kid myself that it doesn’t show too badly. There are many people my weight who look a lot worse, I think anyway. My last, pre-diet weigh-in tipped the scales at 16 stone 1lb, which made my BMI a scary 33 or so. I’m aiming for 12 stone at the least, hopefully even down to 11. That’s going to take months.

For a kick start, I have chosen Diet Chef, a method with pros and cons.

Advantages of Diet Chef

You go on the internet, plug in your height, sex and weight, and they recommend a nutrition plan. You plug in your credit card and within a few days, huge cardboard boxes they laughably call “hampers” arrive, containing almost all the food you are supposed to eat.

Breakfast is porridge or granola, in a variety of different flavours.

Lunch is a soup in a pouch.

Dinner is a casserole, stew or curry, also in a pouch.

In addition, you also get a snack – either a low calorie sawdust bar or a pack of two oat cakes, in an assortment of flavours. There is also a daily milkshake.

The cereal, soup, shake, snack and stew between them average out at 1500 calories per day. You’re supposed to add one piece of fruit and veg a day too, as well as half a pint of semi-skimmed milk. Since I’m a man, and since I have so much weight to shed, I’m allowed an additional 300 calories a day to make it up to 1800. The booklet you get makes suggestions like rice, pasta, slices of bread and additional veggies, but I have on occasion resorted to making it up with 6 rich tea biscuits.

It’s basically a slop-based diet. It is however, pretty tasty slop. The soups are mostly excellent (Thai Chicken was horrible, however). The evening casseroles are also on average pretty good, although not as good as the soups.

The main advantage is not having to think too hard. At meal times, you wander into the conservatory and sift through the boxes, make a choice, bung it in the microwave for two minutes, and eat it. If you know you’re going to be out over lunchtime, put a pouch, a shake, a snack and an apple in your bag, and that will more or less keep you going through the day.

It fits very well into my chaotic lifestyle.

You get a lot of choice – when you’re deciding what goes in your “hamper” you can choose from a fair variety of soups and meals. The shakes, snacks and breakfasts are more limited, but there’s nearly a month’s worth of different evening meals.

They suggest you give up caffeine. Out of my cold, dead hands, DietChef!

I’ve made almost all of my own bread this year – I have to cook and eat less bread while I’m doing the diet.

Disadvantages of Diet Chef

It’s not exactly sustainable – once I finish, after months of microwave ready meals, I will just have to go back to the ordinary eating that got me fat in the first place, without having learned a whole new set of eating habits.

It’s not exactly cheap – the cheapest deal is 35 days’ food for over £200, and on top of that you need to buy fruit, veg and milk. Even with my extravagant supermarket and alcohol habits, I don’t think I was spending that much on just my food. If we both go on the diet – P has less to lose than me – it will really hit us in the wallet.

You could easily make up most of the food yourself – the cereals in particular, and also the low-cal veg-based soups either from scratch or from tins or packets. The evening meals would be a bit trickier. That would require thinking, though, and the main benefit of DietChef is not having to do that too much.

Until the diet, milkshakes were not really something that featured in my food habits. Each milkshake is 300 calories – but also a lot of vitamin supplements. I am fast learning that 300 calories is easily found and wondering if there are better ways to do it – order the 1200 calorie version without the milkshakes and have 600 calories a day for free choice. Again, more thought needed.

Slop based food has meant lots of stains on clothing. Must eat more carefully.

Early successes

In my first 10 days on the diet, I have lost 7lbs, which is far better than I dared hope. Oodles of caveats for that: I know the first week of any diet almost always sees a higher loss than can subsequently be sustained. I didn’t use the same scales (not sure we own scales – I’ve been using Boots’ “healthy weight” machine – in different branches of Boots).

But to get there, I have not been too rigorous about the diet. I’ve had more than one portion of fruit and veg – although tapering off from 5 on the first few days. I had a day off when we went to London to see a show and get a meal. I might be able to get to a microwave at work, but there isn’t much chance of that on a train.

I’ve been jokingly referring to the food as “misery pouches” – in fact it’s not miserable. Most of it is tasty. It’s reasonably filling – although I do want to snack as much as I did before. There are long periods of the day when I am thinking about food.

The first week success has persuaded me to keep going, and I have signed up for two more whole months of this. Wish me luck. If you hear no more on this, assume I’m still fat.