Pendle’s Lib Dem peer and Pendle councillor, the crusty old Lord Tony Greaves, journeys through life as an angry man. I’ve written about this before.

Alas, the invective he deploys has no subtlety or nuance.

It is just crude and in-your-face.

His description of David Cameron as a toffee nosed slimebag is a good example of the genre.

What he thinks of Nick Clegg is anyone’s guess. Probably unprintable.

Greaves accused former Lib Dem leader Menzies Campbell of being so right wing he would take the Lib Dems “to the right of David Cameron”.

As for David Laws, again in the news today, he is branded “a Tory”.

For Greaves, this is moderate language indeed.

PS The Pendle Labour Party had some good results in last week’s local elections. In my old happy hunting ground, the Party wins two seats from the reviled Lib Dems and one from the Conservatives in hitherto staunch blue Reedley. Labour also held on to the two they were defending. Greaves must have been apoplectic.

The Tony Blair

We are in Orangeville, an hour’s drive north of Toronto, and drop into the Winchester Arms pub before the play begins at the local theatre – a jolly musical comedy.

Scanning the menu I spot “The Tony Blair”.

How intriguing! Has the great man been in town? Signing books, perhaps? Delivering a speech?

I ask the server why the pub’s most expensive offering - the New York sirloin “charbroiled to your liking, topped with sautéed mushrooms, onions, lettuce and tomato on a fresh baked loaf” – is named after Tony Blair.

She is stumped.

I shake my head.

But it’s real good, she says.

David Cairns

I am stunned to read of the death of David Cairns, the Labour MP for Inverclyde, at the tragically early age of 44.

David was a former Catholic priest. The first to get elected to Westminster following the lifting of the ban that kept the Catholic Clergy out of the Commons.

I remember his warm, engaging and breezy manner. Always smiling and full of enthusiasm.

Everyone who knew him will feel a terrible loss.