Cottingham Liberal Democrats enjoy their annual Garden Party

8.04.00pm UTC (GMT +0000) Fri 25th Jul 2008

What a lovely spread!

Despite the rain on Saturday 19th of July, Cottingham's Liberal Democrats played host to local Lib Dem friends at their annual garden party. Fortunately there was plenty of space and a very warm welcome at the home of Richard & Alison Weighill.

The food is always a treat!

The visits of Lib Dem MPs Lembit Opik and Simon Hughes provided a great deal to talk about, as well as the sensational Haltemprice & Howden By-election. Events seem to have overtaken Lembit who had just celebrated his engagement to Gabriella but he certainly helped flooded Cottingham residents during his visit by taking such a close interest in their plight.

Simon had paid us a flying visit on his way to London from the North East and saw for himself where the floods had invaded so many homes, especially in Anlaby. Simon went on to help Lib Dems in Hull by canvassing for Denis Healy, the Hull North PPC and holding discussions about the latest thinking about the way forward at Cowley Street.

Although David Davis can now claim a 15,000 majority as a result of his re-election at the by-election, everyone knows this is Davis in Wonderland stuff. Would he have survived the Cameron re-shuffle of his front bench team? Did he jump and make the biggest splash he could rather than be pushed out of the Shadow Cabinet? We will never know. But what is certain is that he will now longer be sought out by the media about his party's views on Home Office matters quite so often.