Left Side of Liberal

Set your phaser to kill, Mr Huhne

2009-10-22T15:01:00.004+01:00

Tonight is, perhaps, one of the most important episodes of Question Time that has ever been broadcast. Every liberal in this land, I hope, is just waiting to watch the British National Party getting torn apart in a live debate. Let me get this out of the way immediately - the decision to allow Griffin to sit on the show was the right one. They let UKIP on and - as I have shown before - they have a very similar support base. Sadly, for all those who are anticipating a 40 minute long fight, Griffin will play it safe - a Farage clone who will spew meaningless words and attempt to, like so many far-right politicians before him, "hold his nose and enter the Reichstag".

Some are suggesting that the BBC are pandering to the BNP. I prefer to take the opposite view and point out exactly who will show up with the pitchforks and firebrands. No, not the crowd - although I would relish watching Griffin attempt to preach hatred to every single ethnic minority in London - but the panel. I'm afraid I don't know much about Greer or Warsai, but then you see Jack Straw. Now, Jack Straw is probably the most influential MP from the north west and one with an excellent record (unlike, for example, Kitty Ussher in Burnley) of fighting the BNP despite over 20% of his electorate being of South Asian origin. He's on the wrong side of the fence, but he's actually one of the few Labour MPs I do not actually dislike. In short, I suspect that Straw is going to be exceedingly effective in demolishing the BNP if Griffin makes a single mistake.

Now, onto Chris Huhne. Huhne has perhaps the easiest platform out of all the three party representatives. He's not the government, he's not anywhere near as easy a target as the Conservatives and because he's a Lib Dem the one that everybody knows will be utterly dogmatic and forceful in his anti-BNP arguments. In short, he could be entirely dull and uninteresting - by our standards - and still rip Griffin to shreds. But we don't want him to do that. If Huhne has ever wanted to prove his credentials as one of the brightest stars in our party, this is the day he can do it. We don't want Huhne the Lib Dem. We want Huhne the superhero, utterly demolishing not only the BNP's standpoint but exposing every single word that Griffin speaks for what it is - vacuous, racist nonsense.

PS: Here's a game - if you had an ideal panel of four to take on the BNP (one Labourite, one Tory, one Lib Dem and one other) on Question Time, who would you pick? I'd actually say that Straw would be on my list for Labour but for the Lib Dems I'm not sure - I would pay to see Paddy Ashdown simply bounce every single argument back at Griffin with added "I was a paratrooper, you were a National Front organiser" punch...

Politicians are people?

2009-10-02T15:32:00.003+01:00

I'm a fresher, born and bread in a place that the Liberals forgot (Accrington). I came to Aberystwyth fully knowing that it was a LD seat with a sizable number of LD councillors placed all over Ceredigion. I am admit, however, that I hadn't quite grasped the concept in the title. To me, pre-Aber, politicians and especially elected officials were some form of superhero, held aloft on great wings made from ballot papers - a copy of On Liberty in one hand and their latest speech in the other.

The nice thing is, they're actually not.

I've met Mark Williams, MP for Ceredigion. He's a really enthusiastic guy with a lot of convictions and a really good speaker as well. On the Lib Dem social night on Wednesday I got to talk to, at great length, the mayor of Cardigan, Mark Cole (who has basically convinced me to go to Welsh Conference...) and discovered that he too is actually a human being. Looking back, I really wonder why, in over a year of talking on LDV to people from across the party, I hadn't grasped this concept earlier. I think I have one or two theories, and one of them is quite an important thought.

Firstly, you have the simple fact that I'm an idealist, and the fact that being in Accrington isolates you from politics all together like some black hole absorbing light means that that was exacerbated. But the most important theory is that it's to do with the media. We see politicians of all shapes and sizes - some writing articles, some on Question Time or Any Questions?, some talking to some random journalist about the latest scandal or development. You don't see on a regular basis, though, them going with a few friends for a pint, or talking about the latest football results or doing a whole manner of other things. That's why when we see, for example, Lembit Opik doing Bargain Hunt, we immediatly comment, despite the fact that hundreds of other well known faces and thousands of people have gone on the show.

What is the impact of this view that we appear to have grown that politicians are seperate, better, than the rest of us? Obviously, it is bad for candidate selection, but is it more than that? Perhaps as media coverage of politicians increase, people become switched off whilst jokes are made about politics being showbiz for ugly people. Perhaps we need to have a serious look at how we portray our representatives as a whole and convince society that these people are not superheros from another planet but actually just teachers or students who just decided to have a go.

PS: Apologies to the two Marks for singling you out!

Sunshine?

2009-09-30T18:12:00.002+01:00

I'm pretty sure that at Cameron Towers right about now there is a party going on, celebrating the fact that Murdoch has finally decided to throw his hat in the ring with the Tories. There's doubtlessly more optimism in the Conservative ranks, too. But the real question is whether to most voters the opinions of the press - and especially The Sun - actually matter on voting day.

Let's go back a little. "It was The Sun what won it" was one of the more popular theories why Labour won a landslide in '97. The theory went that due to the prelevence of the media in the way many ordinary people thought on important issues, the backing of said media towards one canidate must undoubtedly have impacted the vote. This theory, brought 12 years forward, is why this shift has been so exceedingly interpreted as a major event. The question is, is that right? Granted, The Sun has a huge readership, and alongside the rest of the Murdoch empire it has the capability to print as much propaganda as it likes. Also granted, assuming the so often held steriotype that voters are stupid, opinions in the press tend to leak out into public thought. But there are major problems with this issue if you factor in the twelve years since 1997. In 1997 there was no blogosphere, no Twitter or Facebook and indeed only the most rudimentary of forum software. Alongside that is the huge increase in the population of the 'net in those twelve years. Obama understood this in his campaigns to become the president of the US in an internet campaign that went beyond everything that had come before it. There is a general consensus that the position of the newspapers has gotten more and more untenable as not only people find their news on the internet they also now thanks to increased communication get their opinions from it as well. I'm somewhat guilty of lifing opinion straight off the internet - it's one of my fatal flaws - but I know I'm not alone in the matter. Overall, the impact of the Internet must have a lessening impact on the effect of Murdoch picking Cameron.

The Internet is not the only thing that has changed since 1997. For one, the economic circumstances are somewhat different. Major fought an election following several long and painful recessions, but Brown will be fighting after a very sharp shock of a recession. Unlike Labour in 1997, the Conservatives will have genuine problems finding a credible position to attack Labour's former economic policies on which engages voters. Major precided over a relatively poorly run and tired Tory party that couldn't agree on Europe. Brown precides over a tired Labour, but it is still New Labour - a party with a recorded history of well run campaigns. It is important to remember at this point that Brown has never actually lead Labour into an election, so we have no real idea how the 2010 campaign will be conducted.

To conclude this somewhat rambling monorail of thought, it is in my humble opinion that the impact of the swing of The Sun really cannot be considered to be the be all and end all of the week's news. The impact of The Sun itself is far less than it used to be, but more importantly in my mind is that we are looking at different times with different opinions. I'm not confident enough to predict that this is meaningless, but I'm relatively sure that it's not that large of a story.

Getting back into the mix

2009-09-29T14:53:00.003+01:00

Well, I suppose because I am actually at university now I probably should blow the dust off this thing and get back to blogging about stuff again.

University is a weird place. It's especially weird for folks like me who are quite closed and not what you'd call fond of drinking, but there is something irrepressibly likeable about looking out a window and seeing academia. And alcohol. Boy is there a lot of alcohol. Aberystwyth has more pubs and clubs per square mile than anywhere else in the UK, and so far I've found that people tend to enjoy trying to get a drink as as many places as possible every evening. This could just be Freshers Week, of course. In other news, it hasn't rained – a miracle in Wales – and my flatmates are a great bunch.

Let's get off what I've been up to (that's for Twitter, if you're interested I'm there under Huw_Dawson) and onto politics, shall we?

The last few days have been full up with good blogging material that far better writers than I have gone over, but I'll just put my perspective on things. The conference – to me – looked like far more of a positive event than Mr Neil painted so energetically on the BBC coverage. Even the darkest cloud – that of the tuition fees argument – was happily blown away when nice old Mr Cameron decided to tell everyone that the Tories would cut loans and grants for everyone except the very poorest. I've talked to many History/InterPol students here and it looks like the the conference was a hit, especially the Mansion Tax. So go tell everyone who says differently to jump in the lake.

Expect daily updates from now on! I plan on writing a lot about what I've been reading about to do with my History and InterPol topics, so hopefully there'll be more interesting stuff here soon than me rabbiting on about not much.

It would appear that I have let this blog grow dusty

2009-06-22T11:08:00.000+01:00

It's a stunningly bad habit of mine to leave perfectly good projects to rot due to lack of interest. This probably would be one of them. What is clear, however, is that I've been away when things were interesting - now that we're back to boring day-to-day politics, lets make a post about directions.

My direction is Aberystwyth University to study History and International Politics. But whilst I'm there, and this is where the blog enters matters, I intend to update this thing on a far more professional basis. That's why, over the summer, I intend to have a little fun. Hence why I replied to Iain Dale, the only other blogger I know for their blogging, as such -

"Nom nom nom nom nom.

Tory tears taste so sweet."

This is the internet, after all, and I'm a child of it. Generally discussions rise far below the high water mark of stupidity here. There is something impeccably funny, however, of using such a netchild joke to describe what was, effectively, a knee-jerk Iain Dale comment to promote his own blog post. "Tears" posts are totally disarming - they're shaped in the fashion of "dragging them down and beating them with experience" and largely disregard proper debating arguments, although I fancy if Dale wanted proper debate he wouldn't be with a party such as the Tories.

Basically it was a joke. Knowing the handbag-waving tenancies of Dale (I'd describe anybody who walks out of Cabinet like that having a hissy-fit, personally!) I don't doubt he's chalked me up in some long, dreary list of people he'd like to slightly inconvenience at some point.

So, what's happened in the last month - Brown never went, Cameron goofed slightly and Clegg sort of sat around telling the press that he was cross. I can't help thinking that the recent local election results, purely down to a cataclysmic SW result, has winded some of our drive and vigor, and the prospect of another Brown Christmas doesn't really fill us with hope or glee.

ID cards are dead, Brown's trying to fake reform whilst placing the inevitable Iraq War inquiry into a position Cameron can't use to pummel Labour more and then call an election, and the Lib Dems are hoping for a good result in Norwich North.

As an aside, Liberal Youth are being charismatically silent and invisible. During the whole Brown crisis, there should have been something - anything - to drive forward the youth opinion that Brown must go. There was nothing - not even a witty slogan. Direction is what LDY needs - let's hope that I can do something about that with my free time at Aber.

Oh! Greg Pope, MP for Hyndburn, is stepping down at the next election. I curse my young years and tendencies to be in the middle of Wales at election time, because I'd really like to be at an opening meeting for the Lib Dem Hyndburn 2010 group, if it existed.

Statistics: BNP versus Lib Dems. Also, UKIP and BNP - the far right bedfellows

2009-06-09T17:03:00.005+01:00

For my own personal amusement, I decided to feed the Guardian's statistics on the EU election votes into a spreadsheet and pull out some graphs.

The fuchsia line of best fit is of my own addition. Using the data, I also compared Conservative to BNP, Labour to BNP, UKIP to BNP and Greens to BNP:

Con vs BNP - weak negative correlation
Lab vs BNP - no correlation
UKIP vs BNP - strong positive correlation (We're talking a clear line - a strong BNP vote corresponded with a strong UKIP vote. It's even worth a graph to demonstrate)

Greens vs BNP - strong negative correlation

The graphs are not hard to make for yourself - they'll paste without any trouble into your Excel or Openoffice spreadsheet.

A Silly Thought

2009-06-05T01:43:00.003+01:00

If any more ministers resign late at night, Nick Robinson will fall asleep on TV. I sort of want this to happen.

Props to the man for not allowing petty mortal things such as sleep to interrupt political news!

Labour's Angle of Attack - Crime

2009-05-20T12:41:00.003+01:00

From Labour's Lancashire propaganda leaflet:

"It's hard to believe the Lib Dems are still sticking to their pledge to end jail sentences for drug possession, want to legalise the sale of cannabis, and would never lock up a young people who are convicted of an ASBO. But it's true."

I'm not sure if that actually IS true, actually, although to go through my own personal opinions...

1) Possession with intent to sell is a incarceration-worth crime - simple possession should lead to hefty fines.
2) I'm actually for legalising it and then placing heavy taxes on it. We make money of cigarette smokers, after all.
3) Throwing a child in prison will always be a stupid idea.

Anyway, it goes on. It's a crime swipe - apparently we're soft on crime, mostly around drugs, although I don't actually recall most of that being party policy. The attack vs the Tories is one of "They'll cut public services".

Let's be a little uncomplicated for a second. I don't actually know of many young people in Lancashire that would be switched off from voting for the Lib Dems because they want to legalise cannabis. In fact, quite the opposite!

Ah well. Labour have already sacrificed the youth vote many times over - no sense for them to appeal to them now!

Saving Our Internet - A Follow Up

2009-05-08T10:52:00.004+01:00

I recently wrote an article for Lib Dem Voice about the new internet law ammendments heading though the EU parliament. I was against the proposals to allow ISPs to block internet access without legal action.

I would appear, however, that the parliament has ammended the legislation to fix this potentially catastrophic law. From the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8036341.stm

I'm going to buy something to celebrate, I think!

The Beginning Of The End - The Pirate Bay Trial Draws to a Close

2009-04-17T12:28:00.003+01:00

As you might be aware, there's been quite a large amount of problems with copyright over the last few years. Thanks to the relentless waves of new websites, faster connections and new technology, it gets easier and easier every day to get information (This time last year, for example, Twitter had not hit the headlines). This information, be it photographic, literary, audio or video - any of them can be copyrighted. The problem is, that copyright is an inherently awful system, and almost all liberals (big and little L) accept this. It badly needs universal reform as it protects businesses who otherwise would fail (Disney), can cause - along with Patent and IP laws, both of which also need reform - products of immense worth to never reach the market and can be used by an industry to control things. As liberals, we hold up the individual over the state and big business as a core value, and we were the first party to suggest a Freedom of Information act for the UK. We have a good background in this sort of thing.

I want you to consider what has happened to YouTube. Yesterday, I tried to find a copy of a new Green Day single. The first video I tried, YouTube had taken down for copyright infringement. Of course, there were hundreds of other videos with the song, and the song is now safely recorded via Audacity onto my hard drive so that I can convince myself to stump up £10 for the CD when it hits the market. Consider the contradiction - a company charges a high price for something but is wholly against free advertising. When copyright laws are swung around, stupidity enters the system.

Let us look at the recent development, one which, if upheld at appeal, will spell doom for the entirety of free sharing of information over the internet. The Pirate Bay founders have been found guilty of copyright infringement and their punishment is to be sent to jail for a year and pay a small amount of compensation - two point four million pounds. The commercial wing of the website in question sells t-shirts with it's own logo on the front, and a modicum of advertising. Nothing illegal there. What, thanks to this trial, may become illegal soon is providing the infrastructure to download copyright content. The Pirate Bay hosted Torrent Files, which are little pieces of code that tells another program what is in the files, along with little pieces of code to prevent corruption, and where the server that tells you where other people who have this file are so you can download the files from them. It's a fantastic system, as the entire shebang has to be maintained by it's own users. Now, if this is upheld, the infrastructure of this - if it allows the sharing of all files freely - is entirely illegal. This sounds pretty small - it only affects Torrent users. But in fact, because of how much the music and film industries screamed and shouted, this provides the legal precedent for any company to sue any organization which - in theory - has the ability to share it's copyright information. Like ISPs. If this case is upheld, ISPs will them be in the legal wrong for not stopping the illegal downloading of copyright - which means that they will have to impose measures to blacklist websites, prevent certain forms of file transfer and monitor customers so they can legally protect themselves.

Liberals of all shapes and sizes are against control of the internet, because it it by far the greatest liberalizing force in human history. Any legal president that can restrict freedom must be opposed. If we do not stand up and make a noise here, at this line in the sand, we are going to lose the internet to business.

Aberystwyth University and Life Goals

2009-04-02T17:41:00.003+01:00

"Education, Education, Education", as Tony Blair said. Of course, Labour simply thought that meant increasing the budget and punching the teachers. But when he said that, a much smaller version of myself - a 6 year old, to be precise - was pottering about, sometimes being very difficult to all and country. I, and that of my entire generation, have lived through Blair's education system. It has given us more people passing GCSEs, A Levels and getting Degrees than ever before. Disregarding the fact that much of that improvement has been down to shoddy qualifications and my own dislike of pressuring the teachers, it was undoubtedly better than the Thatcherite model. But as I leave some small party of some of Labour's imprint - fortunatly not drastically harmed by the experience - and head onto university, I have to decide my goals, what I want to do with my life, and - most importantly - how politically active I should be.

Now, you're sitting there thinking "Uh-oh, personal blog post approaching." This is an entirely valid assumption, but if you'll allow me to indulge myself for a paragraph or two, there's a good political attack at the bottom.

I want to be a Liberal Democrat. I like the idea of long hours, low pay, continuous insults by association and job security relying on The Public. I like the idea of having to wheel and deal in Westminister to get anything done. I like the idea that, perhaps once or twice, an idea I agree with will get to become law, improving Britain for the better. That's why I'm going to Aberystwyth. That's why my primary focus of university will be to use it as a springboard into politics, stopping to slam Liberal Youth into a bucket of cold green goo a few times. That's why I've been writing this blog. That's why I've been attempting to learn policy, economics and history. That's why, of course, I'm writing this very post - I want to learn, to practice, to move forwards. I want to make my town a better place. I want to help the causes of all those who have mental conditions that make them, sometimes, socially awkward or plain incompetent.

The point of all this is that I'm heading to Aberystwyth University to do an International Politics and History course. But there is no doubt in my mind that, had factors been different, I could have ended up working in Tesco. Or, alternatively, I could be heading to Baliol College at Oxford, where the political elite go. That one might have happened if I'd been a harder worker and, perhaps, not have had 3 and a half years of shoddy Comprehensive education shoved upon me. The fact that this disparity exists, however, is my big bugbear. We've heard all the arguments for Comprehensives, National Curriculums, Diplomas, Tuition Fees, Foundation Degrees and Apprenticeships many times. We've seen Labour swinging from left to right to left over the issue, with the hypocricy of their own cabinet members sending their children private ringing true all the time. I have to face my life after Labour with the Liberal Democrats. However, what truely puts a great sadness on my face is simple - how many children "could have been"? How many young Bohrs or Obamas have been squandered because of this education system that is still just as class based as it was 20 years ago? Labour's education policy - like so much of their repetoir - is an illusion of numbers and lies.

With the Liberal Democrats, I hope that I'll be able to, eventually, work to prevent any more wasted children.

Somehow, calling for the spirit of Lenin is not a great idea...

2009-03-25T22:19:00.005Z

I am getting very worried about Liberal Youth. In all honesty, looking in from the outside it almost seems like most of the people involved haven't got the foggiest idea what the hell they are doing. But the thing is, that's not always a bad thing. However, I have wonder of the rank and insultingly short sighted stupidity of certain rhetoric that a certain author of a certain piece in the new .pdf magazine distributed to all those on LY's mailing list. It is this:

So, let’s ditch Stalin and take on board some Lenin. We might not be communists, but we are (in our own
way) revolutionaries. As Lenin once put it, we must learn to have ‘the heart on fire, the brain on ice’. Both
are as important as each other.

I obviously agree with this. There is nothing wrong with drawing inspiration from a violent revolutionary that deposed a newly democratic Russian government and turned Russia into the USSR, that caused the deaths of quite a large amount of people over it's long, repressive and violent history. Whilst I can appreciate that this is a great example of foresight and a terrific use of writing technique, I could imagine that some people, in their ignorance, might just consider that drawing on one of the most illiberal people that ever lived as a call to arms to revolutionize a failing, increasingly arrogant and utterly divorced from reality organization would be a bad idea. In fact, some of them even have written lists of why this shambolic catastrophe of a magazine is so insulting to their inboxes. Such a list might look like the following:

1) Tienanmen Square on the front cover?
2) Shoddy layout that appears to suggest that the author(s) have never read a publication like Private Eye for clues as to how to create a quarterly magazine.
3) Microsoft Word font used for title...
4) Stupid name.
5) Appears to be filled with the pro-reformist agenda.

It's a strong argument, I agree. But I think that it's clear that the strengths of the document outweigh it's weaknesses:

1) LY have delivered a finished product.
2)

Personally, I prefer Gorbachev.

Losing your mind, the technical way.

2009-03-06T20:30:00.003Z

Captain's Log, stardate zero six zero three two zero zero nine.

It has been over a day since me and my crew began this mission, to install a working operating system onto a new computer, and I feel that success is only now drawing near...

I ruddy hate computers sometimes.

Why does the Royal Mail need to make a profit?

2009-02-27T10:52:00.005Z

I somehow feel that I am not the only person in Britain that would like to kick George Pascoe-Watson in the groin. I cannot stand his newspaper, I cannot stand his political views and he as a person reminds me of all the worst aspects of the media hackery. When he was on Question Time last night, I became one of those people that needlessly shouted at the TV. One of those arguements I had with the TV on QT last night was the discussion about Royal Mail, with the Plaid MP making the point that Royal Mail made a £30m profit last year - this was diametrically opposed to Mr Pascoe-Watson's view that Privatisation is Good. What everybody on the panel appeared to have missed, however, is that putting the cart before the horse rarely accomplishes anything.

The Royal Mail is a nationalised company, which concerns itself with distributing parcels and letters across the nation (up winding roads and across rivers included) in an efficient and organised way. Royal Mail also provides hundreds of outlets for collecting a pension from (say) which provide a lifeline to quite a lot of old people. It pays it's large amount of staff a decent wage, it is heavily unionized, and, overall, is not as bad as some of us consider it to be. These are the facts of the matter. Three things stick out: one, the Royal Mail is already efficient - letters get collected processed, sent across the country and delivered within 1-4 days, depending on the stamp. That's quite a bit job, and Royal Mail are quite a bit more reliable about their job than, say, DHL. Secondly, Royal Mail provide an important public service, that if compromised would damage the infrastructure of the country. Thirdly, Royal Mail employs a vocal bunch of workers. This means that the Royal Mail is a quite important part of our lives.

Why does a firm that provides a vital public service to everybody need to be pushed so hard to drive for profit? Why does the Private Sector have a magic pill that generates more money without more costs? Why do we risk worse service, higher prices and more unemployed postmen in the quest for this higher profit? In this blogger's personal opinion, profit is superfluous to service. The Royal Mail is a vital provider of public goods, and as any economist will tell you public goods are undersupplied by the private sector, because the general benefits of a public good affect society as a whole, and do not count on the business sheets of corporations. Royal Mail cannot stop delivering post and parcels - their product is non-excludable. Royal Mail does not stop other people delivering mail - their product is non-rivalled. They are a public company, striving for a public service. Lining the profits of rich businesses and making The Sun happy is irrelevant in comparison.

Education, Education, Ed... errr...

2009-02-06T10:53:00.004Z

Labour do appear to have forgotten that slogan.

I have to admit, I really like the new Education policy that the Lib Dem education people announced yesterday. For the uninitiated, in essence it promises to cut KS1 class sizes to 15ish, pump a vast amount of money into the school system, the creation of an independent standards authority, cutting the National Curriculum from 600 pages to 20 (hooray!) and give more powers to academies...

Oh bugger. It was going so well too. Let me discuss the major problem with the Academy system in this country. It doesn't work - in fact, it doesn't work at all. Academies are not something that spring up and make a failing school better - academies are there for the exploitation of by clever schools to secure more freedom and funding. They do not promote local business or specialist training, or all those other lovely things that we've heard they'll do over the course of the next few years. It takes a few months to sort out a school transferring from normal to Academy status - precious little of that is spent on the stuff academies are supposed to promote. In short, they're fake schools.

The Academy scheme ultimately ends up as the following. The school children have to buy a new uniform due to the school's name change. The headmaster and the teachers will get a slight pay rise, and precisely nothing will change in the school. In fact, I would go so far as for things to get worse at the school. The teachers rarely want the school to change for the fourth time in ten years. The pupils know that this is just a cheap attempt to get more funding. The parents are frustrated at having to get used to the new name and all the other hassles that are associated with Academy status, and still, despite all these problems, the school will decide to lower their science GCSE down to Single Award to try and save lesson time for useless Vocational Courses and Critical Thinking/General Studies; this will get them more GCSEs to put on the league tables (entirely true story, nearly happened to me).

The thing I really like about these proposals is the pledge to crank the funding of those children on Free School Meals (like I was) up to the same funding that the average private school attendant (like Clegg was) gets. In fact, out of all the areas of the country, including quagmires like Manchester and Liverpool, Lancashire would get the third highest payout (£53m), which itself is beaten by Kent (£55m) and utterly dwarfed by Birmingham (£112m). These are the sort of schemes that I like - a cold, hard cash injection to really hammer regeneration into a local area. I can see clouds, though. How will the money get through to the school as opposed to the council/LEA? How will it not be wasted by a school, or properly allocated to the schools that actually need it?

I like Cold Hard Cash policy. I like the fact that it is solely us, the Lib Dems, who are concentrating on Education even in a recession. One just hopes that the policy is not squandered, is paid attention to, and is rewarded by the public.

25 things you did not know about Artichokes

2009-02-02T15:21:00.003Z

Wait. I don't know anything about artichokes. Ah well. Start again.

25 things you did not know about Huw Dawson (because, you know, I know quite a lot about that subject).

1) Despite viewing myself as a Lancastrian, I spent the first 12 years of my life in West Yorkshire.

2) Despite viewing myself as a Northener, my father is from a reasonably well off family from The South.

3) I spend a great deal of my time thinking up excellent posts for this blog, and then subsequently never putting pen to paper or finger to keyboard and writing them.

4) My father's a member of the evil Green Party.

5) I strongly suspect my mother votes Conservative.

6) I have 4 siblings - 2 older sisters, a twin sister, and a younger brother.

7) I'm Catholic, and go to church every Sunday.

8) Even though this blog is called Left Side Of Liberal, I don't consider myself in agreement to the Loony Left, although I have a habit of sympathising with the plight of said Loony Lefts if they actually have a clue what they're talking about pragmatically.

9) I have Asperger's Syndrome, although it's only a mild variation (some people refer to it as High Functioning Autism). If you were in conversation with me, you'd only spot it if you recognised the tell-tale signs of talking for 15 minutes far too quickly without once looking you in the eye. Or breathing.

10) I've always wanted to learn the electric guitar, but have never had the confidence to go out and buy one.

11) I've got several novels scetched out loosly, waiting to be written on a rainy day.

12) I've met Greg Pope, who is a nice enough chap if not a huge personality.

13) I have a profound anxiety on answering the phone if I don't know who's calling.

14) When I was younger, I was terrified of Black Holes as I thought they would eat me.

15) Despite being a big fan of sci-fi, I've never read any Douglas Adams book all the way through.

16) I can build, repair and mantain computers. This skill came from utterly destroying several family computers and learning where I went wrong.

17) Coke is better than Pepsi, but I personally prefer a cup of tea for refreshment.

UPDATE: Here's the final 8. :)

18) I am an avid player of online computer games. I've met a huge bunch of people by this method, engaged in a vast variety of discussions, and generally been a shining example of the benefits of Web 2.0. This is why I am such an avid defender of the internet - it is the greatest invention mankind has ever created, and should be free, liberal and open for all.

19) I also spend a great deal of time with little plastic minatures, making a fuss painting and organising them. I suspect that a small number of those imaginary readers I have also indulge in this pastime. I actually considered calling this blog "A Liberal on WAAAAAAAGH" but wimped out at the last minute. One day, I intend to make that blog, and you'll be able to see my little hobby in better detail.

20) I have an interesting habit, in that I generally only ever wear one coat or jacket, and wear it until it falls into ruin. A friend of mine refers to my exploits one summer by referring to me as Fisherman's Friend. I accept that a great quilted coat, designed to keep the hardiest Russian lumberjack warm in the winter, was perhaps not the wisest choice for attire in that especially hot summer of 2006.

The joke was on him when it rained, though.

21) I have an exceedingly bad habit of writing godawful articles on the spur of the moment, and posting them somewhere. I WILL return to the issue of university tution fees via an OpEd on LDV, but I will spend more than an hour typing up my cursory rant.

22) I and my siblings have gone to every form of schooling in this country - boarding school, normal private school, grammar school, state school and faith school. I have been both to a grammar and a state school, which explains my hatred of the state school system.

23) I used to want to be a military historian, until I discovered that it wasn't just about learning about the grim ways people killed each other.

24) I swell up like a melon if exposed to face paints.

25) I am terrible at making up big lists of interesting facts about myself without getting into a huge depressive dint over my relatively dull life. :)

Anyway, now that I've got my blog rolling again, I'm off to get some inspiration for tomorrow's post.

Heathrow 3rd Runway in, Labour MP for the Heathrow area OUT

2009-01-15T12:53:00.005Z

Predictable uproar in the Commons on Hoon's promise breaking announcement today, as you can see via BBC Parliament. If you check the events at quarter to one, however, you will see the MP for the Heathrow area being suspended from the Commons for shouting out that it was an "insult to democracy" to not have a vote on the matter (unfortunately for him, no tellers were forthcoming for the division on the vote to suspend him, and they Ayes got their head). The justification from Hoon? The House does not vote on "Planning".

Hoon is the same person who informed Julia Goldsworthy on Question Time about his concerns that there are people out there who "want to blow up this country" as justification for increasingly despotic surveillance legislation. Evidently the same justification (we're right, you're not) is the sole answer that the millions of poor souls that are going to have to the impact on their quality of life.

You have to love the way the Government can circumvent the House, these days.

EDIT: Sorry for not updating when the BBC story was posted - Physics exams do that to activity. The MP was John Macdonald, and (I did not notice this at the time) he actually walked down - while shouting - and picked up the Mace. The man deserves a round of applause for risking embarrasment to make a point.

The BBC Slant

2009-01-12T20:31:00.003Z

I'm not sure if you've noticed - perhaps you have far more important things to do in life than stare at websites all day - but the BBC appear to have a curious trend in the photographs of politicians of note. Whenever on picture accompanyments to stories on the BBC website you see more than the head of the politician in question, it becomes immediately clear that they are at an outrageous slant in relation to their backgrounds. Take, for example, the following picture of David Camperon:

See what I mean? Perhaps it's the photographer's idea of a joke on the political slant of a photographee. You see it all the time, especially on pictures of Cameron (as above) or of Clegg, who typically leans in the opposing direction. As the picture is of Clegg listing to the right whilst making a speech, he somehow reminds me of the O Rly owl.

Wanton Violence

2009-01-05T11:57:00.002Z

The sound of war in the Middle East is not what I would call new. It is as old as the conflict between the Jews and Palestine in Biblical times. I've grown up surrounded by news of more deaths on both sides of the opressing concrete walls, each side shouting at the other - and often to themselves - about rights of occupation, borders, responsibilities and so on. You generally get used to it. But the problem is very real. Millions of people, split into two opposing camps, each wishing the other dead - which if anything sounds like the hook for a really bad reality TV show.

What I cannot abide with in the conflict is the constant inane loss of life. Every day, a few more people are blown up in air strikes or killed by suicide bombers, and each time this happens up to 30 families (or so) learn to hate the enemy. Both sides of the coin survive on this conflict - the Israeli government's voters are Jewish expansionists who want to squeeze Gaza and the West Bank, whilst Hamas survives on their flamboyant rocket attacks, more a weapon of mass harassment than destruction. If you removed the conflict, sought a solution that dished the blows both ways, both of these governments would collapse. This is the evil of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and it has been documented many times before.

Perhaps Gordon Brown should learn a little of Israel's proactivity. Israel has an election coming up in the next few weeks. The Jewish settlers are getting a bit uneasy. What's the solution? Take it out on your resident punch bag, contained in it's own concrete cage. Wars are popular things (ask Thatcher) and taking such proactive measures such as blowing up over 100 innocent Palestinians to show your power to this electorate is a great way of gaining endorsement. Of course, when the International Community comes a-knocking, you can pretend it was all about protecting your civilians (I believe that the current ratio of Israel:Palestinian deaths is something akin to 1:100) and delivering punishment to Hamas. What an excellent election strategy.

This is politics gone hideously astray. The rocket attacks are meaningless harassment, affecting a tiny minority of Israel's civilian population. In a big to ensure retaining office, we get to enjoy the sound of gunfire and explosions further ruining any hope of building a Palestinian state. Israel has already given Gaza the Escape From New York treatment. Now comes the Independence Day treatment, making sure to cover their own backs with grandoise excuses and a fawning electorate. The violence needs to stop, now.

The Legacy of 2008

2008-12-28T11:49:00.002Z

Years tend to have themes that people remember. 1966 had the World Cup, 2001-2005 were all about Terrorism, and so on. So, looking back over 2008, I have to think a little about what 2008 is going to leave in my mind. It's actually not as easy as pointing out one date or event - if it was, like the voters of the LDV awards, I'd have to say the Obamarama election. It's a really odd sign of the times that people care more about the US president than the politicians of this country, if you think about it.

Anyway, back on subject. What legacy will this year leave in my mind? I think that it's probably Dread September, when the stocks just fell and fell and fell. I have to own up to a little anarchistic glee whilst watching the FTSE 100 some days. I also recall getting a little carried away with doom-laden predictions. That feeling, so aptly summed up by the song that was stuck in my head all September, is probably going to be my lasting thought.

Now to go and celebrate the ultimate demise of this years Turkey with some sublime homemade turkey soup. Have a good New Years Eve!

Woolworths

2008-12-17T14:24:00.002Z

It's almost completely empty, other than the expensive items. The staff look miserable, the remaining stock looks pathetic. The Woolworths in Accrington has been here for as long as anybody can remember, and now it's dieing. It's truely one of the most sickening experiences I've had for a long time.

Accrington Broadway is in a poor state, as I've said many, many times before. We've lost most of our decent stores to the economy, even during the up times. Now we're heading down, and somehow I look to Woolworths not as a tragedy in itself, but a warning to Wilkinsons, Smiths and M&S. Perhaps not on a UK-wide scale, but the shops cannot be making enough money to stay open in this tough climate. I am not looking forward to the day that I enter town just to see another giant closing it's store forever.

Perhaps the galling thing is not the closure of the store itself. To me, the truely sad thing is that I know what happens next. Less big stores will decrease footfall. The customers that once plodded through Woolworths will take their shopping to the internet or ASDA. The spiral will continue. This is a threat to the entire commerical heart of Accrington. And looming over this is that, by about 2012, there will be a shiny new Tesco just a few hundred paces away. This Conservative council cannot run Accrington's town centre. I have heard far more of plans to place crop circles on Coppice Hill than to expand the commercial sector.

I'm already know what will happen to the space Woolworths filled. It'll be broken up into three and filled with three identical pound stores.

Lancaster

2008-12-09T09:20:00.002Z

Youth violence is a problem that has hit an apex in recent years. To say, of course, that it is the direct result of todays society is unkind, for we have had dilinquency for many years before today. The problem appears, however, to have hit that height of notoriety in recent years. Sophie Lancaster was kicked to death by a group of thugs in the middle of last year. When the fiends that did it were convicted, Radio 4 ran a short report on Bacup and it's youth problem. Now, I'm not a resident of Bacup, but I do know a little bit about the area.

Bacup is very similar to Accrington in many respects. It's smaller, granted. It's got pretty high unemployment, economic inactivity etc etc. Unlike Accrington, however, it has this large group of thugs.

I am always slightly stunned by the horrific details of the attacks, but ultimately the saddest part is that her death was almost completely unpreventable by our society. In our system there are winners and there are losers. These poor saps who did the crime are the sons of losers, or losers themselves. And that means that we cannot truely punish them. By throwing them in prison, we punish them for their crime. But we cannot do that to every member of the 30-large gang. Society assumes that prison destroys lives. This is true.

The end result? The real problem - that of a small group of our generation becoming entirely detached from society and wreaking havok on all and sundry - is one that society cannot prevent. The depressing part of the Radio 4 report was that Bacup was not able to learn its lesson. That is, sadly, true. But what Bacup, like many of the small towns of Britain, needs is a new direction. What we need to understand is that problems like youth violence cannot be solved by throwing the thugs in jail. The crimes need to be prevented, lessened, even pre-empted with action. So often in these towns, the police is sidelined and understaffed. When gangs form, the officers lack the resources to tackle them head on. So these gangs can - almost literally - get away with murder, because there are more of them then there are of the police.

Two or three more police on the streets in Bacup might have saved Sophie's life. The reasons behind this growth in youth violence is the feel that the police are powerless to stop them. They are. It is perhaps truely ironic that in some cases the police have far too much power - like raiding Parliament - but in most cases far too little. It's a sad irony. But, perhaps, the steps that are needed are well known to the public. More actual police officers. Less time stuck with paperwork. More proactive policing.

Like so many things in our country today, policing needs a wholesale review and reform. The lack of reforms simply appears to be creating the opportunity for crime.

Not to brag...

2008-12-02T08:37:00.002Z

... but it's snowing outside and school's been closed. :)

2008-12-01T08:38:00.003Z

There are many things I do not like in the world. Slavery is one. Violence is another. The thing I cannot stand the most though, out of all the various faults I find, is hypocricy. And, thanks to the leaking of what is supposed to be Clegg's opinion on 4 of his shadow cabinet, we get to see this in bucketloads in LDV's comments. Here's some extracts:

This is disastrous for the party - Nick Clegg should offer a public apology to his shadow cabinet colleagues and in view of the unbelievable stupidity of this gaffe the Party should consider if he is still fit to lead it!

It is clear that Clegg is a disaster for the party. The problem is it would look very bad if we pushed him out on these grounds just a year after electing him.

So here we have the ideal situation - he admits he has made a very stupid mistake, a mistake of such rank stupidity, discussing serious confidential matters in full hearing of the public, that he would undoubtedly be calling for the resignation of a government minister had a government minister done something similar. And he says “On those grounds, I have no choice to resign”.

We all say “boo-hoo, how sad our leader had had to resign, but what a jolly decent chap he is to resign on such a matter of principle”. And we think “Oh thank God, he has gone”.

As I commented, it's frankly disgusting that people are deciding to use the opporunity as some sort of grounds to try and force him to resign. As I also commented, the fact that these same people are making angry sounds over Green's arrest is, to be frank, complete and utter hypocricy. Why? Because the arguement that Green shouldn't have been arrested is because he, as an Opposition minister, is obliged to hold the government to account. Similarly, Clegg is obliged to hold opinions on the effectiveness of his team. Just because somebody that sat behind him on a plane decided to make the news public, doesn't mean that he isn't allowed to hold an opinion. Or would the leader-haters rather we had a party where every word spoken by our MPs is closely vetted, to make sure there can be no possible gaffs?

This is not a public issue. This is a private issue within the party, about a small number of angry individuals who simply have no desire to move with the times. It is, to be frank, shocking.

Web Neutrality

2008-11-27T13:15:00.003Z

Alright, I admit I'm a little biased on this subject. But as a child of the internet age, I've got used to many personal freedoms that are afforded to the users of the internet. One of them is this blog, after all.

Of course, as a political student, I also have a big opinion on the politics of the internet. And there is one key political discussion that the internet has been waiting to have an argument about for ten years or so now. That issue is Web Neutrality.

Web Neutrality is a policy that many users would like to see become a legal requirement for an ISP to operate. Essentially, it is the legal right to not limit a user's internet access, no matter what. You might be wondering what the point of that is, but to make it clear, imagine the internet as a country. Web Neutrality would be the bill of rights for that country - the right to be a member of a political party, the right to education, or the right to housing. In this case, it would be the following:

1) The right to free access to all content on the internet by your ISP
2) The right to not be snooped on by your ISP

We're already breaking rule 2, and we're beginning to morally justify breaking rule 1. So let's remove the moral implications - yes, the restrictions of content that society deems to be unacceptable are exempt - and concentrate on the core facts. An ISP should never be able to say what you can and cannot access. An ISP could offer their own content that would be only accessible by their own customers, but they can't infringe on the core right of freedom of information. But, even if the battle is being lost here, the second rule - the freedom of privacy - cannot be ignored. What happens on the internet should stay on the internet.

My personal opinions of the politics of the internet go further than that. Copyright law, for example. This is going to get me into morally muddy water, but here's my core belief -

If you can't protect it well enough, it's your own stupid fault.

Copy write Theft is not, despite the title, theft. Theft is stealing something. Theft means that the former owner does not have access to the object that has been stolen. When you endlessly duplicate something and share it across the internet, you're not denying anybody anything. Obviously, the copy write holders - usually faceless conglomerates - are slightly ticked off at this. "What," they cry, "that's millions of potential customers!" But that's not the reality. The reality is that these pirates will never actually buy the product in question - why bother with the hassle of scouting out the files on the internet when it's down at the shop for £10? Instead they just want to enjoy it. We have radios. We have public libraries. We have the internet. It isn’t as if the publishers are defenceless, because copy protection is becoming more and more advanced. If you cannot defend something well enough, you are doomed to use it. That is a core human value, and one that must apply to the internet.

And yes, as I said before, I’m biased.

Quango

2008-11-26T11:24:00.001Z

Another day, another History lesson.

The subject was Macmillan's Housing policies. We watched a video for most of the lesson from the nineties, celebrating 50 years of the Welfare State. We'd already got everything we needed from the first 20 minutes of the video, but we kept watching, as the grim story of the 60s and 70s, with the social collapse of many inner city communities unfolded as quickly as the shoddy tower blocks went up. This area of Britain's social history was a farce, as pretty much everybody agrees.

In the last 30 years, this process has been reversed by all sucessive governments. More and more houses have been sold, to be taken over by housing associations. Quangoes. This is a reflection of the rest of our society, with yet more and more groups of unaccountable companies running our lives.

Quangoes, to me, are an example of the reason why none of the major problems that our cities and towns face have been solved. It is not in a company's interest to provide public goods, that all of society can benefit from.

More and more, as the new rich flee the cities and towns to hamlets in the countryside, or to their own walled off estates, the process of social stagnation that begun in the 60s has become more and more worrying. And there is nothing any democratically elected government can do about it, because, more and more, they have no say in it. It is down to the quango.

Summation

2008-11-25T21:32:00.002Z

LDV does a good job of summing up the PBR.

• VAT to be cut from 17.5% to 15% from Monday until 2010
• Top rate of income tax to rise to 45% on those earning more than £150,000 – the top 1% of earners – from 2011
• Allowances to be raised, so this will be worth £145 a year to 22 million basic-rate taxpayers
• National Insurance to rise by 0.5% on all rates of national insurance from 2011

No. Not good enough Mr Darling.

The government IS going to borrow far too much. The sheer scale of the borrowing means that in the future, it's going to be a pain in the backside to lower the national debt. Worse, the Treasury is making optimistic noises about the economy, so Darling can get away with the tax rises that are designed more to be seen to be doing something than actually to reinforce the economy.

But the much more interesting result of yesterdays announcements is that it is driving the Tories - who previously, let us recall, wanted a new Age of Consensus, fron the centre ground, back towards Thatcherism. I was very sceptical of the Lib Dem situation yesterday, but if both parties are abandoning the centre ground, this can only be good news for Clegg. Everybody knows the economy is bad. Everybody knows that Labour and the Conservatives are going to be in the boxing ring for the next year or so. The last time this happened was before Mr Cameron's time as leader. The squeeze in the centre has been forcing our poll rates down as both sides attempt to appeal to the centrist swing voters. Now that this 3 year battle is over, we can finally start to sound properly different from both Brown and Cameron again. Every time there has been a Labour-Tory punch up in the last 20 years, the Lib Dems have gained seats.

Long may the battle continue.

A Coming Election?

2008-11-24T12:00:00.002Z

Today, Alistair Darling is going to announce some big tax policy shenanigans. This is apparently so that he can help fix the economy and give people more money to spend. As such, we're going to see a VAT cut to 15% and some deffered rises to corporate tax.

This is a contradiction.

Giving people more money in their pockets would include cutting council taxes or slashing income tax. What the government has leaked so far sounds much more like a cut to corporate tax burden for buisnesses. That's neither fixing the economy - that might involve getting both Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley to start lending at very competetive rates (good for both personal and corporate situations) or maybe actually lowering those taxes that we all pay once a year.

I'll post with a more indepth opinion on what our dear Darling has proposed when he's actually proposed them.

But what do all these policies mean? Well, let's go back to my A Level History class, namely the 1959 election. When Harold Macmillan went to woo the public, he went in with a strong economic backing and a recent tax-cutting budget. If this sounds familiar, this was what was happening last year when George Osbourne suddenly turned up and gave a much stronger policy speech than Brown was expecting (which, according to Andrew Marr's A History of Modern Britain is why he called off the election). So Brown is trying to recreate last year. That means that, with the Tories on the back foot for the first time in a year, we might be about to see a Spring 2009 election, which is disasterous for the Lib Dems. Back in the summer, Nick Clegg decided that the Lib Dems needed a bit of modernising of the background functions and systems that will be needed to cope with a larger number of MPs and local parties. They're probably chatting about the needed changes as we speak. The current system - an interim government, if you like - is supposed to last until it's all ready to be changed. From what I've read, that should be in 2010.

AFTER a 2009 election, if there is one!

I'm a big fan of modernisation - it's like a massage, in that it can be both be excrutiatingly painful and good for the body as a whole - but if it alls get held up for an election, then a lot of work might go to waste. Let's not forget that we're currently not in a strong polling position, either!

Fame!

2008-11-17T22:26:00.002Z

I've just spotted that I was the third most read blog between the 9th and the 15th of November on the Libdemblog network. I'm pretty chuffed now, because that means people actually read this orange blob other than myself! Thanks for reading! :)

Integration

2008-11-15T13:17:00.002Z

I'm pretty awful with money. I'm one of those great spenders, which isn't exactly helped by my bad memory and even worse sense. I've not been able to indulge for the last few months, though. My Educational Mantinance Allowance was late coming through by 3 months. It was a little agravating, especially as I managed to forget my PIN when I finally attempted to withdraw some of the massive shedload of money that had finally been payed to me.

So I'm in the bank, in line for a new PIN. There are two Poles in front of me, one was closing their account. They're talking to each other in Polish - a language I really need to learn - and the bank assistant goes to fetch some paperwork. I carry on standing there, these two men talking in front of me, and I notice to my right that the bank manager had just left his office with a young Polish couple. Speaking fluent Polish, he has a brief chat and sends them on their way. He then comes back and finishes of the paperwork fully in Polish, shakes hands, they leave. At this point, I'm standing there flabbergasted. This is a British bank, but they've seen fit to hire a banker that's fluent in Polish. On a wall, there's a poster advertising the Polish services the bank offers - in Polish. My reaction? Happy as anything! We've read so often in the papers about the BNP making headways in the North, of angry Brits moaning about the EU migrants. But when it comes down to it, we're as welcoming as anything. It's the same at my local church - the second reading is in Polish - and across Accrington.

I sometimes really love living here.

(I presume it was Polish they were speaking, having no knowledge of Slavic languages whatsoever!)

Apathy

2008-11-10T11:40:00.003Z

It's odd, I suppose. I'm sitting in my British History class, and were starting on our topic on Consensus Politcs. The teacher asks how many of us are definatly going to vote - 9 out of 17. The teacher asks how many are probably going to vote. 2 out of 17. That's a voting percent of 64%, 2% more than the US election (thanks LDV!) but when we got onto why the ones who were not going to vote.

"Well, they're both the same."

I place my head in my hands and contemplate throwing myself out of the window. We carry on. Three people (myself included) know the name of the Lib Dem leader. We discuss more about why people are disinterested in politics.

"I don't really have any political opinions."

The cop-out arguement comes into play. It's meaningless, and usually comes from people that would vote for Lib Dems or the Greens if they got it all explained to them. My sister is one of them. It's a puzzling development of mankind that some people are just hostile to poltics in general. You have your chance to change your life and you let it pass you by. I can't understand it. The crucial question is: How can we, as Lib Dems, give these people political opinions? We're not the party of brainwashing or "vote-camping". We should be telling these people about all the parties.

The big question mark for me is the outright hostility of the youth to politics. I must investigate.

Motivation

2008-11-09T21:42:00.003Z

I voted for Lembit in the Party Presidential Election. I thought he'd be a great guy to run the Party - enthusiastic, able, interesting. Sadly, Ros Scott won, and Lembit probably has to wait another few years for another go (if he wants one!) and I get a little depressed. I think, though, that it was more interesting about what Chandilla Fernando said in his loser's letter to Voice. He said:

But here, barely, half of our own members voted in the election for Liberal Democrat Party President. And our membership is now the lowest it has been in any of our lifetimes.

In the early hours of Friday morning, we failed to save our deposit in a Parliamentary by-election, despite having an excellent candidate in Harry Wills.

Kidding ourselves about the scale of the challenges we face is a route to nowhere. Far better to address tough questions today than to face electoral reverse tomorrow.

He went on to talk about how he'd set the agenda (and, to be fair, he had) and so on. But I actually agree with him. I think we could have done better in Glenrothes than 900-odd votes and a loss of our deposit. But more importantly, I'm a little saddened that only half of the membership voted. I'm also down in the dumps about the Party generally, although that's due to not feeling very connected at the moment. Maybe that will change if I go to the local meeting in a few days... Anyway, the vote. I'm struggling to understand why people didn't send their ballots back, really. They got them through the post, along with manifestos for all three candidates. No need for a stamp to send them back! So why did they not get their voice heard?

It could be that there was some form of catastrophic problem with the balloting. That's not very likely. So we're at two choices - either half the membership couldn't be bothered to vote, or did not want to. The latter is fair enough, but that can't be all of them. Can it really be that a sizeable minority couldn't be bothered? I hope not, but that seems the most likely possibility. The solution? If I were the one elected to be the President, not Baroness Scott, I'd strongly consider trying to get more local events going across the country. Forget 7pm-on-Tuesday-Wear-A-Suit-At-The-Church formal meetings (largely why I'm probably not going to the meeting, I don't have a suit!). I'd like to see weekly or fortnightly get togethers in a local pub or similar! That would get the faithful talking. :-)

Ding dong, the witch is dead.

2008-11-04T13:13:00.004Z

I do not like commenting on the US political scene. I see it as a stagnant quagmire, devoid of all life and new thought, slowly sucking its surroundings into its damp core. Even today, when America turns out to vote for their new president, I can still pull out no real enthusiasm. I should be happy. When I heard on the radio at the age of 9 that a man called George W Bush had won the Presidency, the tone in my parent's voices were near distraut. They wanted Al Gore. I immeditately disliked this Bush man. I chuckled when some childhood friend told me that they'd broken all the W keys on the White House computers as a prank. And we moved on with our lives. I - to my everlasting shame - originally was happy to hear about September 11th. I was 10, I viewed America as this huge ogre, all of my childhood hates rolled into one. I was shocked, dismayed at the catastrophe when it finally sunk in, and it's only been years later that I've finally grasped it for the true horror that it was. But even then I had no respect for the Texan. I wanted Kerry to win in 2004, and was shocked when he didn't. And now I'm sitting, looking at McCain and Obama. Both these men deserve the presidency. I should be happy, because Bush is finally gone forever.

I'm sure that if Obama wins, it will be terrific for America. If McCain wins, we might finally see some new movement in the Republicans. But ultimately I see nothing that gives me any hope that the problems that have been created over the last 20 years have any hope of going away.

They're opening another mobile phone store in Accrington.

2008-10-25T20:28:00.002+01:00

It's Orange this time. They're taking the spot that was once taken by a budget book store. I can't decide what's worse, having too many budget stores, or having too many phone stores. I think that brings the number - in a town centre with at the most 40 stores - to about 5. 1 in 8 of our stores are dedicated to selling mobile phones.

I don't like our selection of stores in Accrington. We have a M&S, a Woolworths, a Wilkinsons and a JJB Spots as our big four, with that planned massive Tesco and the current Asda and Aldi only 2 or 3 minutes away on foot. When you actually think about it hard, you realise that it isn't as bad as you see on the surface, but the vast multitude of budget stores really adds a shadyness to the town as a whole. The real crippling fact is that we have no bookstore whatsoever.

The problem is that I very much doubt that any of those budget stores - or the mobile phone stores - will be there after the end of this reccesion. And I somehow doubt that the shops that replace them will be any better.

This is only a short blog post, but it's Saturday evening, after all.

Shouting from the rooftops of Accrington

2008-10-23T15:28:00.001+01:00

The problem of a disinterested electorate has been a longstanding and somewhat irritating problem for the big three political parties for the last few years. It’s not actually a new phenomenon – the voting percent began to fall in 1992 when John Major was given a mandate to allow the Tories to govern for five more years. The voting percent fell again in 1997, then 2001, then 2005. That, in short, means this problem of an increasingly apathetic public has been with us for at the very least 16 years. It’s also not as if it’s ignored by the mainstream journalist or writer – Andrew Marr’s History of Modern Britain (a book well worth having on your bookshelf, incidentally) describes the recent 63 years as the triumph of shopping over politics. He might have a point, but I’d change the wording. My English teachers always used to say – and still do say – that giving conclusions in opening paragraphs is a bad idea, but I’ll leave aside their hallowed advice to give my opinion. The last 63 years have been a time in the UK where Liberalism has accidentally managed to change everything, despite the Liberal Party (then the Alliance, then the LibDems) being consistently on the fringe of British politics. Deregulation of the financial markets? That began with Wilson and ended with Thatcher. Legalisation of abortion, homosexuality and the easement of divorce regulation? That’s all down to Roy Jenkins in his time in the Home Office under Wilson. Home Rule for Scotland and Wales? Thank you, Tony Blair (Although it’s more thanks to Neil Kinnock, the policy in question being one of the very few of his big policies that stuck into the centrism of New Labour); We, as Liberal Democrats, are no longer fighting for Liberalism, at least as our major policies. We’re fighting to defend them. And that issue is something that really incites the electorate.

The problem with a disinterested electorate is that they don’t care for issues like Liberalism or Socialism anymore. If they truly care about anything political it is often the money in their pocket, the car in their garage and the food in their fridge that really drags them out to vote. And these have been good to them for many years now, and a country without major problems is a country where, so often, democracy becomes sidelined as a lesser-sequined brother of Strictly Come Dancing takes over, one where major parties are more interested in being in power than actually doing anything whilst there. The LibDems are, sadly, especially guilty of this. Clegg said he knew where we are headed at Conference, and we’re headed for Government. But, crucially, we cannot do this on the backs of dishonest, “dirty” campaigns, or paper-thin policies, or celebrity. The electorate, largely thanks to a negative and analytical press, is no longer stupid. We can’t afford to appear as the third party of stupidity. We are the party of smart people, not rich people. We’re the party of forward thinking, not looking back, ever nervous, at our electors. We are the party that people want in government, if only they could be bothered to vote for us. We need to spread our message more.

Now for something completely different. Accrington is a place that is increasingly becoming guilty of apathy. I know the youth here – more as one who knows about venomous snakes than anything else – and I know that increasingly it is becoming apparent, year by year, that everybody who is in power or who wants to be in power is, to be blunt, an idiot. We’ve had eleven years of New Labour, and we have precious little to show for it. Before that, we had eighteen years of the Tories, and we have had precious little to show for that either. People are resigned to the fact that the Establishment – not the parties – will always be in power. Accrington is such a typical northern town in many ways, and this is one of them. We’re angry, yes, but we’re angry at the entire system which, again and again, has sidelined little towns, little businesses, and little people. And that’s leading towards the obvious dangers, and less obvious ones. Civil disorder is one thing, and isn’t helped by a lack of visible actual police on the streets. But social disorder is far, far worse. And that’s why I’m concerned for Accrington, a town that is so typical of British multiculturalism – there’s the normal British populace, then there is the British Asian contingency, and the Polish community. And I’m worried about social disorder making lives hard for those latter two. Race means nothing to me other than a nice conversation topic and maybe a different religion to learn about. That’s not the common attitude within Britain.

So to wind everything up. Ultimately, the people of Accrington feel far further away from Westminster than they actually are, same as many other towns in the north. And we, as Liberal Democrats, need to turn around and make these dissolute people say “Hey, let’s vote for a better establishment.” The policies are for others to decide, but I think that we need to make them, and we need to shout them from the rooftops.

It's a Government IT scheme. Of course it will work.

2008-10-21T12:44:00.004+01:00

I do think it is somewhat important that kids get internet access at home, so I'm all supportive of the government plan to give computers to children. But as a self confessed computer nerd, I have to express concern at the validity of the scheme.

Firstly, the quality of the computers is certainly going to be a paramount issue. The government has £300m in the scheme, and is going to be put towards 150,000 kids, so at a broad estimate that's £4000 per household (if you assume that there are 2 children per household). Let's subtract the cost of a year's free internet access - about £200 at a minimum. Tech support will be no more, so that's £400 at least. So where the devil is the other £3600 going? Is it into the computer? Don't be daft. We're not looking to give each child an individually made gaming machine (The computer or laptop you're reading this on will probably cost £1000 at the most, and that's for a brand new top of the range one!) or laptop. So is it going on the software? Unlikely. The truth is that most of that £300m will be frittered away on forms, council meetings (those biscuits are very expensive) consultations, use of terrorist legislation to spy on your bins to make sure you're not tax dodging. That sort of thing. So it's quite likely that your household won't get £4000 - it'll be about £1000 at most. IT is not an exactly glowing part of this government.

Secondly, the scale. 75,000 is quite a few computers! (If a laptop is 3CM high, and we piled them all up, we'd be being forced to fly planes around the resultant 2.2km high tower.) And we're letting the bloated, inefficient local governments - with the afformentioned expensive biscuit tastes - sort all this out. Considering that even when this government outsources its IT schemes to Libertaria failure ensures (I still haven't got my EMA. I'm having to eat my own socks to survive.) I have little confidence in the local authorities.

Thirdly, something personal. On the Isle of Man - that's not that far away - they've made a completely free operating system (Called Ubuntu) which comes packaged with lots of free software (Like OpenOffice, which is like Microsoft Office except not £79.99). But the government will no doubt spend £150 per computer fitting them out with plenty of software that is entirely unneccesary.

In summation, this scheme is going to fail. And it is going to fail badly.

Next week, I discuss why I'm always right about these things, including the banking crisis (which is code for me saying "Alright, I was wrong. The markets haven't collapsed."). :-)

- Huw

Lembit appears to have gone a bit crazy...

2008-10-17T10:40:00.003+01:00

... but I'm still voting for him. I've just spotted the rather biased LDV post which appears to have torn up the agreement to be neutral in the election, that says:

Quite why Lembit should feel it’s appropriate to rake over the ashes of the Kennedy and Campbell resignations in a way that paints the party in quite such an unattractive (and, in my view, misleading) light is beyond me. To do so in a campaign for a post which is, above all, about uniting the party and moving it forwards smacks of appallingly poor judgement.

Seriously, if you disagree with Opik's point, then why on earth have you decided to react in a knee jerk manner? Wouldn't it have been better to remain neutral or perhaps damning on a less venomous scale? That said, I've also been struggling to find the press release that mentions a conspiracy against him - his website makes no mention in it's version of his press release.

I don't know. I'm just glad that the only likely offshoot of this will be that the Lib Dems will get a slight mocking in the Daily Mail tomorrow, probably using that very quote as proof...

- Huw

Unemployment is an ugly word.

2008-10-15T11:03:00.003+01:00

It's something that haunts the mind of all low paid or expendable workers in a society - you're job security only lasts as long as the bubble does. With today's announcement of a large increase in unemployment (standing, I believe, at 5.7% today) this can only mean bad things for those amongst us who are not privileged enough to have jobs that only renew themselves upon mishap or election.

I seem to recall mentioning the figure of 28% in this blog in the past. That's the estimated percentage of people in Hyndburn who are, as the Office of National Statistics so roughly puts it, "Economically Inactive". The higher that number, the more people within Hyndburn who do not work. That is a number that is significantly above average for Lancashire, and indeed for the entire North West. Increasing unemployment will only hit this figure harder. The Government has been ignoring the true policies in recent months - their key role is for the benefit of the people, not the "taxpayer", and in this they can only be described, at least in my local area, as failing in a level that is only fairly described as criminally incompetant. Unemployment does not hit areas of highest employment hardest, it hits the areas of lowest employment - where jobs are already in high demand and there is a lack of demand for the services those jobs create in the local area. Accrington is best known for three things - the Accrington Pals, Accrington Stanley and Accrington Brick. The first's memory will never be forgotten, but Accrington Brick - or NORI Brick as it's more often known, is dead. The plant only employed 80 people, but they're all to be laid off at the end of October. I could count off the lists of employers that have closed in Accrington, the number rapidly approaching 1,000 jobs lost in the last 3 years.

Accrington is not a town that is well known for it's political activity. But with all these changes, it is increasingly turning away from the conventional parties, towards, primarily, the British National Party. Unemployment will only drive my town further down that path.

Accrington, a Political Synopsis

2008-10-13T20:02:00.004+01:00

Sometimes you have a sudden realisation of a fact. I had one today whilst watching - shamedly - The One Show (I don't mean to watch it. It's the only thing on at 7PM on a monday.)detailing how a Tory Parlimentary Candidate who dabbled in hard right mudslinging waged his own War on Terror on his Labour and Liberal Democrat foes in the election. Funnily enough, my realisation had nothing to do with this. I tend to just ramble on on these blog posts, without really doing anything other than rehash common opinion. So I'm going to do something a little more interesting. I am going to write a little each week about my local constituency - Accrington and District, worse but more accurately known by the chemical-contaminated sluice that runs through the town bearing the name Hyndburn.

Some simple facts for you. Hyndburn is a Labour seat with a majority of 15%. It's held by the rebel Greg Pope MP, former Whip until 2001. He tends to vote against the government, being significantly more right wing than is the norm within the party. He won his seat when Major was still in power (He beat Ken Hargreaves, the current head of the Right to Life lobby) and is, on the whole, a charismatic and likeable man (I've met him). He's one of the 12 that called for a leadership contest a few weeks back. Arrayed against him are a reasonably sucessful Liberal Democrat party (considering that their base is in Blackburn) and the leader of the Tory council, Peter Britcliff. Britcliff is one of those stubborn men that can't accept that they're not popular amongst voters. He's lost to Greg Pope 3 times now. When Labour got a drubbing at the 2005 election he managed to lose votes - Pope's lost votes were picked up by the BNP (Who achieved a whopping 6.2% of the vote, which is 6.2% more than they achieved in 2001) and to a lesser extent by the Liberal Democrats.

Peter Britcliff is the head of the council. He and Pope do not like each other very much. Britcliff is primarily responsible for destroying the commercial centre of town, leaving the private sector to rot, uninvesting in the public sector, and is currently planning to plonk a monolithic Tesco 100 yards from the Town Hall. I'm not a huge fan.

The local Lib Dem party is non existant. There is not a single Lib Dem councillor, nor is there a Lib Dem local party - as previously mentioned it's part of Blackburn's. I might well be the most outspoken Lib Dem in the entire constituency. The BNP are making worrying ground here - I do not doubt that in more racially motivated areas they'll grab a councillor or two at the next elections. This is a pretty odd place.

I am going to try and make an Accrington-based post each week, detailing punch-ups between Labour and the Tories, my efforts to try and rally a little bit of Lib Dem support in the area, and most of all have a great excuse to slap Britcliff to the greatest audience in the world - the Internet.

- Huw

That's a big slump.

2008-10-06T11:51:00.002+01:00

I'm keeping a close eye on the FTSE share price. As of 11:51AM, the share price is at 4700 or so, a fall of 5% on yesterday. That's a 14% slump in a month, or a 30% slump compared with this time last year. The Dow Jones, in comaprison, has been acting somewhat like a ball, bouncing up and down between floors and ceilings. It has only lost 21% of its value in the last year. Germany's is similar. This tells us one thing, economically. When this crisis hit about 6 months ago, we were hearing that we were the best placed economy in the G8 - that simply cannot be true now.

The German Chancellor Angela Merkel seemed to have completely flatfooted the rest of the EU on her apparent desicion to secure all of the deposits of the German banks. However, that's not going to be put into law, so make of it what you will. Merkel is much more bound to the Reichstag than Brown is to the Commons (although I can't claim any great knowledge of the German poltical system, so I may be wrong there) and I sense that she's been reigned in by her party. That's caused the 5% slump across the EU.

In other news (because I've been ignoring my blogging duties lately) the Lord of Darkness returns to the government, along with Peter Mandleson. What really makes me dislike this reshuffle is that no voter has actually said "We'd like Mandy to help run the country." Mandleson is now the appointed Minister for Buisness, in an increasingly unelected and unaccountable government. Its been glossed over by the press, but for anybody who actually gives a jot about true democracy it's just another stab at the democratic system.

I don't fancy the long haul. I'd prefer Brown to lose now, not in 18 months time. This way, he gets remembered as an Alec Douglas Home rather than a Jim Calaghan. But let Brown make his own bed and lie in it. It's just a great excuse for the Lib Dems to plan out where it's going to strike for it's 100 MP goal.

Good Question Time last night

2008-10-03T10:08:00.002+01:00

You sit down to watch Question Time. Tune in, see who's on the show:

Jacqui Smith
Michael Heseltine
Charles Kennedy

And, to cap it all off

Janet Street Porter.

You could see the car crash from two miles away. It's been a bad week for Gordon Brown, again. Smith is responcible for the most unpopular legislature of this government - ID Cards and 42 Days - and now they've managed to drag Heseltine in to beat her with a stick. Now, Heseltine is a Tory, granted. But he can really make a good point in a debate, and when he came out and slammed into Smith I was grinning from ear to ear. Kennedy left Heseltine to it. Porter, sadly, didn't really speak much. I believe that she was brought in to replace one of the UKIP ringleaders, so not too suprising.

I'm still smiling now. Smith, when the debate settled around her, was utterly destroyed by Heseltine and the other panelists, especially over the Ian Blair issue. Rather unsuprisingly Smith refused to be drawn on the issue. I can't say I'm sad that Ian Blair has gone, but it is possible that whoever replaces him will be worse. We shall see.

Economy, Conservatives, Flamboyance. It's the end of September!

2008-09-30T09:50:00.000+01:00

I cannot deny that I feel a little smug in my correct prediction that the House of Representatives would vote down the Bush Rescue Bill. It’s not technically good news. I personally enjoy the days that Wall Street gets a kicking, simply due to the fact that they have far too much of a say over the politics of the Western civilisation. They’ve given themselves a kicking, and rightly so. As of writing this, the FTSE 100 has fallen 150 points and then jumped 175 points in barely 3 hours. Now it’s on the way back down to the starting value of the day. That’s not a healthy market. The marshmallows are at the ready.

The Conservatives have apparently offered the hand of friendship to Brown over this economic problem. Taken at face value – like most things the Tories propose are intended to be taken – this seems like a gesture of unity. It isn’t. What this hand of friendship is isn’t intended to be helpful or pleasant. It is, you could argue, a little like the class bully helping the nerd up so they can get away with a stomach punch whilst the teacher isn’t looking. It’s yet another flawed announcement. Council Tax freeze? I don’t see a promise not to raise taxes elsewhere. A greater commitment to the economy? No proposals to back it up. They keep mentioning the poor family on incomes of £12,000 or £20,000 a year, especially in regards to Council Tax. These people don’t actually pay Council Tax (they’re exempt due to their financial position) so who is this intended to benefit? Simple. It’s intended to benefit the Middle Classes whilst being marketable to the poor, and at the expense of the local Councils. A Typically Tory proposal. The Sceptic inside me is thinking that maybe this is a tax proposal in disguise. Maybe the reason that George Osborne was talking about Working Class households paying Council Tax because he will make them pay Council Tax. Somehow that doesn’t seem like a policy that the Tories would want to talk about if it were true, though. But the complete lack of concrete promises worries me. Clegg – whilst being vague on the details – came out and said that he’d slash £20,000,000,000 off of government expenses by decentralisation and the ending of various unpopular projects. The Tories have muttered something about finding £1.5bn.

This conference is just reminding me more and more of Tony Blair’s Labour in its prime. Every conference we read in the newspapers of big proposals and counter proposals that have no substance, and monumentally long standing ovations. The Tories do not seem intent on giving up on this tradition.

On track so far.

2008-09-26T12:55:00.003+01:00

Not exactly suprisingly, the talks in the US have stalled. Somehow I doubt whether the Democrats and Republicans can bring themselves to agree on the sky's colour, let alone an economic plan that will put huge strain on whatever government follows Bush's rule. Impasse is an ugly word, but there is a little part of my head that is urging this great spiderous catastophe on. A crunch on a scale like this is bad - imagine the damage to the American economy if it continued for two or three years. It might finally persuade more Americans to get up and start shouting, and - better yet - close down American interference in areas like South America and Africa.

I'm probably an anarchist at heart, really. When Wall Street starts burning I intend to bring marshmallows and popcorn.

Onto BrownWatch, he's currently in the USA doing exactly that. He's going to show the cooperation of the UK in this, although if the talks fall through there is no doubt in my mind that he'll be able to walk away without any more scratches than he currently has, and this is a good way of staying out of the country for the Tory conference.

(PS: Back in May, I said that for a cabinet reshuffle I'd remove Jacqui Smith, Hazel Blears and Harriet Harman. Looks like at least Geoff Hoon - one of the oldest in the Cabinet - is going, and I am pulling Hazel Blears off the list because she impressed me with her appearence on Question Time last night, so that leaves Smith and Harman. I'd love to see either of them put away in a box for the time.)

All aboard the ID train.

2008-09-25T15:06:00.003+01:00

Choo-choo.

Well, it looks like our universally loved and adored Home Secretary is confident enough in her job security to reveal the first stage of ID Cards to the public. £70 nets you a piece of plastic that proves that we have the glorious privelege to live in this fantastic country.

The ID cards are supposed to be unfakeable, but it's brutally obvious that all the fancy gizmos intended to prevent illegal immigrants to enter or work in the UK will be utterly irrelevent considering the true circumstances of illegal immigrants in this country. They don't stop to have their passes checked, they don't work in legitimate jobs, they deliberatly pass under the radar. And I simply cannot see how an ID scheme is intended to change this. And the reason behind why? It isn't intended to.

The ID card scheme is, to be blunt, a racket. What happens is that you pay these shady figures £70, and in turn they don't throw you in jail for not possesing one. And if they don't punish you, it makes the entire scheme pointless.

I don't want to hear about how it will prevent immigration. I want to hear the genuine reasoning behind forcing everyone in the country to spend £70 on a bit of plastic. Is it so that New Labour can lower VAT for lower income families? Is it so that MI5 get a way of recording what everyone in the country is doing at a certain time? Is it to scrape ice off of our cars?

Why, Smith? Why?

A forecast: Crash by Next Friday

2008-09-25T12:57:00.003+01:00

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Democracy simply doesn't work.
- Kent Brockman, The Simpsons

Why is it that the American government seems to be so good at self-paralysis at a time of panic? You hear all about how great American democracy is, and then when you see it in action in a crisis and it does, essencially, nothing. I think the problem here is threefold.

1) Bush only has about 43 days left in office. Not a helpful position to be in to extract influence on the USA.
2) Congress are currently in Election Fever (and even McCain's stunt in trying to stop the election debates from happening is not going to disuade them) and every single congressman or woman sees this as a great opportunity for a royal punchup.
3) The House of Representatives smells revolution and is Democrat controlled.

All three of these bodies will need to validate any mass bailout of the financial sector. And if you honestly think that the notoriously stubborn politicians the US has in abundance will simply roll over to the bankers, then you're mistaken.

To put it in concise terms, we're DOOMED.

So here is my prediction. If it becomes apparent on monday that the deal is not coming any time soon, the markets will crash by by next friday. I'd put up money but at the moment I have none. Idiotic choice of the supplier of EMA to 6th Form students has put paid to all my habits for the moment.

United in Disunity?

2008-09-24T20:41:00.003+01:00

Gordon Brown has made a pretty good speech. To me, it seems that he's probably managed to ensure his leadership until the inevitable Next Crisis (whatever it is) hits our green and pleasent land.

Hang on, I just remembered. I spotted a good picture from the conference.

(Source: BBC Website)

That quite possibly is the most terrifying smile I have seen in a very long time. Milliband's is quite creepy too.

Isn't it incredible how the media seems to have managed to twist a few Blairite MPs resigning or openly protesting (I'm looking at you, Mr Pope) because they didn't like Brown into some form of mass revolt? Blairite - a rare word these days. Anyone remember the troubles the party were supposed to have between the Blairites and the Brownites in the setting sun of Blair's regime? They fit quite snugly in here. People simply forget the most important fact - this is a party that when it came apparent that Charles Clark would not run for the leadership simply swung in behind the dour Scot back in 2007. Brown's ensuing bounce cemented this unity, but now that the Brownite house is on fire, the Semi-Detached Blairites next door are wondering if to fan the flames or not.

We hear today that Ruth Kelly - who if memory serves was a Blairite from the get-go - is stepping down "for the sake of her family". I think the chink is finally starting to appear in Brown's armour, and no amount of polish is going to gloss it over. The Milli-Band are now going to have the opportunity to plot within Westminister. It is interesting to see if the Government's legislative diarroea will change minds, because the speech, to Accrington, has certainly not.

---

On a more positive note, I've secured a ticked to Any Questions on the 15th of October. Any Questions is the Question Time of the radio - if memory serves they have a little bit on the BBC webiste to themselves if you want to check them out.

- Huw

Being a Lib Dem is frustrating.

2008-09-19T10:09:00.002+01:00

You're sitting there on thursday night, watching Newsnight. Paxman mentions that Question Time was on the other channel and you groan, as being a political nerd you much more enjoy the debate of QT and were counting the days back to it being back on the TV. Sighing, you decide against changing channel and instead resign yourself to listen to a couple more reports. You bet you've missed Vince Cable or something. Suddenly, Paxman mentions that they've brought back the floating voter group analysis that they had at the last conference season, with that smart American. Could be good.

If you saw the report, you'll know what happens. The apathy of floaters in Manchester is striking - they no longer hold any trust for Brown but see Cameron as a Right Wing Blair. But when asked "What is your opinion on Nick Clegg?", they respond with "Dunno."

Argh!

They go on to watch various interviews and speeches. They dislike Brown, distrust Cameron. Then go on to vote massively well for Clegg. If they went and voted tomorrow, 90% of them (It being around 5% in 2005's elections) would vote Lib Dem.

This is the problem with being the third part of British politics. You either get ignored or stretched out of proportion. It's frustrating - Community Politics works to an extent, but it doesn't hit nationwide, as the Lib Dems lack a medium to talk to the public within. And it doesn't help when their PPBs are dire.

Opinions

2008-09-18T14:54:00.003+01:00

I have opinions about people. Considering I'm a blogger, that's not exactly suprising. It would be a pretty poor blog if all I wrote was "Well, she seems nice." all the time.

I probably should have begun with "I have an opinion on a couple of people I'd like to share." So I'll start with that.

I have an opinion on a couple of people I'd like to share. They're polar opposites. One male, one female. One Liberal, one Conservative. One in the US and one in the UK. I refer, if you've been clever, to Sarah Palin and Nick Clegg. Both of them have been at their conferences in the last month, both have been trying to stamp their mark on their parties. Both of them are significantly younger than those that have gone before and those they co-work with. In fact, for two people that have so wildly opposing political views, they're suprisingly similar.

But I digress. I'll start with Palin, because I fancy a long rant about something. She is an Alaskan Redneck Biblebashing Creationism-believing Conservative of Monumental Proportions. I couldn't think of a witty acronym. I, do, however, have to admire her for being foolhardy enough to take on the role of Running Mate to McCain. As a Pitbull with Lipstick, and a mother, maybe she'll be brave enough to take on policy that both candidates seem to be ignoring? Like Education or Healthcare? Somehow, I am inclined to doubt it.

The thing is, if you said somebody was a Pitbull with Lipstick in the UK, they'd automatically ask if she had a steel plated handbag, if you get my crude reference to Maggie Thatcher. The Yanks are going to have fun with her.

Anywho, onto Clegg. He's speech was only decent, he still didn't hit home his new tax policy onto the country (I would have mentioned how irresponsible it would be to hike taxes in a time of shrinking purses to put into projects that would not reap immediate benefits) and I think he's making it far to clear that he's really a proxy Vince Cable. Do I care? Not really. Cable did write about forseeing a crunch like this a year before it developed, and has wisely led LibDem financial policy for a very long time.

I have two problems with Clegg, really.

1) He's bringing back memories of Steel with his comment of "I know where the Liberal Democrats are heading. Government."
"Return to your constituencies and prepare for government!" Steel declared in '81. That dream collapsed with an unexpected surge in popularity in Thatcher just before the elections. If I am to put my fortune telling hat on, I forsee the Lib Dems only being in government in a hung parliament situation. Thinking about this, it isn't too unlikely. In 2005 there was a large amount of speculation about the possibility. Blair won that election easily, with the Liberal Democrats winning a good 60 or so seats in total. If Clegg manages his goal - 100 MPs returned this election - and Labour manage a comeback of monumental proportions, I'd be perfectly happy for a Lib-Lab alliance.

As long as Clegg gets a role as Deputy PM and Cable gets the Chancellory. I can but hope.

2) He really needs to learn what to emphasise in a speech. He glossed over the meat of the tax reforms as he knew they'd get picked apart by political analysers, but I would have spoken more about why he decided to make the decision, rather than moving on to praise Cable again...

Then again, I very much doubt the Conservative conference is going to be any more than Cameron flinging insults at Labour and Labour making as many policy announcements as possible to stop Jeremy Paxman leading debates on his chances to be the PM in a week's time.

Why don't Parties give out candy?

2008-09-08T14:47:00.001+01:00

It is a question that has often bugged me.

Here we stand in the 21st Century. It's quite nice here. We have lots of food, a television, computer games and a car. This shows one thing - society is working. The problem here is that this means the people that try and make society work - our political parties, our trade unions - are getting less and less members every year. This is not, of course, a major problem for the two major parties. Labour are funded by the Trade Unions, and the Conservatives are funded by men who live in manors and have monacles. The problem lies in the trade unions - who this year will record the lowest number of members per capita in the entire of recorded history of the movement, and the smaller political parties. Of course, I'm going to raise that the Lib Dems are not having trouble at the moment, but if membership rates carry on falling, it is irrelevent how popular your movement is, as you can't afford to run campaigns.

The problem isn't there for really little parties. The Greens, the Respect Party, and there are always enough homophobic rasicts for the BNP to squeeze for some cash. This is because they're single issue parties. The Lib Dems are not. Neither are the Unions.

The problem with lack of members is that it makes politics increasingly irrelevent for the general public. Why should they bother to have lengthy debates with other individuals when they're happy as they are? If they really need anything they can simply take out another loan, or use the internet. The irony of politics is that the more you succeed, the less people need the people that work the system. So we're now in a state that nobody wants to protest in.

But what is the solution? I raise this entire issue because the Liberal Democrats have released their reform ideas to the public. They're pretty clever - making the higher tiers of the party more transparent and democratic, increasing the power of local parties to base their campaigns on Community Politics, and giving out candy to people who would like to join.

Well, not really for the last one. I only read the consice document, and that was 20 pages long. It said you had to refer to the 90 page booklet (I feel sorry for the folk at the Lib Dem conference. They're going to have to drag all that paperwork back home!). I don't deny that when I signed up to the Lib Dems, it was slightly underwhelming to only recieve a membership card and details on how to get involved in local communities. So whatever Clegg's team have drempt up, one would hope that I get something nice at the end of it. :) I heard that the Lib Dem meeting in Sheffield in March has free food. I should really go.

You see my point? Incentives get people involved and get them helping. If it was all purely internet based, I wouldn't really mind - especially if I moved my blog to a new "lib dem blogging service" or something or other. Might get more hits than the 0 I have now!

In other news: TUC want to tax rich people more.

- Huw

Unemployment

2008-08-28T20:36:00.005+01:00

To be blunt, Gordon Brown's premiership is now a complete farce. Not a farce of Blairite proportions - oh how fond do we remember those days! - when we latched onto the US foreign policy to all it's odds and ends. No. This is a farce of proportions that can only be described as monumentally pathetic.

I've already given reasons in my earlier rantings on UK politics, but what has finally tipped me over the edge to say that, as much as it pains me to say it, I'd rather see Cameron's smarmy face in Number 10 than Gordon Brown's, come the next election. Honestly. This is coming from somebody who was so utterly livid of the Conservative's policy that everyone in the north should move to the south that he very strongly considered sending a polite cartoon of a northerner in a flat cap beating Cameron's face in with a shovel to the Tory Party HQ. In the words of my thorougly lancastrian mother - who is oft mentioned in these articles, it would seem - the South is fine and all, but it's full of Southerners.

Nothing wrong with anything at Birmingham level or higher, mind.

Labour's key point of contention to Cameron's attacks on his economic policies is that under Labour, unemployment has come down to 1 million, rather than under Major where the figure was as high as 3 million. This 10 year old fact was growing somewhat stale - Major is a distant memory - but now Brown, ever the man for change, has managed to remove any real significance of that little fact by being, in his first year, so bad with the economy as to see the number of working households fall and the number of unemployed single parents rise. There is no doubt in my mind that the unemployment figures, when released, will show what people in Hyndburn and across Lancashire have been feeling for the last 10 years. Jobs are going, have been going, and will continue to go, until the only jobs one can find are in supermarkets or in the bayliff's offices.

When a Labour government goes bankrupt, stagnates it's education policy, oversees rising unemployment and does nothing to prevent the people that voted them in from freezing to death in winter...

What's the bloody point in it?

A million monkeys with a million GCSEs

2008-08-21T15:43:00.002+01:00

Well, today we got to glory in the fact that our children are officially better qualified to sit around and wait for a job opening to pack boxes.

The debate about GCSEs getting easier isn't a real debate. To the vast majority of society in the UK, GCSEs are the end of the line. You go into school, see that you've managed to get those all important 5 Cs, and wander away to do some unfufilling job for the next 50 years.

Except there is a problem, right there.

There is no jobs for these 16 year olds graduates to go into.

Ever wondered why there are so many young drunks, vandals, drug addicts and general underclass? This isn't a fault of parents, or in fact the often blamed "society". The fault is that these kids see a simple, logial path for their lives. It goes, simply, High School -> Unemployment -> Job -> Marrage/Divorce -> Kids -> Death. To put it simply, mine is a tad more complicated than that. Why bother getting these GCSEs? Their parents will never have the money or conviction to send them away to University, where the real qualifications are gained. Many of them are simply not bright enough to gain qualifications that people genuinely need to break out of the Poor Group. So what can they do? They have nothing to live for. Their parents are out of work thanks to all of Britain's blue-collar jobs turning into luxury apartments or supermarkets. The remaining jobs are often worse than packing boxes or making toothbrushes. Like flipping burgers or stacking shelves. So these kids decide that they might as well not bother. Even the ones that hold on until GCSE results day finally give up. I have numerous friends (which in itself is suprising) that have simply not seen the point in trying to break the system and simply decided to stay in Accrington and do nothing.

You could give a million monkeys a million GCSEs, and you'd still have an ape. The real solution is to put children into Path For Life education, where those kids that will never become doctors or scientists can learn the best techniques for doing jobs that are both important and fufilling, like learning how to repair motors and fit windows. The worst thing that can happen is when, in today's vague Point Them In An Upwards Direction system, when a kid that could become a doctor ends up becoming a salesman because of his teachers deciding that the school should do Single Award Science rather than Dual Award or Seperate as that would fill their quotas for 5 Cs for each pupil.

We're Doomed.

2008-08-14T20:59:00.002+01:00

I thought the title was appropriate from the recent 40th anniversary of Dads Army, but I think it aptly sums up my general mental frame at this exact moment.

In essence, I've just got shoddy AS Levels that have crushed my hopes of getting into any of the Red Brick universities. Instead, as my ever gleeful mother has pointed out, I am "no longer in a situation to be picky."

Well that is a shame. I'm not one for letting the situation change my opinion. In essence, it's Red Brick Or Bust. I get into a university that I can actually respect, or I stay in Accrington for the next 80 years, litterally my idea of an agonizingly slow death with a guarantee of worse with the follow-up party.

The thing is, I have a good amount of material to shout about this week to make me me feel a little better, not at least a juicy bit of foreign policy that really proves that we're still in the Cold War, even if the Americans can actually bring themselves to talk to the Russians. With Russia invading Georgia to ensure that the rebels in the two northern provinces that harbour russified Georgians stay good and russified, and America stepping in to block the Russians from doing as they please, we really see the utter lack of communication that has marked the relationship of these two companies for 70 years. This is now no longer about Georgia. It is the US - ever insistant that Russia can't get any more powerful as that would harm their monopoly of democratic thought - that has now put it's foot in Russia's cake. And the consequences are not going to be pretty.

Russia is part of the Security Council.

Russia is part of the G8.

Russia is the third biggest economy in the world.

And the US is in the process of burning the bridges.

The US has sided with the EU in this Georgian War. Russia will look for China's support.

This really goes to show how little we've achieved in 17 years without the Hammer and Sickle on the Russian flag.

Plugging the Leaking Ship With Wads of Crisps

2008-08-05T21:01:00.003+01:00

When Northern Rock was nationalised in Feburary, we as taxpayers were all assured that Northern Rock would not hit us all that hard. This is, of course, the truth. We as individual taxpayers are not hit that hard by any fall in share price. I am happy to pay a penny or two to keep quite a number of people in work, and prop up the economy a little.

The problem is, this episode is horrifically embarrasing for the government and is costing quite a bit of our money to keep propped up. £3BN is a very large amout of money. It is, to put it simply, one hundred million packets of cheese and onion crisps. There are a multitude of things you could do with that many slices of fried potato. Feed everybody in Zimbabwe. Pile it in a heap and enter it for the Turner Prize. Keep Walkers in profit for a very long time. What a government shouldn't be doing is putting it into the leaky vessel of Northern Rock, where it will be absorbed and used in invisible ways.

Now, let us think about that. One hundred million packets of crisps is a very visable thing. If you were to assume that each packet was 6cm thick, piling them on top of each other would create a crisp pile that would reach the moon seven times over. Instead, it is going into a bank that is leaking money like a seive, and will probably end up in the pockets of foreign investors and companies, which is the opposite intention to many taxpayers, who no doubt assumed that it would go into more useful constructions, like building houses or buying ambulances.

To further this annoyance at cashflow I appear to be talking about, with a cash strapped government on our doorstop and all it makes me wonder exactly what our dear government is drinking to not see the benefits in taking a large amount of that profit that British Gas (and others) have made to invest properly. Consider this. British Gas (using this as an example of the buisness practice in this country) has layed off plenty of staff this year. That in part ("Cost cutting") is responsible for that massive profit. But whenever a call-centre post is moved to India, one less person has a job. More people out of work, more pressure on the wellfare state to help them out. Less money to contribute to the community. When this is done on a large scale, entire villages and towns suffer from the fall in money flowing into it's internal commerce. Hyndburn has a high unemployment rate, and badly need regeneration in several areas of the consitituency where housing quality is poor. Even a percent of any windfall tax would help bring more jobs into the area and vastly improve the lot of many people's lives here. What the government promises to do about actual improvement to areas like mine? Nothing. It is a scandal.

Milliband

2008-07-30T19:59:00.002+01:00

There is a little bit of a feeding frenzy going on at the moment about Gordon Brown's premiership. You may not have noticed. The ever resourceful media have decided to lengthen this story once again, with the Foreign Secretary - David Milliband - now under the spotlight. It's not too suprising really. Glasgow East's farce (which was embarassing to me as I was willing to bet money that Labour would scrape through...) has faded into memory. The media need a new story.

To quote my mother, Milliband's face doesn't fit.

I sometimes doubt my instincts, but when you actually look at Milliband you do not really get the impression that he's much of a driven public speaker who wants to do the best he can for society. He reminds me of John Major.

Really, the idea that Brown will be gone before the end of september is farcical to me. That would put a General Election just before Christmas. Hell, even if Brown were to leave at all (which is still in question, as he badly needs a cabinet reshuffle), Milliband would need to fight the modern day equvalent of Barbara Castle - Harriet Harman - to get the top job.

It certainly will be an interesting term in UK politics.

Free Stuff is an addiction.

2008-07-22T20:07:00.003+01:00

I've been trying to write this post for about a week now, but every time I remember about it, I've been either too far away from a computer or sharing a tent with two drunk men.

Suffice to say, I've been busy making sure that they avoided horrific hangovers. Anyway, my post.

I overheard on the radio when I finally got up a few days back a brief news topic - this was only a news summary on Kerrang! Radio afterall - Alistair Darling talking about how the government are not going to "be able to put more money into public services for the next few years." Now, at the time I thought nothing much of it. What does it really matter? The government's schemes are generally far overcosted and inneficient to actually impact on my life as a whole. A little while later I was jogging down to Hyndburn Sports Centre to see about a month's membership to the gym so I can get fit before returning to college in the autumn. No luck sadly. The minimum subscription was £16 monthly for 6 months (For anybody who fancys on reading the rest of this blog rather than getting out that calculator, that's about £100) for "Unlimited use of the gym, swimming pool, health classess..." for a total saving of £50. It even gave you a free membership towel, which made me think I was playing Curse of Monkey Island. Now, even to my unfit, flabby self, that seemed a slight rip off.

1) I would be only going for a month.
2) I only wanted to use the gym.

I ask - sensibly - about any other schemes. As soon as the desk sergeant rambled off about a "Youth Passport" I immediately smelt a governmental fidgiting going on. It seemed like a good deal.

Then she said the immortal words "Of course, your gym induction session will be £20."

Yes folks. For the same price you can buy a few good books, several music cds (or what I did and spent it on a video game...), you can have the experiance of being treated like a moron by a PE teacher. Now, imagine all of those large people that were in your variously named Sports classes. Did they get along with their teacher? No.

And yet this is a gym that is partially funded by the government with the specific aim of getting said fat person into the gym.

Like I said, I am sensing an unhappy mismatch of profiteering and a Higher Goal. Government mishmash at it's finest. But I was hit by the actual topic for this post on the jog back. Blackburn and Darwen has recently made a substantial amount of it's sport facilities free.

Sorry for yet another offshoot, but I'll explain the relevance of free stuff in politics. Socialism - let us assume that includes New Labour at this point - is all about free stuff. Free stuff is pretty much only one step away from bribery when it comes to govermental policy. Think about it. Free healthcare, financial advice, librarys, higher education

Hang on, scratch that last one...

and various other goverment services are provided for free. Labour is sitting on a vast pile of free stuff. Free is popular.

Free sports facilities would get me into the gym and getting fit. I would pay £20 for an induction session if I knew that was the only cost involved. But thanks to the economic downturn and Brown not making hay whilst the sun was shining, I'm willing to bet that us Hyndburnites will never actually get our fix of free stuff. The worst bit of course is that all we are going to hear on shows like Newsnight for the next month is Cameron's cronies sipping Earl Grey and saying "Well, those Labour chaps aalways run out of money, hah hah hah."

It's a bit of a double punch.

An increasingly weak UN

2008-07-12T16:06:00.002+01:00

Leads to an increasingly strong Zimbabwe.

I of course refer to the following:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7503441.stm

In which we have the delights of reading about how Mugabe is able to lean on it's Chinese and Russian supporters to remain in power, just like Sudan, Iran, and numerous other states. To me, I am seeing an increasingly weak UN being dominated by several countries that make the will of the people irrelevent.

The US, UK, EU, Japan. These major powers have all agreed that Mugabe needs to be stopped. On the other hand, we see China and Russia, who want to trade with a friendly dictator. This is in essence another nail in the coffin of the global peace finally won with the collapse of communism in 1991. There really isn't much left until we see the final political manouvering of the East and the West.

The pathetic thing is that we are all argueing about such a small insignificant dot on the world stage, with an even tinier dot of a government. But this is a sign of the times. China has managed to do what Stalin wanted for Russia - a massively wealthy country that is under the rule of one man. They have no Truman Doctrine, moral magnate or desire for the removal of bad governments.

What's next, then? Nothing for 10 years or so. But in the end, we're going to see a US that needs to defeat China. And when that happens...

Suffice to say, I'm hoping to be able to do something about it.

- Huw

The War

2008-07-07T11:41:00.001+01:00

In my History class today, we, as we approach the end of the year, were watching Andrew Marr’s masterpiece – History of Modern Britain. It talked about today’s politics, stopping dead with the end of Blair’s premiership. But in truth, by the time Marr was dwelling on the War on Terrorism, I was muttering certain words to myself.

The words were thus – “The biggest diplomatic disaster and in a hundred years.”

This is what 9/11 was, after all. It was not, and never was intended to be, an attack by a foreign religion. What 9/11 was designed to be was a political stunt of horrific proportions. The dominoes were already in place by 2001. Growing American conservatism and funtamentalism. Fuel companies forming magnates. An increasingly persecuted people – mocked by overseas press for being overweight, backward and stupid. In a way, the US had become, and still is, modern day Tsarist Russia. And like the Tsars, the presidency overreacted to all attacks on their country. A jumpy regime – the final and greatest domino – was the last piece. The planes hit 3 targets. The core of the military, the core of the economy. If the fourth plane had hit home, it would have hit the core of the politicians as well. It was designed from the very off to provoke a response.

The US over recent years has responded with typical terror and conservatism. Two wars, countless dead, and nothing – other than the destruction of diplomatic relations between the West and the Middle East – has been accomplished. It has all been for frightfully little, and as such it is greatly saddening to look back at just how obvious it was that this war was desired by all parties involved.

There is no solution to the Middle East now, exactly as all sides desired. The worst event that could strike now is political unity in the area – the Saudis, Iraqis, and all the other numerous Oil Economies would serve up a hate-filled plate of the ultimate cartel – either buy oil at our prices or not at all.

For us as the UK, the war will never be won. We gain no benefit from the “cheap” oil as it was intended to be by the US, but we suffer from the attacks of groups inspired by 9/11. All because of our involvement in a country that we should care very little about. It merely heightens public awareness of a political elite that are forced to play politics in a time when we badly need real leaders.

Denistry reforms failing? Not a suprise.

2008-07-02T14:13:00.002+01:00

My younger brother today was at his dentist, talking to a hygenist about keeping his teeth in good shape. That was a free session. However, he is in the unpleasent position of having a tooth extracted next week.

If the government hadn't bodged NHS dentistry, we'd be paying zip, nada, nothing. As it is, we're paying over £100.

ONE HUNDRED POUNDS. Read it nice and slowly.

This is from a family that mostly survives on money from the government. And we're paying hundreds of pounds to have teeth extracted (and bad toothache is much worse than quite a few things the NHS pays for treatment of!) that if we'd been around 10 or 20 years ago we would have had free. The core reason for all these dentists becoming private? The simple fact that they are treated as 2nd class doctors in our society. That, and they make a considerably larger amount of money out of being private doctors.

So let's mark this glorious 60 years of the NHS with a happy slogan. The NHS - alienating it's professionals for 60 years. Needless to say, I'm furious. This isn't just expensive, this is expensive and if not done leaves a poor kid in a HUGE amount of pain.

How is that fair? Maybe it is time that the government, instead of pushing forward with schemes to "modernise hospitals", bite the bullet and face their core demons - an angry and alienated workforce.

Chihuahuas are better than Poodles, at least.

2008-06-23T11:38:00.004+01:00

When you sit down at a computer after a lengthy absence from blogging, I suppose the last thing on your mind is how much the leader of a political party looks like a Chihuahua. However, this is obviously not the case today. I refer, of course, to this little piece of news off of the BBC website:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7468042.stm

I'm personally not a fan of dogs. They're noisy, messy, frustrating and bird-brained creatures. I'm much more of a cat person. I do, however, wonder exactly what was going through the mind of The Mail's editor when he decided to create such a daft poll in the first place.

As this is a TMOS poll, the overall results are not exactly shocking - nearly half of the readership would vote Conservative. I do chuckle somewhat though, at Clegg's reference to Cameron's former poodleship now being of a much more labradorian strain. We can't ignore that Brown is viewed as a St Bernard (I wonder if the readership had the Beethoven films in mind) and the apparently Chihuahuan edge of Clegg. If Chihuahuas were not traditionally owned by slightly dotty old ladies, popstars, minor royals and the occasional actor, I might well agree with them.

Apparently Brown is good at keeping secrets, and Cameron is more of a Quiz Team leader. I would suppose that this says a lot about each man's respective cabinets, at least.

- Huw

Now we're back to the reason people vote Labour...

2008-05-28T14:20:00.000+01:00

And guess what? It's because the Conservatives are STILL persuing policies involving making it much harder for people at the bottom end of the wealth spectrum to survive:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7420871.stm

Here's the Tories plan:

1) Spend taxpayer's money on a fancy scheme to get under 21's into "employment bootcamps" where they can learn how to get a job and get involved in community schemes.

Problems?
a) Logistical nightmare.
b) Expensive
c) Won't work in combination with current educational schemes.

The problem is that there is too many jobs in some areas of the country, and not enough in others. And that's only going to be solved by government investment in buisness, not a more clued up young workforce.

2) Make benefits even more Means Tested than it is now.

Making it even harder for the poorest members of society to get the money they need, by stacking even more tests and forms on top of them. Not only is that an even bigger waste of government money than it is now (granted, the current level is neccesary) but with the Conservatives campaigning on a pitch of "Labour abandoning the Working Class", it is entirely hypocritical. Especially for younger workers (see the hypocricy with point 1?) as it is going to become near impossible for them to clame Jobseekers.

The solution to this isn't making the money harder to get to, it is giving people jobs.

3) Forcing people to work.

Even if people have taken time off for valid reasons, like sickness, they will be forced into schemes that get them into unpaid employment or risk losing their benefits.

The solution? Get them jobs.

4) Racist policy towards Migrant Workers:

Speaks for itself, really. No more EU co-operation, just block every single migrant worker because British workers are somehow "better".

I have a good friend that works night shifts, and he used to be quite anti-EE (Eastern European). He knows a few of them now, and they're alright people. Nothing wrong with them in the slightest.

If the Tories persued an anti-Asian policy (almost the same thing, discounting second generation Asians) they'd get slammed for being rascist. What's different here?

Lets also not forget that most of these EE workers are catholic, which coincides with Cameron's push for Family Values. And they also have degrees, which fill up specialist roles that we've been losing overseas for years now (and that the Tories have slammed Labour on).

5) Copy policies already persued by Labour and spin them.

For example, point 1 is being taken in a slightly less hardline way by Labour with their New Deal.

---

In all seriousness, that report has basically proved my point - this Conservative party is no different policy wise than previously, but just has Mr Baby Face running the show.

- Huw

I need to make more posts...

2008-05-25T22:01:00.001+01:00

Anywho, this post I made was in responce to somebody suggesting Brown should go:

----

Okay then, who would replace him?

Anybody?

Face it, changing PM now would force the new PM to call a general election, and in these climates Labour would have to work extremly hard to avoid losing a major chunk of their majority (effectively forcing them into an alliance of sorts with the Lib Dems).

As such, removing Brown won't work.

Next? A party relaunch. It won't attract the press, and it won't interest the public. Scracth that.

Next? Cabinet reshuffle. I'm not a good man to talk about these things, as I don't know most Labour MPs from Adam, but I could give a wishlist for who I'd like dropped.

Dropped:
Jacqui Smith (Because she's lost the support of the public services)
Hazel Blears (Because she's a grinning idiot with the most annoying voice known to man. Not a good property for a cabinet minister)
Harriet Harman (Object of ridicule, political lightweight)

No anti-female agenda, they're just all examples of why the cabinet isn't working.

Let us not forget that the PM is The First Amongst Equals - the cabiniet is the real runner of the show, not the PM. And this cabinet is incompetent.

---

The Cabinet IS incompetent. It has too many members, with quite a bit of talent weakened by several members that, quite frankly, would be better removed and replaced.

- Huw

My opinion of Cameron. Not a pretty sight.

2008-05-23T09:52:00.002+01:00

I made this post on Warseer.com, and I'm pretty happy with it. So I'm going to repost it here.

Right, first of:

Just because Labour or the Conservatives did things more than 10 years ago, has no say whatsoever on what they would do in the future.

The Tories did drag our economy out of the mud, but on the back of American consumerism. Thatcher and her cronies legacy shall forever be us superglued to the United States, which I feel is the worst legacy a politician could have.

Now, onto why David Cameron is an utter charlie.

1) He has no European policy
2) He has no realistic enviroment policy
3) He has an exceedingly shaky economic policy
4) He is an upper class showman, a personality entirely unsuited to being able to take critisism. Cameron, unlike Blair or in some respects Brown, is not a teflon man. Things stick to him. Outside of his own party, he is not a popular chap.

Anyone else regulary watch PMQs like I do? Notice how Cameron never defends his own policies? Because he knows that in a battle of "10p Tax-esque" policies, the Tories win hands down. They have policies floating around from Thatcher's era.

I will vote Liberal Democrats no matter what, but in all honesty, if it came down to a choice between Reds or Blues...

Reds. No doubt about it. And Greg Pope is a nice chap.

- Huw
_________

Hooray for getting the majority of my exams out of the way!

- Huw

Hell, even as a Catholic...

2008-05-19T12:49:00.001+01:00

... I still think that medicine is more important than ethics.

Today, the government vote on a bunch of ammendmentss to change various aspects of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology bill, to review what is right and wrong about certain aspects of research.

Issue One: Chimeras

The government is expected to win the debate about using Human DNA in Bovine Eggs, and I fully support this. We're looking at chemicals here - no life, no God. And if it saves peoples lives, then ethics has to take a back seat in almost all cases. And this is from a Catholic.

Issue Two: Saviour Siblings

This really is a sticky one - how do you ensure that the child will actually be wanted, rather than required? I'm for it in principle - as is the majority, but it is so open to abuse and trouble that it would need major amounts of paperwork.

That being said, Saviour Siblings are a family thing, and not really eligible to be restricted by the government.

Issue Three: Fathers

This one is about time - in Gay relationships, having a Father requirement is futile. Really. However, in the case of single women... be normal, find a boyfriend. Or adopt. It's another example of the society we live in - women no longer really wanting to find a boyfriend, but still want a child. It's just silly. If you hate men that much, you shouldn't risk having a male child, right? :)

Issue Four: Abortion.

Shove it down to 20 weeks, easily. The cost involved for an abortion is huge, looking at it from an economical point of view. The moral implications are always nasty with abortions.

Besides, the old adage "don't get knocked up in the first place" springs to mind.

It will never be that easy in the Commons, though. Too many different opinions. And Conservatives mucking about trying to cause controversy.

Really, this is an indication of Brown slowly righting himself - it has been a tough two weeks, but now it looks like Labour's recovering. Which is annoying.

- Huw

Hooray for Freedom of Information!

2008-05-16T14:46:00.003+01:00

Now we get to see how much Cameron spends on Brylcreme. :)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7404031.stm

This is long overdue - MPs are public servants that spend money we donate through Tax - the public has every right to know how much that is. Seeing that there are 600 MPs int the country, and they could get £20,000 each in property aid, that racks up to, what, £12m of taxes?

Clegg's been doing this for a while now - it is in the interests of fairness that the other two big men in the Commons follow suit.

Not that Cameron would need the money, but still.

I chuckled when I spotted that:

Commons Speaker Michael Martin was himself criticised when it emerged that his wife had claimed £4,139 on taxis - largely for shopping trips.

To where? New York?

That must be one rich cabbie.

- Huw

Brown's Economic Woes, and how he's probably not going to fix them

2008-05-15T13:31:00.002+01:00

The title says it all, really.

Brown's Woes:
The Economy. Simple as that. Brown was heralded as a very good chancellor - he kept Britain in a long period of growth, put in good legislation to help buisness', and generally was quite helpful.

However, he's come a bit unstuck now.

What Brown has done is he has drawn masses and masses of money into the UK by borrowing. Borrowing money is good when your only steering the economy - when you're trying to right it again all that debt ties your hands.

There is no money to change anything. Vince Cable made this point last night too - the extended period of borrowing has lead to the government being hit by its very own credit crunch - it has no money to move anywhere with, and this is leading to Brown being seen more and more as a failure. Really, you have to respect the rest of the cabinet - they're all using Brown as a scapegoat. And they're doing it well. This is a problem in the Labour party today - the old Blairite/Brownite split. And increasingly it is looking like the Blairite faction is winning, despite the lack of a figurehead. Brown is proving why extended periods of borrowing can only cause trouble. And due to this lack of money, there really isn't much he can do.

- Huw

And another U-turn arises.

2008-05-13T21:28:00.002+01:00

You'd think that this government would be getting a little dizzy by now.

Of course, let us not forget that this is a good thing - a refund to those hit by the botched Budget last year can never be seen as bad, mind - but the real question was why Brown let himself in for this as Chancellor and left Darling to pick up the pieces.

To be blunt, at times like this you wonder how connected Brown is to his party. He didn't forsee such a huge backbencher revolt over the issue last year, and he refused to acnowledge their concern before the disaster that was May 1st.

So this is just a political gimmick to get the populace back on Brown's side. I doubt it will fail in this aim. In my eyes, however, I regard this as the worst kind of U-turn - not one borne out of guilt or hindsight, but one of political manouvering. And this isn't the first time it has happened.

Darling, to his credit, handled the crisis well He defended policy (as he has to) but in the background he was constantly working - it would seem - to fix the issue in Labour's favour. Hence, he's not a bad politican.

Field has backed down now that his demands have been met. This, really, is a bit of a blunder. He has to hold the government to account for as long as this issue has not - in reality - been sorted indefinatly. And I wish him best of luck.

I think Vince Cable sums it up best. When he adressed the Chancellor, he said:

It may well be that for a few hours this will get you out of the difficulties that you created for yourself."

It is a band-aid, not anything major. But it is a step in the right direction.

- Huw

Keep on trucking, Frank!

2008-05-12T20:14:00.002+01:00

I love it when politicians come out of the shadows and fight for what they believe in. Frank Fields is just this sort of character - he realised that the 10p income tax removal was wrong, and now we see him fighting against much of his own party to keep Brown from slipping away from the 10p tax issue. This backbencher assault - if anything - has proved one thing. In my mind, Brown as a character simply isn't PM material. The fact that he is getting upstaged by a backbencher on these issues clearly shows this - Blair, in comparison, was always at the front of the party, making big speeches, and generally being interesting. This is something that Brown, whilst being a decent Chancellor, simply cannot work with, and as such he has removed New Labour's "look at me" persona.

It doesn't help that he's not a Teflon Man, either.

The thing is, Fields wasn't the first chap to bring up this issue. Who was, you ask? A certain Greg Pope, former Whip under Blair and now a rather lonely backbencher. More important, he is my local MP. I've met Pope, and I can say that he is a pretty nice chap. And works very hard for my constituency. Not that that doesn't mean I'm voting for the Lib Dem candidate in 2010, but I'll regret not voting for Pope.

---

At the moment, I am discovering the pain that is Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock. This is supposed to be a political blog, but I'll say one thing.

That game gives your fingers one hell of a work out.

- Huw

Possibly the worst BBC website pun of all time.

2008-05-10T20:33:00.002+01:00

"So solid Crewe" in reference to the high-profile By-Election there in a few weeks.

Seriously. Somebody should hit the journalist that came up with that.

Even odder, the Monster Raving Loony Party are standing. And their candidate is The Flying Brick.

I thought that was John Prescott?

- Huw

Saturdays are not good days for political blogging.

2008-05-10T20:14:00.002+01:00

Because nothing much happens.

I mean, no wonder that this country is a bit apethetic towards politics. They only get 5 days of it a week. Whereas you have all sorts of "interesting" gossip all year around.

Maybe I'm just bitter because it is slow days like these that I end up rambling on about lots of nonsensical rubbish. Or that I'm just plain bored.

So now our government leaves the humble blogger to think of something to write about. Bless BBC News though, because we have learned about everybody's favorite Political Wife, Cherie Blair, about her new book. Which talks all about her time as the PM's wife.

To be honest, it is written by a lawyer. So it isn't going to be interesting... It does cover some interesting topics though, like how the deal between Blair and Brown came to be, and how Blair advised Brown on being PM. Like getting married.

You know, seeing how Tony Blair had Cherie for a wife, that seems like a rather stupid piece of advice.

A rather boring day.

2008-05-08T19:33:00.002+01:00

Burma's still not letting many people into the country to help. Which is rather silly - you have a massive humanitarian disaster, and you use the occasion to flout your independance.

Honestly.

In the UK, Cannabis is now going to be shoved back to Class B. Which is a bit of a U-turn for Labour, but to be honest I support them here - it should have always been kept as Class B simply because it is common as muck and fuels criminal activity.

What were Labour thinking anyway? Appeal to the druggy crowd?

- Huw

So we get to see Democrats voting. Again.

2008-05-06T19:39:00.002+01:00

Anyone else getting bored of this drawn out, pointless election campaign? It is as if both candidates are dragging out this electon as long as possible because they are embarresed to actually face McCain.

So what is my thoughts on this election? I think that Clinton deserves to nab it. I think Obama is too much of a thinker to really convince the average voter. Which is a shame, because I think that Obama will win the Democrat race.

Which leads him right into the Conservative's crosshairs.

Kerry got the same in 2004 - as soon as he was confirmed victor, he was attacked by a well-prepared propaganda campaign. Kerry was discredited and tossed aside for Bush to mantain the presidency.

Ah well; not as if American politics is ever different - Conservatives and Democrats wrangleing over the amount of spots on the other's nose while the US education and welfare systems carry on failing.

- Huw

A few thoughts on progressive Energy Policy.

2008-05-05T21:15:00.000+01:00

Sometimes I write some rather good posts on Warseer.com about all sorts of issues. I post them up here - it keeps my blog active as well as giving me an archive of thoughts.

---

Let me put it this way. There is no good or real reason WHY we couldn't all be driving a hydrogen car (say) in the year 2020. The practical and economic reasons are placed upon us by burocracy, capitalism and economists. If you are including "limits of possibility", then we're doomed.

Example? Wilhelmian Germany. The real power behind the throne was the various cartels, leagues and alliances of the German upper classes (The ultimate Capitalist arrangement - faceless corporations in the shadows with a King puppet). They withstood pretty much everything that the world could throw at them. Including the First World War. The thing that did them in was the final defeat of Germany in 1945.

Last time I checked, we're doomed if World War Three broke out, so let's scratch off that theory of how to begin truly progessing from Oil.

The buisness practices of America, Russia, China and India are all based around the effective control of world Oil supplies. Many nations entire economies are based off of Oil - Saudi Arabia is a good example. So world-wide beurocratic change is effectively impossible (pragmatically, there is no way that these 4 countries can agree on Oil, similar to Austria and Russia on the Balkans. We must remember that the "United Nations" is really a myth - there has never been a time in history when mankind's nations have been truly united).

So without Beurocratic change, what alternative is there?

The eventual "running out" of Oil. Which will be utterly cataclysmic for all Oil based nations. No Oil = No Oil Economy. No Oil Economy = No Economy. No Economy = No Government.

Now, to me that looks like for most countries, things look pretty bleak.

Of course, this is where us Europeans come in. Unlike the UN, we actually have a legislative body - the EU. And therefore is is a hell of a lot easier to avoid beurocracy, cartels and all the rest.

Now, for the basis of a viable discussion about energy and that sort of thing, we must assume that we are only dealing with the EU. This way we can avoid the fatal error of trying to fit Capitalist and Progessive countries under one banner.

Now, is hydrogen power possible on a European scale? Let us check:

1) Plenty of Water - Check.
2) Money - Check.
3) Time - Check
4) Willingness to change - Check

As such, I'd guessimate that we could be seeing the first viable hydrogen powered cars (assuming that they sort out a way of having canisters that don't go boom) by about 2020, with hydrogen fuel pumps.

- Huw

---

Sadly there is nothing much to talk about in the world of Politics today - that tends to happen on bank holidays!

First up is the fact that Collective Responsibility appears to be hindering any real progress on the Gordon Brown problem - all the cabinet ministers now are obliged to pop in and say that Gordon Brown is good. You have to feel sorry for MPs like Alistair Darling and David Milliband. Both are overshadowed by former members (Gordon Brown and Tony Blair respectively) having made life stupidly difficult. I strongly suspect that we will be seeing a reshuffle before 2009. And I strongly suspect that both of these perfectly able politicians are going to be chucked on their behinds thanks to not being able to stop the tides.

It is curious that Milliband keeps being bandied round as a possible replacement for Brown - maybe we're seeing a glimpse into the machinations of the Commons? I hope so. Labour may as well kiss their chances goodbye as long as Brown is leading the election campaign come 2010.

- Huw

Johnson won? Blimey.

2008-05-04T18:18:00.002+01:00

I was pretty suprised myself to discover that Boris Johnson won the London Elections. Then again, the win was forshadowed by the major Labour losses all over the country, so on reflection, it really wasn't so suprising.

However, it is important to remember why Johnson won:

1) Anti Labour sentiment in London
2) The strong campaigns run by Johnson and Paddick
3) Johnson's complete refraint from any form of stupidity during the campaign.

I think Boris will be a decent mayor - his policy of 50,000 new cheap homes appeals to me, as does the fairness of his proposal for a monthly payment of the Congestion Charge (as long as it is truly representative). Time will tell.

I hope that Johnson finds a place for Livingstone and Paddick, really. Livingstone's travel record is fantastic, as is Paddick's record with the police. Shame that Paddick is unwilling to join up with Johnson.

Anyway, our dear PM has begun his cross-Britain "We must learn" campaign. I want Labour in charge of our country, but I along with many people have lost confidence in this government.

Here is hoping Nick Clegg can use the public's unwillingness to vote Tory as a marketing tool - if he pushes Lib Dem left-wing policies, he could make a killing.

Pride comes before a Fall

2008-05-02T13:46:00.000+01:00

Well, today we have witnessed the biggest collapse of New Labour support of all time. Not since 1978 (If memory serves) have we seen such a massive and shocking collapse of support.

Okay, I'll quit being descriptive. Here is my opinion.

I think everyone is beginning to realise that this is the end of New Labour's golden period. For the last 11 years, we have seen a momentus bubble of public support, and even despite the Iraq War, more scandals than you can shake a stick at (The Newspapers will certainly be sorry when Mr Hip and Interesting Cameron and his Totally Rad Conservatives replace this bunch of Clowns), and other interesting quirks that we enjoy as part of the UK, New Labour has endured.

So where has it all gone wrong?

Here is the point where any normal blogger will jump into critisisms of Labour, but I am going to hold back here. HAS it all gone wrong for Labour? Or is this just an illusion that the media wants to tell us - rule one of being a political activist is to recognise the media's exaggeration. The Conservatives made massive games in 2004, but then the General Election came the following year and suddenly they mantained office, despite the Iraq War being such a momentus scandal. Why? Old Duffers. Old Duffers are a great little bunch of people, because they supply that amount of the votes that never shifts for the main two parties. These are the people that have kept Labour in Reading (minus Reading's Labour leader, who lost his seat to the Lib Dems!), have caused trouble in areas like Liverpool, and generally provide a staunch resistance to anything not died in their colour. This is where the Lib Dems lose out - how can one contest a seat when a good 30% of the voters will never switch their vote?

So where HAS it gone wrong for Labour?
1) A poorly run campaign - this is a general problem for all three main parties, but generally Labour shines out in its stinking ineptitude. The London Mayoral elections were based on Livingstone saying how good a job he has done and applauding his own political maverik status.
2) The 10p tax (and related issues). This requires 0 explanation. Look at it this way. Labour has permanently insulted the last of her Socialists. What has happened is that Labour has moved to the centre, but the public have stayed where they were. This is fine in boom times for a party, but very very bad in bust times. The voters feel alienated and revert to the Conservatives, simply because they haven't been in power for 11 years.

3) My personal theory. The public has finally lost faith in Labour. And instead of doing the smart thing (of course) and voting for the Lib Dems, they have shunted themselves onto the side of "Call me Dave" Cameron. Here is a question for you. How many Conservative politicians can you name in a minute that ARE NEW to the Conservatives sinse Cameron took over?

I can't.

This is Cameron's magic - we are entering the phase of The New Conservatives, where the party, like Labour, is willing to do almost any policy, backstab, or general unkindliness as long as they win. And Labour isn't fighting them. We see Ad Hominem Hyperbole in the Commons, Ad Hominem Hyperbole in the news...

Here is a News Flash New Labour. The public has forgotton John Major.

As a Lib Dem supporter (and a leftie), I would be far happier for no more of these political shenanigans to arise before a general election. But that would be stupid. Cameron will pull as many cards as possible to win. And I hope my party can profit from the situation.

------

As of now, the Lib Dems have GAINED BURNLEY. The best thing about this is that we have not only beaten down Labour, but stopped the advance of the BNP (who's only two councillors in the UK exist.) If the Lib Dems can conquer Burnley, maybe Hyndburn is next?

The Lib Dems have had a very good night, truth be told. Only dark spot is Liverpool, but there will always be next year to force down Labour.

- Huw