2 Must-Read Blog Posts
What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:
- Tories in Devon and Cornwall set themselves a target of raising £13,000 in an Obama-style online donate-now campaign, perhaps in an attempt to wean themselves off the Ashcroft millions. How much did they raise?
- Stephen Glenn picks up on the news that Lord Paul has said he will voluntarily end his non-dom status from April, whether required to or not, and asks what it means for the Tory “they do it too” defence.
Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.
2 Big Stories
Short term prison sentences don’t work
A bit for libetarians and for regulators – so take what you will. It was laws and regualations, not market forces, that ended this, though it seems we can never under-estimate the ability of a greedy State to make a bad situation worse.
This is an account from 1942 looking back to the condition of the poor a century earlier.
In the early years of the [19th] century the builder and landlord were unrestricted. The filthiest hovel or cellar could be let to as many people as would take it; no drainage or water had to be provided.
Ventilation the State heartily discouraged
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Better late than never, today’s Daily View finally arrives. The miners’ strike ended on this day in 1985, and Switzerland voted to join the United Nations in this day in 2002.
2 Big Stories
Life found on Mars
A former US grassroots campaigner, now working in Manchester, has claimed that Labour is an alienating force in our big cities and Obama would never have made it in the Labour Party.
Gregory Galluzo, the Guardian claimed on Saturday, trained Obama in grassroots politics over a decade ago.
Galluzo is quoted in the Guardian as saying:
In my experience the Labour party in your big cities like Manchester is one of the most alienating forces in Great Britain.
It is a very small group of people that controls the city council and they get voted in because they are Labour, not because of
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Contrary to popular belief, the Victorians tended to be pretty open and frank about sex. The old myth about covering the legs of pianos or tables was a joke told by the Victorians about others.
This text is taken from “An exposition of the true Cause and only Cure of the Three Primary Evils: Poverty, Prostitution and Celibacy”, by Dr George Drysdale and published in 1852.
Excepting medical advances and terminology, it could almost have been written today.
The only means by which virtue and the progress of mankind are rendered possible is ‘Preventative Sexual Intercourse’. By this is meant sexual
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Every now and again, some opinion poll or other asks people to name their own MP and politocos tutt when, invariably, a good proportion fail the test.
But, if you were to speak to every MP and ask them who the MP for their own constituency is, you’d hope for a better result.
Sadly, news reaches us that at least one MP may be unsure.
Dawn Butler, Labour MP for Brent South, held a coffee morning on Friday with Rt Hon Paul Boateng MP.
On this day in 1920 (according to the nice people at Wikipedia), the Nazi Party was founded.
The days when the Daily Mail publically paraded its sympathies for the Nazis are long gone – their interests lie elsewhere these days…
2 Stories
The story Mail hacks have been waiting for
This story must have felt like Christmas and Easter rolled into one for reporters at the Daily Mail – it’s got everything.
…it is becoming increasingly clear that teenage girls are a stand-alone demographic in crisis
So says a report in Sunday’s Observer, looking at the pressures faced by teenage girls and the effects it has on their lives, and it’s far from alone.
As Mark Pack reported here on Sunday, the Evening Standard and Telegraph both reported on concerns of girls becoming sexualised at ever younger ages.
Just hold on a moment, though.
Yes, teenage girls have problems. And it may well be that there are specific measures the State can take to reduce those problems, such as the regulation …
A few quotes from Labour’s Campaign Quotations book from the 1951 General Election.
Back in the days before the Internet (yes, young people, it didn’t always exist), Labour published this 300 page book of quotes from friend and foe to help its eager activists.
Socialism is a system of national co-operation. It is based upon the principle of co-operation, as opposed to the principle of competition. It is based on the principle of collectivism as opposed to the principle of individualism. It is union as against disunion, order as against anarchy. It means each for all and all
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It’s Wednesday 17th February and for me, like so many other Lib Dem activists, another day of delivering leaflets and knocking on doors (plus a Council meeting in the evening).
On this day in 1933 prohibition ended in the United States, and in 2003 London got a new congestion charge. There, wasn’t that interesting.
2 Lib Dem-related Stories
Lib Dem voters are the kinkiest
Thanks to Sara Scarlett for spotting this report in the Telegraph. There’s lots there on the sex lives of supporters of the three main parties, including:
It can be a harsh blow for any parliamentary candidate. You’ve filled in the forms, been through the selection process, made your speeches, answered the questions and, in a fiercely fought contest that may even have involved more than one applicant, emerged victorious to represent your party in the General Election.
And then you discover that the seat, in which your party has failed to top 13% of the vote in either of the last two elections, is unaccountably not having tens of thousands of pounds poured into it by the central party; nor are activists from across the region …
As reported in the press last May:
Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, called [on 13th May 2009] for MPs to be banned from making a profit from selling second homes which they bought using their Commons allowances.
He will prevent Liberal Democrat MPs making money out of selling such a property after having their mortgage interest paid by the taxpayer – and wants the rule extended to all MPs. Any profits from the sale of a property would be handed back to the Exchequer.
And today:
The head of the new authority tasked with overhauling MPs’ expenses has said profits made
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A survey of a thousand men and women in London reveals that most women asked believe that the victim of rape is sometimes at least partly to blame.
Almost three-quarters of women said if a rape victim got into bed with the assailant before an attack they should accept some responsibility.
One-third blamed victims who had dressed provocatively or gone back to the attacker’s house for a drink.
More than half of those of both sexes questioned said there were some circumstances when a rape victim should accept responsibility for an attack.
These figures are nothing new. A 2005 survey found …
Posted in News
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Tagged crime
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Confusion reigns in the Conservative Party over whether or not MPs’ and Peers’ tax affairs should be private.
Back in December, Cameron said
If you want to be in the Houses of Parliament… you need to be, or be treated as, a full UK taxpayer. We would pass that law if we get elected… as rapidly as we could.
Now we have Eric Pickles saying
Lord Aschcroft is entitled to his privacy.
and George Osborne saying
We live in a country where people are entitled to a private relationship with the Inland Revenue.
So which is it?
Are MPs and peers entitled …
According to today’s Observer, and blogged by Paul Walter, the Lib Dems are doing surprisingly well in the celebrity supporter stakes.
For Labour, long time backer J K Rowling (who surely could match the Ashcroft money and hardly notice it had gone, if the mood took her) is joined by David Tennant. He must be a worry for Labour – Tennant’s support may lose Gordon the Dalek vote his only-slighty-too-authoritarian government seem to have spent the last 13 years attracting.
The Conservatives meanwhile have Carol Vorderman, Kirstie Allsopp* and Trevor ‘bong’ MacDonald. Older readers will remember Carol …
Posted in General Election
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Tagged andrew motion, brian eno, carol vorderman, chris martin, coldplay, colin firth, daleks, david tennant, j k rowling, john cleese, kate winslet, razorlight, the kinks
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Today’s literary delicacy, served up for your pleasure, is an account by Edward Stourton of the (now banned) French dish of ortolans.
These tiny songbirds are pretty little things, with greenish heads, yellow throats and brown and black striped backs. They must be captured alive and then left for a month to gorge themselves on grapes and figs in a dark box (some connoisseurs prefer to blind them altogether); once they have swollen themselves to a grotesque size they are drowned in Armagnac, roasted and eaten whole, bones, feathers and all. Tradition dictates that the diners should cover their
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Radio 4’s Today Programme has revealed the cost of the new parliamentary body to police MPs’ expenses: around £6.5 million a year, with 80 staff and a boss pulling in £100k.
Nice work if you can get it, but surely it raises serious questions about the new system.
The total amount current and former MPs are being asked to repay, covering claims over several years, is a touch over a million pounds.
That means the new cost of checking those expenses and ruling whether they’re legitimate is many times higher than the amount the public purse was previously losing where …
Posted in Op-eds
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Tagged mps expenses
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Pick up a newspaper or turn on the radio and TV this morning and there’s only one story filling up the front pages and the airwaves…
Look at a Lib Dem election campaign, whether it’s a sitting MP or target seat challenger, and you’ll invariably find a hard working local campaigner, a local champion, and leaflets full of local stories.
That’s not at all what you see in Conservative literature. Across many seats the Tories have all but given up promoting their local campaigning credentials, or selling their candidate as the best person to be the MP. True, you’ll always find a few token stories, but the vast majority of material hitting doormats promotes Cameron, and Cameron alone.
Most of their firepower pushes the message that …
