“What has happened to Dr. Evan Harris MP?”

He was last spotted on Newsnight defending Dr David Southall and Professor Sir Roy Meadow.

If Dr Harris would occasionally argue FOR the public interest and not against it, he could yet prove to be a formidable advocate.

“Tim Farron is MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale… i’m sure that he knows plenty about farming!”

Indeed. Hucks have been farming Shap Fells since the time of Henry VII and probably a good deal longer.

Don’t underestimate Don: he manages to get some quite good coverage for an essentially unpromising brief.

I feel it’s a good lineup and shows we have moved on

There are interesting times ahead for us. I really hope this Shadow Cabinet works. Largely because if it doesn’t, then who the hell is left!

It would be interesting to speculate on what Huhne’s team would have been like had he won.

I’ve been unemployed and on a course with other unemployed young people. My calculations told me 60-70% did want a job but 30-40% really did not want one and were actually doing things to avoid one at all costs (such as pretending not to be able to read when literacy skills were evident just not very strong…)

Peter Hain confirmed on December 13th that by 2010 benefits will be withdrawn for lone parents unwilling to make themselves available for work because they have a child/children as young as seven. I would be delighted to be proved wrong but the media coverage (including an interview he did for BBC News 24)indicates that David Laws supports these moves.

Other Orange Bookers are on record supporting the tough love/Wisconsin welfare programme.

In my attitudes towards the NHS and education I would place myself on the right of the party. But this welfare stuff really worries me.

I’m not sure where that comes from – I think Steve is an exceptional mind, but he does oppose the changes on public services that Clegg has made clear that he wants to see. There are very few people in the party who would advocate slashing lone parent benefits – I think that’s a red herring.

How patronising! You mean I suppose that he doesn’t display sufficient enthusiasm for ‘new thinking’ like slashing benefits to lone parents.

Slightly surprised by Lembit’s new role – he would have liked to have got transport, I suspect – but feel it is probably a good thing to have got some fresh blood into the communities & local govt brief. Andrew’s experience of local govt was an increasingly long time ago and things had moved on considerably.

Am also pleased to see Ed in a heavyweight job again though I didn’t expect it would be Foreign!

Others have noted that as one might expect, the Cleggites have done well and the Huhneites on the whole have suffered.

She won’t thank you for that! It’s her birthday today. She just turned… well it would be ungentlemanly to say, so you can check out her birth year on Wikipedia, like I did.