I just logged into my libdems account to see if there was any useful members information, like who to contact if you have questions about something (nope), or published information for party members (like local or national party budget, spending, accounts, etc - also nope).
It ammounts to the lists server - which very few members know of, and even fewer use, and flocktogether.
How incredibly 21st century, not.
You know what would be quite cool - if libdemsonline was given a trivial budget with which to sort this kind of stuff out, heck I have plenty of expertise in this area and would be more than happy to help, but currently unless you want to deliver leaflets or cold-call innocent bystanders in a by-election the other side of the country, any volunteering or involvement in the party is pay to play.
*sigh*
Good god people!
Think outside the box - do you really think the nation will notice if the lib dems blow an extra few hundred thousand splurging out on billboards, leaflets, focus groups and all that tosh.
Seriously - only a few decades ago parties got parlimentary majorities with a campaigning budget that is dwarved even by modern parties combined under the "others" label like UKIP or BNP, let alone the Liberal Democrats - maybe it's time to look at alternatives to throwing cash at council elections and by-elections.
Political advertising is probably the least effective advertising around, the public filter it out, ignore or avoid it, the only way to get the publics attention is to make the headlines yourself - that means taking control of the agenda, not following the other parties like sheep and listening less to the increasingly irrelevent westminster echo chamber.
How about, some really good initiatives ?
How about some radical policies that will make the public and media sit up and take notice.
How about using the resources we have to be smarter ?
How about making Party Political Reform hit the headlines by setting our own standards above and beyond the legal requirements of the house of commons, lords or EP.
Martin Bell got elected by being above-board, rather than being "Just Another MP", the only way a third party will ever make a serious dent in our parliamentary duopoly is to stand out as different, not acting like, talking like, and behaving like the other parties.
The Chinese government are little better than the Burmese Junta or Mugabe and his militia, yet Brown is snubbing the Dalai Lama by not having him as a guest at Downing Street - apparently it's ok for dictators or footballers, but not anyone the chinese communist party don't approve of.
Spineless ? Totally!
Same new labour, same "ethical foreign policy".
Nice, howies t-shirt of the week : subprime minister
]]>I really liked Nick Cleggs conference speech last week, unfortunately it doesn't match his actions when it comes to things like drugs, prostitution or even reform of parliament.
Last I heard he was still backing the speaker of the house and some other MPs to decide the new rules for expenses, not exactly revolutionary.
I would have thought that expenses rules would be fairly simple - after all we have the ready-made set of expenses rules that apply to the rest of us - HMRC has clear, well documented rules about expenses - they are quite generous enough and the legions of self employed people in the UK manage to (and are required by law) to account for their spending with receipts, etc.
It's not unreasonable to remove perks - outside of London, an MPs salary is almost unattainable, certainly in the top 0.5%, and nationally it's in the top 5%, and given the number of staff MPs can employ at no cost to themselves, the workload isn't unreasonable, nor is the travel to/from westminster.
The 2nd home in london scam is pure profiteering, it's beyond a perk, and in many cases it crosses into blatent fraud and property speculation. A more reasonable alternative would be to provide a minimal allowance, which the MP can "top up" to make rental or mortgage payments, but any mortgage would be held by the state rather than the MP - when the MP no longer requires the property they relinquish it and any financial gains (or losses) are left with the state (which after all paid).
Well thanks Nick Clegg for not sticking with the status quo, and really rocking the boat with your bold leadership on reforming parliament.
I think it's great you're supporting somebody who claimed tens of thousands of quid for his wifes shopping trips and pocket 20 grand more to cover accomodation costs that he didn't have, and best of all - this chap is doing the review of MP expenses, gosh it doesn't look like a corrupt old boys at all.
I'm sure that we as a nation can follow suit and you'd support us if we all decided to fiddle our tax returns and put things like shopping, family travel, lap dancers, etc through our books. I'm sure the Inland revenue wouldn't quibble over a few tens of thousands of pounds for us all, and it certainly wouldn't mean being prosecuted for fraud.
Speaking of bold moves - how is your big push for reform of drugs legislation? Oh. yeah. It doesn't exist. Did you forget about it? Don't be surprised that you will be forgotten too unless you stand out - because right now when people say our party doesn't matter or make a difference, with the notable exception of Vince Cable and some excellent MPs that feels like the truth at the moment.
It was fun shopping in Truro City Centre yesterday - most of the small shops were shut all day, and the larger shops opened their doors at 10am but nobody could purchase anything until 10:30am - utterly bizarre, not only that but because of the shorter day and the proximity to christmas it was havoc in pretty much any significant shop that was open.
As a sole trader in the IT Industry, I've had to work 7 day weeks, or weekends at various times for various reasons - you can't really take down business servers or web servers during the working week, so it has to be done on the weekend or bank holiday. Before I graduated I worked in several jobs, all of them meant working sundays, bank holidays and even new years eve - Bar work, Hospital Cleaner, Hospital Porter, Hotel waiter, Hotel Housekeeping, Hotel Porter.
Let me be totally frank - if you don't want to work, or open your business on a sunday, or christmas day, or easter sunday or a bank holiday - that's entirely up to you - but don't demand that everybody else close their business or not shop, or do whatever they heck they want.
So, as a Liberal party - what's the policy on sunday trading - I mean, how many votes do we really expect to get from narrow minded "christians" and stuck-in-the-70s shop owners? Hardly any - stuff them.
... after nearly 18 months of it being noticed and raised as an issue at our local Linux User Group, and numerous complaints since it still doesn't work in anything apart from internet explorer. (http://www.chooseandbook.nhs.uk/patients/faqs/techissue) - what a complete farce. Apparently it's a good thing that a whole two thirds of UK users can actually use the site! idiots!
I keep on saying that the Liberal Democrats need a minister, or at least spokesperson, for ICT - maybe Nick Clegg really will realise that a role considered essential in every boardroom is missing from his cabinet - but I doubt it, the westminister village is still too distant from the real world where we actually have to make things work to pay the mortgage.
There is more than enough work to justify a minister for ICT, the lack of such a minister in the cabinet of any of our national parties is negligent - all three parties have been very poorly briefed on the technical issues of both RFID Passports, and ID Cards and certainly have no idea at all about who nominet are, let alone have any idea of the simple steps needed to enforce the law when it comes to crime on the internet.
Oh telecoms regulators how I hate thee!
We're ex-directory and registered with TPS. You would think that would mean we avoid the worst abuse of the telephone system, but it doesn't - I regularly get scam and cold calls from dodgy companies who should know better.
The worst part is there is nothing you can do - if a UK business breaks the law or pays another company outside the uk to do the same, there is no way to trace them or take action.
OFCOM fails miserably in regulating cold calls via fax, email and telephone - today I got an automated war-dialling (as they can't have got my number legally) call from "The Information Team", who have a UK call centre, use a UK telephone number, and yet I am unable to do anything to prevent them doing it again - I can't even find out where their UK office is and go around and give them a hard time.
This is crazy - people use UK telephone numbers and .uk domains for illegal scams, and are untouchable - the telephone companies, ISPs, registrars, police and OFCOM all have no interest in taking any action. Utterly pitiful.
links for more information on these scamming scum :
* http://whocallsme.com/Phone-Number.aspx/08445592577/2
* http://groups.google.co.uk/group/uk.telecom/browse_thread/thread/244be21b7a25f91d
Those useless unhelpful muppets :
* http://www.ico.gov.uk/complaints/privacy_and_electronic_communications.aspx
* http://www.ofcom.org.uk/telecoms/ioi/nwbnd/prsindex/
* http://www.ofcom.org.uk/complain/landline/nuisance/silent/?itemid=284845
* http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/
I've tried registering complaints with tps, etc - all of them say upfront they will not confirm anything and probably won't take any action - should you want to bring a civil case you require a private detective and some friends inside the telecoms industry - otherwise you're going to be a victim for as long as it's worthwhile for scammers to cold call and war dial.
It's crazy that I can't find out who these people calling me are and get them to stop, or report them to trading standards (which even when you've done some research is a waste of time).
..but I am firmly decided that I'm fed up with the cheerleaders and campaigners.
Both candidates have a lot of common and party policies, so it's only on the personality smaller/detailed issues that you can really tell them apart, and this is where the bloggers, campaigners etc just muddy the waters and put everybody off both.
I think that a lot of campaigners need to learn that actually it's how you play that is more important than winning sometimes - particularly in politics - you need to put constituents needs before your party, you need to ensure quality candidates rather than bums on seats in councils, you need to spend money researching policy and getting people involved not printing yet more flyers and leaflets full of fluff and photo ops.
Unfortunately although both candidates are far closer to who I want leading the country than anything offered by the other main parties, I'm still disappointed that they are very conservative in their policies - they haven't taken any major issue or new idea and really sold it or made it part of the news agenda, which they could have done with Drug Liberalisation, Sex Worker liberalisation, EU Reform, Iran, or Palestine.