7 posts tagged “liberal democrats”

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.

..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.

To actually be tough on the causes of crime and immigration means doing almost exactly the opposite of Tory and New Labour's rhetoric.

Fortunately, even if it's only in one area, the Lib Dems are pushing something powerful through - if you legitimise those who entered the country illegally, but live productive and innocent lives here, then you cut off the lifeblood of the underground and criminal elements.

Taxation, representation, and removal of fear from reprisal turns the oppressed migrants into a powerful force against the system that encourages illegal immigration and illegal workers - the traffickers, the gangs, the dodgy networks organising sham marriages and finding work that pays well below the minimum wage and with no protection for workers.

Odd then that the Labour party that traditionally represented the workers, now targets them instead of the organised criminals that are the real problem.

The same kind of logic works well when applied to other key social problems that the electorate care about - drugs and prostitution : by legitimising and decriminalising, you remove these activities from the hands of organised crime, and can provide statuary protection and regulations, workers rights, safety / quality control, and reduce the resulting petty crime.

Hopefully, the Liberal Democrat party leaders will grow enough backbone to deal with drugs and the sex industry in the same mature, rational and sensible way as immigration. Daily Mail readers won't vote for a liberal democrat we would recognise anyway - why bother trying to get them on board - all we have to do is provide the public with enough facts and start a rational debate, there's no point trying to get the Diana-hugging-darkie-hating-middle-englanders onboard.

So, apparently the RSA report back in march was a "wake up call" according to our party leader, Sir Campbell, and since then Transform have also published a report on how we need to reform drug laws.

We've also seen a media backlash against the bad science and dodgy statistics linking Mental Illness to cannabis (quick summary - using cannabis could maybe increase risk of from 1% to 1.4% although you may have to an underlying condition, or self-medicate before diagnosis).

So where is the intelligent debate from our national political parties - Prime Minister Brown was going to have a massive consultation (predestined to pointlessly reclassify a couple of relatively harmless drugs back to class B in order to look tough on crime), it's all gone quiet after a bunch cabinet and shadow cabinet ministers confessed to using drugs but "regretted it" and preaching that just because they've tried it and got away with it and didn't do them any harm, they are terrible nasty illegal things and if you get caught you should rightly be imprisoned.

Liberal Democrat drug policy is hidden in the online equivilent to the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard', and ammounts to a couple of pages of double linespace A4 waffling about how decriminalisation would be nice, but not yet (just like nuclear disarmament would be nice, but not yet), and how we need some good reports to held decide policy.

....Well we've had reports, we have medical research on at least one drug (and I'm sure if MPs researchers and journalisists could be bothered) there is plenty of research on how much more harmful legal drugs like alcohol, etc are than illegal ones, so where is the intelligent discourse?

Where are our new innovative and fair policies and proposed legislation?

We had a recent party campaign on being tough on crime - but standing on the fence on social issues like drugs and the sex trade means being soft on crime - in a word the war on drugs (and failing to end it) means being soft on crime
!

ps http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2788634.ece

So I was reading the political spectrum article about UK parties in the last few years ( http://www.politicalcompass.org/extremeright ) and was surprised how far right (both socially and economically) the liberal democrats have veered - I don't think that our current economic policies are are too far to the right, but the chart seems to back up my thoughts about how disappointing our party is on the social liberalism front.

Maybe that's because I'm a hippy ( http://www.politicalcompass.org/printablegraph?ec=-2.75&soc=-4.67 ) - which is odd because I support almost all our economic policy - possibly a problem with the wording of the questions in the poll at the compass site.

Apparently the liberal democrat great and good have decided on a blanket 10 pound a flight "green tax".. wtf?!?

What an incredibly badly thought out idea. Last time I flew I paid a fiver 'airport development fee', then another tenner of airport and flight tax.
 
It's already taxed disproportionately, and of course it's no disincentive to using cheaper and/or older planes that pollute more heavily.

Why not just tax seats based on CO2 output and altitude? A modern small plane, with a economy seat configuration flying at a lower altitude does less damage than an old larger plane at a higher altitude.

The maths isn't that hard, you can also tax the fuel rather than the seats, as with cars - airlines have already taken a lot of measures to reduce fuel use (and therefore emissions), and increased tax on fuel will have a direct impact on emissions.

Charging a blanket tax gives no incentive to airlines to be more efficient and reduce emissions and no incentive to travellers to choose a flight with less emissions.

source : http://politics.guardian.co.uk/green/story/0,,2140998,00.html

I totally failed to vote for our Truro LibDem PPC, as I got the date wrong and thought it was this weekend, I was hoping to at least make it along and vote even if I didn't ask any awkward questions.

My apologies to the candidates who took the time to come around and talk about their agenda and answer my questions.