17 posts tagged “liberal democrats”

The last question of the Q&A was an amalgam of 3 questions emailed in on drugs, mine(with a typo introduced) and two others on a similar theme - i.e. prohibition, crime and prescribing heroin to addicts.

And then after merging the 3 questions together they talked about addiction for a couple of minutes, and the need for more evidence before making diamorphine available by prescription.. for a handful of addicts.. cost 15 grand a year (but only because we have a monopoly supplier that charges 7 times more than the dutch pay).

Nobody talked much at all about how prohibition was causing problems, only the lady from the Prison Reform Trust mentioned the problem of criminalisation, and the fact that most addicts turned to drugs because they had other problems - essentially the drug addiction was the symptom of their problems rather than the cause, and how criminalisation makes that worse rather than better.

All in all a very very disappointing response, totally ignoring the 2 questions that asked directly about prohibition and decriminalisation, and Brian injecting random punctuation into my question.

Thanks to the amazing Ryan Cullen for leading me to it, answering my bitching about how hard it is to find any specific piece of information about what actually happened at conference.

.. so how do I find out if I got an answer?

I can't find video, let alone transcript on the Crime Q&A on Monday morning, only 4 hour long broadcasts from BBC parliament that may or may not include the Q&A I'm looking for (which I can't even find a time for beyond "monday morning", let alone the location).

The alternative to 4 hour long BBC videos is wading through dozens of unlabelled 20 minute segments on ustream.. no wonder most of the videos there have less than a dozen views.

This looks like a repeat of last year - if you want to know want to know anything beyond the headlines that the press and bloggers care to share you have to pay out hundreds of quid and waste a week of holiday time away from wife and kids. *sigh*

And this is after a mailshot saying that it was opening up to people who couldn't attend and invited questions - what a half hearted effort.

WTF aren't all the Q&A panels etc transcripted and published on the lib dem website - no wonder the press doesn't go beyond soundbites like Vince Cable's mansion tax and Nick Clegg unilaterally removing a manifesto promise on tuition fees for universities - you can't bloody well find any useful detail or information anywhere.

Sometimes it feels like the name of our party is just a name, as meaningless or even misleading as when East Germany was called "German Democratic Republic"!

If only Chris Huhne and Nick Clegg had the guts to break the westminster taboo and making this an issue.

"adults should be free to make lifestyle decisions without the intervention of the state", it's hardly contreversial anymore if the Guardian to The Economist, as well as more than 50% of the public support the end of drug prohibition.

Really - Is "Liberal Democrats" just a name or is it a statement of our principles?

From a recent party mailing :

Monday 21st September (morning) - Crime Policy: Panel including Chris Huhne MP (Shadow Home Secretary), Jan Berry (Independent Reducing Bureaucracy Advocate), Juliet Lyon (Director, Prison Reform Trust) and Professor Larry Sherman (Wolfson Professor of Criminology, University of Cambridge)

Apparently I can ask a question even if I'm not present, so I thought why spend time working on a good question on our drug policy and have it be ignored, if I can get some other names and craft a better set of questions backed by a group of like-minded members?

I'd basically like to point out that despite the soundbites about 'wake up calls' from party leaders and spokespeople each time a report comes out, none of them have spoken out or even bothered to mention existing party policy from nearly half a decade ago, let alone revisit it - so surely the time has come to put together a working group to update our drug policy with the new information available now, from Transform's reports, to the successes and problems of decriminalisation in Portugal.

It's really time for the 3rd party to stand out from Labour and Conservatives and bite the bullet on an issue that the westminster bubble finds taboo, and be.. well.. Liberal.

It looks to me that the Lib Dems are being left behind by the Tories and Labour when it comes to new technology.

As far as I can see, nobody at Cowley Street or the Shadow Cabinet. even a junior minister has any knowledge, remit or portfolio for Information and Communication, while even labour has Lord Carter of Barnes, as the Communications Minister.

Lynne Featherstone now has a job championing e-campaigning, but nobody is doing an iota about technology policy - try getting a policy from any MP on any loosely technical subject and with the honorable exception of John Pugh MP, few of them will know anything about the Internet beyond that 'facebook is popular, and I click the little blue icon to get the internet'.

Something is very wrong indeed when how to use technology to win some council seats or discuss speed limits in some village in somerset, has a load of priority and publicity, but how to turn around public sector waste and failure on IT projects and spending, or how we should handle the problems of governance of nominet and the UK TLD, or how we should be shaping the future of communications and technology through groups like BSI, ICANN and ITU or the UN are unmentioned, unheard of and those in charge of the party and policy are utterly clueless about them.

This week both the Tories and Labour have come out with Policies and Reports, The Lib Dems have done zip, nada, zilch in the last decade in this area and our new president with all her talk of reform and modernity hasn't made a sound on the subject.

Colour me very unimpressed.

I get mailshots asking me to write software for free to help campaigners - I don't see many other professions providing pretty expensive services for free, and certainly not when they have absolutely zero representation or input in policy!

I already commit enough time writing open source software that I'll actually use, I'd even consider writing code for worthwhile projects like MySociety, but Cowley Street is happy to shell out a fortune for expensive marketing experts and people to cold call and ask for yet more cash again for a bunch of faceless councillors I never hear from... *sigh*

W T F ? Seriously! What F**king gives here ?

Cold calls are viewed as nuisence calls by almost everybody, automated (i.e. wardialling) calls with a recorded message have been sensibly outlawed in the US and are the one of the biggest causes of complaints to OFCOM because they are notoriously unreliable, as well as unwelcome, silent calls or pre-recorded messages are even more unwelcome than zealous party activists.

I recently got a phone call from Cowley St asking for a donation to help fund this stupid idea, except of course they couldn't tell me what they planned to spend the money on.

That's one of the really galling things about being a party member, you don't get any input on campaigning, and if you want to do or say anything it's always the same response : "here deliver these leaflets (that people will throw in the recycling unread)" or "if it matters to you come to conference, and put forward a motion", those two things seem to be the answer to everything.

All I asked for is some accountability on campaign spending before I hand over some cash, in this case I'm pretty confident giving these people money would do more harm than good!

How many scientific reports do we need before we can have the "science based" policy that Nick Clegg says we should have ?

Back on the 31st of July the Commons Science Select Committee released their recomended rating system as part of their report on drugs (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/31_07_06_drugsreport.pdf).

Anything from our front bench..? No - Just Nick Clegg giving us more "we need more science" hot air and dithering.

Back in March Sir Menzie Campbell claimed that the report was "a wake-up call. Our current policies are clearly not working. We need a non-partisan debate about the way forward." that was when they were discussing the initial findings

So has the front bench woken up ?

It's been, what 4 or 5 years since the last drafting of party policy on drugs, how many reports from scientists, doctors and MPs have we had in that time ? 6, 7, 8 ?

So where is this debate ? None of the front bench are prepared to stick their neck out, even our "radical" new leader is solumnly silent or tries to avoid the subject - Jock barely getting a sentance from him on the subject in the blogger interview with him, and that was just hot air.

Both Nick Clegg and Menzies Campbell have had ample opportunities to make an issue of this and really show the failings of Tory and Labour party policies, but have failed - when Brian Paddick spoke out on the subject, Nick Clegg was quick to call his sensible and well researched suggestions "too radical" - which is crazy and backward, it was exactly what Nick and the shadow justice minister / home secretary should have been pushing.

It's crazy that a supposedly Liberal party is taking an attitude of "see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing, do nothing" on what is probably the largest social problem in the western world of the late 20th and early 21st century.

I know there are some illiberal lib dems who oppose sensible drug legalisation, but we are a liberal party and proclaim to base policies on common sense, freedom, justice and in this case "science", so WTF is going on ?

Apparently the Home Secretary isn't being Tough On Drugs enough for Tom Brake (LD MP for Wallington), so he sent a letter questioning why it's legal for shops to sell hookah pipes (which apparently can only be used for drugs like opium or skunk, and would be impossible to use, say cherry flavour or turkish tobacco in)..... because we need MORE LAWS CRIMINALISING SOFT DRUGS!!! WILL NOBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN???! .. sorry.

Cllr Jayne McCoy is organising a protest outside the shop and calling for parents ( WILL NOBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN???!... ahem) to come and make themselves heard. Because somebodies child could buy a hemp tote bag or sandals, or a joss stick stand or some oversizzed Rizzlas or THE HORROR a T-Shirt with a Cannabis Sattiva leaf on it, or worse SOME KIND OF SICK JUNKIE HUMOUR on it.

In response to  Lynne Featherstone's piece at libdemvoice and the comments there.

From what I’ve seen of the comments everybody responding is a lib dem. (I’ve voted lib dem, paid my membership, contributed towards leadership campaigns, set up mailing lists, and tried to kickstart technical stuff, membership no 82***91 FYI)

I think it’s fair to say that there is nowhere internal to discuss these things.

Conferences are once a year, expensive to get to, expensive to get into, and policies are watered down before they are even discussed there.

The manifesto discussion website resulted in 0, Nil, Zilch impact on the manifesto, and is now not even working.

In my (admittedly limited) experience local parties are frequently only interested in either very local issues (speedbumps in feock parish, somebody building 6 flats in perranwell), or the pure party politics of council elections and squabbles.

The mailing list servers are a great idea - but like many grassroots good ideas the great and good are almost entirely absent - a few MPs are on the local community party lists, but don’t expect any debate or interest regarding actual policies onthem with anybody who has any say.

The lib dem members website is next to useless - the only useful working feature is the mailing lists, and websites - but those don’t ammount to much if you’re only talking to yourself, or preaching to the choir and ignored by relevent party officials. I can’t get budgets, funding, upcoming manifesto ideas, policies, etc through it. I can’t get much information from the public website either - try finding the LD policy on drug liberalisation (no wonder Nick Clegg seems to ignore/forget it) - it’s not linked from anywhere (not even the news stories on drugs), its in the equivilent of Douglas Adam’s “locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying beware of the leopard”.

*sigh*

I feel that these blogs are the only way to shame party officials into listening or responding, what’s more, as a Voter (and I really wish more party campaigners and officials would think like a voter rather than a politico), I want a transparent and accountable party, the same as I want a transparent and accountable government. If we set the standards within the party, people can expect us to set standards in local and national government - a very positive thing.

Anyway, despite it’s many faults, I still support the party (in my voting, donations, time, opinion and blogging) - it’s the best party we have in the UK, and we have better parties here than in the US and much of europe - it’s just that like Oliver - I want more.

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.