4 posts tagged “liberalism”

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.

So Richard Brunstrom, the Chief Constable of North Wales, has published a 30 page report advocating an end to drug prohibition. It builds on his experience, the experience of medical, police, social and scientific experts including the Royal Society, yet Nick Clegg thought it went too far.

Apparently he's "not persuaded that full legalisation is the way forward but what is necessary is that a more logical and evidence-based approach is needed" - hang on! ..we've had 3 reports now suggesting a logical evidence-based, which would be legalisation and regulation.

...perhaps he's waiting for some other approach that is logical, and evidence-based but somehow maintains the status quo of prohibition - perhaps rejig the classification system a bit. God forbid the liberal democrats should fail to sit on the fence on a major issue, even if it's the definition of liberalism. Some of the commenters on the guardian article today about the party are right - the lib dems aren't a socially liberal party after all.

To be honest, with the 2nd leadership election in 2 years, a total lack of socially liberal policies and a total inability to get a social liberal and social democratic message accross to the public and media I might as well join the Green Party - they might not elected either but at least they still have their principles!

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 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.