9 posts tagged “politics”

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).

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.

..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.

The MOD is planning to use PFI to privatise some areas of Search & Rescue, apparently because our current Sea Kings are getting a bit old. Hmm... isn't this the same MOD that's blown 4 Billion on two new Giant Aircraft Carriers, but failed to buy the new helicopters required for current campaigns, and er.. search and rescue.

Cornwall County Council is totally against the idea - not surprising given that Falmouth is the vanguard for the atlantic when it comes to shipping problems.

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!

Write to your MP, sign the petition, blog about, join the Facebook group, write to the press.

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.