New sections on Libcon
You may have noticed links to new sections on top of all the pages today. Not all of them are active yet.
These new sub-blogs will add more content to the site without over-loading the front page. Different content for different audiences, etc etc.
So you may see some technical errors and changes in the meantime. Please drop me a line via the Contact page if you spot anything.
With the election coming up – political coverage on LC will obviously be ramped up quite a bit. If you’d like to contribute, please do get in touch.
Penalised for being young, we have every right to feel apathetic
Somewhere in all the fuss and rigmarole of the launch of the central party tour buses, the government has just rushed through a bill called the Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) Order 2010.
No, it hasn’t made the headlines, and probably wouldn’t have done so even if it weren’t Election Announcement Week, because it’s a very, very boring bill. I know, because I’ve just read it.
In between interminable sub-clauses concerning what types of building may or may not be used to store maggot-infested meat is a slippery little snippet of legislation creating a new dwelling category, ‘Houses with Multiple Occupants’
Which means that any three or more unrelated adults living together now constitute a legally separate form of household, requiring separate planning permission and separate housing administration.
Sounds like an everyday piece of wearisome local-government wrangling, but let’s be paranoid for a second and ask ourselves: who is this set to target?
continue reading… »
Tesco rejects Tory National Insurance plans
The country’s largest private employer and largest National Insurance contributor has rejected the Conservative campaign over National Insurance contributions.
The Times reports that a senior Tesco executive said the supermarket chain would not oppose “whatever measures are considered right” to put the public finances back in good order.
David Potts, retail and logistics director and a Tesco board member, said:
Clearly we have all got a responsibility to make sure that the nation emerges in good health from the world recession. We have got to support whatever measures are considered to be right. I think people recognise there’s a big job to do to get the books balanced.
Conservatives plans opposing National Insurance rises would make it more difficult to reduce national debt.
Many Conservatives have instead touted increasing VAT, which would disproportionately hit poorer households.
UKIP local chair fired for making sex & torture films
Poor Rob Ager. He tried so hard to put “intelligent material” into his film scripts and what does he get?
Suspension, that’s what. According to the Telegraph today:
Rob Ager was chairman of UKIP’s Liverpool branch until party chiefs found out about his films, which include scenes of bondage, incarceration and flagellation.
Who said UKIP politicians were boring? Here are some of his big hits:
One of Mr Ager’s films, called The Sex Game, features a half-naked man being whipped and abused by a “dominatrix”.
Another, called The Victim, features what Mr Ager describes as “a duo of deranged sadists” who capture a man at random so that he can be “tortured and eventually killed”.
But that isn’t the best bit.
Until he was warned off doing so by party officials, some of his films also contained plugs for UKIP in the closing credits.
Now we know why the UKIP vote was expanding with certain parts of the population.
Mr Ager told the Telegraph: “My material is pretty tame. I put a lot of intelligent material into the scripts.”
It’s political correctness gone mad!
Hat tip @Jessica_Asato
‘Big society’: not cohesive Conservatism
Contemporary British politicians rarely adhere to any cohesive set of ideas, yet for some reason feel compelled to pretend that they do. And if their ostensible philosophy can be condensed into a two-word soundbite for the benefit of headline writers, so much the better.
Remember Blair’s ‘stakeholder society’ stance, circa 1995? The concept did not entail much by way of concrete measures, but the accompanying rhetoric spoke warmly of social inclusion, trust, co-operation, long-termism, equality of opportunity, participation, active citizenship, and rights and responsibilities.
Thus properly social democratic concern over Britain’s unequal distribution of wealth, income and power could be neatly skirted around for the duration of a three-month touchy-feely gabfest, after which the prime minister in waiting dropped all mention of the term for no apparent reason.
I cannot help detecting a similar lack of substance in David Cameron’s claim to stand for a ‘big society’, which has been a theme repeated in several recent speeches.
continue reading… »
Tories get excited about ‘air superiority’ against Labour
I’m struggling to see any sense at all in some over-excited Tory Boys at campaign HQ boasting to The Times about establishing “air superiority” in the campaign over Labour.
“We’ve got more executive jets than you” is their rather testosterone-fuelled boast, contrasting their fancy campaign toys with Gordon Brown’s plan to let the train mostly take the strain.
David Cameron’s campaign will exploit “air superiority” over Gordon Brown, as the Tories use their cash advantage to leave Labour grounded … With Labour compelled to make a virtue out of the necessity imposed by their relative poverty, the Conservatives said the party had not leased a single aircraft but had booked a number of different ones … It will be Mr Cameron’s use of executive jets that is likely to become a symbol of the campaigns’ contrasting styles, however.
Firstly, I am sure their candidate Rory Stewart would caution the Tories that you can’t win a war from 20,000 feet; still less a General Election. Despite the Tories’ reticience to roll back Labour’s popular top rate tax hike, they have probably got a fair share of the executive jet owning classes.
continue reading… »
We’re planning a Flashmob for Cameron
Dear Dave,
We know this is tough for you. Tony had it so easy. All he had to do was repeal Section 28, allow gay adoption and appoint the first openly gay cabinet ministers and everyone thought New Labour was god’s gift to gay rights.
You’ve not only had to overcome your party’s dodgy record, you’ve also struggled personally with the prejudices that made you vote in a pretty anti-gay way before you became leader. So big up for everything you’ve done so far to overcome homophobia in yourself and in your party.
But Chris Grayling and Berkshire B&B-gate really does make us doubt your homophile credentials. His comments were more stupid than offensive – surely he can tell the difference between inviting someone into your home and providing a commercial service?
continue reading… »
Why vote? No point for most voters
Assertion: Turnout is affected by the likelihood your vote will make a difference and the amount of campaigning the parties are doing in the area.
In areas that are considered to be “safe”, a) voters are less likely to be interested and b) parties are less likely to run competetive campaigns, targetting resources and activists on marginal seats they may gain or lose.
Electoral Reform Society: Election already over in nearly 400 seats:
The Society has listed 382 seats which are ‘Super Safe’ in that they will not change hands even with a landslide on any conceivable scale. The Society points out, however, that there are many more seats where the outcome is a very safe bet, even if an upset is not beyond probability.
It is my belief that turnout is likely to go up, overall, in this election as it’s the first election since 1992 where the overall result is not a foregone conclusion.
But for residents of 382 seats out of 650, the local result is already a foregone conclusion. There’s a spreadsheet on the site to download; if you live in one of the seats listed, and you’re considering not voting, make sure you’re registered to vote. Go to the polling station.
Don’t put an X in the box.
Write “No Safe Seats; make my vote count” on the ballot paper.
Why should you do this? Because at an election, the returning officer must get the agreement of a representative of each candidate before a ballot can be rejected. Your already selected future MP will get to know how frustrated you are.
Prediction: after the election, if it’s as close as it is now, a large number of Conservatives will complain that they were robbed and that Labour got more seats than they deserved, or words to that effect; you already see this with the “we won the votes in England” meme.
They will, of course, completely ignore that the Lib Dems and Greens barely scraped the number of seats they deserve. What they don’t take into account is that the ‘safe’ Labour seats are very very safe.
Turnout is incredibly low in many of them; that doesn’t necessarily indicate disaffection, it just indicates that there’s no point in going to the polling station when you know the MPs won already. Labour seats see a much stronger falloff in turnout than Conservative seats, Lib Dem seats are in the middle.
The Conservative party says they like the voting system as is, rotten boroughs, safe seats, differential turnout and all.
It’s a damn shame that they’ve never bothered to try and understand it.
——
crossposted from my personal journal
Labour abandons plans to ditch FPTP voting
The Indy reports:
Moves to stage a referendum on scrapping the first-past-the-post electoral system have been abandoned as the parties wrangle over legislation to be rushed into law ahead of the general election.
The Government has also dropped proposals to phase out the right of hereditary peers to sit in the House of Lords.
…
The Government yesterday said it had given up hope of pressing ahead with measures to hold a referendum on whether to move from “first-past-the-post” to the “alternative vote” system under which voters list candidates in their order of preference. Tory frontbenchers in the Lords had criticised the plans, set out in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill.
It was always going to be too good to be true wasn’t it.
According to Vote for a Change, Conservatives were reported to have refused offers of a sunset clause, and were prepared to adopt a ‘scorched earth policy’ vetoing the whole CRAG bill if the referendum wasn’t dropped.
Willie Sullivan, head of the Vote for a Change campaign said in a statement last night: “In Wash Up and armed with a veto not granted them by any voter, the Conservatives have killed reform of the voting system and reform of the House of Lords. Cameron’s message is clear. And it isn’t change.”
Amnesty and defensive jihad
I have been away in Angola for the last couple of months and out of email contact, but there has been a recent exchange of letters between Claudio Cordone of Amnesty and Amrita Chhachhi, Sara Hossain and Sunila Abeysekera which is worth reading.
continue reading… »
You can read articles through the front page, via Twitter or RSS feed. You can also get them by email and through our Facebook group.
» The real agenda behind Telegraph’s abortion investigation
» How Scotland Yard monitors prying bloggers and journalists
» When disabled people want to work – employers can hold the back
» Revealed: the reality behind Workfare and why it doesn’t work
» Job snob? No, I’ve got the T-shirt
» Why country-by-country reporting matters to our wellbeing
» If Unions want to become stronger, they need to modernise
» Why work “reforms” in Spain are a warning for workers across Europe
» Five things you need to know about the NHS bill
» Bigger. Fatter. Gypsier. More Racist.
» Laziness levels in Britain getting lazier, wails government
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