http://liberalconspiracy.org creating a new liberal-left force Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:00:40 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Lurch, according to my dictionary, is an archaic or dialect intransitive verb, which means ‘to prowl or steal about suspiciously’. Seemingly its sole use in twenty-first century English is to provide Tories with an all-purpose pejorative designation for any identifiable outbreak of milquetoast social democracy inside the Labour Party. Labour, you ... http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/03/11/labour-lurching-towards-where-it-always-has-been/ Thanks to our friends at Political Scrapbook for this: With more than 39,000 views, David Cameron’s airbrush hairbrush moment is the 3rd most viewed clip on YouTube. And that’s internationally – not just in Europe or the UK. http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/03/11/watch-cameron-video-hit-on-youtube/ This originally appeared on 'Though Cowards Flinch', here and here It has come to our attention that the magazine ‘Total Politics’ is planning to publish an interview with Nick Griffin, the racist leader of the British National Party. Yesterday, we made an initial call to bloggers to consider a boycott of this ... http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/03/11/call-to-boycott-total-politics-blog-awards/ Bad business: "Gallup's annual update on Americans' attitudes toward the environment shows a public that over the last two years has become less worried about the threat of global warming, less convinced that its effects are already happening, and more likely to believe that scientists themselves are uncertain about its occurrence. ... http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/03/11/half-of-americans-think-global-warming-exaggerated/ Fraser Nelson previews The Spectator's interview with Nick Clegg, in which the LibDem leader has "put his heart into showing his hidden Tory side" according to the Speccy editor, who awards him a blue rose in noting his bid for a heir to Thatcher accolade. It sounds as though it could ... http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/03/11/clegg-praises-thatcher-calls-for-more-savage-cuts/ A letter in the Guardian, co-ordinated by Colin Burgon MP, calls for a second fiscal stimulus to boost the economy: The Conservative party's calls for immediate cuts to the economy have been met by a growing chorus of criticism, warning that this risks sending the economy back into recession (Report, 8 ... http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/03/11/calls-for-second-fiscal-stimulus-to-economy/ When the Metropolitan Police shot the innocent Jean Charles de Menezes in the head, seven times, we didn’t get the truth. We got anonymous sources briefing the media that de Menezes had run away from police, that he’d leaped the barriers at Stockwell tube, that he’d been wearing a heavy ... http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/03/11/how-a-stupid-row-about-facebook-distracts-from-police-failure/ Since 1948, Britain has supported the idea that state pensions, health care, education and other public services are best provided by society as whole. But this idea is now under threat. A coalition of campaigning groups, including the British Medical Association, trade unions and community groups, are organising a demonstration ... http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/03/11/demo-to-defend-welfare-state/ Guest post by Giles Wilkes Given there is no sign at all that the Conservative’s disastrous 2010 campaign is likely to improve, this question of the economy’s performance with a minority government will continue. A note from CitiGroup puts the case for the prosecution: There is no consensus across the parties on fiscal ... http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/03/10/hung-parliament-could-sort-out-public-finances/ Republicanism, communitarianism, John Lewis, EasyCouncils, co-operatives, mutuals, the ethic of engagement, the reinvention of the firm, motivation and productivity in employee ownership and a market economy based on common ownership. Suggestive of the fact that from both the left and right a convergence will soon take place that seeks to ... http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/03/10/theses-on-progressive-conservatism/ Has somebody gone and invented time travel, and the story broke on a day when I was just too hungover to listen to the Today Programme? Or could it be that Peter Mandelson is secretly a Time Lord? They are supposed to look like human beings, after all. I only ask ... http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/03/10/back-to-the-1970s-with-william-hague/ Here's what the Tories say: "We want to see a transformation in the role of community groups, social enterprises and the voluntary sector to help build a stronger society for all of us. We would enhance the role played by charities, voluntary organisations and social enterprises in tackling the problems facing our ... http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/03/10/tories-slash-funding-for-local-charities/ How a group of laid off workers took over an uninhabited island and began their protest. When so-called "reality TV" programmes started mushrooming up one after the other, many commented on the fact that the only "real" thing about them was in the name. And yet, as they quickly saturated television, their ... http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/03/10/redundancy-island/ Tomorrow, Amnesty International holds a panel discussion on the impact of religious fundamentalism on gay and women's rights. The speakers are playwrights Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti and Jo Clifford, and artist Sarah Maple. I spoke briefly to Jo and Sarah about their experiences: Keen churchgoer Jo Clifford knows exactly what it is ... http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/03/10/god-women-and-pigs/ Guest post by Jennifer O'Mahony On March 1st in France, immigrants were encouraged to stay at home, protest, and spend nothing as a nationwide protest against the country's latent problems with immigration and national identity. Peggy Derder, Nadir Dendoune and Nadia Lamarkbi, three French professionals in their thirties, hit upon the idea ... http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/03/10/the-day-without-immigrants/ India's Upper House voted on Tuesday by 186-1 for the Women's Reservation Bill, which would see one-third of the seats in the Lok Sabha (India's House of Commons) reserved for women for a period of 15 years. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said: 'This is a momentous development in the long journey of ... http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/03/10/india-backs-quotas-for-women-mps/ Campaigning group Power2010 has announced plans to target those MPs who have consistently opposed cleaning up and reforming our political system. In their bid to rid Parliament of anti-reform MPs, the grassroots campaign is drawing up a list of culprits from all major parties wanted for “crimes against democracy” and from ... http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/03/10/power-2010-target-anti-reform-mps/ A new report by the TUC, which is published today to coincide with the start of its annual Women's Conference, indicates that women are likely to bear the brunt of any job losses resulting from early cuts in public services. The report, Women and the Recession – One Year On, warns ... http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/03/10/tuc-women-will-be-hit-hardest-by-public-sector-cuts/ Guest post by Richard blogger Andrew Lansley has recently written about the main Conservative health policies. He justifies his policy to privatise parts of the NHS using the following statement about productivity: "we can not go on seeing productivity fall in our public services, just as it rises in the private sector" But ... http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/03/10/nhs-more-productive-than-private-healthcare/ Youth unemployment data across the EU suggest that countries with more developed apprenticeship policies have minimised the worst effects of the downturn. In Britain, 17.9% of those below the age of 25 are unemployed. True, some countries are faring even worse. The percentage is 21.5 per cent in Ireland while, in ... http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/03/09/how-apprenticeships-cut-youth-unemployment/ The editor of Conservative Home, Tim Montgomerie, is, I understand from the Financial Times, a “committed Christian”. He is presumably familiar with the way in which the parable of the Good Samaritan warns us away from racist stereotyping, and perhaps also of the anti-racist message in the episode of the moneychangers ... http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/03/09/so-much-for-compassionate-conservatism/ I’m all for the coinage of snazzy neologisms, and I have never been big on political correctness.  But premising an argument for the intellectual superiority of conservatism on the contention that anybody not blinded by the right is perforce a ‘libtard’ seems to sink the underlying contention straight away. Yet such ... http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/03/09/libtard-conspiracy-reply-to-james-delingpole/ Guest post by Adam Ramsay Last week, around 7000 students voted in their union elections at Southampton. This broke the UK student union turnout record set at Edinburgh last year. Not to be outdone, Edinburgh students came back on Thursday night, and re-broke the record. Around 7,200 cast ballots – four ... http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/03/09/student-activism-growing/ He is the leading advocate of the British Tea Party vanguard, yet Daniel Hannan MEP may be slipping sensibly down the Palin-o-Meter scale this morning. Hannan makes a series of partisan points in his paean of praise to Eric Pickles, but he also offers a rare acknowledgement from the right that ... http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/03/09/hannan-most-people-disagree-with-me-on-tax/ Both the 'Hope not Hate' campaign and the 'Nothing British' campaign aim to defeat the British National Party. Hope not Hate draws on the leftie tradition of mobilising opponents to fascism, and protesting wherever fascists try to march, inspired by the 'Battle of Cable Street' in the 1930s. ... http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/03/09/beat-the-bnp-help-their-supporters/