LibDem Blogs - Archived!

The tax system in the United Kingdom of today is one that works. It works for the government where taxes can be raised without anyone noticing, it works for the civil service where new jobs in admin and audit can always be guaranteed, and it works for the accountants who we pay to see how much we can gain from the government. Shame about its impact on both citizens and businesses, both of whom pay vast amounts of tax for the priviledge of getting some of it ...

BBC NEWS | Election 2005 | Weblog: "A tip from a colleague for getting rid of Labour canvassers. Just tell them: 'I will give you my vote because I so admire Tony Blair's stand on Iraq.' Evidently they back away in confusion, unwilling to offend the nutter. " - Mark Mardell

Things are getting worse for UKIP. Having lost Robert Kilroy-Silk to Veritarse, the party has now lost another celebrity supporter, Joan Collins, who's defected to the Tories. Collins shares with Kilroy-Silk the distinction of being a committed Eurosceptic with a home in continental Europe. UKIP must be praying it does not lose its one remaining celebrity. The party has recruited as one of its

Conservatives are employing immigrants for £4/hr to distribute leaflets down South. Current minimum wage is £4.85. News

Husband and wife team from the looks of thing. One of 159 parties standing in England, apparently... The Electoral Commission : Regulatory issues : Political parties : Registers : Register of political parties

As the nominations close, Skipton's 3 major party candidates and UKIP is joined by Robert Leakey for the Virtue Currency Cognitive Appraisal Party. Must find out more about them... BBC NEWS | Election 2005 | Seat-by-seat | Skipton & Ripon

English Local Government Minister, Nick Raynsford, cannot be very popular with the Wales Labour Party. That is because his intervention on Council Tax yesterday has undermined their entire General Election campaign. Until now the Labour position on rebanding in Wales was quite straightforward. They argued that it was necessary, that it was fiscally neutral and that responsibility for the subsequent Council tax bills rested entirely with local Government. Admittedly, they floundered a bit in places like Cardiff where two thirds of householders face increased payments of £100 plus, despite the fact that the local authority has cut the Council Tax, ...

There is a good essay on this subject by Dolan Cummings on the Spiked website: Fifteen years ago, the term "antisocial behaviour" was barely in use. Through the 1990s the term grew in currency, as the perception increased that community was breaking down and that people's behaviour, in particular young people's behaviour, was deteriorating. Concerns about social problems increasingly became focused on individual behaviour rather than the economic or structural factors that had hitherto dominated politics.And: A political approach based on fear and distrust, which encourages the belief that every minor irritation is the tip of an iceberg, is never ...

I have added a new link to the "Lib Dem blogs" on the right: Taken Liberally.

Why is it that Fleet Street stands on a soapbox and makes authoritative pronouncements on politics for three and a half years and then falls obediently into line at election time? The Mirror, for example, was a fierce opponent of the war, running a daily 'WMD-ometer', accompanied by 'off-message' political comment on an almost daily basis. Now it is toadying up to Labour like there'd never been anything wrong... And as for the Sun with it's 'red smoke' stunt; well, they're always on the winning side because they're allowed to change sides whenever it suits them. With ...

So the Tories' big story of the day was (surprise surprise) another opportunist tax cut - this time on stamp duty. Now tell me, what's more important? University education? Care for the elderly? Or 1% off for housebuyers? And they still haven't explained how they can afford tax cuts anyway. For those who don't remember the eighties: crumbling schools, long hospital waiting lists and more unemployement was what happened last time. Oh yes, and a sort of smoke and mirrors trick where you cut income tax, and then increase VAT instead as I recall. There's no such thing as a ...

Interesting video report into the phenomenon of political blogging on the BBC news site features the new 'talking blog' from Sandra Gidley! Her latest posting involves singing but the BBC have wisely spared us that!

(to tune of drunken sailor) Wave to them sweetly and blow them kisses...... They absolutely hate it!

This blog has recently been named blog of the day in the Evening Standard (Winnie the Pooh take a bow) and this morning I did a pre-record for the Politics Show (or was it Daily Politics?) - all good fun.

I popped over to the Environment Centre on the Rye to hear a presentation on Parents as First Teachers. This is an organisation dedicated to helping parents interact with their children in a more positve way, in order to promote child development. This is an area that Frances Alexander, our doughty Party President, has been particularly enthusiastic about. A word about Frances. As the ex-Mayor, she is, like Maurice Oram, a fixture in the local community, being the governor of several local schools (she is an ex-teacher herself) and active in support of the Environment Centre, amongst a long list ...

If we can get the government to move by losing a legal case, I just wonder what we could achieve if we won a legal case. Clearly the Judge was uncomfortable with what was such a hot potato. The issue remains, however, that there are things that the government can do that will cut postal vote fraud. The ball is in their court.

UKIP is running 488 candidates in this general election. Or is it? One UKIP candidate in the north-west of England is standing in eight seats simultaneously. He has been nominated in Ashton-under-Lyne, Crosby, Heywood and Middleton, Hyndburn, Manchester Central, Rochdale, Stalybridge and Hyde, and Wigan. Dr John Whittaker, an MEP and originally the UKIP candidate only in Wigan,

Google have now released (in Beta) some features that were only avaliable in the States. Maps, which load near by cells in cache to speed up draging. Local, which is a bit like Yell and SMS, which lets you text google, and get directions, phone numbers, froggle prices or google search snippets.For those who are worried about pub quizes, I've so far found it too slow. My only problem with Maps, is that they claim to get from my Mums to mine, you can do a U-turn on Castle Gate, which anyone in Lincoln knows is impossible.

Exactly fourteen days to go until election day. We are now at the halfway point in the election campaign. Things are going well. We are making inroads across the board and in the national campaign, our positive message is being well received. Our policies on abolishing the council tax, on removing tuition and top-up fees due to students, even on increasing the top rate of tax for those earning £100,000 or more to 50%- all these have gone down well. Even more, people are responding to the principles that underlie these policies. The need for greater accountability, so that Parliament ...

Yes, frequently, but it didn't make me a socialist... Unlike the elderly gentleman that myself and the eminent PPC for Bolton NE had a brief and informative discussion with last night on the doorstep. After a discussion of how the collapse of Soviet Communism was the fault of the US, we agreed that we were both exceedingly principled but would sadly have to agree to differ. His wife, incidently, was considering voting Lib Dem. A very interesting area generally with numerous people who seemed up for a debate about something or other on the doorstep be it the local council, ...

Hustings time. Always well attended but usually by the party faithful and a selection of churchgoers. They vary a lot but usually there are a lot of questions on "personal conscience" issues such as abortion, euthanasia, section 28, stem cells etc. Was surprised to find that this was not the case this time and questions were more political. I suspect nearly all members of the audience had thought about their voting intention before entering and few were swayed in a different direction but I was intrigued by the gentleman at the end who asked me why on earth I was ...