Liberal Burblings

Archive for September, 2009

This is hilarious. In a few seconds you can see 130 photographs of Obama meeting world leaders at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He looks precisely the same in each one. Spooky!

Barack Obama’s amazingly consistent smile from Eric Spiegelman on Vimeo.

James Graham has a brain the size of Asia and spends every waking moment thinking deeply and judiciously about politics (well not really, he also thinks about comics and things). He does the thinking so we don’t have to.

I thoroughly recommend his latest offering: Our Vince: from Fred Astaire to Mr Bean? It is such a brilliant post that I struggle to find words to sufficiently describe its brilliance.

Most LibDem party members don’t have degrees in politics. They spend most of their time doing a thing called “work” and “life” and only pick up the odd mention of party conference through the filter of the media and life events like blocked drains.

Well, this year I am one of those party members so described above.

As James set outs, our economic policy has been jerked about so much recently that, on the ground, I don’t have a clue what it is. Do we want to cut taxes? Or increase taxes? Cut spending? Cut waste? Do we want a local income tax or have we finally gone all Tony Vickers and gone for Land Value taxation?

Or is our economic policy now basically: “What Vince says” ?

Friends come up to me and say “Vince Cable was great on Sky News”. “Great” I reply – “I hope he was able to give you an idea of our latest policies, because I haven’t got a clue”.

Scrap scrapping tuition fees? Don’t be silly. OK delay the scrappage a bit but it really is monstrous to ditch such a totemic policy. It removes one of the main reasons for having a Liberal Democrat party in the first place.

A mansion tax? Well, we get caned whenever we mention higher taxes for high earners. But how on earth can we seriously espouse a mansion tax when we are still, as I understand it (though I haven’t checked for Vince’s latest pronouncement on Sky News this morning) advocating local income tax? The problem with mixing the two is that one contradicts the other in terms of principle. Income tax is a progressive tax based on ability to pay (based on income). A mansion tax is a tax based on the property you happen to be fortunate enough to be living in.

I have to make a confession here. I have a problem with Land Value Taxation. I haven’t a clue what it is. Whenever I have tried to understand it, my eyes have glazed over, I have felt the will to live seeping from my being and I have been overwhelmed with the urge to slit my wrists. But I now know that is vaguely associated with the Mansion tax. Great. Except didn’t we ditch the rates system because it meant that little old ladies without much income but living in a big house got unfairly caned? Isn’t the whole point of the local income tax to get around that problem – so that you only tax those with the ability to pay at the relevant level?

And before anyone asks how we are going to get the deficit down and pay for scrapping tuition fees let me say this: sooner or later politicians are going to have to do the fair and sensible thing and stick income tax up substantially. We can’t wiggle around trying to avoid the issue any longer.

Overall, I don’t have a problem having certain policies as long as there is evidence that they have been properly thought out and discussed thoroughly at all levels, and are sufficiently sensible and within the party’s framework of beliefs to be accepted by members. I certainly don’t think the scrap scrapping tuition fees announcement meets that criteria and I don’t think the Mansion tax meets it either. We appear to have far too much leading from the front going on here. OK, Paddy did that quite a lot. But there was a point when, even with him, he looked around over his shoulder and found that he wasn’t being blindly followed any longer.

We lost our son Toby, aged 16 months, to meningitis in 1993. All a long time ago, water under the bridge etc – you might say. One way of dealing with our grief, which we have always found helpful, is to be involved with the Meningitis Research Foundation. The charity is 20 years old this year. (When I was told that, I was then dumbfounded to realise that we have been members of the charity for all but four of its years.) Each year we put ourselves on the list to speak to the media about the illness during Meningitis week which, this year, is this week – at the height of incidences of the disease through the year.

You would have thought that our “story” would become less compelling for the media as the years go by. But I was extremely impressed by the depth with which Stacey Poole of Meridian Tonight approached the subject when she visited us today. There’ll be a piece on Meridian Tonight tomorrow featuring three local families blighted by the disease. (I believe it’s tomorrow, although we have put it on series link to be on the safe side.)

You can find out about meningitis here. It continues to be a serious killer, I am afraid. There are many types of the disease and vaccinations for only a few types. The symptoms often get confused with flu and it is wrong to only rely on the “tumbler test” for rashes – that often comes too late. Awareness of all the symptoms by young parents, and also fresher students (and everyone really), is essential. All the potential symptoms to look out for are explained and listed here.

Ah! Glorious sort-of Indian summer! I could aactually just about feel some warmth from the sun today. As I read my Observer, lulled by the trickles from the Kennet and Avon Canal and seranaded by Testosterone-charged Big screen football fans, I could actually feel the pheromones surging through my veins as I read that the Cleggster has been berating the Camster for being a “con-man”. Well done Cleggie. If you want evidence for that audacious charge – read through my blog posts for the last three and a bit years. But then again, don’t. Unless you are suffering from chronic insomnia, that is.

I am not a fashion expert and I can feel a Lord Bonker’s Diary piece coming on here. But straps, braces and suspenders are designed, are they not? – tell me if I am wrong – to keep things up. Otherwise they are useless. And if such straps, braces or suspenders are themselves falling down, they can’t be doing a very good job of keeping up the thing they are employed to keep up.

So, by their falling down and needing to be hitched up again while being filmed by18 cameras, those straps of Miriam Gonzalez Durantez’s ….um……er…….lower half garment (yes – I am so much not a fashion expert that I struggle with differentiating between skirts, dresses and trousers) were something of, dare I say it, a minor bijou fashion errorette, were they not?

Ah! Glorious sort-of Indian summer! I could aactually just about feel some warmth from the sun today. As I read my Observer, lulled by the trickles from the Kennet and Avon Canal and seranaded by Testosterone-charged Big screen football fans, I could actually feel the pheromones surging through my veins as I read that the Cleggster has been berating the Camster for being a “con-man”. Well done Cleggie. If you want evidence for that audacious charge – read through my blog posts for the last three and a bit years. But then again, don’t. Unless you are suffering from chronic insomnia, that is.

I am not a fashion expert and I can feel a Lord Bonker’s Diary piece coming on here. But straps, braces and suspenders are designed, are they not? – tell me if I am wrong – to keep things up. Otherwise they are useless. And if such straps, braces or suspenders are themselves falling down, they can’t be doing a very good job of keeping up the thing they are employed to keep up.

So, by their falling down and needing to be hitched up again while being filmed by18 cameras, those straps of Miriam Gonzalez Durantez’s ….um……er…….lower half garment (yes – I am so much not a fashion expert that I struggle with differentiating between skirts, dresses and trousers) were something of, dare I say it, a minor bijou fashion errorette, were they not?

I recommend having a look at Frixo.com which provides live traffic reports. You just stick in the area or road you are interested in it brings up the trouble spots. You can get it on your mobile as well. They’ve even got a wonderful widget (below) which I have stuck in my sidebar.

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