Love and Liberty

On Sunday, Richard and I celebrated six months of marriage.




And two-hundred-and-forty-six months since we’ve been together.




We had to wait twenty years. We had to wait until the Liberal Democrats were in government.




So here’s a video we recorded on Sunday to say thank you to the only party that’s always been there for us, and always been there for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

What We Said

We got married.

It was a fantastic day.

So many wonderful people celebrating with us.

And so much food.

We’ve been together a long time, and we’ve been to a lot of weddings, and there’s never enough food.

Trust us on this. If you ever get married –

– which is fantastic, by the way –

– then feed people and they’ll be happy enough that they listen to your speeches.

But the thing about us getting married is, we had to wait a long time.

A very long time.

Twenty years.

To the day.

It wasn’t that we had very strict parents.

Well, not much.

You see, I met Alex

And I met Richard

And we fell in love.

And we got together twenty years and six months ago today.

So we got married six months ago today.

Because we’re gay.

So it was a long wait.

In fact, we had to wait

Until the Liberal Democrats were in government.

In the ’70s, when we were born, only one party said as a matter of principle that they backed gay rights.

That was the Liberals.

In the ’80s, when we were at school, one party brought in Section 28, to put bashing the gays into law.

That was the Tories.

Only one party opposed Section 28 from the first.

That was the Liberal Democrats.

Labour were in favour of it.

Until they weren’t.

But they didn’t do anything about it when they had the power to in the ’90s.

Not for ages.

In fact the bit of Britain that first got rid of it was Scotland, in the early 2000s.

When the Liberal Democrats were in coalition there.

Labour had absolute power in Westminster back then.

But they didn’t bother changing the law for the rest of us until much later.

I remember the 1992 election, when one of the three big extreme things Jeremy Paxman sneered at a party leader for was supporting gay rights.

That was Paddy Ashdown and the Liberal Democrats, and he stuck to his guns.

Actually, Paddy doesn’t need guns, he’s dangerous enough with his bare hands.

That was Paddy Ashdown.

I remember the 1997 election, when one of the three big things the Daily Telegraph said a party’s manifesto was dangerously extreme for was supporting lesbian and gay rights.

That was the Liberal Democrats.

And eventually, in 2001, one party came up with the first ever Manifesto for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People.

That was the Liberal Democrats.

And all the promises in there were in their main manifesto too.

That was the Liberal Democrats.

And they did the same thing again at the next election.

That was the Liberal Democrats.

And meanwhile the other parties either kept on hating the gays

That was the Tories.

Or just didn’t have the balls to do anything in case it put people off.

That was Labour.

Liberal Democrats proposed civil partnerships.

Labour and the Tories voted them down. They were both against it before they were for it.

And even then the Liberal Democrats wanted civil partnerships as a choice for both same-sex and mixed-sex couples.

But both Labour and the Tories have always said those can only be a second-class option for the gays.

The government spent thousands and thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money in court opposing an equal age of consent.

That was the Labour Government.

They lost. And the government spent thousands and thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money in court defending the ban on gays in the military.

That was the Labour Government.

They lost that too.

So when the Labour Party boasts that it equalised the age of consent

Remember that they only did it because they lost in court and the court made them do it.

So when the Labour Party boasts that it scrapped the ban on gays in the military

Remember that they only did it because they lost in court and the court made them do it.

The Labour Party’s boasts are like a burglar caught red-handed and then found guilty who then tries to claim credit for giving all your stolen stuff back.

When you know they’re the ones who nicked it in the first place and only the court made them do it.

And then when the Coalition was formed in 2010

Only one party leader had said he was in favour of equal marriage.

That was Nick Clegg for the Liberal Democrats.

And that year the first British party ever voted to back equal marriage.

That was the Liberal Democrats.

And eventually the Lib Dems persuaded the leader of another party.

That was David Cameron for the Tories.

And later than that, another party said there was no need to have equal marriage – but in the end came in third to back it once it was already happening.

That was the Labour Party. They were against that before they were for it, too.

And one party was badly split about it.

That was the Tories.

And a lot of their MPs said they backed equal marriage because it was a “gesture” to “detoxify their brand”.

That was the Tories.

So as it was only a gesture, we can think of a few gestures to make in return.

But this isn’t tagged as an explicit video.

And another party didn’t care, and hadn’t bothered doing it when they had absolute power for thirteen whole years, but they jumped on the bandwagon last and then tried to claim all the credit.

That was the Labour Party.

But at least this time they didn’t oppose it tooth and nail until the courts made them do it.

No. So that’s something, I suppose.

But when one party said that to make it all properly equal, let’s make the law equal marriage for trans people too, and open up civil partnerships to mixed-sex couples so everyone has more choices

That was the Liberal Democrats.

The other parties said

It’s complicated.

No thanks, you’ve had your gesture, that’s your lot.

That was Labour and the Tories.

So next time any important issue of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights comes up in Parliament…

You know what’ll happen.

Two parties will swing with the wind and just vote whichever way’s fashionable.

That will be Labour and the Tories.

Because they always have. So you’d better hope lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people happen to be popular that year.

Good luck with that.

And one party will vote for equality for everyone.

That’ll be the Liberal Democrats.

Because we always have.

Always will.

Because Liberal Democrats believe in freedom and opportunity for everyone.

Freedom for every individual

For everyone to have the liberty to live their lives as they choose

For fairness and equality before the law

I’m Alex

I’m Richard

Thank you, the Liberal Democrats, for changing the law so we could get married.

We had to wait twenty years

Some of them Tory years

Some of them Labour years

Without the Liberal Democrats in Government, we’d still be waiting.

For more about why we believe in the Liberal Democrats, take a look at Liberal Democrats Believe – a Liberal quote for every day of the election (and more)!

Labels: Conservatives, Gay, Labour, Lib Dems Pointing, Liberal Democrats, Marriage, Nick Clegg, Paddy Ashdown, Personal, Richard, Things To Remember About Labour

The BBC has once again shown its unquestionable political neutrality with tonight’s fair and balanced Question Time line-up. A BBC Spokesperson said:

‘No right-thinking person could disagree with the security industry having absolute power over every corner of our lives, so two panellists from the Snoopers’ Charter-supporting Labour Party and two from the Snoopers’ Charter-supporting Conservative Party, with UKIP for balance, reflects the views of all right-thinking people from neo-fascist to fascist. No Liberal view is possible (so we’ve refused to invite any). Any disagreement means you’re clearly a terrorist and, with our detector vans, we know where you live.’

With the biggest story of the week being the authoritarian Labour Party teaming up with the authoritarian Conservative Party to say they must go much further right – again – the BBC’s decision to exclude the Liberal Democrats from yet another Question Time beggars belief. By pretending that only the traditional party of the right, the party that’s urging them to be more right-wing, and the party that’s scaring them to death by being amazingly right-wing have anything to say about the Snoopers’ Charter they are gravely unbalanced.

This isn’t just about excluding the Liberal Democrats – again – who the BBC used to ignore because ‘They’d never get into government’ and now ignore because ‘They’re in government’. It’s about giving a completely one-sided view on major issues on which all the other parties range from deeply authoritarian to would-be totalitarian.

Labour’s former Home Secretary Alan Johnson called on Sunday for the Conservatives to reintroduce the Snoopers’ Charter with Labour support, clambering eagerly onto a soldier’s dead body to use as a platform. He is, of course, one of the guests tonight. And if you think “totalitarian” is hyperbole, he explicitly told Nick Robinson on The Andrew Marr Show that “these things are so much easier in China”. Your guess is as good as mine as to whether Mr Johnson’s eye-boggling totalitarianism is because he’s a former communist or a former associate of Mr Blair. Perhaps even his heavy-breathing desire to pry into the e-mails of every single person in the land comes from his time as a postman and a frustrated desire to open up everyone else’s post, now grown to maniacal proportions. Who can say? But whatever inspired his twisted psychological desire for control-freakery, that it’s there is a proven fact from his own mouth.

As Millennium Dome, Elephant said the other day about Mr Johnson’s disgusting opportunism in using a murdered soldier to feed his own neo-fascist wet dreams, he is not only wildly irresponsible to call for new powers before anyone’s been able to fully investigate what happened – but the security services themselves have admitted that they knew the suspects were suspicious and already had all the powers they needed to monitor them but didn’t have the person-hours to make them a priority:

“WHY, if the security services seem like they're saying that monitoring the THOUSANDS of people they ALREADY have powers to monitor is TOO DIFFICULT, WHY is the solution to monitor MILLIONS of people?!”

The Conservatives are desperate to move to the right because they’re terrified of UKIP. The Labour Party have a long and disgusting record of being far to the authoritarian right in government, and are now calling in Opposition for government to be far more illiberal still. But then, everyone should remember what the Labour Party did with thirteen years of war-mongering, evidence-sexing, amnesia-promising, freedom-crushing, LGBT-hypocrisising, rich-brownnosing, poor-taxing, crony-bribe-swallowing shameless absolute power.

Only the Liberal Democrats opposed the Snoopers’ Charter and the sticky-fingered urges of securocrats to peek into and keep every electronic communication, followed naturally by every phone call, every item of post and ultimately every telescreened bedroom in Britain. The only thing that stopped it was that Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg directly vetoed the Snoopers’ Charter. The Conservatives wanted it. The Labour Party is gagging for it. By silencing the only voice that is not identically securocrat, the BBC is not merely being ‘unfair to the Lib Dems’ but simply not doing their job for the public.


Fossilised relics of previous completely fair and balanced Question Time line-ups can be found here , here and here.

The BBC complaints form can be found here. For viewers who aren’t Daleks, if you want to complain directly to the BBC about their consistent and outrageous political bias, obviously they’re frightened of their viewers being able to get in touch, you can’t do so by e-mail – though if anyone wishes to supply me with the personal e-mails of, say, the director and producer of Question Time, the head of BBC1, the Director-General or the BBC Trust, I will very happily republish them here – and must instead jump through five pages of hoops on their website.

Labels: BBC, British Politics, Conservatives, Daleks, Labour, Meddling In Things That Are Nobody's Business But Your Own, Pictures, Questionable Time, The Golden Dozen, Things To Remember About Labour

The Labour Government eagerly joined President George W. Bush to invade Iraq. An illegal war.

The main ‘justification’ for invading Iraq was a series of lies to Parliament sexed up by the Labour Government. The Labour Party has the blood of hundreds of thousands of people on their hands. Ten years ago in March, Labour joined President Bush in invading. Ten years ago today, President Bush announced it was “Mission accomplished”. That was another lie. The Labour Party stayed the main cheerleader for the hundreds of thousands of deaths and tortures that followed.

So much for Labour’s “ethical foreign policy”. Twenty years ago, the Labour Party abandoned socialism and the Red Flag. Ten years ago, the Labour Party chose to stain the Union Flag in the blood of hundreds of thousands instead.

Who Are the “Traitors” and “Collaborators”?

The Labour Party demonised anyone who opposed the war as “traitors” and “collaborators”. The Liberal Democrats were proud to stand up for international law and do the right thing – even though at the time opposing the war hit us badly in the opinion polls.

The Labour Party still call the Liberal Democrats “traitors” and “collaborators”. Now it’s because we’re in coalition with another British political party who isn’t the Labour Party. They howl and shriek daily that trying to fix the economy after the Labour Government spent all the money and much more they didn’t have – in part by spending so many billions on an illegal war – is exactly the same as being Nazis.

The Labour Party say this because they remember what they did. And the only way they can cope with their guilt for all that death is to accuse someone else instead. But I remember what the Labour Party did, too.

• Remember – who was it who joined the coalition with President George W. Bush?
  

• Remember – who was it who led Britain into an illegal war?
  

• Remember – who was it who involved Britain in illegal torture and rendition?
  

• Remember – who was it who lied and lied and sexed up fake intelligence that weapons of mass destruction which didn’t exist could be launched in forty-five minutes?

Remember what the Labour Government actually did.

The Liberal Democrats Did the Unpopular Thing Because It Was Right

And remember what the Liberal Democrats did – we were the only party to oppose the war back when it seemed political suicide to do so.

Ming Campbell writes how Britain lost its moral authority. I remember how he was desperately ill and came out of hospital to vote against – so that every single Liberal Democrat MP voted against the war.

Andy Strange remembers the Liberal Democrats marching against the Iraq War (I remember bringing bags of sweets and feeding them to Shirley Williams and other leading Lib Dems on the front line of the long march to keep them going on a bitter day).

Caron Lindsay reports Scottish Lib Dem Leader Willie Rennie’s speech about the Iraq War.

Nick Clegg writes on the lessons of Iraq.

Labour Leaders Past and Present – Blood-stained Bullies, Cowards, Hypocrites

Brave, brave John Prescott, the Labour Party Deputy Prime Minister who screamed “traitors” and “collaborators” then and still screams “traitors” and “collaborators” now admits ten years later that the invasion of Iraq “cannot be justified”.

Lord Prescott is the authentic voice of the Labour Party. A bully. A coward. A hypocrite. A moral vacuum who stayed in power at any cost. A man who went along with President Bush in an illegal invasion, lied to support it, attacked those who were against it.

And ten years later, ten years too late, Lord Prescott admits it was all wrong. So vote Labour!

While brave, brave Ed Miliband worked for the Labour Government as a leading advisor through every second of that time and slimed his way to being a Labour MP on the back of it.

To reap the rewards of insider power and become a Labour MP, Ed Miliband supported the war to the hilt.

To become Labour Leader, Ed Miliband said seven years too late that he “considered” resigning.

Brave, brave Ed Miliband.

Things To Remember

So when the Labour Party pretend to be sweetness and light, just remember what they did with thirteen years of absolute power. Remember that war-mongering, evidence-sexing, amnesia-promising, freedom-crushing, LGBT-hypocrisising, rich-brownnosing, poor-taxing, crony-bribe-swallowing shameless Labour Government.


And remember that when the USA asked the UK’s help in arming up for a potential war on another Middle Eastern country, this part-Liberal Democrat Government said no.

The Labour Party had a choice. The Liberal Democrats had a choice. So do you.

Labels: American Politics, British Politics, Iraq, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Things To Remember About Labour

What to do on not blogging much for a few months? Follow the practice of so many worn-out artists and put together a ‘greatest hits’ package! So, below, you can find links to my best six (ish) articles of the last year on politics, Doctor Who and several other subjects. You can scroll straight down to that – but if you’re interested in Liberal Democrat blogs, I’ve also followed Jonathan Calder in developing a few ideas on how to revive the Lib Dem Blog of the Year Awards after this year’s moribund turn. I’ve even, perhaps unwisely, made a pledge…

Brighton and the BOTYs 2012

Cast your mind back, if you were there, to Lib Dem Conference in Brighton this September; if you weren’t, imagine a fluffy Liberal habitat suddenly turned into a big scary security theatre with all the unintended consequences of giving in to police accreditation. No, not all the civil liberties implications or the threat to trans people – we’d all expected those – but exactly what happened to the happy-go-lucky relaxed atmosphere and boosts to the town. Like drunken late-night walkers trying to go their usual way home encountering a wall of steel and machine-gun-wielding police officers barking at them to cross the road, pronto. Or the way that, as the main Conference Hotel was within the secure zone alongside the Conference Centre, suddenly none of the Lib Dem or media bigwigs could bring in their usual outside shags move to insert and renumber by building community relations and stimulating the local economy. For me, I found myself having to hold my tongue as Twitter joke trial-style comments ran through my head on seeing a Famous Media Git being held by armed police ahead of me. Then my shoes – with orthotic soles to help my malfunctioning feet – setting off the alarms and trying not to squeak, ‘I’m not Rosa Klebb!’

But there remained at least one little oasis of fluffitude. Bloggers and blog-readers were to be found attending this year’s Liberal Democrat Blog of the Year Awards, always a highlight of Conference. Well-deserved (if delayed) congratulations to Liberal Youth’s The Libertine and their Bears for Belarus campaign, to Lanson Boy Alex Folkes and to Mark Thompson (and commiserations, particularly, to Caron Lindsay). And a good evening was had by all that were there… It’s just that, in other aspects, this year’s evening felt rather diminished.

It wasn’t those excellent winners, nor the other excellent shortlistees, that gave me pause for thought. The element of disappointment was largely created in advance, and as a result turnout was very low by comparison to other years – not terrible, and worth having, sure, but it looked like less than half the size of previous crowds. The BOTYs have almost always been packed out before, and often in rather larger rooms, while this year the room was more empty than full. There were surely many reasons, but high among them must be the air of ill-preparedness: the late opening of nominations; the near-non-publication of shortlists; the speakers giving the awards giving the impression that they were being asked in the room itself. From the organisers out into the blogosphere and the wider Lib Dems, it was as if everyone was tired of the awards and had simply lost interest. This just isn’t sustainable. Fortunately, there are ways to get them going again.

Jonathan Calder’s Plan For Fresher BOTYs

Lib Dem blogfather Jonathan Calder, of course, beat me to writing about the problem with the BOTYs by a long stretch with his call Time to freshen up the Blog of the Year awards, although he was with the crowd in not being one of the very small crowd at this year’s BOTYs. I don’t agree with every single word – I’m not quite so worried by the declining number of active blogs as a metric, as it’s by a rather smaller share than the party’s membership – but his main thrust is persuasive.

Jonathan argues that there should be awards for Facebook and Twitter use, to reflect changing online activity. Perhaps perversely, I’m not on Facebook (being notoriously rubbish at keeping up with writing or messages, and finding my existing social networking quite enough to fall behind with) but strongly agree with him on a regular Lib Dem Facebook award category, whereas I am on Twitter (short flurries of high activity, long weeks of occasional glances) but suspect that’s not a good idea. Or, rather, that it’s a good idea but a bad practicality. In concept, Twitter use should be recognised, but in practice I don’t see how it could work, even if BOTY judges were involved for a much longer and more active period than they ever have been before.

For me, though, Jonathan’s crucial point is on the “Best Posting of the Year” Award, and what its absence this year meant for entrants. With most categories limited to particular types of blogger, as Jonathan pointed out, “then the Blog of the Year award itself is your only hope”. Like Jonathan, I’ve been nominated for that award a few times but never won it; like Jonathan, I much preferred the award for the best individual post (which I was also nominated for several times, and won last year). As far as I’m concerned, a blog should have to be bloody good to win the Blog of the Year, and it would be daunting to put yourself forward for it. In my own case, the only time I thought my blog worthy of a nomination I wasn’t shortlisted (and on one occasion that I was, I was simply embarrassed, having felt I’d had a weaker year and that much better blogs had been overlooked). But while my blog is inconsistent and often largely inactive for a month or two, I do feel proud of the odd post, and am very happy to put some of them up for consideration. And Jonathan is right that a lot of people feel the same way – not ‘Help! I have to have produced twelve months of reliable production and brilliance!’ but, ‘Phew, I may not always have kept it up, but this one was really good’. This isn’t just an award for ‘lazy’ bloggers – it’s the one everyone could have a shot at (or that critics might argue that’s most obviously about quality rather than ‘my mate’).

And it’s bizarre that, in the week that the Government announced the scrapping of GCSEs and putting every pupil’s eggs in one basket with single exams alone, the BOTYs shifted to nothing but continuous assessment with no room for one-offs. If nothing else, isn’t it easier for judges to read single nominated posts than to study a full year’s output?

I’ve also written this piece because Jonathan names and shames me:

“…the award for the best posting of the year has disappeared. This was, in many ways, this was the best category of all – in particular because every blogger had some hope of winning it. And also because, until a couple of years ago (which appears to be a developing theme in this post), Alex Wilcock encouraged members of an email [list] to which most prominent Lib Dem bloggers were subscribed to nominate their best posts of the year.

“I urge the Lib Dem Voice editors to bring this category back and use their site to encourage all of our bloggers to nominate their favourite posts. This would allow even the newest bloggers to have some involvement with the awards and make it closer to what it should be – a carnival of Liberal Democrat blogging.”

Jonathan does indeed have me bang to rights. I will, however, accept my share of the blame on condition that I can protest that some of the blame lies in the organisation. The Blog of the Year Awards are held in mid-September; in previous years, the shortlists were opened in mid-July. That’s crept later and later, until this summer the awards were thrown open on August 29th. That’s simply too late – and, for me, the biggest single reason why this year’s BOTYs were a comparative flop. Very little time for discussion amid the wider blogosphere; very short deadlines, and very little time for the judges to confer; and then no time at all for the shortlistees to have their moment in the sun.

In previous years, nominations closed at the end of August and shortlists were published in early September, giving weeks for many different blogs to get attention and celebration and, as the BOTYs are intended, to give “a fun way to celebrate the talent in the Lib Dem blogosphere, whilst introducing you to some blogs you might not have read before”. This year the shortlists were published on September 22nd – just two hours before the awards were given out. They may as well have skipped straight to the winners, for all the attention the shortlistees could get. No wonder so few people turned up. Then, after the awards, though this surely isn’t down to LDV, in previous years all the shortlistees for the main award – not just one “Blogger of the Year” – got to interview the Leader. Nick might be happier with a one-to-one, but that’s not the point; that was to engage more people, more styles, more perspectives.

My BOTYs Pledge: Start Early and I’ll Help

I’m not pointing my finger at anyone bar myself for any one particular failure this year. The whole thing looks more like a classic example of organisational inertia, probably coupled with individual exhaustion, in that I’m certain it wasn’t the fault of any one person – though some share of fault may lie with some of the LDV team leaving it to just one busy person to organise everything. Please, all of you at Lib Dem Voice, do a better, wider, earlier job next year. If none of you are going to be able to spare the time, don’t leave it ’til the last minute and produce another disappointment. What’s the point? If you need to, publish an appeal in June for people to help with the organisation and be allocated tasks come July (reader, please make a note in your diary and volunteer).

Another change I’d recommend to Lib Dem Voice is to use your extra time and extra organisers to make much better use of your BOTY judges. In his article, Jonathan explains that, having been a judge, in his year the judges were given no idea how the shortlisting process worked, agreed no criteria and, indeed, had no contact with each other, let alone discussion. Other former judges have told me that their contribution consisted only of firing numbers into the ether by way of voting, which seems to have been an uninvolving and unsatisfying experience. Surely there can be a happy medium between that and having to meet up for a banquet with wigs. If nominations go back to opening earlier, they can close earlier and give the judges at least, say, a week to have a few email exchanges on what they think of different nominations. Perhaps the Lib Dem Voice editors might each month also ask Ryan of Lib Dem Blogs Aggregated to give them a list of the latest people added to the Bloggregator so that a list of eligible “new blogs” can be published when nominations are opened, as that’s the award for which it’s most difficult to spot the potential nominees (and how about giving that category a thirteen-month span each year, from August to August, as people who start their blog while nominations are open tend to get missed out).

I’m notoriously disorganised and unable to meet deadlines, so you might think I’m calling for volunteers in the sure and certain hope that I shouldn’t be one of them. But I will make one pledge by way of help.

If Lib Dem Voice gets its act together and opens nominations at least a week before the end of July, and if they reinstate the award for the best individual post, then I will write a piece for them publicising it in the first week of August. I will pick at least a dozen articles from at least a dozen different blogs from across the year that I think are among the best and plug them in the style that I pick my own below. I will include an appeal for everyone else to come up with their own suggestions, both in the comments and by email to me. And a week before nominations are due to close, I will write another article for LDV, this time rounding up everyone else’s suggestions. Though obviously it would mean I’d be less likely to be shortlisted – gasp – it would be one way to celebrate the talent in the Lib Dem blogosphere and introduce people to more blogs.

In the last month so far, though several posts have stuck with me, the one that I’ll definitely put up for an award is, ironically, one that I’d recommend not in the best individual post category but The Andrew Reeves Award for Best use of social media/campaigning by a Liberal Democrat: Jennie Rigg’s outstanding effort in putting questions to over a hundred candidates for this year’s Liberal Democrat Federal elections. Even if LDV ignores everything I’ve written, I will be nominating Jennie.


Now on to my own choices for my own best posts from September 2011 to September 2012 – which the eagle-eyed reader will realise are all ineligible for next year’s BOTYs even if they take my advice and bring back the individual post award, so read them for fun, or for thought, but not for any awards…

Six of the Best 2011-12: Politics

Happy Birthday to the Libera-Tory Coalition?

Last week we hit the half-way point of this Parliament (fixing that was at least one piece of constitutional reform); back in May, I looked back at the first two years of the LiberaTory Coalition, and how even at its founding we expected to have a terrible time of it. I called it “the worst possible time to take power”; Vince said “It’s going to be bloody awful.” So it’s not been fun, but it’s not been a surprise.

“I am a Liberal and I am against this sort of thing” – Time To Remember What We Stand For

Rising up against Labour-style cyber-snooping powers from the Coalition – otherwise, what’s the point? There’s a big difference between having to choose painful cuts because Labour destroyed the economy, and choosing authoritarianism (which is more expensive, too). With some necessary reminders of our Liberal history.

Government Porn Filter Collapses In Security Nightmare

Few things make me more likely to despair of the Coalition than when they come up with authoritarian bollocks like Labour never lost. This summer they proved why they shouldn’t be trusted with controlling the internet: even the consultation was a disaster.

A New Purpose for Politics? Is It Bollocks

A revolt against Lib Dems who think our big idea should be Blairite micro-managing people’s lives for their own good. No, no, and no.

Never Mention “STV” Again

After the disaster of the AV referendum, to prepare for the fight on the real thing, why not champion “British Proportional Representation” and make a broad appeal beyond Lib Dem wonks?

Things To Remember About Labour

I remember so many things to dislike about the last Labour Government that it comes as a surprise how many people imagine it as some noble fantasy. Ever eager to help, I wrote five mostly short pieces on Things To Remember About Labour. I might even return to the series at some point… After all, I’ve not even written about their destroying the economy yet. Or their obeying every order from Rupert Murdoch. Or Iraq.

• Anything new the Labour Party claims they’d do if only they were in government now? It’s a great big lie. They had a booming economy and absolute power for thirteen years – so if they gave a flying fuck about it, they’d have done it.

• In thirteen years of authoritarian government, the Labour Party inflicted 4,400 new laws on the UK – more than any other government in British history.

• Labour opposed every single move towards Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender equality before they were for it.

• Labour sucked up to the super-rich, took bribes from the super-rich, and slashed taxes for the super-rich – while doubling tax on the lowest-paid.

• The Labour Government promised Lords reform, but delivered a House of Cronies stuffed with Labour appointments, and ignored House of Commons votes for an elected Upper Chamber.
  

Since then: while Lib Dems are in Coalition with the more moderate part of the Conservative Party, Labour went into coalition with the frothing far right of the Tories to be anti-Europe, just as they did over Maastricht twenty years ago, just as they did over Hong Kong, just as they did over Lords reform, and so on, and so on, shameless opportunist knee-jerk authoritarians that they are; John Kampfner, too, has noticed how Labour is to the far right of the Coalition; and Mark Pack has pointed out the biggest difference between the Coalition and the Labour Party – when the USA asked the UK’s help in arming up for a potential war on another Middle Eastern country, this government said no.

Six of the Best 2011-12: Doctor Who

DVD Detail – Doctor Who: UNIT Files Box Set

I’ve not written many DVD reviews in the last year, but this one’s a doozy. Taking on Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen in two very flawed but strangely moreish stories, complete with the deepest political analysis they’ve ever been subjected to and my own exclusive, ambitious (and absurd) photos at the original locations. KKLAK!

DVD Detail: Doctor Who – The Trial of a Time Lord: The Mysterious Planet

Now that Colin Baker’s a TV star all over again, take another look at one of his finest performances as the Doctor. It may have seemed like a trial up against Michael Jayston, but it could have been worse – it could have been Nadine Dorries…

DVD Detail: Doctor Who – Paradise Towers

Traditional Doctor Who often includes fascistic guards, killer robots and ancient evil struggling to awaken, but the brilliance of this 1987 Sylvester McCoy tale was to combine these elements not on a shiny spaceship or in a stylised English village but within an insane sit-com run by Richard Briers, clashing youth gangs against Mary Whitehouse types and bureaucracy gone mad in a run-down tower block. Result!

DVD Detail: Doctor Who – Kamelion Tales

Peter Davison’s Doctor battles Anthony Ainley’s Master in this DVD box set of two Doctor Who stories set in the gorgeous locations of a medieval castle and the island of Lanzarote. Which of the Doctor’s companions will remove the most clothes? Which of them will announce that he’s not a naughty boy, but the messiah? And will Magna Carta die in vain?

Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons

Celebrating Doctor Who novelist supreme Terrance Dicks with one of his earliest and best-loved books, introducing the Master and bringing back the Autons. And deadly daffodils.

Doctor Who and the Dæmons and Barry Letts

More Master, more Pertwee better on the page, and this time looking at Terrance’s partner in crime, the late Barry Letts and his gorgeous novelisation of the Doctor versus the Devil (or is it?). Complete with an argument about science. No, religion. No, science!

Six of the Best 2011-12: Other Reviews

The Avengers – My Wildest Dream

Marking the passing of marvellous actor Philip Madoc and brilliant director Robert Fuest, I took a look at their work together in this outstanding Avengers episode of mind-bending murder for The Manchurian Capitalist (also featuring Peter Vaughan, Edward Fox and John Savident). Not the comic-strip, billion-dollar movie The Avengers, by the way, though my next two choices are – sort of – movie crossovers…

Judge Dredd – The Complete Case Files 01

Celebrating 2000AD’s thirty-fifth birthday by going back to the start with this chunky 300+ page reprint volume, taking in the whole first year of the grim future law officer who’s still their star, Judge Dredd. I thought the movie worked, too. If you feel like picking up one of these volumes, Judge Dredd The Complete Case Files 02 and 05 are probably the best, though biased towards ‘epic’ stories.

Wholly Unavailable On DVD Batman!

Batman going all fascist at the box office this year may be true to the character, but I prefer Adam West’s camp mid-’60s TV version. Shame you can’t get it on DVD, but I took a look at its high and low points in ITV4’s constant repeat rotation. Try it today!

The Weirdstone of Brisingamen

On the publication of Boneland, Alan Garner’s return half a century later to his writing on Alderley Edge, I looked back at what his first book meant to me. Since then, I’ve been inspired to read many more books touching on the legend of King Arthur, and might even write about some of them…

Sherlock Holmes – Murder By Decree

Who couldn’t love a Sherlock Holmes–Jack the Ripper conspiracy theory mash-up? Well, that would be me. Going into just why this still critically acclaimed movie doesn’t do it for me (give me the schlockier A Study In Terror any day).

Why The Avengers Matters

Celebrating fifty years of the most Sixties show of the Sixties, not just because it was fun but because, unexpectedly, it mattered – from the day it introduced viewers to Honor Blackman as an intelligent, independent woman who flung men over her shoulders. And proving that not all the best ones are big ones.



I hope you enjoyed all of those (or at least some of them). I’d also like to thank Stephen Tall for doing a better job plugging my writing than I did. Not only did he label my Happy Birthday to the Libera-Tory Coalition? a “must-read” post, but he turned one of my comments on Lib Dem Voice into a post of his own:

The Alex Wilcock Realpolitik argument for Nick Clegg staying as Lib Dem Leader





Richard also follows on with a plea for well–thought-out blogging in Don't Dumb Down Our BOTYs!



NB Blogger, frustratingly, converted my line breaks past a certain point into simple spaces. If the formatting looks a bit dodgy, I edited the html by hand several times and it wasn’t having it. Even splitting the post in two didn’t help. Pasting in break commands everywhere, and multiples between sections, eventually stopped the last third being one giant splat of text – and though the gaps don’t look regular, though they should, now I don’t dare touch it again.

Labels: Batman, Best of Love and Liberty, Blogs, Coalition, Colin Baker, Doctor Who, Judge Dredd, Liberal Democrat Conferences, Personal, Reviews, The Avengers, The Golden Dozen, Things To Remember About Labour

The Labour Government promised Lords reform. They delivered a House of Cronies stuffed with Labour appointments, and ignored House of Commons votes to set up a fully elected Upper Chamber.

Labour got rid of most of the peers who held seats by hereditary inheritance (by an amazing coincidence, overwhelmingly Tory) but only replaced them with swathes of new Life Peers holding seats by time-serving political inheritance (by an amazing coincidence, overwhelmingly Labour).

So they replaced no democracy with no democracy, and rewards for favours to kings centuries ago with rewards for favours to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in office.

Then, five years ago today, the House of Commons voted for a wholly elected Upper Chamber (as well as backing, by a smaller majority, an 80% elected / 20% appointed Upper Chamber). The Labour Government opposed both of these votes before they took place, but I was foolish enough at the time to think that, the votes having taken place, the Labour Government would act on them. Of course, they didn’t. They flat-out refused the democratic will of the Commons to extend the democratic will of the people.

Who can explain why this anti-democratic decision was made? Except that the Labour Party made so much money by selling peerages that it would have left them many millions short had people been forced to stand for election rather than just pony up, no questions asked.

M’learned friend tells me that the Labour Party was not officially selling peerages, as the police investigation presided over by now-Lord Blair (no relation), who was then by an amazing coincidence given a peerage by the Labour Government (quite a strong relation), didn’t prove that they did. It’s merely that, as I noted yesterday, by another amazing coincidence, every single person giving Labour a million pounds got a peerage or knighthood in return.

Labour spokespeople, with no breath of shame for their lies and hypocrisy, attacked the Coalition Government for ‘creating the largest number of peers at once that the Lords have ever seen’ in the first new set of appointments after the General Election. Before taking that seriously, you should remember two facts. That the previous Labour Government, over their time in office, loaded up the Lords with by far the largest number of peers in history in order to stuff a Labour lead into the Upper Chamber… And that the majority of that ‘largest number of peers at once’ created shortly after the last election were outgoing Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s resignation honours, using his last power of patronage to fill up the unelected House with even more Labour cronies after the Labour Party had been thrown out of the elected House by the voters.

Democracy Is For Government, Not Just For Election-Time

A hundred and one years ago, the Liberal Government passed the Parliament Act, beginning the process of subjecting the Lords to democracy. Now that we’re back in government after a small interregnum, the Liberal Democrats are getting back on with it. Even though Labour are – surprise – still looking for ways to sabotage the process, along with some former Liberal leaders who’ve gone native now they have cushy jobs for life (Lord Steel, be ashamed), though by no means all.

The media coverage of Lords reform keeps stating that only the Liberal Democrats are interested in an elected Upper Chamber – as if no-one else could object to retired politicians, bribing businesspeople and never-elected bishops being able to boss all the rest of us about with no chance of us poor plebs ever getting rid of them. Of course this just assumes, probably rightly, that the Liberal Democrats mean what they say when they put something in their manifesto, and that the other two just pretend to be interested in democracy at election times but are really lying through their teeth.

So here’s something for both the Labour and Conservative Parties (and too-cosy Lib Dem peers) to remember. This is what the three main parties promised to get elected:

“Replace the House of Lords with a fully-elected second chamber with considerably fewer members than the current House.”

Liberal Democrat General Election Manifesto 2010

“We will work to build a consensus for a mainly-elected second chamber to replace the current House of Lords, recognising that an efficient and effective second chamber should play an important role in our democracy and requires both legitimacy and public confidence.”

Conservative General Election Manifesto 2010

“We will ensure that the hereditary principle is removed from the House of Lords. Further democratic reform to create a fully elected Second Chamber will then be achieved in stages. At the end of the next Parliament one third of the House of Lords will be elected; a further one third of members will be elected at the general election after that. Until the final stage, the representation of all groups should be maintained in equal proportions to now.”

Labour General Election Manifesto 2010 – which, you may have noticed, was the only one that still wanted to rig the Upper House so that, whatever the voters decided, it would still have an entrenched Labour plurality for fifteen years!

“We will establish a committee to bring forward proposals for a wholly or mainly elected upper chamber on the basis of proportional representation… In the interim, Lords appointments will be made with the objective of creating a second chamber that is reflective of the share of the vote secured by the political parties in the last general election.”

Coalition Agreement between the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats, May 2010

So to say that this is only a Liberal Democrat thing not only ignores how the whole House of Commons voted five years ago, but assumes that only Lib Dems tell the truth and that the other parties are liars.

Any Labour and Conservative politicians reading, why not prove that wrong?

Labels: British Politics, Coalition, Conservatives, Corruption, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Lords, Things To Remember About Labour

Labour sucked up to the super-rich, took bribes from the super-rich, and slashed taxes for the super-rich. While doubling tax on the lowest-paid.

Tony Blair’s Labour outspent the Tories getting elected, with the amazing coincidence that every single person giving Labour a million pounds got a peerage or knighthood in return. Labour now pretend they’d tax the rich more (see Things To Remember About Labour #1).

But they introduced their totemic socialist policy of the 50p tax rate… One month before their thirteen years’ absolute power ended. That makes the LiberaTory Coalition 22 times more socialist than the Labour Government, and counting. That’s if you’re kind, and just compare one month with 22 months that each Government has had a 50p tax rate on top earners. If you look at the proportion of the time each Government’s been in power, then Labour had a 50p tax rate for one month – 0.64% of their time in office – but not for the other 155 months. The LiberaTory Coalition has kept this rate in place for 100% of their time so far, even though when Labour introduced it was not only in an Augustinian ‘We’ll make the rich pay more, but not yet’ to come in only for the next government, but time-limited to one year. The Coalition Government has already held it for much longer even than Labour planned for them to do.

Labour Today – Still Labour Mañana

Voted out of power, with all their millions now coming from the unions rather than super-rich donors, it’s another amazing coincidence that Labour claim to be tough on the super-rich (as long as they only have to say it, not do it). If you have several millions to hand, you too can buy a Labour policy U-turn (and a peerage). Perhaps they might become more Blairite again if Tony Blair were to give them some of the twelve million pounds he doesn’t pay tax on, thanks to Labour’s lax policies on super-rich tax-dodgers?

But even now, Labour’s policy is nothing more radical than ‘Me too!’ or ‘We would have more, honest… Just try to forget than in thirteen years of absolute power, we did so much less.’

The LiberaTory Coalition is raising far more money from extra charges on bankers than Labour ever did – again, even Labour’s small charges, too little, too late, were only to last a year – but Labour still say, ‘It’s not enough! You’re wrong and evil because, er, you only get much more off the bankers than we did, and not much much more!’

Labour slashed Capital Gains Tax, so lots of the super-rich could pay a lower share that way than their cleaners did in income tax. Despite the Tories not wanting to do it, the Liberal Democrats insisted that one of the first things the LiberaTory Coalition do was to raise Capital Gains Tax so that more of the super-rich pay their fair share. And Labour says… ‘Cut it again!’ (Er, some mistake, surely?)

And while Labour doubled income tax on the lowest-paid from 10p to 20p in the pound, the LiberaTory Coalition is following the number one Liberal Democrat commitment at the last election and taking the lowest-paid out of paying tax altogether, while also giving a tax cut to low and middle-earners generally.

Bye-Bye, 50p?

I don’t know how much money the 50p rate brings in. As Duncan writes, there’s a lot of argument about that – and the Government should simply publish the facts. And I’d rather it was kept in place anyway, because it’s very popular, and it’s difficult to make people trust the tax system if it looks like the super-rich are getting a big tax cut, again, like Labour used to. If there were to be a change to the top rates, I’d rather it was to smooth out the tax mess for people who earn a lot, but less than enough to pay the 50p rate… Because, as Millennium writes, they actually pay more. And I’d like the people who pay the biggest share to be the people who earn the most.

But I’m prepared to look at the facts, as well, and if it turned out that a tax on vastly expensive property – say, house values over two million pounds, the “Mansion Tax” the Lib Dems have also been calling for against the wishes of both Labour and the Tories – was harder to dodge than the 50p rate, and brought in more money than the 50p rate, I’d be prepared to make a choice on the facts.

So just remember. If the 50p tax rate does happen to go, after more than double the time Labour wanted it for, and the alternative brings in much more money from the super-rich… When Labour pretend to be shocked and call for the 50p rate to be kept instead, remember that it was so important to them that with all their absolute power in Parliament – more than either the Tories or the Lib Dems today – this policy was so important to them that they had it for one month. Out of thirteen years. And that, depending on whether you count months or percentages, even if you completely ignore all the greater money from the “Mansion Tax” (and they will), Labour will be pretending to be shocked that the LiberaTory Coalition was ‘only’ either 25 or a 160 times more socialist in taxing the super-rich than the Labour Government was.

Labels: British Politics, Coalition, Labour, Tax, Things To Remember About Labour

Labour opposed every single move towards Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender equality before they were for it. The Labour Government spent millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money fighting to keep discrimination in the armed forces and age of consent before the European Court found against them and they were forced to change the law. Now they shamelessly claim credit, like a crook caught by the cops and found guilty after a long trial they tried to escape… Then pretending they turned themselves in out of their own goodness. They voted against civil partnerships and in favour of Section 28, too, before belatedly U-turning and pretending they’d been in favour of equality all along.

Labour’s civil partnership laws were designed as a second-rate same-sex marriage, so they deliberately exclude mixed-sex couples; the original Liberal Democrat proposals that the Labour Government voted down in Parliament years earlier were gender-neutral and non-discriminatory. At the same time, the Scottish version of Section 28 was scrapped by Lib Dems in the Scottish Government while the Labour Government at Westminster kow-towed to the bigots for several extra years.

Today, the Labour Party continues to pretend it’s in the lead to the LGBT communities, while being very different to other audiences. The Liberal Democrats in Coalition Government are acting on putting Lib Dem policy in favour of equal marriage into law, while Labour tells the LGBT press they’re “pressing the Government” for it… Except that the Labour Party has no policy in favour of equal marriage, and explicitly opposed it when they had absolute power in government for thirteen years.

And just in the last week, we’ve seen yet again that Labour politicians are against homophobia when it suits them… But homophobic themselves again and again as long as it’s against someone they don’t like, like a Tory or a banker. ‘Some of my best friends are gay’ doesn’t cut it this century.

The Lib Dem position on LGBT rights is simpler and more principled – for equality when Labour was opposing it, for liberty before it was fashionable, Always Been There, Always Will.

Labels: British Politics, Coalition, Gay, Labour, Liberal Democrats, The Golden Dozen, Things To Remember About Labour

In thirteen years of authoritarian government, the Labour Party inflicted 4,400 new laws on the UK – more than any other government in British history.

Though Labour is all over the place on almost every policy in Opposition – alternating between Tory and Trot – there’s one thing in which they’re consistent.

Labour is still determined to be to the far right of the Libera-Tory Coalition on law and order, immigration, civil liberties… Basically, they’ll say anything to please a Tory or a Trot, but the one thing that keeps them together is that they’re never, ever Liberal.

Labels: British Politics, Labour, Meddling In Things That Are Nobody's Business But Your Own, Things To Remember About Labour

Anything new the Labour Party claims they’d do if only they were in government now?

It’s a great big lie.

They had a booming economy* and absolute power for thirteen years**.

So if they gave a flying fuck about it, they’d have done it.


*Later revealed to be a debt-fuelled disaster that’ll probably take another thirteen years for the Libera-Tory Coalition to repair and pay off Labour’s bills.

**The Labour Party, on its own, had massive Parliamentary majorities, so they could do whatever they wanted – and did. Even though the large majority of people voted against them each time. Neither the Tories nor the Lib Dems have anything like that power, so each has to compromise.

Labels: British Politics, Coalition, Labour, Things To Remember About Labour