Thoughts on politics and life from a liberal perspective

Tuesday 13 May 2014

House of Comments - Episode 110 - Small is Beautiful

Episode 110 of the House of Comments podcast "Small is Beautiful" is out. This week I am joined by Green Party activist Sian Berry and leader of The Pirate Party UK Loz Kaye to discuss Cameron's pledge to resign if he can't get an EU referendum, Fracking, copyright law and how the UK political system treats small parties.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

You can download the mp3 for the latest episode directly from here.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:



Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboo for hosting the podcast for us. We would also like to thank Kevin MacLeod from Incompetech.com for our theme music.

Friday 9 May 2014

Pride purges the truth

(not satire - It's Tom Pride!)

Pride's Purge has a somewhat distorted post today.

He has decided to highlight 21 things that the Lib Dems "didn't bother" to veto. And then juxtaposed this against the one thing that he suggests they have vetoed, the mandatory second strike knife crime suggestion from David Cameron. He's even got a graphic and everything, look:


Now I suspect some Lib Dems would quibble with the description of some of those in the right hand column but let's leave that to one side.

The biggest problem with this list is that there is way more than one thing the Lib Dems have vetoed in government. Here is a list gleaned from comments by both Nick Clegg and David Cameron:

  • Cuts to inheritance tax
  • Bringing back O levels
  • Profit making in schools
  • New childcare ratios
  • Firing workers at will with no reason needing to be given
  • Regional pay in the public sector
  • Scrapping housing benefit for under 25s
  • Ditching the Human Rights Act
  • Weakening protections in the Equality Act
  • Boundary changes
  • Various measures on the environment
  • Automatic renewal of Trident
  • Reducing top rate of tax to 40%
  • Snoopers' Charter
And I am sure there are loads of others too.

Tom, if you're going to run a "satirical" blog trying to score points off everyone except Labour, at least get your basic facts right.

Surely you can find real things to attack the Lib Dems for rather than just making shit up?