House of Comments - Episode 54 - We need to talk about Margaret

Episode 54 of the House of Comments podcast "We need to talk about Margaret" was recorded yesterday and is out today. This week I was joined by libertarian blogger Mark Wallace of Crash Bang Wallace to discuss the impact and legacy of Margaret Thatcher in the wake of her death last week. We cover a fair bit of ground including her rise to power, her early days, the miners' strike, the Falklands war, the Poll Tax, the culture of selfishness some say she fostered and finally her fall from power, her legacy and the shadow she casts across contemporary politics. We also tackle the question of just what balance she struck between pragmatism and ideology.

There were a couple of sound problems during the recording so please forgive the odd blip!

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

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:

listen to ‘Episode 54 - We need to talk about Margaret’ on Audioboo

If you are a political blogger and wish to be considered as a future guest please drop me an e-mail at markreckons@live.co.uk.

Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboo for hosting the podcast for us and especially to Audioboo's James O'Malley who has helped us out getting relaunched. James is also editor of The Pod Delusion podcast which is about "interesting things" and is well worth a listen too! We would also like to thank Kevin MacLeod from Incompetech.com for our theme music.

Phone line Poll Tax?

Costigan Quist has an interesting post about the Digital Britain report from yesterday.

In it he argues that the 50p monthly tax on every phone line in the country that is proposed is effectively a poll tax. I agree with this. It is not based on ability to pay and is simply levied on every single phone line. This money will then be used to pay for broadband to be extended to hard to reach parts of the country.

I guess when they drafted this proposal they thought that the amounts involved are so low that it doesn't really matter. But virtually the entire current cabinet would have been viscerally opposed to the Community Charge in the late 1980s and although the amount here is much lower the principle is still the same. Why should very poor people be paying much more of their income proportionally than very rich people to pay for the extension of broadband?

This strikes me as an ill-thought through gimmick.