Jan Moir "clarification" on Stephen Gately is full of holes - #janmoir

Jan Moir has published a "clarification" about her hateful article last week on Stephen Gately's death today in the Daily Mail. There is a cached version of it you can read here so that I don't need to link to her article. There is also a cached version of her original one here.

She seems to be trying to justify what she did and apparently it's all our fault for misinterpreting poor old Jan. The thing is, her explanation of what she meant is full of holes. I am not going to do a full fisk, I don't have the time or energy but here are a few of her points with my thoughts:

The point of my article was to suggest that, in my honest opinion, Stephen Gately's death raised many unanswered questions. What had really gone on?

After all, Stephen was a role model for the young and if drugs were somehow involved in his death, as news reports suggested, should that not be a matter of public interest?

Ah, the old "public interest" defence! Why is it in the public interest though Jan? The only thing I have seen (alleged) is that some cannabis was smoked on that night. Even if that was true is it really likely to have contributed to the death? Even if it did, why is that in the "public interest". It may be of interest to the public but that is a very different thing. Stephen was not a politician or public servant. This is thin, thin stuff from Moir clutching at straws.

We were told that Stephen died of 'natural causes' even before toxicology results had been released. This struck me as bizarre, given the circumstances.

Absolutely none of this had anything to do with his sexuality. If he had been a heterosexual member of a boy band, I would have written exactly the same article.

Really Jan. REALLY? In that case why did you say the following in your original article?:

"Another real sadness about Gately's death is that it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships.

Gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships, arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages. Not everyone, they say, is like George Michael.

Of course, in many cases this may be true. Yet the recent death of Kevin McGee, the former husband of Little Britain star Matt Lucas, and now the dubious events of Gately's last night raise troubling questions about what happened."

These comments are not compatible with your claim that none of your comments had anything to do with Stephen's sexuality. They had everything to do with it. You specifically suggest that this case (and bizarrely a completely unrelated suicide) raise "troubling questions" and that "happy-ever-after civil partnerships" are a myth. It was hateful and homphobic and trying to deny you said or meant it is desperate stuff at this late stage.

Yet despite this, many have interpreted my words as a 'bigoted rant' and suggested that my motive was to insinuate that Stephen died 'because he was gay'.

Anyone who knows me will vouch that I have never held such poisonous views.

Was someone else typing those words last week then?

My assertion that there was 'nothing natural' about Stephen's death has been wildly misinterpreted.

What I meant by 'nothing natural' was that the natural duration of his life had been tragically shortened in a way that was shocking and out of the ordinary. Certainly, his death was unusual enough for a coroner to become involved.

What you actually wrote was:

"Healthy and fit 33-year-old men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again.

Whatever the cause of death is, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural one. Let us be absolutely clear about this. All that has been established so far is that Stephen Gately was not murdered."

which seemed to be setting yourself up as some sort of medical expert. Perhaps you could point us towards the actuarial graphs that show massive dips in mortality rates at the age of 33, after all no-one seemingly healthy and fit of that age just dies apparently.

Regarding the reaction to your column you say:

To say it was a hysterical overreaction would be putting it mildly, though clearly much of it was an orchestrated campaign by pressure groups and those with agendas of their own.

There's a big difference Jan between an orchestrated campaign and something that lots of people feel revulsion about when they become aware of it who then decide to act upon it. You are failing to understand the digital world we live in and how systems like Twitter and blogs can accelerate the reaction of the public to something they feel strongly about. Paul Bradshaw on the Online Journalism Blog does a good job of explaining this here.

No Jan, a good example of an orchestrated campaign would be something like the complaints about Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand last year that your newspaper organised. That was a situation where before your paper got involved there had been two complaints and afterwards there were thousands, often from people who hadn't even heard the original broadcast. I sense a bit of Rovian projection going on here (the deliberate projection of one's own behaviour onto one's opponent).

You round off your "clarification" by saying:

Finally, I would just like to say that whatever did or did not happen in Majorca, a talented young man died before his time. This, of course, is a matter of regret and sadness for us all.

So if he was so talented, why in your original piece did you say:

"A founder member of Ireland's first boy band, he was the group's co-lead singer, even though he could barely carry a tune in a Louis Vuitton trunk.

He was the Posh Spice of Boyzone, a popular but largely decorous addition."

This attempt to distance yourself from your words and views will not wash I am afraid Jan. We all saw what you said. It was a nasty, hate filled homophobic piece and no amount of "clarification" will change that.

You should apologise properly. This wriggling you are indulging in now is just pathetic.

Nick Griffin on BBC Question Time - the verdict, #bbcqt

Well that was quite a mad evening. The BBC Question Time Live Chat on here was the best attended ever for the one that included Nick Griffin.

I do not think Griffin came across well at all. He tied himself up in knots a few times and faced with the quotes of things he had said before ended up all over the place trying to justify and/or distance himself from them. He also seemed to be trying to laugh along when comments were made against him which for me did not work.

However, I am bound to think all of this given how different my politics are from his. I do think though that he will not have come across well generally out there in the country. There was too much evasion and frankly he actually sounded too much like the sort of politician, not answering the questions properly that people are often turned off by.

On the Live Chat there was a feeling that the show was too dominated by him and questions about his policies. I agree with this although it was inevitable I suppose given the build up and hype. Also, I suspect many of the questions submitted by the audience were about this and the purpose of the show is to reflect what the audience want to ask about. I still think the producers should have made sure at least half the programme was dedicated to non-BNP stuff though. As it was only the Jan Moir issue was raised outside of Griffin-centric questions. What about the postal strike? What about Afghanistan?

I still think the BBC were right to have Griffin on and I suspect they will again at some point, after all he is going to be an MEP for 5 years. However next time they should think a little bit more carefully about how they structure it.

Yes, Griffin and his views are widely reviled but to allow the show to become dominated by him in this way makes him and his views seem more important than they really are.

BBC Question Time Live Chat - 22nd October 2009 - #bbcqt

It's Thursday which of course means that it's #bbcqt day again and as usual the Live Chat on this blog will start tonight at 10:30pm.

This week's show is from London and has been the subject of controversy as one of the panelists is Nick Griffin, the leader of the BNP (British National Party) who was recently elected as an MEP. There have been protests outside BBC TV centre about this and my namesake, the Director General of the BBC has had to step in to back Question Time's decision to allow him on.

The panel will also include the Justice Secretary Jack Straw MP, the Conservative spokeswoman for community cohesion Baroness Warsi, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne MP and the playwright and author Bonnie Greer.

Liberal Democrat Voice also always have an open thread for BBC Question Time which is usually posted just before the start of the programme.

Join us from 10:30pm below.

The BBC are right to have Nick Griffin on Question Time

I think the BBC are right to have invited the British National Party leader Nick Griffin onto Question Time this evening. He is the leader and an elected MEP of a party that got 6% of the vote at the most recent European elections. To deny him a place on one of their shows would be to single out the BNP for special treatment and as my namesake Mark Thompson (the director general of the BBC) points out in a Guardian article today, it would be to expect political censorship of this kind to be outsourced to the BBC. That is not their job.

I have written before about why I think the policy of "No platform" is a mistake. As I said previously, my view is that you win debates and arguments by taking on your opponents, not by banning them from the debating arena. That way allows them to claim political martyrdom. Darrell Goodliffe also has a good blogpost about this here today.

I have read some blog posts and commentary that have expressed the concern that Nick Griffin might not actually come out all that badly. He might even do quite well in the forum of Question Time where populist rhetoric and soundbites sometimes get applause. I am afraid my response to this is that yes, it is possible that he doesn't go down dreadfully as me and I suspect most other people would like. It cannot be guaranteed that it will play out like we hope but again that is no reason to ban him from the show. It is the job of the fellow panelists and the members of the audience who oppose what the BNP stand for to take him on. Beyond that, we cannot control the outcome. That is democracy.

For those who are interested, I will be running my regular BBC Question Time Live Chat on this blog from 10:30 pm this evening.

Taking illegal drugs is normal for millions of people in the UK

There was a fascinating article by Melanie Reid in The Times on Monday. It covered the release of a report by Dr Fiona Measham and Dr Karenza Moore, criminologists from Lancaster University which set out to "explore the hidden world of pharmaceutical intoxication in Britain’s bars and night clubs". Here are a few snippets along with my thoughts:

They discovered evidence that almost all Britain’s thousands of clubbers routinely take drugs, in particular cocaine (tried by 83 per cent of people), cannabis (93 per cent) and ecstasy (85 per cent). Eight in ten had taken a drug within the previous month, and nearly two in three of those questioned had taken, or were going to take, drugs on the night they were surveyed.

So in the world of clubbing in which hundreds of thousands of UK citizens indulge every year, taking illegal drugs is normal.

The extent and complexity of drug use that the academics uncovered surprised them. “Everyone knows that it goes on,” says Measham, a senior lecturer in criminology, whose 2001 study Dancing on Drugs was until now the seminal study of recreational drug use. “How else would the clubbers stay awake until 5am, when the club closes? But it’s unspoken.

Not only is it normal, but everyone knows it is and in fact it is obvious if you think about it. Staying up dancing until 5am to repetitive beats is not something that is easy (or even desirable) to do for many without some sort of chemical assistance.

...Here too is highlighted another contradiction: between the growing commercialisation of the night-time economy and the increasing government policy of what Measham calls “the criminalisation of intoxication” without education, advice or treatment services attached. The people who suffer, under the present situation of tacit tolerance of drugs, are the users. “Even if the club owners wanted harm reduction literature in their club, it would acknowledge that there was drug taking on the premises. And they are concerned about being arrested or shut down.”

Last year the owner of the Dance Academy in Plymouth, Manoucehr Bahmanzadeh, and its manager, Tom Costelloe, were found guilty of allowing the venue to be used for the supply of Ecstasy and jailed for nine years and five years respectively. This despite neither man having actually sold drugs on the premises.

So all the talk by governments of pursuing harm reduction and education of the risks alongside criminalisation is highlighted for what it really is. The two policies are incompatible with each other. If you keep drugs criminalised then by definition you are providing a strong disincentive for people wishing to use drugs to seek help and advice and those in a position to be potentially able to provide help, advice and possibly medical assistance will of course be very wary of doing anything that may result in their prosecution and imprisonment.

Clubbers of all ages queue quietly outside the Manchester venue — many, Measham’s evidence would suggest, already “front-loaded” with drugs. Notably, only people who have taken alcohol are behaving obnoxiously. The security on entry is strict but not too strict: Measham and Moore found that in practice only large quantities of drugs — ie, too much for personal use — will be removed from clubbers.

Surprise, surprise! As I have been saying for years, groups of people taking drugs like cannabis or ecstacy are far less of a nuisance to the rest of society than those who are taking alcohol. This snippet also highlights how much of an ass the law is. The security know full well of the extent of drug taking and mainly turn a blind eye to it. Disobedience of a law on such a scale must surely bring the repute of said law into serious question.

What is important, Measham and Moore say, is to draw the distinction between this kind of recreational drug use, and the problem drug use that dominates the political agenda and absorbs its resources. The two groups do not overlap; the dealers are different; and so are the drugs. Clubbers almost never take heroin or crack cocaine, the academics’ surveys show, and they remain in society. The UK’s problem drug users, with a daily dependency on such drugs, may be hugely outnumbered by the recreational drug takers — 150,000 as opposed to four million — but they remain the focus of government policy.

Highlighting that the main focus of drugs policy is on the very small minority of drug users who develop problems, rather than the millions who can manage just fine, holding down careers, families and being good citizens contributing to society in many other ways. Those millions of people are criminalised by the current system and are exposed to potentially dangerous "cut" variants of their drugs of choice as well as lack of access to help and information, all so that the government can appear "tough on drugs".

I am not convinced how "tough" any regime can be considered when the law is largely ignored and considered ridiculous by such large swathes of the government's own population.

As soon as politicians get near power some sort of blinkers in this area of policy descend and they refuse to countenance the blatantly obvious, that the "war on drugs" has manifestly failed. Perhaps this report will help contribute to the existing wealth of evidence against current policy and will help stiffen the spines of those politicians who privately accept this fact but publicly still pretend that the "war" is winnable.

Millions of the government's own citizens are telling them their position is untenable.

"Open Up" campaign is a distraction from real reform

There is a new campaign called "Open Up" which was launched a couple of days ago and seeks to get all parties to run open primaries in order to select their parliamentary candidates.

James Graham has already done an excellent job of pointing out how expensive all of this would be on his blog so I won't go through that here except to say that I completely agree with him.

James also makes another point which I want to elaborate on:

I worry because the anti-politics rhetoric that is informing this campaign (and others) is leading people up the garden path. Instead of embracing the opportunity to shout loudly for pluralist politics and for moving beyond politics meaning little more than voting every few years, people are grasping at ideas that don’t even amount to half measures.

This sums up my main concern about this campaign. There are huge problems with our politics in this country. The expenses scandal is but one small facet of a multifarious group of issues that we will ultimately need to tackle. People feel disconnected from politics and politicians. This happens for various reasons one of the most important being that politicians all try and crowd onto the narrow centre-ground in order to attract the very small number of floating voters in marginal constituencies. Anything that could be perceived as jeapordising the votes of these few hundred thousand people is beyond the pale. We see this happen time and again at every election and it constricts the flow of ideas and debate to the point where people struggle to tell the difference between the parties much of the time.

Aside from all the logistical problems with open primaries, they will not solve this basic problem. The candidates for the seats will all still come from the same parties and the safe seats and marginals will all still be there. James is right to describe this as not even a half measure. I'm not even sure it is a quarter-measure.

What is does do however is allow people like David Cameron to look as if they are grasping the reform nettle and doing something about it. The truth is that Cameron wants to do as little as he thinks he can get away with whilst putting maximum spin on the paltry measures he has taken. It is clear that he will never implement any sort of radical political reform. In a way I can't really blame him. If he just sits tight and waits for a few more months, he will likely be Prime Minister with a decent (perhaps very large) majority and the chance to be Prime Minister for 5 years, possibly even a decade or more. He will not want to do anything that might introduce a more pluralist element into our politics and heaven forfend actually have to win the argument on something before being able to legislate on it.

Just because Mr Cameron will not want to put his considerable prize at risk however does not mean that the rest of us should fall into line. Anyone backing the "Open Up" campaign should be aware that if it succeeds it will make arguing for meaningful political and electoral reform that much more difficult. There is a big risk that many will feel that reform has been "done" and we could find our arguments are heard even less.

I feel very strongly that the current political climate is the best opportunity we will have in this political generation for electoral reformers to get our voices heard. We should not allow this to be derailed by measures that are at best tinkering at the margins.

How open was the Conservative Bracknell primary?

I have come across an interesting video on Youtube this morning. It is from local Bracknell constituent Dan Haycocks who is campaigning to try and get current MP Andrew MacKay to pay back the money he seems to have overclaimed or instead step down if he is not willing to do so. He has created a campaigning website called Goodbye MacKay.

The video shows Dan and other members of his campaign trying to gain access to the Bracknell open primary/caucus that was held here on Saturday. Despite currently living in the constituency and having a valid ticket for the event, Dan was physically prevented from entering the event by a bouncer. No real reason was given for this.

Two of Dans fellow campaigners entered the event and tried to distribute "Goodbye MacKay" literature and were ejected.

What Dan wanted to do was to ask each of the primary candidates whether they thought Andrew MacKay should pay back what he owes or instead resign. It seems to me that given the reason for the primary taking place at all in the first place is because of the actions of Mr MacKay that this is a valid question to have been asked. The fact that the Conservative association actively prevented Dan and his fellow campaigners from being present at the meeting and asking this question really makes me wonder just how open the process is and how seriously the Conservatives locally here are taking the expenses issue.

Dan also speaks to a number of Conservatives and local association members on the video outside the event to get their views. I was surprised to hear one of them towards the end of the video who seems to be saying that because Mr MacKay was such a good MP he should not have to pay anything back. I wonder what David Cameron thinks about this attitude!

I have embedded Dan's video below:

Women only shortlists would be unneccesary under STV

David Cameron's announcement today that he is going to impose all women shortlists in some seats for the next election has met with a mixed reaction, not least from Conservative bloggers, many of whom think that this is a profoundly unconservative move.

I absolutely agree with Mr Cameron that we should have more women in parliament but I do not think women only shortlists are the answer.

At risk of seeming a bit like a broken record, I think the answer is electoral reform. Bear with me here...

If we had Single Transferable Vote in multi-member constituencies (with say 5 members per constituency) then each party would be encouraged to supply a diverse range of candidates in terms of gender, ethnicity, age etc. Any party just supplying white, middle aged male candidates would likely find themselves suffering electorally. It would then be up to the electorate to choose the MPs from the various available candidates from all parties but crucially, no party would feel they had to go with a traditional candidate profile "just to be on the safe side" as I fear all too often has happened in the past.

I firmly believe that if we had such a structure in place then strong candidates of both genders and all sorts of different backgrounds would end up as MPs. There would be no need to restrict shortlists to any particular type.

The answer is staring Mr Cameron in the face.

If leaders can't agree on TV debates, broadcasters should instead

Mike Smithson on Political Betting today is speculating that the TV debates may now not happen. He quotes reports of arguments going on with both Brown and Cameron stipulating different formats and numbers of debates. Nick Clegg of course also wants to be involved in all the debates which as I have stated before I think has to happen.

Mike thinks that Cameron is using the Blair playbook from 1997 on this which is agree the principle but allow the negotiations to get bogged down in the hope that it will all fall apart and not actually happen, after all as the front runner he probably feels he has most to lose. Mike thinks this ploy may actually work too.

I am not so sure. Back in July I called for a broadcaster to promise a televised debate for the 3 main leaders and threaten to "empty chair" any of them that refuse to attend. In early September, Sky News stepped in and did exactly that. At the time it seemed that Brown would be the one to bottle it, however if it turns out that Cameron is trying it on too then the same should apply to him. We are a bit further down the line now and the main broadcasters have agreed the principle of holding the debates with the minimum number I have seen mooted as 3. Therefore, if agreement from the party leaders cannot be reached soon, I think the broadcasters should again step in and say they will have 3 debates with all 3 main leaders and threaten to empty chair any of them who refuse to attend.

I know some people will think this is allowing the broadcasters too much power but I feel very strongly that political manouvering should not be able to rob the people of this country (yet again) of the chance to see proper televised debate between the party leaders.

Full review of Bracknell Conservative Open Primary

Dazmando has done a sterling job on Bracknell Blog of recording what happened during yesterday's Bracknell Conservative Open Primary/Caucus event that was eventually won by Dr Phillip Lee.

He has detailed how each of the seven candidates performed as well as provided details of their leaflets and his thoughts about how the event went as a whole with the things that worked well and some problems with the process too.

It is well worth a read.

Has Bracknell sent a message about local candidates in primaries?

The result has just been announced of the Conservative Bracknell open primary/caucus and the winner is Dr Phillip Lee. I want to extend my congratulations to Dr Lee for his victory in this hard fought contest.

The contest has been very closely tracked in the blogosphere not least because of the presence in the shortlist of the leading Conservative blogger Iain Dale who came third. My commiserations to him.

What I wanted to focus on in this post though is what message Bracknell may be trying to send to the Conservatives and politicians in general about these primaries and the candidates they were offered. I should state that despite being a constituent I was not at the meeting (I am abroad at the moment) so I do not know how each of the candidates performed. However I was concerned right from the outset that there were no local candidates on the shortlist.

My friend Darren did some interviews with some of the candidates on Bracknell Blog and from Phillip's interview, as well as other information I have seen it struck me that although he did not live in the constituency, he was the "most local" of the candidates having been a GP just 10 miles outside the seat boundary and actually having some on-call patients within the constituency. Given all of this, my hypothesis was that if the "localness" of a candidate was a crucial element in the minds of the voters then Phillip would win. That has now come to pass.

Of course I do not know if this was the crucial element in his election, there may well be other reasons. I would however be surprised if it was not at least a factor and given how close the contest seems to have been (it went to 5 rounds) it could easily have been what made the difference. So, perhaps there is a lesson here for all parties but especially the Conservatives who have been most keen on this form of caucus/primary type election.

I think it will be worth looking at how other contests of this nature go in the future to see if a pattern of local (or "more local") candidates being selected is borne out. If it is then it will be food for thought for the party bosses making the decisions about how to select candidates. After all, if it becomes increasingly difficult to parachute favoured candidates into safe seats in the future I suspect they will not like that. At all...


PS: I should just make clear my view that I think contests of this nature would be unnecessary if our electoral system was changed to Single Transferable Vote with multi-member constituencies. That would give the entire electorate the chance to rank multiple candidates from different parties as part of the election itself.

The Jan Moir case and the PCC

Mark Pack has a great post on Lib Dem Voice today where he dissects the Press Complaints Commission's remit and explains why he thinks their oft-used criteria of "normally" requiring the person or family of the person directly affected to complain should not apply in the Jan Moir, Stephen Gately article case.

He suggests the following reasons:

(a) The widespread public reaction to the publication of the piece, resulting in the crashing of your website, a special page being added and your staff going on the record that they have received a near record number of complaints. That by itself is not a “normal” case.
(b) When someone’s relative has died there are all sorts of reasons as to why they may not wish to take up any regulatory actions. People may wish to grieve in private. They may have bureaucratic complications to deal with. They may wish to think about the media coverage of their personal tragedy as little as possible. Whatever the reason, these are precisely the sort of circumstances in which normal rules about requiring them personally to complain should not automatically apply.
(c) The nature of the complaints about the article, particular on the grounds of discrimination, is one that affects the wider population. For example, if a newspaper piece was to incite racial hatred, that could have an impact on people other than those named in the piece.
(d) Your remit explicitly provides for considering complaints from people other than those directly affected – hence the use of “normally”. If this is not such a case, what is?

I think all his points have merit but for me, point b) is the strongest. Why should his grieving family have to cope with pushing the complaint through? I also think point c) is strong as well as I think it could well have the effect of spreading discriminatory sentiment more widely.

The PCC has seemed largely toothless to me over the last few years. They need to grow some quickly.

If you want to lodge a complaint with the PCC yourself, you can do so here. You should make sure that you address the remit question in your complaint, perhaps using one or more of the above (in your own words!) or other criteria if you see fit.

Jan Moir and The Daily Mail vs Twitter and the Blogosphere

I'm on holiday at the moment and have just dipped briefly into the blogs and Twitter again before heading out for the evening but I have been disgusted by Jan Moir's horrible, hate filled smear against Stephen Gately of Boyzone (I'm not linking to it) full of innuendo about his death which she has tried to relate to the fact he was homosexual.

However at the same time, I have been heartened to see the number of people on Twitter and across the blogosphere, literally from all corners, Tory, Labour, Lib Dem and others all expressing their disgust at Moir's article and at The Mail for publishing it. Apparently the pressure has been so intense that the advertisers have asked for their adverts to be removed from the online page where the article sits.

I am also heartened by the number of comments below the article itself (500+ at last count) expressing their disgust with it. It means that they cannot fail to hear the message.

The Mail has recent form for this sort of thing. They have to understand how reviled they are making themselves by publishing stuff like this. Hopefully the reactions they have had to this and other recent examples will start to have an effect on their editorial policy.

I've been FactChecked!

Channel 4 News' fact-checking department did a piece yesterday which analyses my safe seats and expenses scandal correlation work from back in May.

It has been prompted by an article that Nick Clegg wrote in The Daily Telegraph on Wednesday about expenses where in the final paragraph he says:

And of course, if we’re to sort out politics fully, we need to think about the future, not just the past. Britain needs voting reform to abolish the safe seats that make MPs complacent – those in safe seats were three times as likely to be identified as having abused their expenses by The Daily Telegraph. If we want to rebuild faith in politics, there can be no half measures. Only fundamental reform will be enough

Nick Clegg's office confirmed to Channel 4 that these figures were based on my research.

A very nice lady named Alice from Channel 4 called me on Wednesday to discuss all of this and to request the source data. At the time I didn't realise that they were going to do a full article where they analyse the work in detail and essentially try to pull it apart and see how it stands up. You can find the results of their analysis here. It is worth reading the whole thing to see the points they make for and against the research.

Addressing one of the counter-arguments to the usefulness of the source data they say the following:

...How important is the minister-factor in the make-up of the Telegraph's list?

It's not the case that everyone included is a big name. Thompson told us there were a large number of MPs he hadn't heard of - and he's a self-confessed political anorak.

Phantom mortgage claimants Elliot Morley and David Chaytor, both of whom have now been banned from standing again as Labour MPs, weren't exactly big household names. Neither was Margaret Moran, she of the £22,500 dry rot bill, or Fabian Hamilton, or Stephen Crabb - all mentioned in the early Telegraph investigations.

Their verdict is:

Clegg's claim is based on some fairly detailed analysis of a big tranche of MPs which made up the Telegraph's early expenses revelations, and found those in the top quartile of safe seats were three times as likely to feature as those in the bottom quartile.

Re-doing the analysis at a later date, when the paper had covered more MPs, showed those with the biggest majorities were twice, rather than three times, as likely to feature as those with the smallest.

Clegg implies that one factor causes the other, using the finding as a basis to call for reform of the first-past-the-post system which gives MPs such differing majorities.

But doesn't necessarily stack up. A correlation between two factors does not mean that one causes the other, and it's also worth bearing in mind that top frontbenchers are more likely to have safe seats than MPs as a whole.

Still, it's an intriguing piece of research - though perhaps one that we should be careful about stating as political fact without question.

I think their conclusion is fair here although I also think it is fair for Nick Clegg to highlight this situation in articles and bring it to people's wider attention.

I am pleased to see on their scale they give Nick's claim a 2 which on their scale of 0 - 5 seems pretty good (the lower the number better).


PS: As I am currently on holiday, I may struggle to respond to any comments on this quickly.

BBC Question Time Live Chat - 15th October 2009 - #bbcqt

It's #bbcqt day again and as usual the Live Chat on this blog will start tonight at 10:30pm. This week I am away so Dazmando from Bracknell Blog has very kindly stepped into the breach and will be your host.

The panel will include Home Secretary Alan Johnson, Conservative shadow immigration minister Damian Green, Lib Dem shadow transport secretary Norman Baker, UKIP leader Nigel Farage, and journalist and broadcaster Dame Joan Bakewell.

Liberal Democrat Voice also always have an open thread for BBC Question Time which is usually posted just before the start of the programme.

Join the chat from 10:30pm below.

Off to The Big Apple

Blogging may be light for the next week as I am off to New York, New York, New York (so good they named it several times or something) on Thursday. I may get the chance to post intermittently but I will mainly be focusing on having a good holiday. In an unusual move (for me) I'm going with my Mum. I haven't been on holiday with her for about 20 years!

However, rest assured that the BBC Question Time Live Chat will still be on on Thursday evening. There will be a guest host this week, Dazmando from Bracknell Blog is stepping into the breach so play nice with him!

New political podcast - House of Comments

Myself and Stuart Sharpe of the Sharpe's Opinion political blog have started a new series of political podcasts called "House of Comments". The website for the podcasts is here and the first episode which we recorded yesterday is now live and available to download via this page here (raw mp3 file here if you prefer). You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes here.

The format is to invite one or two other political bloggers each week and discuss a few of the stories that are making waves in the blogosphere.

For the first one, Iain Dale of Iain Dale's Diary joined us and we discussed various issues including conference opinion polls and if they mean anything, Gordon Brown's eyesight and whether it is a valid topic for debate, The Taxpayers' Alliance and their director who does not pay UK tax and General Dannatt joining the Conservative party.

I would be interested to hear what people think about this venture and the first one. We hope to do them weekly (although we have to skip next week due to holidays) and intend to ask a variety of political bloggers from across the spectrum to participate in future episodes.

UPDATE: Stuart has blogged about the podcast here now as well. He has pointed out something I forgot to mention which is that originally we were also going to have a Labour blogger on the first one alongside Iain although they had to pull out at the last minute for health reasons.

If MPs reject the expenses report they will regret it, fast

There is a report in this morning's Times which suggests that members of the Estimate Committee are considering throwing out Sir Thomas Legg's independent report on MPs expenses as they think it has exceeded its remit.

My response to this is, are they insane? Part of the reason the furore of a few months subsided in the way it did is because an independent report had been commissioned. Do they honestly think that the public are going to stand for them rejecting the report, whatever the grounds?

My experience is that many non-politically involved people are absolutely disgusted by the expenses scandal and they will not be interested in the arguments or nuance of this, all they will hear is that the MPs have rejected the independent report.

If they go down this road they will regret it and very quickly. They should accept it with good grace and quietly follow the recommendations.

More reasons to avoid Morrisons

This story in today's Observer is almost too silly to believe but it is true. Jackie Slater, a 50+ year old woman was refused when she attempted to purchase a bottle of wine in a branch of Morrisons because she was accompanied by two young women (her daughter and her niece), one of whom was 17 and neither of whom had any ID. The reasoning was that the older woman may have given the alcohol to the girls after leaving the store.

I barely know where to begin with this ridiculous, illiberal nonsense. The thing is though, it's not just Morrisons. I have heard anecdotally and also read on numerous occasions of this sort of thing happening in different supermarkets across the country. This is the natural progression of the sort of authoritarian diktats that we get from our government. It puts supermarket managers in fear that they will be prosecuted for allowing youngsters to get hold of alcohol and they react by being ultra-cautious. The net result of which is that they appear a laughing stock and get coverage like Morrisons have done today.

The thing is that even if Jackie had been buying the wine for the woman who was 17 years old this is perfectly legal as long as it is drunk at home.

I am very uncomfortable with the idea that we are now in a situation where stores are so terrified that they feel compelled to take massively disproportionate action in this way.

Surely the Lib Dems should be doing better than this?

I don't hold much stock with opinion polls during conference season. The focus on each of the three big parties in turn causes distortions in the responses. I think it will be another week or two before the dust settles and we can see where the three parties stand.

However I am going to stick my neck out here and say that when that dust does settle, the Lib Dems are likely to be roughly where we were before, around the high teens perhaps pushing 20%. Labour will be around the mid - high 20s and the Conservatives will be in the 40s. I will be happy to be proved wrong on this by the way and if we are consistently polling in the early - mid 20s I will be delighted, I just don't get the feeling it's likely.

So if that is the case then it looks like with a bit of a following wind and decent coverage in the run up to an election which always gives us another 2 or 3 points in the run up to polling day we could well find ourselves in terms of percentage of vote share, roughly where we were in 2005 (around 22% or so). The number of seats we get might of course be a bit down depending on regional variations.

If all this does pan out like this then the biggest question I think my party will have to answer is how the hell did we allow the best opportunity for electoral advance in a political generation to slip through our fingers? Let's have a run-down of the situation we are in and some of the major political events that have happened in the last couple of years:

1. We are in the worst financial crisis in most people's living memory. The government and the Conservatives did not see it coming. Vince Cable did predict a fair bit of what has happened and was ahead of the curve for much of the crisis. Most importantly he is widely trusted and respected on this issue across the country. Non political people I know say how he "always talks sense" on the economy. The Lib Dems should be reaping huge political rewards for this.
2. The government is desperately unpopular. They are tired, clapped out and bereft of ideas. It is clear that the electorate has had enough of them. At the same time, I do not detect any huge groundswell of enthusiasm for the Conservative party. At best what I sense is people feeling that "this lot" have had their chance and blown it, and it's time to give "the other lot" a shot. It definitely does not feel like 1997 when not only were Major's Tories widely despised but Tony Blair was widely admired and there was great enthusiasm for him and the new dawn he appeared to herald. We barely seem to feature in this. Voters appear to be switching in large numbers straight from Labour to the Tories.
3. Politics is in crisis. Politicians have never been less trusted. They appear to be a remote political class talking an excluding language that many people cannot really understand. They got themselves into a position through cowardice whereby there was a nudge-nudge culture regarding expenses where many MPs effectively topped up their salaries to what they thought as a "decent level" through administrative sleight of hand and lax rules. There has been an explosion of public anger about this and there is a general feeling that the way MPs are elected is at least partly to blame with 70% of seats being safe and not changing hands leading MPs to be less accountable to their electors. The Lib Dems, although not exactly squeaky clean have been much, much better than Labour or the Tories. There has been no flipping, no London Lib Dem MPs claimed a second home allowance and frankly the infractions committed by our MPs pale almost into insignificance compared to the other big two. On top of this, we are the party who have been arguing for the sort of reform that would have made MPs much, much more accountable for decades. We should be being listened to now as experts in this area and making the political weather regarding the reform agenda. Instead we appear to have ceded the ground to the Conservatives who talk a very good game but are really not offering anything substantial in this area. The existing electoral system favours them too much.

As a member of the party who is well aware of the great talent we have within our parliamentary ranks and more widely it is intensely frustrating to watch as what really should be our moment start to slip through our fingers.

We of course do not deserve all of this to fall into our laps. We have to fight, tooth and nail for it. I have seen plenty of evidence that we have the wherewithal to do this, but all the battles seem short term and tactical rather than adding up to a grand strategy. A good example is Nick Clegg's 100 days idea from the early summer. What happened to that? He announced it, the other parties ignored him and it disappeared. At the very least he could have insisted that Lib Dem MPs stay on over the summer and hammer out a plan or something. Instead Nick slipped off on holiday like the other party leaders.

I intend to write about this more over the next few weeks with some concrete ideas on what we can do, however I am interested to hear what Lib Dems and others think about this.

Do you agree that this is the best chance we have had in decades and what should we be doing?

Do Lord Drayson's assertions on HPV vaccine coverage stack up?

A few weeks ago I attended a debate between Lord Drayson and the Guardian "Bad Science" columnist Ben Goldacre called "Science reporting: Is it good for you?".

It was well attended and as I blogged at the time, even though I disagreed with Lord Drayson's argument (that the UK press is basically good and certainly much better than it used to be when reporting science) I thought he made a good fist of his argument.

On 30th September I was getting so sick of some of the misleading coverage about the HPV vaccine (for example here) where the press was doing its usual thing of hyping up unproven fears and Lord Drayson was still tweeting that the press were doing a good job that I tweeted him this:

@LordDrayson Have you actually seen the scaremongering the Mail and the Express have been at? e.g. http://bit.ly/gVPPx

His response was this:

@MarkReckons #SciDebate Much better coverage on HPV vaccine than on MMR. Scientists & sci/med reporters doing a gr8 job in difficult circs

I really did start to wonder what planet Lord Drayson was on at this point given the coverage I was seeing.

This is now further compounded by some research that Ben Goldacre has done published today which shows that last week's Sunday Express cover story headlined "'JAB' AS DEADLY AS THE CANCER" which quoted a Dr Diane Harper was full of false assertions about her claims. It is worth reading Ben's article in full.

I wonder what Lord Drayson thinks about this.

UPDATE: As Mark Pack points out on his blogpost about this subject today, the best place to get reliable information about the HPV vaccine is the official NHS page on the subject here.

Constantly Furious does it again

I've not got much time right now although there are several things on the tip of my blogging tongue. However I do have time to post a link to Constantly Furious' post about the post office workers from yesterday.

Sometimes I agree with CF and sometimes I don't but he always makes me laugh with his turns of phrase. In the linked post he spends some time berating the union's attitude but what made me laugh was his final line where he gives some advice as to what should be done:

Just take the f**king letters out of the sack, and put them through the holes in the doors, right?

Gold.

Thought for the day breakfast event

A short video version of the "Thought for the day" breakfast event hosted by Editorial Intelligence that I spoke at last week is now up. The event lasted about an hour and the edited version is around 7 minutes but it does give you a flavour of how it all went. I think they may also have done an audio podcast of the whole thing which I will link to as/when it becomes available.

I spoke about the future of newspapers (a topic close to my heart). The other speaker turned was Zac Goldsmith, Conservative PPC for Richmond and committed environmental activist. He was there ostensibly to talk about his latest book "The Constant Economy: How to Build a Stable Society" but he actually talked about environmental issues more broadly and outlined some of his policy positions.

Youtube clip is embedded below:

BBC Question Time Live Chat - 8th October 2009 - #bbcqt

It's Thursday which of course means that it's #bbcqt day again and as usual the Live Chat on this blog will start tonight at 10:30pm.

Coming from Manchester where the Tory conference has been this week, the panel will include the Work and Pensions Secretary Yvette Cooper MP, the shadow chancellor George Osborne MP, the Liberal Democrat housing spokesperson Sarah Teather, the M&S boss Sir Stuart Rose and the broadcaster and editor of Private Eye Ian Hislop.

Liberal Democrat Voice also always have an open thread for BBC Question Time which is usually posted just before the start of the programme.

Join us from 10:30pm below.

Champagne Super no-no

There is a story today in the Manchester Evening News (brought to my attention by @AlixMortimer via @Peter_Henley on Twitter) about a Tory party member, Philip Whittington who got into a spot of bother yesterday at the conference Midland Hotel after he was accused of failing to pay the bill on a £150 bottle of champagne. He was arrested on suspicion of theft but he claimed that he thought it was a free bar and that he was entitled to it. The police decided to take no further action and Mr Whittington was released at 6am this morning without charge.

So far, so good. An apparent mistake led to an unpleasant few hours for a man who will probably be more careful in future. I expect he has learned an important lesson.

Except apparently that is not good enough for the Conservative party. According to the report:

A Conservative Party spokesman said: "We have banned the individual from attending any further Conference events and are considering what further action may need to be taken."

So despite the fact that as far as the police are concerned, no action is required and despite the fact that the gentleman protested that it was an innocent mistake the Conservative Party have unilaterally banned him from any further conference events! Not only that but they are looking to see what else they can do to the unfortunate man. What? Kick him out of the party? Make him wear a sandwich board proclaiming his unworthiness and parade up and down Market Street?

I can understand the Conservatives being a bit jittery about this sort of thing but this sort of reaction is way over the top. It does not befit a party who just a couple of weeks ago were trying to claim they were truly liberal.

If they were, they would reinstate Mr Whittington's right to attend future conference events.

More unintended consequences from Labour policies?

I did a post a few weeks back highlighting some of the debating tactics that opponents will try to use in any campaign against the Independent Safeguarding Authority regulations being brought into force this month.

Today, someone called Frankie S has left a lengthy comment on that post which I think merits a wider audience so I have reproduced it here in full. Over to Frankie:

It's not just people who work with children who will be effected by the ISA, it's also everyone working with vulnerable adults. Be aware: We are all considered vulnerable adults in some circumstances. For example if you are a student. The substance misuse field is staffed at least 30% by former substance misusers, many of whom will have offenses mentioned in the barring lists. Also, consider the case of oprojects where former gang members are mentoring youths to help them resist street gang membership. These people could possibly be barred from doing the good work that they do. I include a letter I wrote to the ISA outlineing our concerns.

Hi Andy

My colleagues Bob Bharij and Linda Bush were at the meeting about the ISA yeaterday. I would have liked to have been there myself as I have been trying to get some clarity on the matter also. Thought you might be interested in the email below that I sent to:

Warm Regards

Hello

I work with the London Training Team at Addaction, the nation's biggest organisation supporting substance misusers. Our two main projects train people, (the majority of them ex offenders), to work in the substance misuse field. The new ISA vetting & barring system will have significant implications for our recruitment process as well as for recruitment in the field as a whole. I was directed by the ISA helpline to the document called Guidance Notes for "Barring and Decision Making Process". This document does not give the clarity we need. On page 12, 4.6.5 it lists relevant offences, (which most of our trainees will have a history of), particulary "involve acquisitive behaviour and fraud" "relate to addictive behaviour or persistent offending".

This raises the following questions:

1) Is it the case that anyone whose previous offences are described under 4.6.5 will be investigated?

2) If not, what criteria, (e.g. time lapsed since offence/s etc), would mitigate the chances of them being investigated?

3) If a person is investigated, what criteria would mitigate the chances of them being barred?

We recruit trainees who will become job ready in one to two years time so we need to know exactly who is likely to be barred or not in advance of recruitment.

This means we need to know, at the very least, the criteria the investigations are working to when they consider the above cases.

At 4.6.9 of the document it states: "It is again important to stress that each case is dealt with on its merits. It is therefore, not possible to specify which offences would lead to a bar (other than auto-bar offences) and which offences would not".

If it is not possible to specify what offences would lead to a bar, we at least, need to know what criteria would mitigate the chances of them being barred?

For us, this lack of clarity is unworkable. We are working with the, often, fragile aspirations of people who are turning their lives around and attempting to become productive members of society. We feel very strongly that it would be unfair to the individuals involved, detrimental to our finances and counter-productive to the aims of our organisation to recruit and begin training people without knowing whether they are later going to be barred from working in the field.

I would be very grateful if you could address the above questions and clarify the issues raised.

Regards

This sounds to me like yet another unintended consequence of Labour's authoritarian policies. I am interested to hear the response that Frankie gets from the ISA and I hope he/she posts another comment on here to update us. If they do, I will update the main post here to reflect that.

Will Cameron regret the General Dannatt episode?

The news that General Dannatt is to join the Conservatives as an adviser has been welcomed by the Tories today. As a former head of the army, Dannatt is a big hitter and it is a real coup for Cameron to have him on his team.

However, I think the manner in which this has happened could eventually come back to haunt Mr Cameron. General Dannatt has publicly attacked Gordon Brown's handling of the war in Afghanistan accusing him of having chosen options to save money. It is currently fairly unusual for a former army chief to launch such an outspoken attack on a serving Prime Minister and regardless of what I might think about the merits of what he is saying it sits uncomfortably with me to see the argument being conducted in such a public fashion. I suppose it shows how strongly the General feels about the issue and how badly dealt with he felt.

The problem I think Cameron could now have is that by giving the General such a high profile job, just after his outspoken attack he is effectively condoning what he has done. This is a dangerous thing for a man who hopes to be Prime Minister in 7 months time to have done. If he does become PM, it is going to be much harder for him to command loyalty from former senior army chiefs given that he has allowed the current situation to become so political.

This seems to me to be a reflection of the problem Gordon Brown faced as PM with some of his own backbenchers once he became PM. As soon as his MPs became restive on an issue it was difficult for Brown and his allies to insist on loyalty from them when they all knew that Brown and co had spent many years trying to undermine Tony Blair and being the opposite of loyal.

Cameron may face a parallel situation with the armed forces in a few years time. He has rewarded a former army chief who has effectively taken a political position. He can't now complain if future former army chiefs also take political positions, but of course next time it may be against him.

Is this another situation where Cameron has only looked a couple of moves ahead on the chessboard rather then the requisite 10 or 15?

Praying for a cure leads to death of a girl

Sky News has reported a story today about a couple from Wisconsin who watched their daughter suffer from undiagnosed diabetes without seeking medical treatment for her. Instead they invited friends to sit around and watch her on the floor as she deteriorated, became unable to eat, speak, drink or walk and eventually died.

At first this story seems quite inexplicable and you might think that the parents and the friends they invited around are pure evil. However the parents and the friends actually had the best of intentions. Dale and Leilani Neumann and their friends are religious and they thought that prayer would heal their daughter Madeline (also known as Kara).

They have both been sentenced to 6 months in prison, although they could have been sentenced to 25 years. During the court case:

Leilani Neumann said: "I do not regret trusting truly in the Lord for my daughter's health. Did we know she had a fatal illness? No. Did we act to the best of our knowledge? Yes."

I think this case highlights a problem with how religion is applied in some circumstances. Mrs Neumann clearly still does not accept that trusting to God, and God alone for a cure was the wrong thing to do and her statement at the end shows that the best of her knowledge is that prayer and prayer alone is the solution to illness.

There have even been experiments to determine the healing properties of prayer such as the Harvard Prayer Experiment from a few years back. That study showed that prayer did not help the patients and in fact those that were told they were being prayed for experienced more complications.

It is a difficult issue to tackle this one but from my perspective I take a similar view to this as I do over other unproven remedies. That it is irresponsible to shun proven treatments and to plump only for unproven ones.

I also wonder if non-religious parents who refused to seek medical help for a sick child who then died would be treated as leniently as in this case.

UPDATE: Joe Otten has pointed out in the comments below that a recent case in New Zealand would be a roughly equivalent non-religious case where parents used homeopathy to treat a severe skin disorder which led to the death of their daughter. The sentences they received were approximately ten times the length of the religious case above. Direct comparisons are tricky though as it is of course a different case and a different country.

David Cameron and Champagne

So apparently David Cameron was "caught" drinking a glass of champagne at an event yesterday. The Daily Mirror has decided to go big on this story today. They clearly think that it is extremely damaging for the Tory leader to be photographed doing this and their headline is:

David Cameron seen drinking champagne as Tories reveal wage freezes and pension cuts

They also have a quote from union leader Dave Prentis:

It is sickening. This is the real face of the Tories. Champagne for Cameron and his crew, as though the recession never happened, while millions face a thirsty future with frozen pay, job and pension cuts.

Sickening? Really? That a man at a party has a glass of champagne? Sickening?

It's pathetic. I wish the press in this country would grow up. Tackle the issues. Discuss the details of what George Osborne announced yesterday, I'm sure your readers would like to know. Don't take a picture of a man doing what many people all across the country do at parties and then try to make out that it is abhorrent. It is exactly this sort of approach that makes politicians terrified of saying or doing anything outside of ridiculously narrow boundaries.

By the way I refuse to link to any of the coverage of this.

Is Paxman/Boris the new Frost/Nixon?

It was highly entertaining to see Jeremy Paxman interview Boris Johnson last night on Newsnight. Boris was most definitely not "on message" but I guess trying to make him toe the party line is a bit like trying to herd cats! However Jeremy's attempts to Paxo him did not really work out as you might expect...

Boris answered Paxman's questions about the Lisbon treaty and David Cameron's Bullingdon days in his own inimitable style, giving as good

as he got and taking the interview off on some fascinating tangents. He even at one point delivered a direct to camera statement after Paxman insisted following Boris' assertion that Paxman was seeking to "intermediate" too much!

It is well worth checking out and will surely become a classic of the genre. It is currently on the iPlayer here from about 16 minutes in or you can watch the embedded Youtube of it below:

Tory Lisbon line not going down well with the public

On the way into work I caught the end of a discussion about the Conservative position on the Lisbon treaty on Victoria Derbyshire's 5 Live show. It seemed that Mark Francois was doing his best to communicate the party line on the issue but the audience of 200 invited members of the public seemed to be getting more and more exasperated with him.

I heard several comments from audience members along the lines of politicians not being able to give a straight answers and there was a fair bit of heckling and booing when again and again Mark tried to deflect the questions with his "wait and see" line.

Obviously an audience on a radio programme is not a scientific sample but if the reaction there is at all representative of feeling out in the country (and I look forward to the polls on this) then this is an issue that could drag the Conservative party down just at a time when they really need to be maintaining a decent lead over Labour.

I wonder how long they will be able to hold the current line.

In related news, on the advice of Mike Smithson I decided to have a little flutter today on the likelihood of there being a referendum on Lisbon at some point during 2010. Ladbrokes are offering 10-1 which I agree with Mike are good odds.

Interview with Danny Kushlick of Transform Drug Policy Foundation

Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with my views regarding drug policy in this country.

At the Lib Dem conference a couple of weeks ago I attended a fringe meeting on this subject sponsored by Transform Drug Policy Foundation who campaign to reform drug law. Their speaker was founder and head of policy Danny Kushlick, a passionate and extremely knowledgeable campaigner on the issue. I took the opportunity after the meeting to grab a quick interview with him to talk about TDPF and its objectives.

The interview lasts about nine minutes:

PS: For some unknown reason I have noticed that I introduced Danny's organisation incorrectly. It is definitely Transform Drug Policy Foundation!

PPS: Apologies for the shimmeriness in the background on the video. Hopefully it's not too distracting and it is the audio that is the important part anyway!

This is why people dislike politicians

There is a revealing snippet on Iain Martin's Wall Street Journal blog today. It highlights how the decision to drop the agreement to a TV debate from Gordon Brown's speech was taken and the consequences of that decision. An exasperated Labour aide said:

Do you know when the decision was finally taken by Gordon to drop the commitment to debate Cameron from the speech? At 1:30 in the morning on the day of his speech, that’s when he decided. At that point there’s panic. Quick, who has some substance we can use to fill the hole in the speech? That’s when they quickly re-heat the stuff about putting single mothers in state-care homes, and chuck it in. At… 1… 30… in the morning of the speech.

So the "bring back the poorhouse" stuff was thrown in at the last minute. No wonder it did not sit well with the rest of the speech and had so many holes in it.

I expect that in the end this idea will be quietly dropped but not before Brown has forced his ministerial colleagues and other underlings to go out on the media and make fools of themselves trying to defend this re-heated and ill-thought through nonsense.

And all so that he could save his announcement about the TV debate until the day before the Tory conference in order to try and cut into their news cycle. This was a rubbish idea anyway as his very belated acceptance of the gauntlet thrown down by Sky News and already picked up by his two main opponents reflects quite poorly on him. It was pretty obvious he was going to accept given all the briefing so its effect was minimal. Also Brown has clearly learned nothing from the debacle a couple of years ago when he flew to Iraq during the Tory conference to announce troop withdrawal. That rebounded on him and made it look like he was playing politics with the war. It was was one of the reasons why he bottled the election. Why does he insist on these risible tactics?

It is exactly this sort of thing that makes people dislike politicians so much. The politicians think they are being oh so clever but people are not stupid and can see through it.

Inheritance Tax thoughts

I have spent a chunk of this morning discussing Inheritance Tax with a few people on Twitter. There is clearly a very strong feeling amongst certain people about this tax. Phrases like "Death Duties" and "Taxing the dead" were used at various points. There was also one person who had been forced to sell their home in order to pay IHT.

The view I have taken on IHT is that it is actually taxing the heirs rather than the dead. I have also perceived it as a means of increasing social mobility.

However I fully accept that there are problems with it. I don't think anyone should be forced to sell their home to pay it, that is just wrong. I also know that very rich people get around it in various ways. So I find myself in a position where I agree with the principle (although the exact threshold and percentage I am less definite about) but am concerned about how it works in practise.

from what I can tell, there seems to be a fairly clear position from both Tory grassroots (against in principle) and Labour grassroots (in favour in principle). I am curious to know what other people, especially Lib Dems think about this.

Could Gordon Brown have handled the TV debate issue any worse?

Well, finally, Gordon Brown has agreed that he will participate in a TV debate ahead of the next general election.

Back in July I suggested that one of the broadcasters should announce there will be a debate and threaten to empty chair any of the 3 main leaders who refused to turn up. Then in early September, Sky News did just that (I wonder if Adam Boulton reads this blog!).

Nick Clegg and David Cameron straight away agreed to it in principle. Look what we have had from Gordon Brown though:

• Firstly he refused to say if he would participate.
• Some of his colleagues though such as Peter Mandelson appeared to be trying to bounce him into it.
• Then just before his speech to the Labour party it was heavily trailed that he would accept the challenge in his speech. It appears the idea was dropped at the last minute, thus making him look indecisive, again!
• Then finally, a month after the initial challenge and both his main opponents accepted he belatedly says yes.

I struggle to think of a more cack-handed way he could have handled this. He could have pre-empted all of this months ago by announcing he would do it and would have looked like he was setting the pace. Alternatively, as soon as Sky News announced it, he could have accepted thus making him look ready and willing to embrace the challenge. He could have put it in his speech to the Labour conference which would have gone down very well with activists and help put an extra spring in their step.

Instead he waits until 3 days after his speech and after all the Labour delegates have drifted away from Brighton.

Gordon Brown got to the position he is now in largely because of his reputation as an excellent political tactician. This episode strongly suggests to me that any skills he may once have had in this area are now gone.

Still, at least we are now very likely to get one, possibly more TV debates ahead of the election which is a very welcome move and kudos to the Sky News team for forcing this issue. I have no doubt if they had not have done this there would have been no debate.

Are Tory bloggers out of step with membership on the environment?

Conservative Home are publishing the results of a wide-ranging survey of Conservative membership on a variety of issues today with the second part tomorrow.

Tim Montgomerie also has an article in today's Independent which summarises the headline findings. One that leapt out at me was:

84 per cent support environmental measures

I found this figure very interesting because if you read many of the leading Conservative and right-wing blogs and many of the comments after the posts they often do not reflect this view. There seems to be a vein of suspicion running through references to the environment and climate change that there is little evidence that it is man-made and even that the whole environmental agenda is some sort of left-wing conspiracy.

Here are a few examples from a quick google search:

• Iain Dale finding it very amusing that snow affects climate change book launch, confusing weather with climate (many of the comments below the post are noteworthy too). There are more examples from Iain here and here.
• There are examples on Con Home of articles hostile to climate change politics too, e.g. here and here.
• Here are a couple of examples from "Letters From a Tory" here and here.
• And here's Donal Blaney with his several penneth on the subject here, here and here.

I could go on but I think you get the point.

Now before loads of right-wingers start jumping down my throat I am not saying they do not have the right to their views, of course they do. I am not personally in the business of accusing people of "climate change denial". It's not a religion for me although I do think it exists and a good proportion of it is man-made but I am happy to have the debate. I am only raising this because it highlights an apparent difference of opinion between leading Conservative blogs and their membership. This seems a bit odd because usually, from what I can see (e.g. on Europe, Tax and other big issues) the Tory blogs are usually very much aligned with the grassroots view.

I would be interested to see what other people think about this.

Agreeing with Zac Goldsmith

I was honoured to be one of the speakers at a breakfast event hosted by Editorial Intelligence yesterday morning. They call the events "Thought for the day" and they invite two people to speak for 5 or so minutes each on topics of their choice. Then the other invitees (there were about 30 of them drawn from various sectors of the media and business) get to respond and make points or ask questions.

I had decided to speak about the future of newspapers (a topic

close to my heart). The other speaker turned out to be Zac Goldsmith, Conservative PPC for Richmond and committed environmental activist. He was there ostensibly to talk about his latest book "The Constant Economy: How to Build a Stable Society" but he actually talked about environmental issues more broadly and outlined some of his policy positions.

I was already slightly charmed as talking beforehand Zac explained that he had read some posts on my blog and mentioned my piece on the future of newspapers as one that he had enjoyed. When I said I was talking about that at the event he was pleased and said he would make sure that he linked the two together when he spoke, which he did. His view is that one of the big barriers to conquering environmental problems is the media and in a more democratised media, like the one I predict there would be less vested interests getting in the way of serious coverage and debate on the issue.

As I usually find with these sort of events it was very enjoyable and there was a vigorous discussion afterwards where both mine and Zac's positions on the subjects we discussed were tested and picked apart by some excellent contributions. I think I held my own OK and I did learn something new (about how hyperlinks are being used with some paid content - I may come back to this in a future blogpost). Unsurprisingly, Zac was very strong defending his position and carried it off with the sort of graceful charm that I will likely never achieve (although to be fair he has been born and bred for it!).

The thing that struck me most during the event though was that I really could not find anything that Zac said that I disagreed with. I spent much of the time when he was speaking nodding. I had to stop myself eventually for fear of looking like a nodding dog on the back shelf of a car! I myself am passionate about the environment and it was heartening to hear a Conservative candidate with such strong views on this subject.

One thing I did ask him during the debate was whether he agreed with many of the policy positions of Susan Kramer (Richmond Lib Dem MP and his opponent in the upcoming election) to which he responded yes. Susan has strong environment credentials and has made opposition to the expansion of Heathrow one of the defining issues of her time as an MP so far. It is a shame that two passionate campaigners on the environment are fighting for the same seat and only one of them can win. Of course I hope it is Susan.

Despite this, I expect Mr Goldsmith will one day make an excellent MP. In fact if more Tory MPs were like him I would be a lot less concerned about the likelihood of a Conservative government after the next election.

PS: There will be some filmed footage of the event as well as a podcast which I will link to when they are available.

Mark Reckons - September 2009 STATPORN

In September I had 8,668 Pageviews from 7,008 Visits and a total of 4,354 Absolute Unique Visitors.

My top 5 blog posts were:

1) Interview with Douglas Carswell MP about "The Plan"

2) The future of newspapers

3) Interview on drugs policy with Phillip Oppenheim, former Conservative minister

4) Fisking Mike Ion on LabourList regarding voting against Labour

5) Campaigning against the ISA will not be easy

Top 5 referring sites were:

1) blogs.telegraph.co.uk

2) Lib Dem Blogs

3) Lib Dem Voice

4) Iain Dale's Diary

5) Twitter.com

1,207 visits came from search engines and the top 5 search terms were:

1) mark reckons (246)

2) drayson + goldacre (55)

3) mark reckons blog (28)

4) sarah palin (20)

5) ian tomlinson (14)

BBC Question Time Live Chat - 1st October 2009 - #bbcqt

It's #bbcqt day again and as usual the Live Chat on this blog will start at 10:30pm.

The panel will include Culture, Media and Sport Secretary Ben Bradshaw, shadow work and pensions secretary Theresa May, former Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy, historian and presenter Dr David Starkey, and economist Dambisa Moyo.

Liberal Democrat Voice also always have an open thread for BBC Question Time which is usually posted just before the start of the programme.

Join us from 10:30pm below.

Iain Dale and other Bracknell candidates should be judged on policies, not slurs

Bracknell Conservative primary candidate Iain Dale is the subject of a horrible, homophobic slur in the Daily Mail today. I am not going to link to the Mail or reproduce it here. You can read the details in a post that Iain has done today if you wish.

The thing I wanted to comment on though is Iain's fear that he expresses in his post a couple of times that by highlighting this he is damaging his chances in Bracknell. I really, really hope he is wrong about that.

I should make it clear that I am not supporting any particular Conservative's candidacy here in Bracknell and whoever is selected as candidate for the Conservative party I will be vigorously campaigning against them and for our excellent Lib Dem candidate Ray Earwicker.

However I hope that these slurs do not have an adverse effect on Iain's attempt to get selected. As with all the other candidates, people should judge them on their ability as a candidate and how they perform at the hustings here in Bracknell on the 17th October.

Frankly, I am gobsmacked that a newspaper in 2009 can get away with hateful smears like this and I hope that Iain's complaint (and I suspect his won't be the only one) to the Press Complaints Commission is upheld.

There is some other blogosphere reaction to this here and here.