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)