Coalition now on the side of rapists...

...according to Labour!

That's right, whilst we're all giving a hearty two cheers to the Freedom Bill and we're all being told that with that nice Ed M in charge, Labour is eschewing it's authoritarian ways and reaching out to us liberal types, Mrs Ed B writes "Relaxing DNA rules could reduce rape convictions".

Whilst it would be easy to pull her tawdry argument apart we know these are intelligent people (aren't they?) so we must assume this is just mendacious rather than meant. However can you spot the slight (!) disconnect between these two conjoined statements:

"Cooper is alarmed that DNA will be retained only in "limited circumstances" if someone is arrested but not charged with rape."

and

"Labour said this was a "huge missed opportunity" because studies have shown that the reoffending rate for rape is as high as 29%."

? Sigh...

Maybe he's found a safe Labour seat?

Just saying...

UPDATE 16/04/2011 Well well well...

Conservatives for AV banned from own Conference

I hear, via Yes2AV, that the Conservatives for AV group have been banned from their own spring conference. The article on ConservativeHome from their leader is here. As always with ConservativeHome, it is the comments which are more fascinating and telling than the article. These are mostly concerned with any party advantage that can be gained from any voting system instead of any principles but my favorite comment is this from "neocon":

"Keeping FPTP is no guarantee of anything .It just produced a Coalition and produced Minority and Coalition Govts in the first half of the 20th Century.

If as Prof John Curtice and the IPPR suggest that we will see many more Coalitions in the years to come with AV or FPTP then obviously we must stop this.

My view is legislate so that we only allow two political parties at Westminster and then we and labour can take turns and only have to govern on our own." (my emphasis)

I don't think further comment is required!

Welcoming Master LibCync

I've been completely terrible at blogging for a while, this is one of the reasons:

He was born last week at a whopping 9 pound 5 and a half ounces!
There is a lot less sleep going round chez LibCync, whether this will lead to more or less blogging I'm not sure! It will certainly lead to a drop in coherency levels (oi, I heard that :)!

It's now time for the Blessed Vince to pipe down on the bonus question

So goes the wisdom of bankers. On the day that Vince warns bankers about excess bonuses again, I bring you the political pronouncements of the bankers themselves.

In a letter to clients from an investment management firm passed to me, they have this to say on the political issues of the day:

"Whilst one may dislike good companies disappearing, particularly to overseas predators, it is surprising how often they resurface at a future date in a somewhat different form after some imaginative financiers have had a bob or two. Apart from contributing to some banker's bonus, takeovers keep a lot of company directors on their toes to the overall common good.

"It is probably now time for the Blessed Vince to pipe down on the bonus question and remember that one banker's £1 million pound bonus is very often the Chancellor's £500,000 tax take - a fact that is conveniently forgotten in banker bashing. "

Well, Vince has been dubious about the "common good" of some takeovers for a while now and has also expressed the view that excessive bonus may be better spent, in the "common good", lending to small companies or improving the fragile banks balance sheets to allow them to lend more and to improve the worth of TAX-PAYER OWNED banks. But thank to Messrs Bankers I can now see the error of my ways!

UPDATE: Due to the letter passer being paranoid, I've now removed the company name!

Brian Coleman insults our Lynne...again!

You may remember, a couple of years back, Brian Coleman, Conservative Chair of the London Fire Authority, called Lynne Featherstone, "dizzy", "an airhead" and "an utter disgrace" for calling out the fire brigade when she thought her boiler was going to explode and take her house down. Her actions were backed up as the right thing to have done by the fire brigade.

Well, amazingly, Brian is still chair of the Fire Authority and in Today's Hampstead and Highgate Express he's back to his old tricks. Amongst the other insults liberally flung around he says:

"Lynne Featherstone is entirely light-weight. God knows how she manages as a minister"

Charming...

Oi, students! Answer this!

What would you rather the LibDems have done:

a) Have all 57 MPs valiantly keep to their pledge and vote against the unfettered, uncompromising and unprogressive (Labour-initiated) Browne proposals for a cap-less full free market in tuition fees with no allowances for poorer students and then valiantly see these proposals go through with the votes of 500 Tory and Labour MPs (to be fair, now they are in opposition I'm sure some Labour MPs will now abstain but not enough to change the result).

or

b) Trade our votes with our coalition partners to make the Browne package better, fairer and more progressive for Students

Any rants/comments are expected to start with an answer and working. I thank you!

Having said that, I don't think having Vince denying there is a trust issue with breaking the pledge (and it was/will be broken, however justified) is particularly right or helpful. I don't know what our press operation has been doing all this time. Surely they could have seen this coming? The leadership should have been out there explaining this (along the lines above) a long time ago instead of putting their heads in the sand and hoping this would all go away and allowing this "betrayal" narrative to develop (which the media are only too happy to perpetuate).

But then, in my opinion, this is just a continuation as we also had an appalling election campaign (okay that's over-stating it a tad, but it was just the usual depressing long line of missed opportunities) starting with that appallingly bland slogan and logo and then that embarrassingly misjudged VAT bombshell poster (when even your own politicians look embarrassed unveiling it you have to ask - oh and that hasn't caused us any problems at all...) just making us look like any other party. Yes the first debate was great but we didn't seem to move foward in the subsequent two or capitalise on them (evidentally).


Er... I digress but only slightly as the tuition fees problems were all eminently foreseeable and have done us tremendous damage but not, I would argue, by the facts themselves but by the mishandling of them.

UPDATE: Also, what he said.