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I've belatedly noticed that I was tagged by Andy Hinton for my top five political influences. My excuse is that I was taking a couple of weeks off, as it turned out, to try to rewrite some of the code behind my blog, and that even now the auto-discovery off references to my blog isn't working on the live server. Mine probably won't be as unexpected as Andy's five, and unusually for me probably won't deserve the amount of explanation he gave to some of his, but here goes...

After some considerable thought (yes!) number one goes to:

• Henry George, author of "Progress and Poverty", the seminal work on Land Value Tax and "Protection or Free Trade" a similarly influential book showing how free trade ought to be the vehicle that gives the best chance for the working man and woman to maximize what they can get out for their labour. They are the basis of much of the early twentieth century liberal economics that led to the People's Budget of Lloyd George in 1909. Figures as diverse as Mark Twain, Einstein, Leo Tolstoy, George Bernard Shaw, Churchill and Milton Friedman acknowledge his influence, so I figure why not me too!
• Number two goes to Conrad Russell who, when I was in my Liberal infancy, showed in his "Intelligent Person's Guide to Liberalism" the multiple faces of liberalism that ought to be balanced to produce a coherent and successful liberal polity.
• At three has to be a chap called Paul Oliver, a dear friend from school, with whom I am sadly no longer in contact - hmph! the youngsters of today with their mobile phones, email addresses and Facebook profiles to keep them in touch! - but with whom I would sit up to all hours of the morning "sorting out the world" at school and who probably got me thinking about more political and philosophical issues than I can now remember.
• Fourth goes back in time some way - David Hume and in particular his "Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth" gives me hope that if we ever get to sit down and design our political system and constitution again we do not need to start from the undemocratic elected dictatorship we have now.
• And, probably not actually fifth if I had to think about it harder - probably higher - comes Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers of seventeenth century England, Christian "proto-communists" who fought for the right of everyone to have common access to the bounty of nature with which to sustain their lives by their own labour.

So there we are - quite a difficult choice really - there are so many I could have added:

Paddy Ashdown for example who provided a refreshing antidote to the 90s sleaze culture in the way he handled his affair and which probably convinced me as much as anything that the Lib Dems were basically the most decent folk in British politics;

or Joe Nutt, my English O level teacher who shocked me by giving me a 19/20 for an essay I wrote on inner city deprivation but at the same time noted that it was probably somewhere to the right of Ghengis Khan in its apparent assumption that some people appeared born into and stuck in "vicious and semi-criminal" (to use Charles Booth's phrase) lives and communities that they had little hope, in Thatcher's Britain at least, of escaping;

or former Belgian central banker Bernard Lietaer who offers a vision, in "The Future of Money" of an economic redesign that could produce "sustainable abundance" to use his phrase in a superconnected world having to deal with globalization, environmental and demographic change;

or maybe even Robert Owen for planting the seeds of the worldwide Co-operative movement from his mill in central Scotland.

Oh - and I am flattered and gratified that Andy suggests my incessant nagging about Land Value Tax is not without merit or use. Every person convinced is another step towards acceptance and implementation of a sustainable fiscal system that could finally complete the vision of the great liberal reform agenda.

Whilst I might be happy about the ACPO drug idea, two other news stories today provide yet more evidence if any were needed of the creeping surveillance we are being subjected to. First, from the Oxford Mail comes a story that Thames Valley police are going to start setting up airport style metal detector arches in places like shopping centres at random to try and catch people with knives.

I know, I know - the police are our friends, and if you've got nothing to hide you have nothing to fear. And it's voluntary - but you watch their reaction if you turn around and try to find another way into the shopping centre or wherever.

Well bollocks to that. I don't want them going through my Anne Summers shopping bag turning out that shiny new metal vibrator I bought for Christmas because it sets all the bells in the shopping centre off! Or whatever.

And then there's a story that they're going to be using hand-held fingerprint scanners on people they stop for whatever reason. We're told they're not going to be storing the data they collect.

Yet.

We're told that it's voluntary.

At the moment.

But we also know that it's linked to a database of about 12% of the population already with fingerprints on file for whatever reason, and we also know that most people simply do not know their rights to refuse such things as "voluntary" stop and searches, so how will they be properly empowered to refuse this advance of the big brother state?

Just beware of sleeping at night - you might wake up with a bar-code tattooed on you some night soon!

...and is not "liberal" either.

There are often attempts by ministers (Jacqui Smith is mentioned in Sunday's Independent for example about the recent prisoner data loss) to shirk their responsibility for government cock-ups. There are also left wing commentators who crow that these incidents are clear proof that "neo-liberal" policies of "privatising" government functions are evil and should be stopped; that the "free market" does not work in the public sphere.

But I don't consider such contracting out of work as either liberal nor as implying that ministers are no longer responsible for their incompetence. Nor, even, are they truly "privatisation". To me the doctrine that says some things are better done by profit motivated companies (or other, non-government organizations) does not mean merely sub-contracting to a government service level agreement.

Yes, such arrangements may save on costs or similar. But all they are doing is delivering the same policies and procedures designed by government. This is the "corporatisation" of government. It is inherently protectionist - the government grants usually monopolistic contracts to firms, sometimes even, like Capita, that started life as a bunch of civil servants deciding they could do better for themselves by making a profit out of what they do.

No, real privatisation, so called "liberalisation" of government functions, should mean the state divesting themselves completely from interference in that policy area. For example, just because DVLA contracts out its computer systems and administration does not mean the registration and licensing of vehicles and drivers has been "privatised". Not bothering with a DVLA at all and allowing insurance companies to work out ways of ensuring the drivers and vehicles they are prepared to insure comply with what they consider to be safe would be. i.e. a different way of working, free from government entirely, and open to proper competition where new ideas and ways of achieving similar ends can be developed. Finding new structures, free from the dead hand of government to do the things we need, rather than what politicians think we ought to need.

Similarly with ID cards or passports - it is not "privatising" simply to contract out the development and implementation of a government policy to profit making firms. Indeed, this is anathema to true economic liberals - for it is corporate welfare, money for old rope if you like. My idea from yesterday about getting rid of government validated passports entirely and instead letting people buy their own guarantee of identity if and when they need one using a new mechanism such as digital certificates would be liberal; the true privatisation of functions the state previously chose to regulate and deliver itself.

And of course, such liberalisation may not end up being delivered by "for-profit" corporations at all.

So Jacqui, stop trying to hide from your responsibilities. You have cocked up just as surely as if the person with the memory stick were your permanent secretary. You are incompetent. Indeed doubly so - for not only have you failed to do your job, but you've even failed to make sure the simpler option - getting someone else to do it for you is done properly.  You should go.

Thales, the successor to Thomson CSF, has won the first contract to start the design process for the National Identity Register which will be the more sinister side of the whole ID card system. For those of us committed to opposing ID cards and the NIR at every opportunity and wanting a way to boycott suppliers this presents a challenge. Many of the possible suppliers of course are not ones with big "brand names" you can easily boycott. Thales itself is mostly a government contractor, making war machines. And they are nearly a quarter owned by the French state. Both of these in my opinion make their appointment even worse (not because it is French, per se, but because it is partly controlled by a foreign state, however currently friendly that state may be).

But they do make, through their Thomson media subsidiary, a few things we can target. They are, for example the largest or perhaps sole supplier of the BT Homehub kit (and its equivalent from Orange). They also do an awful lot of facilities stuff for film, advertising and television (they own the Thorn EMI filming facilities firm), but it will always be quite difficult to find out which programs, films or advertisers are using them.

So the main real consumer product they can be identified with is Homehub. So, if you happen to be a BT subscriber and use one of those sexy boxes, maybe it's time to switch your communications provider?

(They also make set-top digital TV boxes and DVD equipment if you want to do some more digging around).