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Hat tip to ConservativeHome who highlight an Ipsos MORI poll that shows Lib Dems, leaderless, up two points from our nadir at 13%. Which begs the question; perhaps we should fill the vacancy until and unless it starts to fall again...:)

Labour 1% ahead in MORI poll tomorrow:

I wonder if Police dip-sticks target drinkers will apply in Uttoxeter, Rocester and Alton too. If so twenty five years ago and it could have been me. Maybe not anti-social as such, but yes, while every so often someone would chunder, getting into the local town to get some booze (especially at the ends of terms) was a school tradition as I am sure it was everywhere else (remember young Prince Charles and the cherry brandy incident?).

I'm not sure I agree with these sorts of intrusions into teen life, but sometimes I guess, they want to be seen to be doing something - I'm sure in my day if we were obviously drunk we would simply be bunged in the back of the police car and taken to the merciless punishment of our housemaster or parents or something, or the cells if we were uncooperative.

I still remember with a mixture of fear and pride getting a taxi back to school with a box of mixed alcohol on my lap - and I mean everything - we were into "punch" at sixteen - made with everything, anything you could get hold of, and the more different drinks mixed in the better, the more manly.

Suddenly, trundling round the lanes north of Uttoxeter and only a mile or so from the relative "safety" of school blue lights came on behind us. "Bugger - we're busted" we thought. The police car pulled up alongside and waved the taxi down. We cowered, trying to hide our bags and boxes.

"Coming for a pint after" yelled the policeman at the taxi driver. It was his brother in law, and the taxi-driver was trying desperately not to piss himself seeing us dropping our loads!

I caught this on the BBC:

It is this last part that really gets me riled:

What utter bollocks, to use the technical turn of phrase, when applied to a parent. In the public gaze, there will be a parent taking a taxi with their child, acting as parent and under their authority alone as parent. The whole purpose of the CRB type legislation is to reassure those with primary caring responsibilities for vulnerable people, usually parents and other guardians, that others, when put in positions of contact or responsibility for their wards, children and relatives, have been checked out.

Do parents living in council housing have to be "CRBed"? Does a parent waiting with their child in an NHS medical facility waiting room have to be "CRBed"? Or even a parent stepping onto school property to deliver their child right to the door? In what way are those different from this case?

Maybe my blog reader is faltering, but I seem to be getting enough comment on the Irish EU Treaty vote from eurosceptic types. But very little from members of the most avowedly "pro-EU" political party in Britain. Are the Lib Dems collectively stunned by the result?

As that strangest of beasts a pretty anti-EU Lib Dem I'm personally kind of pleased.

In "Let Our Cities Breathe" earlier I wondered whether there was a mechanism that could make it financially feasible to redevelop whole neighbourhoods of private housing to cope with the post oil-age and climate and demographic change without any existing resident losing any of their existing equity value and whilst making space for fifty per cent more bedspaces in configurations more closely suited to current housing market needs and still sell the additional units and below market value.

So I set about to try to prove it on paper, and there is a spreadsheet now that purports to show it is possible. Go here to find out more about how Commmunity Land Trusts and Mutual Home Ownership could make a community led and owned "Wren-esque" grand plan for redeveloping any area a possibility.

Technorati Tags: affordable housing, climate change, community land trusts, localism