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...who seems as appalled as I am at the relish with which our party has taken to banning a four hundred year old "pleasure": Forceful and Moderate: Smoked out....

Now, I accept the public health arguments, and I accept in particular (as a member of UNISON how could I not) the arguments about the dangers to staff. Yet still there are ways round having to illiberally ban something. Many people take on jobs that have risks to their health or personal safety. Health and Safety legislation tries to get employers to minimise those risks in most cases (for example with protective gear) but in some cases, when all that's done and risks still remain, employees can command a premium.

If 80% of people really want to eat and drink in smoke free places this is plenty incentive for the industry to give them that option. Since more than 20% of people smoke anyway (and it's higher amongst the young adult population), isn't there a good chance that only those who do would be prepared to work, for more money if possible, in an establishment that permits smoking - I know almost everyone in my SU bar are smokers - they get extra breaks!

As a party we have, or had at least, policy in our "abolish regulation" stuff to replace the national minimum wage with a more flexible arrangement negotiated and enforced thropugh trade and workers associations on a region by region basis so it could reflect the costs of living in different places. We could add into this premiums for working in smokey bars perhaps. A real liberal response to this would be to try to level the playing field in favour of the workers, not outlaw something (especially something that is still so very, even if inexplicably, commonplace).

Incidentally, does anyone know how this affects hotel bedrooms? I have a get around in my mind already. Small hotel, bedroom suites rented by the hour with more settees and tables than beds, room service delivering booze. Get the picture? The wealthy can get round anything.

...for members of the Oxford Union to vote tonight in favour of upholding the invitation to neo-nazis David Irving and Nick Griffin to speak next week comes with the news that Des Browne, Dennis McShane and Chris Bryant have said they will boycott future events at the Union if Monday's debate goes ahead with those two participating.

Me, I'm not a member so it's not my decision, and I am in two minds, having caught the bug and objected strongly when Irving was last invited in 2001 and I was on the City Council. On that occasion it was cancelled the night before when it became clear that events outside the union might make the city centre unsafe for ordinary folk going about their lawful business and leisure as Irving's supporters and Anti-Nazi League demonstrators promised to fight it out in the street outside and the police decided that it would be a public order problem.

My preference is for open and free debate - though I suspect that the two main protagonists on Monday do not really share that preference, and in a private member's club it should not be for anyone else to dictate who they have to speak to them. In a private member's club moreover made up of some of the most intelligent people in the land one would expect those members to be as well qualified as anyone to make up their own minds about the views of two of the country's most obnoxious people.

But if it's going to prove again, as I suspect, to be a threat to public order outside the Union, out of earshot from the privileged membership supping with the devils in their hallowed debating chamber and bars, they need to be told and not go ahead.

All this brouhaha about the Olympics, torches, boycotts and so on has not passed me by. I hear all sorts of stuff from the "athletes' side" about how the Olympics is not political, about how people have trained all their lives to get to this supreme test of their skills and abilities against others from every nation on earth. I have some sympathy with that. I was once quite a competitive fencer. I used to love the competitions (second in the West Midlands under 16s foil if you're interested and can believe it!) and I can only imagine the excitement and satisfaction of having made it to the very top on the planet in your discipline.

But saying that the Olympics is not political seems to me nowadays like saying it's non-commercial and strictly amateur - at least the latter has been the case within my life time. But, as we all saw on 7th July 2005 (when there wasn't other news on that day), the choice of venue is intensely political, certainly in the sense that politicians are deeply involved in it. It can (and has already in the case of London) make people fortunes, that others pay for.

I admit to having had misgivings when Beijing was awarded the games - I don't like the fact that Formula One has a race there, though in a sense that's less of an issue because F1 is an unashamedly commercial, big money, oligarchic event that pays but lip service to the troubles of "little people" and with no loftier ideals such as the Olympic movement professes. But I, along with many others it seems, did hope that having such a high profile international event, together with their growing commercial and economic presence in the world, would focus minds in China on reform. Until I think it was last year sometime that someone high up in the Chinese government said something to the effect that China would never be a liberal democracy ("over my dead body" by implication). I accept that moving such a huge population to full democracy would take time, but this was a "never, never, never" type of statement.

Ever since I have thought that "we" should somehow object to the whole shebang and the credence it gives to the veneer of acceptability. I know that in 1980 the Moscow regime was pretty similar to Beijing's and that the boycott then was a specific protest about the invasion of Afghanistan (oh how we can now ruefully laugh about that!) and it did no good whatever so far as I can remember - though even then, China joined the boycott. So as an organized thing, I'm not sure a "national" boycott will do any good this time either. However, as in 1980, there are other symbolic objections we in the democratic world can make. Athletes could attend and take part under the flag of the Olympic movement rather than their national flags and anthems for example.

But it is pure fantasy to say that the Olympics are non-political - they never have been in reality, even long before they became a festival for junk food vendors and sweat shop employers to tout their tawdry wares and part of a professional athlete's career progression. The Soviet Union - and other countries within their sphere of influence - didn't take part from 1928 till 1952. African nations withdrew in protest at South Africa and Rhodesia being allowed to take part in the seventies. If it really were apolitical, why does the torch even go anywhere near Downing Street - surely if it's all above politics it should be a royal occasion.

Personally, if any athlete choses voluntarily, having gained a place in the team, not to attend, putting lives in Darfur, Tibet or, so far little mentioned despite last year's riots and crackdown, Burma before their personal attainment, they'll have my full support and they ought not to be punished or denigrated for making that sacrifice.

James Graham has a piece on openDemocracy on policy making in the Lib Dems, in which, amongst other things, he bemoans the lack of local involvement in policy making:

That isn't to say that the quality of debate at Lib Dem conference isn't high; the problem is the level of debate up until that point. "Consultation" such as it is involves a three hour debate on the Sunday morning before party conferences followed by a narrow window of opportunity to make written submissions. In many cases the working group will have already pretty much decided 90% of the paper by that point. Local parties as an entity contribute very little to policy overall; very few have regular policy discussions, let alone formal ones which actually feed into the process. Indeed, Unlock Democracy research suggests that of the three main parties, the Liberals discuss policy less than either of the other two at a local level, despite the much greater power their local parties theoretically wield.

Coincidentally this came up in a fringe session at Saturday's South Central regional conference chaired by Chris Marriage, chair of the South Central regional Policy Committee. I had a few things to say at it which I think would help address this apparent lack of localised discussion, and since I got all excited about it, I went straight out and got two signatures on a nomination form to be on the regional policy committee and hey presto! was returned unopposed.

I observed that with the new system of calling on a standing panel and not advertising individual policy working parties at a federal level there is, if anything, even less of an opportunity for individual members to get involved just in an area they have an interest in. Further, there seems to be ever less opportunity for local parties and other bodies to get policy motions debated at conference. Some would say this is just a function of having ever more business to conduct at busy conferences and others perhaps more cynically that FPC/FCC don't want so many "oddball" motions slipping into a carefully media managed conference agenda.

It was stressed that in theory at least regional policy committees were there to set policy for that region rather than being a regional branch of FPC, and that much is accepted, for the moment. But need it be that way? Could we have a mechanism where regional policy committees have a remit to help develop policy making capacity at local party level and then filter local submissions and champion them up to federal level?

Chris suggested that perhaps there ought to be a place as of right for a representative of each region on FPC. I think that is not possible - FPC is already big enough. But perhaps what there could be is a committee - perhaps meeting just two or four times a year - of representatives from each regional policy committee that could have some presence from FPC and a right to submit ideas (and fully worked up policy papers if available) into the FPC process.

Here in Oxford East we do have policy discussion type meetings - "Pizza and Politics" and so on - and I am somewhat shamed to say I have not yet made it to one. They seem at the moment mostly to be a vehicle for explaining and debating existing policy. I think an early one though sought to debate the Tax Commission I consultation paper before it went to conference and feed into that process.

I hope I'm not pre-empting my first meeting of the regional policy committee but I think I would like to make this a task of mine on that committee - to get in touch with local parties and try to get them to do more "blue sky thinking" with their members with the aim of getting the best of locally generated policy ideas and championing them up to federal party and federal conference level - to give local parties another shot at getting their ideas debated in the big tent.

Hat tip, though I hate to say it, to Yellow Peril for this story: LibDems soften on axing council tax - [Sunday Herald]:

LibDems soften on axing council tax

By Paul Hutcheon, Scottish Political Editor

SCOTTISH Liberal Democrats are backtracking on plans to replace the council tax with an income-based alternative, the Sunday Herald can reveal.
Nicol Stephen’s party is softening its support for abolishing the successor to the poll tax because it does not want to jeopardise a third coalition deal with Labour. Senior LibDems believe the policy, which could increase the bills of middle-class Scots, is not worth a huge political fight.

The development is significant as the introduction of a local income tax was presumed to be a key plank of the party’s electoral strategy for next year’s Holyrood election.

The issue separates the LibDems from Labour, who remain staunch supporters of the council tax, and was thought to be a factor preventing another coalition deal.

Of course they are perfectly able to vary policy in a properly federal party where different areas may demand different tactics, and this is great news, if true. Scotland has led the way on land reform and voting reform. Land Value Tax would be the natural extension of the community land ownership laws they passed. I hope ALTER and the Labour Land Campaign can maybe get together and persuade our respective party groups north of the border to go for a Site Value Rating for local government in Scotland.

Glasgow, I believe, has the lowest rate of home owner-occupancy in the UK - LVT with a homestead allowance could help spread home ownership.

Glasgow is also the city that, at the turn of the last century, was being squeezed by surrounding landowners till the poor people squeaked as highlighted in several speeches on Land Value Tax by one Winston Churchill - and he made one of his best known speeches on the subject in Edinburgh.

It was predominantly Scottish ex-patriate business-men and colonialists of course who took Land Value Tax to places like Hong Kong, Singapore and New Zealand - implementing overseas the solution to the problems of a feudal landowning system they had laboured under and escaped from back at home.

Let them now lead the way and prove to the rest of us how it can be done!

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