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The BBC reports that scientists have created sperm cells from stem cells.

Now I am no biologist for sure, but doesn't everyone produce stem cells? And anyone's stem cells can be switched on to produce any type of human cell? Does this not imply that it would be possible to turn a woman's stem cells into sperm cells? Is this the beginning of the end for men's part in the reproductive cycle?

Can't live with them, can live without them?

So, last night saw the first meeting of the "editorial board" of a new project initially being sponsored by Lib Dems ALTER , the party's only affiliated group focussing solely on radical economic issues, to publish a book of essays, in a similar vein to "The Orange Book" or "Re-inventing the State". We will set out the case that the "Liberal Economic Tradition " holds the key to the permanent eradication of poverty and the freedom to chose one's own path through life.

We hope to publish in time for the end of August this year, which will be the 100th anniversary of the passage through parliament of the Liberal Government's Old Age Pensions Act in 1908, a key landmark in the development of the modern welfare state, and a few weeks after the 60th birthday of the NHS, conceived by Liberal economist, William Beveridge.

It will truly take Liberal Democrats "out of their comfort zone", for many at least, by arguing that much of what we now have, a "state of welfare", started as a set essentially temporary fix-its intended to alleviate the worst poverty while the entrenched privilege caused by state protected monopolies was dismantled through such radical change as land reform and tariff reduction leading to truly free trade. It will promote the idea that this "unfinished business" is just as relevant and important for today's world, paving the way for what banker and author Bernard Lietaer has called "sustainable abundance".

Over the next few weeks we will firm up the range of topics and start looking for people who may wish to contribute an article in each area, hopefully mostly, and perhaps exclusively, from within the Liberal Democrats themselves. We would like it to be a truly collaborative effort with contributions not just from the "great and the good" within the party, but from the many grass-roots members who we believe share some of these ideas .

So, if any of you are interested in contributing something, do please get in touch with your ideas, or a subject area you would be interested in writing about. From time to time I'll keep people up to date on here, but we're also likely to create a "Liberal Alternative" website where we can co-ordinate the effort.

...remember when policemen were people you felt you could go up to and ask for directions?

No longer it seems. In fact, if you have anything like a map with you, you could find yourself staying at Belmarsh (warning, watching the whole of this may cause you to damage your computer in anger!):

H/T Tristan

I am so glad Terence was filming this. Everyone should get the chance to see this kind of thing and have a real good think about the "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" attitude that is allowing our country to become a fascist state. The ability to stop at random (I was going to say "take to one side", but clearly they're happy to do this in full view of the entire concourse), with no probable cause whatever, and humiliate them in order to show other passengers "look, we're doing something about your security" is utterly obnoxious. I must say, though, I am amazed that he was allowed to continue filming, considering all that has been going on about photography in public places.

Britain, like never before, needs Fourth Amendment rights enshrined in law: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Just by way of another brief interlude in my self-imposed blog silence while I am upgrading software and design, I wanted to mention the wonderful speech I heard yesterday. One of the nice things about being one of the university's governors is that I can get to choose to go to pretty well any number of graduation ceremonies. I don't avail myself of the privilege terribly often, but I went yesterday evening to the graduation ceremony for most of our law students.

The honorary graduand was Clive Stafford Smith, the British born US based death-row lawyer and campaigner against the death penalty and torture and all things Guantanamo. As I understand it, he is, like many passionate campaigners, if not many lawyers, not terribly well remunerated, to put it mildly. His clients tend, almost by definition, to be amongst the poorest, often least educated in US society, and they have no legal right to representation once the sentence is handed down. There's not a lot of money in death penalty appeals or sticking up for the disappeared in America's network of secret GTMO-like prisons.

So he was appealing for these bright young starry eyed graduates to come and be exploited by his charity, Reprieve, for a few months, or more precisely, their parents to fund them while they are there. He promised an experience the like of which they are unlikely to find in a whole career at the Old Bailey or the corridors of corporate power. While they may dream of millionaire partnerships at Clifford Chance, he does it because it is fun! You cannot imagine the fantastic feeling you get, he says, when you "whip George Bush's ass in the Supreme Court" and defeat the world's only super-power in their own courts.

And when you think about it, how do we measure success? Is it the money? Or perhaps the satisfaction of a David victorious against Goliath.

In one of those odd coincidences, Land Value Taxer colleague Tony Vickers was last week having a few problems adding an article to the 1909 website and eventually he forwarded a quote he had just discovered to me by email to put it into an article.

I hadn't thought that the opportunity would come around so soon to do so, but it transpires that Ming Campbell is today giving a speech at a Joseph Rowntree Foundation conference in which he will announce housing proposals, including:

· Building 100,000 new affordable, social and low cost homes each year

· Devolving and reforming the planning system to make decisions faster and more effective for all parties

· Introducing equity mortgages to ensure that affordable housing is built and maintained for the benefit of generations of buyers

· Building smaller social housing developments which are integrated with private housing

· Cutting VAT on housing renovations and repairs

In Joseph Rowntree’s Memorandum to his advisers on setting up a charitable trust (the "parent" trust of the aforementioned Joseph Rowntree Foundation) in his name, written in 1904, he said: “Every Social writer knows the supreme importance of questions connected with the holding and taxation of land, but for one person who attempts to master this question there are probably thousands who devote their time and strength to relieving poverty and its accompanying evils. … Such aspects of [the Land question] as the nationalisation of land, or the taxation of land values, or the appropriation of the unearned increment – all needs a treatment far more thorough than they have yet received.”

Ming is right to say that "Britain needed a revolution in housing" and that "innovative and imaginative solutions were needed to deliver this revolution".

But he goes on to demonstrate that with our policies we are amongst those "probably thousands who devote their time and strength to relieving poverty and its accompanying evils" but are not yet prepared to become the "one person who attempts to master this [land] question" that Joseph Rowntree wrote of. The aims are admirable, the policies as good as anyone else's (and considerably more than Labour seem to care for), but ultimately it will be futile if we do not rise to Rowntree's challenge and deal with the attitude of Britain to land ownership.

They knew it 100 years ago, it's such a shame that we so obviously need to relearn it today. But relearn it we must, unless we want to be talking about this in another twenty years as just as serious a crisis as today.

Technorati Tags: affordable housing, land value tax, lib dems, property tax