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There's a new cover version of that popular jingle "Britain 'needs compulsory voting'" out by those wild and crazy dudes at the Institute for Public Policy Research. Backing vocals are provided by Pete "Ha-ha" Hain and Jeff "Ho-ho" Hoon.

But to make a mark in these days of digital media downloads, SMS voting and supermarket sweep the boards it would have to have that something special, and it doesn't. In Ballot Box Jury's "hit or miss" ratings, it gets a resounding "miss". Along with The Truants' version of "We don't need no edgewekashun" and ASBOs "Leave Them Kids Alone" it's always going to fail to sparkle unless some carrot goes with the stick.

To me the carrot in this case has got to be making that vote count for something. Is it any wonder that people lose interest when the voting system means that if you don't predict the (usually) one and only winner correctly you get nothing - nobody to represent your views. And even when you do, you get someone else's choice anyway in the form of a single party candidate.

When in many constituencies and council wards more than half the vote is literally wasted, counting for nothing, and people see little difference between one group of politicians vying for their vote and the next, just forcing them to make up their minds is a recipe for disaster. They even suggest having a "I don't care" box so you wouldn't even have to make up your minds, just tear your minds away from Corrie for half an hour to get down there and do your "civic duty".

No doubt it's another thing they want to add to the National Identity Register in time, and when we're all bar-coded or chipped and pinned or whatever the next stage will be polling station officers will be able to send out little electric shocks to people at five to nine in the evening if they haven't voted yet.

It's clearly policies that count the most though. When we do reach out to a lower than average voting group they do turnout. The Lib Dems have proved this time and again with the student vote. Make the effort and you can lift turnout. Okay, maybe it's not yet the most exciting thing on a student's schedule for the week, but we have turned the corner in many places of student voting apathy.

If you finalise your policies through a focus group intended to be the most bland cross section of everyone in the country round a table of six people, you're not going to produce something to engage everyone - just something that doesn't offend too many.

A couple of years back, Jon Snow, Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University was asked about voter apathy at the end of his Chancellor's lecture. I thought his response was spot on; people are not politically apathetic in the main, they just often channel those energies and opinions in other ways. They didn't see the ballot box necessarily as the way to make their feelings clear about the Iraq war, so they took to the streets in droves. They join Greenpeace or Amnesty. They shamed the government into action last January when they rushed to give their widow's mite to the Tsunami emergency appeal. Strangely, this was just what Peter Hain, in his more enlightened moments said in 2001 - why has he changed his mind?

So, IPPR, if you want to make a difference, perhaps you could have a little think about your initials:

Interesting Policies and Proportional Representation would change peoples' opinion and engage them, not yet more New Labour authoritarian compulsory schemes.

Technorati Tags: electoral reform, politics

We're none of us getting any younger. In four months I reach my big four-Oh. I left school almost as long ago as I have working years left under the current rules at least. Yes, I like to think I'm still young, but I think I'd be right to object to being called "boy such-and-such". David Milliband is a full year and a half older than me and David Cameron is some months older. George Osborne is a little younger, but would have been in the fourth form when I was in my sixth, so not a lot.

Respectively they are referred to disparagingly as the "Boy Emperor" (apparently within his department anyway), "the Boy David", and "Boy George". On the other night's Question Time there was an audience member who looked to be in his early twenties complaining that nobody in politics really represented his generation (pace Mr Tall of course, who, so far as I am aware is not referred to as "the Boy Stephen").

Clearly referring to people nearing or past their milestone fortieth as "boy" does nothing to make them any the more representative of younger people.

Anyway - it's just a rant. Maybe we could find some better epithets to give these people. Dislike their politics, make them out to be naive, yes, but really, can we not be more imaginative than calling them "boy" (and yes, I know I've done it too). Alexander was younger than George Osborne when he had finished conquering the known world, and that nice Mr Pitt had been Prime Minister and given up by the time he got to our age.

Okay - maybe I am a little envious - my English/Latin A level teacher referred to me to some parents he was showing round school one day twenty two years ago as "looks like fifty but really is one of our sixth formers"...:)

My personal Òhot-favouriteÓ for the Liberal Democrat leadership, Chris Huhne, has been advocating shifting taxes away from peoplesÕ incomes and onto environmentally damaging activities and resource use.

I've been mulling over the things Chris has been saying about eco-taxes, and in particular about fuel tax increases "hurting" people, and how, in part, he proposes to mitigate that hurt by reducing/abolishing income taxes on the lowest earners. And it struck me that the whole idea is incomplete without LVT (Wikipedia: Land Value Tax) as part of the package.

I'm not an anti-car person. But I believe, following some of what Michael Rowbotham says in "The Grip of Death: A Study of Modern Money, Debt Slavery and Destructive Economics", that there is a significant difference, in purpose and in outcome, between "transport" and "travel" and how both relate to economic circumstances.

Transport, loosely, is "needing" to get from A to B to fulfill some kind of economic imperative - getting to work, getting the kids to school quickly enough so you can get to work in time afterwards, getting goods to ever more distant markets (a function of the deficiency of effective demand in any one "economy"). Travel, loosely, is liberating, experience broadening. Most "traffic" on our roads, in our skies and so on, is "transport" and has a direct relationship to location values - particularly the inability often to be able to afford to live within a more sustainable transport mechanism's reach of one's employment.

(For different reasons...) Holiday air traffic is also transport, not travel, and is directly related also to economic circumstances - if you only have a week's holiday, you want to get to your destination and back as quickly as possible to maximise the time on the beach or whatever. We have lost the notion that the journey is as important as the arrival because economically we cannot take our time about time off work.

Now I'm sure Chris understands all this. And I'm sure he also realises that his remedy for higher fuel duties - of taking those most affected out of income tax - does not go far enough *as stated*. It does not address the *need* for transport traffic. Just makes it more expensive and compensates those who would be worst affected.

One common response to taxing people out of their cars is that "we must have the quality public transport in place" to enable people to switch. But LVT gives us a different, more sustainable solution - of reducing transport needs, not just changing the mode of transport. And, of course, provides a mechanism for sustainably recycling any investment in more environmentally friendly transport infrastructure than these cash revenue subsidies which serve only to line the pockets of the Brian Souters of this world.

The same goes for non-transport fuels. Especially domestic heating and energy. We have the oldest housing stock in the OECD. Our energy efficiency standards have been, for most of the 20th century, woefully inadequate and still aren't that brilliant today. In 1990 our insulation standards were still not as rigourous as Sweden had in 1929! And swapping a higher fuel bill for a few more inches of insulating material is not going to make much of a long term difference.

We need something that will actively encourage not just bit by bit improvements in response to fuel price change (which will happen anyway if Peak Oil has or is about to happen) but to redevelop whole tracts of our housing to things like the "40% House" standards. (Lib Dem member - and former GLD chair of course - Mark Hinnells is part of the team on this). Since such energy efficiency is capital intensive in the cost of the building, it won't work without LVT - under council tax it increases the market value of the whole property and costs more in tax. But with LVT you can effectively offset the additional capital cost which can take many years to recover in cheaper energy bills with lower land cost and an ongoing revenue commitment in the form of the tax liability).

So, the big question is, how do we get this message across that eco-taxes are incomplete without LVT.

It's spawned a whole industry playing on fear of drink spiking, school children creating tamper-proof bottle tops (they shouldn't be drinking anyway), knee-jerk Blunkett raising GHB to Class A and so on but new evidence suggests that most "victims" of date rape drugs are, in fact, merely bladdered, mullahed, out of their trees on....alcohol, that most dangerous, but paradoxically legal and socially celebrated, drug:

Date-rape drugs 'not widespread'

Use of Rohypnol is not "widespread", said report

Research suggests date-rape drugs may not be as prevalent as first thought.

A study commissioned by the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), suggests many victims of sexual assault may have just been extremely drunk.

Quelle surprise.

Incidentally I noticed the other day polling evidence on attitudes to alcohol that suggested that up to 5.7 million people in the UK I think it was "drink to get drunk" - so let's have none of this bleating about it more often being about good taste and social oiling. People who "drink to get drunk" are no better than the heroin junkie wanting to get out of it. By contrast, the casual dope smoker having a spliff to unwind is more like a dinner party wine drinker - right down to the connoisseur style of critique of the subtlety of different "brands".

1916: U.S. Supreme Court finds the income tax is constitutional.