Randomly Selected Article or Link

In a Guardian article about Jack Straw to broker deal on party funding towards the end he is quoted, about his previous jobs at Home and Foreign Secretary as saying:

Mr Straw said that he welcomed the change of job in part because in nine years as home secretary and foreign secretary he had been on call, night and day, without a break.

"There had to come a time at one stage where I was going to be able, not to go off duty entirely, but not to have to respond to emergency calls all the time," he said.

This is a recurrent theme in my political outlook. We do not vote for these people to be "superhuman". To be the only person who can possibly field "emergency calls" all the time. The Prime Minister is even worse - we do not vote for him to pretend to be in a cabal ruling the planet on his own with the leaders of G8 or whatever group it is today.

It's one reason I so loathe the Westminster/Whitehall government model. I think of the MPs I know, and some of them have been top stream ministers, and well, they're not terribly extraordinary people. In fact the most extraordinary thing I find about most MPs is their rather off putting egos.

I don't know if a better system can be devised. I seem to think that in the past the pace of life, and diplomacy, has been that much slower than an individual did have the time to take it all in and have something of a life. Do they think it's a mark of humility to be our "servant" all day and all night? Well it's not, it's the worst of egotism that says "I am the only person out of 60,000,000 citizens who can possibly deal with this, so i must be constantly available".

Technorati Tags: electoral reform, politics

So, Dave's been at the Googleplex trying to give an inspiring vision of what the internet can do for us, and especially our relationship with government. I imagine that if the fun-loving boffins at Google made up the audience they will have been yawningly underwhelmed or resorting to bouncing their hyper-activity stress balls off the video screens.

It's a bit of ironic timing though, after last week's debacle over Labour stealing the Tories' or more accurately the Lib Dem's policy clothing, as my speech writers are just putting the finishing touches to the second of my pieces on Revolutionary Liberalism covering a much bolder image of how technology is about to turn our entire way of life on its head in new and exciting ways that twenty-first century politicians are going to have to work with.

The duckies guarding Google from politicians
Originally uploaded by Yodel Anecdotal

Far, far greater change is afoot than simply providing national statistics to end users and citizens so they can chose and make policy in a more informed way, like the challenges of the end of money as we know it, a whole new way of working in the knowledge economy and in international commerce. A world in which the Googles, Verizons and UPSes will be the moderators and media of global trade rather than governments, where the webs of trust that nation states have established to provide the function of guarantors in worldwide business are rent asunder.

A world that has implications for all public services, creating a new era of interpersonal trust and co-operation moved by the power of market information in individuals' hands unencumbered by the protectionism of states and politicians. An era that will have the power, because it will be people based, to usurp the role of international credit markets, so 'dis-credited' in the past few weeks. And it is the geeks in Dave's audience today, not the politicians, who will be leading the way.

Cameron is right about one aspect - politicians have got to learn to back off, for if they don't do so voluntarily and in co-operation with this new world, they will be ignominiously cast aside, redundant - but I will believe that he himself is ready for that challenge when he makes policy to prove it. Some of the greatest steps in concentration of power to Whitehall and Westminster are, after all, only a couple of decades old, coinciding with the growth of the information economy in the late eighties.

...but will the politicians listen? Somehow, I doubt it!

Since I wrote my piece on gangs and drugs on Saturday I've seen a steady trickle of hits from Google searches about Rhys Jones and I've kept an eye on the search terms and found I was pretty well alone in voicing the opinion that drugs policy plays the biggest part in the gang gun deaths that stalk some of our estates. So it is with some relief that I find Johann Hari is another voice of sanity in today's Independent:

Johann Hari: Tragic victims of a self-defeating policy:

This is the story of two victims of a war that cannot be won and should not be fought. You have heard of the first: Rhys Jones, the 11-year-old in Liverpool who was shot in the neck as he played on his bike. You have not heard of the second: Andres Sauzo, a 24-year-old Mexican man who had his arms, legs and head chain-sawed from his body, and was found rotting in five bin bags scattered across his home town of Zihyatanejo. They are casualties - either direct or indirect - in a war that kills tens of thousands of people a year, and could end tomorrow, if we chose to.

Rhys and Andres were killed because of a political decision by the US government to wage a global "war on drugs", and demand other governments fall into line. When you criminalise a massive and growing industry – some 5 per cent of the world's entire economic activity – it does not go away. It is handed to armed criminal gangs, who flood the streets with guns to secure a slice of the riches.

Aside from also citing Milton Friedman, he goes on rightly to criticize the British political reaction to the events of the past week. I hope some of them are listening, and can hear over the noise of their knees jerking and their bandwagons' creaking...

The scattered proposals tossed out this week to deal with drug gangs are elaborate evasions of the real issue. Banning gang videos on YouTube is barely even a sticking plaster, while the Cameroonian idea that gangs are the rancid afterbirth squeezed out by single parents simply doesn't match with the facts. Denmark has the highest rate of single parenthood in Europe – but it has virtually no gangs, except among recent immigrant communities, who overwhelmingly consist of stable two-parent families.

No: if we want to stop gang culture, we need to take back the industry that makes gangs rich, and give it once again to doctors, pharmacists and off-licenses. Legalizing drugs rips the spine out of gangs. Of course they will try to move into other industries – protection rackets, cigarette smuggling and so on – but these have far lower profit margins. In a legalised economy, the gangs would no longer be the richest kids on the estate, and could barely afford firepower, so the core of their glamour would melt away.

We should be outraged. In my opinion our governments, acting in our name, are knowingly complicit in the suffering and the deaths that all this causes, for little benefit and certainly with no liberal philosophical justification. We should be demanding action now, not only to save future Rhys Joneses, but to save what is estimated at £18bn a year in domestic policing and criminal justice costs alone.

It’s wonderful, while most students are in recess, to see our streets, lamp posts, telephone boxes, park fences, trees, pavements, footpaths and so on clear of the detritus of advertising fliers and posters that make them so tatty during term time.

Once upon a time the City Council and universities collaborated to provide “fly posting boards” in strategic places around east Oxford and Headington. But they’re no longer enough it seems, and we must be deluged with these execrable bits of paper daily while the students are here.

But I believe that the new licensing laws put some power back into the hands of neighbourhoods and residents. A bar or club can have its license reviewed at any time following complaints from the public about anti-social behaviour.

So I would like to put bar and club operators on notice that once the students return, I shall be documenting and collecting such advertising litter around my area (Headington Hill) and ask the licensing authority to do something about the many repeat offenders I find so regularly.

I believe the new law means they cannot hide behind the claim that promoters of individual nights’ events are wholly responsible for advertising if their venue appears on that advertising. Are they willing to put their licenses on the line to prove it?

First, let me welcome all the many new visitors who have been reading my blog, thanks to the free publicity of my Labour opponent's latest leaflet!

In contrast, I and the Lib Dem campaign across the city are focussing on the issues on which the city council can make a difference in local services and stressing our positive record:

• Keeping the council tax down.
• Improving council services.
• Reviewing, and hopefully abolishing, residents' parking charges.
• Improving the quality of private rented housing.
  
• What we have already been doing locally

Let me look at these in more detail:

Keeping the council tax down. Labour and the Greens in Oxford have voted for above inflation increases in the council tax set by the city yet again. We need to maintain pressure on council budgets to force managers to deliver more efficient services without asking more of the hard pressed tax payer. Council Tax is the most unpopular and unfair tax. The Lib Dems would abolish it nationally. Labour have fudged the issue after spending millions (of your money) on a report telling them what we all know.

Improving council services. The independent council watchdog, the Audit Commission, has reviewed the last two years of Lib Dem administered Oxford and given us high praise for improving the state of Oxford City Council and the services it delivers. We have more than doubled recycling and are about to take that to a new level with the pilot introduction in parts of the city of weekly food waste collections which will go to be composted and remove the need to have anything in your ordinary rubbish collection that can go off. We have cut the time council houses are out of action between tenants to just one fifth of what it was under Labour in Oxford.

Reviewing, and hopefully abolishing, residents' parking charges. The Conservative run county council ignored the wishes of residents in Headington Hill and Northway and many of you have told me on the doorstep how unfair you find it that you have to pay to park in your own street. Even those of you without cars and others with driveways to put theirs on understand that this is an extra tax on their neighbours. My Labour opponent opposed my campaign to have the major employers developing in the area pay for implementing a scheme if it proved necessary. Those same PFI developers she was so keen to support have made millions out of the contracts, and millions more through sophisticated financial wizardry while we are paying for what they have imposed on our neighbourhoods. Our streets belong to us - why should we pay twice for using them?

Improving the quality of private rented housing. All too often in Oxford people having to rent their home, and there are lots of us because of Labour's mismanagement nationally of house price speculation, have been used for far too long to accepting substandard accommodation run by landlords who, at times, let homes in a dangerous, unhygienic properties to the most vulnerable people. The Lib Dems in Oxford have started to introduce stronger checks on rented properties going way beyond the Labour government's minimum standards and the small number of only the largest properties they legislated for.

In Northway:

• We have recently agreed a near £60,000 package of investment in the childrens' play area in Foxwell Drive - an important facility that allows younger children in particular to get out and enjoy fresh air and physical activity in a safe, contained environment.

• My colleague Altaf Khan, city and county councillor for the area, has successfully campaigned against Tory cuts that closed the Northway IT hub. Instead the equipment is now in the Northway Community Centre and Altaf is now working towards getting funding to create a pleasant and appropriate space to host the IT hub and get more people learning about and using these fast becoming essential tools of modern communication.

In Headington Hill:

• I have been campaigning against flier and flyposting litter and many, though not all yet, of the venues and promoters are now being more responsible about how they distribute their adverts.

• And I successfully managed to get the city council to take some responsibility for the parking chaos on Pullens Lane caused by the new residents' parking arrangements in other parts of the local area.

I will be campaigning for better, safer, parking arrangements, especially near council built apartment blocks where space at the moment is woefully inadequate, and for new investment in the Northway Community Centre to restore it to a vibrant and well used community facility and hopefully to encourage many more residents to join the community spirit and participate in the sports and leisure facilities in the area. And I would like to help create a "Friends" group for Headington Hill Park and Dunstan Park to get regular users and neighbours involved in managing and developing these wonderful urban green spaces.

But yes, I admit, and am proud to do so, that I am passionate about reducing the dead weight the heavy hand of government at all levels imposes on our lives and communities. I am passionate about those communities instead being enabled to take ownership of local public assets and to meet their own local needs through their own initiatives. And I am passionate about individuals taking responsibility for their own behaviour so enabling us to reduce our addiction to government interference in our lives. And if you stick around a bit and read some more, you'll see I would bring to the City Council innovative ideas about how that could be achieved and financed without adding to the burden of the public purse and the taxpayers' pockets.

Do you have Facebook? Sign up to the elections event to tell me you are supporting me!