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I'm very busy at the moment trying to get a web database up for my old school former pupils' society, but I noticed today a lot of discussion about Tesco and its market dominance.

Personally, I patronize the Co-op and local shops as much as possible and am in some ways fortunate to be able to do so, and I abhor monopoly and monopsony, and it is clear that Tesco, ASDA and others are getting pretty close to such a position if they haven't already. But there's a simple little step that could at a stroke force Tesco and others to account properly for some of the externalities of out of town shopping...

They currently don't pay uniform business rates on their massive free parking areas at out of town developments - a massive subsidy from town centre retailers to the big sheds. With Site Value Rating (Land Value Tax levied at a local level), with which the Lib Dems propose to replace the Uniform Business Rate, such land would be properly valued and taxed.

A bit pissed off today. In one broadcast & newspaper article Michael Gove has done more to spread the word about Community Land Trusts than my own dear Lib Dems have managed in the nearly two years we've had them as a key plank of our housing policy.

But good on him - I've been trying to speak to Michael Gove about CLTs since March last year or whenever it was Cameron promised to build more homes so long as they were "beautiful". He explained it pretty well. And if Cameron can get his people on board with them Oxfordshire CLT Limited could begin the New Year in bullish fashion with all the county's MPs onside.

There's often talk about the "younger generation" who have only ever known Tony Blair in charge in their political memories. Well, in a way that applies to me too. Of course at forty, I have more political memories than that (including writing, at age 11, to someone called Williams who was in charge of schools at the time, or so I thought, to complain about the discipline regime at my private preparatory school!), but I only really got involved in party politics after the 1997 General Election.

So far as I am aware my family had always voted Liberal. They were part of that Scottish cohort who were not in the Kirk (Tory party at prayer) and were not Catholic (who it was always said were instructed by their bishops to vote Labour), but Gospel Hall Brethren and so in that non-conformist set that gravitated in Scotland to the Liberals.

But, at public school, self interest put me off ever wanting to vote Labour (who would, we were all told, close down private schools) and, whilst my early career in the City was unashamedly inspired by the Thatcherite loads-a-money era, I could not stomach voting for a party that treated me as a gay man as inferior (don't argue with me here, they did, and as recent opinion polling amongst their members shows still do at heart). I had the great misfortune, at my second voting General Election, to live in the constituency of that odious woman woman Jill, now Baroness, Knight, author of the hated Section 28.

Despite all the promise of equality from Labour, I actually contacted Millbank during the 1997 campaign, the first in which I had gone so far as to actually read party manifestos, to ask whether Labour party policy of repeal of section 28 and equalisation of the age of consent were specific first term promises and was told they were not. So that settled me on joining the Lib Dems. And for a year and a half I was just that, a "sleeping" member, paying my dues (albeit at the rate of the minimum annual subscription per month in order to salve my conscience at not actually doing anything active!).

Whilst there was a certain feeling of relief that Labour had routed what had become a moribund and corrupt government, and some smiles at the "New Labour, New Britain" agenda, little did I know that the reign of Tony Blair would lead me to a deep loathing of national politics, the notion of the nation state even and crucially the role of an individual claiming to "lead" and "speak for" an entire nation of sixty million different opinions. The size of that first, and indeed second, majority, silenced real political debate as surely as a one party state would have done. Only the House of Lords, which I loathe as an institution, seemed willing and capable of opposing anything, and their days were numbered.

I am hard pressed to name anything I think Blair has done in his ten years that was done voluntarily and with good grace and for the better. Age of Consent and Section 28 were both changed in the end, but reluctantly, after European Court intervention in the case of the former and after unnecessary delay in the case of the latter. Devolution for Scotland and Wales was good, but in reality all but predated Blair in the form of the Scottish Constitutional Convention. Wealth inequality has been up and down, the Big Brother state has moved on apace, there feels like there has been just as much massaging of figures, and certainly more spin than ever before, and little if any feeling of a real ideology behind it all. I've never felt before that politics was merely a cynical exercise in winning elections to perpetuate one's own power at almost any cost.

At the same time I have flirted with Trots, and then "seen the cat", respectively looking for the small government option - either anarchist in the former case or "geo-libertarian" once I had had my eyes opened, precisely because, like nobody else before him, the smarmy, spinning, unassailable man at number ten had put me off government entirely. Two books that kicked off that search for a personal ideology are "An Intelligent Person's Guide to Liberalism (Intelligent Person's Guide Series)" (Conrad Russell) and "The Grip of Death: A Study of Modern Money, Debt Slavery and Destructive Economics" (Michael Rowbotham). And now not even the Lib Dems can adequately express my radicalism for economic and constitutional reform, to end protectionist monopoly and elected dictatorship respectively.

So it's good bye and good riddance Mr Blair. I'd rather you didn't take any international man of mystery jobs that would mean me continuing to see your smarmy git face on my television or newspapers ever again. In fact, maybe you'd consider going to Mars for a while. Thank goodness nothing, not even conversion to Rome, can bring you a plenary indulgence any more, and there remains a chance that you will be brought before some authority you might recognize at some point in your future, to answer for your actions.

Technorati Tags: political obituary, tony blair

Thanks to Liberal conspiracy for highlighting protectionist amendments being sneaked into the Telecoms directive which MEPs will decide on tomorrow:

The amendments basically set the scene for forcing ISPs to monitor all their customers' traffic to catch them sharing copyrighted material on the web and to cut customers off if they keep doing it.

Over in the comments on Matt Wardman's blog posting the other day I suggested that this whole surveillance obsession smacks of "we do it because we can". Why should one's electronic communications, voice or data, be any more permissible to be snooped on than any other communication - snail mail, face to face or similar. Just because we can. For a variety of reasons electronic communications leave traces, and traces can always be tracked, but why should they be?

It is true that we need to have a debate about intellectual property and how, or indeed whether, it should be enforced in an era of global instant communication. It appears that the artists tend to be ahead of their production companies in exploring how to use the massive marketing opportunity that is the internet, such as recent experiments in releasing music for free, or on honesty box terms, on the web. But of course it is the media corporations and production companies that are lobbying for this sort of protectionist measure. The debate needs to be held much more widely than that though, and not snuck through where these measures were explicitly removed from the directive last time the European Parliament discussed it.

I have written to Sharon Bowles and Emma Nicholson. I suggest everyone take a look at the details of these amendments and give some thought to writing also to any of their MEPs. It is being debated tomorrow, so act fast!

I very fundamentally believe that the internet in particular is seen as a threat by both governments and corporations who feel they are not able to control it. For me, it is the greatest advance in people communicating with people and eventually needing far less "government" to broker their international relationships or trans-national corporations to broker their trade. But for it to bring about the vast benefits of voluntary co-operation amongst individuals around the world it needs to find its own rules, not have them imposed by those very bodies that are scared of it!