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I wonder if Police dip-sticks target drinkers will apply in Uttoxeter, Rocester and Alton too. If so twenty five years ago and it could have been me. Maybe not anti-social as such, but yes, while every so often someone would chunder, getting into the local town to get some booze (especially at the ends of terms) was a school tradition as I am sure it was everywhere else (remember young Prince Charles and the cherry brandy incident?).

I'm not sure I agree with these sorts of intrusions into teen life, but sometimes I guess, they want to be seen to be doing something - I'm sure in my day if we were obviously drunk we would simply be bunged in the back of the police car and taken to the merciless punishment of our housemaster or parents or something, or the cells if we were uncooperative.

I still remember with a mixture of fear and pride getting a taxi back to school with a box of mixed alcohol on my lap - and I mean everything - we were into "punch" at sixteen - made with everything, anything you could get hold of, and the more different drinks mixed in the better, the more manly.

Suddenly, trundling round the lanes north of Uttoxeter and only a mile or so from the relative "safety" of school blue lights came on behind us. "Bugger - we're busted" we thought. The police car pulled up alongside and waved the taxi down. We cowered, trying to hide our bags and boxes.

"Coming for a pint after" yelled the policeman at the taxi driver. It was his brother in law, and the taxi-driver was trying desperately not to piss himself seeing us dropping our loads!

...a great post on the Libertarian Party blog today should help get you over your myopia, with a smile at least:

Tucked away in the comments to Lib Dem Voice's How rich are you? article comes this snippet from Tim Leunig (LSE economist, and member of the Housing Policy working party I was on a couple of years back):

"The obvious new incentive effect is on house prices. We would expect them to increase (by around 8x the level of council tax, so around £15k), as happened when rates were replaced by the poll tax."

Well quite. We in ALTER have been saying this since the Local Income Tax policy was first debated. We've gotten the impression that the rest of the party has not been listening. Hopefully someone as respected as Tim within the party will make someone listen with comments like that.

To reiterate...not only will most of your national income tax reduction be eaten up with your new Local Income Tax but if you happen to be in that growing group who are getting no help with housing costs and cannot afford to buy a home, you'll be likely to find prices even further out of your pocket by at least another half an income multiple.

Perhaps this is why the Lib Dem Youth and Students annual conference this year voted against Local Income Tax and in favour of Land Value Tax instead. That cohort is what we usually regard as our "core vote" I believe. Not the people you'd want to piss off I'd have thought.

"Axe the Tax" was, and remains, a great idea - Council Tax is as regressive and unfair as taxes come. Local Income Tax was an easier thing to sell, perhaps, than another type of property tax. But, as Keynes was it said "when the facts change, I change my mind, what do you do sir?" it is time, three years on with property prices up another third, to think again about a tax policy that will extend the misery of those we want to help. There's no shame in changing policies if a better idea presents itself. Affordable housing is, as Gordon Brown said this week, right at the top of the agenda now - we should not continue with a tax policy, in the form of Local Income Tax, GUARANTEED to exacerbate the affordability crisis all parties appear to want to solve.

Technorati Tags: axe the tax, council tax, land value tax, ldys, lib dems, local income tax

Anyone not already outraged by the treatment meted out by the military, both British and American on our citizens from Tipton should have been watching:

The Road To Guantanamo: - Channel 4's new drama from multi award-winning film director Michael Winterbottom – The Road to Guantanamo – created huge international impact and won the prestigious Silver Bear for Direction for Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross in competition at The 56th Berlin International Film Festival.

...tonight.

You can say all you want about the necessity to do certain pretty nasty things in time of war, about rules of evidence not functioning properly in a foreign country you are trying to subdue, and who knows whether the lads from Tipton are telling the God's honest truth (though personally I am more inclined to believe them than all the FUD that comes out of the security services), but it seems to me that heads should roll for their treatment and that of others still in GTMO and other members of the gulag archipelago.

Impeaching Blair is too good for him. I hope he's watching and can still say what he said to Parky last week about conscience and being judged by history and his God.