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Michael Meadowcroft has a letter in today's Guardian about how middle class folk tend not to live in the "rough areas" where gang culture finds it all too easy to get established. He says:

Gangs grow out of our divided society | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics:

How many teachers, solicitors, social workers, politicians and police officers live in such neighbourhoods even when their work closely involves them there? All too often they commute from the suburbs and reinforce the picture of success meaning a chance to get out. Unless there are financial and housing incentives to live and work in one and the same community it will be very difficult to dislodge the feeling of bitterness among those who do not have a choice.

Of course, we wouldn't want a "real liberal" interfering too much with social engineering to create such incentives, but his party does support LVT (although not as a replacement for income taxes and the like which would increase the incentive). Under LVT the savvy professional household would find that they would pay less tax by moving to poorer areas (ie with a lower Land Tax) and in the process take their economic activity and expenditure into those areas creating more prosperity there.

Spot the odd one out in the image below. All four species coexist in large numbers. They all work together to defend the collective against predators and to provide for their mutual needs. They all look and behave as if they are being controlled by some mastermind at the top of a hierarchy.

But in fact it is only the humans (top right!), the one with the largest and most complex brains, the only one, so far as we know, to have developed some kind of moral sense, the only one to have created sophisticated communications technologies between each other, the better, one would have thought, to co-ordinate our actions when required, the one with free will, and the one that has devised fantastic markets that transmit information and resources around the world at blistering speeds. Only humanity seems to have collectively decided that they need some self-centred egoists at the top of an wholly artificial hierarchy to take instructions from.

Many will no doubt say that "our leaders" put themselves up for public approval, scrutiny and not infrequently ridicule in the name of "public service". But for me, whatever their supposed good intentions I cannot think of an example, at least in national politics, of someone who does not seem to want to accrete power to themselves, or, and this is even worse, to an amorphous blob called "their party".

Only "their party" (presumably with them in charge) can solve the nation's problems. Is it logical, for example, to say that only the Tories, if only they had power, can deliver "small government"? Isn't that an oxymoron? Only the people, reinventing power structures for themselves as required, can create "small government". A party in power trying to deliver "small government" is, well, a party in power, by whom we, the citizens who put them there, or not as the case may be, are ruled as absolutely as any ancient tyrant, or so it seems, between elections.

So, when Nick Clegg calls on the other party leaders at Westminster to join him in promoting a Constitutional Convention to look into the future of the British political landscape he risks the political equivalent of asking turkeys to vote for Christmas. He looks with some approval at the previous process in Scotland, yet that did not even look, it appears, at the question of whether government was even needed or not.

A friend of mine has a theory of the evolution of markets through human history:

• Market 1.0 - was decentralised but disconnected, and 'market presence' required the physical presence of buyer and seller, typically in local and regional exchanges.
• Market 2.0, which has now reached its zenith, is centralised but connected, with market presence through intermediaries such as Exchanges or proprietary Alternative Trading Systems (ATSs).
• Market 3.0 represents the final evolution of markets: decentralised but connected, with market presence being through a 'network presence' on a dedicated market network.

And, if this analysis is right, since the power dynamics of human society are closely related to the development of markets - with for example wars, metaphorical as well as actual, to corner markets or access to resources, still going on in "our name" - so politics, over and above any consideration of public disengagement with the current system, needs fundamental change to cope with Market 3.0. Indeed, one could argue that Market 3.0 is a state in which coercive political intervention is not only unnecessary, but counter-productive to the common good.

As ever, there are many vested interests in all this. Market 2.0 required the creation of huge, often now global, corporate behemoths and their political protectors, at first mercantilist and now corporatist. Market 3.0 offers the potential for real mass democratization of markets, the trading equivalent of devolution, and with it wealth creation and distribution. Where government once tried to ensure access to markets for their national corporate behemoths, it will in future have to try to ensure access for all of us. And in doing so, undermine its more familiar role of making decisions for us. Protecting our ability to participate rather than wielding power over us by them deciding who can participate.

There is certainly a core of liberalism in Clegg's invitation, but if we're going to have a "Constitutional Convention" - something for which the opportunity will come once in a generation at best - then it has to start with as close to a blank sheet as possible in respect of the future role and accountability of government. I'm afraid I for one don't have confidence that that insular political establishment can be open enough (even if you do add to the mix a few churchmen or "community leaders" - all self selecting beneficiaries of the current system to my mind). The political establishment exists currently in order to gain and hold power. They don't represent us, so much as persuade us with clever marketing that we agree with what they want to do. And if any such convention turns out not to produce the radical reform required now, it could go either way - popular rejection of government and politics and a vacuum in which real tyrants could wield power or ever more illiberal government trying to fight a rear-guard action in order to maintain their own relevancy. Neither are particularly appetising outcomes.

Why am I a member of a political party then if I hate them all so much? Well, for all my loathing of the power of government and its wielders, I hold out hope that there is one party whose history and core ideology can break that mold. Personally, I think Liberal Democrats would be better setting out our own stall - we have the closest to a blank sheet in terms of recent power wielding at least - of radical reform, and let the people decide. Asking the cosy consensus themselves to join in will, well, perpetuate that cosy consensus and risks persuading the rest of us that what comes out the other end is in our interests, or, again worse, the "best that can be agreed on". It won't be, if it is stitched up within the political establishment itself and its extended family of hangers on. A plague on both their houses - let us get on with it and set out to persuade the British public that our way is best for the future, to give us the power to implement such a radical shift of power away from politicians and back to the sovereign individual.

I rarely post about computer toys and goodies, but I have been using ecto as my blogging client for ages now and I just suddenly wondered tonight how things were going with the upgrade to ecto version 3. And lo and behold I found that this very day Adriaan has put out an alpha release of version 3 for Mac OS X.

I'm a techie, and I don't mind playing around with alpha software, though it's not for everyone, but I've downloaded it and at first site it looks great. A real improvement on an already very good tool. And this is the first post with ecto 3.

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...but if some of you arrived here because of a scurrilous Labour leaflet trying to discredit me because of my opinion on drugs issues, I wanted to settle your minds, I hope, with a synopsis of my position...

I am indeed in principle in favour of legalizing the vast majority of recreational drugs - for adults. Once legalized, their supply should be regulated, controlled through a licensing system, and taxed - which can help fund more treatment instead of prison cells. It is not the state's job to prevent adults in particular choosing to put something into their own body, or indeed, like dangerous sports and so on, what they do with their own body, if others are not harmed by that. Such laws actually remove the ability of the individual to be morally responsible for what they themselves do.

That is not to say that I want to see an increase in drugs use. Just that I believe that it is the current approach, the "war on drugs", that creates and sustains an illegal underground market that encourages people into multiple addictions and puts people into the hands of criminal suppliers who could not care less about the health of their customers so long as the money rolls in. It was recently suggested that the international trade in illicit narcotics is now the world's third largest trading sector, after I think it was financial services and energy. When heroin was legal in this country we had 18 registered addicts in the country - despite it being used in common, over the counter, drugs such as cough syrups. Make it illegal and we have seen the level of addition soar exponentially.

This is a long considered and pragmatic position, that agrees with many professionals in the fields both of law enforcement and drug treatment. Basically, that the current system, based on criminal enforcement, puts far more people in danger from drugs - it makes it easier to peddle to children, because the peddlars are unseen and uncontrolled (and sometimes children in the schoolyard themselves). It creates the core of gang and gun culture. It makes it harder to seek help when, in doing so, you have to out yourself as a criminal.

From Colombia to Croxteth, Afghanistan to the Aylesbury Estate, more people die because of the criminal networks engaged in the drugs trade than from the drugs themselves. Our politicians know this and continue to pursue the obviously failed "war on drugs" strategy because it is a populist one that's sure to get some people huffing and puffing and voting for them - don't fall for it - they are nothing short of accessories to murder! We need a mature debate about these immoral laws (any law that actually colludes in and creates the environment that breeds killings in our communities is an immoral law).

Nonetheless, as the desperate Labour party scaremongers know, my theoretical position on drugs is not one that has much relevance in the role of a city councillor, which is why we Lib Dems have decided not to rise to this astonishing personal attack, marring as it does what has been a reasonably well conducted campaign so far, and concentrate on the positive things we wish to do within the remit of the city council. I do not want any more people, and predominantly younger people as many of the victims of the current drugs system are, dying because of a populist and immoral set of laws that create more problems than they fix.

Now, perhaps you will stick around a bit and read up on my positive ideas for the pressing problems on which Oxford City Council could have an influence, such as affordable housing, and partnership working to bring a bit of business sense and community ownership into the management and development of community owned assets - in the process, I hope, giving more opportunities to people to do something fruitful with their lives and leisure time and not get onto drugs in the first place!