It’s another beautiful Sunday, can’t bring myself to write about politics. Have this instead:

Having a devious, scheming mind myself, I’ve often been known to speculatate about ulterior motives for  legislation from this Government, often considering the unintended (or otherwise unnoticed) consequences.

Guido’s reminded me of something I wrote on the ‘Suing Bloggers’ story that hit the blogosphere a while ago. I had a slightly different take on the issue, because something about the plan struck me as more significant than the ability to sue bloggers:

Quote, “…we will also seek views on the abolition of criminal libel in respect of defamatory material”

Well that’s interesting, isn’t it? If libel can never be a criminal matter then doesn’t that mean that a politician with deep pockets for example, or politicians belonging to a party with deep pockets – could quite easily risk putting out a complete whopper during a General Election campaign, knowing that by the time it’s all cleared up there would only ever be a financial penalty, and the damage would have already been done?

Thanks, McBride. Thanks for encouraging and rewarding my paranoia. Just brilliant.

The coming General Election hopefully won’t be held at the very last possible minute, because not even Brown would be that stupid… would he? To be remembered as the Prime Minster that had to be dragged kicking and screaming out of office, like a gambler chasing his losses needing to be thrown out of a casino?

Lib Dem Voice features a guest Op-Ed piece about the question of the Lib Dem’s position in Hung Parliament, pointing out that the media’s agenda for the Lib Dems will be “who are they going to support? Labour or the Conservatives?” and this noise will drown out absolutely everything else. 

Put simply, the easiest way to destroy the Lib Dem party in the next election is for an ‘informed source’ to leak information that Nick and Vince are planning to do a deal with Gordon Brown to keep him in power. 

That’s it. That’s all it’d take. Such is the vulnerability of the ‘no comment’ strategy. There is no more important communications challenge facing this party than getting this issue solved quickly and definitively. 

Ruling out supporting Gordon Brown’s Labour would go a long way.

“There’s no blank cheques, but it’s clear supporting a 4th term Labour Government is unthinkable for us – not after the mismanagement of the economy, culture of spin and deceit and the abuse of civil liberties. A vote for the Lib Dems will never, ever be a vote for Labour” said Ann Counterfactual earlier today. 

…could be political dynamite. What better way to drum up a bit of “if the Tories can’t beat Labour in your constituency, we urge you to hold your nose and vote Lib Dem” from all the newspapers except for the Daily Mirror, who will be riding donkeys wearing underpants on their heads cheering on a 4th Labour term.

Poor sods. 

But the story would then become, “so what are your conditions for working with the Tories.”

Back to where we started? Not quite. It would give us an opportunity to give our main policy priorities. Our platform might actually get heard. 

This, combined with a desire to increase the basic rate tax threshold to £10,000, along with a ‘do less, but do the essentials better’ approach to public services, along with urgent reform to civil liberties… and we’d really be onto something. Dance, Vince, Dance.

Ann Counterfactual said, “One important part of refiring the economy has to be putting money back in people’s pockets. Most people want healthy public services, but if we can’t afford those services then we simply can’t afford them – no ifs, no buts – we have to live within our means if we really want to help anyone at all.”

and

“Look at how Council Tax ruins the lives of the most vulnerable pensioners and tell me how you think tax is a good thing? Sometimes the tax itself does more harm than good.”

I think I’d actually explode if I heard something like that. 

The Lib Dem leadership are doing sterling work promoting tax cuts as something that can help “The Poor”, and it’s true – they can.  Reframing these sorts of policies as something that benefit ordinary people, not just the rich and the mighty, is something we should be proud of, not afraid of. 

By acknowledging that taxes are a burden, even if we currently only care (on paper) about the burden on groups not traditionally targetted with a ‘hey, would you like to pay less tax?’ message, is an important moral victory for liberalism.

It’s baby steps but perhaps people like me should applaud and welcome these steps rather than flame people for not going far enough.

My employers have asked me to get stuck into making an iPhone application. I sighed and said, “I’m going to need a Macbook then, I’m afraid.”

It’s a hard life. I’m reliably informed by Stuart Sharpe that iPhone development isn’t for women or something, which effectively means it’s now my life mission’s to build the world’s most awesome iPhone app. Sorry Stu, you’ve unleashed a monster.

But, it’s interesting: Work Begets Work. I am stupendously busy at the moment, with an Ultra Secret Project I’m working on, along with yet another piece of work that’s come from word of mouth that’s very interesting indeed. I have a specialist niche in graphics programming, mainly in Javascript at the moment, but with Javascript being the ‘big thing’ on the internet these days it means I’m kept very busy.  I hope I quoted the right price for this new job though.. the danger isn’t in quoting too much – it’s quoting too little.

An interesting story was told to me about a friend of a friend who went into business selling information about shares and businesses. He started by charging £2000 for the information and got no takers. He put the price up to £20,000 and suddenly people became interested and the guy became a millionaire.  People thought that something costing only £2000 must be worthless, whereas something costing £20,000 must be absolutely amazing. I lol in their general direction. Their mother was a lmao and their father smelled, indeed, of rofl. 

People still think that if it costs more, it must be better. Of course, this is where reason must be applied if you actually care about throwing money away: If something’s been hand crafted using the finest quality materials then it’s going to be more expensive than mass produced crap with low-grade materials. But if the exact same thing is built by a lean, efficent company versus a bloated and inefficent company, then you’re throwing money away plumping for the expensive option. How’d you know which companies are the most efficient if higher price is supposed to mean better?

Sometimes you end up paying more just labels and names. Guitars are a killer for this. Certain brands have such ‘glamour’ that you end paying a ‘hey I’ve got a Gibson, ner ner ner!’ premium. It’s fair enough – the glamour adds to their value for certain types of people. More adventurous musicians will know that you can get the same quality for much less money and significantly better quality for the same money. What do you do? Buy the cheapest, nastiest glamour branded gear, or the absolute best stuff produced by another company with much tighter profit margins? 

So funnily enough the last two guitars I’ve bought ended up being from brands I’d never even heard of. I picked them based on the sound and feel (and how beautiful they looked, because there’s still a shallow part of me that I’ve not quite killed off completely), ignoring the prices and labels, and I’m very happy with what I got.

But then that’s me, trying desperately to seek out quality and excellence and the unsung heroes in the secret corners of the world. I haven’t quite killed off the romantic, idealistic part of me either.

Story of the day has to be the Gurkha farce. Listening to BBC Radio 5 live this morning, the Horrendous Victoria Derbyshire proudly announced that this was now fixed, that the Gurkhas had been granted access to live in the UK.

Cut to Joanna Lumley in a blind rage, pointing out that the criteria only applies to the ‘Officer Class’ of the Gurkhas. A Laywer says that the Government should ‘hang their heads so low they touch their shoes’. About 100 Gurkhas will benefit, the other 35,900 can fuck off.

Cut back to a stunned Victoria who sounds like she’s been slapped with a fish.

You know, someone should slap her with a fish. I’m serious. I’ve been listening to Radio 5 Live for a few weeks now and noted that she is unable to conceal a shockingly pro-Labour bias. She first incurred my ire during the last conference season, when she was softball with labour, brutal with the Tories and patronising with the Lib Dems. Her pitch lowers and she becomes increasingly monotone when talking with someone she disagrees with, and relentlessly puts forward the counter argument – whereas when she’s talking with someone she agrees with the opposite is true – her voice goes up in pitch, she sounds happy, and the counter arguments are ‘softball’ at best. Whenever she mentions the Lib Dems she becomes surprisingly jokey, throwing out lots of insults and jibes. The only other people who seem to incur Victoria’s patronising tone of voice are… well, men.

To coin borrow a Colbertism, Victoria Derbyshire: You’re On Notice.