A woman’s baby was put into foster care because she wasn’t considered intelligent or competent enough to look after her premature baby. Three years later, the baby is now well enough to be looked after by any normal person, and so she wants the child back. The local council is fighting to stop her, so the woman is going to the European Human Rights court.

In all this there’s people who’ve been forgotten. Possibly. You see, we don’t know if the foster parents and the would-be adoptive parents are, in fact, the same people.

Let’s, for the sake of hypothetical argument, twist this argument around. The foster parents are the people that nursed this baby to the good health she enjoys now. They took on a seriously ill baby with special needs, cared for it, loved it, and now, three years later they want to do the most natural thing in the world – adopt this child. They have a bond, a relationship. For the little girl, her parents are her parents. From their point of view, the biological mother, now that the baby is well and ‘normal’, suddenly wants the child back, and they’re in the mood to fight to stop this happening. They love this child.

Of course it seems harsh for anyone to have their child taken away from them because they’ve got an IQ of 70 – I do not believe for a second this was done lightly. But this is the problem with this sort of decision. As unfair as it seems for the mother, it is crueller and more unjust still for the child. Children need stability, and to take her away from whom she considers to be her loving parents is not something that should be done lightly, or in fact ever without good cause.

In other words, when you actually start considering the child’s needs first this issue isn’t quite as clear cut as an odious council abusing their power bullying a thicko.

The idea that you can dump a sick child on the state for a couple of years then come back when it’s well again isn’t something we should ever tolerate or encourage, and that’s what I’m afraid of here.

Today I am ashamed of my membership of the Liberal Democrats. Thanks Polly. This recommendation should be trusted more than your ‘Only Gordon Brown can save Labour’ piece because?

Oi Vey.

First the Observer. Now the Guardian. I see an attempt to snap Brown’s arm off behind his back, they’re twisting it so hard. Before Lib Dems get excited by this ‘overtaking Labour in the Polls’ business, this ‘lowest polls for Labour ever’ business, this actual endorsements from something other than Lib Dem Blogs and/or the Independent they need to remember that if Labour and the Lib Dems were both at 18%, Labour would still get 200 seats while the Lib Dems would lose 30 of theirs. One of the reasons Lib Dems tend to develop an eye twitch when the subject of First Pass The Parcel comes up.

And the Guardian… they can’t even spell never mind be trusted to recommend a party to vote for. Ferchrisakes they’ve been saying ‘Vote Labour’ for – I think, give or take a couple of days – FOREVER. Not exactly known for their critical faculties.

The only message Lib Dems should take from the current polling is how much of a crisis it is for Labour being at 18% and to view same polling figures for us as equally catastrophic, rather than, hey, not bad for this point in the cycle. When the Guardian, the Independent, the Times and the Sun say ‘Vote Lib Dem’ then, then, engage smug mode.

Hat tip to the distinctly untraumatised Lib Dem Voice.

So this time last month I posted some visitors figures for the first time and was largely told off for caring about such things. Bloggers, you see, are only supposed to be secretly obsessed with their readership figures. My mistake

It’s not the number of visitors that matters – it’s about finding a niche and filling it well. My niche seems to be ‘being a Lib Dem that drives everyone nuts’ and long may that continue.

Be that as it may, Guido was in a mischievous mood and linked that stat-porn post on his, ‘seen elsewhere’ bit which seemed to put me on a few more radars than I was before (and gave me a very weird sort of thrill, too – to my shame my heart skipped a beat when I realised what was going on), and the result is that this month there’s been 12,512 of you visiting, which for me is absolutely loads and makes me feel like a Propa Blogga. I’m not ashamed to admit I’m quite chuffed by this (even if I have been pipped by Mark Reckons this month, the bugger!). I managed to squeeze into quite a few Daley and Golden Dozens whilst sneaking links from the most unexpected places like over on Tory Bear which resulted in me having to sponsor Jennie Rigg to carry ‘Charlotte Gore is not a Tory’ banners. At the very last minute I was delighted to have been linked by Devil’s Kitchen, too, which means I haven’t completely aliented libertarian readers whilst I’ve been messing around with lists and other sillyness.

I should say thanks for visiting. I’m thinking I’ve done with the blogging medium now, I’ve peaked, mission accomplished… and so now wish to experiment with communicating a libertarian message through the medium of dance, puppetry or performance art. Hmm.

Here’s something I’ve seen popping up across various blogs in the last few weeks:

There’s too much capacity in the Car Industry

Clearly, during a recession, the demand for new cars is going to be lower than it was – that’s true. Even when people want to buy a new car, they’re less likely to be able to finance it at reasonable terms.

At the same time, we’ve got the Car Scrappage Scheme, gifting everyone £2,000 for turning in any car for £2000 (who’s paying for the cars to be actually scrapped by the way?) which, assuming it works, turns taxpayer’s money into demand for for new cars, yes?

So I started checking out the prices of cars, to familiarise myself with the state of the industry – what products they’re offering and at what prices. I wanted to see what the market place was like. A Fiesta starts at £10k. A Corsa starts at 10k. A Punto starts at 10k (are you spotting a pattern here?). A Mazda 2 costs £10k. A Yaris starts just shy of £10k.

A Peugeot 206 starts at £8.5k but I wouldn’t recommend one of those on account of the hell my housemate suffers with hers.

The most obvious thing about all these cars is that they’re practically identical in appearance and features: Shitty, unappealing overpriced crap.

All this is, of course, highly fascinating. Except I was looking at this market about 6 months ago, in fact, because a newly qualified driver friend of mine was looking to buy a new car. Puntos and Fiestas, I’m reasonably certain, were starting in the £6-7k price range.

If that’s true, that means the advent of the Car Scrappage scheme has seen prices jump up between £3 and £4k, in order to then offer a “discount” of £2k, resulting in a total price increase of £1-£2k.

In other words, even with the stupid squandering of tax-payer’s money, cars are getting more expensive. But there’s a good economic reason for that.

The natural consequence of a recession means that people aren’t quite as willing to pay quite so much on this shitty, unappealing overpriced crap as they were. That means over the life-cycle of say the new model Fiesta, they will expect to sell significantly less than they’d hoped. Because the cost of developing a new car (including design, testing and configuring the factories) are recouped over the whole life-cycle, those costs are being spread out over a smaller number of cars. Therefore prices go up… which means demand falls… which means production needs to reduce… and so on until, inevitably, car companies begin making record losses.

Reasonably we can expect (should this continue) car manufacturers to reduce the number of lines and variants they offer. We should expect the number of manufacturers to reduce, too although it seems none of these bottom end car makers seem overly concerned with trying to compete on price.

Too much capacity in the car industry? Probably. Temporarily. But ultimately we live in a country where new cars have always been traditionally overpriced compared with other nations as it is, and now prices are going up. We are supposed to be witnessing Government support to stimulate sales of cars to ‘save’ this industry, but we all know that there’s steep financial punishments for anyone daring to drive any of these new cars (depreciation not withstanding)

For what it’s worth, I suspect paying £20 in tax on £30 of fuel might have something to do with the ‘over-capacity’ of the Car Industry, but then pricing people off the road is the modern way of circumventing demands for proper road infrastructure. Labour, at least, understand how to dodge issues that they have no solutions for – put their critics on the back foot and keep them there.