Pot

I've submitted a couple of FoI requests to the home office for their data on the public consultation run before Christmas, but I suspect that my emails are being handily blocked by their mail server. Anyone else feel like dropping an email to public.enquiries@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk asking for both the raw data and any statistical or summary information compiled relating to Question 39a and b on the consultation? Here's the email I wrote:

Hi,

I note that the IPSOS/Mori report on the Home Office drugs consultation of late last year has now been issued, minus the section on cannabis reclassification, which is due to be published later. I would like to make a request under the Freedom of Information Act for the full anonymized survey answers to Questions 39(a) and 39(b) of the "Our Community, Your Say" consultation along with any summary information that IPSOS/Mori or the Home Office has compiled based on these survey answers.

Thank you.

If you write in and get a reply, even a read receipt, I'd love to know.

Blush

Soooooo, let's say you're a right-of-centre political party currently without any MPs, but a fair number of council- and Euro-level representatives. You are offered the services of a science-hating, racist, money-grubbing, gay-hating, Iraq-war-supporting defector who had previously been elected under both old Labour and new Tory banners to be your one and only MP, garnering a large amount of publicity for your organization, probably showing it in a rather poor light, and almost certainly convincing several people of your party's essential barminess.

What would you do?

(a. accept the services of the slimy spineless toad, compromising any principles you ever had in order to get a single, useless seat in the legislature...
(b. refuse politely and suggest he might prefer to switch to the BNP...
(c. beat him repeatedly around the face and neck into unconsciousness with his own shoes?

We report! You decide!

Shot

Spotted on CiF:

if you can still bring yourself to vote Labour after they've stolen from the poorest workers, lost your children's personal data, assaulted habeas corpus and the right to walk the streets without carrying a card like a criminal, left a million schoolchildren without even a single one of the devalued GCSEs to their name, wasted billions on the Olympics, borrowed in the good times with no thought for the coming downturn - then, frankly, you should be shot.

Great stuff.

Face

Labour backbenchers last night convinced the government not to go out and just start punching poor people in the face.

Green

This is probably the slickest party political video I've seen this side of the pond:



I might not agree with everything they say, but it is very, very well produced.

(ps. can you see my google ads? I can't, but I think they do that on purpose)

Four ideas for better democracy

For every parliamentary candidate:

1. Criminal records indicated on the ballot paper.

2. Full CV and two references posted online for all to see.

3. Set your required salary (inc expenses) on the ballot paper.

4. Politics 101 test score also on the ballot paper (testing eg. stats, political history & philosophy, comprehension)

And that's just with the current system. Don't even get me started on electoral reform...

War On Progress

What annoys me most about the term "progressive" is that it only every seems to be used by lefties who think that the left has a monopoly on "progress", whatever that is. A lot of people think that Thatcher made a lot of "progress" by crushing the trade unions in the 80's, but does she get the "progressive" mantle? Of course not - progressivism is only for elitist left-wingers who think that their vision is the one and only true one. Just fuck off, m'kay? If you want to say that you are an environmentalist feminist multiculturalist left-leaning liberal, then don't try and appropriate a word that connotes "good". It's like the whole mess of the "decent left" all over again.

What progressivism really reminds me of is the wanky non-speak of the Transition Towns movement that seems to use an awful lot of words to mean not very much at all.

ps. no post on progress can go without mention of Daniel Davies superb "Don't Just Do Something, Stand There": the great thing about the status quo is that it is no worse than the status quo.