The strange death of liberal England

Indeed. There are some very strong and good things about the liberal history and culture of this country, but it is perhaps a victim of it's own success. For example having to balance views on climate science. The climate is changing, we are affecting it. I myself am pretty sure that's scientific fact. Yet for everyone who comes out and says climate change is happening, 'Mad' Melanie Phillips still breathes. Sadly. But that is the price to pay for liberalism.
On art, I have no idea so I'll skip over that.
On science, now that's something I'm interested in. even if I'm not necessarily clever enough to understand it all, I'll give it a go

19th Century Liberals and poverty

Apparently, 19th century liberals did more to reduce poverty than Labour ever did. Really?
Well, no. But makes a good right-wing attack on Labour, if you're abit shabby about the detail, which they obviously are.
Lloyd George had a huge role in reducing poverty in his time through things like National Insurance, and he was a liberal.
But liberalism is not so easy to box, 19th C liberalism also lead to the workhouse, back in those days some Tories were at least paternalistic one-nationers, while the liberals were the 'leave them be' lot.

About the only true or sensible part of the article is:
"If either party were serious about reducing poverty they would reintroduce that very sensible Classical Liberal principle, one of the few Liberal principles that the Lib Dems still believe in – that the poor shouldn’t pay tax at all. They could raise the income tax and National Insurance threshold to £10,000 and abolish council tax, while taking benefits away from the well-off."

Simon Jenkins on Afghanistan

Simon Jenkins in the Guardian has committed what, for me, is a real crime along liberal lefties.
I base that on my assumption that he supports things like human rights. The thing is that there comes a line when human rights and self determination clash, and he doesn't want to accept this.
His article is that of a right miserable git, claiming that trying to foster democracy in Afghanistan is all balls to try to inflate Obama and Brown's egos. And he doesn't accept that there is any link between Afghanistan and terrorism in the west. There was a military/intelligence bloke the other day who came out the other day saying the two were linked. The truth could be anything, but I know who I'd believe on balance of probability.

There are some in Afghanistan who support our being there, some who oppose. As a liberal (Socialist) I want to see liberal (Socialist) values rule the world, and if some in the military are willing to give their lives for what we call freedom, then we should not shirk tough decisions.
Having said all that, I fear I'm becoming a Socialist Neo-Conservative as in wanting to intervene militarily to remove nasty dictators and impose liberally values

liberal reforms

"it is "pointless to persist with the conventional responses to the increase in crime. More police, more prisons and more effective judicial procedures are clearly not working, except in so far as they satisfy a patent public thirst for retribution.""
from a book written by Tory MP Alan Duncan.

I don't like sticking huge quotes in here, but it's such good and interesting stuff. Not sure if any of this will make it's way through to being policy, but it's very encouraging that they are willing to go against the grain.
"They add that "deterrence is an increasingly empty threat, and nobody seriously believes that a spell in prison is capable of reforming or rehabilitating the criminal character. A criminal record only makes it harder to re-enter normal civilian life, turning a significant minority of people into career criminals and so making crime an even more intractable problem"."


let's hope that liberalism wins the day and these are the sorts of things we can expect from Duncan and the new Tories.
Cameron is, apparently, a libertarian, so let's hope he puts his money where his mouth is:

"The sensible solution, they say, is not to treat the symptoms of crime but the causes, including the "demoralised condition of young people in many inner cities today" and - perhaps to the relief of rightwingers worried where all this is heading - "the lack of any culture of ... self-improvement in those parts of society where the majority of people are dependent on state handouts".

The chapter on all this was in the hardback version, but mysteriously disappeared from the paperback version. However, there is a link to it on his website if you want to read more.

In the same book, Duncan famously argued for the legalisation - or at least the decriminalisation - of drugs, which isn't Tory policy. The assumption that prison doesn't work and only makes crime worse isn't likely to be in the Tory manifesto either. It's a long time since the Conservatives have wanted us to hug hoodies, but it's interesting to know where Duncan's sympathies really lie, nonetheless."

BNP on the BBC

This again. There's a lot of it about.

i’m not happy about the lack of consideration for free speech on Liberal Conspiracy.I thought it was supposed to be a LIBERAL forum. Being a liberal means tolerating those you don’t agree with, even when they are nasty racist nutters. the point is that everyone seems to be calculating what to do on the basis of what will do most damage to the BNP, rather than considering what is best for democracy. I know the BNP in power is bad for democracy as we all know what they’d do, but i’m getting pretty sick of so called ‘liberals’ trying to deny basic liberal rights to people they disagree (very strongly) with.




"This article does rather seem to imply that the British public are inbred morons, ready to march straight to the ballot box and vote for whichever candidate has the nicest sounding name. I have a bit more faith in them than that (most of them, anyway).”

I don’t. (prove me wrong, britain, prove me wrong)

Benevelont dictatorship is the way forward I say. I only post here because nobody has created ‘authoritarian conspiracy’ yet.

More seriously, the problem isn’t so much the BNP’s appearence, but the fact nobody else in the mainstream parties is going to be capable of making pro-immigration arguments. We’ve had over a decade of hysteria about immigration that leads to moronic comments about britain having an open door policy (it doesn’t – anyone who thinks this is asked to explain why it would be necessary to have a campaign to allow Iraqi interpreters into the UK if we actually did have an open doors policy) and frequent inaccurate assertions about the benefits immigrants are entitled to. So much so that I doubt even the more literate and nuanced members of the anti-immigration brigade would be capable of writing a few paragraphs that put the pro-immigration case if a gun was stuck to their head – which isn’t the case with other political issues where most people at least know some of the arguments against their own position. I’d rather see Griffin face a couple of academics from Compas or the centre for migration policy research than a couple of loyal party hacks reciting the party line.

For that matter I’d rather see an entire panel of experienced academics discuss the issues of the day than a bunch of party loyalists more interested in making soundbites. Imagine a panel comprising proffessors of economics, criminolgy, international relations, history, social policy and physics. Now that would be worth watching."

Bearded Socialist:
"I'm certainly with you on the panel of specialists rather than party hacks, sounds amazing. But there would only be you and me watching it because it's 'boring'. Even if we got thousands to sign up to support it, it wouldn't never get off the ground because it's not 'young' or 'sexy' enough.

On addressing the issues, you're quite right.
The media are full of stories every day about migrants coming over here, stealing our jobs, lazing around on benefits, committing crimes, overtaking our culture, putting down the ingenous people.
I don't think it's true, but the fact that it's there all day every day makes it become near enough true.
That, to me, is a big part of the problem. I wonder how much of the BNP's support comes from personal experience, how much from the media"

Ban the bastards

From Pickled Politics
"From Hope Not Hate:

The Home Secretary has just announced that the anti-Islam march in Luton will not be taking place. In fact, as a precautionary measure, all marches have been banned in the town for the next three months.

This is a massive victory for everyone who joined our protest yesterday. Over 14,000 letters were sent urging a ban and our voices have been heard. Thanks to everyone who sent off a letter. We have won and Luton is a safer place because of it. This is just further proof of what we can achieve when we get organised."

I'm not in favour of banning things. I mean, the left would be up in arms if an anti-war march or anti-racism march had been banned, or if all marches had been banned for three months. It's very difficult, because i'm a liberal sort and anyone going against that naturally rubs me the wrong way. But where to draw the line? The whole idea of being a liberal is tolerating those who disagree, but if they really are racist or anti-Islamic they may deserve to be banned. It's a bit of a liberal paradox.

I don't like the glee that lefties of this sort take in banning people who disagree with them.

If they are an illegal group then fair enough i suppose as they have fallen foul of the law