Putting The (Tom) Brakes On

The Lib Dem blogosphere generally does a good job of covering comprehensively the political events of the day, even though in the Information Age there's always something more to talk about (and usually someone more to discuss it). Nevertheless, some of the things the blogosphere miss can be a little surprising. Indeed, I was working on a review of some energy matters we'd missed the other night when a bout of idle channel-hopping led me to something that had me hopping in a rather different way...

Last month there was a brief tizz about a protest in Wallington regarding the imaginatively-titled shop, “Your High”. There was a brief discussion about the nature of liberalism and the demands of councillordom, but very little came of it. Until, that is, I was flicking through the channels at the back end of Freeview and alighted on BBC Parliament's coverage of the introduction of a Ten-Minute Rule Bill last Wednesday, July 9^th by our own Tom Brake. The title of his putative legislation?

The Cannabis Seeds (Prohibition) Bill

In case anyone needs reminding why that would be a serious problem, allow me to quote from the Party's existing drugs policy;

“While retaining the criminal penalties on the statute book, we therefore propose to issue policy guidance that it is not in the public interest to prosecute individuals for possession of cannabis for their own use, cultivation of small numbers of cannabis plants for their own use, or social supply of cannabis.”

(Honesty, Realism, Responsibility; Policy Paper 47, 2001)

Theoretically, of course, there can be no prohibition on any Member of Parliament bringing any legislation he so desires and it would be highly dubious for any political party to attempt to restrict the rights of individual members. But in case you'd missed it, Tom Brake is not just MP for Carshalton and Wallington; he is a shadow minister in Chris Huhne's team and is our names spokesperson on Home Affairs.

Acting as a local member in the perceived interests of your community is one thing. It is completely inconsistent, however, for a member of our party's shadow ministerial team to introduce legislation that runs contrary to approved party policy.

Yes, it's a Ten-Minute Rule Bill, it's chances are slim and none. Nevertheless, a Bill sponsored by The Right Honourable The Earl Of Vaz, GCB, CH, VC, DFC and Bar must be considered fairly serious when it falls within the purview of his select committee. And in any case, there is a distinct matter of principle involved.

Scotland != Wales

You have to give the BBC credit for really knowing how to cock things up sometimes...

Now, as I remember it, the BBC Trust report on coverage of devolution said that there were significant issues and that these affected Scotland slightly and Wales extremely. And yet, is it just me, or have the Newsnight team deigned to allow Shona Robison MSP a seat on the panel table at their NHS debate, while Helen Mary Jones AM has to sit in the darkness behind the panellists alongside our own Norman Lamb?

I mean, you'd think they wanted to offend the country that only feels that it created the NHS...

Europe vs. Europe (ref: J.M. Barroso, Portugal)

As the XCIVth Brussels summit broke up with Brian Cowan looking both physically and metaphorically like the new Gordon Brown, it strikes me that the coverage missed out one little detail that's worth considering as we go forward over the next few months.

Specifically, it's worth remembering that the Treaty is the result of negotiations between twenty-seven democratically-elected governments as they existed during the intergovermental conference during the summer of 2007. And democracy has this tendency not to stand still, to the extent that, since September 2007 we have seen;

• New governments following elections in Belgium, Cyprus and Poland
• A new governing coalition in Italy
• New heads of government following retirements in Ireland and Latvia
• Election wins for governing coalitions in Denmark, Greece, Malta and Spain

Furthermore, by the time of the next summit in October (where Ireland are due to come back with proposals), we will definitely have seen elections in Slovenia and Lithuania as well.

Not that I particularly think that any of that matters. It's just worth noting that if some renegotiation is needed, the goalposts will have moved quite significantly.

No End In Site

Very few things on this blog can be considered regular. One of the few consistent elements is my award for Stupidest Political Quote Of The Year, a prize which normally does a good job of being won before the summer recess. But even that isn't especially successful, particularly as it's not the snappiest title in the world and the acronym, SPQOTY, isn't much cop either.

So I've been wondering about a suitable name for it. Eponymisation is clearly a non-starter as the going rate for something like that is one charitable foundation and a councillor's allowance doesn't quite stretch to that. First winners are normally a fairly safe bet, except in this case it was Ed Balls and that might make the inevitable future trophy somewhat difficult (or at the very least family-unfriendly). And then there's the easy way out, which is to call it the Scunner Broon Award and have done with it; after all, he's said enough stupid things this year to win it ten times over.

That however has its own problems. For starters, there's the question of whether the rules should allow for the SPQOTY for 2008 to be something said in 2007. I mean, for all that;

“We could have fought an election on the issue of competence”

Was flaming daft last October, it's positively ten feet over Neptune now; rarely has a political epitaph been so comprehensively and rapidly produced.

More importantly, however, I have to ask myself whether it actually meets the criteria for the award; insanely stupid though it was, the present Government's competence (or more accurately their utter lack thereof) is no laughing matter for millions of people.

For all the calamity, however, I've rarely believed for a second that any of it might lead to the Supreme Leader's departure from Downing Street. As they proved with the Blair debacle, the Labour Party just isn't psychologically cut out for the idea that a member of the Party could perform badly enough to overcome the bonds of collective loyalty; heck, in a party so deluded that some members of its student wing believe that Alan Johnson (yes, the same Alan Johnson who pushed through top-up fees) is the saviour of the Party's left-wing ideals, anything is possible.

I mention all this because, despite all this, I'm starting to wonder whether Gordon can actually beat the odds and get himself kicked out. Discounting all the standard extreme possibilities (generally the ones that feature animals and/or bondage equipment), there are things he could do that even a Labour backbencher's self-interest would struggle to avoid.

The largest category of these is probably the “Don't Vote For Us If...”s. Perhaps understandably, elected politicians can throw away thousands of votes without worrying each other, so long as those votes are statistical; it's only when the discarded votes are directly identifiable that things go wrong.

Which is why I was surprised that Gordon chose this juncture to announce that he favours the use of new sites for the construction of nuclear power stations. The government's new-found commitment to new nuclear build has as yet posed little threat to anything, largely because no-one in Whitehall seems to have grasped that in order for it to happen they have to reach beyond the warm words and actually, you know... do something about it. But at least until now the “threat” has been to existing power station sites, where local opposition will be limited thanks to community experience of the existing facilities.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with the policy; if we want to move from looking for a low-carbon economy to a zero-carbon economy, we will need more nuclear than we have at the moment and that will mean exploring new sites. Nevertheless, as a piece of politics it's a calamitous announcement; without any qualification as to specific sites that are or aren't being considered... well, put simply, “Nowhere Is Safe From Gordon's Nuclear Nightmare”.

Is Brown's departure likely? Not especially. But if he continues to show a propensity to employ shovels while already well below ground level, particularly when the material being removed is great clumps of voters, he may have one last shot at being a history-making Prime Minister, if not necessarily in the way he might desire...

What... Is The Air Speed Velocity Of An Unladen Swallow?

Regular readers (by which I mean Sid and Doris) may be wondering what I'm doing blogging at half one in the morning. And indeed normally I would save it for a time when, well, anyone was going to read it. But in this case, it's apt to raise the issue during the event that inspired it.

To explain, I'm rather fond of hidden social indicators, the little things in life that demonstrate a wider truth. For years my favourite has been the correlation between the power of the hand dryers at a particular venue and the people you will find therein; for instance, the strongest hand dryers I've ever encountered were in Glasgow Queen Street station, while the weakest were in an independent school in Taunton (and for the record, the ones in Cardiff City Hall are fairly lame...)

In a similar vein, I'm presently watching Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Finals, something that leads me inexorably to Channel Five. As a fan of all the big American sports, many a night over the last ten years has been spent with Jonny and Josh, Nat and Mike, Russ and Nick and Mark and Andre; indeed, I am one of those rare people who actually saw the opening night of Channel Five back in 1997.

Massively fond of it as I am, I must nevertheless admit that in those early days Five's market was, well... a little restricted. Nowhere was this better reflected than in the advertising, which ranged all the way from chat lines to, erm, more chat lines. Quite seriously, it was not at all unusual at that early stage to have an entire ad break filled with nothing other than entreaties to call hot women in your area.

Mind you, things changed pretty soon; it wasn't long before you were being asked to call hot men too. Around the turn of the millennium it became something of a game, watching the breaks intently waiting for the holy grail, an ad break containing only gay chat lines. It never happened, but there were a few “I've got the first two balls in the lottery” moments...

I mention all this because it occurs to me tonight that we're approaching another such moment of advertising saturation; I've just had three commercials in a row for price comparison sites. I'm not sure what the great cultural significance of this is, but as I've never felt compelled to compare any prices at all, I know it's not working...