The Blood is The Life 03-04-2012

• Lib Dems: Playing politics wrong
  Interesting narrative of how the Lib Dems have performed in government so far. Largely I can agree with the analysis and conclusions, but I think I have a bit more hope that we'll pull ourselves out of it.
  (tags: libdemmery )
  
  
• Why does the government always get it wrong? « Paul Bernal's Blog
  The vast majority of politicians don't listen to people who are immersed in the internet because at heart the vast majority of politicians are small c conservative, and the internet is still thought of as new and scary and weird. Aside from the weirdos taking over (and believe me, I'm doing my damnedest on THAT score) I don;t see what we can do about it...
  (tags: government )
  
  
• Love and Liberty: “I am a Liberal and I am against this sort of thing” – Time To Remember What We Stand For
  "Freedom isn’t always popular. The securocrats are already shouting ‘Look – terrorists!’ and ‘Look – paedophiles!’ as if that answers every question. The papers and the Labour Party will be foaming at the mouth for more, more, more. But there is absolutely no fucking point in being Liberals if we don’t stand up for freedom. " - Daddy Alex nails it, several times and in many many words.
  (tags: libdemmery )
  
  
• The Woman in Black: Angels of Death Sequel Moves Forward - MovieWeb.com
  Hmmm. BIt soon to slumping into tired sequels, perhaps. But maybe it'll be good.
  (tags: film )
  
  

I've Just Got Off The Phone After a Conference Call With the Office of the DPM

... which started politely, quickly degenerated into everybody shouting at each other, and ended up with everybody sounding very subdued.

The Spads did start by trying to defend the proposal; by the end of the conversation, once many many people had explained the technical, logistical, political and financial problems with the proposal, along with the objections on principle, they were saying "well if you're right about what this entails, we won't wear it". And I'm afraid that when one of the them used the phrase "terrorists and paedophiles" in an attempt at justifying this intrusion into everybody's life the F-word rose unbidden to my lips and I didn't manage to stop it coming out. Hopefully enough other people were shouting at that point that it didn't offend too many folk...

I'm not much mollified; I have some reassurance that we've got through to the leadership (or at least, the leadership's minions) this time, but I still don't think they get what the problem is and why everybody is so upset, and I have no confidence whatsoever that this won't happen again... But I think they want to know what the problem is and how to stop this happening again. I don't feel ignored any more. One of the Spads in particular seemed very keen to keep on engaging. So some progress, but I don't know if it's enough progress.

One thing I do feel confident of: the soul of this party is very much alive in people like Jenny Jones and Alex Wilcock and Zoe O'Connell and Richard Flowers and a whole bunch of Marks, all of whom did a lot better than I did at remaining calm and making cogent points and not swearing.