1. Capitalists@Work identifies more Polly Toynbee inconsistencies.2. PoliticalBetting asks why Charles will call himself when he becomes King.
3. Dan Hannan on why Belgium is better off without a government.
4. James Forsyth echoes my post yesterday on the dangers of a falling Pound.
5. John Redwood on the dangerous balance sheet of the Bank of England.
6. Richard Willis wonders why his local council's spending on its own PR has gone up by 84%.
7. Tom Harris thinks an inquiry into the Iraq war would be rather pointless.
8. Dogstarscribe has some well intentioned advice for Derek Draper et al.
9. Letters from a Tory writes to Dominic Grieve on the subject of gay marriage.
10. Dizzy exposes double standards by George Monbiot.
11. Michael Meacher asks how authoritarian New Labour is.
12. Ian Kirby on the Tory Party's falling membership.
Iain,
ReplyDeleteI hope you won't mind me posting the comments below. I tried to respond to the Letters from a Tory site but didn't seem to be able to. Anyway, this is what I thought about his comments on referendums on social issues:
I agree with a lot you say, but I think you underestimate the extent to which legislative changes can pre-empt and influence public opinion. Slavishly following the majority is not what our legislators should be about: otherwise gay sex between consenting adults would be illegal and probably punishable by the death penalty.
Effective lawmaking should require an element of disinterest: "I don't do this myself, but I don't see why it should be banned". It's more likely that we can get that approach through our current system of representative democracy than through the sort of legislative X Factor you (engagingly) propose.
>2. PoliticalBetting asks why Charles will call himself when he becomes King.
ReplyDeleteBecause nobody else will have the least interest in what he has to say. Not even the daffodils.
Or perhaps you, like pb, mean 'what'. Read before you post, dear boy.
Iain, many thanks for the link.
ReplyDeleteTom, your comment got caught in my spam filter - sorry about that, I've now retrieved it.
"4. James Forsyth echoes my post yesterday on the dangers of a falling Pound."
ReplyDeleteIain
The problem with only referring to the Euro or the dollar in relation to the pound is that people think they are kind of strong currencies anyway and people might get the impression that the pound is still strong against other currencies.
Far beter to show how Gordon has made (or not made) the pound "lead the world" by comparing it to currencies across the same time period people think are weak in relation to the pound.
Why not show how Gordon's pound is not only nose diving against the Euro and the dollar but also a basket of mighty currencies that includes the: Albanian Lek, Belarus Ruble, Bangladeshi Taka, Moldovan Leu, Argentine Peso, Bulgarian Lev, Dominican Peso, Iranian Rial, Iraqi Dinar, Lebanese Pound, Mauritanian Ougulya and the Mongolian Tugrik.
When people read that we are also nose diving against those currencies considering the problems some of them have then they'll get the message that Brown is destroying our economy. The Euro and the dollar are relative in the public's eyes. The Lek and Tugrik are disastrous for him.