Archive for left foot forward

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What should happen to an MP who is voted out of office?

The voters have cast their verdict and an MP is out of office. What should happen to them next? Most people’s answers to that are somewhere on the spectrum from the polite (let them tidy up their affairs and see their staff properly treated as their contracts end) through to answers best not to be [...]

A good analysis of conference so far…

21 September 2010 ,
… is to be found over on Left Foot Forward: Party democracy alive and kicking at Lib Dem conference. I don’t agree with all of it – such as the use of “indefensible” – but it’s a good post that shows an understanding of how parties work and makes good use of details of what [...]

Tax policies aren’t just about who gets what money

During the week I did this guest post for Left Foot Forward: You judge a set of tax proposals by who gets what money. It sounds obvious, doesn’t it? Who could possibly object to that? Well, for a start – me. The reason is highlighted by Will Straw’s analysis of the key policy goals laid down [...]

TV election? Not where it matters most

Left Foot Forward has an eye-catching headline today: 2010 will be the “television election” say social media experts, and in some ways it’s certainly a welcome change for internet pundits to be talking down rather than talking up an imminent internet-fuelled revolution in British political campaigning. However, I think the post (or rather the people [...]

News updates: tax-dodging Germans and Andrew Rosindell

In February I reported on the question facing various governments in Europe: should they buy stolen data which will help identify law breaking tax-dodgers? The German government did this in 2008 and the threat of a repeat was sufficient to cause a mini-sampede of people confessing their sins. Nearly 2,500 Germans have now agreed to [...]

General election date: the thing I don't understand…

27 February 2010 ,
… is why there appears to be a group of Conservative supporters who (a) are convinced Gordon Brown is an indecisive bottler but also (b) at the slightest whiff of news (the sun has come up! a Labour councillor left his home 10 minutes earlier than usual! my mother’s uncle’s nephew works at the council [...]