Every parliament they have a ballot, in which the 600-odd MPs vote for 20 out of their number who will get priority to present Private Members' Bills to parliament. Aside from the sneaky government-sponsored Private Members' Bills, the top five of these are generally the only ones with a cat in hell's chance of becoming law.

The list came out today of who has won the ballot for this session. There are two good strong Lib Dems in the top five, and one of them is Evan Harris. EVAN HARRIS! YAY!!! Get rid of the Two Doctors rule, Evan! Go on, you know you want to! And, you know, if Evan doesn't do it, in at #19 on the list is John Bercow, who is another third of the cross-party pro-choice trimuvirate of which my own MP, Chris McCafferty is the third member.

Or, you know, Evan could do something about the woeful treatment of refugees. That's one of his areas of expertise too. Or perhaps the fact that he is an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society and the Patron of the Oxford Secular Society is a pointer towards what he might do with his Private Members' Bill...

Heee!

Sorry, getting overexcited. Still, it's not often in this country we get the chance for some genuine Liberalism, and two good shots in one parliament? That's something worth getting excited about, IMHO.

The divisions are up for the MPs expenses vote and, like Alex Wilcock, I am very happy indeed that not one of the piggies who voted to remain more equal than the rest of us is a Lib Dem. Predictably, the printed press is squealing about the horror and unfairness of it all, from the strident howls of the Fail, to the more measured disapproval of the Indy.

I am one of those rare people who thinks that MPs should be paid a lot more than they currently are for basic salary - on the grounds that if we want the best people to represent us, we should pay the sort of wages that will attract the best - but I also think that people HUGELY resent the fact that MPs get to claim expenses for the sort of things that normal people have to buy from their own wage.

In business, it's perfectly acceptable to claim for travel and lunches and sundry expenses, but how many people in the real world can claim for a telly or an iPod? Similarly, staffing costs for a constituency office are something that I have no problem with, but to be able to claim the cost of buying a second home, and then keep the profits when you sell it? Just no...

The fact that MPs have voted to retain the current system shows how out of touch a lot of them are with the public mood. When we're heading recessionwards and the rest of us are all having to suck it up and tighten our belts, the amount of resentment over MPs expenses is palpable to all. I am very proud that the members of my party who voted recognise this, and sad that my local MP didn't, and I think we should be making a lot of noise about it when it comes to election time.

They've found the deleted scenes from Metropolis! Sci-fi geeks rejoice! And pray Cthulhu we get a showing of it at the FFW next year...

matgb has a highly amusing post about the hypocrisy of the guy who sued the BBC for showing Jerry Springer: The Opera and upsetting his delicate religious sensibilities (related Facebook group).

Don't watch anything on YouTube which isn't allowed to be there, else you'll get got.

Creationism hits science classrooms in the UK. and we are funding it via the state school mechanism. *I* am paying for some poor kids to be taught complete bollocks as though it is fact. Amused Cynicism makes comment more eloquently than I ever could.

The Torygraph have picked their top ten ever Doctor Who episodes. No surprises that it's Ten-heavy, but perhaps surprising that it contains no Trout. And, obvs, Caves of Androzani should be #1.

James May is amazed that the BBC are upset with him for drinking a G&T, when really, they should be upset with him for putting slices of lemon in it. LIME, James, LIME!

Jeremy Thorpe says Robert Mugabe must die. I guess there's a limit to everyone's Liberalism, eh?

David Davies shows just how pro-liberty he really is. Hey ho. Is anyone actually surprised by this?

Chicky Yog imagines Gordon as a barman and finds him wanting.

The turkeys HAVE voted for Christmas: Mike at PB is right. Any PPC opposing any of the lot who voted for this is going to have a field day.

In the light of John Major's comments re: the 42 days issue, I'd like to remind everyone of one thing.

The debate before the house is not referring to the total period a person can be kept inside before they have to be released. This is, in fact, about whether or not we should have 42 days of imprisonment for people before they are even told what they are supposed to have done wrong. Once you have been charged, once the rozzers have deigned to tell you what they think you've done, you can still be kept locked up for an almost indefinite period, up to and including your trial, given the consent of the judiciary.

The sole reason that this measure has been introduced is that when the police bring charged suspects before the courts, a lot of the time the courts say this man is clearly innocent, let him go, and the government wants to stop innocent people being released because they think it makes them look soft. Does anyone have any doubt at all that the three (yes, THREE, such a huge proportion of our 60,000,000+ population!) people who have so far been kept to 28 days under the current legislation before being charged would have been allowed to be detained post-charge by a court? FFS... What sort of country are we living in when someone can be locked up for any significant length of time without even being told what they are suspected of doing? How the hell have we come to having our government piss wantonly and indiscriminately all over habeas corpus without a peep from most of us about it? I'm sorry, I'm becoming incoherent. This just makes me SO ANGRY.

Given that you can be detained almost indefinitely post-charge, do we really need to have a limit of more than a week? Or even a couple of days? America manages with a two day limit...

At the risk of sounding like Jay in Dogma:

Oi, Catherine Pepinster! Why the fuck should your stupid, irrational, anti-scientific prejudice get in the way of SAVING LIVES you stupid woman? Why do religious people get a special pass on "matters of conscience" that the rest of us can only dream of? Why the fuck don't you get your teeth fixed? It's a little ball of cells. A little ball of stuff that can't even be called tissue, because it's not advanced enough. Listen to Martin Kemp and stop trying to drag the irreligious majority back to the middle ages. Just because YOU want to live in the sixteenth century doesn't mean the rest of us do.

* huge cheer for Diane *

Quite frankly, I could kiss Diane Abbott right now. But, Quentin Twat has appeared, so onto other matters:

Via Unity and Spyblog, the news comes that the Regulatory Reform Bill has been resurrected. The irony that they've chosen to do it in an Act which repeals some of the more contentious parts of SOCPA is not lost on me. Keep your eyes on Save Parliament, people. I think this one is going to rumble on for quite some time.

Still, there is some good news this evening: the chavs that beat up and killed Sophie Lancaster are in prison, and there they will stay. Better than life meaning life, better than the death penalty, is the fact that these scumbags have been caught, tried, and swiftly punished. It doesn't matter how severe a punishment is if there is no fear of the punishment actually happening; such was clearly the case when the little bastard was laughing and joking with his mam after killing somebody. I hope bigoted tossers take the prospect of being punished if they kill someone simply for looking different slightly more seriously now.

Some final notes for Andrew and the This Week gang:
- Diane is clearly not as comfy with Champagne Charlie as she is with Michael, and he keeps interrupting her! Tell Our Former Leader to get some manners if you have him on again.
- I like entrails ;)
- YAY for Diane fangirling Vince :D
- YAY for Linkin Park!
- YAY for the juxtaposition of Dave saying "end to Punch and Judy politics" with his Punching and Judying

(is it premature for me to say here that I'm glad, with the end of the Blair era, to see the end of Richard and Judy politics?)

But yeah, pretty good episode of This Week this week. Which is more than I can say for the damp squib that was the season closer of Ashes to Ashes. I think claire_wain said it best here. Especially the bit about the Doctor Who trailer. I actually swore at the telly when I saw Billie Piper's face. *cough* Anyway, Ashes to Ashes: I'll admit I didn't see that ending coming, having suspected Evan for most of the season, but even so... Still, it's still better than Life on Mars. Yay for Ray's burgeoning gayness and Shazza's crush on Alex!

The much-derided John Lewis list was an attempt to fix a glaring issue: it used to be that MPs just claimed expenses. This meant, for example, that some MPs were claiming "communications allowance" to pay for several members of full time staff to run a website and a call centre, and others weren't even claiming for their phone bills. This is manifestly unfair, and means that MP #1 is getting vast amounts more taxpayer's money than MP #2. So they brought in the £10,000 a year communications allowance. This is how much MPs can claim for stamps, phone bill, internet, etc.

Similarly, some MPs were claiming for three homes (constituency, Westminster, flat for mistress) and the richest furnishings therein (remember Derry Irvine's wallpaper?) and some were trying to be good and going for the cheapest options possible. The John Lewis list was a (misguided) attempt to solve this. Pick a middling retailer, and use their prices as a guide to what it is reasonable for people to spend. Unfortunately, most of us proles can't afford to shop at John Lewis, thus the cry arises that the MPs are frittering away taxpayers' money when they could be shopping at Argos...

This perfectly illustrates that the more you legislate for the detail, the more there is for people to object to. It is a parable for the current government that they do not seem to understand. Creating a list of acceptable items for people to spend money on is ALWAYS going to create division and argument, just as creating over 3000 new criminal offences rather than enforcing the ones which already exist is going to fuel, not solve, derision of the legal system. Micromanagement is stupid in business and government.

In my view, MPs should not be able to claim expenses at all. I can't. Why should they be able to? BUT they should definitely be paid a decent amount of money in order that they are remunerated for stuff that one can reasonably expect them to have to do. This means that they should be paid an amount that is a decent wage, plus allows them to maintain a home in their constituency, and maybe two full time staff because an MP is required to do more work than one person can reasonably do no matter how much they are paid; slightly more for cabinet minsters, perhaps? Then government should build, close to Westminster, a nice big hostel. It could be fairly luxurious, even. But a hostel none the less. There would be an ensuite room in it for each MP. Then there will be no need for the second homes allowance. If MPs WANT to buy a second home in London, they can, but it has to come out of their own money.

This way those who are venal and self serving and pay £10,000 a metre for wallpaper for their flat will have less money to spend on doing stuff for their constituents and this will be blindingly obvious to all. It's a perfect, Millian, Liberal solution: give them a decent wage and then allow them to choose for themselves how to spend it. The current basic salary is £60,000. I reckon that's probably about a third what it should be, given that these people are running the country. You pay peanuts, and you get Hazel Blears. And Derek Conway, frantically defrauding the expenses system. Lets at least pay bananas and get apes ;)

For any Democrats still to vote in the primaries, this entry on PoliticalBetting.com might be of interest. I found it quite interesting, anyway. I suspect tinuvielberen is right when she says that a lot of this is personality-based.

And, if I was American, apparently I would be green:

What's Your Political Philosophy? created with QuizFarm.com

Green 100% Old School Democrat 100% New Democrat 75% Foreign Policy Hawk 40% Libertarian 40% Pro Business Republican 25% Socially Conservative Republican 0%

Predictably, all I can think now is Kermit the frog:

---

For those who haven't been following the Arse Bishop of Canterbury's horrendous cock-up of wording, dear old elephantfeed has the best entry I have seen on it so far, if you can parse his faux-child style. Some of his understanding of the legal concepts involved is a little simplistic (as one of the commenters has said) but his understanding of the legal philosophy is absolutely correct:

When it comes down to it, most Law is there to settle disputes between PEOPLE. In CRIMINAL law, the dispute is between ALL OF US and someone who is doing harm – because we cannot operate as a society if we let people do harm to others. But mostly it is because two people have a disagreement and they need someone to sort it out.

There is NOTHING to stop them going to their Priest or Vicar or Rabbi or Imam or Militant Atheist Baby Elephant and asking them to help them decide. Arbitration is to be ENCOURAGED and, so long as both sides are happy with the outcome, it would certainly cut down on all the cases that are clogging up our judges' calendars.

But what happens if the Vicar and the Baby Elephant have DIFFERENT answers?

[A: Nobody is a bit surprised?]

That is when you end up in court.

It's just no good if you have MULTIPLE legal systems, not all of which are based on equal protection for all parties. People will be unable to settle their arguments if one person insists on one law and the other demands the rights to use another.

That is why you need ONE set of laws.

Dead on, Fluffy cheeks, dead on.

At the end of the day, though, I'm quite glad that Rowan said what he did. That was a huge flash of true colours right there, and EVERYONE has seen it. He's made it perfectly clear that not only does he think that discrimination on religious grounds is acceptable, he thinks it is "unavoidable". Uh, no, Rowan, it will be quite easy to avoid. Disestablish your increasingly anachronistic church, prevent people from acceding to our legislature just by being bishops, stop any religion from having influence over our legal system disproportionate to the number of believers, and let the secular majority live their lives in peace without being beaten with the "white Christian country" stick every time one of us suggests something you (or any of your other Misogynistic Bearded Sky Pixie Cult friends) don't like.

Why can't we all just listen to JS Mill? He was bang alongside the English law principle that you should be able to do anything you like as long as it's not specifically outlawed. Religious codifications always tend to go the other way, and this is fundamentally illiberal.

It's rather disturbing when one's theoretically heterosexual fiancé gets invited to a Facebook Group called "Nick Clegg is More of a Hottie Than David Cameron Any Day" by another theoretically heterosexual male. I know that Lib Dems are enamoured of using FaceBook as a campaign tool, but really, even if you're taking the mickey (as that group clearly is), some things are not going to make you look good. And do you guys really think that yet another comparison of your glorious leader to Cameron is a good plan? If everyone thinks they're the same person then that weakens you catastrophically, surely?

Still, at least Facebook have listened to my earlier whinge and changed "fan of" to "supporter of" for politicians. Which means I'm getting loads of invites to become a supporter of X person... I'm with Mat on this one; if you're a Lib Dem and you value localism, you want your supporters to be local. This means that I still won't be becoming a supporter of any Lib Dem councillors in, for example, Ealing. Even if they buy me a really good birthday present ;)

Devil's Kitchen has whined about MPs pay. He kind of has some good points (I think MPs should spend less time legislating too, although not so they can spend time in other jobs, but so that they can spend more time doing constituency work and becoming more accessible to the electorate). But the assertion that we end up with the dross and the crap who can't actually make £60,000 plus £136,000 expenses in their normal professions if that is what we pay MPs is extremely offensive. Firstly, the assertion that everyone who earns less than £200k is dross and crap is something that makes me want to punch the right wing twat on his pompous nose. Secondly, as I said in the comment to Aaron Heath's entry, I get uncomfortable when people complain that other people are not worth the money they are paid and that their jobs are easy when they haven't actually walked a mile in their shoes, possibly because I have been on the receiving end of such accusations myself more often than I would like. I also think that the suggestion that MPs only do 160 days work a year is not only inaccurate, but dangerous. MPs might only sit in parliament for 160 days, but that doesn't mean they don't have surgeries, local campaigns, etc, to do in their constituencies. Asserting that this is not the case simply furthers the endemic disillusionment with politics which has been stalking abroad in this country for ages. I, personally, think that MPs should be paid more. That way we'd get people attracted to the job who have some measure of intelligence and talent, and less people like Hazel frigging Blears.

Speaking of accusations I have been on the receiving end of... Well, it wasn't really an accusation, but a friend of mine mentioned in an f-locked post his moral discomfort with a friend of his having a large age gap relationship (I'm not giving any more detail than that, since the post was locked, and I'll thank readers who are also on this friend's f-list for respecting that confidentiality also). I've been in a large age gap relationship. It didn't work out, but it lasted ten years, produced one child, and ended on friendly terms which remain friendly to this day. I was the initiator of the relationship. In fact, in my late teens, I went through a long phase of going for men in their thirties. Most of them were mildly uncomfortable about my age, because they thought that they would be on the receiving end of precisely the kind of moral discomfort my friend has. It annoyed me then, and it annoys me now. The younger person in a relationship might well be being exploited, but so might the older. My rationale for choosing older men was because they were 1, richer and 2, more grateful. *I* was exploiting *them*. On the other hand, maybe there's a genuine attraction and the relationship will be a happy one. Either way, if all parties are above the age of consent, I firmly believe that not one single person has the right to judge. Nice people don't judge others for having interracial or mixed religion or mixed weight or mixed height or same sex relationships, so why is it still acceptable to judge others for having an age gap larger than we, personally, are comfortable with? I suspect that position will not make me popular, but there it is.

Finally, something that's been bugging the lovely matgb and I, in a low level way, for a while now.



Why is there one corner of the Houses of Parliament which always remains unlit at night? It can't be that the bulb has gone: surely they'd have changed it by now?

ETA: actually, looking at that photo, it's two, isn't it? Weird.