You can clear away snow, and Lib Dems

Originally published @ 8:32 am, Thu 9th Dec 2010

The BBC presenters must go on courses for sanctimonious behaviour. Yesterday, the Secretary of State for Transport tried to explain that people will not be sued if they clear pavements of snow and ice with a reasonable intent. Ha, we'll see how that pans out said the presenter. And the Phillip Hammond knew the damage was done.

But Phillip Hammond was wrong to say that this fear of prosecution for reasonable behaviour was a sad reflection on modern times. As I understand the story on clearing snow and ice, it's been doing the rounds since the early sixties.

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But maybe I shouldn't be showing any sympathy for ConDem ministers given everything else that's going on?! Well, No, cos work we're doing on the ground to keep people and commerce going is undermined every time uninformed people like news presenters send out a signal that says you will get done.

Anyway, the ConDems are sending out enough damaging signals themselves. Lib Dems planning to vote 4 ways on tuition fees. (A feat only matched by British Trotskyists in their response to "was the revolution in China led by Mao socialist?")

Easy to forget though, that when the legislation was originally passed, the Conservatives voted against it. And Labour didn't implement the original change until we had won a fresh mandate at the General Election.

But it did cost us votes this time and the remit for fees has moved from adding on the revenue raised to boost university education to replacing the teaching grant provided by Government.

However, how this saves the Government money in the short or medium term is not clear since the terms require the Government to borrow more in the meantime.

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Meanwhile, a Yes to AV campaign for Labour supporters has been launched, and I support it. http://labouryes.org.uk/

Essentially, too much of the national coverage during a General Election gets taken up with urging people to vote in line with the one of the 2 leading parties in a constituency from the last election, rather than vote for who they really want to vote for. An alternative vote frees voters from that burden, and in an election as important as that for a Member of Parliament, that’s a step forward.

The change is relatively minor (compared to a switch to Proportional Representation) and keeps the constituency link.

There are catches - people will not be used to it, so may make mistakes; local elections being held the same day in multi-member wards may confuse some voters (and this is something I've come across with the existing system).

Since this is a relatively minor matter compared to who runs local authorities from next May, I'd rather there'd been a separate polling day to allow for a separate campaign. To minimise disruption for schools, I think we should pioneer an all postal-vote referendum.