Election 2015: On the Campaign and Results & Lazy Arguments

Guess who is back? Back again.

It’s me!

After the election campaign, I wanted to put my thoughts to paper or maybe film but finally decided on paper. Film might come later.

In case you missed the election last week, the Tories were elected to parliament with a majority, the Liberal Democrats collapsed and the SNP swept nearly all of Scotland’s seats.

Now the Tories have a majority, they have decided to govern like true Tories, now that a certain liberal party aren’t holding them back.

Theresa May is bringing back the Snooper’s Charter. This is a government surveillance bill that will allow the police and intelligence services to spy on your internet communications whether it be skype, facebook, IM or anything else in case you are a terrorist or plotting a crime. It assumes you are a criminal or a terrorist before you’ve even committed a crime.

The Tories want to scrap the Human Rights Act (HRA). This is an Act that enshrines the European Convention of Human Rights into British law. It’s an Act which means UK citizens don’t have to go to a European Court to protect their human rights from the state.

The rights in the HRA are:

• Right to life
• Right not to be tortured or treated in an inhuman or degrading way
• Right to be free from slavery or forced labour
• Right to liberty
• Right to a fair trial
• Right not to be punished for something which wasn’t against the law
• Right to respect for private and family life, home and correspondence
• Right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion
• Right to freedom of expression
• Right to freedom of assembly and association
• Right to marry and found a family
• Right not to be discriminated against in relation to any of the rights contained in the European Convention
• Right to peaceful enjoyment of possesions
• Right to education
• Right to free elections
• Abolition of the death penalty.

This begs the question, which of these rights do the Tories disagree with?

There is a small comfort that they want to introduce a British Bill of Rights, but that could mean we give human rights only to British citizens and anyone considered not British enough is denied their human rights.

On top of all that Prime Minister Cameron has said: “For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone.”

That’s the Prime Minister of the UK saying that even if you obey the laws of the land, the state will not leave you alone.

Only a week has gone by and already the Tories are saying: bye bye to our civil liberties and our human rights.

I’m really missing that liberal party. What were they called again?

That’s right the Liberal Democrats.

Going to give half a credit where its due, Nicola Sturgeon, the unelected First Minister of Scotland has said that she will do everything in her power to block the scrapping of the HRA in Scotland.

Here is the point where I disagree with Sturgeon and nationalism. I don’t want to just protect Scotland from the repeal of the HRA. I want to protect the whole UK from the repeal of the HRA. I want to protect my brother, my sisters-in-law and my brother-in-law down south from having their right to life, right to not be tortured by the state, right to be free from slavery or forced labour taken away from them.

David Cameron, however did rule out a second independence referendum, much to Nicola Sturgeon’s displeasure.

My First Minister thinks that the Prime Minister for the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland has no right to rule out an independence referendum for a part of that Kingdom. Or that he has no right to rule it out when she herself, said that this election was not about independence. That promise lasted all of what 3 days.

But then again Ms Sturgeon’s election rhetoric was full of holes, particularly the main plank of her election strategy.

“Providing a stronger voice for Scotland to protect Scotland’s interests.”

Two big problems with that: how do you define “stronger voice”? How do you define “Scotland’s interests”?

Let me first tackle “stronger voice”. We had 59MPs before the election and 59MPs after the election. The strength of Scotland’s voice on that basis is exactly the same.

The boundary review is going to kick in again and that is set to reduce Scotland’s representation by 7MPs. I’m going to assume that you will fight like you did during the last parliament to keep Scottish representation in Westminster at 59MPs.

Now Scotland has 8% of the UK population and 9% of the representation in parliament. The boundary review is set to equalise that representation so that we have the same amount of representation as we have population.

That begs the question to Ms Sturgeon and the newly elected SNP MPs, why do you think a voter resident in Scotland is worth more than a voter resident in England or the rest of the UK?

Now that 56 out of 59MPs are SNP MPs i.e. 95% of our representation is SNP on 49.97% of the vote, do we really have a stronger voice?

The SNPs success has effectively denied the majority (50.03%) of Scotland a voice at Westminster. The majority were only denied because they had the audacity to disagree with each other on what is in Scotland and the UKs best interests.

The Prime Minister and the to be appointed leader of the Opposition should be constantly reminded throughout this parliament, that the SNP still represents the minority view point of Scotland.

This will be the first parliament in decades with the fewest amount of Scottish MPs in government capable of influencing the direction of the UK Government. Even Thatcher had more Scottish MPs in government, both in cabinet positions and ministerial positions than will the newly elected parliament.

Under every single objective measure, “Scotland’s voice” is weaker now than it was before. So I have no idea how you expect the people of Scotland to hold you to account on this so-called “stronger voice”.

We come to the second problem with your central election plank. What is in “Scotland’s interest”?

I’m pretty sure the whole point of democracy is to debate what the interests of the organisation, community, nation are and how best to resolve those, yet you just painted your opponents as anti-Scottish and that the SNP were the only party to put Scotland’s interests first. You allowed us the electorate to make that mean whatever we wanted it to mean so that come the next election, there was no possible way for you to be held to account because your promises meant absolutely nothing and you could get away with doing and saying whatever you want.

Take the forthcoming EU referendum for example, there will be many in Scotland and throughout the UK, that is in our interests to get out of the EU, whilst many will disagree. Yet last October Ms Sturgeon and her SNP cronies argued that Scotland should get a veto in any EU referendum. Ms Sturgeon said it was “democratically indefensible” to take Scotland out of the EU against its will if the UK as a whole votes to leave.

About a month before hand before the Scottish independence referendum, Ms Sturgeon was arguing the opposite, that it was democratically defensible to take local authorities out of the UK against its will.

Before Nationalists throw a temper tantrum and start throwing toys out of their prams by crying: “but we’re a nation.” Democracy doesn’t care!

Democracy couldn’t care less if you are a nation or not.

Democracy is a tool for people to decide together what they should do. Democracy can be used in an organisation or globally, where everyone’s vote weighs the same regardless of position, education level, nationality and regardless of where you live.

It is either democratically defensible to take local authorities out of the UK against their will and to take Scotland out of the EU against its will or its democratically indefensible.

You cannot pick and choose when something is defensible and when its not. Your logic has to be consistent.

But that’s not the only time SNP supporters or voters have used illogical or unreasonable arguments.

I went along to the Ayrshire Matters, Scottish independence town hall debate, and the opening argument by someone who recently canvassed for the SNP but denies he is a nationalist was that we should all vote Yes to independence in order to see Scotland in the country drop-down menu online. That was the quality of the debate. I expect a 12 year-old to make that argument and I also expect 12 year-olds to be able to tear that argument to shreds.

I’ve heard from two people, one in person and one online, their anecdotal evidence as to why zero-hours contracts are bad & they both denied the substantiated evidence that tells us that employees on zero-hours contracts are just as happy as people on regular contracts. But both these people used their own unsubstantiated evidence to deny and argue that the substantiated evidence is wrong, which is a completely unreasonable argument.

Don’t get me wrong it makes them compassionate human beings, one of them is hearing harrowing stories about zero-hour contracts and think they are a disgrace but the argument of “I hear it all the time…” is a Katie Hopkins style argument that all people named Tyler are bad influences because she hears the name Tyler being screeched by mothers at school gates. This denies all the Tyler’s who don’t get screeched at unrepresented in the sample and the evidence ends up being skewed towards troublemakers or anyone with a parent who will screech your name because they forgot to kiss them goodbye.

The same is true in the debate around zero-hours contracts. It is a well-proven fact in psychology that people are more likely to complain than they are to say they are happy or satisfied with something. Therefore you are more likely to hear people voluntarily complain about zero-hours contracts than hear people voluntarily say: “I’m on a zero-hours contract and I like it.”

In fact most people will not ordinarily volunteer what kind of contract they have unless you ask them and even then they might refuse to tell you, unless you are seriously persuasive.

Even the substantiated evidence we have on zero-hours contracts does nothing to work out if the people who are dissatisfied with their contract are weighting one or two events out of proportion either because it just happened recently or because when they think about their contract, they think of one or 2 negative things are readily brought to mind but 98 or 99 things they like about their contract are ignored.

Now some of those biases are almost impossible to get rid of in objective evidence, but we should try to get the most objective evidence possible and base decisions on that.

Abuses of zero-hour contracts should be stopped but we should not make policy or legislation on the back of “I hear it all the time…” arguments.

Today, the Prime Minister and the First Minister will meet for the first time since the election. Let’s wait and see what happens.

The UK, not Scotland needs a Claim of Right.

So on Saturday, Willie Rennie, leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats made a speech in Glasgow talking about the need to develop a new blueprint for a new constitutional settlement for a stronger Scotland within the United Kingdom.

Willie is right that a new constitutional settlement is needed but he is wrong as to who needs that new settlement.

It is the UK that needs a new constitutional settlement.

It is the UK that needs a Claim of Right.

A Claim of Right that says the British people are sovereign.

Historically, it has been the Scottish people who have been sovereign not the English.  Westminster has always been sovereign rather than the people Westminster sought to represent.

But that is the best thing about being in a union.

Scotland can take the best ideas from England & the rest of the UK and make them our own and the rest of the UK can do the same.

Scotland needs to lead in the UK for a new constitutional settlement not just for Scottish interests but for all of Britain’s interests as well.

The UK needs a Constitutional Convention that brings together wide-ranging views from across civic society and from all political parties.

It will be no doubt incredibly difficult to give balance to all sides of the debate and indeed all nations and regions of the UK, but that is my point.

A union that does not know or does not seek to know or understand how to best balance the interests of all is a union that is doomed to failure.

A union whose political leaders will do anything to appease one section or nation within it, whilst neglecting the needs of others is a union that is doomed to failure.

Our political leaders are at the moment throwing everything trying to keep the union together by trying to achieve a No vote in next year’s referendum.

Instead of proposing a bold, radical idea for a new political and constitutional settlement that will bring our systems of governance into the 21^st century, our leaders prefer to tinker at the edges of a broken system. 

The Economy Grows!

Today’s ONS figures show that the economy has grown by 1%.

This is good news. We’ve waited a long time to see growth in the economy.

It has to show there are some things going right with the current economic strategy since unemployment is down, inflation is down, deficit down.

The debt however is still rising but its supposed to keep rising. The government is only trying to get eliminate the structural deficit.

I hope like me, you enjoyed Andrew Neil defeating Ed Balls on today’s Daily Politics. Ed B was trying to reconcile his comments when he said he didn’t believe there to be a structural deficit before the recession when we can now see that is complete and utter balls.

Perhaps, like me you’d enjoy casting your eye over this article on Touchstone blog pointing out that policymakers and governments shouldn’t focus on the structural deficit, noticing how difficult it is to estimate the output gap and therefore the structural deficit.

That being said, we clearly can’t go on spending loads of money we simply don’t have but perhaps we need a new approach to how we tackle the economy.

But let’s be clear, lets all for the moment revel in the fact that the economy grew by 1% in quarter 3. We are now out of recession.

Salmond digs himself a deeper hole!

Today in First Minister Questions, Alex Salmond told the Scottish Parliament that Nicola Sturgeon had sought permission from Scottish Law Officers in order to tell Parliament on Tuesday that she and the Scottish Government were going to seek legal advice from the Law Officers over an independent Scotland’s position in the EU.

Yet, Alex Salmond said he did not have that legal permission so why in answer to a specific question posed by Andrew Neil did Alex Salmond say he had sought legal advice from Scottish Law Officers.

If he is not allowed to say whether he has sought that advice without permission from said law officers without breaking the ministerial code why then did he not say in reply to Andrew Neil: “I’m unable to confirm or deny that we have sought legal advice”. Unless of course he had asked and received permission from Scottish Law Officers over saying he had received the permission to say he had received advice when he hadn’t.

The full interview I’m talking about, can be viewed below. Alex Salmond saying he sought legal advice is at 10.40.

As you can see Alex Salmond is perfectly clear that he had sought advice from Scottish Legal Officers but was unable to publish that.

Alex Salmond is in a hole and he just keeps digging.

The polling that should worry LibDem HQ!

I’m not talking about the voting intention figures. Although, I do think that if Nick Clegg wants to make the LibDems 1 of 3 parties of government, we need to be polling around 20% between elections.

This post isn’t about those polls though.

Lord Ashcroft has had some polling done in Corby where there is a by-election on November 15th.

The poll does show we’ve lost a significant amount of support but at this point, we’re used to that.

What is worrying is who the voters said was the best party on key issues.

On growing the economy, creating jobs, cutting the deficit and the debt, the NHS, schools, Europe, crime, welfare and immigration, the LibDems hovered between 6-8%.

The only issue where the LibDems did well was on protecting the environment where 26% said the Liberal Democrats had the right approach.

This is only Corby voters so can’t be applied nationally. Ipsos-Mori did a national poll a few weeks ago and the results were practically identical.

If we are truly turning into a true party of government, those numbers should be a lot higher.

These figures correlate to the support that the LibDems are achieving in the national voting intention polls particularly with YouGov.

If we want to be 1 of 3 parties of government then the LibDems need to be challenging for the top spot in some of these categories.

These reports show how far away we are from being a true party of government.

When Did The Scottish Liberal Democrats Become Authoritarian?

I have been shocked and surprised by the actions taken by the Scottish Liberal Democrat Leader, Willie Rennie in recent days.

It all started when the Herald published an article, accurately reporting that Scottish Conference Committee and Scottish Lib Dem HQ (SLDHQ) refused to let Yes Scotland have a stall on the same commercial terms as everybody else.

The Liberal Democrats are generally praised by the media for being comfortable and relaxed enough to allow members to genuinely debate and pass policy motions including when we go against the wishes of the party leadership. If you look at our recent Federal Conference, Jo Shaw helped defeat the leadership on the issue of secret courts. If we look back to before the election, the leadership was defeated not once but twice on the issue of dropping one of our key policies i.e. our policy on scrapping tuition fees. All Nick & Vince could convince conference to vote for was a phasing out of tuition fees over six years.

What makes our party so great is that we can speak out, it is not only allowed but also encouraged for members to have their own opinions and to express them. Unlike the Labour & Conservative parties, we are not drones, who believe what they are told to believe by their party HQ.

It is because of that liberal democratic tradition in our party that I believed it went against liberal values of allowing people to make their own decisions and encouraging debate to refuse Yes Scotland a stall at conference.

Now like Willie Rennie, I am prepared to be “awkward” (Willie’s word) when it comes to standing up for liberal principles. If the issue really was one of capacity at the Vine Venue, which I don’t believe because I was there at last years Autumn Conference and the addition of a single, solitary stall should not have posed a problem.

So when Andrew Page approached me with a letter to the Herald that spoke out for liberal democratic principles, I was happy to put my name alongside the others. Andrew, himself was approached by someone who had voted for Andrew and the LibDems previously. This LibDem voter was himself exasperated that the party could do such a thing & it was the LibDem voter who drafted the original letter, which Andrew significantly shortened before approaching myself, Graeme Cowie, Allan Heron, Norman Fraser, Gerry McGregor & Alex Dingwall.

What truly shocks me, is the way Willie Rennie has since handled the issue. Instead of shrugging it off, telling us he’s heard our concerns and that as liberals it is a healthy part of being in a liberal democracy for members to air their grievances in public as well as in private. Willie Rennie has sought to assert his authority and control over us mere members. Rennie acted in a way ill-befitting a liberal leader.

Willie Rennie, today wrote a letter (see bottom for the full letter) to all those who signed the letter to the Herald, in part explaining the decision of the leadership and conference committee to refuse the application but also and more importantly to admonish those who expressed a different view from that of the leadership.

Willie once criticised Alex Salmond for running a tight ship and not allowing MSPs & members of his party to speak out, yet here is Willie now trying to exert the same kind of control over his party as Alex Salmond does.

Since when does a member of a liberal party have to run things through central office.

Not one person who signed the letter did so to undermine or disrespect Willie Rennie or the party. We signed the letter to stick up for liberal principles in the open.  Not one person in our chat about it, when Andrew asked if we should run with the letter thought of going to through the bureaucracy that is conference committee.

While Willie and others within the party think we should have gone through Conference Committee or HQ before sending the letter and aired our grievance in private, I disagree. Going about it internally would have achieved nothing as there would still have been a negative story about the party in the press saying how undemocratic we are. If people like me, don’t ever speak out when our party is in the wrong, nobody will listen to us when the party is doing the right thing.

I understand why HQ refused the application on political grounds. After all we as a party in October want the media to report about the Home Rule Commission report which should be out within the next fortnight.

That being said, I don’t see why we couldn’t have accommodated them at Spring Conference, we could have perhaps have offered them a fringe event that included a wide range of views on Scotland & the UKs constitutional future on the panel.

The problem I have is that it is far easier to defend decisions when all it takes to defend the decision is citing our values.

I can’t defend a decision such as refusing Yes Scotland a very small platform to be part of our internal democratic process at conference by citing our values.

Our values state we are a pluralistic, tolerant party.

The Scottish party when it comes to Scottish independence and the SNP are anything but. When it comes to this issue, the Scottish party are intolerant, petty and behave like children. I expect that from Labour & the Tories but not the Liberal Democrats.

Not one of us who signed the letter are rebels. We did not do it to undermine Willie or the party. The letter will only undermine Willie if he lets it. We come from different sides of the independence debate. We didn’t sign it because we thought Willie inaccessible.

Every single one of us signed it to stick up for liberal, open, pluralistic, democratic principles.

The Admonishment Letter in Full

Dear Nicola,

I am not sure what is gained from members communications with me through the Herald newspaper on our conference fringe line-up. You know that I have made myself accessible to all members in my time as leader to discuss any issue.

If you had shown me the courtesy of contacting me I would have explained our decision to you. It wasn’t easy and was finely balanced.

On the one hand, it could have shown that our party is relaxed with our policy position, open to it being tested at the heart of our conference and confident in the stated position of the vast majority of our members who support Scotland staying as part of the UK. We could also have banked the fee we could charge for the space.

On the other, it could have detracted from our messages for the conference. Even without some kind of stunt on the day their presence would have been a focus for the media. As we don’t get too many opportunities to promote our own message the last point is important.

It is the clear wish of members that we promote our vision of a federal UK. That is what I want our focus to be on as we unveil the Home Rule Commission Report.

In the end we decided not to offer Yes Scotland a space as we believed promoting our party’s views must come before commercial opportunity.

Whatever our response to their approach, it would have been made into a story by Yes Scotland. A rejection has been portrayed as not democratic. An acceptance would be used to indicate growing support for independence in the party. I’d rather not have anything to do with people who treat us like that.

It is a matter of deep regret for me that you have chosen to show me such disrespect in sharing your views with the media without speaking to me first.

Yours Sincerely

Willie Rennie MSP

Nick Clegg: “Our Future is Ours to Make”

Ah, the Great Leader’s speech. The main & last event of the Liberal Democrat party conference on Wednesday, was I don’t know how to describe it other than a muddled mess. It had great bits, don’t get me wrong. Parts of the speech made me when I watched it live, think Clegg is the man of the moment, the guy with the ability and determination to take on the vested interests and win.

Yet, at other times, his speech made me think “actually, you don’t get it. You’ll lead this party into opposition for another century and we as a party are blindly following”.

I finished watching being more conflicted about Nick’s leadership. With one hand, I want him to be Prime Minister, with the other I see him leading us to an electoral abyss.

The speech started off with a slight groan that he was going to be yet another politician to politicise the Olympics and Paralympics but I thought he handled it quite well.

The way he showed that behind each Olympian or Paralympian stood a coach. Behind that coach stood a team of physios and trainers. Each member of the team is using their individual talents to come together to do something extraordinary. Nick built on that theme by looking back at the riots and seeing that teams of individuals who came together to clean up Britain. Nick pointed to Maurice Reeves who started up his furniture store again and on the walls of the new store were pictures of young people with messages of hope.

I have to say this part reminded me of Obama’s “Yes we can” campaign of 2008. It also reminded me of his speech a few weeks ago where he tried to make the same message, that we all stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before. That we can build things together.

I was hoping that this would be a white British Obama speech, but I was disappointed because it quickly fell away into a muddled mesh of words that ended up being too much for political wonks. It failed to inspire either the activists. More importantly, it failed to show the electorate as a whole what we, the Liberal Democrats are about.

Nothing shows what a mess the speech was more than the ending. Nick paraphrased Grimond and Steel: “I see generations of Liberals marching towards the sound of gunfire.(Grimond) And yes, I see them going back to their constituencies to prepare for government. (Steel)”

Nick ended up finishing with: “That’s the prize. It’s within our grasp. So let’s go for it.”

To paraphrase the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons: Worst. Ending. To. A. Speech. Ever.

Despite the limp ending, what made me conflicted about this speech and about Nick’s Leadership as a whole was really the core message of the speech.

The speech was really about the Clegg project.

Clegg was telling us as a party, where he as leader wanted to take the party and how we were going to get there.

He was effectively trying to win back those people like myself who are critical of exactly where he is leading us as a party. Of course there are others in the party, who aren’t just trying to provide constructive criticism but who are actively calling for Nick to stand down.

It didn’t work though. At least not for me.

I’m on board with the aims of the Clegg project. I don’t want the LibDems to be a party of protest. I want the party to be one of 3 parties of government. Better yet, I want the party to be one of 2 parties of government.

So up to that point, I’m 100% behind Nick.

The problem I have with Nick and his leadership is his strategy of making us, one of 3 parties of government. Nick’s sell to the electorate is:

are you ready to trust Labour with your money again? And do you really think the Tories will make Britain fairer?

To use the colour analogy that Nick used in his speech. Nick wants the Liberal Democrats not to be yellow i.e. a colour that is incomparable to either red or blue. Nick wants to turn the Liberal Democrats, purple.

He wants to be Tory Blue enough so people trust us on the economy and Labour Red enough, so that we can be trusted to help the poor, the vulnerable and make Britain better.

The problem is we’re already there.

We’re being attacked from the right for being too red. We’re being attacked from the left for being too blue.

Nick might think that’s the perfect place to be but I say that has left us on 8% in the polls and leading us to become a party of perpetual opposition once again.

To use a slightly different analogy. If you go out on the pull with someone that looks completely different to you. Each of you will probably attract the attention of about half of the opposite sex (or same sex if your that way inclined). Now if you find someone who looks similar to you but slightly uglier to go out with you as well then you’ll find that the majority of the attention of the opposite sex comes to you. However, if the third person that you and your mate go out with is a slightly uglier version of your mate then the majority of the attention of the opposite sex goes to your mate. (This by the way can be much better explained by Dan Ariely here from about 11 mins in, I recommend you watch the link.)

The reason, I use that analogy is that for so many years we were seen as the similar but slightly uglier version of Labour. People looking at the Lib Dems and Labour would think that Labour were the far superior option. Therefore they would vote Labour.

Now we’re in coalition with the Tories, those voters who saw as the inferior Labour party have left to join Labour. The coalition is also now painting us, as similar but slightly uglier version of the Tories, so come 2015 who are they going to vote for? Us or the Tories, well its a no-brainer, they are going to vote for the Tories.

Nick has recently hired Ryan Coetzee (the former Director of Strategy for the DA in South Africa) who has an impressive record of building the DA vote share up from almost nothing to the largest party in a 7 party coalition that unseated the ANC. I’m interested in seeing what his strategy will be.

I’m particularly interested in seeing if he is capable of making the other parties look like similar but slightly uglier versions of the Liberal Democrats rather than the other way around.

One of the best lines of Nick’s speech was “Our Future is Ours to Make”. Indeed the future is ours to make, Nick. But what future will you make for the Liberal Democrats? I hope to see us as one of 3 parties of government but I fear your making our future one of perpetual opposition.

We Are What We Eat!

This post was originally posted on Liberal Youth’s blogging platform The Libertine on the 25th of September 2012.

So said one delegate speaking on the Good Food Shouldn’t Cost The Earth motion at Conference on Sunday 23^rd September.

Now that has some truth; what we eat has a significant impact on how healthy we are.

The motion before Conference spoke of how important it was to eat healthily, and for government to promote healthy eating behaviour and give us citizens the ability to make informed choices about what foods we consume.

It should have been an interesting debate but it wasn’t. The debate was sidetracked by the farming and agricultural parts of the motion to promote sustainable food production, as well as one speaker who devoted his whole speech to arguing for legislating for the “traffic lights” system to be used on all food labels.

I know Liberal Reform were keen to see this motion voted down because of the “consultation on fiscal measures such as the taxation of heavily sugared drinks” and the “adopting a timetable to achieve a minimum of 30 per cent organic food.”

I’m against those things for the same reasons as Liberal Reform are but I also have another reason which I’ll come to in a moment.

What surprised me most about a debate on a motion which was primarily about healthy eating to try and combat the problem of obesity and obesity-related diseases, was that exercise was not mentioned once.

Now, I’m borderline obese but incredibly fit. I’ve got a lot of fat on me but my gym says that I’ve got one of the highest, if not the highest, target in the whole entire club. That means, all the machines I work on are tougher for me than anybody else in the club.

I also had bloodwork done recently and all came back normal. In fact, as my GP remarked, that my cholesterol was excellent and that those levels were rarely seen in the West of Scotland. I don’t live in the healthiest parts of Scotland.

What matters most in healthy living is not necessarily what you eat but how your body processes what you eat.

Science is only just beginning to delve into this. Research being done in the UK by Professor Jamie Timmons is showing that with just 3 minutes of high intensity exercise a week, you can dramatically increase your body’s insulin sensitivity i.e. reduce your risk of developing diabetes.

Research being done predominantly in America is showing that if you ‘calorie restrict’ or fast at least 2 days a week, you can also reduce your risk of developing certain cancers, diabetes and Alzheimer’s.

This research is showing that if you fast 2 days a week (by eating 500-600 calories on a fast day) or fast on alternate days a.k.a. alternate day fasting, then you can eat foods that are high in saturated fats or loads of sugar and not see any rise in cholesterol or blood glucose or any other health indicator related to those so called “unhealthy” foods.

As someone who tries to put the science to the test and uses it to improve my health, why should I be punished by taxing the foods and drinks I eat on feed days (non-fasting days) because other people are choosing not to regulate how their bodies process these foods?

A party that claims to make evidenced-based policy has just passed a motion that fails to even ask the question of “how do our bodies process the food we eat and how does that affect our health?” We failed to ask if there are there other ways of regulating how our bodies process, through exercise or other means?

When it comes to healthy eating and exercise, one size does not fit all, yet we as a party, have just passed a motion that tries to say that one size does fit all.

The party that claims individualism, has just passed a motion, claiming that when it comes to how our bodies process food, we are all the same. It was almost like I was watching the Labour party conference, instead of the Liberal Democrat party conference.

Davey’s Safe Energy Hands

Yesterday, Ed Davey, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change made a speech in which he said, he was playing safe with Britain’s energy future.

“When I was asked to look after the country’s energy and climate change future, some people called me “a safe pair of hands”. When it comes to gas and electricity, I think that’s a good place to start. Not least because some people want me to play it anything but safe. They want me to risk Britain’s energy policy on one solution – one technology. Bet the economy on nuclear. Gamble UK plc only on renewables. Play Russian roulette with shale gas. Well, these safe hands won’t take those kind of risks with jobs and Britain’s growth.”

Now in some sense, it is good and right for the government to invest in more than one technology, if one succeeds and outperforms then fantastic but if one technology were to go wrong, then we have other investments to cover for the failing technology.

That’s all well and good but I also get the feeling that if we don’t put all our eggs in one basket, or put it in another way “gamble UK plc” on renewables then we won’t get the success of renewables that we could achieve.

After all, lets remember that renewables isn’t one technology in itself but several. They are nearly all directly or indirectly powered by the Sun, all apart from tidal power, which is powered by the moon.

If your cautious and bet safe, you might get a modest return on investment, or a modest decline on investment, but the bigger gamble you make, you increase your chance for a big return on investment or a bigger loss. Yes, those investments need to be balanced out, but perhaps Davey is being too cautious.

Personally, I’m not a fan of nuclear at all. I don’t think we should invest in it at all. I don’t like the huge commissioning and decommissioning costs of nuclear programs let alone the nuclear waste, thats generated which won’t decay for centuries.

I admit, we need to invest in oil and shale at the moment to cover ourselves if renewables fail. The big bet should be on renewables, after all why should we rely on a source of energy generated by the past when we can generate all our electricity needs from the present.

The sun hits the Earth with enough energy to power us for years, yet some people on this planet don’t want to use it.

The sun powers our climate including the wind, which is currently howling outside right now, yet people do not want to harness the sheer energy that it produces.

The sun powers the rain cycle, that is used in hydro-electric power.

The moon powers the tides that hit this island every day.

Considering the sheer amount of energy available in renewables and that we are taking energy from the present and not the distant past. I don’t see why we shouldn’t gamble on it.

If Liberal Democrats, want a green future, renewables are the future.

Nick Clegg apologises but is it believable?

Most of you by now will have seen the next LibDem party political broadcast in which Nick apologises. In case you haven’t, here is the video:

I admire Nick for apologising, I really do. Neil Monnery told him to do it a year ago & Neil pointed out that he or his advisers thought that an apology would be laughed at or that questions would arise as to why did you do it in the first place.

Now whilst it was good to see a politician do something as refreshing to apologise for what everyone sees as a giant mistake and damaging to your electoral chances.

I thought the video was very badly done and it was done in a manner that made the apology not believable. I use the words that it was far too staged and scripted. What I mean by that is that the way it was staged and scripted & the way Nick delivered the script made the whole thing not believable.

Now lots of LibDems think the opposite to me and that Nick’s apology was completely honest and sincere. Yet had Ed Miliband and Ed Balls apologised for their parties mistakes, then every LibDem in the same manner. Of course their advisers would make sure the tone is right, the lighting etc. was right but we would see it for what it was, a dishonest and insincere apology.

The video, is everything the public hates about politics. Its part of why trust in politics has been eroded. The public see these videos with the nice lighting, the politician talking straight into the camera & saying this & that, whilst going and doing the opposite. The public have been trained to see everything in that video as its been staged and scripted as “oh, look my polling figures are bad, let’s do something to increase my polling figures” or “oh look, lets see how we can best persuade these suckers to vote for us, in order to screw them once we get power”.

The apology would have been much done, if it had been scripted into his conference speech so that it appeared Nick had gone off-script, in order to say what he actually believes in & to connect with us. Of course in order to convince us, a different speech would have to be leaked to the press only for him to follow it to veer away from it.

The Guardian has a story, that his advisers were against it but Nick became convinced it was the right thing to do, after the summer tour. I agree an apology was necessary, but it needed to be done better.

In the language of the video, Nick says it was wrong to commit to a policy that wasn’t affordable at the time when there was “no money” lying around. If it wasn’t affordable, why was it in “our fully-costed manifesto”? If it became unaffordable because we were in government, which it did, if it became unaffordable because we had different priorities, which we did then say that but don’t contradict something else that we said at the time of the election. That makes what we say at the 2015 election, seem like its complete lies.

Instead of rebuilding trust, he’s actually eroding it further.

The apology also shows that Nick doesn’t get that the tuition fees is a symbol of distrust, that the people who went away from us over the broken promise see other broken promises so addressing one but not the others, I believe shows that he just doesn’t get it.

Now, I believe Nick Clegg should be Prime Minister, but I feel because of his “voters will miraculously come back” strategy, which it seems he still doesn’t want to move away from, will lead us into opposition for another century. I don’t believe this “apology” helps, I believe it entrenches that distrust.