Police and Crime Commissioners: Democracy, how?

Stephen Tall has just posted an article about why he, as a Liberal Democrat, supports Police and Crime commissioners. Unfortunately he focuses on so many logical fallacies to make his point. Let's count:

Here’s the thing: I don’t have a problem with elected police commissioners. I know they were a Tory manifesto idea and that the Lib Dems are opposed to them (while reluctantly agreeing to vote for them as part of the Coalition Agreement). But I’m just fine with them. My support for directly elected police commissioners is paralleled by my support for directly elected mayors:

First, I'd just like to say...at least it's a principled stance. If you're happy for the sham of democracy that is directly elected mayors, then being happy for the sham of democracy that is PCC's makes sense. It's still crazy if you actually care about democracy though....

For too long, city council politics have been in the hands of amateur part-time leaders:

Boom, instant strawman. Amateur, really? Well then, why do we even have part time representatives at local level, the amateurs! Hell...a third of our parliament have never been an MP before...why do we hand these people such power?!

What I find really interesting about Stephen's argument here is the complete counter-intuitive nature of it. On the one hand Stephen will say here these people are amateurs, that they can't be trusted to de-facto be on the ball when it comes to providing the right direction. Yet on the other, as you will see, he claims that we the public need to be trusted to elect people to do the job.

So which is it Stephen? Are we to trust out local councillors as they have been handed power by people, or to mistrust them as amateurs that don't have a clue about what's going on?

some have been very good, some not so good. But all have been ham-strung by a political system that grants them responsibility without power, allows them to be in office but not in government.

What does this even mean, Stephen? Ham-strung? Responsibility without power?

Let's remember that the local police authorities must:

• Set budgets
• Charge money through council tax (if necessary)
• Set the strategy for the police authority area
• Get feedback from local people
• Encourage and nurture diversity and equality
• To deal with complaints

By comparison, a police and crime commissioner must:

• Set budgets
• Charge money through council tax (if necessary)
• Set the strategy for the police authority area
• Hold the chief constable to account (and appoint them)

So I guess the sum total of the things that "ham-strung" those local authorities was the need to consider equality and racial diversity, and to actually listen to the public as part of their legal obligations, rather than through political expediency.

For those that don't know, by the way, local police authorities were formed by members of local councils for the area, roughly in line with the political allegiances in the region. This ensured that views from people in Cornwall (for example) were considered alongside views from people in Devon, and that different political priorities were measured up against each other in accordance with the views of the local people. Other "lay" members were also appointed, including magistrates that had real experience of dealing with the outcomes of criminal investigations.

To use my Devon and Cornwall example, the independent members vary from members of boards for charities or schools, to private business people (piano teacher, PR). They are real people like you and I, offering real, direct input from a variety of locations around the region.

I understand and respect those who oppose the idea and the principle of commissioners, those who cleave to the collectivity of committees known as local police authorities. But it’s an argument that all too often spills over into that least attractive mindset: the elitist liberal fearful of too much democracy.

Strawman number two, and an appeal to emotion...maybe we should throw ad hominem in there too. Stephen clearly doesn't respect those who oppose the idea, otherwise he wouldn't play on the emotive description like "elitist" or the idea that they are "fearful of too much democracy".

You see now by arguing against Stephen's point, I am an "elitist" and "fearful of democracy"! Drat, sussed out! Or rather not so much, such "bullying" tactics tend to spur people on rather than shut them out...

Many liberals are openly fearful of a right-wing hang-em-and-flog-em nut-job winning power.

Strange, I thought liberals were fearful of the person that the general population didn't want to represent them getting the job? Hang on. I remember being told time and time again that it was liberals and their annoying propensity for STV (and the lesser AV) that would have the BNP swarming to power in 2015!

But sure, liberals probably don't want an illiberal in power...goes without saying. Does that mean that they are against this system simply because that could be the end result? That's right, people... STRAWMAN.

I get the concern. Come to that, I’m pretty appalled by the idea of Lord Prescott’s return to public life in Humberside.

Who wouldn't be...

But you know what? That’s democracy for you.

The end, simple as that, and they all lived happily ever after! It's such a "genetic" fallacy, this idea that different applications of democracy cannot be criticised, indeed the flaws of any democratic system simply have to be ignored because...hey...that's democracy for you!

Poppycock.

Campaign in favour of what you want and against what you don’t want. Despair of the electorate’s judgement. But respect the voters’ right to make the wrong decision.

Unless the voter is voting for a local councillor, of course. They're just amateurs.

There are legitimate concerns that vesting a commissioner’s power in just one person might lead to corruption or limit debate.

Sure, if you want to paint opponents (strawman) of simply being paranoid about evil forces infiltrating our beloved democracy. Thankfully the views of those like me who stand very much against these plans have a little more depth.

Our concerns are rooted in the fact that the police and crime commissioners have LESS duties to maintain the police force in their area, not more; That the very nature of the "democracy" that is electing them threatens to leave entire communities unheard and left to rot in areas of demoralising, but not high-electoral-priority crime; That tying the power to control strategy to a single party, rather than a broadly representative group, lessens the ability to prevent poor planning in the future; That the electorate fundamentally do not understand enough about the nuance of organising the police forces in this country, and therefore being asked to decide between a set of people with broadly the same ideas (less crime, more police, more victim support!) isn't providing democracy to anyone; And that...as with every election of this type...the danger of personality rather than ability becomes to reason that someone gets power. The list, I'm sure, goes on.

Our concerns are far more legitimate and far more important than the not too unreasonable limited views of the tin-foil hat brigade.

Such concerns will, I believe, be outweighed by the vast scrutiny and direct, personal accountability that will come with these powers. You can bet their every move will be watched with greater care than is currently focused on the authorities they’re replacing.

It is surely true that they may be watched more. The great tragedy of the police authorities is that it wasn't clear how they were important in shaping the role of the police. Victims, perhaps, of the turn of the century and new ways of communicating, their structure and process was stuck in the mid 1900's style of minuted board meetings and commissioning statistical research.

Oh how easy it would be, how cheap too, to start gaining public opinion in a more effective manner, and to be more transparent in what they do. But no. We shall not try these simple changes, we will throw the baby out with the bath water.

But scrutiny? Accountability? Boris Johnson was just re-elected to London Mayor. Why? Personality. Dislike of Ken. Was it because of what he did? He himself admitted that he had FAILED to deliver his promises. On the campaign trail it was shown that he was lying to the public about what he had achieved. "Crime down" according to boris, when actually it was up...the London Mayor IS the police and crime commissioner for the London Metropolitan area...and we're supposed to believe that scrutiny and accountability means anything?!

Certainly I hope the new system will put a stop to the tendency for committees to be captured by chief constables, for there to be a greater equality in the power dynamic at the top of the force between the professionals and the people’s representatives.

Well, when the system is now tailored so that political types can sack chief constables that stand in their way, and appoint a sock-puppet chief constable that'll do their bidding, it's not too high a hope is it?

But just a second... is the option here really black and white? We either have police authorities, regionally representative of the public, with direct public interaction and real experience in crime and punishment, but without any power over the chief constables....or a single unrepresentative individual elected with a huge £100k salary that can sack and appoint chief constables at will?

Of course not, it's an insult to our intelligence that we should sit here and accept this new system because it is a route to ensuring public control of the police, rather than police control of the police. It's one route, yes, but the best route?

There is one argument with which I have no truck: the mealy-mouthed complaint that elected police commissioners will ‘politicise’ the police. What is policing if not political? Was ‘kettling’ peaceful G20 protesters a non-political act? Was the Hillsborough cover-up something politicians should have ignored?

Proper appeals to emotion here. Fact: Police and Crime Comissioners will have no operational control over the police. Kettling? These changes make no difference there. Not, of course, unless the PCC decides to sack their chief constable and bring in a more liberal one... but then there you go, that's not the police controlling policing matters, and the public controlling direction and strategy...that's a single elected person controlling a professional to do as they wish. That is, ultimately, corruption.

Hillsborough is a particularly low blow by Stephen. It is clear from the reports so far that there is nothing that any police authority would have been able to do with police simply lying about what went on, asking/intimidating people to falsify reports. A PCC would similarly have no effect on this.

What's the point to bring these issues up? This "reform" won't alter them, but they're being presented as if they are the reason we need Police and Crime Comissioners.

Is it actually a liberal stance now to say "Hell yeah we should have someone who will run a police force like a mob family, and fully politicise operational decisions!"?

This is what people are complaining about when they talk about politicisation of the force...it's not that politics are in place, since the way policing operates will always reflect society and that in itself is political. It's when policing STOPS reflecting society, and starts reflecting an individual, that it is no longer an impartial service.

Besides, if policing should truly be non-political, why do those who oppose the new system stick up for local police authorities which have a majority of elected councillors?

See above...

I have the suspicion that the worry of ‘politicisation’ is really code for ‘we’d prefer the public not to be too involved in how they’re policed’.

Ah, a new logical fallacy for the mix (if you're still counting, keep up!) tu quoque, to add to the ad hominem and strawman.

Our complaint about politicisation is that the public won't be involved when a single person, representing what will ultimately be a small area within a larger one, most likely focused on a very loyal voter-base that need to be nurtured. A single elected individual is extremely unlikely to take a broad range of views on board and treat them all with equal weight, especially when they are elected either through their own biases with a political party, or with the political pressures of the funding that has been given to them to achieve their new found power.

By comparison, police authorities had true scope, they took from all sections of the region, and even directly involved the public from around the region.

How the hell can you have the audacity to stand there and claim that it is we, questioning why a simple and small reform of local police authorities, authorities that already have much tighter democratic legitimacy, and a greater guarantee of minority voices being heard and represented, are the ones that are trying to take the voice of the public away from how the police do their policing?

I remain hopeful that elected police commissioners will, probably not to begin with but in time, lead to better policing.

Based on what, Stephen? What makes you hopeful? The misplaced notion that around a quarter of the country voting between two or more candidates promising pretty much the same thing will suddenly spur on dramatic changes to the way the police do their job?

Why do I believe that? Because I’m a democrat who believes that greater transparency and clearer accountability improves decision-making.

Except there are no guarantees of that. Even with AMS, we will have regions that may well fall in to the same cycle we have with FPTP, where only one party wins. That's not democratic accountability, it's just inherited autocracy. Transparency? Pah...I point once again to pretty much every vote I've ever seen and the sheer amount of lies and manipulations that are thrown around, completely tricking honest and trusting members of the public.

It's the reason that real liberals will support TRUE democracies, that being bodies of people to collectively represent. The closer you can get to one person one vote on an issue, the more people will be getting what they actually want. Deferring your vote to an individual so that it is one person, all the votes...that's not transparent...there's no debate, there's no discussion. You can't see why that decision has been made or what influenced it.

For too long, the liberal approach to crime — to have a tough but fair system which makes offenders face up to the consequences of their crimes, punishes them proportionately, and aims for their full rehabilitation into society — has been easily, cheaply derided by our opponents as ‘soft on crime’ when it is anything but. As The Economist found on a recent visit to Jersey, an island which already has elected police chiefs and isn’t usually regarded as a bastion of liberalism:

There is a great emphasis on keeping offenders, especially young offenders, out of the criminal justice system, and avoiding anything that looks like public humiliation. Young tearaways and petty offenders will be sent to perform community service, but there is no question of putting them in bright yellow waistcoats emblazoned with the word “offender”. All Parish Hall Enquiries are confidential. Islanders use the word “paternalist”, a lot, to describe their approach to justice. Those who offend repeatedly will face tough justice in the end, the home affairs minister, Senator Ian Le Marquand, told me: “but we like to take our time getting there.” So is justice tough or soft on Jersey? Locals call the distinction rather empty. What counts to them is trying to get justice right.

Anecdotal fallacy. Jersey is a community island of around 100 thousand people, it has a population smaller than some of our smallest cities, on an island with a handful of towns alone. Compare that to Devon and Cornwall where a single person would have to represent 1.65 MILLION people. Comparing how a large town, or a small city, would police itself, to how entire counties, in some cases more than one county, would be directed by a single individual, is an absurd concept.

But take all that aside, so Jersey has a system going that liberals would enjoy. What does that prove? That Jersey perhaps isn't quite as "hang-em" as Stephen seems to think we believe them to be? Great! Does that mean that the rest of the UK will be the same? Maybe, maybe not. Does that matter? No, because the successes and failures of individual areas based on our own perception of what "works" or not is independent of the frailties, risks and weaknesses of the system that still manages to produce any positive results.

Will that approach find echoes across the country after 15th November? I may be a liberal, but I’m not that much of an optimist.

And indeed polling would agree, people are vindictive and blood thirsty.

However, elected police commissioners who want to be re-elected will need to show that their approach works

No they won't, at least not to everyone, only to some people, and only on issues that affect them. Got the silver-fox vote sowed up? Well then, show them that hoodies hanging about on street corners and home burglaries are getting priority funding. Never mind the assaults that happen in that area where they don't vote for you, or the car thefts in the other area that doesn't vote at all.

that they can actually cut crime

Unless they do a Boris and just massage the figures, or outright lie. Again, they can ignore that crime is rising, as long as their core voters feel crime is falling where they care about it.

working with the police, working with the communities

More like getting the police to work for them...and there is no mandate for PCCs to care one jot about actually engaging with whole communities if they don't wish to.

I have enough confidence in a liberal, evidence-based, humane approach to justice to believe that even those elected police commissioners who preach lock-em-up-fire-and-brimstone will repent when they realise that prevention and rehabilitation are the best ways to crack crime.

We can but hope, because that kind of nation-wide revelation is probably the only thing that can save this flawed idea from cutting large swathes of the public out of how their police are run, and worse cause their relationship with crime to actually get worse as entire communities are ignored in order to help re-election chances.

IE9, :focus and a strange bug

So earlier @laurakalbag posted about a problem she's having on her site...

There's a super bananas :focus and/or background and/or cascade bug on IE9 on my site. And I've only these vague ideas of what's causing it.

— Laura Kalbag (@laurakalbag) October 20, 2012

When you first visit the site on IE9 it looks as such:



But if you put focus on to something (it's hard to see, but I've applied focus to the first of the thumbnails) it returns to look like this:



What's worse is if you click on a div, it ends up like this!



Seems like a very odd one, and worth keeping a note of.

First of all, you need to realise that IE9 (and probably IE8 and IE7 at least) all allow you to "focus" on most elements, not just on those that should be able to receive traditional focus such as links or inputs. This is different from how webkit and mozilla seem to operate.

Next, IE9 automatically puts focus on the body when the page is loaded. In the case of @laurakalbag her site had a css rule for ":focus", which is naturally applied to any element that the browser deems to have focus...including the body or divs.

This is where the weirdness properly starts though. The reason for the change in state is because when focus is applied somewhere, the body element obviously loses focus. This allows it's background colour (a purple) to return, no longer over-ridden by a semi-transparent black (looks light grey).

Now it's understandable that where a css property hasn't already been defined, it being defined in the focus attribute will make it change (such as the box-sizing attribute, that causes the div to contract in the third screenshot above). What is truly strange is how IE treats the order of importance of CSS attributes.

Put simply, using this case as an example, if you define the background-color of the body and of :focus eligible elements (which, in IE9, is most things), then you must put the background-color value in your .css file.

This makes no sense, as anything in style tags in your .html file, defined AFTER the .css file, should take precedence. But it doesn't here. In fact you can define you :focus values AFTER you've defined your body values within either the .css file, or in style tags in the .html file, and it'll respect the values of the physical element over the :focus values every time. It's an entirely inconsistent practice.

Check out these link to see the same type of action occurring (you need to use IE9 or IE8, obviously):

:focus and body background-color defined in .css file

:focus defined in style tags in .html file, body background-color defined in .css file

:focus defined in .css file, body background-color defined in style tags in .html file

:focus and body background-color defined in style tags in .html file

You'll see that the first two links are green, while the second two are red. The first two are as we would expect it to work as we designed it, but actually probably work counter-intuitively to how priority is given to CSS values. The last two links display contrary to how we would like, but probably follow the rules properly

So... what should you do in this situation?

First of all, define your :focus with more specific scope. You probably don't care about focusing on your divs, so why not use "a:focus, input:focus"?

If this isn't an option, the only way to deal with this is to exploit the way IE9 interprets the priority of css values, and to use classes to define the background-colour that should be used, or to put specific inline styles on to your elements.

Class added to body (with body.class in .css file)

in-line style added to body

Conclusion?

When dealing with :focus for Internet Explorer, be careful, and be specific! If you can't be specific, then the next best thing is to get all of your themes and styles in to a .css file, again being more specific with your selectors than using the class as a simple object variable, and to ensure that where your pages need different styles to use those classes, not to try and use styling through <style> tags!

Hypocritical Histories: Votes at 16

Labour and political opportunism, will it ever end? This time it's on the issue of Votes for 16 and 17 year olds. @WayneDavidMP today laments that Nick Clegg "declined" to give the vote to 16 and 17 year olds.

I think he's got a bloody cheek. Shall we just look at the history of Labour's 13 years in power and what they did to further the cause for votes at 16?

1999: Labour stand in the way of Votes at 16 amendment by the Lib Dems

2003: Tory peer, and Lords, agree to votes at 16. Labour declines to timetable commons portion of legislation, killing it off

2004: SNP call for vote to extend franchise to 16 year olds. Labour vote against as does Wayne David MP.

2005: Lib Dems make a vote for a lower voting age. Tories vote against it, Labour barely turns up, certainly Wayne David MP doesn't seem bothered to come and vote for it.

2006: Lib Dem lords table amendment for votes at 16, Labour peers vote against it.

2008: A Labour (shock!) private member's bill is talked out of the commons by Tories.

2010: While Lib Dems reiterate for the third election running they would support votes at 16, Labour merely offer a "free vote" on the issue, without even the conviction to whip such an issue to pass.

So.. let's not have any of this nonsense about Lib Dems denying 16 and 17 year olds the vote. History tells us that if it goes to a vote Labour and the Tories will simply vote against it, as Wayne David himself has already done. Perhaps if this MP wants progress on the issue of extending the franchise, he should take the first step of personally not standing in the way of progress.

Why we should be getting outraged about Matthew Woods

Matthew Woods is an unfortunate soul. Thinking himself the comedian he posted, from what I have been able to find out, a slew of jokes that would have found any mortal comedian on stage booed off.

Booed off stage that is, not...as is the case in Matthew Woods' case... imprisoned for 3 months with a judge cursing the system that didn't allow him to be jailed for longer due to the fact that Matthew pled guilty to the "crime" of posting an offensive message on an "electronic communication network"...otherwise more nefariously known as Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003.

Matthew is unfortunately not the first, nor will he be the last; despite the seemingly PR motivated moves of the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Crown Prosecution Service in the UK trying to find a more reasonable way to react to people's outbursts of bad taste.

Perhaps the highest profile case, certainly due to it's eventual collapse with the conviction being overturned in the high court, was that of Paul Chambers and his "Twitter Joke Trial". We celebrated that day thinking that never again would the authorities be able to risk abusing what is ultimately a flawed law to secure flimsy convictions against people simply speaking out of turn.

But then came Azhar Ahmed, Neil Swinburne (Warning, Daily Mail), and on a different law Barry Thew.

Azhar Ahmed is, by all accounts, simply an angry young man. Are we doing the right thing by making him both angry and motivated to further hatred of the state? Barry Thew is, reportedly, someone suffering from mental health problems...who's son died in the custody of the very police force that he was protesting tastelessly against with his t-shirt. What part of his attitude towards the police is to be forced out of him by subjecting him to the full repression that the state can put on him?

Maybe some people need to reacquaint themselves with the notion behind "First they came...", because quite frankly it is not enough for us to sit here and claim that it is ok for people to get locked up for saying things that we don't like, or expressing views that we are not comfortable with. When that expression turns to action, or when it is actively used in the purpose of brainwashing and motivating other people to commit crimes, or where it is negligent to the direct effect it will have on people's safety, that is when expression in itself becomes a crime...but not before.

It may be cliched, but can you imagine if we were having the discussion about equal rights for homosexuals, women or black people during a time where twitter and facebook existed? How offensive to the populace would some of the comments and arguments presented by those fighting for their equality seem, and how much would their causes have been hampered by a state so readily able to lock them up for their non-conformist views?

I think it's a stretch trying to say that Matthew Woods has anything meaningful to say, of course, but it is the underlying principle that is important...are we happy to scare the general public in to not speaking out against the social norm? Are we happy to force conformity on people with the threat of jail time? When laws are based on what is "reasonable" and "offensive", measures that can only be sized against what the majority of the public feel at that time, how can we protect those who have something to say even if we don't want to hear it?

Maybe it's a lack of understanding in modern society about what we almost lost in World War 2, but I for one get a little terrified by the prospect of any nation "needing" a law like s127, or even of the section 4a of the Public Order Act 1986, for these incidents.

We need a distinction, and we need it sooner than later now that the world has been brought so close together with it's communication networks. Harassment, bullying, intimidation and attempts to create public disorder are not crimes that we should allow to go unpunished. Speaking your mind in a manner the majority wouldn't be comfortable with? Punishing such things is an unacceptable practice.

What's worse is that this is a liberal issue at it's core. Where someone is saying something that brings no detriment to another (and no, hurt feelings may be something unpleasant, but no-one should have a right to never hear anything that offends them), their right to say that thing needs to be protected. For a few years now this has been a very real issue. What have the Liberal party of the UK done about this, the Liberal Democrats?

The answer is nothing, unfortunately, which leaves me wondering why it is that they should be voted for. If the Lib Dems cannot stand up when laws are being abused to silence opponents of the norm, and while in power make those laws go away, to alter them to be much more specific to expression that is used to commit crimes, then they simply aren't fulfilling their role.

I expect Labour to keep these laws in place...state control is their mantra. And despite Tories being "small state", I also expect them to keep these laws in place, since they are ultimately terrified of anyone who isn't them. I also expected Lib Dems to make liberalism a priority, so am utterly confused why this isn't happening.

Right now we're letting people get locked up for their emotions having boiled over, and for extraordinary poor taste in comedy. That is the base level of using the powers the state have. What we do not need is conferences and discussions on how the police are to determine whether or not to charge against that law or not; we need the laws that allow such a process to be gone, so that the police do not have the option of charging people for unpopular sentiment.

I'd like to just end with this, from Wikipedia, on the Gestapo...

According to Canadian historian Robert Gellately's analysis of the local offices established, the Gestapo was—for the most part—made up of bureaucrats and clerical workers who depended upon denunciations by citizens for their information.[35] Gellately argued that it was because of the widespread willingness of Germans to inform on each other to the Gestapo that Germany between 1933 and 1945 was a prime example of panopticism.[36] Indeed, the Gestapo—at times—was overwhelmed with denunciations and most of its time was spent sorting out the credible from the less credible denunciations.[37] Many of the local offices were understaffed and overworked, struggling with the paper load caused by so many denunciations.[38] Gellately has also suggested that the Gestapo was "a reactive organization" "...which was constructed within German society and whose functioning was structurally dependent on the continuing co-operation of German citizens".[39]

It's all too easy for us to say "Oh, don't be absurd, the times we live in now are nothing like what the Nazi's did", but to say that is also wrong. We are now listening in on each other on Facebook and Twitter, with the same curtain twitching level of anonymity that allowed Germans to pass on information about their fellow nationals to the authorities and get them punished. Whether they did this out of genuine concern or because they aligned with the Nazi's views is barely relevant...what is important is that their society fell in to the worse kind of way because they let the differences between one another become more important than what bound them together, because they assumed that some people had less rights because they were different.

I look at our society and I don't see one that is any morally superior to that of the German people that allowed Nazism to take a grip and poison the world, and the fact it is allowed to continue while we have a party in power that is about as well poised to help stop that kind of society from developing, through it's inaction, is unforgivable upon that party.

Some people don't like the police, some people don't like the army and our foreign operations, and some people don't know when a joke isn't funny. They also go to work, enrich their friend's and family's lives, maybe they support charities and their local communities. Why are we so happy to steal away the latter part of what a person gives to the world because we aren't comfortable with how they express the former? To me, it's that brazen disregard of the complexities of individual opinions and views that is the most offensive thing of all.

After November 15th...

The ads will tell you you need to vote for your Police and Crime Commissioner on November 15th. Why? Because CRIMINALS will HOPE YOU do NOTHING!

Utter, insulting, nonsense.

It says something about the desperation of those behind the new policy, the policy of taking the power of policing budgets across multiple forces, spread over two entire counties in some cases, and putting it in the hands of a single person, that they are ALREADY resorting to the politics of fear.

The insinuation is sickening. If you're not voting, you're essentially some kind of criminal loving bastard then, aren't you!

If you haven't already, please read what I put online when there was the chance of defeating the policy from becoming law, and why this is the wrong fix for a non-existent problem.

The outcome of the elections, with likely turnout figures, is predictable to see. Towns or areas that vote more readily than others will get increased budgets spent on them (or at least the crimes that those areas suffer from will), meanwhile areas that don't bother to vote won't get as much support. This is because rather than it now being a responsibility spread across representatives for all regions, the single person will act as parties do in government.

How many pro-student, pro-youth policies do you see getting implemented versus pro-pensioner? Look at the Tory Conference... "we will cut housing benefit for the under 25s...we NEED to cut the welfare bill...Don't worry winter fuel allowance and bus passes will remain universal regardless of wealth!"

The youth don't vote, so they don't get any help. The same will happen to crime ridden areas that are apathetic about the abilities of the police. What is someone who is from the east of Devon going to give two shits about when it is a problem of those in West Cornwall?

So, don't bother. Everyone stay at home (at least there is less chance of you being burgled that way). Don't legitimise a process that is intended to make it easy to play politics with your lives. Don't accept the abandonment of true cross party, and multi-region, oversight and control of the police force...and certainly don't accept one person being in control over what does or does not deserve polices attention across entire counties.

Don't vote for your Police and Crime Commissioners on November 15th, the criminals couldn't care less either way...in fact they might just like you to vote, as it may help to continue a system that provides "weak" areas that are rich pickings for criminals.

Are you thinking of voting Tory in 2015?

Do you have any family? A son or daughter? Maybe a brother or sister even?

If so, how would you feel if they were able to be sacked from their job with no reason? How would you feel if they couldn't afford to live away from their parental home, if they're lucky to not be forced to be homeless, due to high rents, a housing bubble kept inflated by the government and an almost complete reduction in housing benefit for the under 25s?

How would you feel if, while in this period of unemployment, chasing the same job as at least 2 or 3 dozen other people are going for (if you're lucky), they get deemed to be "workshy" and are forced to do community service instead of carrying on the job search?

How about being forced to work for a company with no relevance to their career path, for a third of the income that they'd be paid if they were officially given that job, having their morale sapped from them as they are passed from company to company to do the work that they would have only a few years ago paid a fair wage to get done?

How would you feel as their hopes are raised for a possible interview to find a trainee position out of these enforced labour sessions, only to find that they are over-subscribed and the chances to getting such a job is nigh on impossible.

How would you feel if they had an accident, seriously injuring themselves, but then couldn't get any benefits because government targets force people to be told that they are able to do work, despite a now limited scope of jobs available that they are physically capable of doing?

How would you feel if they fell pregnant, had a child, but couldn't afford to have both the heating on and food on the table, without going to handouts arranged by charity, not by government, never guaranteed to be there the next time they need help?

How would you feel that if they then finally managed to find a job, they'd be promised a measly £2k to give up further rights, leading to them once again being sacked for no good reason?

If you would feel pretty good about all this, and think this is a fair and understandable way to deal with your family in this situation, maybe you should carry on with your plan for voting Conservative in 2015.

The curious case of Craig Evans

So, you're feeling amorous and decide to send a text to a current love interest of a sexual nature... all good? Except if you're Craig Evans who appears (as far as reports allow us to see) to have been a bit too hasty in his actions and accidentally sent his message to all of his contacts.

This may not normally be more than an utterly humiliating and embarrassing experience, with family members, friends and acquaintances alike all receiving the invitation for some...let's say... "happy times". Except as a swimming instructor he also happened to have the number of a couple of his students, aged around 13-14, who also received the message.

Cue a court case at Birmingham Crown Court, and a sequence of events that landed him with an 18 month jail sentence for, as far as we can so far tell, causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity.

It's bizarre.

First of all, there is the issue of bringing the case to court. The CPS has been notorious in the last 12 months for taking cases to court that simply aren't in the public interest, such as the ill-fated attempts to pin terrorism malicious communication charges on Paul Chambers.

The fall out from Chambers' case led to the Director of Public Prosecutions promising to be much fairer about how they approach charging these sorts of "crimes" in the future.

Of course the case of Craig Evans is one that started before this particular about-turn by the CPS.

The question starts though with the legal wording. Intent.

A person aged 18 or over (A) commits an offence if—

(a)he intentionally causes or incites another person (B) to engage in an activity,

At what point did the CPS decide this was intentional? There are (to my layperson mind) two situations here that are reasonable; the third being that this was a cunningly orchastrated plan to solicit sex from two underage girls while maintaining an air of innocence through the "ooops I didn't mean to do that, why would I send it to my mum" defence.

First, it wasn't intentional and, as the defence appears to have put it, the guy simply made a mistake in sending it to everyone on his phone instead of via text to the intended recipient.

Second, it was intentional as some kind of twisted prank but the intention itself was never to get anyone to engage in sexual activity.

In either case I'm not entirely sure how the charge of "causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity" can be applied. Maybe a proper lawyer can enlighten us, or someone that has transcripts of/attended the case...

There is, therefore, a definite whiff of something weird going on. It has to be expected that the defendant's team weren't denying that an "inciting" message had been sent, but that it wasn't intentional. I would also assume that the question asked of the Jury was whether they felt it was intentional or not.

The jury found him guilty, and the judge at Birmingham Crown Court gave him 18 months.

Now, however, he is out after an appeal, halving his sentence and suspending it.

But wait... the conviction wasn't overturned. He is still technically guilty of inciting a child to engage in sexual activity, he will no doubt still be on the sex offenders register and scuppering any chance to carry on with his job as a swimming instructor that works with children.

The judge is reported, on reducing the sentence, to have said...

It is difficult to conclude that he was targeting anyone

So... it's not clear if he targeted anyone. This means that the only way the charge can stand is if he intended to target everyone, in the knowledge that two kids would be included, but not those children specifically.

Any other explanation (again, to layperson Lee here) means that there is an acceptance that intent is not possible to determine. If that's the case, isn't there a burden of proof that says "beyond all reasonable doubt" in Crown Court cases? If the Judge admits that they just aren't sure of what he intended, how can the charge itself stay standing?

EDIT: To further confuse, Elias also said that the Custody Threshold was reached, under law this relates to how...

The court must not pass a custodial sentence unless it is of the opinion that the offence, or the combination of the offence and one or more offences associated with it, was so serious that neither a fine alone nor a community sentence can be justified for the offence.

Source: Criminal Justice Act 2003

So we also have this statement that not only the original judge, but the appeal judge too, felt this crime was so serious that simply putting a fine on him wouldn't be sufficient, only jail time would do. While accepting that this may well have been an unintentional act (or if intentional, not targeted at the girls specifically), how can you still say a custody threshold has been reached?

This case is strange, from the CPS bringing it to the appeal judge not quashing it. What are we missing? The legislation is concise and clear, there's not an awful lot that is possible to be causing such a crazy situation to be occurring. I guess we have to watch this space...

Responsive Images: No solution yet

I've just finished reading what is, essentially, a very good A List Apart article on the new(ish) problems of high resolution displays entering the marketplace (such as the new iPad).

It's good because it tells people, again, what they should be practicing but oh so many aren't...optimise your assets. However it's not great because it's the same conversation we've been having for over a decade now. The problems of the turn of the century, where people would "go crazy" and design for 56k modem users leaving those of us on the 28.8k connections languishing in ever longer download times, are the problems of now...but on a more global scale.

I had high hopes...

A visitor to your website might be using a high-PPI tablet or phone from the comfort of her couch, or from the middle of the Arizona desert. Likewise, those brand-new Retina Macbook Pros could be connected to the internet via Google Fiber, or tethered to a 3G hotspot in an airport. We must be careful about our assumptions regarding pixels and bandwidth.

...but ultimately this avenue was simply not progressed. And thus we have the problem about discussion of proper responsive web design in the modern time: It focuses *only* on the front end development team.

I love front end development, the creativity and freedom to express is fantastic...but I also love that when there is a problem that front end development simply can't address, I can fall back to my server side knowledge.

So when I see this...

Other attempts exist, such as bandwidth detection, cookie setting, server-side detection, or a mixture of all three. As much as I’d like robots to solve my problems, these solutions have a higher barrier to entry for your average web developer. The major pain point with all of them is that they introduce server/cookie dependencies, which have been historically troublesome.

We need a purely front-end solution to high resolution images.

...I just have to groan in despair. (emphasis is mine)

You see, the problem of serving the right image size for the right device is indeed a front end problem. You measure the size of the screen you've got, you take the resolution in to account, and you put the right image in to keep everything looking pretty and engaging.

Bandwidth though, bandwidth... that is a server side problem (for now), and one we have gone on for too long ignoring. The idea that you can have a purely front-end solution to the paradoxes of bandwidth management is unrealistic right now, and may always be. I guess that's why the rest of the article ignored this issue.

Take for example your "average web developer", who is on holiday in the moors. They have, at best, a 2g/edge connection to the internet over mobile networks but their company has just called them to sort out a critical problem with a website.

They pull out the (hypothetical, but soon to happen) large screen laptop they develop on knowing this kind of call was possible, with a 200DPI screen. Your purely front-end developer produced website loads some catastrophically large images that take ages, and cost loads, to load and assess.

On the flip side you have someone with an old iPhone2, sitting at home on their WiFi, with bandwidth that exceeds the kind of speeds you'd ever need to buffer your favourite episode of Breaking Bad with no buffering issues, and they are being served heavily optimised images just in case they have little network capability.

Each person receives the opposite experience that they deserve, and all because our purely front-end approach doesn't take in to account the main factor that we're trying to be responsible about.

The solution?

Browsers need to take more responsibility. Our only communication with the user's situation is through the browser. We are sitting in a room with an earpiece on that is connected to a single person. That person can talk to anyone they want, but we can only listen to, and speak to, them.

The browsers need to start taking information from the user's machine, and from their very browsing, to generate reliable and mid-term data of that person's bandwidth. Through access to the device's inner workings, and complimented by being able to keep short-term calculations of something as simple as an ongoing average download speed on all sites, would provide our websites with the information they need to do right by the user.

This could be as simple as sending this information along within the data that is sent to the server as standard (in a HTTP request). A numeric value of the current likely download speed would let server-side developers take that value and guide what is served to the user, by managing which CSS files are delivered, or more directly through a server-side image processing solution such as Adaptive Images.

But it's not impossible to assume that the browser developers themselves can't go one step further. If we are to implement the srcset or picture aspects of HTML5, then why not future proof the web and consider that a value for bandwidth may also be included?

If a media-query style selector was available for bandwidth, such as "min-bandwidth" and "max-bandwidth"...dealing with the potential problem for the value of this bandwidth changing (and thus changing content)...we could add a better granularity to our front-end image requests.

Looking at the Apple pushed srcset attribute, and using a value that represents the current average download speed in KB/s, we could see this (taken from the A List Apart article's example and modified)...

<img alt="Cat Dancing" src="small-1.jpg"
srcset="small-2.jpg 2x 50b, // this is pretty cool
large-2.jpg 100w 100b, // meh
large-2.jpg 100w 2x 400b // meh@2x
">

You see that I'm following the same nonsensical syntax that has been proposed by saying that "b" represents the bandwidth availability of the client, as "w" represents the pixel width.

If we were to look at the "A List Apart" example, that incorporates the picture element, it may look more like this:

<picture alt="Cat Dancing">
<source media="(min-width: 45em) and (min-bandwidth: 400kb)" srcset="large-1.jpg 1x, large-2.jpg 2x">
<source media="(min-width: 45em) and (min-bandwidth: 200kb)" srcset="large-1.jpg 1x">
<source media="(min-width: 18em) and (min-bandwidth: 100kb)" srcset="med-1.jpg 1x, med-2.jpg 2x">
<source media="(min-width: 18em) and (min-bandwidth: 50kb)" srcset="med-1.jpg 1x">
<source media="(min-bandwidth: 50kb)" srcset="small-1.jpg 1x, small-2.jpg 2x">
<img src="small-1.jpg">
</picture>

This would solve a whole load of problems, aside from being even more verbose than the already verbose suggestion! For a start it would begin by looking for a small and generic image that all can use. If the screen is a high resolution display it'll go for the higher resolution image, but only if the bandwidth measurements are such that it is responsible to do so.

The end result is that the developer with the large laptop in the hills will get poor resolution imagery, but it'll be fast...while the person at home will get crystal clear high quality imagery, also delivered fast.

By being more holistic in our approach to how we make decisions, whether front-end or server-side, we can deliver better experiences. Adding the ability to control content by an average bandwidth value, at the start of a user's browsing session ideally, we can control load times. We can ensure that no image we serve is likely to take more than 3 seconds to load regardless of the quality being delivered, all because we are deciding on that quality based on their bandwidth limitations.

EDIT: There is a further look at this, and how much broader we can go beyond screen dimensions, on Matthew Palmer's site.

Greedy Brits

There is a strange phenomenon in this country that I can't quite understand. Whether it's misunderstanding, pig ignorance or willful misrepresentation out of greed, our country suffers from a disgusting disease of greed.

Of course, those greedy lot are more vocal than the more measured, and may well be a minority, but their presence is significant in the national discourse none the less.

Take Higher Education tuition fees; This is a "debt" (it's not a real debt) that falls heaviest on those who are strong earners, specifically those that are strong earners from day 1 of their graduate life. Yet if you listen to the NUS, and to Labour, and a swathe of misinformed protestors on the issue...you'd believe it is bleeding the poor dry.

Ignore that the terms of this "debt" are far more favourable to the poor than they were before, repayment terms giving people a much greater margin of income before they need to repay their fee loans, all we seem to be able to see if the pound signs that say £9k instead of £3k.

No, paying more is bad. Except a large number of people, with a median wage of £21k (granted, this isn't a graduate median wage, but that figure is nigh on impossible to find accurately) in this country, won't be paying anything back. The rise of the fees from £3k to £9k may as well have been pushed even higher to £100k, because the repayment terms are so favourable to those who are poor.

Furthermore, the terms mean that it doesn't matter what your debt is, you'll be paying it off for 30 years anyway (if you reach the threshold of the median wage in the country, at which point you become part of the wealthier minority). Oh, except if you're super rich of course, in which case you'll not.

So who is really arguing against these changes? If you're rich (but not wealthy in heritage), I guess I can understand it. You used to pay your tuition fee loan off really quickly, now it's going to take you longer; it's "unfair" you have to pay more now given you take more. But if you don't know...what is the problem? you're afraid that you'll have to pay more than you used to?

As I said above, maybe these people are just ignorant of the realities, or maybe they are just out and out greedy. To be paying more than you would have under Labour's old system you have to be someone that enters the top 10% of all earners in the UK, one of the richest earners on the planet.

It creates a bizarre situation where people are complaining that they have money to pay towards maintaining an institution that likely helped them achieve "greatness", because rather than taking an extra 60p of everything they earn in the future on their luxurious salary, it'll only be 51p.

Boo-fucking-hoo.

There are literally billions of people in the world that can't even comprehend taking home enough money each year after taxation and "debt" repayments, probably while owning a fairly secure asset in at least one home, to buy three small cars. And you're complaining that you might have to reinvest some of this in to an asset in our society that helped you get to where you are?

Seriously, sort out your priorities.

Then there is the supposed declaration by Nick Clegg of war on the "middle classes", as it would be described in the Daily Mail. New taxes on those earning over £50k, the top 10% of earners in the UK! Cue absolutely batshit-insane, shooting-self-in-foot, cutting-nose-off-to-spite-face, nonsense...

"What is the point in working if the harder you work the more you get penalised? You'll just end up with a nation of backward, scrounging wasters because everyone else will just leave." - m.bauder, London.

We live amongst people that seem to honestly believe that having money that *you don't need* portioned up so that some of it goes back to help people that *don't have the money they need* is penalising you for working harder.

Now, let's just take this shit about you "working harder" our of the equation. It suggests the single mother juggling three part time jobs to keep her kids heated and fed while only just aquiring the median wage isn't working hard. It assumes the cleaners that come in to work every day to the London underground and clean up our shit and take our abuse and stress on a daily basis don't work hard. More importantly it assumes that sitting at a desk, funneling other people's decisions, and having meetings over lunch is hard work too.

But what is the penalty? If I currently earn £42k, and I get a £5k pay rise, then I'm up each year by around £2500. What exactly am I having to deal with to get that £5k pay rise anyway? Maybe a new person to take responsibility for? A better job title?

Maybe I'm self-employed and I only get that extra £5k is I am doing actual extra work, perhaps more hours, truly "working hard"...am I going to look that £2500 down and say... "nah, don't need it" just because it happens to be the result of a 40%, rather than 20% tax rate?

let's not forget that I'm already taking home something in the region of £28k *already* and that is at least £5k above what you "need" to live a comfortable life style.

Don't think the idea of £2300 is worth it compared to £2500 in take home pay? Fine, don't do it. The work won't disappear, it'll just go to someone else who is either a far more rational greedy person or, (fingers crossed) someone that actually needs the money.

You stamping your feet, crossing your arms, and sticking your bottom lip out saying "fine, I won't earn that much then" isn't a threat. It's laughable that you think your earning power is even remotely that important. All the "threat" does is allow more people in to work, and it means money has the opportunity to be more evenly distributed around the population of this country.

"Im sick of polititions thinking hitting the middle class is the answer, go after the people who can afford your ludicrous tax hikes!" - ali, Dublin

It just confounds me that people that earn an insane amount of money by global standards can think they don't have anything left to give. So you might need to not buy your over-priced brand of tomato sauce, maybe you'll need to use the car a bit less (at least you might walk more, avoid the heart attack from all this stressed outrage at how everyone is trying to take the pennies from your piggy bank). At what point though will you ever realise how good you've actually got it?

Of course the basic, greedy, one-track-mindism of this kind of person, to boil everything down to money and possessions, causes much more damage. Not being able to "afford" to give a fair share of your disposable income to the state to pay for things like welfare, job creation, healthcare, education, security only means that more is needed to help people. If your money isn't helping to create jobs, then it's costing you more in welfare bills. If your money isn't helping to educate and pre-preemptively tackle issues such as violence, and illness...then people will just cost more in patching them up. If your money isn't going towards keeping the peace, then it just costs you more in cleaning up, detaining and compensating.

It begs the questions as to whether or not these greedy lot are even responsible enough with money to deserve it!

At the end of the day we live in a society now where if you earn the median wage, taking out the basic costs of living such as necessary food, rent, insurance, tax and basic amenities, they have perhaps a 25-30% disposable income that they can use (probably to spend on more than basic food first!). Someone earning £50k will have close to 50% disposable income. I wouldn't be calling for that level to be the same no matter the wage (though note it would still mean someone on £50k would have twice as much money in real terms), but do we really believe for one second that out of everyone in the entire country it is this group of people that are both unable to give more, and are already targeted "too much"?

When do the Lib Dems grow a pair?

The Lib Dems, this conference they're using their limited lime-light to talk about how they're for "fairer tax"; but, pantomime audience, those evil Tories just won't let that happen!

[Audience: Boooooooooooo]

It seems then that the Lib Dems are positioning themselves in to an area they know how to fight from... claiming they want things but without the power to do them. The trouble is that previously they weren't in government, and now they are.

What are we meant to take from this kind of declaration? That the Tories want to keep helping the wealthy? No shit! That's hardly a revelation now is it? No, the only thing we can take is that the Lib Dems are losing their grip on direct power, and are choosing to take a back seat.

Now, for the record, I think that the Lib Dem involvement in creating compromise in Tory legislation has been, on balance, positive. The difference between the NHS bill before and after Lib Dem involvement is significant, the progressive nature of the reforms to Higher Education fees is to be applauded, and even though the end result wasn't positive at all, the Lib Dem Lords still did a fantastic job in creating a hard time for the Tories in their welfare "reforms".

This doesn't mean the end results are perfect, but it shows that at least moderation has been a result of coalition politics.

But that, it seems, is where it ends. No commons reform, no Lords reform, no repeal of the Digital Economy Act (or the parts relating to shutting off people's internet without being found guilty of a crime), retaining the 50p tax for now, mansion tax, falling behind on Green targets...the list goes on as to the number of things that Lib Dems want and are not getting.

They can claim as much as they want that they've achieved certain things in government, but these are all things the Tories would have, in all likelihood, done anyway.

So, in light of all these failures...what's the point in sitting there and pretending you're in opposition again (aside from how comfortable it feels)?

If Lib Dems are serious about fairer tax it's time to make a stand. Are they there to make real change or to moderate the Tories? I cannot believe for a second that the country would do anything other than (generally) be happy for the Lib Dems to make such a stand right now and make it a "make or break" issue for the coalition.

I guess it's time to tell just whether the Lib Dems are actually golden, or really just yellow.

Students and the new 2012+ loans system: Who loses?

I have the same discussion every time Clegg comes out. Clegg will say something, like that he's sorry and that he did something wrong, and those who don't understand or don't want to accept reality will come out and say "You bastard! We will never be satisfied, you ruined Higher Education funding, everything is ruined, the world is ended" or something to that ill-conceived effect.

They are wrong. The changes to the HE fee's system are not only a net positive, they are overwhelmingly positive...so long as you agree that the wealthy should pay more relatively than the poor for the upkeep of essential services in the UK....and so long as you agree that accessible Higher Education is an essential services.

Let's quickly revisit the old situation and the new situation.

pre-2012:

People racked up loans of £3k per year plus a maintenance loan if they took it.
This was repaid through a fixed rate based on income above ~£16k, or via advance repayment.
Any loan remaining after 25 years is wiped out
The loan increases by inflation only.

post-2012

People can rack up loans of up to £9k per year plus a maintenance loan if they took it.
This is repaid through a fixed rate of income above ~£21k, or via advance repayment.
Any loan remaining after 30 years is wiped out
The loan increases by an interest amount, set above inflation.

So as you can see, fundamentally similar systems, with some key differences. For a start the new system introduces a situation where some may be repaying more than they actually took out as a loan. however the change to income boundaries mean that people will pay less each year than they used to to repay the loan. The amount of the loan, obviously increases.

It's not a debt:

But the key to remember here is that it's not a debt. It's an obligation to pay a percentage of your income as a graduate, up to a threshold that is marginally variable.

With a traditional loan, the loan:
Counts towards your credit rating and ability to take out other loans
Is paid back REGARDLESS of ability to pay (though lenders may come to agreements with you)
Remains until it is fully paid, after interest, even if you die
If a fixed term, repayments on it can vary based on a varying interest rate

A tax, on the other hand:
Is paid based on income or transaction
Never ends unless special conditions are reached
Leaves no legacy cost for next of kin to pay (unless in relation to taxes that occur due to actions after your death)
Has no set amount to be paid, no threshold to reach.

So as you can see, this system is a mishmash of a tax and a loan...for the benefit of the student as it happens. You see it has all the hallmarks of a tax, meaning no liability for the "debt" to pass to others, no variation in repayment amount that isn't linked to your increased income, doesn't affect your credit rating or ability to borrow, and has a threshold on ability to pay. It also has the benefit of a loan...being fixed term rather than never ending it means the amount may never be, fully repaid (For many this is actually the likely outcome). Also being a loan it has the downside of collecting interest, though this becomes largely irrelvant when compared to how a tax operates.

So then, how has Nick Clegg ruined the system for students?

Short answer: He hasn't.

Those who argue against the current system are either arguing that it's worse than the old system (because it's higher fees!) or that it's worse than a hypothetical "better" system (because we shouldn't pay for HE outside of general taxation!)

The former are ill informed, or perhaps just aware that finally the system is rigged not to help those who are better off, but to finally make them pay a fair share in to the system. The latter are people better off ignoring in a political debate like this, since ideals are just that.

What we can discuss is the current vs the former system. What better way than to work out who's better off, or not?

Part-time students:

Let's get this easy one out of the way. Part time students used to have to find the money up front to pay for their courses. Given their likely reduced income to be able to take time to study, this kind of upfront cost was entirely prohibitive to re-skilling in an academic sense.

Now they get to take out fee loans the same as everyone else. Some may end up paying more than they would have up front, however since the original situation was prohibitive to the poor, and only those who then go on to increase their income will be worse off, I think we can call this an extremely progressive move, can't we?

ELQ students:

Thanks to Rob Fay ‏(@Arathrael) for having me consider this one. Equivalent or lower qualification (ELQ) students are students that already have a degree, whether from abroad or not, and are going for a different degree to the same or lower level.

So, for example, a masters student won't get any help (unless going for a specific course that the government is happy to help fund) doing a different subject undergraduate or masters course. Someone who has an undergraduate degree in law but decides they want to be an English scholar won't get any help either.

How the new system affects them is varied from institution to institution. Like with foreign student fees, this is an area where different institutions have a more free reign on charges. Some simply add a supplemental fee to the existing course fee, others charge as if you are a foreign student, some match the cost of the undergraduate degree as if you weren't an ELQ student, and others wildly vary depending on the course.

The change in fee structure has done little to change this situation. For a few this system will be no different as it was already expensive and remains so. for other their fees may increase by a small or large amount. Those worse hit as ELQ students are ones that would have been getting the "best" deal a year ago at their institution as the margin of change is greater for these institutions that are matching their fees to the full time cost of course of non-ELQ students.

It's a definite blow to the idea of taking a second degree if you want to change direction, but while part-time students above make up a significant number of students that will benefit, ELQ's are much smaller in number. It's an area of the policy I'd sorely like to see changed, however we may be talking about less than 1% of the student population being negatively affected.

Postgraduate student:

Postgraduates are unchanged from previous years, where tuition fee loans aren't available to them.

Undergraduate students:

The main body that are effected are the undergraduate students, students taking their first degree. While their fees go up to £9k a year, the effect for anyone that doesn't make the average graduate wage, or has poor wage progression, is that they will pay less for their education than they did with the old system.

Let's outline some assumptions I shall be making from hear on in.

1) Tuition fees are £9k.
2) Everyone is taking a maintenance loan of £5500
3) courses are three years long
4) RPI will be around 3.5% and stable (hah!)
5) The cut off income for paying contributions starts at £21k and rises with RPI
6) Interest rates will remain as currently defined (complicated, RPI only < £21k, RPI plus a variable rate based on salary between £21k and £41k, and RPI + 3% on over £41k)
7) UK salary growth only grows with inflation

What this should signify is your general university goer, taking advantage of the money up front in loan form, on a standard course. The country is stable, prices are rising, but so are salary expectations. The interest rates mean you have to be doing well on salary progression to escape the interest rate, once passing the 2012 equivalent of 6.5% or thereabouts on your unpaid loan! That is, until you've been paying it for 30 years.

So, let's make some strawmen. How about Terry, he graduates into a good graduate job earning £22k, securing a good pay rise in his third year of employment, and his sixth, but otherwise stagnant on pay rises in line with RPI. In year 11 he makes a career jump, a promotion or moving to another company to a higher position, still attaining only modest RPI level wage increases. After his 20th year he gets another big promotion which sees him coasting along on RPI level wage increases until his 30 years are done.

Terry ends up on a salary of around £56.6k in today's money, he's done pretty well for himself. Still, he hasn't paid off all his debt remaining AND he hasn't actually paid back in to the system what he took out when accounting for inflation. However he would have paid off his smaller debt in the old system in about half the time.

Situation: Strong earner
Comparison to old system: not favourable
Paid off debt: No
Paid off amount borrowed initially: No

How about June. She is unemployed out of uni for 3 years before taking a low paid job around £16k at the wages of the time. Her wage progression is only bouncing along at RPI, but she sticks at the job. After a few years she's had enough and decides to start her own business. It starts slowly, but she soon makes a success of it.

She builds up her business to a stable level, taking regular above inflation pay rises for herself, after 30 years sitting on a reasonable salary around £47.5k in today's money. The loan didn't stop her from being able to get a business loan or any such necessity to make her business work, and ends up not only not paying very little of her debt before it's wiped out, but she doesn't pay what she put in AND she just about doesn't pay as much as she would under the old system.

Situation: Unemployed to entrepreneur
Comparison to old system: slightly favourable
Paid off debt: No
Paid off amount borrowed initially: No

Gary. He starts strong, straight in to a highly paid job at £35k. The job has a structured salary progression for 10 years after which progression drops off to just 1% above RPI. Good pension though. He repays his loan 3 years before the 30 year mark, but ends on a salary around £55k in today's money.

The result is that he pays much, much more than he would have under the old system, pays slightly more than he took out originally after inflation, but pays it all off.

Situation: Great job for life
Comparison to old system: very unfavourable
Paid off debt: Yes
Paid off amount borrowed initially: Yes

Kelly isn't one of the lucky ones, she remains unemployed for most of her life, except for the odd part time job, spending most of her time raising her children instead.

Situation: "Full time mother"
Comparison to old system: Same/Marginally favourable for those who get a low paid job for a period of time.
Paid off debt: No
Paid off amount borrowed initially: No

Bobby manages to get a £26k job out of uni, however he never really applies himself as much as he should, he goes from job to job, but never manages to attain a pay rise above RPI. He ends, obviously, on £26k in today's money...but at least he's not had to pay too much. Under the old system he would have fully repaid his debt, under this one he's not even paid half of that amount.

Situation: coasting along
Comparison to old system: very favourable
Paid off debt: No
Paid off amount borrowed initially: No

Then we have Felix. He starts out from the bottom but he is extremely capable of working his way up. He's got the right skills, he has the right industry, and after a steady and consistent pay progression he finishes his 30th year with a £150k salary.

The progression means that he's able to pay the debt off early, saving some money on what he would have had to have paid if he was forced to keep up payments for the full 30 years. But he does pay roughly what he borrowed, and paid significantly more, perhaps double the amount, than he would have done under the old system.

Situation: Tipped for the top
Comparison to old system: unfavourable
Paid off debt: Yes
Paid off amount borrowed initially: Yes

Finally let's look at Kacey, she has a good job but also puts her kids first...applies herself when they get towards university age themselves revs up the career. For almost 20 years she gets an ok set of pay rises, some years not getting more than RPI as her small business employers struggle with the times. But as they expand she is later able to make moves up the ladder and command greater salaries. She ends up on almost £76k after 30 years with most of the salary earned in the later years.

She ultimately pays just over half her loan. She would have, under the old system, almost paid her loan after the 25 year cut off, but the amount she has paid into the system only exceeds the old system debt by £2k, while at the same time saving her significant money each year as the payments are lower.

Situation: Late bloomer
Comparison to old system: marginally favourable
Paid off debt: No
Paid off amount borrowed initially: No


There are many more "types" I'm sure, feel free to ask me to model one. These represent, I feel, the main types of salary progression; from the unemployed or low earner, to the high flier, with those who make salary gains early or late in their career in between.

It's clear to me who the winners and the losers are. The people rich enough to pay off early need to be significantly rich before they gain any "benefit" and even then are worse off than under the old system. Those who stagnate around the average salary will win, as will those who have low paid regular jobs. People who achieve later in life will also be winners, while those that start strong but fail to progress their salary will perhaps be worse off...though being someone earning an average of £47k per year over 30 years is debatably never so "worse off" to be animated about.

The reality is that unless you're doing well in life, compared to everyone else in the country, you're going to be better off if you go to university now compared to in previous years.

Shouldn't the fees be less?

NO! Labour floated a plan to move the fees to £6k instead of £9k, playing on student's fears and trying to cynically move in on a territory that they have no right to occupy given their place in the creation of very real student debt.

The effect of this plan would be that Felix is much better off, while people like June are no better off. Reducing the "burden" actually helps the rich and doesn't help those on lower incomes at all. If anything, the fees should be increased from 9k to something higher, to ensure that those graduates that progress hard and fast in their salary always pay in to the system!

Is it regressive?

Well, yes...if you take the letter of the meaning the fact that very wealthy or high earning individuals can pay off all they owe before they accrue any interest, while less well earning individuals may have their "debt" increase and the amount they pay back end up larger than they initially borrowed.

But the old system is also regressive. The same rich people can pay off their loan early, and easier. The old system is technically more regressive than what we've got now...and while I'd rather see an out and out graduate tax rather than this weird loan, I also welcome progress.

Progress...

We can't let the best be enemy of good. It happens over and over again that we have people that scupper positive steps forward because their too hard headed to take a compromise. Whether it's Lords Reform, or Common's reform, or this hear change to HE fees...there is granularity in what is good and not. The situation is that the old system clawed back money from people that barely had enough to pay their rent, and completely ignored the large proportion of part-time students in the UK.

This system redresses that, and while it leaves ELQs out in the cold (for shame) it helps many, many other people in to not being penalised for their degree not working out for them the way they thought it would, for their industry collapsing around them, or for choosing to do more altruistic but low paid work.

Why not a graduate tax?

So this is the puzzling thing. If it's like a graduate tax, and is paid like a graduate tax...why isn't it just a graduate tax. It'd be interesting to find an official line, but with the SLC set up and the loan book available at some point to be picked up by private interest, there is a money saving to be had for the government by keeping it as loans. In theory.

Also a graduate tax opens up a Pandora's box. How do you deal with the fact you have people with loans who would now have a graduate tax, and how about all those students from the 60s through to current day who never signed up to go to university with a graduate tax in mind.

Wiping people's slates clean is easy, convincing everyone who's graduated they should be paying a graduate tax on the other hand...I would like to see the politician brave enough.

General taxation

Of course my preferred route is general taxation paying for Higher Education, including second degrees (those ELQ students). Creating a world where re-skilling and re-educating is accessible and free to anyone who wants to do it is necessary for a free society and to break down the barriers to social mobility. University as an experience changes and matures people (in general) and provides them with life experiences and scenarios far richer than they could find without it.

This isn't to say HE is perfect, it needs to reform before people could begin to be confident enough in it to not be disgruntled at paying for it in their taxes, but equally I believe that where the tax is found for HE doesn't have to come from the pockets of shop workers and bin men. Businesses should play their part more than individuals, especially if they can target where their tax funding goes in a more direct manner, and an additional few percentage points of income tax should be put on the higher earner bracket. After all, high earning graduates will now be effectively paying a 49% tax rate, spreading that cost to everyone that is successful in their earnings to help create more successful workers seems to me to be a fair thing to do.

[Note: This has been put together in a rush, I hope to get the references, etc, together soon...unless you're reading this in a few months, in which case I totally forgot. Prod me.]

On Assange

A lot is being said about Julian Assange, a lot of it would seem to be complete guff. That said, I am nervously stepping in to put my thoughts down, mainly because 140 characters isn't enough to explain my view to those who have asked.

Primarily I'd want to say I can't see what all the fuss is about. The idea of this being a conspiracy, or being engineered in any way, seems to be a wild fantasy by those who would prefer to put their stance of anti-Americanism above all else.

The facts are that two women claim that they were sexually assaulted (and I will use that term for brevity even though clearly the issue if of rape also). The fact that they went to ask about getting a HIV test rather than to report a rape doesn't mean anything other than that at the very least these women were concerned about what had happened with them.

There was no delay (relatively), with only a couple of days between the alleged incident and going to the police. There was no governmental or high-end order to make this case happen as, despite prosecution initially saying that they didn't see a case, it was a legitimate legal process of appealing that decision by a social-democrat lawyer, with a long history of fighting against violence against women, on behalf of those women.

Did the prosecutors change their mind solely based on the claims of the lawyer, or was it also slightly political? The answer: Who cares, two women believe they were sexually assaulted and deserve to see their accused properly challenged on the fact.

Assange's lawyer has appeared to have as much as admitted to the fact that Assange did it, perhaps already going in to far too much detail about events than is proper before the case is heard by a court. And no, claims that they consented before (about a different sexual act) or after (which can come through any kind of emotional and psychological need to cope with such sexual assault) mean nothing, in my opinion, as to whether the act that the lawyer admitted to constitutes rape. However that is for the Swedish courts to deliberate over.

David Allen Green, most recently, has followed up on a post by @PME200 debunking some myths surrounding the Assange case by posting his own debunking of some of the more legal aspects of the Assange case from this point onwards.

It is entirely right that Assange gets deported to Sweden to be formally charged, and no...he's not only wanted for questioning (see the links above) and so dealing with him outside of Sweden is plainly not an option any of us who care about justice should settle for.

It is entirely idiotic of Assange to claim that he wants assurances he won't be extradited to the US. It is impossible for a government to make such a claim, because there is zero knowledge about what might happen in the future. Making this song and dance is thoroughly disrespectful to those who claim to be victims of his.

Just think for a second if you have a mother, daughter, sister, whatever... who was waiting to have their rapist brought to justice, but had to hang on while he made grand claims about this being some kind of US led vendetta against him? It's disgusting and reprehensible.

If after the case the US decides it has a case to bring, one that is non-political, equivalent to a Swedish offence, and respects his rights as a prisoner...then I also don't see why he shouldn't face extradition. Thankfully for him the world *is* watching, and the idea that Sweden (and the UK, if our say still counts at that point) would send out a message that it'll deport people simply because another country has a problem with their politics (in this case, what has Assange done other than obtain and publish secrets, exactly what newspapers around the world have been doing for years) seems nonsensical to me.

This whole affair shouldn't change what Assange has done for exposing lies about what is going on on behalf of the more clandestine aspects of governments around the world. Unfortunately it will change it, since he is running to a country with a terrible record on the rights of the press and freedom of speech to gain safety; it begs the question that, like many of his rape apologising supporters, is he really for freedom of information and speech, or simply against the governments of the west?

My problem(s) with Dark Knight Rises (spoilers)

Starting, perhaps predictably, with a caveat...I really enjoyed watching the Dark Knight Rises at the cinema, it's a great movie well executed. Not perfect, but very, very good. It's not on the other hand a great Batman movie, I feel. In fact the more I reflect the more I see it as disappointing, and a missed opportunity.

First, let me say, there were good things.

Anne Hathaway's portrayal of Catwoman felt perhaps like the most true to the modern comics than any other characterisation made so far.

The twist of Talia al Ghul was (for me) completely out of the blue. Perhaps because of the detractions from the world I know of Batman in the comics, I'd allowed myself to consider that Nolan would make Bane the son of Ra's al Ghul. I should have guessed it earlier (and no doubt many a bat fan would), but it was a well crafted twist...perhaps more so because of the way the pre-screening media was involved in selling the dummy.

Showing the intelligence of Bane; the path of the previous Batman movies did a great disservice to the only character to truly break the Batman. This Bane was almost everything that he needed to be.

Also, in general, the costume design, the soundtrack, the work that was done on the environment, the locational work...basically the actual filmmaking...was all fantastic. This is the main reason that it'll always be a great movie.

It's the story and the characters other than above that make it disappointing.

The film itself seems to take inspiration from two main stories...though it doesn't take more than a few of the elements that make those stories great. The stories are Knightfall and No Man's Land, arguably the two most defining stories of the 90s for Batman.

The trouble is that Knightfall is a character study in Batman losing all hope and being unable to reach out for help when the odds start to become insurmountable. It's a story of Batman believing that he can get through everything on his own. But in order to do this Batman is beaten down, kept too active and involved in crime fighting super-villains.

This is Bane's plan, to wear Batman down so that when he comes to fight him, it will be a Batman of broken wills and concentration. The film, by contrast, does the opposite and portrays Batman coming from the other direction...with plenty of spirit and a slowly improving (though not peak) physical condition.

The interaction between Bane and Batman, therefore, seems entirely consequential. That the plan is to have Bruce Wayne watch Gotham destroyed as Ra's would have intended seems almost tacked on.

Furthermore the interesting thing about Knightfall is what happens next. Bruce decides to retire as Batman under largely happy circumstances, but only because there is another Batman to take his place, that he has an understanding of, and trusts to do the job. Interestingly Alfred also leaves Bruce during this time as he doesn't want to see him damage his body any more.

Bruce would later come back to retake the cowl, when his replacement goes somewhat crazy and starts endangering the public and taking punishment to a new level.

The film cut this opportunity off, by 'killing' Bruce Wayne off (though it doesn't really explain how Bruce Wayne is perceived in the public eye after the ending) who would be there to come back?

Then there is No Man's Land, perhaps my favourite Bat story of all time, where an earthquake has left Gotham largely destroyed, with criminality running rife as Ra's al Ghul (Bane acting as his proxy in the film) has previously released everyone from the maximum security prison after trying to release a virus around Gotham (Batman Begins, essentially Batman Year One meets Contagion as story lines...I digress). As a result the federal government deciding it has to cut Gotham off from the rest of the country.

The story showcases perfectly Batman's abilities to act as a strategist. With several allies around the city in the form of police, other vigilantes and even former foes, Batman regains control of Gotham enough over time to allow the government to stop their blockade of Gotham.

Is any of this present in the film? Of course not. Batman miraculously recovers from his 'broken', or more likely dislocated, back and makes it back to Gotham (with no money) just in time to stop the city from being destroyed.

No strategy, no organisation, no intelligence.

And maybe this is what bothers me about the film as a bat film...Batman wasn't recognisable in it as the character we know. He pleads and bargains more than he growls and commands, he starts off severely injured and out of the game for 8 years, without any good reason

Batman started to stop criminals, not just super criminals...those like the man that killed his parents. The film already says that crime isn't abolished in Gotham, so why would Batman stop just because organised crime was curtailed?

The Batman I know and love would have, by the time he was 10 years in to life after donning the cape and cowl, become a master detective and be finding his prowess in being a 'war general' of sorts. This Batman is a damp squib, almost emo in personality. While Batman in the comics may use his personal loss and possible depressive outlook to drive him to clean the city up, the film's Batman doesn't use it at all.

In fact the greatest loss in Batman's life in the comics is that of his sidekick Jason Todd, the second Robin. We know from this that Batman's reaction to the loss of someone by the Joker is rage and determination, not depression as happened in the aftermath of Rachel's death. The key is that Batman shouldn't stop doing what he intended to do when he started.

It does make him less keen to trust people with his identity, and getting close to him though, which is what makes he film's portrayal even more confusing as he seems to readily hand over the mantle to 'John Blake' without really knowing much about him and his ability to not get killed the first time he faces danger.

But then Nolan is clearly trying to wrap up his Trilogy, and he does it in style (albeit of questionable physics). But from the initial niggles in Batman Begins of allowing Ra's al Ghul to die (as much as that character can, and having guns on his vehicles ) the concerns only grow. Dent/Two Face killed readily in the Dark Knight, then Talia and Bane killed in the Dark Knight Returns. The obsession with killing off villains seems to have grown and grown.

And then there is letting everyone know or find out his identity so easily; He talks about why he wears his mask in the film, yet does everything he can to ensure people know it is Bruce Wayne underneath it.

This might all sound like I'm being overly critical, and perhaps I am. As I said at the top of this post, I enjoyed the film a lot for what it was and it genuinely entertained me. I just also see from my previous knowledge of the stories a lot of missed opportunities, fundamental mistakes with the character that I'm surprised DC signed off, and avenues cut off for potentially keeping this particular universe going.

But then given how this character of Batman was left, not my Batman but someone else's that had the privilege to bring him to the big screen, I'm not sure that I would particularly want to see any more of 'The Dark Knight' Batman anyway.

Roll on the 'reboot', as long as it's not another origin story!

What's the fuss with the NHS cap on private income?

After a significant misinterpretation by the New Statesman, a lot of people got very concerned on Twitter about the potential for the rules on how much income NHS hospitals could make from private sources.

I feel this is a subject that is incredibly fraught with symbolism over substance, and wanted to just delve in to the realities of the cap, the law, current reality, and how it all ties together.

What is the cap?

There are rules over how NHS Foundation Trusts (FTs) operate. these FTs were created by Labour to enable a form of lessened state control, local staff and public were intended to drive the direction of their local NHS services. In return they get to keep any profits they make, can work with and are in essence in competition with other FTs.

It was privatisation of sorts, just without the (direct) commercial influence of a company running the board, and it started the whole ball rolling to where we are now.

To balance the extra freedoms they have to operate, a means of capping how much money these FTs can make from private patients was introduced. It's disparate and not necessarily "fair", in that it is whatever their income was in 2003. This means that some hospitals have much higher caps than others, but all under the currently proposed less than half of all income level (erroneously referred to as a 49% cap, but which I'll use as it's understood when talked about).

In fact the reality is that less than 1% of all money coming in to FTs this country is from private healthcare sources.

Side Note: NHS Trusts

The whole situation with the NHS is complex, FTs aren't the only providers of care, NHS Trusts that provide services in the more "traditional" structure are being essentially abolished with the new NHS reforms, the intent is to give patients more say and the only way the government (both the current and the last) sees that as being practical is by trusts becoming FTs.

Of course this is why you'll hear people claiming that the 49% cap is new, and that there was no cap for NHS Trusts before. Technically it's true, but it's a bit of a side point as they are being told to become the equivalent of foundation trusts, which means they would have been capped, albeit at an income level of lower than 49%...hence why this is still ultimately a rise on the potential income hospitals can make.

Reaching the cap?

It's no surprise, when looking at the FTs figures, that analysts and those in the sector aren't actually too bothered about this cap; in the short to medium term at least there is little chance of foundation trusts reaching the 49% cap anyway.

With only a handful of hospitals having significant income from private sources, it is inconceivable that all NHS hospitals will suddenly be putting NHS patients second to a vastly increased private constituent, in only as the rate of rise would be completely out of step with the amount of private money circulating (the amount FTs took from private patients DROPPED compared to 2010/11, presumably due to recessional forces).

The reality is that the law as set out isn't about capping anything, given there is no need for most FTs to have such a high cap anyway, it's about symbolically enshrining in law that hospitals are primarily there to provide services for NHS patients, not for private ones.

This doesn't mean less beds for those using the NHS

One way that opponents of the raising of the cap put their case is that they make grand claims about resources being requisitioned for private patients, meaning they won't be there for normal NHS patients. Some go as far as to claim (as Polly Toynbee tried) that it means that half the beds could be reserved for private patients.

The reality is that if we look at those FTs generating a lot of income from private sources, it's through infrastructural investment and partnerships that involve new technologies and better facilities being developed for the express purpose of bringing private patients in from outside the area, not only from within the UK but from around the world. Some people just want to have the opportunity to pay for what they see as the best specialist services in the country, even if they wouldn't usually be able to on the NHS (or at all, because they are international patients).

The result of this is money coming in from wealthy sources to provide profits for an FT that can be reinvested in NHS services, while at the same time having newer, better facilities on site that NHS patients can also be using to the improvement of their health. Indeed by allowing partnerships with private hospitals (and to , and therefore being able to provide a "better" experience for private patients (through finding them a space, and thus a shorter waiting time, with the partnered institution), the side effect is more capacity to deal with non-private patients at NHS facilities.

Of course this causes it's own issues, with it being clear that cashflow will largely pool in London and the South East, with little prospect for the North; indeed this is why the overall private patient income gained by FTs is so low despite those like Royal Marsden already commanding significant percentages of income from private sources.

The misplaced outrage over no cap

So if the 49% cap is symbolic, almost entirely unable to be reached, what is the problem with a removal of the cap? Opponents to the idea (and I must stress, I'm not in favour of a removal of the symbolism of the current law) claim that it would lead the the wholesale privatisation of the NHS, that normal patients would be put second.

I say this is rubbish.

For NHS FTs to generate 100% income from private sources it would have to also become a requirement in this country for everyone to take private insurance, and for hospitals to HAVE to generate it's income from private insurance. It would also require the current reform laws to change to allow hospitals to be selective over how they treat people, and what their duty is.

On the second point there, let me just reiterate what it says in the reform act...

(4) Monitor must exercise its functions with a view to enabling health care services
provided for the purposes of the NHS to be provided in an integrated way
where it considers that this would—
(a) improve the quality of those services (including the outcomes that are
achieved from their provision) or the efficiency of their provision,
(b) reduce inequalities between persons with respect to their ability to
access those services, or
(c) reduce inequalities between persons with respect to the outcomes
achieved for them by the provision of those services.

The same is said of the Secretary of State for health, of the Clinical Commissioning Groups and the board that monitors those CCGs. It is a core principle in the law that the NHS is not to introduce policies or to integrate in such ways that those without private health insurance see a widening gap between the quality and effectiveness they receive versus a private patient.

Even if this was not the case, until the law is changed to require people to take private insurance, ala the US of A, and that the state will NOT provide funding for patient care it is fundementally impossible for a 100% private income situation to be reached, and can we honestly see this happening given how vociferously opposed to these rather tame (in comparison) reforms has been?

While people look at the removal of the cap as something that means privatisation, I just can't see it adding up to that. Those who complain about the idea of a FT making 50% of it's income from private sources completely ignore that this could be achieved without reducing the level of income from non-private care. In essence hospitals could DOUBLE their income from current levels, provide no worse care for NHS patients, and hit that 50% income level from their private patients.

Is this really a problem, assuming that all the various levels in the new structure of the NHS do their job and ensure that hospitals adhere to the principles of increasing quality and effectiveness of care for NHS patients, and a commitment to reduce inequality between patients on the issue of ability to pay? I'd say that in practice, it is not.

'Lib Dems did nothing about the NHS', and other nonsense.

Just for reference, I feel I may be sending a few people to this over the next few weeks...

Getting tired of idiots claiming things about Lib Dems/NHS/tuition fees that simply aren't true.

— Lee Griffin (@Niaccurshi) July 10, 2012

1) Lib Dems DID get on their high horse about the NHS, it resulted in a significant delay AND reworking

— Lee Griffin (@Niaccurshi) July 10, 2012

You may not like the end result, but do not pretend the Lib Dems "did nothing" on the NHS.

— Lee Griffin (@Niaccurshi) July 10, 2012

2) We will some time enter a time when people realise why the Lib Dems did not halt fee reform, because IT HELPS THE POOR.

— Lee Griffin (@Niaccurshi) July 10, 2012

Labour can bluster on all they want, especially on how they'd have raised it by less (and thus let the rich off early, ironically)

— Lee Griffin (@Niaccurshi) July 10, 2012

The reality is that the Lib Dems may not have stood against tuition fee rises, but that was actually a progressive thing to do.

— Lee Griffin (@Niaccurshi) July 10, 2012

3) If Lib Dems are the only ones getting "on their high horse" about Lords Reform, that is less negative on them than Tories and Labour

— Lee Griffin (@Niaccurshi) July 10, 2012

All 3 parties have been committed for the best part of a decade to reform. Tories + Labour not standing behind it are disingenuous to voters

— Lee Griffin (@Niaccurshi) July 10, 2012