Green taxes, apparently they will save the world. I on the other hand think that they are being mishandled and misused as a means for generating income off of people unfairly. Green taxes, at their best, are a means of penalising those that make active choices to do environmentally unfriendly things and to take money from them to actually go about solving this country's climate change issues.

At their worst, however, they are used to plug gaps in local governance finances with disregard to reality and to simply make it looks like something is being done to tackle climate change...even if it means telling supermarkets to generate more profits without a set plan on how to spend those profits on green initiatives.

As it happens David Cameron has wised up to this and becomes the only party leader so far to actually start thinking sensibly on the issue of climate change when it comes to Green Taxes, for whatever means that is.

All in all I don't think that the budget we witnessed today was especially ground breaking. Commentators have already said about how most of it was expected and about the tone, my only interest is what the effects mean for people in the long run. Personally I don't think it is as bad as it could have been but it's certainly not favourable, certainly some of the "positives" are barely positives at all in more historical context and it's not within me to congratulate people for offering piecemeal as if it is a huge concession.

With it being talked about in the commons it is of course to be expected that video games and the massive corrupting influence they supposedly have on us all would start to be talked about more over the next few weeks and months, unfortunately it is a Liberal Democrat that appears to be the first to miss the point. It's not that I necessarily disagree with Andy's main sentiments that completely putting video games under the purview of the BBFC is necessarily a step in the wrong direction, but I can't actually see any evidence that it is a step in any direction at all.

If you were to believe everything you read in today's news about Jacqui Smith's railing against families and youths that don't do enough to curb under-age drinking then you'd think that families are to blame for mass under-age drinking and that under-age drinkers are all yobs causing chaos and destruction. My first instinct was that the nature of the statements she's making show a lot of ambiguity and potential here for some kind of spin. So let's look in to this report and what she's said, from the Times...

A "tipping point" has been reached where more 13-year-olds in Britain have drunk alcohol than those who have not, the Home Secretary said yesterday.

The next episode of Politalks is now here, with thanks to Gavin Whenman who will for the foreseeable future be partnering me on the project. Video below is probably NSFW!

First we banned smoking in pubs, and there was general gratitude. Liberals, in fighting this particular battle, had won the case for all around liberty, not only in that of the smokers rights but also the rights of those around them. So why is it then that the so-called "liberals" of the Lib Dems are now trying to ban something else in way that acts so contradictorily to that previous philosophy of liberalism, patio heaters?

It's about time people started realising that the aim of reducing emissions is not to become carbon neutral, the world has an ecosystem and the planet has survived even huge industrialisation by man kind. Putting some carbon dioxide in to the air does not matter, it is when those levels are too high and stay too high for too long. If you're going to start assuming that people are not taking responsibility then you are turning in to an authoritarian who can only be seen as attempting to micromanage millions of individuals lives on a mass level. People deserve the basic respect and trust of their governments to do the right thing and manage their own lives, while being influenced by duties and educational material. Painting all patio heater users as inconsiderate world killers is not necessarily the truth and it undermines the message that we should all be sending out about reducing our emissions.

Over on CentreRight Charlie Elphicke has posted a continuation of their new debate on Britain's relative decline (and not just economically, they say). In his post he talks about how we should be more rich, not touching the more ambiguous topics supposedly in distress such as crime levels and military power.

I feel Labour have kept the economic boat steady one way or another, with the counter-balance most probably being that we aren't reaching the GDP growth we're capable of. But with many less unemployed than under Tory led policies, more benefits for the poor stifling most hints of outrage at just how few people get so much of the total wage packet every year, and an economy that may not be super strong but also doesn't succumb to the mega lows of Conservative politics, one has to ask just how you should measure how "rich" a nation is in the first place.

I am sitting here feeling pretty incensed after reading the news on the BBC news website about Labour , linked initially from Paul Linford's blog. Firstly because it is typical cowardly Labour who admit one thing in their government initiated report yet make some startling admissions about the "value" that they put on certain criteria in their practice, and secondly because it has spawned an absolutely piss-poor article from the BBC.

In the end the facts are simple. Labour hold between 48 and 96 seats more than they should based on public opinion, and despite there being working examples in our own union of PR systems working, not being too complicated, not reducing turn out, and making government more representative of the people this government is going to do whatever it can to keep hold of FPTP until it gets over the hurdle of what will be a messy general election between 2009 and 2010. It's despicable, it's an example of everything that's wrong with modern "democracy" and it is authoritarian bullshit that has to end as soon as possible.

When starting to peg down a few more blogs and aggregators a few days back to increase my scope of reading I came across this blog that simultaneously tries to condemn the Labour government for trying to "abolish" mass worship and at the same time heap praise on faith schools and, therefore, Christianity. It's the sort of blog that just makes me angry to read it and gives me a desire to find out more with the hopes of just completely being able to discount what bollocks it being said. So with that, here we are, and it's time to look deeper into Cramner's claims.

The facts, in reality, are these: Faith in schools is doing nothing to stem the flow of individuals "losing" religion nor the drop in perception about how important religion is. Faith is not intrinsically linked to morals, and in fact history will show that for every moral good dead there is a quite evil bad one to counter it with the Christian church. And finally, the big myth, faith schools do not offer your child a better opportunity at education unless you were already predisposed for good educational achievement in the first place due to your social and economic background. So, kindly, take your sanctimonious bollocks and shove it up your collective worship.

At Liberal Polemic, Tom Papworth has submitted a very well written blog to his site that is worth a read. Unfortunately I can't bring myself to agree with his way of thinking.

Quite aside from the potential of an over-charging of people compared to todays "rate" due to essential roads becoming the most liable for the heaviest charging because of what essentially amounts to a monopoly on traversable routes, the scenario of roads vital to only the few becoming hazards which can lead to the knock on detriment of the rest of society, the potential congestion issues that could arise, and the fact that building new roads in the area's where congestion and pollution causes us the most problem is nigh on impossible...I believe such idea's set a dangerous precedent in the way our taxation is seen.