Over on Liberal Conspiracy there has been an at times hostile debate surrounding feminism due to the claims of Sarah Palin, Republican VP Nominee, that she is one. Why is this controversial, and why has it started any such debate? Firstly she is someone that believes abortion is a sin, and would appear to wish to ban abortions from taking place in the US if she had her way. This provoked Laurie Penny to claim rather audaciously yet innocently that you cannot be a feminist if you oppose choice (with regards to abortion rights). Needless to say I disagreed, and a lot of cussing and hostile feminist verbatim later the debate hasn't moved on. Why not? Well it's because, as I have perhaps only more recently realised, that the debate is fairly irrelevant to feminism and wholly relevant to liberalism.

Thanks to Jock Coats for the heads up about this, it turns out a Libertarian, Tory councillor has had his words mangled by a national paper. He has responded since and I think it's only too important to encourage people to support him in this case.

Liberal Conspiracy is helping Compass to spearhead a call for a windfall tax on energy companies. Apparently they are making far too much money and we want a piece of that pie. The article itself says...

Yet despite the billions made in profits, the energy industry spends just £50 million a year combating fuel poverty and has only agreed to raise this to £150 million a year by 2010. But every 10% increase in energy prices mean an extra 400,000 people go into fuel poverty.

I'm afraid that "we" don't all agree with this kind of thinking and feel very cautious about a windfall tax.

I've said it before, we don't need quick fixes we need absolute change in the strategy for trading energy.

A year ago statistics were published about child substance abuse, or more realistically put...drinking habits. This February just gone Jacqui Smith attempted to use those statistics to justify hounding kids off of the street and further taking away the rights of youths that were (previously) acting completely lawfully, cementing the idea of Labour as a nanny-state with Smith as it's queen.

Some things however didn't make sense, as I uncovered in the statistics. Painting children as alcoholics for having simply ever tried alcohol even if they only did it once was the order of the day, and indeed it seemed a large emphasis was going on to kids drinking in the streets when a large percentage of them actually also drank in their parents home.

Now it is the time of the Telegraph to completely and utterly butcher the actual message of this years statistics, causing potentially one of the most idiotic statements I've ever heard courtesy of Norman Lamb

These are shocking figures, reflecting a culture where binge-drinking is truly out of control.

I call bullshit on this statement, read on to find out why.