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.

Here is a round up of some of the more obvious news of the last few days. Right now I'm actually likely to be in a hot air balloon for a work social, so if they feel a bit old then sorry...it's likely I'm just a bit high (*groans*?)

First up... Testing students narrows learning. Ofsted has been saying for years that strict curriculum's lead to schools teaching to test. Anyone that's gone through our educational system in the last decade or so knows this is the case as teachers work through a curriculum book to get us to learn what is most likely to be in the exam with only the few going so far as to actually inspire and help us become learning individuals.

Just a bit of an update on the story about Heinz pulling a fairly tame ad that included two men kissing briefly. It seems as though a lot of momentum is building here and if you can lend some more weight to that movement then please do so!

With over 10,000 signatures on a petition asking for the ad to be reinstated, and a group on facebook aiming to boycott Heinz over their intolerant stance it is clear many more people are motiviated to complain about the ad being taken off the air than bigots were to get it shelved.

News comes out today, as it seems to be most days now as Brown tries his hardest to save his career, that Brown is definitely still sticking to his terror plan, as if we didn't bloody well know.

Over at Harry's Place the response to this news is that they of course think that it's not as bad as people are making out...and by the way it isn't as bad as other awful legislation so what are we complaining about, ungrateful souls that we are?

Why not just oppose the legislation as it is, rather than misrepresenting it? The judicial and parliamentary oversight protect people from just being locked up for 42 days for no reason. Why don't critics acknowledge this?

Remember for those that feel liberal, or even left, and actually understand the sensitivity of this issue the you can join many facets of the campaign against the 42 day detenton laws...most of them detailed on Liberal Conspiracy for you to view under "Not a day longer" on the right!

Let's not be coy about it, this is about as bad as it's been for Labour for over two decades. Every day there seems to be more bad news, and where there isn't bad news coming about Labour tearing itself apart there's almost always simply better news about the other parties. That is, until today.

Today marks the time that the Tories are starting to think about getting serious, and with that comes a true fleshing out of the variety of proposals that they have merely drifted over in the past. Good news for the Tories? Not when it shows the same anti-youth, authoritarian instincts of the current government in a traditionally poorly thought out Conservative manner

Labour have pulled a u-turn today with the announcement from everyone's favourite housing overlord, Caroline Flint, that they are now going to try and tackle the "problem" of "studentification". This is an issue that manages to branch all of the main parties as reprehensible with even supposedly student friendly MP for Bristol West, Stephen Williams, signing an EDM to tackle "studentification" through excessive planning regulations that would see local residents able to put a stop to student housing being created, certainly affordably so.

Here again I find myself in a situation with a few subjects I want to touch on but not really wanting to devote entire posts to each of them at this time. So this time the three subjects are BBC2's White season, your DNA and how little you need to do to give the police reason to put it on a database, and a rather sickening situation of trying to send an Iranian kid back to Iran where he is almost certain to be executed.

So the minimum wage is going up, and it is doing so by 3.8% after last being rose in October 2007. This is a rise not far off the fluctuating RPI rate since October and it is something I support in principle. Is it the fairest thing to do though?

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!

At least this is what he might have well said when extending the following comment...

Britain technically is a Christian country with many secular features. It’s those two things. It’s not anything else. If you expect that you would have the same response to your faith needs in Britain as would happen within a Muslim or Islamic country, [you] would be disappointed

This is in reference, I assume, to the idea that universities that allow Muslim students to attend religious meetings and prayer should be reporting suspicious activity and keeping checks on them. Effectively we have moved no further away from spying on our students than we were one year ago.