I'm not as much of a critic of libel law as other bloggers, Unity in particular, however the one area that does annoy me is the necessity to lay down threats of legal action at the doors of people before they have been able to prove one way or another if what they've said is libelous.

In this case Dave Walker, of several sites, has had to take down content spanning what appears to be several years to comply with a legal threat by Mark Brewer's company, a company which now owns a book chain called SPCK. More over there seems to be a little bit of shadiness going on as Unity uncovers, with the company in particular seeking bankruptcy protection in the US.

Brown loves the idea, Jacqui Smith seems to have been delivered to blight us on this planet solely because of her affinity to ideas like 42 days, and a policeman that thinks it is ok to abandon innocent until proven guilty because of some pictures of white powder is ready to back it to the hilt. But in reality, who else is there?

I've been added as one of a handful of bloggers helping out at Liberal Conspiracy with their daily "NetCasts", and Thursday (for now at least) is my day in the sun. You can check out my offerings on the last 24 hours best blogs over at Liberal Conspiracy.

However I also wanted to mention a few blogs here that didn't quite make it in to my list of 6 or 7 items, and intend to do so each week here (if the quality of articles is out there!).

Lib Dem Voice - Mark Pack questions the way the Tories are picking their next Henley MP. Read the comments for the wider argument about how the Lib Dems do it too!
Political Betting - In an issue obviously close to Mike's heart, he wonders why it's taken so long to get the transparency needed for a controversial Ken Livingstone poll.
Alisdair's Blog - Get past the garish header and you have a 15 year old that manages to sound sensible on the subject of the new cluster bomb treaty.
Dizzy Thinks - Dizzy takes a look back at the websites of the main political parties as far back as before the 1997 general election. How times have changed...

You can also click below to continue reading and see the full list on this site if you so wish!

How would you feel if someone was able to look at every web page you were viewing? How would you feel if they were able to store a record of what you viewed so that they can analyse it? How would you feel if they then used that data to target advertising at you? How would you feel if all of this was done without your consent, without your knowledge, and without your consultation?

Well if you're a BT Broadband customer then welcome to the new age, where your browsing habits are sold off to the highest bidder, in this case a company called "Phorm", in one of the biggest scandals of the year that you almost didn't hear about. For those of you on Virgin and TalkTalk don't think you're safe as you're next, and assuming that Phorm get their way then other major ISPs such as Orange and Tiscali will be following suit in the near future.

Politalks 4 is now up! This week we look at terrorism and how torture fits in with that particular problem, in particular George Bush's views on waterboarding. There is also a look at interesting ideas such as soldiers becoming teachers and frankly bizarre educational policy. The big stuff is at the end though, where we let those of you out of the loop know who the sexiest MP of them all is, afraid we have no news on what they'll be wearing to the ball. Video below, transcript even further down, right at the bottom we even have a roundup of the links we took in to consideration when making this

Not work safe unless you have headphones, enjoy!

Jacqui Smith is the most dangerous type of moron in the government, in so much that she's not really a moron really, she just makes sure she makes moronic statements that a 4 year old could see through as being more false than the results of a positive pregnancy test derived from male urine. Today she adds to her previous idiotic statements that attempt to veil her poorly thought out implementations such as parliament supposedly having any power to stop someone from being incarcerated for a full 42 days, and trying to falsely insinuate that more under 13's drinking any alcohol than ever before actually means an increase in a problem. This time it's the unfortunate and ill thought out "Sarah's Law" that yet another grieving relative with far too much media impact is providing too much weight to.

OK, well there's no punchline, the story is an unbelievable enough tale of knee-jerk reactionism as it is. As it stands, I'm backing the bishop on this one. I don't totally agree with what The Archbishop of Canterbury (ABC) said, but I do think that to claim he needs to resign, or that he was out of order for making such comments are ridiculous on two counts. The first is that this is thankfully a free country where a man can make a learned case for a new idea in intellectual company and shouldn't be criticised for doing so. The second is that the outrage largely seems to come from members of his Church that completely misunderstand how much of a subtle nudge this was for Christianity to be given more of it's own weight in deciding legal matters.

Another day another party deciding there is something else that needs banning or enforcing through extreme prohibition. I thought Labour could get no more idiotic after last week's series of woeful announcements on housing, dental health and internal investigations...yet here we are again, this time with kicking "illegal file sharers" off of the net.

Initially this throws up several questions; How does the government and ISPs intend to tell conclusively that someone is file sharing illegally or legally? What assurances can the consumer have that ISPs won't just "play it safe" when it comes to high bandwidth and kick off anyone with high usage no matter how legitimate? How is this truly enforceable with so many unsecured networks around the UK, and indeed internet Cafes, without truly spying on what every person is accessing on the net? Do we really need to resort to French policy to solve our own issues?

CCTV, the bane of the libertarian and the tool of the authoritarian. It is a misunderstood beast, with many claiming it to be "surveillance" in to our lives that is unnecessary, and others (mainly the government) trying to point out the benefit to society that they bring. All in all it's a classic case of at least feeling as if our rights are being infringed on even if necessarily they aren't.

Over at Dizzy Thinks I seem to have got myself into an impasse with the titular member of the blog over exactly what current law is on organ donations and presumed consent, and over the finer points of what such a system means. In particular here I have drawn attention to the current law on organ use and in particular to Part 1 Section 6 of the Human Tissue Act 2004.

Activities involving material from adults who lack capacity to consent
Where—

(a) an activity of a kind mentioned in section 1(1)(d) or (f) involves material from the body of a person who—
(i) is an adult, and
(ii) lacks capacity to consent to the activity, and

(b) neither a decision of his to consent to the activity, nor a decision of his not to consent to it, is in force,

there shall for the purposes of this Part be deemed to be consent of his to the activity if it is done in circumstances of a kind specified by regulations made by the Secretary of State.