Scotland must have thought they were so smart when announcing a raft of measures to cut down alcohol abuse and protect our poor children from the sins of the drink. Pretty disappointed then they must be that ASDA have given them a very simple and very obvious wake up call. At it's most immediate it just goes to show how pointless "tough talking" is when politicians attempt to engage in it, and shows that a lack of courage nationally to stand up to the free market where it is causing a problem will mean you don't get anywhere. Cynically it more tenuously shows that independence and devolution isn't the solution to all of the devolved counties problems.

Rob Chester, head of licensing at Asda, said: "There is nothing to stop companies looking at expanding their home shopping network or opening up depots just south of the border and delivering to homes in Scotland.

An obvious statement that makes it pretty clear that governance on the issue of alcohol is going nowhere, fast. Meanwhile governments, of course mainly the one in over all power, continue to make it harder and harder to operate more sociable and reputable business around this supposedly evil substance pushing more and more in to the hands of the cheaper supermarkets that they clearly don't have the intellect or the balls to properly address.

Fighting alcohol abuse without first of all dealing with the issue of cheap and far too readily available alcohol at supermarkets (by comparison to other licensed venues) is like fighting a heavy weight prize fighter with one arm tied behind your back. Why are politicians so readily lining up to get their arses kicked on this subject?

It seems as though Big Brother had a little bit of a brainwave this weekend, stirring up a task that actually ended up being thought provoking and quite respectful to certain members of the show, against form as some critics may say. The idea? To make half the house go blind for a a few hours and live in Mikey's world.

I wonder how ludicrous this article would sound if about something other than alcohol...

Buying ice-cream at the supermarket could involve a walk of shame to an "ice-cream-only” checkout counter under new plans to help Scotland curb its obesity culture.

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!

So I was talking with a friend tonight and started to brainstorm about how I would deal with the issues of smoking, drinking and over-eating and the burden the pose to the NHS. It's not old news that some are attempting to weasel out of treating the sick and so I wondered in this climate how you could perhaps work a fair system.

Yes, it's true! The Tories are ignoring the statistical evidence in front of them and state they will tax dwindling sales of alcopops as well as strong beer and cider, you know the stuff that generally only find in your traditional local pub, and are going to use that barely existent amount of money to try and drop the price on alcohol that kids really drink. Lager.

I found this consultation on the Bristol City Council website. If you're from Bristol then I would really suggest filling it out with your views as I already have done. But what struck me about a lot of this survey was that it was inherently negative about alcohol. I'm not necessarily suggesting all the questions should have asked people to praise alcohol to high heaven but I believe this to be a poor survey worded in such a way that simple positive answers are being sought from complex questions. Read on for some of the questions and what I feel about them.

Over on Liberal Conspiracy a very good debate is formulating over a series of posts about abortion and the liberal/left stance, with a surprising amount of decent interjection coming in from those that tend to always disagree with the postings on there. Once again I found myself responding to something on there and it getting too long to be a comment, so here is my view on the very muddy subject.

I can't bring myself to support abortion or oppose it on the basis of socially prescribed ethical codes, religious belief or, most crucially, the date at which a foetus has at least some chance of staying alive if removed from the womb…currently found to be 24 weeks and being argued by conservatives and more sensible religious groups to be lowered to 20 weeks. To me the issue is about the life of a child, just as it is for the god squad or those that put a great deal of weight on the rights of the unborn, it is just that such a question of quality of life and reasonable expectation have to enter the debate.

The National Farmers' Union conference has been held this week, and all parties have taken the opportunity to try and win favours with the crowd. Unfortunately for Labour it would appear that Hillary Ben didn't go down so well, while Cameron appeared to talk the good talk, and Nick Clegg will address with a similar message today. Supermarkets must be wondering what they've done to incur all this ire at one moment in time, first suggestions that they will need to sell off land they own to allow competition to thrive now at least two of the big party leaders slamming them for unethical practice and eroding British farming.

Let me get this out of the way straight away, I think the stats that the Lib Dems have uncovered using the Freedom of Information act are never going to be positive. Any rise in the amount of kids being admitted to A&E because of alcohol related problems is a negative. The question for me is are they as much of a negative as pure percentages would suggest, and what are the realities of such data. Unfortunately no matter how much scouring I can do will uncover qualitative data.

The overall numbers mask alarming regional differences. We need to find out why the number of children drinking so much that they end up in hospital is so much higher in some parts of the country. - Norman Lamb MP