An email came my way this afternoon from the LibDems outlining the policy agreement for our new government. I have to say that its something of a mixed bag but there certainly seem to be more highlights than outright failures.
Without further ado, a Wasps view of what is on offer (text in brackets my view).
The Good (or in some cases actually excellent) :
- Scrap the ID card scheme, the National Identity register, the next generation of biometric passports and the ContactPoint Database. (Yes, Yes, fucking YES!!)
- Outlaw the finger-printing of children at school without parental permission. (That will piss on the chips of the righteous.)
- Extend the scope of the Freedom of Information Act to provide greater transparency. (Good but can we trust this lot? Wait and see on this one)
- Ending of storage of internet and email records without good reason. (Another plank of the stasi removed.)
- Replace the Air Passenger Duty with a ‘per plane’ duty. (Encourage airlines to fill the planes rather than taxing us all to buggery.)
- A substantial increase in the personal allowance from April 2011 with a longer term policy objective of further increasing the personal allowance to £10,000, making further real terms steps each year towards this objective. (Finally, why have a minimum wage and then tax it?)
- Restore rights to non-violent protest. (Too damned right but lets see the details please.)
Every single one of those previously caused Wasp to want to sting anything and everything, repeatedly and without mercy so it’s very pleasing to see that they are on the way out.
The Mediocre (maybe good, maybe bad) :
- Retention of energy performance certificates when HIPs are scrapped. (AKA more people with clipboards sticking their nose in – I suppose this was one for the sandal wearers.)
- Radical devolution of power and greater financial autonomy to local government and community groups. (The last two words there make me shiver especially if you have seen the way that grant funding is pissed around as if it grows on trees.)
- Promote green spaces and wildlife corridors in order to halt the loss of habitats and restore biodiversity. (Is this another step against people being allowed to do what they like with their own land?)
The Ugly (Some weird and some just plain wrong.) :
- Radical devolution of power and greater financial autonomy to local government and community groups. (More power for the jobsworths, incompetents and sundry others who cannot find employment in a proper job because they are useless which covers a large proportion of local government in my view.)
- Establish a smart electricity grid and the roll-out of smart meters. (And guess who pays for it? Yes we do! Bastards. Even worse, a centrally dictated specification for smart meters that the free market could provide at half the cost and with a whole host of additional functions such as real time PC logging of data. Why the hell they dont install a standard interface header in the incoming feed and allow the owner to decide if they would like a smart meter or not is beyond me.)
- Establish feed-in tariff systems in electricity. (Probabaly along the lines of the current cluster fuck of an arrangement whereby the poor subsidise the people who can afford £20k worth of solar panels.)
- The provision of home energy improvement paid for by the savings from lower energy bills. (Excuse me? We will be forced to spend any money we save from lower bills on insulation? Really, I don’t understand this one.)
- The provision of a floor price for carbon, as well as efforts to persuade the EU to move towards full auctioning of ETS permits. (No, no, no, fucking no! It is supposed to be a free market not another cartel ffs. Floor pricing indeed. Sure – keep the prices up which in turn keeps the costs of compliance for business up and flows through to higher prices and higher taxes for all. If it’s such a good idea then let the market decide you humus munching fuckwits.)
- Increase the target for energy from renewable sources. (Sure, increase it to 400% of supply – it will make fuck all difference given the current mess. They are not content with heroically missing their current targets (there are not enough ships in existence to complete the planned offshore windfarms for example) so they are going to increase those same targets even more. This one is straight from the composting toilet brigade.)
- Further regulation of CCTV. (Woah! More regulation already? Just get rid of most of it and ban any more being installed.)
- Safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation. (You mean the same as all the ones which were supposed to be in there when it was all passed? Only used in extreme circumstances? Ask Iceland which law was used to freeze the assets of their banks when they went bust.)
More detail on some of those would be very welcome but a decent start in my book.
However! I did save one until last which made me choke on my coffee this afternoon. This one comes straight out of Labours Big Book of Righteous Bansturbation :
- Make the import or possession of illegal timber a criminal offence.
What the Fuck is that? Are we going to have a brand new possession law before they have got rid of one single piece of legislation? And more to the point, how the hell is this going to work? I am not sure about you but I would struggle to tell one bit of dark hardwood from another. You go along to a timber merchants, buy what you like (and assume its legal because it is there on sale) only to get your collar felt on the way home for possessing illegal timber!
I can just imagine the headlines in a few years time – Government raises Teak to Class B and Iroko to Class A under the Misuse of Timber Act 2010.
That last one doesn’t fill me with much hope despite the general good feeling I am getting from the rest. We will have to see I think.
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