The Libertarian wedge

The Thatcherite wing of the Liberal Democrats is sponsoring two fringe events at next week's federal conference in Bournemouth. The first is on a reasonable enough subject, "Mortgages and mayhem". There does appear to be reasonable political balance, Lord Teverson & Tessa Munt counterbalancing Paul Staines (the arch-Tory "Guido Fawkes") and Greg Dyke, though, in view of the participation of the last two, the language is likely to be blue.

I have more doubts about the second. It's not so much the title ("How should we fight the nanny state?") as the indication of the direction the event is to be steered. Co-sponsors are FOREST, the pressure group which wants to rescind the ban on smoking in public places.

Since Sara Scarlett, a leading light in "Liberal Vision" has in the past praised Anne Widdecombe, and attacked Jo Swinson for her campaign for "Real Women", I think we can see where this is going. Scarlett has also attacked federal president Ros Scott and valued campaigner Duncan Borrowman. It is no surprise that she was the object of a move to withdraw her party membership.

Politics is not a matter of black-and-white, no matter what the Glenda Slaggs of the red-tops may say. I agree with Scarlett on some things, especially the thrust of her piece on the isolation and professionalisation of MPs. It would have been nice, though, if she had divulged what she does for a living.

Update: blogger.com notifies me of a recent post on Liberal Vision. by Barry Stocker on the subject of Adam Smith. However, this post is not accessible. Was it removed because Adam Smith is seen as not libertarian enough?

Pantopragmatic: my word of the day

While looking for answers to a crossword, I came across "pantopragmatic" in the dictionary. According to Chambers, the word was coined by Thomas Love Peacock (of "Nightmare Abbey" and "Headlong Hall" fame*) . "It seems to be a real art of talking about an imaginary art of teaching every man his own business." (Gryll Grange, chapter VIII)

I can think of a few Labour ministers, on both sides of the border, that it could apply to.

*Not to mention the "War song of Dinas Vawr": "The mountain sheep are sweeter, but the valley sheep are fatter; and so we deemed it meeter to carry off the latter (etc)".

T-Morange

France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom claim there will be economies if they are allowed to merge their UK operations.

Does that mean we will see an actual reduction in the number of those ugly masts?

English education authority loses data on pupils

Silicon.com reports: the Information Commissioner's Office has said Wigan Council breached data-protection law by allowing unencrypted data on 43,000 school pupils to be downloaded to a laptop.

The laptop was then stolen. It had been stored in a locked office, but not encrypted, according to the ICO. The person who downloaded the data to the laptop was breaching council policy, but there was no block on them doing so.

Joyce Redfearn, chief executive of Wigan Council, has signed an undertaking stating that the council will encrypt data on portable devices in future.

One trusts that the Welsh Assembly Government already has advice to local education authorities in place.

Bravo, Engelhardt

In a recent statement, the boss of Admiral and confused.com has criticised the huge earnings of most of his fellow-directors running other FTSE100-listed companies. His companies are run on a profit-sharing basis. “I am a founder-owner of the company, so it’s not just my salary which keeps me going," he said, “there’s food on the table, every night, it’s true. But I do think it’s amazing when you see some of the pay packages put together.

“What can a [chief executive] do to warrant the kind of packages put together compared to the other people working in the organisation? I do think things should be spread about a bit more.”

He is following in the footsteps of John Spedan Lewis, who wrote: "Capitalism has done enormous good and suits human nature far too well to be given up as long as human nature remains the same. But the perversion has given us too unstable a society. Differences of reward must be large enough to induce people to do their best but the present differences are far too great.

"If we do not find some way of correcting that perversion of capitalism, our society will break down. We shall find ourselves back in some form of government without the consent of the governed, some form of police state."

His solution (not original, but apparently reached independently of other workforce-involvement schemes) was that residual profits should be distributed annually to the employees - thenceforward known as "partners" - in proportion to their pay in the form of non-voting shares carrying a fixed dividend which they would be free to sell without affecting the control of the business.

It is noteworthy that the John Lewis group (which includes Waitrose) is one of the few British corporations to thrive during the recent economic crunch. Ironically, eight years ago there were some senior John Lewis partners who felt that the organisation was behind the times, that it should demutualise in search of expansion and higher profits - much as permanent building societies were doing. Fortunately, they were advised that it would take an Act of Parliament to do this and JLP survived.

Keith Waterhouse

I second the appreciation of Keith Waterhouse by Bernard Salmon.

I, too, remember him as a columnist in the Daily Mirror, and a rather better writer than the much-lauded Cassandra, in my opinion - though he was generally not as vitriolic as his predecessor. But he was also the author of a novel, "Office Life", which was turned into an enjoyable television play starring Jenny Agutter.

This was a shrewd, if sidelong, commentary on the deceptive nature of the Thatcherite economic revolution, continued unquestioningly by Blair and Brown. It would stand repeating.

Bottled ales

I've just taken delivery of Jeff Evans's "Good Bottled Beer Guide" from CAMRA.

Its terms of reference are restricted to bottle-conditioned ales (that is, those in which fermentation continues in the bottle). Therefore, local specialities like Hurns Brewing Company's Tomos Watkin range are not included, but Welsh craft beers are well represented.

In South Wales, we have Vale of Glamorgan, Rhymney (which produces a bottled dark for CAMRA), Otley (based in Pontypridd, not Yorkshire!), Kingstone, Ffos y ffin, Dare and Breconshire breweries. There is the Neuadd Arms Brewing Co, which suggests a good way of breaking the journey on the Heart of Wales railway. North Wales boasts Conwy, Jolly Brewer (Wrexham), McGivern (Wrexham, no web site known) and North Wales (Moelfre). West Wales has Penlon.

Over the border, there is Whittingtons Brewery, based in Newent, birthplace of the famous Lord Mayor of London. I don't know if Peter Black is a beer man, but if he is, the products should appeal to him: A Winter's Tail (a winter ale) and Cat's Whiskers (a bitter).

I'd still like to know what happened to Jigsaw (or was it Puzzle?), a cinnamon-flavoured wheat beer (produced in Shrewsbury, if I recall aright), which was very refreshing in the times when we had hot summers.

Inland waterways boom in recession

The move against the exchange rate of the pound of late has encouraged holistays (I much prefer this term to the American "staycation") and leisure boating has boomed as a result. The experience of Norfolk is typical. Unfortunately, I cannot find WWW evidence for this, but a recent BBC-News item showed that the Grand Union and other canals in Britain are sharing in this boom. A spokesman went so far as to say that there are currently more boats active on the network than there were at the peak of the Industrial Revolution.

If only the engineering and financial obstacles to connection of our two canals could be overcome, Neath Port Talbot is well placed to share in this success in future.