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I mentioned the "Political Compass" website in my post from the other day about coming back from "the brink" of left extremism. I've done this test several times before now, and as I mentioned have usually come out way in the bottom left of the chart - in the anarcho-syndicalist area I suppose.

I still think some of the questions are a little awkward. My main concern is that, like many of this sort of questionnaire it assumes to an extent that "private" equals "corporate". I think that there are many models of business and social support and some of them are collectivist, but that such collectivism should be voluntary and not coercive by governments.

So, while I am quite happy saying that, for example, I strongly agree that the sole social duty of a corporation is to return profit to their shareholders" I don't necessarily believe that a corporation is the only way of successfully organizing production. Is that too much of a contradiction?

Anyway - these quandaries, I would suspect, pull me back from being on the very far right of the economic scale, but I am quite surprised (and not entirely unpleasantly), to be, for the first time, to the right of the origin in the left-right economic axis. And definitely pleased to remain in the near anarchist area of the authoritarian-libertarian axis:

Economic Left/Right: 1.63

Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.69



Interestingly, from their analysis of contemporary politicians and such like, there is nobody in this whole quadrant. They do put Friedman in this area, much further to the right but also much closer to neutral on liberatarian/authoritarian issues, which I suspect misunderstands him by painting him solely as an economic ideologist. And just as interestingly they feel Tony Blair is further right and more authoritarian than the supposedly right wing Angela Merkel.

As if Oxford City Council hasn't had a difficult enough time adjusting to changes in the balance of power in May and since, the Oxford Mail reports another City Councillor Set To Quit:

Labour Oxford city councillor Dan Paskins has forced another by-election by announcing he is to quit the Town Hall.

The 26-year-old executive board member and Lye Valley councillor will become the fifth Labour councillor to quit this calendar year. He is due to leave officially in a couple of weeks.

Dan is generally the decent sort, and has done the decent thing - he's been offered a job in Liverpool and doesn't think, rightly, he should try to hang on at the Council pretending to attend the odd meeting or simply fading away over six months' inactivity. So he's done the honest thing and decided to stand down before he disappears.

Byelections always put a bit of strain on parties, and there was some discussion the other night about how much they cost to hold them separately (in this case unavoidably though as all recognised I think) rather than to announce any you know are coming up at the same time. So, whilst I am sure my party colleagues will want to crucify me for suggesting we want even more campaigning in early autumn, perhaps now is a good time for those who have not yet done the decent thing, who got where they are today through the efforts of other people in parties they have now abandoned, to do just that.

Paul Sargent, Sajjad Malik, if you're reading, you clearly have a couple of weeks to think about this. Do the decent thing, prove you have a mandate under the banner you now carry, or not. Let's have a "super Thursday" with three on one day.

I know sometimes there are things that make one doubt whether one is in the right party. My last occasion was, I think, the stabbing of Charles Kennedy and before that his sacking of Jenny Tonge (though her reaction to his alcoholism proved to me I made the right decision remaining in the party despite my misgivings about his treatment of her).

But, for all the bleating and moaning appearing around the Lib Dem blogs and for all that the other parties are trying to put all the "blame" on the Lib Dems for on not having a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty-not-Constitution, I can't say I give a flying foxbat about the events of today.

There has been plenty of opportunity for those with a differing opinion since Ming first suggested an in or out referendum instead of a Treaty referendum back in summer. We had a leadership election in which both candidates took this same point of view. Members who were so against it now, especially ones with 300+ Technorati ratings perhaps who get way more coverage than most of us, could have argued their position then and got concessions from one or other candidate.  At the very least they could have made it a bigger issue in that campaign either to understand the proposed policy better or to be able to support it with good grace rather than this after the fact bleating.

Let's face it, the Tories have little consistency on Europe. They needed to make us the scapegoats over Lisbon. They would not have wanted an in/out referendum in any event as that would have exposed them for the bi-facial opportunists they have been on Europe since at least the days of Wee Willie Hague's 2001 election campaign.

"In Europe but not Run By Europe" is vacuous tripe trying to have it both ways. They started the move towards being run by Europe before Maggie's volte face "no, no, no" speech. Had they had to face an in/out referendum they would not have known what to do - campaign for "out" as many of their supporters probably believe they stand for, or let those all down and campaign for the protectionist superstate they helped to create and they still support as a political cadre.  Even the true left have had a more credible and long standing consistency on the matter.

Me, I can't see the difference frankly between trying to decide whether to put the brakes on pre-Lisbon or post-Lisbon. Personally at the moment, whatever my party affiliation I would probably fight hard for an "out" vote in a proper referendum on membership. Nick's policy would have given me that chance. A vote on Lisbon wouldn't - it would just let me say "a little bit more or a little bit less" of the same illiberal project of the same power hungry political elitist structure.

Ultimately the one thing that Nick Clegg was probably wrong on was to make it a three-line-whip on an issue on which policy had changed without a positive resolution of the party in conference since his MPs had last put it to their electorates. But the principle of holding out for an in/out vote was to my mind correct, and I know which way I would have voted in that, but not in a silly vote about Europe plus or minus Lisbon, but above all Europe still.  Bu people falling for the Tory and IWAR attempts to lay the blame on Nick are I think mistaken.

If a councillor almost anywhere in England at least made the sort of statements Iris Robinson's been coming out with about homosexuality, I would have thought that a complaint to the Standards Board would at least be entertained and investigated. Even her "retraction" is disgusting and compounds her guilt:

When the Good Friday agreement was developed into a constitution for Northern Ireland, it had, I seem to remember, quite exemplary equalities provisions. Northern Ireland was, for example, as a result, the first place in the UK to equalize the age of consent for gay and straight sex.

I realise she has parliamentary privilege when in the House of Commons, but her last outburst was on the public radio in Northern Ireland and should have landed her in trouble in my opinion. If a similar remark had been made in the commons about almost any other minority (I suspect not if it were "immigrants"), I'm sure it would have engendered a formal censure of some kind.

I am sure she does indeed represent some religious bigots in her constituency, but I am equally sure that not everyone who has voted for her can be tarred with that same brush. I do believe in democracy, so I am not calling for some interfering twerp from some QUANGO investigating her remarks - that's her consitutents' job when she next runs for office. But people should know that she's an evil bigoted bitch whose personal conviction renders her unable to represent her constituents properly.

UPDATE: As "Scribo Ergo Sum " reminds us, our psychopathic unelected "leader" Gordon Brown prefers to do business with her and her party than his own revolting members.  Iris would no doubt love the idea of locking up homosexuals for 42 days without charge or reason.

Okay, I may give the impression that I dislike US politics. But I never cease to be amazed at local government in particular. Relations of mine have been mayors of Decatur (pop c 55,000) and of Double Springs (pop c 1000) in Alabama. But with the controversy raging in Virginia today I was looking at precinct returns there and local ballot measures.

Take Arlington. Population 200,000. The county board of five people from what I can work out run the county with a budget of $900m. They have five elected officials - Sheriff, Revenues Commissioner, Treasurer, Attorney and Clerk of the Circuit Court. Fully half of their budget is raised in local property taxation, and only a tiny fraction - 10% or so comes from state or federal coffers, with the rest apparently raised from local fees and other little taxes like taxes on restaurant bills.

Those five people are technically part time just like British local councillors, but all draw a salary of between about £12,000 and £15,000 a year. Lots of other people get involved on a voluntary basis on advisory boards and consultative bodies (for example the 13 person housing board). The schools budget accounts for about $330m and that, whilst set by the county board, is run by the schools board, again of five people.

43% of the population are minority ethnic and sixty languages are spoken by kids in the county's schools.

This tight little ship maintains property taxes at less than 1% of assessed value and its bonds (for it has the power to contract debt as it put to the electorate yesterday for five major projects totaling just over $200m dollars to spend on capital projects over the next five years, including schools buildings, transport systems, public spaces and so on) are Moody's AAA rated.

Remind me, why do we need 48 city and 16 county councillors to represent Oxford with a budget of about the same sort of figure, plus hundreds of directly employed staff, none of whom are ever accountable to the citizens? Why is getting people to participate in helping those councillors to make decisions (as if they ever listen when they do consult!) like pulling teeth? What is wrong with us in the UK? Why do we seem to need vast numbers of people to do things on our behalf?

And these structures are many and varied across the US. So why the hell is Ms Kelly, who would no doubt be proud of Virginia for other reasons today, deigning to offer English local councils just a few tightly regulated options as to how to run the place. Don't try telling me that on a small island we need more homogeneity. We don't, we need local innovation and public entrepreneurship. We need to tell our Whitehall and Westminster overlords to sod off and leave us to decide for ourselves, locally, how we pool our citizens' skills (and boy, do we have them by the truck load in Oxford) to make local communities work.