The two extremes in modern politics are busy-body Democrats and busy-body Republicans. The Democrats are dominated by the Nanny Statists and the Republicans dominated by nasty Theocrats. Given those choices I too would like the Democrats more. The Democrats think I'm stupid and need them to care for me. That is pretty disgusting. But what really scares me is that Republicans think I'm sinful and need to be punished. While trying to stamp out stupidity is, well, stupid, trying to force people to be virtuous is downright dangerous.

Matthew Elliott, the co-founder and Chief Executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA), has accepted an invitation to lead the ‘No’ campaign in next year’s referendum on the introduction of the ‘Alternative Vote’ system for UK general elections. Matthew will continue to provide strategic advice to the TPA, but he will step down as an official spokesperson in the run up to the referendum.

Like everyone else, the political class has to eat.

Unlike everyone else, the political class proposes to eat us.

Now that the pesky mosquitoes have mutated into gnawing rats and threaten to grow into rabid wolves, more and more Americans are finally starting to take notice.

It’s class war, to the death, like it or not — a war for survival, the political class or us. Personally, I’m for us.

The business tycoon has lots of spare time to socialize in powerful circles, because this is the business of the tycoon–who already has money and is struggling not to make himself rich, but to stay rich. Such a person will naturally support big government, because big government is a wellspring of resources–a teat, in other words, from which the tycoon potentially derives nourishment.

Government is also a potential means to eliminate competition. If a corporation invents a better mousetrap that is revolutionary and spends millions developing it, what better way to prosper than to hire a politician to ban the old-fashioned kind with the snappy spring that people baited with cheese?

We want to link our recent campaign (in which Parliament Square was successfully occupied for three months by our Democracy Village) with other libertarian campaigns for human rights, constitution and democracy. We want to consider together how best these campaigns can work together, and how if at all they can relate to the forthcoming government cuts to public services.

We should therefore like to invite you and members of any relevant groups you belong to come and speak with us about your work, and to find out more about the rally we are planning. in the hope that you and/or your group would like to help promote it and participate on the day.

The whole "Ground Zero Mosque" meme is fraudulent in the classic sense: It's an attempt at theft by deception. By convincing people that a cultural center is a mosque, and that "Ground Zero" is located two blocks north of where it's actually located, they hope to build popular support for their call on government to steal some things -- a piece of land, a building, and the religious freedom of the land/building's owners -- for them.

And fraud, a/k/a theft by deception, isn't libertarian either.

The political classes and especially the leftist political classes hate freedom and capitalism because it empowers and it frees the masses, a confident and independent happy population has no need of a big authoritarian bullying interfering government which thrives on poor frightened jealous subjects.

The problems with this passage from Lilla's article are legion. Let's begin with the fact that nothing he describes here can properly be understood as "the libertarian spirit … spread[ing] to other areas of our lives." Rather it is a case of the spread from the culture generally of a generalized distrust of elites and other authorities — a spread of what I call decadent individualism into the political sphere, where it expresses itself as libertarianism. This is what happened in the '60s, when hippie individualism was born and the libertarian movement, born 20 years before, received a massive injection of growth hormone.

It seems to me that Lilla is right when he claims that those promoting libertarian ideas today are bent on neutralizing, not using, political power and on empowering those who say they want to be left alone. It seems to me that Lilla is absolutely and incontrovertibly right when he claims that millions of Americans are fed up with being told

what counts as news or what they should think about global warming … what their children should be taught, how much of their paychecks they get to keep, whether to insure themselves, which medicines they can have, where they can build their homes, which guns they can buy, when they have to wear seatbelts and helmets, whether they can talk on the phone while driving, which foods they can eat, how much soda they can drink … the list is long.

A few weeks later, we got a second long form with a notice saying we were sent that one because we never returned the first one. So being a good American, I filled it out. "2" people living here. But since I am such an extremist, I decided not to put the date on that one. I can only be pushed so far you know.

For years, both conservatives and liberals have ignored libertarians, hoping that Americans would never discover libertarianism. That plan obviously did not succeed. People are gravitating toward libertarianism in droves. Now, conservatives have going on the attack, hoping that they can pressure libertarians into becoming like them — people who abandoned their principles to become statists with free-market rhetoric. Liberals, meanwhile, are going on the attack with their bankrupt statist economic philosophy, hoping to pressure libertarians into abandoning their sound understanding of free-market economic principles and embracing statism in the name of “reforming” and “saving” free enterprise.

So, three steps to new politics. First, sweeping legislation to restore the hardwon liberties that have been taken one by one from the British people. This government will end the culture of spying on its citizens. It is outrageous that decent, lawabiding people are regularly treated as if they have got something to hide. It has to stop. So, there will be no ID card scheme, no national identity register, a halt to secondgeneration biometric passports. We will not hold your internet and email records when there is no reason to do so. CCTV will be properly regulated, as will the DNA storage database with restrictions on the storage of innocent people’s DNA, and Britain must not be a country where our children grow up so used to their liberty being infringed that they accept it without question.

Speed Limits. In a number of states in America, it is actually illegal to set speed limits below the 85th percentile. This is the internationally recognised and scientifically backed method of setting the optimum safe speed limits. In the UK, too many speed limits have been set well below the 85th percentile for political and ideological reasons as part of Labour’s policy to force modal shift. Speed limits should be set to keep traffic moving, minimise journey times and keep the roads safe. They should not be used as a tool to discourage driving. A law mandating that speed limits on main roads must respect the 85th percentile principle would be a step towards ending the criminalising of safe drivers, save significant costs in enforcement and administration, and return some credibility to road safety.

Now, economics was always the Conservative strong point, and it may be thought that the Liberal Democrats have nothing of their own to offer. However, we in the Libertarian Alliance have never liked the Conservative approach to economic reform. Their tax cuts favoured the rich. Their deregulations turned those at the bottom into casualised serfs. Their privatisations turned state monopolies into income streams for their friends in big business. They were better in all these respects than Labour. But we are interested to see what the Liberal Democrats will now be able to contribute with their belief in raising tax thresholds for the poor at the expense of the rich, and their belief in mutual institutions to provide public services in place both of the State and of big business.

I rather like it because it allows us to see our politicians as they really are. All their pompous guff about "the national interest" evaporates as we see them selling their souls for power. Policies that were an essential part of their electoral programme suddenly become unimportant and are ditched as they put their self-interest above their supposed principles. They have no choice if they want power, but they could be honest and admit that's what they are doing.

The best news is that Gordon Brown has steeped down at the Labour Party leader. Like Dubya, he and Blair were blots on the human race and I'm pleased to see them all gone. They aren't in prison, where they belong, but its an improvement.

This moment of uncertainty in our democracy has delivered us a once-in-a-generation opportunity to change a broken system. Fair votes must sit at the heart of our political process.

And this is precisely the problem with democracy. On the surface, it seems like a marketplace of consumers buying products, albeit political ones. The reality is that nothing checks out. We don't get what we buy. What don't know what we are buying. We don't know what the thing we are buying is supposed to do. What are we really buying? We are expending no real resources on the purchase other than our time.

Oscar Wilde said that socialism annoyed him because it took too many evenings. Similarly, democracy takes too many lunch hours.

You see, while I’m as blunt as can be about what I believe, and what I advocate, statists almost never openly admit what they want. For example, everything the “government” spends, it first takes from people (via “taxes”). But those who support government welfare–which is a lot of people– hardly ever come out and say “I think money should be forcibly taken from you to give to the poor.” Even when I question them at length, they go to great lengths to not admit, even to themselves, that what they advocate is the initiation of violence (against you, me, and everyone else).

Above all, a majority Labour Government would have fixed the system to keep itself in power forever. It would have used its own creatures in the Police and the bureaucracy to harass and perhaps even to murder its opponents. A Con-Lib pact will do none of these things. It will allow a free and fair election at the end of its term, in which some distinctively libertarian or traditionalist force may have a better chance of making its voice heard.

If anyone is still with me it’s time to conclude – the time has come for a major debate on constitutional reform, not about whether we need it, but what we move to. However, I wouldn’t be surprised that at the end of the debate the British people decide to stick with what we have on the devil you know principle.

However it ends, the next six months or so are going to be fascinating for political nerds.

XYZ – The central fact of this nation is that its political and media classes are rotten to the core. These classes are made up of ageing radicals who’ve spent the past 30 years marching through the institutions, and of younger apparatchiks who don’t fully believe, but who accept the framework within which they operate. And it’s worse than this. A fish rots from the head down, and the rot in this nation has spread deep into the body. Key parts of the electorate may not consciously have embraced the statist and green and politically correct ideologies of the Establishment. But they have been desensitised to them. They regard any alternative as eccentric or even alarming.

6) Despite denying plans for a central database of communications data, the Home Office set up a new directorate just this January to push forward the £2 billion Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP). The intent is store details of everyone you call, text or e-mail and which websites you visit – providing a record of clues to your religious and political beliefs, your sexual interests and personal relationships, your financial and medical worries – ‘just in case’ they become of interest to the authorities. Phone tapping and opening mail is so sensitive that it is a power exercised only on the approval of the Home Secretary, and cannot even be mentioned in court. But collecting communications data, and building techniques for them to be arbitrarily investigated, makes much more available to be known about every one of us without any form of warrant or independent oversight.

What I got out of this rally, other than some nasty sun burn, is a sense of despair, not on the part of these people, but on my part. What was made clear to me is that the Tea Party people are not the great hope for America that they think they are. They are no more freed0m-oriented than President Obama.

Wealthy career politicians are famously detached from real life, but at street level libertarian politics are done each and every day, in liberated space; on the bus, via community land trusts, squatted social centres, http://www.thecommonplace.org.uk on-line social media www.meetup.com/21stcenturynetwork in the average family home or other, egalitarian grassroots enterprise. A completely different kind of society can be built around these models, but what’s needed is an inclusive, constitutionally-literate grassroots recovery plan, and I see nothing in the mainstream agenda to take us there.

On May 1st a piece of street theatre and a party will ensue as we drag effigies of the party leaders from their HQs to Parliament Square. After we've executed them, we are calling for people to bring pop up tents and for an occupation of the square to begin and run until May 6th. During that time we wish to see a festival of ideas through the formation of a regular Peoples' Assembly. Can we all pull together, and set up democracy village? It's a great idea, but it can only happen if everyone gets involved.

Hundreds of MPs voted in favour of each and every one of us being fingerprinted for the ID database and having an ID card. Yet I'm sure I don't have to tell you that very few MPs have chosen to get one, even though they're now available to those who volunteer.

This seems to be the general play of left and right, today. Leftists and rightists bid for competing trade-offs in liberties and responsibilities. At any given time it’s easy to distinguish one from another, but there are no sure, lasting principles, no element of constancy.

The lying state at work, the state that has lied to us for so long now lost in a fog of lies of its own making that they can no longer recognize their precarious situation.

The lying state no longer sees that the lies they spread are no longer believed, so immersed in lies they are now even lying to themselves. When a state begins lying to itself there is no hope for that state.

Now that the right to vote has been neutered by an undemocratic Parliamentary system in serious decay, the conditions are emerging to reassert more fundamental rights to do with power and control over our lives. That is why we not only say “Hang on to your vote” at the election but also urge the building of People’s Assemblies as a possible mechanism for carrying through revolutionary change in the traditions of the Levellers, Chartists and trade unionists of earlier eras.

In other words, the taxpayer already pays half the ticket price for every rail journey. And who benefits? 50% of all rail journeys are made by commuters into London and are less than 20 miles. The wealthiest 25% of people use trains 4 times as much as the poorer 50%. In purely economic terms, rail is not a sustainable method of transport.

What would have happened, do you think, if the likes of Paine and Jefferson had "gone through channels"? If they had petitioned the king, run for the local school board or a higher position, if they had tried to repeal the Stamp Act and other laws one-by-one. I suspect there would have been no America because there would have been no revolution, no vox populi repeal of government itself. Instead, the American revolutionaries went to the source of all real social change -- the hearts and souls of men. They did the hard work and they showed how quickly a society could be turned around; it took something akin to 15 or 20 years for their ideas to create an expanse of freedom in the world.

Ultimately, this is why the slogan “vote for change” is uninspiring. Voters don’t know if there’s going to be any change at all. And if there is going to be change, voters don’t know what sort of change it is going to be.

Perhaps David Cameron should just take a leaf from Adam Smith’s book, and promise to deliver ‘peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice’. To borrow a phrase, that would be change we can believe in.

So, isn’t the solution to America’s woes rather obvious? Abolish (don’t reform) all those socialist and interventionist programs, bring all the troops home and discharge them, and dismantle the military-industrial complex. That’s 93 percent of the budget right there. Wouldn’t that constitute a considerable savings in spending, one that would even enable Americans to abolish the federal income tax, a tax that our American ancestors lived without for more than 100 years?

Sure, liberals would go ballistic, just like conservatives would. But what better way to solve the woes of socialism and imperialism the statists have foisted on our country, along with the soaring spending, debt, taxes, and inflation, than to restore America’s heritage of economic liberty and a limited-government, constitutional republic to our land?

We are always being told how difficult the work of an MP is, and that the vast majority of them went into politics with the most honourable of intentions.

The problem comes when these honourable men and women choose to make politics a career. At that point, all of those good intentions go out of the window. It is at that point that they sell their souls to the whips and start planning their climb up the greasy pole (or should that be poll?).

The scandal is not really in the fraud, exaggeration, or deceit – if that is what they were – committed by particular researchers, or the failure of the IPCC process to identify that certain claims were false. The scandal is that politicians seek moral authority in crisis. It was not ‘science’ that produced stories of imminent catastrophe; it was the bleak doom-laden politics of this era. Scientists merely extrapolated from this scenario, into the future, taking the logic of the political premises to their conclusion. The politics exists prior to the science. In reply, sceptics, with a more positive vision, ought to demonstrate the gap that exists between the science and the story, and how it might end differently if we start from more positive ground.

This movement is simply saying: "We are fine without you, Washington. Now for the love of God, go attend a reception somewhere, and stop making health care and entrepreneurship more expensive than they already are."

Subsequent events such as the Downing Street road pricing petition and referenda in Edinburgh then Manchester against congestion charges have delivered an unambiguous public rejection of most aspects of the 10 year plan. Despite this, the New Realists are still pushing for the introduction of pay–per-mile road pricing and presumably accept that by necessity, its implementation would have to be forced upon the public through a very undemocratic process.

For years councils have been getting away with it. They have been cutting parking availability while increasing on street enforcement and creating a lucrative revenue stream.

The use of CCTV systems to enforce parking restrictions will enhance their ability to fine motorists but this will be problematic as drivers will be unaware they may have contravened a parking regulation until the fine comes through the letter box two weeks later. This makes it almost impossible to gather evidence if an error has been made or the ticket is believed to be invalid.

Above all we must halt the onset of grey Britain. The ideologically motivated attempts to price and tax families out of their cars and onto public transport where daily life becomes more difficult must be stopped. Reducing the chances of people finding work as a result of reduced mobility would be damaging to our economy and reduce the wellbeing and prosperity of many families.

The car has been one of the most empowering and liberating inventions of the 20th Century. We must not allow those who want to restrict our freedoms to prevail.

In any given election, those votes for NOBODY — votes not cast by registered voters, votes not cast by those eligible to vote who choose not to register, and votes not cast by those barred by the election laws from voting — would, if counted, generally constitute at least a plurality and usually a majority of all votes.

What is more, after the failure of the mainstream news media to report what the malevolent and unpleasant scientists involved in the Climategate affair had written to one another about those with whom they disagreed, or about what they had done to invent, fabricate, contrive, fiddle, tweak, alter, massage, conceal, hide or even destroy scientific data for the sake of protecting and peddling the pseudo-science in which environment correspondents had so readily and so ignorantly believed, the people no longer trust the media.

And that is bad news for a governing class that has come to develop a far-too-cosy relationship with the mainstream media. It is also very bad news for the mainstream media themselves, which are now rapidly losing circulation and ad revenue as the people rightly desert them for the Internet, where - notwithstanding various expensive attempts by the over-funded international Left to interfere with Google and Yahoo searches - the truth is still available if you know where to look.

Send a message to Brown, Cameron and Clegg. Let them know what you think should be their New Year's resolution - and that you expect them to stick to it!

http://www.power2010.org.uk/page/speakout/resolution?source=resolutiontake2&utm_source=power2010&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=resolutiontake2

Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2 – 6 years. It does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places. In fact, Governmentium’s mass will actually increase over time, since each re-organization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes. This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass.

The American left has long forgotten its roots. As Arthur Ekirch has explained, the left sold its soul to the state with the New Deal. Whereas it once opposed regimentation and industrial management of society, it turned to support exactly that. War was the next issue to go. The New Left in the 1960s held out the hope of capturing some of that early love of liberty on the left, even the anarchist impulse, but the New Left didn't last long. It was eventually swallowed up by machine politics.

Yes it is time for a nationwide strike to shut down the economy for a day or a week to show Washington, D.C. that we are tired of supporting socialism and the socialist policies of this government.

WE need small businesses, professionals, machinists, truck drivers, pipe fitters, teachers, millwrights, cab drivers, and all loyal Americans tired of the socialist policies being imposed by this government.

A National Strike of NO CONFIDENCE would send a powerful message to Washington, D.C. that we are not going to take it anymore.

Watching the sorry charade of MPs clinging to their second homes, "golden goodbyes", and the right to give jobs to their nearest and dearest, you can't help but wonder where this outspoken bunch were when we needed them to fight the issues that matter to the British people.

If they'd spent half the energy they have sticking up for their perks and privileges into defending our civil liberties, challenging the government on climate change and reining in the banks you can bet we'd be in a far better state than we're in now.

We were obliged to pass a Human Rights Act to bring the European Convention of Human Rights into UK law, but we manage to avoid its rules on detention without charge, house arrest and due process and we have outsourced torture to allies overseas. We have been pushed to the brink on reform to make the House of Lords an elected chamber, but we are confident that we can keep it at bay for at least two or more parliaments.

Parliament, far from being representative of the people, is actually our bulwark against the people. We are also able to treat the people not as citizens but as subjects. We encourage people to believe that they are free, though actually they are in chains, unfelt but real chains nevertheless.

The report calls for strict enforcement of the motorway speed limit with an estimated saving of 0.2% of the UK’s CO2 emissions. It goes on to say that lowering the speed limit to 60mph would cut emissions by a further 0.2%. However, the Drivers’ Alliance has calculated the cost to the economy in terms of time wasted through slower journeys would be a staggering £2.6bn per year or £1710 per tonne of Co2 saved.

Of course, it’s all a fraud, designed to distract people from the overriding reality of political life, which is that the state and its principal supporters are constantly screwing the rest of us, regardless of which party happens to control the presidency and the Congress. Amid all the partisan sound and fury, hardly anybody notices that political reality boils down to two “parties”: (1) those who, in one way or another, use state power to bully and live at the expense of others; and (2) those unfortunate others.

Lord Diplock defined civil law as the “Application of common sense and common morality to the activities of the common man”. To call for a change in the law which puts self interest above common sense and morality say's a great deal about its advocates. Rather then creating harmony on our roads, Cycling England’s activities are creating division and acrimony.

I'm taking the extraordinary step of writing to you now because NO2ID supporters have the opportunity to shape this new campaign by submitting *your* ideas for how we should change the way our country is run. The most popular 5 will then become the backbone of a major national campaign leading up to the next general election.

The Climate Sceptics are here to demand rational debate and responsible leadership. We reject the extremist views that now threaten what Australians have sacrificed to achieve in living standards, rights and freedoms.

If you want your own children and grandchildren to enjoy these values as you do, click here to join, and get in touch with your kindred spirits in your local area. There are a lot more of you than some might want you to discover.

After two referenda and the fastest growing petition in history nobody is in any doubt as to the public’s feelings about road pricing. Much more pressing is the need to dismantle the anti car culture rife at all levels of government which is designed to stifle dissenting voices and the creation of a level playing field. The RACF is well placed to help expose the inherent anti-car bias which has helped create the very situation that Glaister proposes to solve with an independent regulator. Drivers have circled the wagons on the issue of tolls and the RACF are either looking in or looking out.

Yet, when you think about it, conservatives and liberals aren’t really on different sides. They’re actually on the same side. Look at Iraq and Afghanistan. Is anything different about liberal Barack Obama’s policies, compared to those of George W. Bush? Of course not. The occupation of Iraq continues, with U.S. troops continuing to kill Iraqis. Obama is even expanding the occupation of Afghanistan, with the troops killing not only Afghanis but also Pakistanis.

Those are a few of the sort of Pork-barrel projects that Ron Paul proposed to the budget. He really outdid himself this year. A quick tally shows his pork projects totaling almost $395,000,000. Last year he only managed to line up only $96 million for the little piggies in his district, making him the biggest spender in the Texas delegation in the House of Representatives. He clearly outdid himself this year.

Not content with funding anti car/anti road groups like the CfBT, the government then appoints the CfBT to ‘represent’ the voice of the driver to the Government. This is an unacceptable situation that cannot be allowed to continue and underlines just how determinedly anti car our Government has become.

Funding of lobbying and political campaigning by government bodies has a number of negative effects:

• It distorts the public policy process in favour of the interests and perspectives of a narrow political elite.
• It slows adjustments in the direction of policy in response to changing circumstances.
• It increases political apathy among the public, particularly because taxpayers are forced to fund views they may seriously disagree with.

Still, what does one say to a fascist? Calling him names, however well-deserved they may be, isn’t going to win him over (but it might be fun anyway). Telling him he’s stupid and evil, even if true, is also unlikely to cause any honest self-examination on his part (and might cause some unpleasantries to be inflicted upon you). So, assuming you could even get his attention for a moment, what should you say to Mr. Order-Obeying Statist Enforcer? (My apologies to the noble American moose for the unfortunate acronym there: M.O.O.S.E.)

The main aim of fascism is not the annihilation of one racial group within society. It is to smash all forms of democracy and take away the rights of the entire working class – black and white, Jewish and non-Jewish, Muslim and non-Muslim.

Fascist movements use a dual strategy of building brute force on the ground and creating a “respectable” political facade.

Demanding MPs act and decide what the law should be exposes the democratic deficit in relation to morality: namely that MPs would mostly likely vote based on their own morality/values. Thus negating their constituents views and exhibiting a truly Platonic approach to governing, as can be seen by Nadine Dorries upcoming campaign, ensuring that a mature approach to euthanasia isn't taken.

As with so many things, the current government considers charitable status to be a political matter and has placed one of its most loyal Labour Party puppets in charge of the Charity Commission so that only those organisations that further Labour Party policy will be afforded the tax and other privileges that go with being a registered charity. Recently they decided that education is only a charitable purpose if it accords with the Labour Party's view of what schools should do. This was never an issue before because government recognised that all educational facilities are beneficial to some children and that was sufficient in itself for bona fide educational establishments to be afforded charitable status.

"Wow... what a worthy goal." I told her, "But you don't have to wait until you're president to do that. You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and sweep my yard, and I'll pay you $50. Then I'll take you over to the grocery store where homeless guys hang out, and you can give them the $50, you earned, to use toward food and a new house."

What would happen if three percent of American gun owners or maybe even three percent of the American public decided they were ready to take things to the next level with minor breaches of the law?

• We’ve forced a Recall Law onto the political agenda, and are ready to push for it to be finally introduced when the moment comes. We’ve sent a clear message to MPs that we want real reforms including recall in response to the MP expenses scandal.
• We’ve stood together to say no to a secret inquiry into the Iraq War. We made sure our petition was seen by every MP on the day Parliament voted, adding to the pressure which changed Gordon Brown’s mind.
• We’ve been talked about in national newspapers from the Daily Sport and the Daily Mail to the Independent and the Guardian, as well as TV and Radio.

What public choice theorists claim is that bureaucrats have a far better opportunity to yield to the temptation of malpractice than are those in the private sector. The theory does not claim that all bureaucrats are cheats and all those in the private sector are professionally responsible. But it identifies an evident tendency and shows it to exist through the study of economic and political history. Common sense supports this, as well, when most people notice that if they go to, say, the Department of Motor Vehicles (one of the more visible government outfits), they mostly get a reluctant, bored, at times even curmudgeonly treatment, whereas in the private sector the routine tends to be eagerness to serve, to generate and keep business.

Now The Snoopers are back. They pry into our garbage bins, secretly film us and employ covert agents to follow us (justified by legislation originally promoted as being anti-terrorist). One couple were subjected to a prolonged stake-out to check that they were living where they claimed to be and not evading the equality rules in the educational lottery. A teenager was prosecuted for allowing a toddler to discard a sweet wrapper. Fortunately, our judges still have enough power to treat such cases with the derision they deserve. What is not disclosed is how much this snooping impoverishes the taxpayer, but it is not difficult to imagine the cost of several weeks of secret surveillance. Also typical is the fact that the actions in question were not even offences until the advent of New Labour Government. It is not only a crime to want to select a school for your child (unless you are rich), there are now so many new offences that no one, even the lawyers, knows what is legal or illegal. There are literally thousands of new crimes (including the Orwellian sounding enviro-crimes). When the Government is enacting seven new laws every day, without a semblance of proper debate, ordinary people are exposed to legal hazards of which they are completely unaware.

As with all of the great peaceful revolutions throughout history, all it took was more and more people ignoring their political masters to make them irrelevant. The Mahatma comes to mind. In a huge act of defiance that challenged the mighty British Empire and united India, Gandhi and thousands (eventually millions) of his followers marched to Dandi along the Indian Ocean and began harvesting salt in direct violation of the British Salt Tax. Practicing satyagraha (non-violent protest), Gandhi and his followers drew the attention of Britain and the world to their cause, eventually winning their independence from the empire.

I think the most important message is to communicate that we are sick and tired of our elected representatives screwing around with the system, and we not only expect, but demand that they honor their promise to post bills for comment and expect them to know the contents of any bill voted on.

And you? Well, you pay for it, of course. The political class drinks milk, the productive class gets milked.

When challenged about the futility of revealing documents that don't allow a clear examination of whether expenses or allowances were properly claimed, the response from the politicians concerned has been a unified "nothing to do with us guv". In a way they are correct. They assert that the decision to edit receipts and expenses forms was taken by civil servants without guidance or instructions from any of our elected politicians. If this is correct, it is indeed nothing to do with them but only in a narrow sense of them not having taken the decision. In a wider, and I believe more accurate, sense it is everything to do with them because they failed to ensure that the material released would satisfy the purpose of the exercise, namely to allow the little people to assess whether claims for reimbursement were valid.

We’ve got a bailout tsar, a car tsar, a climate tsar, a technology tsar, a general “regulatory” tsar, war and foreign policy tsars galore. Can’t swing a cat in Washington DC these days without knocking over a would-be Romanov heir. I half expect Obama to appoint a tsar tsar to keep track of all of them (maybe he can find someone named Binks to fill the position).

James Arbuthnot thinks it wholly necessary for us to pay £138 for a “chainsaw for logs”. Massacre him at the general election.

The new leftists — as is the case with all persons who desire authority over other persons — did not fear the power of government. They adored it. Like Hitler, Stalin, and other despots, their primary reason for inciting the people to reject the old order was to get this power for themselves. And the people did not object at first because they did not understand that the power of government is dangerous in any hands. They just thought that it was dangerous in the hands of a king. So they took the power from the king and transferred it to a "leader." They failed to see that it was a brutal restoration of the very thing they had rebelled against! In fact, those second leftists held far more power than Louis XVI ever had.

Those leftists, holding a slim majority in the two years' existence of the National Constituent Assembly, did a remarkable job. They limited the extreme powers of the central government. They removed special privileges that the government had granted to various groups and persons. Their idea of personal liberty with absolute equality before the law for all persons was rapidly becoming a reality. But before the program of those first leftists was completed, a violent minority from their own ranks — the revolutionary Jacobins — grasped the power of government and began their reign of terror and tyranny.

What will always interest ruling classes, therefore, is the nature and acceptance of its legitimising ideology. This will vary according to circumstances that are not fully within the control of any ruling class. It may involve averting the Divine Wrath, or promoting acceptance of the True Faith, or protecting the nation from external or external enemies, or raising the condition of the poor, or making us healthier, or saving the planet from us. The claims of the ideology may, in other times and places, seem unfounded or insane. What they generally have in common is the need for an active state directed by the right sort of people.

If I were to point a gun at someone and shoot them dead in a case of mistaken identity I would serve time, and deservedly so. If a police officer shoots someone under the same circumstances they get suspended pending an investigation and then after the investigation that always seems to clear the officer of any wrongdoing they are back out on the streets packing a gun and protecting us with the same incompetence that they had in the first place. Show Me, where is the accountability? I’m not trying to imply that officers aren’t doing their best to protect the public, but I am stating that the same citizens that they are sworn to protect are held to a higher standard and harder punishment for the same crimes.

If we are ever to restore the public's faith in Parliament, and if those innocent MPs' names are ever to be cleared, then we need urgent change. First, taxpayers must at last be told the whole truth about MPs' expenses. Our petition, co-launched with transparency campaigner Heather Brooke, for full and immediate publication of MPs' expenses details has already attracted over 3,700 signatures. If you haven't yet signed, or haven't yet circulated it to your friends, colleagues and family, please do so.

Bath plugs, gazebos, barbecues, antique fireplaces, ginger biscuits, Farley's Rusks (presumably not for the Member's consumption), nappies, pizza wheels, make-up, servicing swimming pools, underfloor heating - the list so far revealed is already outrageous.

Honourable MPs would not put in claims like this, and even if they did, a decent expenses system would not allow them to be paid out.

This is a song about a politician. A British politician. Unlike most politicians today, he wasn’t a dishonest, corrupt, lying, thieving, warmongering, human-hating no-good. He was a human being, one of us. His name was John Good.

It’s to be sung to the well-known tune, “The Twelve Days of Christmas”.

With a postscript – to be sung to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”

I once had a rabid animal rights lunatic demand to know how I thought fox-hounds were supposed to tell the difference between a young fit fox and an old sick fox. Short answer: Young fit foxes run faster.

Stop taxing us to death and then saying you have to raise taxes even more because you failed so miserably at the things you taxed us for in the first place.

Stop spying on us and stop intruding on our fundamental rights. Give us back habeas corpus and stop even thinking secret tribunals and prisons have any place in America.

Open up the system and let the average citizen participate in how this government is run. Stop putting up barriers to getting on the ballot just so you can stay in office forever and stop keeping any of what you are doing secret from us.

The problem, ultimately, isn't that "leftists" are in power, just as the problem last year wasn't with the "right wing." The problem, now as always, is that government wields vast power, and it does so with the approval and support of the most powerful political factions in our society. Republicans and Democrats alike bludgeon us with the state when they are in command -- they just have slightly different priorities when it comes to abusing us and and curtailing our freedom.

The majority of the public believes, correctly I might add, that the bailouts are rewarding the very people who caused the problems we are experiencing: "68% of Americans now believe most of the taxpayer money given out as bailouts is going to the very people who created the country's current economic crisis." Those who invest in the economy believe this slightly more strongly (70%).

Rep. Greenberg says the sponsor of the bill acknowledged that it had problems. That, of course, didn't prevent the moralistic wing of the legislature from passing the bill "for the sake of the children." The bill's sponsor told him they would fix the bill later. Greenberg said: "I tend to think that the only way to fix the bill's problems is to run it through a shredder, incinerate the remains and bury what's left in a big hole."

The second prong is a little more subtle. Mr Cameron is saying, in substance, "if only we'd told him, it might have helped" followed by a deep sigh of remorse. That raises the question whether it would have helped. When we ask that question the only possible answer is that it would not have changed the disastrous course the government was following. Poor Gordon is shown up yet again, he cannot turn round and say "you should have told me and then I would have changed course" because we know it would have made no difference. So, rather than Mr Cameron saying his party is partly to blame we find that it is not to blame at all because there was nothing that could be done to infiltrate the Brownian thick skull.

Question: What's the difference between politicians and prostitutes?
Answer 2: Prostitute only screw you if you want it.
Answer 6: Prostitutes don't start wars.

If a government of radical conservatives ever does take power, it will have one attempt at saving this country. That means radical and focussed actions from day one. Anything less than this, and it will fail. I am suggesting a revolution - but this is really a counter-revolution against what has already been proceeding for at least one generation. If we are to beat the heirs of Marx, we must learn from Marx himself.

I was, until recently, a committed monarchist. I now have to admit that the Queen has spent the past half century breaking her Coronation Oath at every opportunity. The only documents she has ever seemed reluctant to sign are personal cheques. Conservatives need to remember that our tradition extends not only through Edmund Burke to the Cavaliers, but also through Tom Paine to Oliver Cromwell. We live in an age where it is necessary to be radical to be conservative.

Rand Rothbard Friedman became the first Anarcho-Capitalist Libertarian president when he publically denounced the state, repudiated all political parties (including Libertarian), refused to campaign at all and said absolutely nothing after that. But he did it with such flamboyantly arrogant panache and uncompromising conviction that voters thought he almost certainly must stand for something, so they swept him into office on spec. Then, taking advantage of the massive dictatorial powers meekly surrendered to each successive president by the legislative and judicial branches of government, his first and last acts as president were to declare the government an organized criminal enterprise, unilaterally disband it, declare the Voluntary Union of North American Stateless Societies in its stead, and promptly resign.

We might wonder why inaugurations aren’t more sober affairs. Why all the hoopla? The answer is simple. Government is a horrendous and exploitative imposition on most of us. From the rulers’ perspective, there is always the danger that we may figure this out and refuse to go along. Hence the need for regular propaganda spectacles to reinforce the myth that we are the government.

TPA supporter David Griffiths emailed us about a story in his local paper whereby Worcestershire County Council will be squandering your money on Food Champions, going door to door to educate people about “home composting, date label meanings, portioning guidance, storage tips and handy recipes for leftovers”. Trying to outdo Delia Smith, Worcestershire County Council try and defend this scheme saying it could save residents £420 a year. Note the word ‘could’. They omit the fact that these officers are all being paid by the taxpayer, their cars, pensions and wages paid out of the public purse. That’s a cost already met by the taxpayer, so Worcestershire’s taxpayers’ have got a hell of a lot of composting to do if they’re going to save the money already spent by the council on this nannying scheme.

Some economists are telling us that we shall have to pay higher taxes for at least a generation to service these debts.

But this is not true. Our governments will borrow little from us - most of us having no savings to lend. They will instead continue selling bonds to the Arabs and the Orientals, and a few Russians if the price of oil recovers in time. The real value of these will then be inflated away.

Mr. Redpath’s pledge list was another example of how the LP has become a Right-wing, conservative party and is no longer a libertarian one.

I can’t see him accidentally leaving off all references to civil liberties and foreign policy. This is not an oversight but appears to be a conscious decision to disassociate the LP from any policy that conservatives would find offensive. Mr. Redpath only confirms my reasons for disassociating myself from the LP. His lack of even a token reference to civil liberties speaks volumes.

While I agree with the European Court, I loathe the idea that it should take this unelected, unaccountable foreign quango to up hold our liberties. Nothing better illustrates our failed constitutional settlement than this case.

Making government more powerful doesn’t solve this problem because the problem was never a lack of power. A government that can be bought off when it is small is one that can be corrupted when it is large. The difference is that the large government can inflict more harm on behalf of those who have purchased its powers. Making government more powerful thus doesn’t solve the problem but makes it worse. The ability to corrupt the political process doesn’t go away. If anything, the incentives to corrupt politics is now even greater.

This is just one of thousands of results of the mixed economy, the welfare state, in which your individuality is abolished and you are treated as a member of some ant colony or bee hive. You will be conscripted to be part of it all, never mind how sensibly you may figure out to deal with the fiasco. No, you will not be allowed to use your good sense, virtue, and occasional luck to address the economic mess the politicians, bureaucrats and their rent-seeking clients produced. These folks were the ones who prevented the realization of the free market and instead created a top-down, planned or managed arena of wealth redistribution.

They say Parliament is democracy in action. The turnout for the recent Local Transport Bill debate in the Commons was democracy inaction. Scarcely any MPs bothered to turn out to fill the vast open spaces of the debating chamber though they did scurry out of their rabbit warren of offices to pass the Bill by 313 votes to 143.

All legacies end in ashes. The skeletons eventually come out. The alternative histories get written.

We all know this. And we know the politicians who spend so much time trying to get us to believe in their legacies know this.

So we’ve learned to see politics as a game — a game which everybody eventually loses.

If only King George III had understood the trick, we’d still be under British rule. All he needed was some other control-freak doofus like himself to run against in an election. Then the colonists would have been so distracted over the pointless debate over which aspiring tyrant was worse, it never would have occurred to them to tell BOTH would-be tyrants to get lost. If you want to get bummed out, do a little research, and find out the level of oppression, taxation and regulation that was inflicted upon the colonies by King George III (which triggered a revolution), and then compare it to the level of oppression, taxation and regulation that today is inflicted upon us by Emperor George (Bush). How did our glorious and noble revolution end up making things so much WORSE for us?

Yes, sure, get their help against an income tax. Work with weird skinhead neo-Nazis against mandatory helmet laws. Make common cause against the government where it is essential, but don't pretend it is okay that they are racist, don't call them libertarians if they are former government prosecutors and former CIA agents, and don't lose sight of your principles.

On the ground PC Plod often has to choose which law to enforce and how to do so. This is not just a matter of choosing between arresting an offender or giving him a talking to, it can be a choice between attending one reported crime or another or between enforcing one law where to do so might cause another to be breached. These are value judgments of a political nature and can be influenced by PC Plod's own political views. PC Plod sees someone trying to break into a car and at the same time another car zooms past in excess of the legal speed limit, he cannot nab both so he has to choose, will it be car thief or car driver who ends up in the book? Which does he consider the more serious offence? This is a political decision. Lefty Plod is pleased to see an expensive car being broken into so he chooses to pursue the speeder, Righty Plod considers property more important than fast driving which has harmed no one, Wishy-Washy Plod can't decide and calls for back-up.

In the context of the political parties we are addressing, we are inquiring whether their MANIFESTOES, in their currently released or about to be released forms, are viable plans of actions.

I thought I would list the prime issues that I would like to see covered by candidates in this campaign. I will not discuss what I think a presidential candidate should advocate but I’m not convinced a president should propose any legislation -- he is the executive not a legislator. Nor am I going to discuss what the courts should do. The way courts interpret rights and government power is built on a long history of legal precedent and ideology and that is not something that can be addressed in a short time. So I am sticking to the work that the Congress ought to tackle -- and measures which I think a president should sign into law.

The more political involvement in the market place the happier the major big corporations will be. They know how to influence that process. They have the massive sums of money necessary to buy the candidates. All one has to do is watch how Big Business interests purchased the support of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama when it comes to the ethanol scam. The only people who really benefit from ethanol are the major Agricultural companies and the Big Energy companies that produce it and collect the subsidies.

What this report shows is that the purveyors of sexual panic are actually doing harm. As the study showed, it is adolescents seeking out sex online who are the main “victims” of this activity. If the goal is prevent such activity then focusing on the non problem of children being seduced online doesn’t help. It focuses efforts where there is no issue while primarily ignoring the area where some concern might be legitimate. Parents who are paranoid about their young kids being seduced might just ignore the hormone-flooded teenager using the Internet to seek out sex.

To think that gold medals for supposedly national heroes (when in actual fact, the economy stagnates) in a 'poor' country will cost US $ 1.5 million can't be described as modest. Never mind that Ghana's President can purchase two Presidential jets under dodgy circumstances, completely shutting our the country's Parliament from the initial purchasing arrangements.

However, be sure that at the next available photo-opportunity with G-8 leaders we'll be begging for more Aid dollars. If only these Aid givers knew…

Our reply is again, so what? It may be that the Conservatives are less evil than Labour. But so are the BNP and al-Qa’eda. George Galloway would make a less ghastly Prime Minister than Gordon Brown. But the Conservatives are less evil, I suspect, largely because they are not yet in Government. The last time they were in government, they cheerfully laid the foundations of our current police state.

As his constituency is pretty typical of lower-middle class England, this could be the nearest we shall ever get to a referendum on liberty. In most elections – and particularly in general elections – people vote on a balance of issues. In this one, the question will be "are you happy to see your country turned into a panopticon police state?"

If returned to Parliament, Mr Davis will have the moral authority to speak against our further descent into authoritarianism.

Many people who already hold the view that government is immoral, still decide to vote, citing the moral justification of self-defense. Although I sympathize with their moral position (having long held the same view), I consider the self-defense argument to be more a rationalization than a moral justification. In practice, I have not seen any evidence that "voting in self defense" accomplishes anything constructive.

Except for a measure to increase taxes (votes for which are counted by the initiating government agencies), voting in self-defense is not usually a response to a direct, immediate threat, but rather to a long-term threat posed by the system itself—and the very act of voting validates acceptance of the terms dictated by the system. The self-defense argument is usually a simple failure to understand how voting sanctions the actions of an overbearing government. "After all" the government will proclaim, "You voted so you implicitly agreed to accept the majority decision".

I have a mutually favorable intention for you. I will needing you to assist me in executing a business venture between the Washington of the D.C. and your state of residing.

This business involves the transferring of large money sums from the banking accounts of the citizens of your situation to the account of the governing body of the Capitol of America, of which I, Hillaracko Bamajohn McClainton, will soon becoming the Chief Executing Officer.

In a free society politicians would be like the sheriff in those fictional Westerns who want the job so they can maintain peace and fight crime. They earn themselves a good resume or CV when they achieve this goal and not by being year-round Santa Clauses to the citizens of their towns. For this they receive payment which is collected from something like user fees, funds the citizens contribute by some sort of peaceful, voluntary fashion. That is how freedom works, namely, by systematically precluding all kinds of aggression--brutality, theft, extortion, coercion--from how society works.

I’m sure that when that party falls apart, and I believe there is a good chance that the campaign teams of Root and Barr will do a lot to bring about this destruction, that the fringe Right types will go back to the GOP. The party of principle sold out the principles and now it is merely seeking power. And as it seeks power it destroys the libertarian message. I have to say that at this time I consider the Libertarian Party as the enemy of libertarianism. I hope its death is quick and complete. And I urge libertarians to withdraw their membership from the party, cease funding the party or its candidates, and pledge not to vote for any LP candidates. There are plenty of good, educational campaigns that one can fund instead. But money given to the LP or its candidates helps betray the libertarian message. Boycott the LP.

I don’t like siding with the Berkeley city council especially after seeing how they have ruined Berkeley. And while I think they are right in their motion I don’t think they have the vaguest idea why they are right. These are not people who understand the moral imperative of limiting government powers to that of protecting rights only. They are right in this issue entirely by accident. The Marines and their defenders are wrong. The city council is right but for they have no idea why they are right. And the principles that would vindicate them in this case are principles they don’t understand or practice. But given a choice between the two groups I would have to side with the city council -- with qualifications as explained here.

The idea of a free society is that one must rely on one’s works and good fortune and, now and then, on the kindness of friends and neighbors, in order to get on with one’s life, not on theft-facilitators. The idea of our society, in contrast, is for everyone to try, each election, to rip off everyone else.

• I am the Decider! I, I, I DECIDE!
• There are HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of me, and less than 600 "politician" legislators.
• I CAN control those $%&+@# politicians!
• They'd better get it together, starting right now!
• Now GO OUT and VOTE for (DECIDE for, CHOOSE!) Dr. Ron Paul.

But, my fellow Americans, take pride. You helped fund this travesty of injustice because your tax moneys are supporting this regime. Take heart that the blood of American soldiers was spilled, and their lives snuffed out, so that the Bush regime could install a government that allows people to be arrested, tried and sentenced to death merely for reading articles critical of the moron who founded Islam.

Contrary to perception the real argument between Democrats and Republicans is not whether the American people should be kept on a leash. The debate is always about how long the leash should be.

I have a hard time believing a Democrat, any Democrat, will be worse for the country than has been King George and that Dick who works with him.

Maybe you like the ideal upon which the country was founded. That’s nice, but for the most part, that ideal is STONE DEAD. We don’t have it, and 99% of Americans don’t WANT it. And if you’re proud of our present system of government, you need your head examined.

But there is today, both in the islands called Britain and elsewhere, a rising tide of contempt for politics and politicians. The political classes have spent most of the last two centuries trying to persuade us that they and their state are good for us. But people - and not just those already aware of the ideas of liberty - have begun to see this for what it is, a lie. More and more people are waking up from the anaesthetic, and starting to feel the pain. I sense there's the potential for a big backlash building up out there.

So, I think, to try to form a libertarian political party today would be a step in exactly the wrong direction. Not only would we be trying to play the statists at their own political game. But we would also be tying ourselves to a system that is doomed to fail.

In the end it comes down to two things. The first, is mind your own damn business. The second is leave other people alone. Radical isn't it. Just stop sticking your ugly puss into the affairs of other people. Your constant nagging and nannying of others is boring, intrusive and offensive. And if you keep it up then don't be surprised if the reaction is to slap restrictions on your liberties and choices. At some point the person who keeps nagging gets smacked in the jaw and they deserve it. If you don't want my preferences imposed on you (and I already know you won't like them) then don't impose your preferences on me. Fair enough.

We have a ruling class that sees itself not as a committee of trustees for the nation but as a committee of proprietors. This ruling class has increasingly stripped us of our traditional freedoms and of our national independence. With the legal changes of the past two decades, even I have given up on keeping track of what it is still legal to say or do. Anything the authorities do not like is either overtly against the law or subject to indirect punishment through the laws on town planning or consumer protection or health and safety or child welfare. The tax gatherers are rapacious. Other officials enforce regulations that crush individuality and that frequently cannot even be explained.

Yes. Perhaps someday the politicians of the United States — the president and Congress and judges who refuse to acknowledge our rights or our personal autonomy — perhaps someday they will be made to pay for their betrayals, past, present, and future.

Perhaps someday, the American people will refuse to obey those who hate our freedom, regardless of where those enemies reside or what excuses they offer for the destruction they cause.

Do you know why your so-called representatives were in such a scramble? Because they were adjourning to go on vacation. Run-of-the-mill legislation might have been left until they returned in September. But this was "anti-terrorist" legislation. And so a scared Congress voted without thinking. The next time you hear someone rhapsodize about government "of the people, by the people, for the people," remember this episode.

It is against this backdrop that rising resentment over the incompetence of the political class who tax us so much but deliver so little is slowly building. Only the miraculous stability of our economy is holding back the deluge of social and political unrest. Terrorism, recession, a new crime wave and the threat of off-shoring are all on the horizon if they haven’t arrived already, and politicians who underestimate the dangers of this new world are in for a nasty shock. Few in Holland saw the Pim Fortuyn moment coming. Must our self-absorbed political class remain oblivious until we all suffer a similar wake-up call? We sincerely hope not.

The Libertarian Alliance believes that all social problems can be solved by keeping politicians from doing anything about them.

Yes, both conservatism and liberalism are reactionary. Conservative thinking defers to the past, the way things were. It deems what was (or is) as right. It looks to society now and in the past for its moral guidelines and political dogma. It reacts to society as it exists, claiming it is just. Liberalism makes the opposite choice, but reacts to the same source. Liberal thinking examines society, and judges it as wrong. "Society is not perfect now, so we must change the way things are." It holds change as the correct position in politics and moral affairs. It reacts to society as it exists, claiming it is not just.

U.S. imperialist polices in the Middle East have been good for special interests and power-loving politicians, but bad for the American people. Someone in government has finally had the courage to say so.

As your benevolent dictator, I don’t give a whit what you do with your body, how you raise your children, or what you drive to get to work. I just want you to be free to decide for yourself how best to do that without fear of me hurting you for your decision.

You've done a great job of "bait and switch," but the game is over. We know the real problem isn't terrorists, or drugs, or commies, or the Nazis. The problem certainly isn't the blacks, or the whites, or the chicanos, as you want each group to believe about the other. No, the problem is you, the politicians who have turned your jobs into featherbeds, while you expect us to sleep on the floor.

Since both main political parties are agreed, opponents have a choice between not voting at all and voting for one of the smaller parties. Many are voting for the BNP. There is a chance that many who do not vote will also vote BNP once it can prove that it is a credible political force. Therefore, the BNP must be destroyed.

You know what I think? said the liberal. I think our enemies are doomed, whatever happens. Their system is failing. Politics isn't sustainable any more. Democracy was the final, futile attempt to shore it up. But it's out of date. People are losing faith in it - and with good reason. I think it will collapse under its own weight, like the Soviet Union did.