Electoral turnout is falling, and those that do bother to vote are increasingly not opting for one of the two main mass parties: Humans for the Conservatives and Labour for the Orcs. This means any Prime-minister (who is more or less guaranteed to be either David Cameron or Ed Miliband after 2015), is going to lack legitimacy. Some say the fact that the likes of Tony Blair or David Cameron, who became PM on a small plurality of the vote, discredits democracy. By this analysis, our system, because the House of Commons is not the result of an accurate tribal headcount, is illegitimate.

All this represents is the fact political argument in the west is no longer about whether everyone gets enough to eat. Everyone now does. Political argument, even in these times of "Austerity" is really about the distribution of plenty. We're now so far up Mazlow's hierarchy of needs that even Sun-readers who have a roof over their heads, and more than enough to eat, now expect their unconsidered views to be listened to.

The four stages of learning are:

1. Unconscious incompetence: You don't know how little you know.
2. Conscious incompetence: You now know how little you know
3. Conscious competence: You can make the right calls with the right information, if you think about it.
4. Unconscious competence: Like changing down a gear in a car after 20 years of driving, you can do it without thinking about it.

The political anger is due the fact that having found out a bit, some people have started expressing opinions, and now feel ignored. They have learned to find a profit & loss account and do some basic arithmetic and conclude that corporate tax is being "underpaid" without troubling themselves to understand why this might be. Some people hear some funny accents on the bus and conclude they're being "swamped" by immigrants. Yet these "problems" are ones of enormous complexity, utterly unsuited to the simplistic solutions being proposed by the man in the pub. But there are politicians prepared to ride the wave of this solipsistic anger, hence the rise of minor parties, especially between elections, when the electorate don't feel they're choosing something important like the Prime-minister.

People have found out a bit, and don't like what they see, because a little knowledge is a dangerous thing and people fear that which is only partially understood. Here be dragons.

I reckon I'm at level 2. All I understand is how little I know, and I am deeply sceptical of anyone who claims to have the solution to complex political problems. There are trade-offs, but no answers. Side-effects are unknown and unknowable.

The list of people at level 3. in matters of modern political economy is very, very small, consisting of Ben Bernanke, a couple of Nobel Laureates (but NOT Paul Krugman), a few central bankers, people at the top of a few businesses. Even these people might just be level 2. but with power. Everyone else who claims to have the answer, is lying.

No-one is sufficiently able to collect and process the data to successfully manage an economy at level 4.

The answer is, of course more direct democracy hoping a semi-engaged electorate can be bothered to turn out for local referenda; and trusting to the wisdom of crowds. The answer is also the 'electorate of one' allowing markets to give people power over their own lives and removing a lot of competences from political control, devolving them to the individual and family.

It's because of my scepticism that I favour market solutions, and resist political control. Not because I think it's an answer, but because I don't think there is one, so we should let everyone make up their own minds about their priorities as far as possible. The job we're asking politicians to do is impossible. So let's make it easier, by getting government to concentrate on its core functions (there is an argument to be had about what the core functions are). Let's take back the power (and money) from politicians as far as possible, and so make decisions at a level where mistakes aren't catastrophic.

Libertarianism, the only solution for people who have sufficient wisdom to know they're ignorant.

It appears the NSA and GCHQ are able to read people's e-mails more or less at will. The whistleblower, Edward Snowden, who made this startling revelation has fled to.... China.... (well, Hong Kong, but the irony remains).

Of course the NSA and GCHQ can read our communications, THAT'S WHAT WE PAY THEM TO BE ABLE TO DO. The difference between countries like Britain and America, and those like China, is the security agencies of the former are genuinely looking for people who want to hack soldiers' heads off in the street or blow themselves up on buses, while mostly ignoring people saying "I disagree with the Government". China on the other hand, is about monitoring its citizens' opinions of the Government.

Now, I'm not going to defend in detail the hyperventilating response of the US authorities to people like Snowden and Bradley Manning. Manning, in particular has been vindictively treated, and Snowden is rightly afraid of the same treatment.  But the wikileaks scandal did lead to widespread legitimate questioning by electorates about what is being done in their name and that is a good thing. The USA is in danger of losing sight of what made it powerful - the freedom enjoyed by Americans to think what they will. The suspicion of Government has been replaced by a fawning deference to the intelligence-military-industrial complex. But this is a cultural battle, not a political one.

There's a reason some things are secret. Large-scale, indiscriminate leaking of information can cost lives if it means agents and sources in hostile countries can be identified. In an ideal world, our Governments wouldn't need secrets, but we don't live in an ideal world and there's always an ideology of the angry - radical islam, before that Communism, anarchism and so forth which demanded surveillance. There's always going to be a battle between those who favour security, and those who favour openness, in which will be impossible to strike the right balance at all times. What's important is to keep the tension so that neither security prevents free thought, while allowing spooks to monitor some bad-guys. Libertarians on Twitter, most of whom have absolutely nothing to do with the intelligence agencies, are instinctively outraged about attacks on privacy by state agencies and kick up a knee-jerk fuss without thinking the issue through. As the overlap between Twitter libertarians and Geeks is almost total, internet freedom is felt very personally. Most people (and we live in a democracy) are more outraged when the spooks whom we pay to keep us safe, fail at their task.

It's too easy as a libertarian to start from a position of "all state action is wrong" then work from there. It's possible to make the intellectual arguments about how wicked the intelligence agencies are or even deny their utility. Of course they're there to defend the Government and the State. Only an extremist could think this somehow wrong. Because the one part of the British state which appears to be doing its job is the intelligence agencies who are actually protecting ordinary people. It won't be the politicians getting blown up on buses. In crying foul when intelligence agencies are doing what we pay them to do, you leave the non-aligned with the impression that Libertarianism is rather childish, and has nothing to say about the problems facing the world today, preferring to imagine a perfect state-free utopia. But Libertarianism is not anarchism. The state has the right to defend itself, and the majority law-abiding population, from those who would seek to use violence and subversion, rather than democracy, to achieve political ends.

Don't believe we've got the balance right? How many countries would let parties which openly call for the break-up of the country to sit in the legislature? That's allowed basically in Western Europe and the Anglosphere. If you're prepared to use democratic means (which means persuading voters) you're legitimate, more or less whatever you want to say.

Clearly, the intelligence agencies have foiled all but a handful of big attacks on our society, and they have done so by quietly watching the enablers and inciters. It seems probable had 'the not-employed-as-plumbers' Adebolajo and Adebowale gone into a hardware shop and bought a load of pipes and chemicals, they'd have been lifted for preparing a bomb. The fact these two were known to the intelligence agencies at the time of the Woolwich attack at all means MI5 is doing something right. The fact they weren't lifted suggests the agencies have a mind on civil liberties. No intelligence agency can be wise to every threat, or use perfect judgement and most people are realistic enough to see that.

If the PRISM data is held, to enable people already of interest to be looked into more closely (and social networks here are vital) then this is understandable, and frankly despite protestations to the contrary, I expect the NSA to be able to do this to US citizens too. This is going to happen anyway, but I'd rather it be in a legal grey area as it is now, which will persuade the spooks to not 'take the piss'. During the cold war, Left-wing organisations and trades unions were often accused of being in league with the enemy - the Soviet Union. Most were not, and some like the Communist Party of Great Britain were openly sympathetic to Moscow. MI5 had files on Labour movement figures, many of whom ended up in Government.

Before mass communication, it was easy. You tapped telephone lines, steamed open letters and broke the codes of people you thought might be a wrong 'un. Laws enabling agencies to do this, in extremis, were enacted. Nowadays it's a bit harder. The sheer volume of electronic communications leads to agencies to data mine using algorithms to look for data in which they might be interested. The problem is that most extremists are, by nature, thick and incompetent. They're easy to find by traditional means. The intelligent ones who're actually capable of organising the big atrocities are harder to pin down. Simple encryption will defeat data-mining of PRISM data. No encryption is perfect, but it requires resources that will only be deployed if the agencies are already looking at you. It's the network analysis from the thick and incompetent foot-soldiers and human bombs which leads to the clever, effective terrorists.

To me, the Cold War 'Spycatcher' stuff on Labour figures is reassuring. MI5 had a look, found nothing of interest and ignored them. People who had been of interest for a bit were not prevented from seeking high office. Preventing politicians of one side from entering office would have led to scandal of epic proportions. The very legal grey area the in which the spooks operate appears to have been a protection far better than any law.

Now, with all intelligence agency behaviour to be subject to laws, laws will be drafted to allow the Government to monitor communications. Given this legal top-cover, the Agencies will do so with alacrity. The volume of data stored, and the freedom with which it will be used, will rise exponentially. Any competent plotters will regard the Internet as fundamentally insecure, and will find other ways to communicate thus rendering them invisible. Furthermore, there's the opportunity cost: spooks will spend all their time checking out people who tweet they're going to Blow the Airport sky-high, and missing the next competent killer as a result.

The spooks belong in the shadows, collecting information, but being careful what they do with it, lest anyone find out how. William Hague said "we've nothing to fear from GCHQ", and I agree with him. But the argument of Labour home secretaries that "if you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear" (which I've long thought should be criminalised, punishable by 42-days in prison) does not follow. Data, in the volumes it's generated these days, can be mined to create an entirely false picture of a person. A number of angry tweets will be used to demonstrate in court a violent personality disorder. An essay which in context is obviously dripping with irony, will be used at face-value out of context to demonstrate the opposite of what's meant. (*innocent face*). Too much data means the wood will not be seen for the trees, as innocent people fall under suspicion.

The East-German Stasi used to monitor all and sundry, keeping detailed records of pretty ordinary lives. To what end? They failed to spot the imminent collapse of the regime because they were too busy recording the conversations of playwrights. Couldn't happen here? Look at the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA): it was supposed to bring what was already happening under regulatory oversight. What it allowed was local councils to see who was sleeping where, to prevent benefit fraud. The law supposedly designed to protect the British people caused the (presumably) unintended consequence of council bin-snooping and so extended the power of the state.

Britain is not becoming like China where free expression of political thought is illegal. Nor has the British government over-reacted to a now-minuscule terrorist threat, like the Americans have since 9/11, and thrown all oversight of their intelligence agencies out of the window, with criticism of the Government agencies deemed unpatriotic. There is a judgement to be made. So long as the spooks have at least as much to fear as a result of getting it wrong, then it's probably right to say 'if you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear' in this instance (...42 days in gaol? I'll go quietly, yer-'onner). The right people: people who want to blow themselves up on public transport, are subject to surveillance, and no-one should think this is wrong. It's what we pay intelligence agencies to do. There have been remarkably few stories of people incorrectly so targeted, unlike the bin snoopers brought about by RIPA.

If PRISM became wholly and undeniably legal, then the risks the spooks run by using its data would fall, and the temptation to abuse it would therefore rise. So. Let's not give 'em the temptation. The Data and Communications Bill in particular would force exactly the sort of network data contained in Prism to be stored, but thankfully it has been killed off by the Liberal Democrats and some Tories. (You see why I like the coalition? The sillier instincts of both parties are tempered) This bill would have given the intelligence agencies powers they neither should have, nor need to foil the current threat of Islamist extremist terrorism.

However the spooks are doing it now, semi-legally or not, it's working well. So it doesn't need fixing.

If you're debating with a certain type of lefty, you might get told to "Check Your Privilege". This confusing order means that if, for example you're debating the welfare state, if you're securely employed and don't know what it's like to live on benefits, your opinion is irrelevant. It's effectively saying "you're borgeouis, shut up". Dan Hodges dug deeper for the Telegraph.

Apparently the phrase “check your privilege” first originated on the social justice blog Shrub.com, (no, I’ve no idea what a social justice blog is either). Shrub was set up by Andrea Rubenstein...

'CYP' can be frustrating. But this post by Pete Spence argues some of these ideas could be an important part of libertarian thought, if Libertarianism is not to be an intellectual ghetto for rich, white, smug men with good jobs who don't want to pay tax.

The concept of Checking Your Privilege asks you to ask yourself “is life different for other people?” and asks you to listen to those who have different experiences. It’s a sharing of information. e.g. If you are not considered overweight, you may not be aware of the extent to which those considered overweight are harassed. You may not be as acutely aware of the overrepresentation in TV and advertising of people considered to have a “normal” body type.

Intersectionality asks you to remember that individuals are affected by several different things at once. e.g. Someone considered overweight may also be considered successful, and have a high income and good education. They are relatively privileged when compared with someone considered overweight who is also unemployed.

Of course we all ignore this when debating, and descend into shorthand. The key is to always blame the system, for example when discussing benefits and unemployment, not the people, who're mostly just responding to incentives. A rule I'm pretty good, though not perfect at adhering to.

These three concepts are all inherently individualist ones. They ask you only to remember that information asymmetries exist. People can not be treated homogenously, and suffer particular issues that are individual to them. We should act accordingly.

Of course when a rabid feminist tells you to "check your privilege", they're trying to shut debate down, not asking you to think about the other's condition. It's a form of 'ad-hominem', saying your argument is wrong because it's a rich, white guy making it.

A consistent approach requires libertarians not just to be critical of state power, but also of overbearing corporate power and the power of societal expectations and shame. The ideas of privilege, checking of privilege, and intersectionality help us to do this. The complexity of our world is a practical reality, and a problem for centralised approaches, not a call for them. 

And here the libertarianish twittersphere in particular falls down, because it's not clear many people realise how much power large companies wield.  It's too easy to see non-state players as somehow on my team against the state, whereas it's a core role in a night-watchman state to protect people against the interests of rapacious companies for example by enforcing competition law.

Libertarians should not be anarchists, always railing against the state, without considering the proper functions of Government, including economic regulation. Monopolies, state or private serve no-one except the interests of the producer. Extremism, morally blaming weaker members of society for their plight or acting as an apologist for Companies is not going to help the central idea of libertarianism spread.

That is social liberalism, and economic liberalism can go together, ideas which appears to be the future of British politics. Let's not scare potential supporters off by not considering why some people might be scared by the concept of freedom from state interference.

You can rebuild an Army from a small core. You can rebuild a Navy and Air Force. Benefits cuts have positive effects on incentives, as well as the more obvious negative effects. But the science budgets should be maintained. It's short-sighted to cut an area where Britain retains a comparative advantage, and one where private industry and charity cannot mobilise the resources neccessary.

The UK still has world-class universities, and punches well above its weight in pure science. Many of our leading companies have developed around these - Silicone fen in Cambridge for example where ARM develops the chips that power Apple and others.

Above all, it's the long tradition of medical research, where state spending complements the tendency of the Pharmaceutical industry to seek solutions to the shrinking problems of Rich people, where state spending can have positive effects, not just for the British economy but for the good of the whole of mankind.

I'm not the kind of Libertarian who thinks all state spending is wasted. There are things the state can do where business and charity is limited. Much of the state support for science supports the globally important work of medical charities.This money is emphatically NOT wasted.

That the Murderer of little April Jones is evil is on record. The Judge said so. Mark Bridger will spend the rest of his life in gaol and rightly so, joining a small group of people who've committed terrible sexual crimes against children who will never be released.

There is a lot of talk in the press about what motivated him to do this terrible thing. Of course a man with a sexual interest in children, child rape and murder is going to seek out images depicting such acts. The press then go on to blame "the Internet" and call for Google to redouble efforts to block such images, in an almost perfect demonstration of the post-hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. Children were raped and murdered before the Internet. The question is whether such images lead people who would not have otherwise raped and killed children to do so. Is it not just as likely that viewing porn acts as a substitute for the deed?

Does online pornography lead to more child rape and murder? This can be teased out in the numbers, though none of these studies where looking specifically at sex-crimes involving children.

The evidence is clear for all other forms of sexual crime - pornography acts as a substitute, not a complement  for sexual activity.  Availability of online pornography is correlated with lower incidences of rape and other sexual crimes. This has been found in Denmark, Japan and the Czech Republic. It also seems that the USA & Germany saw similar data supporting the hypothesis that sexual violence falls as online pornography becomes more available due to Broadband roll-out. (Google scholar is your friend when conducting this sort of research). The STRONGEST inverse correlations appear to be with sexual violence against children. That is child abuse fell when online pornography became available.

The fact that "porn addiction" has been blamed for killing people's sex-lives in 'meat-space' rather supports this view.

Obviously pornography involving minors is evidence of a real crime - the abuse of minors. That needs to be stamped down on. And more strength to the arm of the law in seeking the perpetrators out. But if it's clear, and it appears to be, access to virtual sex is a substitute for the real thing, then current laws banning simulated material appear to be misplaced. CGI is that good these days, lives might be saved by allowing production of simulated violent pornography. A great deal more research is needed before I will come down firmly on one side of that debate.

It maybe for example, with the current strong laws surrounding the viewing of such material, only those predisposed may seek it out. Perhaps people will be sucked into viewing ever more extreme material were it freely available, and this would encourage offending behaviour in those not already predisposed.

Whatever happens, it's certainly not entirely Google's problem. Google simply cannot ban search phrases, or you'd ban perfectly reasonable searches like those I put into Google scholar to research this article. Porn and especially that involving minors is already filtered, by the Internet Watch Foundation and in the UK Canada and soon Australia, Cleanfeed. Even so, capturing everything illicit is going to be impossible. The Internet is too vast, and too encrypted to police.

Google’s search index is estimated to contain details of around 44-45 billion web pages, although that will include a lot of historical data relating to pages that have since fallen down the Internet memory hole. By way of comparison, Microsoft’s Bing search engine is estimated to have indexed around 13.5 billion web pages and Yahoo’s index is currently estimated to contain around 10.5 billion web pages. It’s therefore estimated that the current size of the ‘Indexed web’ – i.e. websites/pages than can be located using a search engine – is somewhere around 15 billion ‘live’ webpages, but this is still just a fraction of the total number of web pages out there and doesn’t include websites that don’t allow themselves to be indexed or which restrict the ability of search engines to index their content, one of the biggest of which Facebook.

As far as registered domain names are concerned, again there are no clear or accurate global figures but to give you some idea of scale, on the 30th May 2013, there were 145,498,970 domains registered for just the five most popular generic top level domains ( ‘.com’, ‘.net’, ‘.org’, ‘.biz’, ‘.info’) and the most popular Country code TLD (‘.us’) and on that same day 143,800 new domains were registered and 112,589 existing domains were deleted, giving a net gain of 31,211 domains, and 189,302 domains were transferred.

Unity Concludes...

… anyone you see demanding that Google should be doing more to block child porn hasn’t got the first fucking clue what they’re talking about.

The problem is one of attribution bias. Child murders are thankfully rare, and therefore notable. People remember them. There's also the seeking of blame - the idea that monsters exist is uncomfortable. It is comforting that in campaigning against online pornography, you're helping to prevent the same happening to another little girl. The reality, that you're probably wasting your time, is depressing. People develop paraphilias, and sometimes these obsessions lead to terrible crimes. They did before the Internet. But the Internet appears to be preventing some of these people acting out on their sickening fantasies.

Mark Bridger will rot in gaol. But there may be little girls like April Jones who are alive now because of the depraved images he viewed before he killed her. That is not a comfortable thought, and what to do with it, I don't know. But knee-jerk legislation because 'something must be done' is never the right response.

The problem with the debate on the EU is that one side doesn't care, and the other has worked itself into an irrational frenzy. It's now poisoning the Tory party again, whose inability to address this issue rationally (though the press presenting any Tory mentioning 'yurp in the context of 'splits' doesn't help...) leaves the serious possibility of Prime-Minister Miliband. This and the return to power of Brownian lickspittle, Ed Balls is a much more clear and present threat to the UK than anything the EU might throw at us. The eurosceptic movement has been proven comprehensively right over the Euro. The UK dodged that bullet thanks to the likes of John Redwood and, it pains me to say, Gordon Brown. Now the sillier Eurosceptics are making demands that are simply impossible to meet.

What do the Eurosceptics want? Many seem to want an immediate, unilateral withdrawal, by repealing the Single European Act. To imagine this policy is without costs is ludicrous, not least for the million or so British citizens living outside Britain in the EU. Business would suddenly lose free access to the single market, and while access would almost certainly be granted along Norwegian or Swiss lines, it's hard to see the UK's negotiating position improved by such drastic action. It will also take time, probably years to sort out. In taking this drastic action, the UK would STILL be subject to the ECHR, over which UKIPpers work themselves into a tizzy. The European Court of Human Rights, set up by British and American lawyers after World War II, is not an EU institution, and it's convention has been incorporated into British law.

Yes, yes, yes. I want a bill of rights too, but this has little to do with the EU.

So, some sort of negotiated partial withdrawal, where the UK retains access to the Single Market, but withdraws from much of the decision-making process. As a net contributor, with a trade-deficit, a declared nuclear power, the 6-8th largest economy in the world, permanent member of the UN security council and one of only 3 countries able to deploy an expeditionary brigade, the UK will be able to negotiate generous terms for access to the single market. But the City, Britain's largest foreign currency earner, would lose out as much EU business would drift to Paris and Frankfurt. True, the city would be slightly freer to operate world-wide, but it would be slightly less attractive to potential partners. This is not bonkers, but is a large leap into the unknown, and has risks as well as benefits. We will lose whatever influence we have over the EU.

The sillier end of UKIP will counter "but we have no influence over the EU anyway". This is bollocks. The EU is as free-trade as it is because Britain and Germany together can gang up on France, rather like Waterloo. The idea that Britain has no influence in the EU is risible. The UKIPpers tend to forget that most of the UK doesn't agree with them, let alone Europe. Enlargement was a British desire, as is the single market. France much prefers protectionism. The EU negotiates strongly in favour of Global free-trade. It's hard to imagine that without British participation. The EU is a force for good, especially in South-Eastern Europe, where the carrot of EU membership is keeping nations once totalitarian hell-holes on the path to freedom and the Rule of Law. Britain has played a leading role in this. Of course the EU has costs: direct ones like fees and indirect ones like some silly and costly regulation. The cost/benefit analysis is, if you're being sensible, pretty close. It's not mad to want to leave, and I vacillate. I suspect I'll vote out, but let's see what Cameron comes up with first, eh?

The old rallying cry of the Eurosceptic movement was 'single market or quit'. The Eurozone is forging ahead with credit-crunch inspired ever-closer banking and fiscal union. This leaves the outs split into to camps: still want to join (really?) and never will join. The Euro has been shown to be a massive risk for small countries, and in truth, many EU members will never join. Britain as by far the largest of the 'outs' will be the leader. EU leaders are likely to give a fair amount of ground to Cameron in negotiation, as it's clear that unless they do, Britain will leave. They are getting what they want: ever closer union. It will cost them nothing to grant Britain a series of opt-outs while they're busy shoring up the foundations of their group. It seems to me that the UK may get from Europe what we've always wanted. To surrender our participation in the EU's decision-making while we negotiate it strikes me as idiotic.

The referendum is a distraction, and seen as such by the Electorate, to solving the immediate problems of the UK. Cameron has granted a referendum, legislated for in this parliament. He could do no more while in coalition with the Liberal Democrats. However having granted the wish that the dirty foreigners be pelted with turds, the sillier end of the Eurosceptic movement are now declaring Cameron to be a traitorous Europhile because he is not submitting to their (new) demand to kick the dirty foreigners in the nuts too.

Cameron's strategy is right. The Eurosceptics are not serving their country any more, now they've secured a referendum from one of the Main parties. To this end, UKIP sniggering that "Cameron can't win, therefore the promise is meaningless" is just another way of saying that UKIP are the main obstacle to their main declared end.

The Eurosceptic dog is now chasing its tail. If it's not careful, Prime Minister Miliband will ensure it's taken to the back garden and quietly drowned in 2015. If you want 'out', get behind the only referendum you'll ever be offered.

It's a  futile pass-time, but I like coming up with definitions of 'left-wing' and 'right wing'. For most people it's like the difference between pornography and art in that "I'll know it when I see it" but it's fun to deconstruct the mindset of the two tribes of politics.

By 'The Right' I am referring to that spectrum of opinion which rebels over Gay Marriage and the EU and forms the Right of the Tory party and the Ex-Tory UKIP voters.

The Tory party is rather united over Europe: There are those who're suspicious of the edifice, but want, on balance to remain in, and those who favour withdrawal on our terms. Everyone's in favour of a referendum, after a re-negotiation. Afterall, re-negotiate or withdraw was the rallying cry of the Tory rebels.

"But cast-Iron Dave reneged last time" The promise was made in the context of a pre-ratification election. And you know it.

"I don't trust Cameron, he's a Europhile" See answer above. He's the most Eurosceptic PM the country's ever had.

"But he doesn't want to leave" No, and most people think the issue is pretty finely balanced. Whether we're in or not, the EU is our nearest, and biggest neighbour. You can be sceptical about the EU project without being obsessed by the idea that leaving the EU is the answer to all the UK's problems.

"He's not right-wing. There are no cuts" This is a simple lie. Even as the economy flat-lines Government spending has been falling in real terms. Headcount has been falling. If (and when) the growth comes the deficit will fall faster than anticipated from here. The left underestimate the necessity for cuts. The right underestimate how hard they are to put into effect. The truth is the coaltion's cutting far faster than Thatcher ever did.

"Lib-Lab-Con, they're all the same". Um No. The Rhetoric may be the same, but the policies are very different.

"I'm not homophobic, but why did Dave use so much political capital over Gay marriage?" Why did you make him use so much political capital over Gay Marriage. You may not be Homophobic, but you're doing a damn good job of pretending to be. I simply don't understand why the issue of Gay Marriage has split the Tory party assunder more completely than Europe, over which the Tory tribe is broadly united. WHY DO YOU CARE?

"Cameron can't win". Yes, he can. Thatcher was a lot further behind in the polls than Cameron is now at the equivalent point before the 1983 election. She too faced a useless Labour leader on the left of his party.

"But Cameron is no Thatcher". No, the Coalition's more radical (but with less radical rhetoric) than Thatcher's first term.

The question is "what more do the Right want from Cameron?"