Politics Show Sunday 24th September

This was quite interesting for me this week. The second half of the show focusing on local politics came to our area to look at the Vale of White Horse, its Lib Dem Council implementing 'Greener and fairer taxes'.

That'll be my Council then that's been been charging to take people's grass cuttings away for the last few years, but chucking them straight into landfill. Only recently have they moved to a slightly better scheme with a wheelie bin for green waste. The problem ? The £40 charge; hardly encouraging people to go green is it?

Peter Henley interviewed LD Councillor Paul Bizzell, reference his idea for a land value tax. His mate the local LD MP Evan Harris, is another re-distributive evangelist. Whilst pandering to the politics of envy, it will also encourage development of increasingly denser housing, indeed that's the point as Cllr Bizzell was keen to point out.

He clearly hasn't learnt the lesson of Grove, the village in the Vale destined to be transformed by the large highly dense housing estate the LDs have given the go ahead for. Support for a smaller less dense alternate scheme was opposed by the Council and supported by the public. Controversy over the main housing scheme cost them Grove Councillors in 2003.

People don't live in this area to get packed into settlements and implicit LD support for garden grabbing is starting to become unpopular too.

Question Time

On the Question Time just gone, whilst many people as usual were happy to lay into Politicians as a generic minority group bearing characteristics of liars cheats etc, one lady wasn't.

The lady in question was in the audience and was prepared to say the majority of politicians are working voluntarily and putting a lot of effort for very little thanks and deserve a little better than constant villification.

Good for her.

My own experience of involvement with politics, albeit it at a local level for the most part is a feeling of dedicated sincere involvement. There's not many bad people in politics, but there are plenty of bad ideas. And I suspect that applies across all parties, I wish people could recognise politicians for what they are; fallible human beings, and get more involved themselves.