Alberto Costa has sent a letter to postal voters in Angus, in which he writes:

Remember, a vote for the SNP or the Lib Dems will only risk another five years of Labour or a hung Parliament.

Of course, the only thing that would make another five years of Labour more likely in Angus, is a vote for Labour candidate Kevin Hutchens. But Alberto does not mention that, as his intention is clearly to spread Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) about voting for the SNP or the Lib Dems.

Mentioning the Lib Dems as well as the SNP, but not Labour, clearly shows that Alberto knows that Angus is now a three way battle.

What is particularly worrying, is the sense of entitlement Alberto Costa displays in his letter to Angus residents. There is an assumption that the Tories have a right to power and that Angus residents have a responsibility to vote for him:

If we really want change, we all need to play our role and that means electing a new Conservative MP for Angus.

The reality is that if they want real change, then Angus residents have the opportunity to vote for the Liberal Democrats who can deliver it for them.

Alberto Costa, Angus, Conservative, Tory

Montrose Academy held a mock election on Friday, run magnificently by Ian Watt. It was great to see Sean Massie, the Liberal Democrat candidate win the mock election. Congratulation to Sean and his class who ran an excellent campaign. I’ve had to ask Sean for a copy of his stump speech, as it included some key points I hope to use.

I really appreciated being invited to attend a hustings after the vote, between the Angus parliamentary candidates. During the discussion, Angus SNP candidate, Mike Weir admitted that there are three parties whose candidate could be elected, saying:

Whoever gets elected whether it is the SNP, the Tories or the Lib Dems,…

Conspicuously absent was any mention of the Labour candidate, Kevin Hutchens. Clearly, Mike has recognised that people in Angus are looking at all the main options available to them.

The national campaign shows this will not be just a once in a lifetime election. It will be a unique opportunity to sweep away the two old parties’ grip on power. They have and will do anything to stop things really changing.

It is no longer a two horse race nationally, nor is it here in Angus. Residents do not have to pick the least worst option.

When choosing between myself, Mike Weir and Alberto Costa, Angus residents now realise that by voting for the Scottish Liberal Democrats, by voting for me, Sanjay Samani, their vote will count and their voice will be heard.

2010, Alberto Costa, Angus, General Election, Mike Weir, SNP, Tory

During this recession, many people across Angus will be feeling the pinch, working fewer hours or with reduced pay, whilst still having to meet rising food and petrol costs. With huge bonuses for bankers and tax dodging millionaires donating to political parties, most voters must be wondering whether politicians will deal with this unfairness.

The Liberal Democrats have long campaigned for a fairer tax system. We promise that if you earn less than £10,000 you will pay nothing, zero, £0 in income tax. If you earn more that that, you will pay £705 less.

So if you earn, say £8,000, you will pay no income tax, saving you £305 per year, an extra £25 per month. If you earn, £17,000, you will save £705. That’s almost £59 per month extra in your pay packet, to help you pay for your shopping, put towards your holiday or buy that special treat for your kids.

We will pay for this by cutting special tax breaks that only the wealthiest can use.

Pensioners will save £100 a year, which combined with relinking pensions with earnings, will help the most vulnerable in our society.

We will invest £3.1bn to create 100,000 green jobs, including £400m to refurbish harbours to manufacture offshore wind turbines. As your MP, I would fight for that investment to come to Montrose, creating jobs across all of Angus. We will pay young people on apprenticeships, so small companies can take them on.

That’s fairness for you, but what about the way MPs have behaved with our money?

The ugly SNP / Tory expenses and donations spat in Angus makes clear that we need a complete overhaul of our political systems. Labour and the Tories propose a tweak here and there, but after 20 years of scandal after scandal, it is clear we need genuine democracy.

The Liberal Democrats would cap donations and limit spending by political parties and introduce independent audits of expenses. We would create a register of political lobbying, a Lib Dem proposal that Mike Weir voted against in 2006. Crucially, you would have the right to sack corrupt MPs.

The UK needs a written constitution that sets out exactly what MPs can and cannot do and defines the roles of judges, ministers, the Head of State, parliament and national assemblies.

We would introduce a fairer, proportional voting system so your voice is heard. Mike Weir was elected with just 1 out of every 5 of the possible votes. A full 2/3rds of voters, voted against him. Surely Angus deserves an MP with a better mandate than that?

During this General Election in Angus, the Liberal Democrats are the only party that will bring genuine fairness back to our economy and our politics.

2010, Angus, Fairness, General Election

I was very lucky on Sunday to be witness to a great exercise in democracy. Lib Dem conference delegates, myself included, overwhelming supported an emergency motion clearly outlining their opposition to the Government’s draconian, authoritarian, Digital Economy Bill. In doing so, they effectively admonished the party’s leadership in the House of Lords, who had supported parts of the bill and introduced amendments that amounted to censorship of the internet. It also prompted MPs in the House of Commons to do what they could, in the limited time remaining in this parliament, to ensure that the ill judged bill does not pass into law.

Living 2 miles outside of Angus, I wrote to my MP, Peter Wishart, SNP. Given that the SNP have stood shoulder to shoulder with the Liberal Democrats on issues of authoritarianism and the environment, and have widely pilfered our policies, such as Local Income Tax, in other areas, I was completely shocked by the response, which is overwhelmingly in favour of the Digital Economy Bill. (See full text of response by clicking here)

I will let the leaders of the campaign against this bill explain in detail why the bill is such a deeply flawed piece of legislation and tackle Pete Wishart’s general arguments. Namely, Bridget Fox, the Open Rights Group and Lib Dems Save The Net Facebook Group.

I am no fan of illegal file sharing, and unlike many of my counterparts, support ISPs use of “traffic shaping” to ensure other users are not impacted.

But the provisions of the Digital Economy Bill are a draconian solution to the problem, lacking the necessary oversight and turning many of the principles of our legal system on their head.

As Mr Wishart says in his email:

The bill simply intends to tackle this, already illegal, activity by issuing notices to persistent offenders and ask them politely to stop. If, after several notifications, there is no improvement in behaviour, technical measures such as throttling band width, or temporary suspension of the internet may be considered as a last resort.

In other words, the burden of proof of illegal activity will shift to the accused, rather than the accuser, and receivers of these notifications will be treated as guilty until proven innocent.

He continues:

I am absolutely certain that responsible businesses and administrators of shared accounts will want to do everything possible to ensure that illegal activity is not conducted from their internet accounts.

Except that doing so is pretty much technically infeasible, particularly for anyone running a hotspot or open access network at hotels, cafés, restaurants and airports.

One particularly bizarre argument in his email demonstrates the SNP’s complete lack of understanding of the underlying issues with the Digital Economy Bill:

It should also come as no surprise that large powerful internet service providers oppose these measures, as some of their business comes from the illegal sharing of music, films and TV programmes. They have been encouraged to engage in helping tackle on-line piracy, but other than positive contributions from companies like Sky and Virgin, none of the ISPs you mention have shown any interest in tackling this abuse and have actively campaigned against any measure that may see artists and creators properly rewarded.

This demonstrates that the SNP do not understand the issue at all. Not one single ISP makes a single penny from illegal file sharing. Surely that is the precise point of illegal file sharing, no-one makes any money from it!

Instead illegal file sharing soaks up precious bandwidth provided by ISP’s, hampering the performance of their other users. ISPs have responded to this by throttling the performance of heavy users during peak times. This demonstrates that there is little need for this bill to protect other users on shared internet connections.

Why then are ISPs opposed? Because the bill demands that become enforcement officers for a law that they know is technically flawed.

Illegal file sharing is a genuine issue and I have no sympathy for illegal file sharers. The solution is however to create an environment where artists are able to innovate business models that make best use of modern technology to get rewards from their work.

Companies like Sky and Virgin, along with the BPI support this bill, as major content rights holders, their interest is in their profitability, which is not necessarily what is best for their internet customers or for artists and content creators.

By aligning themselves so closely with the Digital Economy Bill, the SNP have failed to understand all the issues involved.

Please join me by writing to you MP to ensure a debate on the motion in the House of Commons, via 38 Degrees.

#debill, ACTA, Censorship, File Sharing, Internet, Peter Wishart, SNP, Technology, Three Strikes

A few days after the Haiti earthquake, aid supplies began to arrive at the Port-au-Prince airport. Reports emerged that supplies were not being distributed amongst concerns over security, with UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon calling for extra troops to be sent to the country. Reports also emerged of looting and lawlessness amongst the population and major concerns were raised about the ability to distribute food in those circumstances.

However, an alternative view was taken by Andy Kershaw, in The Independent, where he wrote an excellent article “Stop treating these people like savages”.

It soon became clear that priorities had become warped in the country, when a 15 year old girl was shot dead through the head for stealing pictures.

The BBC, whose Matt Frei had initially reported major security fears, drawing criticism, then published its own piece “Misguided fears test Haitians’ patience”. It was clear that the Haitian population were getting desperate, and a major misunderstanding was brewing, with potentially disastrous consequences.

I was particularly frustrated to read this quote from one charity worker, in another article on the BBC New website, “What is delaying Haiti’s aid?”

John O’Shea of Irish charity Goal told the Guardian newspaper he could not allow aid workers to move into Haiti from the Dominican Republican because he had “no guarantee that the people driving them are not going to be macheted to death on the way down”.

I found this comment extremely frustrating. On the one hand you have observers on the ground saying that the population was generally calm and dignified, but understandably getting impatient that aid wasn’t getting through. On the other you have an aid worker in another country worried that he was going to be “macheted to death”. The two positions seemed at fairly opposite extremes. I felt that John O’Shea’s attitude was grossly unfair and did a great disservice to the people of Haiti, and his choice of the words “macheted to death” hugely overplayed the likely risks aid workers faced.

From the same article on the BBC News website was the comment :

“If we distribute food all at once, some people will take more then they need and there is the risk of them selling food items, rather than it reaching the people that need it.”

So the response was to deny aid to all starving Haitians to prevent some people profiting from it. If food was being sold, at least it is getting through to hungry people. The concerns over looting got so heated that Haitian police employed a shoot-to-kill policy for a 15 year old girl stealing paintings. These people were desperate for food after 4 or 5 days with no relief. To me, it felt as if property rights were more important than feeding starving people.

I have seen no reports of security issues once aid was distributed, and just a day after John O’Shea’s “machete” quote, Haitians were happily receiving aid.

To me it demonstrates a long held concern I have about our attitudes towards developing nations. The term “Developing Nation” only refers to its economic status. Not the population’s morality, education, scientific understanding, culture or literature. There is no reason to suppose that in the event of such a disaster the population would descend into base violence, or that law and order would break down. And reports indicated quite the opposite. As Andy Kershaw said, we need to “Stop treating these people like savages”.

Aid, Development, Foreign Affairs, International