Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris, with parliamentary colleagues, at an event in support of the Human Fertility and Embryology Bill, which will protect and extend the right of scientists to perform crucial stem-cell research.
At the Social Market Foundation on Wednesday, Liberal Democrat Leadership Candidate Nick Clegg began a speech by outlining the technological context of 21st Century politics. It is a good approximation of my own view. He said:
… the innovations and technological advances that are already shaping and defining the 21st century – Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube – are about something very different: they are about creating the tools that will enable people to deliver services to each other.
One interesting quirk of the new Liberal Conspiracy site (at least, for me) is the comments policy.
We believe in free speech but not your right to abuse our space.
In the past few years, I have scrolled through countless online debates about the nature of free-speech versus reasoned debate. I have read innumberable criticisms of Blogistan as a place of visceral name-calling. I think the policy arrived at reads like a conclusion, or at least, a summing up, of all those online debates. To one who is new to online discourse, it might seem surprising. But I am sure that those who have been part of the blog hive mind for a while, would have found themselves nodding, knowingly. Its unapologetic, and pre-emptive tone seems to be very much “of” its time, and the Internet.
I have heard it twice in seven days. Twice, at two very interesting events, run by two very respectable think-tanks: Its those dreaded Daily Mail readers who are to blame.
In both cases, that journal was being used as a convenient short-hand - to signify something right-wing, reactionary, and irrational. The implication is that there are all these subscribers out there who are somehow intractable. A block of voters who can be persuaded of nothing.
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