Lib Dems, Earthquakes and Promiscuous Women

One of the first things I read this morning was this tweet from Jo Swinson linking to this article in which a senior Iranian cleric pins the blame for earthquakes fairly and squarely on women dressing immodestly. This is what he said:

"Many women who do not dress modestly lead young men astray and spread adultery in society which increases earthquakes"

So, we have a major power player talking absolute rubbish to try to ensure that the forces of change don't take hold. It all goes to show why education is so important ensuring kids grow up with the skills to discern when people in power are talking rubbish. To use the earthquakes the area is particularly prone to and which have killed many thousands of people as a threat to manipulate people's behaviour and repress women is an act of cruel cynicism.

You could look at the Daily Mail's rather desperate attempt to attack the Liberal Democrats in the same light as the Iranian Cleric's. The old forces of power tryig to stamp out reform and progress. It's not a pretty sight. Today we have a 2 page spread which is laughable in many ways but comparing Vince Cable to Puff the Magic Dragon is bizarre even by its standards. They go on to attack Nick for his expenses, publishing a picture of his London home in a paragraph about his constituency home. Bear in mind as well that when Nick sells his home in Sheffield, the taxpayer will get every single penny of the profit because he doesn't believe that MPs should be in the propery game at taxpayers' expense. Also bear in mind that it was the Tories and Labour together who blocked expenses reform and openness which we'd been arguing for for a long time.

If the Liberal Democrats come to power, there will be big changes. Taxes will be fairer, with 4 million low earners being taken out of tax completely and we won't have the situation that Nick Clegg regularly mentions, that a rich city banker pay less tax on his millions than his cleaner does on her minimum wage. Politics will be fairer - with a fair voting system that will bring about Governments that the majority of people have a say in electing and give the voter maximum choice about who should be their MP. The ecoonomy will get the infrastructure boost it desperately needs with investment in green technology providing sustainable jobs geared at the ambitious target of making us carbon neutral in 40 years. Ambitious, yes, but look where we were 40 years ago when we didn't have automatic washing machines or home computers or video recorders.

The Liberal Democrats have offered a substantial and positive programme for Government while the others use fear of their opponents as a reason to vote for them.

So while we have Quentin Letts and the full force of the powers that be at the Daily Mail attacking us to try to stoke up the chances of their Tory pals but let's have a look at who actually think that our policies have some merit: the International Monetary Fund and retired generals.

I'd much rather take the word of experts in the field than of Quentin Letts and the Daily Fail on anything.